My apologies for the lack of updates. Assuming anyone actually still reads this, I’ve been devoting all my time to work and writing my lackluster screenplay which will take the indie horror scene by storm.

BY STORM I TELL YOU!

Peter Hall of Horror’s Not Dead and I have decided to collaborate on a script based on an idea I’ve had stewing in my mind for awhile. Here’s a snippet. Advice/suggestions/criticism encouraged. Check here for updates as it progresses.

Oh, one caveat: I have never written a script before, so I am well aware of how bad it probably is. No real editing has occurred, as I only have about five pages done. If you can guess what movie I had in mind while writing this, I’ll send you a present, probably a DVD. Leave guesses in the comment section.

Or something less retarded. Suggestions welcome.

Chapter One: Horror, Then and Now
Chapter Two: Horror Connected
Chapter Three: Outside Looking In: Popular Opinion on the Modern Horror Industry
Chapter Four: Foreign Horror and its Impact on the American Market
Chapter Five: The Rise and Fall of Torture Porn
Chapter Six: Remakes: Yay or Nay?
Chapter Seven: Cinema Verite: Reality Meets Horror
Chapter Eight: The Future of Horror?

Chapter ideas welcome. I intend on beginning work on this shortly, as any distraction toward the Hell that has become my life recently will be accepted with open arms.

No self respecting horror fan doesn’t like H. P. Lovecraft. Hell, even if you’ve never read anything by him, it’s hard to discount the fear his eerily beautiful prose elicits to the imagination. For example:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” -The Call of Cthulhu

If one can look past his folksy racism, what we have here is one of the most brilliant literary minds of the 20th century, and indeed one of the greatest horror writers to have ever lived. Thanks to him, we now have a way to stop the flying polyps. If the video skips, lags, or shouts out anti-semitic comments, blame Vimeo and the fact that I uploaded what I presume is a very copyrighted Quicktime file downloaded from Yog-Sothoth.com. Be sure to check out their Lovecraft-inspired version of Carol of the Bells called “Carol of the Old Ones.” Brilliant stuff.

Elder Sign from Brad McHargue on Vimeo.

Thanks Elder Sign!

Warning: Elder Sign may cause drowsiness, nausea, cognitive distortion, diarrhea, prolonged erection, erectile dysfunction, agitation, inflammation, insanity, temporal shifting, wandering psyche, screaming brain, pineal stimulation, spontaneous reanimation, Mad Arab Syndrome, loss of faith, and spotting.

EDIT: THIS IS WHY NEIL GAIMAN OWNS YOUR FACE.

Before I begin anything that resembles a bonafide blog entry, I’d like to extend my thanks to Peter Hall of Horror’s Not Dead, for he took the time to give a special shout to my blog and the content within. Mr. Hall runs a phenomenal blog and is an excellent writer, so I feel honored for the laudatory words. As he notes in his entry, big things are in the works, and a collaboration is on the horizon. Keep your eyes glued to the screen (and the horizon), as details will be emerging when we stop being lazy.

Now horror stuff.

Those kind folks over at Quiet Earth, which I maintain is one of the few horror/thriller/genre film sites that isn’t populated by drooling retards, has given us a little peak at the low-budget indie thriller Phasma Ex Machina. The honkey over at QE described it as having a sorta Primer feel, which, if this film is anything like Primer, will make you feel incredibly stupid and endlessly entertained at the same time.

Read more »

WELCOME TO I LOVE HORROR DOT NET.

All caps means its important. Big things are happening. See that banner at the top? I might change it a little. See the stuff on the right? More will go there soon. See all the content? Well, that’s going to hopefully be updated as time ticks by. Plans to shift from I Love Horror on Wordpress.com to I Love Horror dot net are slow-going but the switch is inevitable. Eventually (probably within the next few days or so), posting on I Love Horror dot Wordpress dot com will cease and a giant link will appear redirecting you to I Love Horror dot net. This makes it easier on you and is cheaper for me.

So update those bookmarks fellers! Good things are in the works, and they may involve boobs!

In doing some searching for nifty backgrounds to spruce up me bloggity blog, I discovered a post from AICN from almost 9 years ago that featured a one sheet for what was an upcoming psychological thriller by Brad Anderson.

Not gonna lie – I fucking love it and want to buy it and frame it and stare at it longingly. Until then, here’s David Caruso doing what he does so well – overacting.

I fail to see how this movie can’t be amazing.

Debbie Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas in two hours of B-movie brilliance.

