WesCraven

The Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas is something of a Mecca for movie geeks. In addition to first-run theatrical fare, the Drafthouse regularly showcases cult, foreign, and classic films. Not only that, but they bring you food and beer during the film; satiating each one of your senses. Every Tuesday for the last four years, Alamo programmer Zack Carlson has hosted a late-night horror movie celebration called Terror Tuesday. If you are a lover of horror, both esoterically brilliantly and obscurely awful, Terror Tuesday was invented just for you. So I decided, since I am already a fixture at the Drafthouse, despite their best efforts to get rid of me, why not provide coverage for this weekly treat? The Terror Tuesday Report will dissect the movie shown as well as provide a barometer for the audience reaction to the film; as many of these films demand to be seen with an audience, this proves a vital component to the evening.

This week's film: The Hills Have Eyes.

According to an LA Times feature from last week chronicling the career of director Wes Craven, the auteur was all squared away to direct Scream 4 beginning this May. I even wrote about it here, and we called the story "confirmed". Turns out it's not entirely accurate--and we can't trust the LA Times.

Craven took to Twitter to set the record straight--sharing the following: "SCREAM 4 - LA Times has it wrong. I'm still in talks but nothing has been finalized."

This doesn't mean Craven won't wind up directing the fourth installment in the franchise--I'd be amazed if he didn't--but it's not a done deal yet. We have no idea what the hold up is, but the cynics amongst us are speculating that this might be another sign that The Weinstein Company is in dire financial straits. If they can't lock up Craven, things could be very bad indeed.

Keep it here for the latest on the Craven-Scream 4 saga.

If you love Fred then you will want to visit The Elm Street Legacy official website to browse a dreamscape of behind-the-scene Nightmare on Elm Street goodies. Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, directed by Daniel Farrands and Andrew Kasch, will be delving deep into the world Wes Craven created in 1984. The film spawned an entire franchise about everyone's favorite bastard son of a hundred maniacs, who we'll be able to see again on April 30 in the Platiun Dunes remake.

From the website:

In this thrilling retrospective, fans will enter the world of Freddy Krueger and A Nightmare On Elm Street like never before: exploring what spurred mastermind Wes Craven to craft the first groundbreaking film; delving deep behind the scenes of the original and all of its sequels; learning how the cast and crew brought their worst nightmares to life; and finally, understanding the impact the series and its mythos have had on modern pop culture and the horror genre.

Narrated by and starring Heather Langenkamp, featuring interviews with the cast and crew spanning every film, and loaded with clips, photographs, storyboards, conceptual art, publicity materials, archival documents and behind-the-scenes footage, Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy is the definitive account of what many have called the best, most frightening and imaginative horror franchise in motion picture history.

You'll probably notice some familiar names behind this project including some of the gang at Dread Central. Heather Langenkamp is also serving as executive-producer for the doc which is expected to be released the same month as the remake. You can visit the Legacy website or follow them on Twitter to keep up with everything. While you're there, follow the Horror Squad as well. We're easy and can be lured into the house at 1428 Elm Street with candy.

With Halloween only a few days away, every non-horror site in the universe is scrambling to come up with their very own list of scary Halloween movies. Entertainment Weekly is no exception, but when they want a horror movie guide, they don't hand it over to some staff writer--instead they call up Wes Craven and convince him to pen the piece for them. Craven's list is up at EW.com as we speak and it's a fascinating read.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Craven's list is that the newest film featured on it is 1973's Don't Look Now--a creepy film from director Nicolas Roeg that starred Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. The rest of the piece is comprised of films from the 1960s and earlier.

The choices aren't particularly controversial (although seeing Antonioni's Blow-Up given a spot was a bit of a surprise, as was the exclusion of Friedkin's The Exorcist--a film I'd have thought might have resonated more with Craven given his strict religious upbringing), but what sets this article apart from the 8 million other Halloween horror movie lists you'll read this week is the amount of depth and critical insight Craven pours into each description.

