Among my favorite film books is Michael J. Weldon's two-volume "Psychotronic" film guide. The first was published in 1983 and the second in 1996 (Michael hopes to publish a third at some point). Unlike Leonard Maltin's annual book, Weldon doesn't update an existing guide; each new guide is an entirely new volume. If you want to read about Halloween, you need Vol. 1 and if you want to read about Halloween 4, you need Vol. 2. A "Psychotronic" movie can be fairly easy to define. It's basically any of the "lower" film genres, dealing with the more questionable elements of society: horror, sci-fi, bikers, strippers, superheroes, zombies, kung-fu, vampires, comic books, drugs, sex, action heroes, rock 'n' roll, midnight movies, monsters, witches, cults, serial killers, magic, time travel, robberies, heists, contract killers, gladiators, Spaghetti Westerns, mad scientists, murder mysteries, pimps, voyeurs, etc.

Now and then, an interview yields an unforgivably tantalizing piece of information -- and, while 9 times out of 10 these nuggets are pure, idle, meaningless crazy-talk, now and then they're just too good to ignore. So it is today, as Empire pulls a sidebar from their recent interview with Diary of the Dead director George A. Romero where he idly mentions that one of his dream projects is a stage adaptation of ... John W. Campbell's Who Goes There?, later filmed as The Thing from Another World. Later, of course, filmed as The Thing.

It turns out Romero's a huge fan of the 1951 iteration of the tale, citing it as a major influence: "It really worked, it really scared me." And that admiration isn't just academic; Romero notes, teasingly, that "I watched The Thing many, many times but there's a reason for that ... I keep trying to get hold of the rights and I'd love to do it as a stage play." Romero then goes on to offer his own take on how to make the live theatrical version a more visceral experience: "I'd love to freeze the whole audience ... first of all, we'd have to chill the whole theatre down to some sub-zero temperature."

Empire points out that in a universe that's already offered us Evil Dead: The Musical, a live play of The Thing doesn't seem like a stretch; I'd also add that Cronenberg's The Fly is also due to hit the boards in an operatic adaptation in July. In his interview with Cinematical, Romero mentioned that he's already working on following Diary of the Dead with a sequel -- and, since we're indulging in some crazy talk, which project would you rather see the director focus on: More zombies for moviegoers everywhere, or a (literally) chilling night of theater for the lucky denizens of one city?

What a quiet weekend for indie films! Two holdovers performed very well, while several newly-opened films faced difficulty in attracting audiences. In its second week of release, The Band's Visit (Sony Pictures Classics) expanded from seven to 13 theaters and enjoyed a per-screen average of $9,769, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. The Israeli film may sound like a traditional culture-crossing crowd-pleaser (tiny Egyptian police orchestra gets lost en route to a gig, spends the night in a tiny rural Israeli town, everyone learns important life lessons), but the material is deftly handled to produce a very satisfying and thoughtful entertainment.

Also in its second week out, In Bruges (Focus Features) stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as hit men cooling their heels in Belgium after a job gone wrong. James Rocchi said it moves "in unexpected directions which are the kind of unexpected that you do not actually expect." Specialty audiences turned out in good numbers to see it, to the tune of $8,178 per screen at 112 locations.

Diary of the Dead, George A. Romero's first independent zombie film in over 20 years, follows a group of student filmmakers who, making a low-grade horror film in the woods, drive back to civilization ... only to find it isn't there anymore. We watch the film unfold as footage they shoot travelling through desolate and deadly buildings, neighborhoods, towns, cities -- coming to grips with the fact that the dead are walking and hungry and everything they knew is over. Shot outside of Toronto, where Romero now lives (but, as tradition demands, set near Pittsburgh), Diary of the Dead played both the Toronto and Sundance Film Festivals; Scott Weinberg's review from Toronto can be found here, while Jette Kernion's review is here.

Writer-director George A. Romero spoke with Cinematical about his zombie film legacy that stretches back to 1968's Night of the Living Dead, his concerns about the possibilities and perils of user-generated media, which Presidential candidate he thinks would have the best handle on attacking armies of the dead, and the undying popularity of the undead he created. " (If) I created anything ... it was the "neighborhood zombie" ... the guy with Nikes and a sweatshirt. ... Neighbors are scary, and when they're dead they're a bit scarier. But once you have that, it's idiomatic ... I half expect the zombies to show up on Sesame Street hanging out with The Count. ..."

Cinematical: I've read several notes and quotes from you saying that Diary of the Dead essentially felt like a new beginning.

