Welcome to Dead-Donkey.com...
For over five years, HHAH has been serving horror, scifi and b-movies to the masses. The site is split into three distinct sections; the first is the community forums, next up is the frontpage portal that verifies content and presents news and stats, and finally the scifi forums! Enjoy... Oh and click below to bookmark and share this site!
A bit late, and not at all a shock. Capcom doesn't really have any respect over its franchises traditionally, given the abortion that is the Resident Evil movies... so anticipation is around about absolute zero at the moment
Quote:
** DEAD RISING the movie: Based on the Capcom video games comes a live-action film. The story centers on Frank West, a photojournalist who ends up trapped in a shopping mall in the fictional town of Willamette, Colorado, that is infested with zombies. Frank must defend himself from zombie attacks, rescue survivors, contend with crazed psychopaths, and stay alive while still attempting to uncover the truth behind the incident. The player controls Frank as he explores the mall, using any available object as a weapon. The player can complete several main and optional missions to earn Prestige Points (PP) and gain special abilities. The game is designed as a sandbox game and features several endings, depending on the decisions the player makes along the way. Check out the official web site:
http://www.capcom.co.jp/movie/deadrising
Wondered when this show would hit DVD, one for Tremors fans.
Quote:
Universal Home Video has revealed artwork for the complete series of TREMORS, which stars Michael Gross and Marcia Strassman. According to the DVD Active web site, the 3-disc set will be available to own from the 9th March, and should retail at around $29.98. Each of the episodes will be presented in full frame, along with English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo tracks. No extra material will be included on this one, but we'll let you know if that changes. A small town gradually becomes aware of a strange creature which picks off people one by one. But what is this creature, and where is it? At the same time, a seismologist is working in the area, she detects tremors. The creature lives underground, and can 'pop up' without warning. Trapped in their town, the town-folk have no escape. (thanks to Bloody-Disgusting.com)
However, before the pissants bailed out of the internet game like pathetic beaten trolls, it seems they've sold up all of their old wares, one of which is the free webhosting:
members.lycos.com/.co.uk
This has been bought up by some dodgy company and chrome/firefox/etc. now view the site as a malware host. Problem is, anyone who hosts images on there will now get a nice "this site is malware" page displayed.
I ask that you move all images, avatars, etc. to another host to avoid this.
With all this talk of recession and piracy, you’d think 2009 would have been a bad year for Hollywood and the movie industry. Not so, with the latest figures showing a bumper year at the box office, with records both domestically and internationally.
According to Reuters, domestic box office takings are expected to pass the $10 billion mark for the first time ever. This would obviously set a new record, passing the previous record of $9.7 billion set in 2007.
Outside of North America, figures are expected to top $15 billion, well above last year’s sum of $14.3 billion. The busy Christmas schedule is expected to give these figures a final push to even greater highs.
Warner Bros. have had the best year, with big-hitters such as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Hangover bringing in $1.9 billion in ticket sales, which equated to a 19.6% market share.
However, Paramount is the most consistent studio, making on average $112 million per film, with Warners only managing $72.6m per film.
Looks like PS3 owners (and I bet, Xbox 360 and PC owners too) can get a pimped out limited/special edition copy of Aliens Vs Predator due out on all platforms (barring the wii, of course) this February.
Quote:
Hunter Edition confirmed for US consumers! There, I can finally say it; the Hunter Edition which was announced fairly recently from our European friends is now 100% confirmed in the US with an added bonus – a hardcover graphic novel from Dark Horse Comics featuring the original Aliens vs Predator comic!
PlayStation 3 pictured, click in to see the images of the Xbox 360 version as well
Don’t worry, all the other goodies are still included, such as the four Multiplayer maps (before they release to the general public), a fully articulated and disturbingly creepy Facehugger model, Weyland Yutani sleeve badge, and a 3D lenticular postcard. To sweeten the deal, if you pre-order you can pick up some exclusive skins for all three species in multiplayer.
Found this excellent article on the interwebs that sums up how success killed Duke Nuke 'Em... probably not forever, but for the near future at least!
Quote:
On the last day, they gathered for a group photo. They were videogame programmers, artists, level builders, artificial-intelligence experts. Their team was — finally — giving up, declaring defeat, and disbanding. So they headed down to the lobby of their building in Garland, Texas, to smile for the camera. They arranged themselves on top of their logo: a 10-foot-wide nuclear-radiation sign, inlaid in the marble floor.
