RogerCorman

What a shame! This movie has a special place in my heart. You see, it was shot not far from Austin, my base of operations. There's an 'amusement park', if you want to call it that. I visited the place in high school. It was called Aquarena Springs. As I recall, its primary attractions were gondolas and a swimming pig. Yes, you read that right - a swimming pig. This pig swam alongside a variety of co-ed mermaids. It was indeed surreal, but not nearly as cool as it sounds. And it was here that Corman unleashed his aquatic carnivores.

The film, as you may recall, involves the opening of a water park, a la Jaws 3-D, which is rudely interrupted by giant, flesh-eating piranhas. And it has a crazy mountain man, played by Bradford Dillman. Watch this film and try not to fall in love with the lunatic hillbilly. He's the main character and he's completely unhinged! When he's not fighting off meat-eating fish indigenous to the Amazon, he's probably mailing explosive packages to government buildings. There's also a nifty bit of stop motion animation when he discovers the secret lab. Yes, Piranha is filled with all manner of glorious, b-movie tropes.

Recently, our own Brad McHargue reported that the Blu Ray release of this fine piece of cinema was due out in April. Sadly, Shout! Factory is now saying that they won't be blessing us with this high-def carnage until August 3rd. I imagine this has more than a little to do with the hopscotch that the Alexandre Aja-driven sequel/remake has been subjected to.

Hi-Def Digest has the skinny here.

My friends on the other side of the pond often feel unlucky when theatrical releases for highly anticipated films take their sweet time. But now they can feel lucky about one thing. Dario Argento's classic film, Suspiria, will get a UK Blu-ray release January 18, 2010. This exciting news comes courtesy of Nouveaux Pictures and Cine-Excess, who also recently acquired rights to part of Roger Corman's film catalog. The new high def transfer will also be available on DVD.

Special features on the disc include:

--Audio commentary by leading Dario Argento experts Alan Jones and Kim Newman.

--Fear at 400 Degrees: The Cine-Excess of Suspiria--a documentary featuring director Dario Argento and composer Claudio Simonetti

--Suspiria Perspectives--featuring Claudio Simonetti, Norman J. Warren and Patricia McCormack

No audio/video specifications and region coding is known at this time.

In Suspiria, a young American ballet dancer, Suzy Banyon, arrives at a prestigious European dance academy run by the mysterious Madame Blanc and Miss Tanner. After a series of bizarre occurrences, Suzy eventually discovers that the school is merely a front for something far more sinister. The film is the first in the Three Mothers trilogy and is generally regarded as his best work. Don't cut me for saying that Deep Red fans--for me they're both amazing.

With the Suspiria remake set to start shooting in 2010, I'm hoping someone will release a US Blu-ray version around the same time to remind director David Gordon Green why he should stick to films like George Washington and Pineapple Express.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences deciding to give an honorary Oscar to prolific schlock producer Roger Corman has stocked the fires of debate over at HorrorSquad papa site Cinematical. Eric Snider felt that producing over 550 films was not worthy of an Oscar, regardless of how many future actors, directors, writers and producers got their start in one of Corman's productions. Scott Weinberg, on the other hand, defended the decision, taking up the position that Corman's legacy has irreversibly altered the landscape of filmmaking in the decades since he began making films, which is absolutely worthy of a receiving an Oscar.

Personally, I side with Weinberg on this one, which is why it is a delight to watch the below videos. The event was, unfortunately, not televised (maybe they'll play a clip or two of it at next year's actual Oscars ceremony), but it was still an elegant affair worth checking out. The official Oscars website has put up a few video highlights from the event, which include kind words from Quentin Tarantino and Ron Howard, that are now embedded below thanks to Dread Central. So if you're a fan of Corman's, prepare to smile at a room full of some of Hollywood's most influential players giving him several rounds of applause.

If your business is known exclusively for renting out content other entities have created how do you go about telling customers that you're now going to start creating original content of your own for distribution? Well if you're NetFlix, you hire Roger Corman to produce and Joe Dante to direct a streaming web series called "Splatter" starring Corey Feldman. Bet ya' didn't see that coming.

There are no concrete details about the series yet, only that which Feldman has posted on his personal blog (via Hacking NetFlix) "This will be their first ever live streaming web series. Splatter will be a multi episode web series that will go live on the web on Halloween weekend. My characters name is Jonny Splatter. That is pretty much all I am allowed to say for now."

The very Not-Safe-For-Work teaser he then points to does reveal a bit more, however, as well as maybe satisfying a wish Corey Feldman haters have had for a long time. Judging from its mere 30 seconds, Feldman is going to be playing some kind of eye-liner wearing shaman who either is only in the series to kill himself or, and this is my guess, he can't actually die.

NetFlix hasn't enabled embedding for the clip, which I think is a shame considering the viral approach they're going for, so you're going to have to click over to the official "Splatter" promo page to catch a brief glimpse of Corey Feldman's fearless last moments.

In summer, everyone can see you sweat. Ah, but in space, no one can hear you scream! The latter is, of course, the classic tagline for Ridley Scott's Alien, the coolest, darkest, most horrifying science fiction thriller of all time. (No, I'm not given to hyperbole. Why do you ask?) What better way to cool off during the summer than to contemplate deep space, where the temperatures always hover around absolute zero. In that spirit, Alan Spero at Fearnet has compiled a guide to deep space horror.

As he points out, relatively few films that merge science fiction and horror are actually set in space. He starts off with one of my favorite sci-fi flicks from the 50s, It! The Terror From Beyond Space, which features a monster on a spaceship. This is a good one for kids to watch. Then when they see Alien for the first time, they can say, "Hey, that movie's ripping off It! The Terror From Beyond Space," and you can defend the importance of artistic inspiration and homages to classics.

The guide is a good read, covering the predictable (Alien, Aliens) and the not so predictable, but it leaves out one of my favorites: Forbidden World (AKA Mutant)!

Click the 'Read More' button to watch the exciting, NSFW German-language trailer (complete with gore and breasts)!