One of my favorite events of the year is the Eerie Horror Film Festival. Although it takes place over four days every October, I usually only have time to go for one day. This year I went on Saturday, and watched the first four blocks of movies they played, totalling 8 hours of shorts and features. Allow me to tell you a little bit about what I saw.

But before I start, I have a couple comments. First of all, I’ve never seen a truly bad movie at this festival. Sure, there were some I didn’t care for, but the quality is consistently excellent in the films chosen. Secondly, I was very tired the day I went. This definitely affected my experience of the features, since they were obviously longer.

Worm

UK | Directed by Ray Vernava | 11min

Very weird, very cool! It’s a surrreal fantasy horror piece . . . or something like that. This one is hard to explain, but well worth the watch. Watch the trailer.

Dead Friends

Canada | Directed by Stephen Martin | 11min

An original tale, for sure. I didn’t care for the makeup, but it involves a zombie (always a plus in my book) and some fun humor. Watch the trailer.

The Corridor

Canada | Directed by Evan Kelly | 99min

My first feature-length film of the day was a good one. It was a strange supernatural tale that for some reason kept reminding me of The Shining. But I kept falling asleep during this one — I’m not sure whether it was the movie, or my severe lack of sleep that caused this. I think I needed to pay more attention than I did to really get this movie. Watch the trailer.

Bad Moon Rising

Australia | Directed by Scott Hamilton | 8min

Awesome werewolf short, complete with a sweet transformation scene that reminded me of An American Werewolf in London. You gotta watch this 1-minute excerpt.

St. Christophorus: Roadkill

Germany | Directed by Gregor Erler | 26min

A faced-paced thriller about a guy who endures an extreme amount of pain after witnessing an accident on the road. I loved this one. Check out the official website, where you can watch the trailer (among other things).

Donner Pass

USA | Directed by Elise Robertson | 86min

I love a good cannibal movie, and this made me happy. It’s all based on the Donner Party, and the legends surrounding it. Great production value: acting, violence and gore effects were wonderful. Watch the trailer.

Mea Maxima Culpa

Canada | Directed by Eric Spoeth | 25min

Black and white and based on Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, this short was very enjoyable. Good acting, and good expansion on the original story. Watch the trailer.

Augenblicke

Germany | Directed by Martin Bargiel | 19min

I think I was too tired for this one, as it was really surreal, having to do with blurring the edges of the real and the imagined. Too much for my tired mind to wrap around. I’m sure it was good. Watch the trailer.

The Black Box

USA | Directed by Jason Balas | 81min

I think I was so confused after Augenblicke that the disorientation spilled over into this movie. I guess it’s a post-apocalyptic, futuristic kind of thing, but I really have no idea. I need to try to watch this one again. Watch the trailer, and look for links on that page for other trailers for this movie.

The Living Want Me Dead

USA | Directed by Bill Palmer | 23min

This was my favorite short of the whole day! A man subjects himself to scientific tests for money, and consequently develops a condition in which he gives off a pheromone that causes people to turn into bloodthirsty killers. Brilliant and extremely enjoyable. Bravo! Watch the first scene and sneak peek.

The Millennium Bug

USA | Directed by Kenneth Cran | 98min

My favorite feature of the day! I was pleasantly surprised by this, as I had no idea what it was about. It’s New Years Eve 1999, and a family is headed into the mountains for a holiday getaway. They encounter inbred hillbillies, a cryptozoologist and an enormous creature that surfaces once every thousand years. All practical effects (“No CGI” was actually the movie’s mantra), which was pulled off masterfully. I liked this movie so much that I went out and bought it on DVD immediately, getting to meet the director. What a way to end the day! Go to the official website to watch the trailer and order your own DVD.

Let me tell you, I’m a big Misfits fan. Or at least I was, up until today.

Their new album came out today, and since I could get it at Best Buy for 8 bucks with a coupon, I figured I’d go out on a limb. I haven’t really liked anything they’ve done since Michale Graves left the band, and Jerry Only resorted to taking over vocal duties. Let me tell you this: Jerry Only is a mediocre bassist at best, but his bass skills are light years ahead of his vocal abilities.

And that really sticks out on “Devil’s Rain.” He belts out forgettable choruses sounding like he’s drunk and trying to sound like Graves and Danzig at the same time.

