Monster Scholar

Welcome to the first installment of the Trailer Park, a place for me to review the good, the bad and the ugly trailers of horror movies past and present. Today’s subject is the trailer for Dorian Gray by Momentum pictures. The trailer’s depiction of London is reminiscent of Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd , with big sweeps of the foggy industrial mecca rendered with CGI, coupled with claustrophobic street close-ups. Focusing on Dorian, I love that the only difference between innocent Dorian pre-portrait and the jaded libertine he will become is the removal of a schoolboy hat and tie. The trailer flirts with the idea of masks and the deceit of outer appearances, an apt subject considering Dorian’s beauty is only an illusion. Dorian confesses to a blind priest “this is not my true face” and then glimpses himself in a silver serving tray at party where the guests are all in masks. Collin Firth, whose credits include Bridget Jones’s Diary and Shakespeare in Love is the decadent Lord Henry who l

Born in March of 1958, Victor Ronald Salva was a film prodigy who directed nearly twenty short films before he turned eighteen, culminating with his 37-minute short Something in the Basement that was awarded first place in fiction at the Sony/AFI Home Video Competition. Someth ing in the Basement garnered the attention of Francis Ford Coppola who produced Salva’s first feature release, Clownhouse . Silva recycled the cast from Basement to create what he called a “camp fire story” In Clownhouse , three brothers hiding out in a deserted house are menaced by a trio of escaped mental patients who have disguised themselves as circus clowns. Clownhouse was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and International Fantasy Film Award at the Fantasporto film festival in Portugal. But Salva’s early success was overshadowed by his conviction for sexual abuse involving the 12-year-old star of Clownhouse , Nathan Forrest Winters. The molestation was videotaped by Salva

Directed by Daryn Lynn Bousman, Repo! The Genetic Opera became an instant cult classic when it was released in 2008. True to its distinction as a rock opera, the music never stops and aside from a few snatches of spoken dialogue, the entire movie is one song after another. This can get frightfully tedious for some fans of horror musicals like Rocky Horror or Sweeney Todd which provide breaks between bursting into song. But Repo! is exactly what it claims to be, a genetic opera to the very end. Repo! The Genetic Opera takes place in the not-so-distant future where the spread of industry has caused massive organ failures. The human population faces certain death until GeneCo emerges as a savior, selling affordable organs on credit. There’s just one problem, if you miss your payments GeneCo sends out the Repo Man to recover their property ( Genetic Repo Man ). In the midst of this horror, a private drama unfolds involving the Repo Man Nathan, his sick daughter Shilo, Rotti Largo, the

This week’s zombie kill goes to Jessica from the teen horror comedy Boy Eats Girl . Jessica is a high school student and the love interest of Nathan, the film’s protagonist. Nathan struggles to tell Jessica that he wants to be more than just friends, but after seeing Jessica with another boy he assumes the worst. Nathan reacts like any other teenage boy would and gets drunk. His antics end in an attempt at hanging made successful by his unwitting mother Grace, who opens his bedroom door and knocks him off his perch. Plagued by guilt, Grace brings her son back to life using a book of voodoo spells she found in a crypt at the church where she works. Nathan is restored to life with superhuman strength but lacks a pulse and has a gnawing hunger for human flesh. Nathan inevitably bites a bully at school who spreads a zombie plague that takes over the entire town. Jessica shows her mettle when a group of her friends is cornered by a crowd of teenage zombies. She jumps into action and has no

“His irises tremble violently as the camera fixes on his glassy gaze, and before you know it, you've once again been entranced by the character with whom you're unsure if you should fear or sympathize.”— Actor Bio on Blockbuster Onlin e I just got finished watching Captivity , one of the After Dark Horrorfest films starring Elisha Cuthbert as a kidnapped supermodel with Daniel Gillies and Pruitt Taylor Vince as her captors. Vince gives an unsettling performance as the psychotic Ben Dexter, who owns his own catering business to finance his and his brother's hobby of capturing young women and keeping them in the basement. Vince’s roles always leave me with a feeling of lingering creepiness, so I thought I’d do a brief review of the weirdos he’s played in the past. Monster (2003) Vince plays Gene the stuttering "John" in Monster, one of the many victims of Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute from Daytona Beach who became a serial killer. Identity (2003) Malcolm Rivers is

I caught a story on the morning news about Jeff Kepner, the first man in America to receive a double hand transplant. The family of a 23-year old Pennsylvania man donated the hands to Kepner who looks forward to “hold[ing his] daughter's hand and…grandchildren's hands someday.” Kepner’s amazing story reminded me of several horror films that use disembodied hands to strike fear into the hearts of moviegoers. So here they are in the list of Top Ten Evil Hands. 10. The Crawling Hand (1963) This horror camp-fest was featured on episode 106 of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and stars an astronaut’s dead hand that plummets to earth and begins to strangle the living. An astronaut is on his way back to earth when he begs mission control to self destruct his rocket before it lands. They do and the poor spaceman is blown to bits. The hand is discovered by college student Paul Lawrence who keeps it to himself for further study, but the hand soon evades his control and begins killing innoce

Zombie Kill of the Week goes to Skip, the owner of the go-go dance establishment where Cherry Darling works in Planet Terror . In real life Skip is actually Skip Reissig, Robert Rodriquez’s real estate agent, who at Rodriguez’s urging took on the part of the likable jerk in this grindhouse feature. Skip is manning the helicopter that will airlift the remaining survivors of the zombie apocalypse to a safe haven. There’s just one thing left to do, take care of the zombies lumbering towards the chopper. Skip pitches the copter forward and uses the fan blades to slice, dice and julienne the toxic undead, much to the excitement of the Crazy Babysitter Twins (played by Rodriguez’s cousins Electra Isabel and Elise Avellan) Honorable mention this week goes to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) for doing this gag first. A band of refugees commandeer a helicopter and touchdown in the middle of nowhere to refuel on their way to greener pastures. Headless of the dangerous helicopter blades,

A funny take on the vampire mythos from issue #7 of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by comic book artist Jhonen Vasquez. Click to enlarge.

I recently picked up remake of The Fog on a lark, but it got me thinking about what other horror films capitalize on wicked weather phenomenon. As the survivor of a week of triple digit temperatures here in Texas, I know that weather can be scary. So here they are, for better or worse, my Top 10 Weather-Related Horror Movies. 10. White-Out (2003) A group of teenagers go on a ski trip to Big Bear, California to participate in a snowboarding contest. But things turn foul as people start to disappear and when “xtreme players compete…the snow gets red.” Whatever that means. 9. B lood Tide (1982) Evil lurks in the ocean depths in this thriller starring James Earl Jones as Frye, a man who accidentally unleashes an ancient monster with a hunger for young virgins on a Grecian fishing town. Jones is able to subdue the monster in the film’s closing sequence, with a knife and some C-4. Kaboom. 8. S n ow Day, Bloody Snow Day (2005) This zombie comedy is set in Seattle where residents, besieged by