Entries from October 2007 ↓

Fatally-Yours.com will be hosting a Halloween Costume Contest in which the lucky winner will walk away with the guts, the glory and an exclusive, limited edition Fatally-Yours.com shirt that only a few people are lucky enough to get!

So get your cameras ready for tonight folks, because all you have to do is take a photo of yourself in your scary/sexy/original/gory and/or AMAZING costume and submit that photo to sarah AT fatally-yours.com by 11:59pm on November 7th. That’s right, you have ONE WEEK from today to submit a photo of yourself in THIS YEAR’S costume.

The frightfully friendly staff at Fatally-Yours.com will be deciding a winner, who should be chosen by Friday, November 9th. Perhaps we’ll even let YOU, the readers, decide between the top three.

Rules are subject to change, but this contest WILL NOT be rigged (unlike some OTHER bogus “contests”).

Happy Haunting and Best of Luck!

Now get those camera’s clicking!

Zombie Master, It is said about the first zombie movies that they were metaphors / criticism on human nature and the cruelty of war. When you think

CONVERSATION FEAR: CRYING FOR THE SCORPION

Oh, you didn’t think I’d let Halloween pass unnoticed, did you? And after all, horror is where it finds you, where you’re not expecting it. And where better than the abandoned field, the neglected site once thought utterly dead? You cut across it on the way to school, following the path worn down by a thousand other kids just a little bit late to class, hoping to shave off a moment from your evening trek. Secretly you speed up your pace, all the while assuring yourself that it’s no scarier than it is in the daytime.

And then your foot catches, something digging into your ankle just above your shoe. If you hadn’t been hurrying, you might not have tripped. Galvanized by adrenalin, your muscles too ready for flight, you instead fall to the grass (twisted and stringy like the hair of your crazy aunt, the one that you always hid from), paralyzed. Good thing it was just a stray root and nothing really dangerous, right?

Ah, but I love a good digression.

I was indeed hoping to find a proper subject to talk about this Halloween. And by “proper”, I mean unexpected and yet cogent to the matter at hand. FIGHT CLUB? Been done. CHINATOWN? That was last year. KRAMER VERSUS KRAMER? Okay, that was mostly a joke at Rick’s expense (you all remember Eat More People, right?), but still, that was…three years ago. Time indeed flies like an arrow. At any rate, I was in an ever-increasing bind. Nothing was coming. And really, I’ve talked zombies to death and back. Looking kinda grim. No Halloween this year. Called off due to lack of interest and inability to look beyond the pale.

But sometimes, sometimes Netflix is kind to me. And by “kind” I mean that they dropped the answer right in my lap. For you see, THE WILD BUNCH arrived a couple days ago.

Now, I’m not going to go all looney and suggest that THE WILD BUNCH is actually a horror movie dressed up as a western (as I’ve done in the past with other, perhaps inappropriate films.) That said, there’s certainly moments where it seems that way. And Peckinpah wastes no time in getting right to it. First few minutes, while the credits are still rolling and the protagonists are making their way up the main street, dressed as soldiers, ready to hit the railroad office, we see a group of children clustered around something, some kind of enclosure. They’re laughing and smiling. Maybe they’ve got a puppy or a bunny rabbit in there, charmed by its infantile wiles. They’re certainly pretty happy, excited, perfectly normal kid kinds of things to be. Then the camera allows us a shot of what’s going on in the circle of children.

It’s a group of scorpions being torn apart by a nest of red ants. The larger creatures are staggering drunkenly, fighting against a literal wave of swarming insects. The scorpions strike uselessly, maybe killing a single ant here or there, but where one falls, an army stands ready to take its place. The children laugh and poke the helpless creatures with sticks, cheering at the sport. Legs and pincers and stingers become tangled by a seething rage of ants, their frantic limbs glistening in the light of noon as the scorpions twist and are consumed. The children laugh some more, before they finally strike the scene by burning the nest with chaparral. It’s swept aside while the robbery unfolds.

Peckinpah knows what the hell he’s doing, because that opening is the action of THE WILD BUNCH in microcosm. The final, climactic shootout between Huerta’s army and Pike, Dutch and the Gorch Brothers is nothing more than the ants and the scorpions writ large. And we’re the children laughing in the face of that awful spectacle. You know it’s true.

Granted, there’s a difference between ants and men, isn’t there? Wasn’t that cataclysmic battle brought on by a sense of honor, of four men at the end of their rope going to die to avenge the death of a comrade (and to absolve themselves of their own guilt in it, their own betrayal?) It’s enough that the deed is done, no matter that it brings upon them their own deaths, right? The fact that they did it, that they sought redemption for selling out Angel, that alone sets them above the ants and the scorpions, yes?

Maybe.

It’s almost a pity that THE WILD BUNCH wasn’t the last western (hell it wasn’t even Peckinpah’s last western, as he went on to direct PAT GARETT AND BILLY THE KID) because there’s an encompassing sense of finality about it. At least right until the end, where Thornton and Sykes hook up with the Zapatista rebels in the ruins of the tyrant Huerta’s fortress. The outlaws turn to rebels, having gone past mercenaries and thieves long ago.

But even so, I can’t help but feel a twist of loathing in my heart for those children.

