Happy Sunday, fiends! Welcome back to your weekly roundup of the top horror news.
Just before I started typing this, I was on Facebook and caught a post in one of the horror groups I follow, where an individual called The Exorcist underwhelming. And though one should never read the comments, I boldly went straight to the comments, expecting the person to be dragged across the coals. Alas! I was struck by the number of people saying the movie is BORING, SLOW, and “up there with The Shining as one of the least scary and most overrated movies in horror history.” (Also worth noting, Blade Runner was called disappointing as well.) I’m not gonna tell all the kids to get off my yard, but I am curious if you’re a horror fan and you think The Exorcist is a bad movie, what the fuck is a good movie to you? Sorry to get off on a little tangent right there at the beginning, but yikes. I personally prefer watching The Exorcist III more than the original, but I still think the original is almost as important a film as Night of the Living Dead which was ground zero for Modern Horror. William Peter Blatty’s novel is incredible and William Freidkin and the whole cast and crew did such an amazing job of bringing the book to cinematic life, creating a believable world, and crafting a horror film head and shoulders above other “serious” horror films of the time, like The Omen or Rosemary’s Baby. I think the only other movie of the 1970’s that can match The Exorcist’s intensity is Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkle’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. People can have opinions, I know, but to paraphrase Peter Boyle in Taxi Driver, “this is America, we got freedom of expression, do what you want, God love you, but, uh, you know, don’t go talking shit on my timeline.”
If you listen to Shockwaves Podcast (and you should) they re-ran an old Killer POV (pre-Shockwaves sans Ryan Turek) episode with an interview with the late, great Stuart Gordon and talked a lot about Edgar Allan Poe, HP Lovecraft, Nevermore, and Re-Animator the Musical. Check them out wherever you listen to podcasts, it’s a great interview.
Speaking of Lovecraft, Barbara Crampton posted on Twitter about the new re-imagining of Castle Freak is “actually a combination of two Lovecraft stories: “The Dunwich Horror” and “The Outsider.” Well, holy shit! That’s even more exciting than just an updating of the Stuart Gordon original, which is currently streaming on Shudder and highly recommended.
So we know a lot of movies are moving their release dates to later in the year and for horror it looks like September is going to kick ass with The Quiet Place 2, The Conjuring 3, and Candyman all hitting that month. Then in October, we get Halloween Kills (where’s that trailer, Mr Blum??) and possibly Spiral, the new film in the Saw saga.
A new Samara Weaving movie? Lionsgate has released the trailer for their new film Last Moment of Clarity, which also stars Brian Cox (Manhunter) and Udo Kier (Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein). The film looks more thriller than horror, but with strong Hitchcock vibes oozing out of every frame of the trailer, I expect some appeal for the horror fan.
