John Cusack (also in THE PAPERBOY, one of my favorite films of the year) and Jennifer Carpenter (ever the scene-stealer in Showtime’s DEXTER) star in THE FACTORY, a semi-horror movie made under producer Joel Silver’s Dark Castle banner. A SILENCE OF THE LAMBS-meets-HARDCORE-wannabe thriller tinged with blood, it follows an obsessed father on the hunt for his missing teenage daughter.

Horror short anthology THE COLLECTIVE VOLUME IV (available now from JABB Pictures) was a bit of a motley mix of success, failure, ambition and some baffling choices in curating. We’ve previously looked at the collection as a whole, but the time has come to explore the individual films. It’s fitting then, that we start at the beginning and with one of two films in the package that come from JABB-meister Jason Hoover: FRANKIE.

Neither JACK & DIANE (pictured left) nor VAMPS is specifically a horror film, though they each offer takes on supernatural beings—a humanoid id monster in the former, bloodsuckers in the latter—that work within their own genres.

COMPOUND FRACTURE is the first feature from actor Tyler Mane’s new production imprint Mane Entertainment, and what a debut it is. Genre mainstays Leslie Easterbrook (THE DEVIL’S REJECTS) and Muse Watson are on hand for this dramatic genre bender, but it’s the promise of an on-screen monster mash between “Michael Myers” Mane, and Derek Mears (FRIDAY THE 13TH 2009) that is sure to have Fango readers salivating.

Astron-6, makers of the cult hit FATHER’S DAY, are back in theatres with MANBORG and their latest short film, BIO-COP (rolling out across Canada this month, details here). The team’s SFX and stop-motion guru, Steven Kostanski, has taken to the directors’ chair to deliver their special brand of retro-pop homage; this time a payment of respect to the video action cheesefests of the 80s and early 90s. Famous for making FATHER’s DAY for a budget of only $10,000, MANBORG gets what it gives out of only a thousand bucks and the pure love of the craft from Kostanski and company.

Witches, radioactive mutants, giant monsters and endless ghosts have had their moments in the found-footage genre, and now it’s eco-terror’s turn. And with THE BAY, director Barry Levinson has adopted a somewhat different approach in tune with his hot-button subject matter.

History may be doomed to repeat itself, but does that mean we have to watch it over and over again? When there are Nazi zombies with doomsday devices, we just might be tempted.