The songwriting is abysmal. The one time I listened through the album, there was no point at all where I thought, “Hey, this sounds cool.” It was bland, uninspired, and forced.

On Facebook, I commented on my disappointment with the album, posting it on the official Misfits page. There were many others who did the same. Shortly thereafter, my comment mysteriously disappeared. So did the other negative ones. And they’ve blocked me from interacting on their Facebook page at all now.

This really upsets me. If they’re that paranoid about someone seeing negative reviews of their albums, then that’s a sure sign that they realize their lack of listenable material. They’re getting old — the Misfits are essentially a nostalgia act at this point — and know that the band’s days are numbered.

How sad. Gone are the glory days with the likes of Glenn Danzig, Doyle, Michale Graves, and Chud. Now all we have is Jerry Only desperately clinging onto the corpse of a band that died in 2000.

You’re looking at a fan of everything the Misfits did until 2000. I am now sickened and saddened by post-2000 Misfits, and will never make an effort to see one of their shows or buy any more albums (unless by some miracle we see a reunion of Graves, Doyle, Chud and Only — or even something with Danzig, as weird as that would be).

RIP Misfits.

Because of “real life” responsibilities, I haven’t posted much lately. However, because of some exciting new developments and stuff, I promise to post again.

Take this post, for example. It’s new content.

The announcement was just made on the Horror Jungle website: the podcast is no more. I had a wonderful time with the co-hosts, and feel very fortunate that I was able to spend the time with them that I did.

However, that is not the end of my zombie movie reviews and recommendations. I will regularly post to this website, and I also have another podcasting project or two in the making. Keep checking back! Things are very exciting.

Please visit and support my former Horror Jungle co-hosts. They are truly wonderful and talented people. This is their information, which I stole from the Horror Jungle site 🙂

BillChete

• Horror Jungle Website
• Email

Boss Butcher

• The Bosses Fan Website
• Twitter
• Email

Dr. Shock

• DVD Infatuation Website
• Twitter
• Email

Joe Mummy

• Christiana Productions Website
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Email

HellHunter

• Blogger Fan Website
• Twitter
• Email

Bloody Lizzy

• Platypi Studio Website
• DeviantART
• Etsy
• Email

KC Canton

• DownRight Creepy Website
• iTunes
• Facebook
• Email

CowboysZombies.com

It’s an imaginative title, I know. On August 1, 2011, the UK will see the DVD release of Cowboys & Zombies, previously released here in the States under the title of The Dead and the Damned.

I was excited about this. The combination of zombies and the Western genre has been pretty successful, with games like Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare and books like Eric S. Brown’s How the West Went to Hell. I had high hopes for this independent effort, written and directed by Rene Perez and starring David Lockhart, Camille Montgomery, Rick Mora, and Robert Amstler.

The movie opens with a pretty decent gunfight, but really drops off from there. A bounty hunter is strapped for cash, and goes after a notorious Indian who is wanted for rape and murder. The citizens of the old Western town find a strange glowing-green meteorite and open it up, releasing CG radiation and turning them all into angry, fast zombies. And you can pretty much figure out where it goes from there.

My two biggest problems with this were the lack of originality — there’s really no guesswork here — and the dragging plot. I thought of Creepshow as soon as I saw the meteorite sequence — the Stephen King meteorite segment. And there are just so many traveling sequences. You see a lot of walking around. I almost fell asleep during the drawn-out, actionless dialogue scene between the bounty hunter and the Indian.

Not to mention the blatant CG that plagues the film. I already mentioned the radiation being computer-generated, but a lot of the blood is unquestionably CG and sticks out badly.

I might as well add that I had a problem with the lead actor as well — David Lockhart has the bounty hunter. He comes across as neither rugged nor tough, and his soft, high-pitched voice doesn’t help.

But I will say that I enjoyed the look of the zombies. I loved the sequence inside the house when the blind zombie is stalking the girl. The makeup was done very well, and the scene was pretty well done, even if there were some things about it that didn’t make much sense.

Yeah, I was disappointed by this one. Lots of promise, with little delivery. I give it a 3/10.

Thanks to my friends at Organic Marketing, I bring you some good stuff from the upcoming Fright Night 3D. I love the original, and am curious as to how they remake it. I’m not a fan of 3D at all, and hope I have the option of 2D when it comes to theaters.