George A. Romero: For me, it was a new beginning; I made four zombie films before this, and they sort of tracked, they were along a single storyline, even though they were 10 years or more apart, each of them. And they were just getting too big. The last one (George A. Romero's Land of the Dead) was a studio-supported film, which, you know, I turned around and looked at it: They let me make the film I wanted to make, I loved working with Dennis Hopper and Leguizamo and people like that, but I felt the film and I had sort of lost connection with the origin of the series, which was a little guerrilla movie that a bunch of amateurs made in Pittsburgh all those years ago. And I wanted to go back to ... I wanted to see if I had the chops and the stamina to make a little guerilla movie. I happened to have an idea that I wanted to do something ... all of my zombie films have had this kind of socio-political satire underneath them, and I've always used them as snapshots of the time in which they were made.

I got an idea that I wanted to do something about emerging media, with the mainstream losing its power and Joe Blow from Oshkosh taking over on the blogosphere. And it all sort of fell into place. And I thought 'Well, I can make a little film, do it pretty inexpensively, about students who are out shooting a student film when the sh*t hits the fan, when zombies sit up and start walking around.' I said 'We can go back to the very first night, and we can try to pretend ' -- even though that was 1968 and this is now --- 'that this is the same first night, when this phenomenon first begins to happen.'

In case you haven't enjoyed enough movies about zombies and the undead lately, Diary of the Dead supplies you with yet another opportunity. However, this low-budget film is from the guy who first introduced most of America to the horrors of the walking dead: George A. Romero, who made Night of the Living Dead back in 1968. (So the zombie genre is the same age I am. Cool!)

Diary of the Dead isn't a sequel to the other movies in Romero's Dead series, but it does tend to assume that you know Romero's standard operating rules about zombies. If a zombie bites you or if you die in any way, that's it for you -- you're undead. The undead are cannibalistic, and the only way to destroy them is to destroy their braaaaains. Unlike the other Dead movies, this one is shot as if it were a documentary -- a survivor has pieced together footage from the first night that the dead come back to life.

If you're any kind of horror afficionado, you've probably either heard about or even read the script for George Romero's Diamond Dead -- it's one of those projects that's been around for so long no one even talks about it anymore. The film is a horror-comedy about a rock band called Diamond Dead whose members are all zombies and whose hot babe manager tries to use her media wiles to take them to the top despite their rather unappealing habits, like eating brains and stuff. It takes swipes at the media, Christian fundamentalists who hate the band, and various other Romero-style targets. In a forthcoming interview with Suicide Girls, Romero surprises by excitedly announcing to me that in the last week, Diamond Dead has raced back to the forefront of his upcoming projects slate. "I got a phone call two days ago, before I came here, from the producer saying 'We're back!'" he says, noting that he was more surprised than anyone because he worked for years on the project and "it looked dead." Since the financing has apparently just kicked in as this is going to press, no further details are available.

Romero also notes that he's very eager to get going on a sequel to his new film, Diary of the Dead, saying "I wish I could have gone further with it. If there is a possibility of a sequel, I'd actually love to do it, cause there's a hell of a lot more. I'd love to go further with that theme." At the same time, fans of Romero's previous and much larger film, 2005's Land of the Dead, should most certainly not expect a sequel to that any time soon. Romero expressed guarded admiration for that film, but called his experience with big-budget filmmaking "grueling" and said "it was just too hard." He also feels that Land "lost touch with its roots" and he has no idea how a sequel could even happen, if he were inclined to make one.

With apologies to Joan Jett for swiping her album title, this week's installment of Trailer Park is about the young folk in one way or another.

Prom Night
It seems like every time a remake is announced there's an angered outcry from the fans of the original. I didn't care much for 1980's Prom Night, and based on this trailer I don't see much to look forward to with this new version. Certain kinds of horror can work with a PG-13 rating, but a slasher film? I don't see it. The trailer gives us a group of irritatingly over privileged teens gathering for the prom. Suddenly the lights go out, people start screaming, and I lose interest. This one hits U.S. theaters on April 11. Here's Scott's take.

Descendents (Solos)
Over at upcominghorrormovies.com they're referring to this one as the first Chilean zombie movie and the first English-language film from director Jorge Olguin. You can't exactly tell from the trailer that there are zombies in this thing, but there's obviously a widespread infection in an urban area with soldiers summarily blowing away the victims of some kind of infection. The story is told from the perspective of a little girl who joins forces with other children to escape the city. It looks bleak and horrifying, just as a zombie film should. So far there's no U.S. distribution planned for this one.

Before I had ever attended the Sundance Film Festival, I imagined the event as this small mountain town overrun with an abundance of celebrities, who could be seen just walking around, outnumbering the actual moviegoers. Why? Because that's what a lot of the media concentrates on. And yes, when I did finally attend, I was able to spend five minutes walking up Main Street, in which little time I walked past Evan Rachel Wood, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Tom Arnold and others. Sure, they weren't the biggest names, but it seemed my imagined world actually existed. Of course, most of the big celebs are probably not walking around so casually. But I wouldn't know; the rest of the fest I spent my time watching 37 features, mostly far away from Main Street and the celebs, inside the Yarrow Hotel's press screening rooms.

