It’s still been an amazing trip here at FANGORIA. I’ve noticed now that when I read the articles, I’m picking up on the common mistakes faster and learning how magazine journalism is different from creative writing. But I still have no complaints.

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Blizzard announced Diablo 3. In case you haven’t already get out your party hats and noise makers and start the celebration. And in true Blizzard fashion the game already has a very done up promotional video which screams “ANTICIPATE ME!”

The guys at 1Up.com got the scoop this time: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3168465

And there is already a promotional site: http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/ Including character classes, screen shots, so on and so forth.

New classes seem to include Witch Doctor and Barbarian so far, although I’m sure that any of the old classes will play with a new feel and polish since 2 last came out.

It’s a very good day for horror gamers!

DETHKLOK live at the Nokia Theatre, 06/25/2008.

Dethalbum

Greetings Gorehounds,
It was my pleasure to have witnessed one of the most anticipated tours to enter NYC this year, on Wednesday June 25th, 2008. The DETHTOUR, featuring Soilent Green, Chimaira, and headliners Dethklok, has been crushing clubs all over America and now it was New York City’s turn to behold the madness brought about by these 3 powerful metal acts.

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I live in Toronto. Toronto is in Canada. Guy Maddin lives in Winnipeg. Winnipeg is also in Canada. We are both Canadians.

And we’re both sharing space this week in my BLOOD SPATTERED BLOG.
Coincidence? Absolutely….

If you don’t know the name, you should get to know it; because there is no other filmmaker alive quite like Guy Maddin. The son of a hockey coach father and beauty salon owner mother, the ‘Peg born and bred Maddin became obsessed with classic horror films and German expressionism from a very young age, a fascination that was profound enough that it would irrevocably steer him towards a life making the strangest sorts of cinema. Since the release of his first feature, the absurd, heavily stylized and occasionally hilarious 1988 high contrast black and white shock drama TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPTAL, Maddin has continued to evolve and manipulate the modern surrealist film, creating a bizarre, beautiful body of work that exists in a strange, claustrophobic void all of its own; he was the youngest director ever to win the Telluride Lifetime Achievement Award; he’s worshipped and revered by millions of offbeat film addicts around the globe and he’s a frequent collaborator with beautiful European film deity Isabella Rossellini. And yet, so few in North America know about him and it’s still very difficult to even find his work, save for online and specialty shops (though art house imprint KINO has rectified some of this problem by releasing several Maddin titles on DVD). He’s like a cinematic secret handshake…

Now, while I’m loathe to call the work of Guy Maddin “horror”, his vision and style, his aesthetic artifice is a direct result of his fascination with the genre, much like the work of Tim Burton and David Lynch, his closest comparative contemporaries, are as well.

I want you to know Guy Maddin.
I want you to love Guy Maddin.

So, on the cusp of the Toronto release of his utterly mad love letter to his hometown MY WINNIPEG, I tracked the man down for a little Q&A that, I believe, is a perfect first date for those just now dipping there toes in his wild well…

So without a millisecond more of blabbedy blah blah, Ladies and lads…I give you Guy Maddin…

Chris: Hi Guy

Guy: Hi Chris

C: Name me one film that like that you keep returning to, that you watch often – not your favorite movie per se, but one that keeps providing inspiration for your own work…

G: I’ll give you two. Lon Chaney’s THE UNKNOWN (1927) directed by Tod Browning. I love it. I see it as the ultimate depiction way I used to go around romancing women, actually. I would try to make myself as un-sexual as possible, literally castrating myself like Lon Chaney did, pretending he didn’t have those big members under wraps. It wasn’t until I watched THE UNKNOWN that I realized that I used to look for women that had some sort of complex that allowed me access to their hearts. And it’s always backfired just as tragically as it does for Chaney in that film. The movie just focuses more sharply on how humans behave and deal with other, really. But outside of that, I mean it’s vintage, wall to wall Chaney and Browning; it’s brisk and powerful and entertaining and it’s strange and unpredictable. And I also really love THE DEVIL DOLL…

C: Browning’s last film?

G: Yeah – and these aren’t FANGORIA answers, these are my answers normally. That one, more than any other movie that I’ve seen really, embraces genres, all genres. It’s a science fiction film, it’s a horror film, it’s an allegorical fantasy, it’s a melodramatic tear jerker, it’s just so many things and it’s really inspiring to me. So I know that it’s possible to cinematically occupy kind of a no mans land and every land all at once because THE DEVIL DOLL does this…and does it very well.

C: Did you watch a lot of horror films as a kid?

