Monster Scholar

"She's special. She needs special food."--Madeline Matheson Grace I caught the trailer for this film on Fearnet.com . Grace plays around with fears about the relationship between mother and child that can sometimes turn from nurturing to parasitic. Madeline Matheson is in a car accident that causes her to miscarry her fetus, but decides to carry the child to term anyway. After giving birth to a stillborn baby in the bathtub, Madeline somehow wills the baby back to life. But her unnatural and undying love is not enough, and she soon discovers the horrible price of keeping little Gracie alive . Grace capitalizes on the notion of children as parasites both inside and outside the womb. How many times have we heard mothers tell their older children "I've given you the best years of my life" as they complain about lost youth and their figures? These kinds of sacrifices are made into the subject of horror, as Madeline realizes what she must do (i.e. kill, dismembe

In Rob Zombie’s return take on the 70’s slasher, Michael Myers is still at large and just wants some quality time with his sister. Picking up where Zombie’s 2007 Halloween left off, the film follows Laurie Strode as she is rushed to the hospital with wounds inflicted by her brother a few hours earlier. She assumes that Michael is dead but in typical slasher style, Michael somehow lives and continues his murderous rampage on the hospital staff and anyone else unfortunate enough to get in his way. The original remake of Halloween was criticized for its lack of directorial vision, as Zombie fell into the trap of making a “typical” remake that wasn’t up to par with his gritty style of horror. As a result it was dubbed in some circles as Rob Zombie’s John Carpenter’s Halloween , but that is a mistake Rob Zombie won’t make again. Though he admits to the challenge of working with characters and a story that were not his own in the first film, Halloween II is a second chance for Rob Zombie t

Following the example of Day of the Woman , I’ve decided to drum up some featured items for this blog and ask you what kinds of things you would like to see on Monsterland. Below are some of the cafeteria style offerings I’m planning on dishing out, but I’m always open to suggestions. Leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail at jeanlaredo@yahoo.com Monste r of the Month: Whether they’re zombies, wasp women, singing vegetables, or the slasher next door, these are the monsters that give us nightmares or a good laugh. This monthly feature will spotlight a chosen monster’s filmic or literary origins. Attack of the Leading Ladies: What’s a monster without a few women to terrorize? Leading Ladies will focus on the on-screen careers of women in horror, even if they’re just damsels in distress or monsters themselves. If Chins Could Kill: From Vincent Price to Bruce Campbell these are the leading men that either create the monster or try to save humanity from its wrath, winning our hearts in th

Everyone's favorite vampire mini series returns to HBO for its second season June 14. The comeback of True Blood has been hyped by the release of posters with bloodied characters from the show and the tag line "It Hurts So Good." Another series of promotional images intended for billboards plays with blood and shadows and asks potential viewers if they're "Ready to Be Bitten Again?" "Ready for New Blood?" and "Ready for Seconds?" Entertainment Weekly also gave fans a first look at outlines of the season's first three episodes: June 14: “Nothing But the Blood” A shocking murder outside Merlotte’s has Bon Temps reeling. Meanwhile, Sookie’s (Anna Paquin) relationship with Bill (Stephen Moyer) is tested when she learns about Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll), and of his involvement in her uncle’s death. Sam (Sam Trammell) recalls a shape-shifting encounter he had with Maryann (Michelle Forbes) as a 17-year-old. Jason (Ryan Kwanten) gets a sud

In honor of Memorial Day and the brave men and women who continue to protect our country and serve in the armed forces. Nicholas Pekearo’s posthumous debut The Wolfman has been dubbed “brilliant, insightful [and] overpowering” and for good reason. The werewolf of Pekearo’s novel is no Lon Chaney Jr. Marlowe Higgins a forty-something Vietnam veteran who’s inherited the mark of the beast from his father. The Higgins men have been cursed with lycanthropy ever since Marlowe’s great grandfather, a bounty hunter killed an Indian shaman called “the Mad wolf.” The curse is passed down from father to son, and after generations of suffering Marlowe’s father plans to end the curse himself. He kills Marlowe’s infant brother Jeffrey and intends to do the same to Marlowe, but in the end can’t follow through. His hopes for an end to the curse are later restored when Marlowe is drafted into the service and sent to Vietnam, a sure death sentence. But things don’t go according to plan and Marlowe sur

Mr. Scarlett Johansson did such a good job of playing Wade Wilson, the “merc with a mouth” in this summer’s X Men Origins: Wolverine that 20th Century Fox is offering the actor his own spinoff. Reynolds will reprise the role of Deadpool, the mutant mercenary who can absorb the powers of other mutants and has the same healing factor as Wolverine, courtesy of the Weapons X program. This isn’t Reynolds’ first foray into the realm of monster/action-horror films. Who could forget his happy go lucky vampire hunter persona Hannibal King in Blade Trinity . Reynolds managed to send every American male aged 15-35 to the gym with that sick nice body of his. Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool and Hannibal King With the success of X Men Origins: Wolverine , Hollywood has plans in motion to raid the comic book monster closet, so to speak. Fox is working on an X Men spinoff featuring Magneto and another offshoot named X-Men: First Class (already a successful comic book franchise) is set to be written by Jo