To videogame fans, that logo is instantly recognizable. It’s the insignia of Duke Nukem 3D, a computer game that revolutionized shoot-’em-up virtual violence in 1996. Featuring a swaggering, steroidal, wisecracking hero, Duke Nukem 3D became one of the top-selling videogames ever, making its creators very wealthy and leaving fans absolutely delirious for a sequel. The team quickly began work on that sequel, Duke Nukem Forever, and it became one of the most hotly anticipated games of all time.
It was never completed. Screenshots and video snippets would leak out every few years, each time whipping fans into a lather — and each time, the game would recede from view. Normally, videogames take two to four years to build; five years is considered worryingly long. But the Duke Nukem Forever team worked for 12 years straight. As one patient fan pointed out, when development on Duke Nukem Forever started, most computers were still using Windows 95, Pixar had made only one movie — Toy Story — and Xbox did not yet exist.
On May 6, 2009, everything ended. Drained of funds after so many years of work, the game’s developer, 3D Realms, told its employees to collect their stuff and put it in boxes. The next week, the company was sued for millions by its publisher for failing to finish the sequel.
Front and center in the photo sits a large guy with a boyish face. You can’t tell from the picture, but he had gotten choked up when he made the announcement. His name is George Broussard, co-owner of 3D Realms and the man who headed the Duke Nukem Forever project for its entire 12-year run. Now 46 years old, he’d spent much of his adult life trying to make a single game, and failed over and over again. What happened to that project has been shrouded in secrecy, and rumors have flown about why Broussard couldn’t manage to finish his life’s work. What went so wrong?
I don't understand why they'd remake one of the better/original horror of the 90s, but then, barrell scraping seems to be the preferred method of coming up with ideas these days
Quote:
CANDYMAN remake: In the pipeline for what feels like years is the CANDYMAN remake, which was said to bring a whole new (white) horror icon to the big screen. Tony Todd has always said he'd love to return, but the recent trend of remakes prove that every studios is looking for a new spin to their franchises. Todd has moved on, but still has ideas in case the studio ever gets back in his corner. "Maybe five years ago I would be worried about a CANDYMAN remake, but I am just so busy now that I can’t really worry about it anymore,” Todd said. "But Deon [Taylor] and I have some tricks up our sleeves too...so just sit tight for that because you never know what will happen." (thanks to DreadCentral.com via Bloody-Disgusting.com)
Dan O'Bannon, the veteran screenwriter, director, special-effects technician and occasional actor whose works contributed to several major sci-fi/horror franchises, has died at 63.
O'Bannon was of course best known for scripting Alien, the classic gothic sci-fi thriller that went on to spawn video games, comics, licensed novels and multiple sequels, ultimately including crossovers with that other murderous alien species, the Predator. The frightening monster designed by H.R. Giger and the atmospheric direction by Ridley Scott both built on O'Bannon's concepts to create a sci-fi horror icon that still rampages today, albeit without the stunning impact that made 1979 audiences scream when the creature burst out of actor John Hurt's chest.
But five years earlier it was O'Bannon himself fleeing from a murderous alien, in John Carpenters's debut film Dark Star (1974). O'Bannon didn't just come up with the story and write the screenplay about a bunch of bored, burned-out, depressed astronauts on an endless mission to "destroy unstable planets"; he also played the lead, a lowly maintenance worker with little talent for the work who's only aboard because (due to a series of events too complicated to list here) he's been mistaken for the key crew member, Sgt. Pinback. Now a loathed presence treated with contempt by every other member of the crew, Pinback is nevertheless the only one with any enthusiasm for the mission—and the one who gets saddled with the most dangerous duty, caring for an alien he's taken aboard as pet.
Then it escapes into the bowels of the ship. Pinback's battle with the alien, which resembles a beach ball with claws and has the same relationship with him that Bugs Bunny had with Elmer Fudd, functions at the intersection of slapstick and sheer terror, and provides an interesting preview of the other alien that would run amuck aboard another spaceship only five years later. O'Bannon acquitted himself well as slacker hero, but acted only in bit parts after that.
Following a stint as visual-effects technician on George Lucas's Star Wars (1977) and his triumphant creation of the Aliens, O'Bannon wrote screenplays for John Badham's Blue Thunder (1983), an action movie that set Roy Scheider against Malcolm McDowell in helicopter battle above the streets of L.A., and Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce (1985), a notorious bomb, of which he said, "Tobe Hooper at the helm ... is approximately like having Bozo the Clown at the helm."