G: Well, I actually saw the Browning films later on. But I did watch only horror films as a kid, especially the (Roger) Corman stuff. I would occasionally end up watching a non horror film, only if it had a horror sounding title. Once I went down the local grindhouse, The Lyceum in Winnipeg, to see a movie that was called A BOY TEN FEET TALL which I thought was about a giant boy, which sounded very interesting to me. But it turned out the movie was just about a boy in Africa who faced up to his fears. I remember getting very anxious thinking ‘the movie’s almost over, when’s this kid going to get big?”

C: What about Dracula? You made your own version of the film in 2002 that has obvious nods to the Universal films…were you a fan of the Browning’s Lugosi version?

G: Like the other Browning films, I actually got around to seeing his DRACULA much later in life, in fact I saw it for the first time while I was preparing for my film….

C: Your work has a very low tech aesthetic with simple visual compositions and I’m wondering if you’ve ever felt pressured to change…

G: I think I’m limited by my range. But I don’t feel like learning new technologies. In fact, I like unlearning new technologies. I ran into a bit of trouble when I made the switch from 16mm to 35mm and started learning too much and lost the excitement that I had when it came to primitivism and accidents. Suddenly I had these skilled crew members helping me and there were none of these happy accidents. So I just like attacking the canvas with big sloppy brush strokes and just seeing what happens…that’s my style and my comfort zone.

C: A lot of critics, when asked to define you and work, call you ‘The Canadian David Lynch’…how do you feel about that?

G: Well, it’s a label and it least they’re talking about me. And I understand it and I’m not insulted. I mean I like Lynch. I really love ERASERHEAD and it’s one of the main reasons I was compelled to pick up a camera in the first place. It was Lynch’s use of unprofessional actors and his ability to use dark imagery and especially soundscapes that really excited me and I realized I could do something like that. But we parted ways after ERASERHEAD, in that he later developed a look and a specific style of acting and narrative that has nothing to do with my stuff at all. But certainly ERASERHEAD is a big film to me, I mean Lynch excited a whole generation of us…

C: What about another filmmaker that many have drawn comparisons with you to, Luis Bunuel?

G: Oh he’s really big for me. I love his first film UN CHIEN ANDALOU, the first one he made with Dali, but it was the second one, L’AGE DOR that really affected and inspired me. In spite of everything in it, that Bunuel claimed it to be this image driven, inexplicable joke, it was a complete biography of love life at the time. And when you’re mad with love you’re a surrealist, you do irrational things, the things you torture yourself with make you a surrealist and the surrealists knew that. And that’s the definitive aspect of surrealism for me, that film, specifically the middle part of it….

C: Why do you stay in Winnipeg? Are you going to die there?

G: Well, truthfully I hope that I get hit by a bus in Toronto, or lost at sea in Australia…I want to be lost. I don’t want my body to be taken back to Winnipeg. My mother wants me to. She has this idea that she wants me buried on top of her in the family plot. Now, you asked why I stay in Winnipeg…it’s because I’m invisible. Nobody knows who I am, nobody cares…it’s comfy.

Readers, if you have a taste for cinema that is deeply, authentically weird yet equally profound and moving then do yourself a favor….seek out the work of Guy Maddin. His is a private vision that stands alone…

Until next week, Alexander out…

When I’m really trying to decide if a game is right for me or with my half a C-note I have to look towards others to help me decide. Game review sites and blogs like the one your reading right now (Thank you!) can be a great help to some gamers, but sometimes we fail short if only because a reviewers subjective views are not the same as the ones you may have, or simply put the game must be experienced to be understood, often times when they are quirky or a new concept. Ratings systems tends to fall short as well since as we know there is no real universal scale we can measure a game with. Even fellow user reviews and word of mouth suffer the same flaws as you can never gauge someone’s taste, which is why I promptly wound up having to trade back in Monster Rancher for my DS (Blegh!).

The revival of Alone in the Dark just hit the shelves at your local game store. The series predates virtually every other horror title in existence unless you want to go back to the days of Splatterhouse and has set some of the most important standards and benchmarks across the entire survival horror genre. When a title like this comes out you expect it to make a splash in the community, what you may not expect is it to have the best designed promotional website ever.

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This past weekend was FANGORIA’s Weekend of Horrors convention at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Secaucus, New Jersey. If I hadn’t mentioned it in my previous blogs, this was the first time I’ve gone to one…and it was amazing. The greatest thing was that I didn’t even have to pay for a ticket! Tony put me on the guest list, which sounded awesome (the celebrity geek in me came out).

