This morning I found out that the first zombie that ever scared me, giving me many sleepless nights when I was very young, has passed away. Bill Hinzman, 76, succumbed to his battle with cancer.

I’m very saddened by the news, and I’m glad that I met him and spoke to him on many occasions. I first met him in 2008, when he was the special guest for the promotion of the Eerie Horror Film Festival at the Millcreek Mall (first photo below). At that time I interviewed him for the Midnight Podcast, and was really impressed with how kind the man was.

Since then I’ve talked to him on many occasions, and he was always willing to hang out and talk. I always looked forward to seeing him.

The last time I encountered Mr. Hinzman was at Horror Realm 2010, and had to snap another photo with him because he was decked out in all his zombie glory (second photo below).

I’ll be watching Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Flesheater (1988) in his memory.

I have officially inherited The Weekly Horror Movie Podcast, and the first episode with me as lead host just dropped at Horror Palace.

Take a listen to it now.

A blogger on The Independent reviews The Thing (2011), comparing the two in terms of how the special effects were done. In John Carpenter’s 1982 version, digital effects were all but non-existent, and all of the body-crunching gore was achieved using practical means — prosthetics, mechanical contraptions, lots of liquid latex and fake blood, and so on. The 2011 version features digital effects — all the alien violence was made by a team of geeks on their fancy computers.

It’s a controversial topic among horror fans. I tend to agree with most of what the author says about the use and misuse of digital effects. Where do you weigh in? Was he too tough on modern horror using digital effects?

He did make a comment that I can’t completely agree with, however. He says that “modern US horror cinema is defined by lazy cash-ins, spin-offs and other defilements of legendary films.” Lazy cash-ins and spin-offs: yes. Defilements of legendary films: get over your hatred of remakes because of the alleged untouchable holiness of the originals. I’m tired of hearing this kind of argument.

Just had to put that out there.

“Modern horror: Lay off the CGI and bring back prosthetics”

I just read about bullets specially manufactured and packaged for use on the undead.

No joke. While it’s basically a marketing ploy for the increasing number of zombie movie fans (and those convinced that the zombie uprising could actually happen), the bullets are live ammo, ready for use in a variety of firearms.

If you read to the end of the article, they mention that bullets intended to be fired on zombies causes a concern for people dressed in zombie costumes. I could totally see something very bad happening as a result.

Read the article at BlueRidgeNow.com»