O'Bannon enjoyed happier results when he both wrote and directed Return of the Living Dead (1985). Less a serious continuation of the zombie films of George Romero than a subversive commentary on them, Return and its sequels took place in a world where everybody remembered seeing those earlier movies but was unprepared when they turned out to be "based on a true story." The subtle differences between the zombie phenomenon as envisioned by Romero and the zombie phenomenon as hijacked by O'Bannon are best summarized by the droning chant "Braaiiiiins." Romero's zombies have never once expressed that culinary preference, whereas O'Bannon's crave nothing else. Trust us, in the world of zombie fiction this is a major sticking point. Although zombies were used to comedic effect in Romero's Dawn of the Dead, O'Bannon's Return of the Living Dead was one of the first films to stress the wackiness over the tragedy, thus helping to invent the "splatstick" treatment that later characterized such well-known zombie films as Dead Alive and Shawn of the Dead. Like O'Bannon's previous Alien, Return of the Living Dead was successful enough to spawn a number of sequels, all made without him, and most of diminishing interest.
O'Bannon had the last of his major hits with his screenplay for Total Recall (1990), an extremely loose adaptation of Philip K. Dick's "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" that sent Arnold Schwarzenegger to Mars, where the future Governator fought mutants, Ronny Cox and his own deceptive memories. Despite the box office, O'Bannon was not happy with Paul Verhoeven's directing. He said of Verhoeven, "Whenever he started to flounder and didn't know what to do, he would start throwing in violence. He'd say, 'Bring in all the rubber body parts and the blood hoses and everything and we'll start ripping people to shreds and squirt blood everywhere.' And he'd keep shooting that until he overcame his nerves and got his feet on the ground and would start directing in some reasonable way again. So you'd end up with these intermittent scenes of absurdly excessive maimings at sort of intervals, and usually what he was substituting for were scenes that involved humor in the original [script]. And I realized, 'Oh, he's not good at humor. He doesn't know how to tell a joke onscreen.'"
O'Bannon's only other work as a director was The Resurrected (1992). His other screenplays include the horror movie Dead and Buried (1981), sections of the animated Heavy Metal (1981), the remake of Invaders From Mars (1986) and Screamers (1997). Although none of his works have been produced since 1997, he continues to receive screen credit, and entertain new audiences, with the continued success of his greatest creation, the Aliens.
The folks over at Filmkoncept Scandinavia just sent FANGORIA the first poster for their new film MARA starring Angelica Jansson (PLAYBOY). The film is expected to be finished with post in February, and while we await the finished project, take a peek at the poster, synopsis, photos, and an early teaser below the jump.
Quote:
Jenny (Angelica Jansson) is a young woman with a dark past. During her childhood she witnessed something terrifying that scarred her for life. Now, ten years later years later, Jenny has created a new life of her own.In the last days of summer, in the deep, dark woods of Sweden, Jenny and four friends gather in a cozy cottage for a weekend of partying, fun and relaxation.This abruptly ends when Jenny wakes up in the morning to find herself alone in the cottage.
Thinking that her friends are playing a prank on her she goes searching for them- but they are gone without a trace. Yet, where would they go in the middle of the woods? And why is the car still parked out front? Jenny spends a torturous day waiting for her friends to return. As darkness once again engulfs the cottage, Jenny must face the fact that she has been left alone. In the darkness. In the middle of nowhere. Or has she? Is she really all alone?No. SomeTHING is out there in the woods. A ghost, perhaps. Or a creature. Or somebody from Jenny's frightening past.As the night grows darker, shadowy figures haunt the cottage. Unrecognizable voices whisper Jenny's name. Nightmares come to life. Is Jenny losing her mind? Evil closes in as the story reaches its blood-soaked, twisted conclusion. MARA. A psychological horror-thriller written, produced and directed by Fredrik Hedberg, Jacob Kondrup and Åke Gustavsson.
Gregory Lamberson is just about ready to unleash Slime City Massacre on the unsuspecting world. The film has been quite a while in the making, as it's the followup to 1988's Slime City. They've just unveiled the poster for the sequel.
Quote:
The brain is back!
Gregory Lamberson is just about ready to unleash Slime City Massacre on the unsuspecting world. The film has been quite a while in the making, as it's the followup to 1988's Slime City. They've just unveiled the poster for the sequel.
Artist Stephan Romano (behind the infamous Black Devil Doll Poster) worked on this and definitely captured the retro feel they're going for with the film.