New Moon poster revealed? Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart bringing back heroine chic . The cover of OK! Magazine is sporting the heavy-lidded stars of the upcoming film New Moon , the latest in the Twilight saga by Stephanie Meyers. At first glance Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart look a little heroine chic and one wonders, are they getting enough sun? Perhaps their drab appearance is the result of several leaks and other blunders that have plagued New Moon production. The above poster was scored by the Rob Pattinson fan site spunk-ransom.com and features a petulant Taylor Lautner getting between star crossed lovers Bella and Edward. And before the poster leaked, Casey Ray, the owner of a beauty salon in St. Louis found a copy of the script for New Moon in the garbage! In a classy move she didn’t try to sell the script to the tabloids. Instead, with the help of her lawyer (you need them more often than you think in the beauty business) she returned the scripts to Summit and as a

Blood and beefcake. David DeCoteau’s Ancient Evil: Scream of the Mummy is not for the faint of heart. Unlike most horror films, the thrills and chills don’t come from the monster or gore effects, but the homoerotic tension palpable in nearly every frame of the film. DeCoteau is one of the most prolific horror filmmakers today with 50 plus films released by Paramount Home Video, HBO, Regent Entertainment, the SciFi Channel and Here! TV, a gay pay per view channel. Under the name of Rapid Heart Productions, he has written and directed films like Leeches! (2003), The Brotherhood II: Young Warlocks (2001), and Beastly Boyz (2006). His films are filled with witches, monsters, werewolves and zombies, but what keeps DeCoteau’s fans coming back is the Abercrombie and Fitch-style beefcake he casts in the leading roles. DeCoteau defines his audience as, “mainly gay men, but quite a few straight girls and even a few straight guys who show them to their girlfriends” and as an openly gay man, he e

JFK and Elvis versus a Mummy. “Old age hath yet his honor and his toil” –Alfred, Lord Tennyson Ulysses The film Bubba Ho-tep opens with an aging Elvis stuck at the Shady Rest retirement community in Mud Creek, Texas. Elvis is bedridden with a cancerous lump at the end of his penis, and to make things worse no one believes he’s Elvis. Instead, they think he’s Sebastian Haff, an Elvis impersonator. But it turns out that Elvis, tired of fame and fortune switched places with Sebastian to regain the simple life. The arrangement was peachy until the real Elvis threw out his hip at a concert and caught an infection that put him in a coma, and then into a rest home. Elvis is moldering away in bed where the only thing he looks forward to is his next meal, when strange things start happening around Shady Rest. Bubba Ho-tep, a long dead mummy and the “brother” of King Tut, is accosting residents and sucking out their souls through their arse-holes. The mummy’s attacks give Elvis a purpose in l

The King Tutankhamun exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art inspired this three part piece on the mummy in horror. I have been obsessed with ancient Egypt and mummies ever since I was a kid. I remember shaving the head of a Barbie doll, wrapping the entire body it in ace bandages, and putting it in a hand painted sarcophagus I made out of cardboard for an elementary school project. Those were the days =). After its success with Boris Karloff the Uncanny in Universal's The Mummy in 1932, the mummy has yet to achieve the blockbuster of another true horror feature. The mummy’s status in film stands in stark contrast to the commercial success of its other monster brethren including werewolves ( The Howling, An American Werewolf in London ), vampires ( Interview with Vampire, Twilight ) and even zombies ( Day of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead ). The reason for the mummy’s lack of success in horror is unclear, but it could be that after Universal released A bbott and Costello Meet the Mum

Universal has been trying to cash in on all their monster properties with remakes such as the Wolf Man (starring and directed by Benicio del Toro) scheduled to hit theaters in November of this year and that horrible amalgamation known as Van Helsing. But now they’ve officially outdone themselves. In what originally was considered a spoof press release , Universal has now confirmed its latest entertainment venture: Creature from the Black Lagoon: The Musical, coming in the Spring 2009. The show’s release is meant to build up the hype for the 2011 remake of the 1954 classic. Press Release: 2 June 2008 Drawn from Universal’s crypt of classic monsters and updated with spectacular Broadway production values and special effects, “Creature from the Black Lagoon—The Musical,” will rise, live, on stage at Universal Studios Hollywood beginning spring, 2009. With state-of-the-art stagecraft, acrobatic choreography and hilarious, toe-tapping music, the Creature will be brought to life in a story