Desperately looking for that leading lady cachet that comes only with starring in movies like Gothika, Dark Water and The Reaping, recent Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon has decided to leap aboard the genre wagon and earn herself some shrieks -- along with a nice paycheck from Universal.

Ms. Witherspoon has signed to star in something called Bell Witch. Apparently it's about a woman who becomes convinced that a legendary witch is out to harm her little baby. Eek! The screenwriter on the scene is Scott Kosar, a man who has dabbled in genre flicks solid (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), weak (The Amityville Horror) and surprisingly excellent (The Machinist). In addition to Bell Witch, Kosar is still working on that remake of Romero's The Crazies.

But when I said that Reese "signed" for the gig, that wasn't entirely accurate. Seems the actress took a fancy to a spec script called Our Family Troubles, and now that screenplay goes over to Kosar for a Witherspoon retrofitting. No word yet on who'll be directing Bell Witch, but I'm hoping it's not going to be someone safe, generic and boring.

An American Haunting was also based on the legend of the Bell Witch. For more info on the old gal, try Wiki.

A few days ago, Slither-maker James Gunn mentioned on his MySpace page that his adorably splattery sci-fi horror rom-com was the receipient of four Fangoria Chainsaw Award nominations. My response was "Hey, cool. Where are the rest of the nominations?!?!?" And now, a few days later, here they are. Neat-o.

Although Fangoria has been doing their annual Chainsaw awards for over a decade now, 2006 marks the very first time the event will be televised, much to the delight of zombie freaks and slasher geeks all over North America. The event will be held in L.A. on October 15th, although the Fuse Network won't be airing it until the 22nd. (Which means if you want to watch the event "un-spoiled," I wish you luck.) Want to throw your own votes into the tally? Fine. You can vote right here, but only between September 1st and 13th (which is a Friday, mwaahaaa!)

After the jump you'll find a complete list of all the 2006 Chainsaw nominees, plus my own predictions on which flicks would win if the event were called Amazing Geek Weinberg's Horror Awards instead of The Chainsaws.

I'll confess right up front the main reason behind my desire to write up this story is I find the entire scenario particularly amusing. I grew up as a gamer of many fields; I was a button masher, a card flopper, and a dice chucker,* and anyone who spent any notable amount of time around this scene prior to 2000 most assuredly remembers the humorously bad attempt made at a Dungeons and Dragons movie five or so years back. The movie was roundly mocked by critics, and many fans of the RPG were even harder on the film than the critics had been.

Well the director of said fiasco is back on the scene working on a new horror flick called An American Haunting; and one of his primary goals with the film is to overcome the terrible memories and reputation he got stuck with after the profound failure of his first film. In a recent talk with Sci Fi Wire, director Courtney Solomon admitted "I wished I could have made a better movie ... I have nothing to defend. They were right, I was wrong. It is what it is. Everybody makes mistakes, and I got on the bicycle and hope to keep on driving." Solomon said he has greater control over this film, and he hopes to he has confidence in his ability to move on from his D&D days. For his sake, I hope he's right; nobody wants to be the next Uwe Boll.

*I still dabble in some of these when I have the time, although currently what little free time I have for gaming seems to be occupied by assembling small plastic boats and declaring myself to be a pirate captain.