Happy weekend, fiends! Yours truly is only a few hours away from going to see the great Joe Bob Briggs, live, with his “How Rednecks Saved Hollywood” show. If you haven’t subscribed to Shudder and seen The Last Drive-In, my friend, you’re missing out. Friday night, he played Luigi Cozzi’s Italian Alien rip off, Contamination, a brilliant bit of spaghetti splatter. The second feature was Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, one of the finest vampire movies ever made. Not to mention, Jenn Wexler’s punk rock slasher The Ranger also made its Shudder premiere this week, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
We were at long last treated to our first look at IT Chapter 2 this week, and holy creepy granny, Batman, it looks scary as hell. I think most fans were most worried about this segment since many would agree that the 1990 IT had a great first chapter, but part two was a bit of a slog. With Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, and Bill Hader starring and promises of a lot of blood, it looks like Andy Muschietti and crew are going to nail it. [Truth be told, I was never much of a fan of the second part of the book either, despite some really good stuff being there.]
It’s official! Jason Lei Howden’s funny as hell horror-comedy, Deathgasm, is getting a sequel! The UK’s Grimmfest is going to start producing films and the first one slated is Deathgasm 2. The original, which premiered in 2015, was a bloody cocktail of Evil Dead and Dead Alive with a black metal heart.
Arrow Video will be releasing the final cut version of Leif Jonker’s 1993 low budget vampire epic, Darkness. This is one I’ve never seen, but I remember seeing the VHS box advertised in Fangoria all the time. It featured an amazing looking half-skinned character and promised a gory adventure. Arrow will release a new 2K scan special edition with a gorgeous new cover. The trailer looks really stellar, too. This is definitely one re-release I’m most psyched for this year!
Eibon Press/Fulci Comics announced that House by the Cemetery #2 goes on sale June 7 at 7 pm PST. The comic is 40 pages, continuing Stephen Romano and Vince Locke’s adaptation of the Lucio Fulci film, the third film in his Gates of Hell trilogy, which also included Gates of Hell aka City of the Living Dead and The Beyond. Go to www.EibonPress.com for more awesome comics!
Let’s talk about how good the new Sam Raimi/Alexandre Aja film Crawl looks! Set in Florida as a hurricane bears down, a father and daughter find themselves trapped in a flooding house. But, it’s not just the rising waters they need to worry about, as some big ass crocodiles invite themselves in. As someone who grew up loving animal attack films like Jaws, Grizzly, and Day of the Animals, I’m all in for Crawl. I loved Aja’s remake of The Hills Have Eyes, by the way, and his debut Haute Tension, right up to that ending, which I’m still back and forth on.
And finally, opening this year’s Cinepocalypse in Chicago will be the directorial debut from Misfits/Samhain/Danzig lead singer, the Evil Elvis himself, Glenn Danzig. Verotika is an anthology horror film based on the comic properties of Danzig’s Verotik comic imprint and will feature new Danzig music. Other than that, details are scarce, but we can expect copious amounts of blood and sex!