On Saturday, my sister Melissa tagged along and we were immediately greeted by Tony and his wife, Marguerite. Knowing that this was our first time, Tony pointed out where everything was and we went on our way. First, we hit the vendors’ room where 20th Century Fox was promoting the DVD release of SHUTTER. They asked people passing by if they wanted to take a picture with their spook. Melissa and I figured it was free, so why not? They let us know where to stand in front of the green screen and right before taking the picture, I gripped her arm and gasped at the spot where the ghost would be while Melissa held her hands to her mouth, shocked. When the picture was printed it looked great. Sure, the movie got bad reviews, but that photo op was pretty awesome.

After that we walked around the tables seeing what people were promoting and selling. We came upon the BLOOD NIGHT table where they had some examples of the makeup FX. Severed heads with sheers in their throats and eyelids missing, it really looked gruesome. One of the guys was talking to us about the film and I mentioned how I was the intern at FANGORIA and had listened to Mike’s set visit. He asked if I wanted to say a few things about the film, which they were going to post on their Myspace. Again, I figured why not? I said some things about how everyone is saying this film is going to be bloody and from the looks of the heads on the table, I couldn’t wait. So I’ll have to check up on their Myspace to see if I made the cut.

We also passed Kristina (HALLOWEEN) Klebe’s table. She had a box of cookies in front of her, which I overheard were for her birthday and she was sharing them with the fans. Mike talked to her about her new film, ZONE OF THE DEAD, which also stars Ken Foree.

After walking the whole room, we decided to go see who was in on panel. It was none other than Ken Foree. We sat down and listened as he told stories about playing basketball and which baseball team he likes best (go Yankees!). Then people asked him questions about HALLOWEEN and DAWN OF THE DEAD. He was very truthful and seemed to enjoy sharing these anecdotes. He was also funny, especially when he talked about his injury while prepping for his role in HALLOWEEN.

When Ken was done, Melissa and I walked over to the screening room where we walked in half-way through a film called SPLATTER DISCO. From what we saw, it was extremely and I mean extremely weird, but it was also interesting. From what I was able to figure out, it dealt with a club that had people with bizarre names (Jellybean and Crumbcake are just two of them) and some dressed up as animals (panda, squirrel, cheetah, etc.). There was murder, deceit, Ken Foree, people tripping on acid and musical numbers. Overall, very strange. Some of the stars were sitting there, and when it was over, Melissa asked about the film since we came in late. They told us the title and that it would be out on DVD next month. Since we walked in after it had already started, I realized I’ll have to see the whole thing in order to fully understand it.

We decided to check out the vendor room one last time. On our way we stopped at the table where free movie posters, cards and more were offered. We grabbed a few things and moved on. At this time, George A. Romero was signing autographs. I watched for a few minutes and saw that he was a genuinely open guy. He had no problem talking to the fans and answering their questions, which I think is the most important.

As Melissa and I left, I realized this is one reason why I love the genre so much. The fans are so dedicated and the directors, actors, producers and so on know that because they were once those fans. Although this genre deals with killing and maiming people left and right, in the real world, we all really support each other because we know this is one genre that doesn’t get much respect and we don’t care. It’s what we like and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I’ll be posting some photos soon!

Here is yet another entry in my seemingly unending no budget video blog series…

This week: Robert (Count Yorga) Quarry stars in the awesome 1972 hippie horror meltdown, THE DEATHMASTER.

Enjoy…

A week and a half into the internship and I’m still going strong. Sure, the constant coffee runs are tiring and the endless photo copying left their marks on my fingers in the shapes of paper-cuts, but all in all, it’s going fairly well.

Just kidding!

I just wanted to imagine your reaction as you read that because it’s Hollywood that makes us think interns are java go-getters and Xerox whores. However, that is not the case at FANGORIA. Here, they actually want you to learn and throw no punches. My first day, I was literally thrown in with the rest of them, given plenty of articles to read and edit. In fact, the technical term for me (besides the newest intern) is Editorial Assistant.

Tony and Mike are great guys who genuinely care that you are happy. They are approachable and really know their stuff. Also in the office are Heiner Feil, the Art Director, and Allan Dart, who was once a Fango intern and was later hired on at STARLOG, FANGORIA’s sci-fi sister magazine. Allan now serves as Managing Editor there. “See, an internship at Fango can lead to good things,” Tony had said.

Over the first five days I really did a lot. Between reading articles, writing this blog, and captioning photos, I’ve learned a great deal about the world of magazine writing and editing. I’ve captioned photos for MIRRORS, THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE, and my personal favorite, LOST BOYS: THE TRIBE. Captioning is great because it really lets me unleash my creative side. This is the part of the magazine where you can let go and have fun. Although some of them are changed or altered, it is amazing to see that something you created is winding up in print. In fact, my name will even appear as Editorial Assistant in the next issue…how cool is that?