For example, here's a line from his comments on Murnau's Nosferatu:

"Thin, malformed, huge-eyed; it is like some grotesquely elongated and aged fetus from the womb of Hell, helpless in its need to devour."

Hard to imagine today's younger crop of gore-meisters ever describing something quite that eloquently, isn't it?

By Jessica Barnes

If you were one of the people who thought that another Scream movie was a bad idea (and who could blame you after the train wreck that was Scream 3), there might be a ray of hope...but I have to stress might. Over at Cinema Blend, their 'reliable source' is telling them that the man himself, Wes Craven, will return to direct the latest installment in the horror franchise.

It had been reported that Craven would be involved in some capacity with the film back when the project was first green lit, but you have to wonder what might have convinced him to get behind the camera. Maybe it was all down to nostalgia and he wanted to get together with the old gang, or maybe it was Kevin Williamson's spec script. One thing is for sure, the big empty spot in his schedule since finishing 25/8 probably wouldn't hurt either. (By the way, 25/8 was just re-named My Soul to Take.)

More at Cinematical!

I've gotten behind on my usually-faithful upkeep of a monthly DVD guide, so when Weinberg sent a long a list of all the titles hitting shelves today, I was a little overwhelmed. My wallet has been taking a pounding lately, and this new crop of catalog films newly minted for Blu-ray is certainly not going to let up on the beat down.

Best of the New Releases: Grace, "Fear Itself"
Paul Solet's pregnancy horror film Grace has already been covered here and there on HorrorSquad, but I'll re-cap: I don't like it, Weinberg loves it, and Goss likes it, but doesn't love it. The Blu-ray has been available for the past few weeks exclusively at Best Buy, but today marks the expansion of the both the Grace Blu and DVD flavors to all fine retailers.

The other noteworthy title of the week is the release of NBC's "Masters of Horror" spin-off, "Fear Itself". I haven't seen all of the episodes in the set, mainly because NBC didn't air them all, but it's like all other horror anthology shows. Some episodes work, most don't. I've got a soft-spot for anthologies, though, so this is a rental queue jumper for me.

For your consideration, the following horror titles are out on DVD today:

Last House on the Left
Surprise! Wes Craven's original 1972 shocker doesn't hold up. The most notorious scenes -- a rape in the woods and an attack in a house -- are more disgusting than horrifying nowadays, perhaps a reflection of society's increasing depravity. (Though I don't think anyone would argue that the hick sheriff and his idiot sidekick are anything more than major, embarrassing missteps, complete with jangly banjo accompaniment.) That makes the idea of a remake a bit more appealing, and director Dennis Iliadis fills the bill quite nicely.

The tone is consistently downbeat, with Garret Dillahunt as a restrained, though still nasty-hearted, leader of a small wild bunch of criminals and deviants. The rape is more horrific, perhaps because Sara Paxton is a stronger-willed victim, which makes the crime more unsettling. Tony Goldwyn and Monica Potter are well-cast as the victim's loving, determined parents.

While there are definite missteps -- I'm thinking of the outcome of the rape scene and the scenes toward the end, which veer away from the ultra-serious demeanor of the film, this is the rare remake that, dare I say it, actually improves upon the original. Both the DVD and Blu-ray releases include the theatrical and unrated versions -- the latter adds four minutes of footage. Also included are deleted scenes, and a "making of" feature.

Oh, good, as long as they have the most important cast members on board, I'm sure a new Scream sequel will become essential viewing. (Not!) Yup, Dewey and Gale, the cop and the reporter. David Arquette claims that he and Courtney Cox are definitely on board for Scream 4, according to Marc Malkin of E! Online.

Arquette is excited for personal reasons: "I fell in love with my wife on Scream, so the opportunity to bring [Dewey] back to life and for my wife to play that really bitchy character again, it's just going to be really fun," he said. Kevin Williamson is writing the script with all his characters, even though Neve Campbell has so far refused the idea of playing Sidney Prescott. Of course, everyone wants Wes Craven to return to the director's chair.

