Albuquerque, New Mexico…
There are several of us huddled in the tiny press tent, trying not to let the sandstorm outside frighten us, when the machine gun goes off. For the past 20 minutes, there has been no sound from outside other than relentless wind blasting sharp sand waves across the desert terrain. Gary Oldman just opened our tent’s flap, silently snapped a picture of us, then disappeared so quickly that I almost didn’t see the smirk on his face.
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Glass Eye Pix, the New York-area horror factory run by independent filmmaker Larry Fessenden (pictured), has been busier than ever these days, with four features in a coproduction deal with Dark Sky Films wrapped and being readied for release, and SATAN HATES YOU, a collaboration with MonsterPants, just premiered and about to hit the festival circuit. As if all this big-screen activity wasn’t enough, Fango got the scoop that Glass Eye will be terrorizing the audiosphere via an on-line series called TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE.
Reminiscent of Dario Argento’s gory style, HIGH TENSION (a.k.a. HAUTE TENSION) is an intense French shocker that strikes you in the jugular. Director/co-writer Alexandre Aja lives up to the searing title, creating an admirable tribute to ’70s slasher films like HALLOWEEN and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.
Hailing from Japan, director Kinji Fukasaku’s BATTLE ROYALE is a high-octane thriller, a combination of LORD OF THE FLIES and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME. Under orders from the authoritarian government, 42 teenaged students are given weapons and forced to play a deadly game of survival.
Chuck Connors never asked for your pity. That said, one can’t help but catch the simplest whiff of off-camera tragedy surrounding his star turn in 1979’s TOURIST TRAP today. The headliner of such ’60s television Westerns as BRANDED had gone on record saying he accepted the role of demented Mr. Slausen in hopes of becoming the “Boris Karloff of the 80’s.” Watching Connors rave and rage through the film is to see a leading-man-in-decline struggling to reinvent himself on screen, a Tinseltown phoenix fighting to rise up from his own celluloid ashes.
A few weeks ago, I was meandering through a vintage store when I happened upon a videocassette of the movie GIRL SLAVES OF MORGANA LE FAY. With its cover stating that the film is “a classic of erotic horror,” I couldn’t pass up this potential Eurosleaze gem.
If there’s anything that the DVD era has taught film fans, it’s that where there’s a movie, there will be deleted scenes—moments that might be noteworthy in and of themselves but didn’t fit the director’s (or, just as often, the studio’s) vision of the piece. This is especially true on the documentary scene, where filmmakers routinely shoot double- or even triple-digit hours of footage that must be whittled down to a feature-length final product—and director Michael Stephenson (pictured) confirms that in crafting BEST WORST MOVIE, his chronicle of the TROLL 2 experience, some of the almost-best bits had to hit the cutting room floor.