I also write up some news items that appear on the website. They range from movie updates to convention updates. The news pieces are usually less than 400 words, but they still give me practice in this field. I already saw a difference between my first and second because of the little tips that Tony gave me.

So much done in so little time. The 9-to-5 days seem long, but when I’m surrounded by articles and captioning, it’s crazy how time flies. It’s during my down time when I browse the FANGORIA website to catch up on my movie scoops and recent reviews. Plus, there’s a “Future Fango Article” file with set visits and interviews that will be used in later issues. These are good to read to get some practice with the proofreading marks and to see how each writer is different.

When the articles first come in, they are nothing more than white paper with black ink. Eventually, they’re copy edited, typeset and proofread. Eventually, combined with the photo selection, they are put into a layout that appears in the magazine. If you think seeing it there is cool, seeing it first-hand is even better. Heiner literally takes our breath away with what he comes up with.

I also get excited when a new article comes my way. Whether it be from FANGORIA or STARLOG (edited by Dave McDonnell), it’s enjoyable to read through the features. In many cases, if there was an article that didn’t sound interesting in the magazine, I would skip it. Now, I read everything that goes into the magazine and I can’t believe what I missed in the past.

I definitely look forward to the coming weeks. FANGORIA has opened my eyes to the field of journalism and gave me another option in my career. I look forward to writing more and letting you all know how it’s going and I hope that by reading this, you’ll even consider sending your résumé in.

Exclusive clip off CANNIBAL CORPSE’s 3disc DVD Centuries of Torment The First 20 Years now up!

Legendary death metal band Cannibal Corpse has been busy working on the follow-up to 2006’s victorious release KILL, which saw the band hit the Billboard Top 200 chart at #170 with 6049 units scanned, #6 on Billboard’s Heatseaker chart, #16 on Billboard’s Top Independent Albums chart, #21 on Billboard’s Top Hard Rock Albums chart, a coveted spot touring on 2006’s Sounds of the Underground, headlining the extremely successful Metal Blade Records 25th Anniversary Tour, and multiple tours overseas and dates in Canada and South America. The new album isn’t expected until the fall or winter of 08/09 so until then fans will be able to get their Cannibal fix with the bands first-ever career retrospective 3-disc DVD, Centuries of Torment The First 20 Years.

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A while back in this BLOOD SPATTERED BLOG of mine, I opted to rave and drool about one of my favorite second tier Hammer horror classics, Don Sharp’s playful and decadent 1963 fang-fest KISS OF THE VAMPIRE. In that same entry, I dropped reference to a film that I consider to be the legendary UK studio’s crowning achievement – Terrence Fisher’s 1960 shocker BRIDES OF DRACULA. Well, the time has come, dear readers, to rant about that very same sanguinary flick; a movie that chased Fisher’s 1958 Christopher Lee starring landmark HORROR OF DRACULA (or just plain DRACULA as it’s known to the Brits) but has rarely received the same sort of reverence or profile that that admittedly great first picture commands. And yet a closer look proves BRIDES to be a far more complex, depraved, frightening and sophisticated entertainment, one that still holds the power to chill the spine and thrill the eye.

Are you ready to get Hammered again, friends?

Good. Lock up your daughters. Let’s do this thing…

After the massive international success of DRACULA, Hammer hit up their visionary house director Fisher (who had also at this point helmed both 1957’s CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN) to dip his beak in the bloody well once again and make an immediate fanged follow-up. Fisher was game, the budget was bigger but there was one potentially catastrophic problem – Lee wasn’t interested. The immortal (but reportedly rather diva-esque) thespian had little desire to be typecast - much like his Stoker slapped predecessor Bela Lugosi was – as a vampire and bowed out (though, of course time would try to keep him locked in the role anyway). The idea of re-casting the Count was bandied about but eventually that erroneous notion was rejected in favor of forging an all new undead menace…

Let’s have a look at the plot.

As the picture opens, a narrator informs us that Dracula has indeed been dispatched but his followers live on to spread his parasitic menace across the countryside. Enter lovely French teacher Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur), who en route to her employ at a Romanian girl’s school, gets her carriage stuck and takes refuge in a creepy village inn. Before long the innkeepers are visited by the seemingly kindly and obviously lonely Baroness Meinster, who proceeds to convince the vulnerable and too trusting Marianne to be her guest at her otherwise empty family Castle. Marianne obliges, of course, but soon learns that the Baroness is not living as solitary an existence as she claims to be.