Presumably, it's in Williamson's best interests to have Scream 4 boiling away on a back burner while he toils on The Vampire Diaries for television. But he seems to have burned out after the initial flurry of projects he did after the original Scream: I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2, The Faculty, Teaching Mrs. Tingle, and Dawson's Creek. (I like to say that Diablo Cody is the Kevin Williamson of her generation: snappy one-liners that sound "hip" and "young" but quickly grow tiresome because all the characters sound alike). And the last time Williamson teamed with Craven, we got stuck with the fairly horrid and tedious Cursed. So, no rush on Scream 4, buddy.

By Peter Martin

As Cleopatra -- or my editor Scott Weinberg -- would say: Kiss my asp if you don't like killer snake movies. My introduction came via Sssssss (1973), which I watched on a Saturday afternoon on my grandparents' old console TV. Pre-Battlestar Galactica, Dirk Benedict was a likable lead and Heather Menzies nearly fried my young mind when she joined Dirk in a skinny-dipping scene, even though it was very PG. What freaked me was when mad scientist Strother Martin tried to transform poor Dirk into a snake.

Yes, yes, a gentle introduction, but I thought I was pretty brave just for watching; the trailer for Stanley around the same time scared the crap out of me -- what can I say, I was a sheltered kid. Once I got a little older and a little nervier, I was (almost) ready for Venom, a nasty, unsettling hostage thriller greatly enlivened by a deadly black mamba. I'm not sure what was scarier: the snake, Oliver Reed, or Sterling Hayden. Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing set a new standard for killer serpents in the early 80s with its indelible scene of Maren Jensen calmly soaking in a soapy bathtub, soon to be menaced by something between her legs ...

Anaconda still makes me laugh out loud. It's totally ridiculous, and totally worth repeat viewings for the smashingly silly CGI giant snake attacks. And, of course, a totally committed Jon Voight, in the best performance ever by an Academy Award-winning actor in a killer snake movie.

(So what's the Killer Animal Database? Venture post-jump to find out!)

By Jessica Barnes

Can a horror movie have a political agenda? Well, that was the question I asked myself after reading '15 Horror Movies Socialists Could Love''. So as I started to think back to all the hacking and slashing I'd seen over the years, I looked for some some pattern or connection between what I choose at the box-office and what I do at the polling station -- and what did I come up with? Well, I'll get to that, but first I wanted to take a moment to look back at some of the films that have gained a reputation with critics and fans alike as movies with a so-called conservative or liberal state of mind:

'Red State Horror':

Friday the 13th (1980)
Conservatives supposedly love this movie because it's all about no-good kids getting what they deserve. Sexy teens don't stand a chance in this franchise from the moment they take a drink, get high, or get naked. Plus, it's one of the few horror films with a moral about the importance of a good work ethic.

Frankenstein
It's science vs. religion in the story of a man who presumes to know more than God...and I think we all remember how that turns out.

Lost Boys
Family values are all over this one, and when a divorced mom pays more attention to a her love life than her two sons, look what happens. So even with a pot-smoking grandpa, plenty of critics agree that this film is all about Regan's America and the triumph of family over no-good, rock n' roll loving, motorcycle-driving youth gangs.

Tremors
2nd Amendment fans praise this tale of a band of locals fending off giant worms and the gun-toting survivalists that help save the day -- Take that Brady Bill!

Cape Fear (1962)
Maybe more of a thriller than a pure horror movie, but conservatives like to champion the story of a morally compromised lawyer and his family being terrorized by a paroled rapist. This one isn't an easy sell, but maybe it rings a bell with hard-line fans of justice when the police seem to be more interested in protecting the criminals, and it's up to Gregory Peck to take the law into his own hands.