This is a list of films that had, in some way, an influence on Neil Marshall when writing and directing his 2008 homage to post-apocalyptic science fiction films, Doomsday. Whether or not he was aware of it is anyone’s guess:

28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later
Land of the Dead
Judge Dredd
Waterworld
Alien vs Predator
Gladiator
Resident Evil
Dog Soldiers

Only two of the aforementioned films are included in Marshall’s own list of influences. On this subject Marshall had this to say: “Right from the start, I wanted my film to be a homage to these sorts of movies, and deliberately so. I wanted to make a movie for a new generation of audience that hadn’t seen those movies in the cinema—hadn’t seen them at all maybe—and to give them the same thrill that I got from watching them. But kind of contemporize it, pump up the action and the blood and guts.”²

So clearly Marshall intended this film to lack anything that resembles originality. This is fine by me; originality is not a requisite for a good film and I laud his honesty in stating outright what his intentions are. However, while depicting influence in your own films is never a bad thing, it certainly doesn’t do you any favors when roughly 80% of the film, a statistic I did not just pull out of my ass, is comprised of specific and easily identifiable elements from a wide range of other films.

The plot is generic and, as was noted above, a hodgepodge of other films far superior. Roughly thirty years after a virus ravaged much of Scotland resulting in it being walled off and abandoned, the virus has returned. Thanks to high-tech surveillance, living humans have been found within the walls and it’s up to Major Eden Sinclair and her ragbag team of elite commandos to go behind the walls and find the cure before the virus spreads among the population of London and decimates the city. Hilarity in the form of over-the-top acting and Rhona Mitra’s lack of emotion ensue.

The beginning of the film called to mind both Resident Evil and 28 Days Later in terms of not only style but substance, and given both this and the words out of Marshall’s own mouth, it’s clear he was trying to not only pay homage to classic apocalyptic films, but the newer ones as well. Later on we’re treated to Waterworld and Gladiator, 2008 Edition. Unfortunately, the myriad of influences did little draw my interest, as the film is incredibly disjointed, and manages to shift gears so suddenly and at such inopportune times, that one wonders whether or not it’s actually Neil Marshall behind the lens. It starts off headed in one direction and at one point manages to find a way to become the newest incarnation of The Fast and the Furious, though thankfully without Paul Walker around to fuck anything up; we have Rhona Mitra to do that for us.

He also has said that, “I do think it’s going to divide audiences… I just want them to be thrilled and enthralled. I want them to be overwhelmed by the imagery they’ve seen. And go back and see it again.”¹ Unfortunately – and I say this with a heavy heart, as Dog Soldiers and The Descent are two of my favorite films – I was underwhelmed and have absolutely no desire to see this film again.

Of course, it wasn’t all bad, as Marshall has a masterful eye for gore and manages to do a few things that were both innovative and downright hysterical, the latter of which culminating in a decapitated head flying right into the camera with a brilliant look on its face. Spoon from Dog Soldiers was in it, and I thought he was the best part of the film after MyAnna Buring, who’s just cute as a button. In the end, however, the movie was stale, relatively annoying, and a severely disappointing outing for a director who has come to be known as one of the best in the horror business today.

^{1 http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/doomsday/news/1726180/neil_marshalls_10_post_apocalyptic_picks
2 http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/13/entertainment/et-doomsday13}

Amber “Mandy Lane” Heard and Odette “Holy Fuck it’s a good thing I’m hot ’cause I’m a shitty actress” Yustman will be playing the leads in a remake of the 1970 British thriller And Soon the Darkness. Aside from essentially being a death sentence for the film, the original of which I have never seen nor heard of, this casting choice makes me wonder if people have actually seen Yustman’s prior performances in horror movies and are just casting her because she looks great when wearing the bare minimum of clothing. Amber Heard isn’t too bad. She was kinda decent in Pineapple Express, yet only moderately likable in Mandy Lane.

There was a pun in there, and it was brilliant.

The remake will no doubt be an excuse to showcase their “talents,” as it were, and do little to foster the idea that Hollywood isn’t run by a psychopathic group of unoriginal malcontents.

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I know nothing of this film save for the synopsis, which is thankfully emblazoned right on that there picture <——, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little excited for it. It looks to be free of Hollywood wankery and the effort of someone who actually cares enough to make a decent flick. According to producer Barak Epstein, the movie will “have some crazy alien gore.” As opposed to relatively tame alien gore?

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Quiet Earth reports that Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company Apian Way will be remaking The Neverneding Story. That sound you hear? That’s my childhood dying a slow, painful death.

Fun fact: the Appian Way of Rome is well-known for hosting the lovely crucufixion of 6,000 slaves after the failed revolt of 10,000+ slaves led by Spartacus. The bodies were left up for years, proving that once and for all Rome was a very smelly place to live in 70 BC and an appropriate moniker for DiCaprio’s apparently soul-crushing and childhood-destroyig vehicle fo cinematic pain.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEX4uovt8Aw&hl=en&fs=1]

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Finally, on a more upbeat note, if you head on over to ilovehorror.net you’ll get a sneak preview at what will soon become the new home for I Love Horror. The design, as you can see, is basically the same thing as what I have now, but as time progresses and I start to make sense of CSS, it will begin to take shape into something so epic you’ll crap your fucking pants. Until then, keep coming here and inflating my ego until I give the go ahead. Special thanks go out to Peter Hall of Horror’s Not Dead for all his help.