Watch the trailer, then browse through the pictures below.

I’ve seen some questions about where listeners can comment on the Horror Jungle podcast. I’m going to start posting to this blog every time a Horror Jungle episode is released, so there’s a place we can talk about the podcast.

On episode 1, I recommended the classic Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974). I then recommended Dance of the Dead (2008) on episode 2, and on episode 3 recommended Boy Eats Girl (2006).

Agree? Disagree? Don’t care? Post a comment and let me know.

Thank you all for listening and coming to my site. I truly appreciate everyone.

I love IPA’s. This was confirmed the moment I tasted Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA. I was very anxious to try the 90 Minute and 120 Minute varieties, having heard such good things about them.

A couple years ago, I was fortunate enough to be visiting a friend in Pittsburgh who had been saving a bottle of 120 Minute for upwards of two years, waiting for the right time to open it. He was generous enough to open it right there and share it with me. I was blown away — it’s the brandy of beer. Absolutely amazing.

Many people have told me that 90 Minute is their favorite of the three, but I’ve never been able to locate it. I could only find it by the case, which runs nearly $60. It’s not that I can’t afford it, but convincing my wife that a case of beer is worth $60 is impossible.

The other day I was fortunate enough to find a 4-pack of it for $11. Worth every cent!

I’m not a beer geek, so I’m not going to go on about head and lacing and citrus fragrances. It’s surely a nice-looking beer when you pour it in the glass, and is like the 60 Minute IPA, but richer, tastier, and fuller. Don’t get me wrong — I LOVE 60 Minute — but this just amps up the enjoyment without overdoing things. It’s not overly rich or flavorful; it’s just an awesome beer.

I will buy this whenever I get the chance (and whenever I can get away with spending the money). A+!

This week, the independent British movie Bane was released on DVD by Safecracker Pictures. Written and directed by James Eaves, it runs close to 2 hours, and was the winner of the Best Horror Feature Award at Shriekfest in LA.

This movie has a very Saw vibe. Four women wake up in an underground cell, remembering nothing. They are drugged and subjected to a series of horrifying experiments. On top of this, the women are visited one at a time by the killer Surgeon, who cuts a number into each woman’s skin — the exact time that he’s coming back to kill them. The movie takes a number of unexpected twists and turns, leading to an ending that is truly surprising.

I have to say that I’m amazed at what the filmmakers did with a very low budget, especially in the effects department. There is lots of blood and gore, the vast majority of it being practical (not CG). I only saw a couple quick CG enhancements to the effects, and they did not detract from the scene at all. It all plays into the psychological nature of the movie — they’re messing with the actors’ (and the viewers’) heads, leaving everyone to try to figure out what is really going on.

It’s also very good on a technical level. A lot of careful attention was paid to camera placement and movement, and stylized, creative lighting was utilized to the fullest extent. It’s all edited together very well — even though it’s a longer movie, the pacing is very good and never left me bored or over-stimulated.

The acting is pretty much what you’d expect from a micro-budget film. A couple of the characters are done well, while most are mediocre at best. But they weren’t helped by the fact that there wasn’t much character development — I really didn’t care for any of them that much. Most of the movie is focused on the psychological horror of the situation, not on growing deeper with the characters.

A few specific problems I had:

• I just didn’t get the killer Surgeon. Why was he there? Several things didn’t make much sense to me.
• After the experiments and subsequent questioning, the women were given the chance to ask the doctor one question. Why didn’t they ask what was going on? They never thought of that until the end.
• The main character was awfully calm upon discovering the Lovecraftian tentacle bug monster. She was even clearheaded enough to use the creature to her advantage. I think that any normal person would have crapped their pants and collapsed in a sobbing heap. Or maybe that would just be me.

All in all, this was a very interesting movie to watch. It’s a Saw-like psychological horror film, lacking the fine polish of a big-budget film, but still delivering some nice gore and unexpected twists.

Thanks to my friends at Organic Marketing for sending this!

Every once in a while, I get time to write some new songs and record some stuff. As with most of the songs I write, this new one is the product of just making it up as I go along, having no real plan for how it should turn out.

Holovin Mavers

You can download this on the music page.