Happy Monday, my fiends! I hope you had a horrific weekend in the best sense of the word. I have had a week and unfortunately have watched, um, no horror movies. At all. All week. Between the day job and prepping the release of Paul Lubaczewski’s new novella, A New Life, I have been busy as hell. But I have not let the important news stories of the week escape me, so let’s get current…
First up, and maybe most importantly, at least to me on a personal level, producer Suzanne Nagy has announced that she has finished the sequel to 1976’s Grizzly, which was mostly finished in 1983, but the executive producer slipped away with all the money before the mechanical bear stuff could be shot-so, no movie. Until now! The trailer looks really good. I’m a huge fan of animal attack films (Jaws, Wild Beasts, Day of the Animals, the original Grizzly, just to name a few), particularly bear attack films (there aren’t enough, by the way) and I grew up on Grizzly (directed by William Girdler), not sure how many times I saw it. If you’re unfamiliar with the film, it’s essentially Jaws with a bear and ain’t nothing wrong with that. No release date for Grizzly II: The Concert (because. the. bear. attacks. a. concert!), but there is a new blu that just came out of the first film and I highly recommend it. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, this movie has Laura Dern, George Clooney, and Charlie Sheen in some of their earliest film appearances.
Do we care about the new Lindsey Lohan/Mickey Rourke film, Cursed..? No, me either. Go watch Angel Heart. I know on the one hand that’s kind of a dickish thing to say, but Rourke used to be in some great movies and he really shined in them. The latest thing I can think of where he recaptured that old magic was in the Sin City movies and The Wrestler, and I’m sure that was in large part due to the fact that Robert Rodriguez and Darren Aronofsky respected the star and gave him a chance to be that guy from Angel Heart, Barfly, and The Pope of Greenwich Village. Rourke became a star for a reason and the guy deserves a great second act, not unlike Don Johnson, who has turned in amazing roles in films like Cold in July and Brawl in Cell Block 99. Starring opposite Lohan is probably not going to get it done. (I hope the movie kicks ass, but just looking at it on paper, wow, I don’t care.) So go watch Angel Heart. It’s directed by Alan Parker (Pink Floyd’s The Wall), it co-stars Robert Dinero and Lisa Bonet, the uncut version originally got slapped with an X rating, it’s a period piece with Rourke planning a Brooklyn PI that has to go down to New Orleans, and gets wrapped up in some Deviltry and Voodoo. Solid movie.
Speaking of voodoo, as I mentioned at the top, my publishing imprint St Rooster Books is releasing Paul Lubaczewski’s new novella, A New Life. This is a huge deal for us because previously we’ve released anthologies and my own books, but Paul’s novella marks the first standalone book from a different author we’ve released. It’s another big step for St Rooster as a publisher.
Down on his luck in Philadelphia, Austin found himself homeless and out of options, but a chance encounter with two men, named Nicky and Zion, will change his life forever. Unfortunately for Austin, it doesn’t take him long to learn that getting everything you want can be Hell.
Things get bloody awful in the follow up to Paul Lubaczewski’s critically acclaimed I NEVER EAT…CHEESESTEAK. Achieving a balance of literary fiction and pure horror, A NEW LIFE is smart and brutal with an emotional gravity. Lubaczewski gives us a psychological deep dive into the desperation of life on the jagged edges of society.
A New Life drops this Friday, February 28th and you can order it on Amazon/Kindle or from your local bookstore.