The story is set in the ruins of midtown Manhattan seven years after a dirty bomb blows up in the financial district. The neighborhood (now known as Slime City) is evacuated, but that doesn't stop the homeless from scavenging the area. Four squatters looking for food inside a soup kitchen discover a supply of wine and yogurt, which they immediately consume and are transformed into slime creatures. Worse than that, they're possessed by the spirits of those who died in the previous film!
The original still holds up as a really fun film, making for a great "Melting NYC" double-feature with the classic Street Trash. Really can't wait to see what they've done this time... and how much more disgusting they could possibly make it.
Slime City vets Robert C. Sabin, Mary Bogle, T.J. Merrick, and Dick Biel. Brooke Lewis and Tommy Sweeney all return to their roles, and Debbie Rochon (Tromeo and Juliet) and Lee Perkins (KatieBird *Certifiable Crazy Person) appear as well.
The film will premiere at the Beloit International Film Festival and start making the festival rounds starting next February. For more on the film and the rest of the awesome Mr. Lamberson's work check out his official site.
We just got wind that Spanish Horror legend Paul Naschy died of cancer today at the age of 75. If there ever was a face of horror in Spain, especially through the 60s and 70s, it was Naschy, who was the Spanish equivalent to the legendary Lon Chaney.
A few of the classic characters Naschy portrayed included the wolfman, the hunchback, Count Dracula, and the mummy. But it was the wolfman character he played the most, returning to the beast 12 different times in the HOMBRE LOBO film series. The series revolved around the werewolf / tortured soul of Waldemar Daninsky as he dealt with being a werewolf, and included such films as LAS NOCHES DEL HOMBRE LOBO, LA MARCA DEL HOMBRE LOBO and LA FURIA DEL HOMBRE LOBO to name just a few. If you've seen classic Spanish werewolf movies, chances you've seen Naschy in action.
Naschy also starred in a plethora of other genre films, including takes on Jack the Ripper, exorcisms, and the U.S. titled ORGY OF THE DEAD in 1972. His later roles included COUNTESS DRACULA'S ORGY OF THE DEAD and ROTTWEILLER.
A loss for the horror community, and an even bigger loss for the Spanish horror film industry, who lost one of their most acclaimed legendary actors. Our thoughts go out to Naschy's family in Madrid where he lived for most of his life.
Scorpio Film Releasing and director Richard Griffin are currently in the midst of their latest production, the ’50s genre homage ATOMIC BRAIN INVASION. Scripted by Guy Benoit and Griffin, who sent over a couple of advance “lobby cards” (see below) and produced by Ted Marr, the movie is currently two weeks away from finishing up principal photography.
As opposed to Griffin’s previous horrific/violent fare (including NUN OF THAT, hitting DVD in January), ATOMIC BRAIN INVASION will, in the spirit of its inspirations, be more of a PG-level affair. “Not only do I want it to look and sound like it was made in 1957,” Griffin tells Fango, “but I also want it to be free of all the blood, profanity and nudity of modern horror films. It’s wonderful to have a horror movie that people of all ages can enjoy, much like the classic creature features I watched on television as a child.”
Quote:
ATOMIC BRAIN’s scenario involves a bunch of misfit high-schoolers who must band together to stop an army of brain creatures from outer space that intend to kidnap Elvis Presley when he performs in a small New England town. In keeping with the more ambitious ’50s sci-fi fare, this movie will also address Cold War paranoia and racial issues of the era. The cast, which includes a number of Scorpio regulars, consists of Sarah Nicklin, David Lavallee Jr., Michael Reed, Rich Tretheway, Brandon Luis Aponte, Alexandra Cipolla, David Erin Wilson, Ruth Sullivan, Colin Carlton, Alexander Lewis, Andre Boudreau and Daniel Lee White.
“The wonderful challenge of making this movie has been creating a period film on less than used-car prices,” Marr says. “We’ve had everything from beautiful vintage cars and fantastic costumes to great old-fashioned practical monster effects, created by artists Chris Russell and Alan August.” The filmmakers plan to premiere ATOMIC BRAIN INVASION next summer; you can see Scorpio’s official website here.
According to a recent article on the IT news related site Golem, Hollywood wants to have control over the search engines considering pirate copies of Hollywood movies.
They hired a company to investigate the pirate spreading of the new Star Trek movie.
The complete document from ViaCom is available here in PDF format.
An interesting result of the detective work is available here in PDF format.