Apologies to Rick and Kevin and the rest of the DBS crew for stirring up these old bones. If there’s impropriety, it wasn’t my intention. But what a better day than Halloween to raise the dead, if only for a little?

It's tricky and would be a treat if you can tell me what film this is... I once saw a snippet of a film - it's a black and white film. There are

So here we are, two years later. What started out small has now grown into over 500 reviews cataloging a history of crappy cinema that stretches decades. Thankfully, after two years it's still fun and my tolerance for crappyness is still intact. If not warped. Or twisted. ...

I’ve been both surprised and in awe of the caliber of participants in this series, but of all the people who chose to write in, one in particular made me weak in the knees. It is my pleasure to introduce Judith O’Dea, the actress who portrayed Barbara in Night of the Living Dead and [...]

Review by Theron Neel

I just finished watching Attack of the Baby Doll and The Golem, two movies from Stunt Kitty Films. Both flicks are directed by Debora Roventini and written/produced by Rob Robinson.

These are no-budget video productions that look as if they were made with a home video camera. I mean, there are no production values at play here at all. But I do respect the effort Roventini and Robinson have put forth. Stunt Kitty Films has a website and several DVDs available for sale. They’re also making the rounds at various film fests, so they are definitely taking this seriously. (more…)

Review by Fatally Yours

Dying to Live is a different type of zombie novel, one that takes a more humanitarian and philosophical approach to the popular zombie genre. Though there are some brutal gore scenes described in the book, author Kim Paffenroth focuses more on the interactions between people than the zombies. This different perspective in a zombie novel is wholeheartedly welcomed and is very refreshing.

After an apocalypse that has destroyed the world’s population and turned most people into the living dead, Jonah Caine continues to wander alone as he struggles to come to terms with what has happened. He kills the occasional zombie when he has to, but for the most part tries to avoid them. He comes to believe he is the only survivor until he finds a group of living people holed up in a museum. Among them are two leaders – Jack, the logical and practical military man, and Milton, a kind of spiritual leader to the people who has a special power over the undead. Jonah is welcomed into the community but also asked to prove his worth as the group tries to rebuild a civilization with what little they have left. Soon, though, they come to discover that they aren’t the only survivors and zombies, when compared with the brutality of mankind, may be the least of their worries. (more…)

Review by Fatally Yours

I remember when I first saw the remake of House on Haunted Hill in 1999. Sure, the original with Vincent Price is a classic, but I hold a special place in my heart for the one starring a very hammy Geoffrey Rush and some very creepy ghosts. The night I saw it was a dark and stormy Halloween. I was still in high school and my friend and I decided to ditch everyone else and go to the movies. We had to drive a very curvy and treacherous road to get to the theater (we lived in the boonies back then), so we were already kinda on edge. THEN we saw the movie, which scared the pants off of both of us. And THEN we had to drive BACK on that dark and desolate country road, with ominous trees on either side of us and curves hiding whatever might be lurking ahead…

So, since I enjoyed the experience of watching House on Haunted Hill and still count it as a guilty pleasure, I was eager to check out Return to House on Haunted Hill when it came out this October. Although it didn’t leave the impression that its predecessor did, Return to House on Haunted Hill was still a pretty fun and entertaining haunted asylum movie. (more…)

Although George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead won't be released until next year, Artfire Films and Romero-Grunwald Prods. have greenlighted a sequel that Romero will direct from his screenplay.

The instant sequel will pick up where the first film ends. Fighting their way out of a mansion through a horde of ravenous zombies, the survivors of "Diary" escape to a remote island only to be plunged into another battle with the dead. Principal photography is set to begin in the spring.

THR reports Ridley and Tony Scott's Scott Free Prods. is going back to its genre roots with Tell-Tale, a modern-day reimagining of the Edgar Allan Poe classic The Tell-Tale Heart from director Michael Cuesta and screenwriter Dave Callaham.

"Tell-Tale is a psychological thriller that sets Poe's haunting tale against the backdrop of modern science," Scott Free president Michael Costigan said.

Scott Free is the company behind American Gangster, which bows Friday. The Scott brothers made their early name with Alien and The Hunger.

The Poe-inspired film will be produced by Ridley Scott, Tony Scott and Costigan as well as Social Capital's Christopher Tuffin and Martin Shore. Shore is a Santa Monica-based equity firm that was brought to Scott Free by indie film broker the Gordon Steel Co. Shore made his money in the real estate business, while Tuffin is a producer.

The film is budgeted at $20 million and will be shot in early 2008. Casting is under way. Gordon Steel and partner John Baca suggested that the tone of the film likely will be a cross between Jacob's Ladder and Marathon Man.

In my opinion the most impressive thing we came across at this year's AFM was Vincenzo Natali's (Cube) latest horror film, Splice, which is being produced by the great Guillermo del Toro. While at the show we scored a look at some production art and watched a promo reel that really made me think we were seeing the latest "Species" franchise. Read on for the art for the Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley starrer.

The battle continues this Christmas and we're praying that 20th Century Fox's Aliens vs Predator: Requiem is better than Paul. W. S Anderson's disaster from a few years back. In addition to the new clip, two character posters found their way online and can be found inside. In this follow-up to the worldwide hit ALIEN VS. PREDATOR, the iconic monsters from two of the scariest film franchises ever, wage war in an American Midwestern town - with the residents caught in the middle.