From her terrace, Marianne sees a handsome blonde aristocrat on the floor below and, upon investigating, discovers that he is in fact the Baroness’s reportedly ill son (David Peel, who’s bloody great in this), who is being kept a shackled prisoner by his apparently deranged mother. When the tragic blue blood begs for the beautiful Marianne to free him from his bonds, she obliges and in the process, unleashes Hell itself. Flashing his fangs in his giggling mouth, the now liberated Baron Meinster feeds upon his guilt ridden mother and flies the coop.

Enter professional supernatural investigator Van Helsing (and with that, enter returning DRACULA cast member Peter “Props” Cushing). When we last saw Professor Van Helsing he had crossed candlesticks over an already daylight crumbling Count, putting the Lord of the dead’s ancient ass to bed for good; now he whiles away his days obsessively travelling the byways of Transylvania seeking out more members of Dracula’s ever thriving death cult. Upon arriving in the very same creepy village as our poor heroine Marianne, Van Helsing quickly learns that the undead are afoot. In an incredibly eerie sequence, he witnesses a withered, wild eyed vampire hag writhing on the top of one of the townspeople’s recently dead daughter’s grave, cooing and sweetly encouraging the now vampirized girl to rise from her coffin and step into the nightlife. After putting a damper on their unholy activities, Van Helsing follows the blood spattered bred crumbs to the doorstep of the foul Baron Meinster and vows to send him to the same subterranean sauna (y’know…Hell) as his pal Vlad…

THE BRIDES OF DRACULA is a masterpiece of Gothic horror. From its atmospheric opening, slow, mood drenched, sequnces to its ballistic, barely controlled nervous breakdown of a climax, this is Terrence Fischer’s show all the way. Flashes of the energy and ingenuity he displayed in DRACULA reach explosive heights in this follow-up and it’s difficult to believe the unassuming, humble filmmaker was almost 60 when he spat this kinetic sucker out.

All of the elements I love about this early period in Hammer’s Gothic cycle of the 1960’s are on display in BRIDES: beautiful, doe eyed damsels in push up corsets, stylized, theatrical sets, brisk pace, repressed Victorian sexuality, thundering music (BRIDES offers one of the few scores not composed by Hammer standby James Bernard but rather HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN’s Malcom Williamson), simple good vs. evil morality tales and a lush, eyeball caressing saturated color palette courtesy of regular studio cinematographer Jack Asher. Trust me, this film REDEFINES the concept of cinematic color. Forget SUSPIRIA or BLOOD AND BLACK LACE – Asher’s work in BRIDES OF DRACULA is the single best example of color engorged delirium ever committed to any creepy strain of celluloid.

Curiously, Lee’s absence in BRIDES is not an issue at all, in fact the film benefits from the lack of the shadow he casts and the baggage he brings – it feels fresh and free of the constraints of Stoker. Peel is absolutely sensational as the fey, sneering vampire lowlife Meinster and Cushing is, of course, dynamite in his returning role as the logical vampire slayer; an ever alert man of science who treats the undead plague as a sort of supernatural Manson-esque hive that must be stamped out.

The last reel of BRIDES OF DRACULA is especially incredible. Remember the climax of the original HORROR OF DRACULA when a frantic Van Helsing pounces off The Count’s dining room table, tearing down his curtains and spilling sunlight onto Drac’s screaming, smoldering face?

Well, BRIDES outdoes that pulse pounding sequence tenfold…

In an astonishing 11th hour set piece, a chain wielding Meinster traps a panicked Van Helsing in his windmill lair, getting the upper hand on the Professor, belting him with the metal whip, slamming back his head and burying his incisors in the vampire killer’s open throat. When Van Helsing wakes up he immediately realizes what has happened to him and, treating the bite as a viral infection, heats an iron staff in a fire pit and jabs it into the bloody bite wound, effectively cauterizing it, all the while groaning in agony before dousing his blistering neck in Holy Water!

Absolutely ferocious…

BRIDES OF DRACULA has often been called out for having a confusing and misleading title: we know there’s no Dracula in the picture and therefore any so called “Brides” present aint his. But I see things differently…

Think of Dracula as Jesus Christ.
Now what do you commonly call the Nuns that devote their lives and immortal souls to his worship?
Brides of Christ.
Therefore, it goes to follow that those disciples of the long crucified dead Dracula are in fact, whether male or female, his Brides.

Here endith the lesson.

I don’t think Fisher ever topped this film. When, in 1966, Chris Lee donned the cape and caps to play the Count once again in Fisher’s DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS, it just felt rather…redundant. Stale. And God knows, as much as I love ALL of the Hammer horrors, the Dracula pics just kept getting worse and worse and worse.

But BRIDES OF DRACULA is about as perfect as horror fantasy filmmaking gets and I demand that you see it. Now. GO!

Alexander out.