Quote:
Search Engine: Google
Search engines provide quick and easy access to pirated movies. If one types in “watch
free movies” on Google, the first three unsponsored search results are “leech” sites with links to
pirated movies. The fourth search result is Hulu.com, a legitimate video site.
...
Conclusion:
The flood of stolen content currently available online – including every major theatrical
film within hours of release – poses an immediate threat to the motion picture industry, which in
2007 supported 2.5 million jobs, $41.1 billion in wages, and had a trade surplus of $13.6 billion.
The prevalence of pirated material online provides a strong disincentive for investment in motion
pictures and other professional video content, which are well-understood to be key drivers of
broadband adoption. Consumers are at risk for fraud or identity theft when they are deceived
into providing sensitive financial information to professional quality pirate websites. As more
fully described in the comments of MPAA in this docket, content creators must have the legal
and regulatory flexibility to use technological tools in partnership with Internet service providers
to stem the tide of online copyright theft.
When people talk about Italian horror and giallo (which is—film-nerd alert—Italian for “yellow” and means “Italian thrillers” and is a term taken from the yellow color of the covers of the Italian penny-dreadful horror/thriller/crime-novel paperbacks from the Mondadori publishing house, which eventually became known simply as gialli, or yellows), whether they know it or not, they are only talking about them because of the work of one guy: Roman-born-and-raised Dario Argento. With his films The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970), The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971), and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), and especially his masterpiece, Profondo Rosso (1975), the ex-film critic essentially defined the parameters of the sexy, gory, stylistically dazzling, musically proggy giallo genre. After that, with the delirious Suspiria (1977), Argento moved toward supernatural, macabre, unhinged horror, thereby enlarging his area of mastery to two genres, which he then continued to explore with the classics Inferno (1980), Tenebrae (1982), Phenomena (1985), and Opera (1987), as well as many others. He made it possible for these genres to escape the land of the film buff and cross the border into the mainstream. You would do well to see all of his movies.
But Argento is much more than the guy who epitomized two very cool film styles. Arguably, after years of being considered a commercial B-movie maker, he is the man whose late critical acclaim first made it even conceivable to talk about slasher films as art. Also, he is largely responsible (together, perhaps, with Sergio Leone, with whom he cowrote the spaghetti-western masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West in 1968) for the rediscovery of Italian cinema as more than just the purveyor of dense, difficult films of social responsibility, philosophical musing, and high art, but also as a rich basin of fantastic populist movies that go way beyond the borders of what genre stuff can usually do.
Oh, and Argento cowrote and produced the best zombie movie of all time, George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978). And he first discovered Goblin, Claudio Simonetti’s seminal prog band. It’s all Argento. Not bad for just one guy.
We recently took a train to Rome and met the legendary Italian director at the shop and museum that he owns. Here is what we talked about. (VICE)
"In the aftermath of global thermonuclear war, the Earth’s surface has been turned into a desert battlefield. Three beautiful female hunters: Gray (Meisa Kuroki), Lucifer (Rinko Kikuchi), and Colonel (Hinako Saeki) traverse the barren landscape armed with powerful assault rifles to fight a group of deadly sand-dwelling monsters called “sunakujira” (sand whales). When the the epic battle eventually seems to be coming to an end, the sparkle of muzzle flash dies down and assault ship flies overhead. Suddenly, a gigantic super mutation called “Madara Sunakujira” attacks."
Lycos is dead!
phpbb upgrade complete
When people talk about Italian horror and giallo (which is—film-nerd alert—Italian for “yellow” and means “Italian thrillers” and is a term taken from the yellow color of the covers of the Italian penny-dreadful horror/thriller/crime-novel paperbacks from the Mondadori publishing house, which eventually became known simply as gialli, or yellows), whether they know it or not, they are only talking about them because of the work of one guy: Roman-born-and-raised Dario Argento. With his films The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970), The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971), and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), and especially his masterpiece, Profondo Rosso (1975), the ex-film critic essentially defined the parameters of the sexy, gory, stylistically dazzling, musically proggy giallo genre. After that, with the delirious Suspiria (1977), Argento moved toward supernatural, macabre, unhinged horror, thereby enlarging his area of mastery to two genres, which he then continued to explore with the classics Inferno (1980), Tenebrae (1982), Phenomena (1985), and Opera (1987), as well as many others. He made it possible for these genres to escape the land of the film buff and cross the border into the mainstream. You would do well to see all of his movies.