For many attendees, though, it's all about the celeb sightings and the big-name movies, of which Sundance seems to premiere more and more of each year. However, 2007 didn't seem to have as many popular titles (as far as I noticed from my non-attending standpoint). In contrast, the 2008 festival appears to have more stars than the Academy Awards ceremony. Some of the big films that will be premiering or screening this year include Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind, Barry Levinson's What Just Happened?, Morgan Spurlock's new doc Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, Michael Haneke's Funny Games (U.S.), George Romero's Diary of the Dead and the directorial debut of Michael Keaton, The Merry Gentleman. And, for the sightseers, some of the attending stars include Robert DeNiro, Sean Penn, Maria Bello, William Hurt, Sharon Stone, Bruce Willis, Dennis Quaid, Ellen Page, Ben Kingsley, Ewan McGregor, Sean Combs, Julianne Moore, Charlize Theron, Brian Cox, John Malkovich, Matthew Broderick, Jacqueline Bisset, Meg Ryan, Jack Black and Mia Farrow.

For the rest, head over to Variety for the full list of films and of course their big-name casts.

Well, since it is Halloween after all, it makes perfect sense to get a little horror-related news. The Hollywood Reporter announced that Artfire Films and Romero-Grunwald Prods. have already given the go-ahead to a follow-up of George Romero's Diary of the Dead. This means they must be pretty eager considering the first film is not expected to be released until next year. Diary of the Dead centers on a group of young filmmakers in the middle of making a low-budget zombie flick who have the unfortunate luck of running into the real thing. According to THR, the sequel will focus on survivors from the first film, "Fighting their way out of a mansion through a horde of ravenous zombies, the survivors of "Diary" escape to a remote island only to be plunged into another battle with the dead".

So if you are not a fan of zombie movies (and I know there is at least one of you out there), it's going to be a rough year at the box-office . Only yesterday, Zack and Deborah Snyder confirmed that the follow-up to Dawn of the Dead now has a completed script and that they are on the hunt for a director. So we can add Diary of the Dead 2 to a growing list of films about the 'living-challenged' slated for 2008 (with my personal votes going to Brad Pitt's take on World War Z and the Vampire-Zombie hybrid, Virulents). Diary of the Dead is slated to begin principal photography this coming Spring.

You thought that with all the love we've been throwing at Austin's Fantastic Fest we'd probably forget all about good ol' L.A. Screamfest. Not with me on horror watch! The event runs from October 12 to 20, and if you happen to be located anywhere near the legendary Mann's Chinese Theater -- you just might want to duck inside to see what sort of murderous mayhem is going on.

And the Screamfest looks to be starting off on the right foot this year: Last night's opening night film was George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead! After much praise from the audiences at Toronto and Fantastic Fest, the master's latest zombie opus will hit the west coast with much excitement and gore. And the fun doesn't stop there. The festival will also offer Robert Rodriguez's director's cut of Planet Terror (which is awesome) and a 25th Anniversary screening (and cast reunion) of Friday the 13th Part 3. Yes, in 3-D!

Attendees will also get to check out the long-awaited DVDquel Return to House on Haunted Hill, a screening of the great-looking 30 Days of Night (and the video prequels Blood Trails), David Arquette's festival fave The Tripper, and a variety of genre titles of various shapes, sizes and nationalities. Of the Screamfest flicks we've seen, we've already given a strong seal of approval on the quiet but creepy Alone, the robust zest of Wrong Turn 2, the Pakistani lunacy known as Hell's Ground, , the freakishly ferocious Inside, and the apocalyptic awesomeness that is The Signal. Plus I keep hearing that Shrooms is pretty amusing, Buried Alive is gruesome, and Storm Warning is really solid.

Fear not, Romero junkies. The old guy still has it. Apparently more than energetic enough at an impressive 67 years of age, the creator of the zombie genre has popped back up with a new indie flick that's sure to entertain anyone who's followed the guy's career for the past 30-some years ... like me. After teaming up with a big studio to deliver the adequate-if-unspectacular Land of the Dead, George A. Romero returns to his grass-roots indie-style origins and comes up with Diary of the Dead -- which is easily his most entertaining horror film since 1985's Day of the Dead.

Just to be clear: Diary is not another chapter in the series that began with Night of the Living Dead and continued on with Dawn, Day and Land of the Dead. Instead it's a stand-alone and entirely fresh take on the inevitably impending zombie apocalypse, as seen through the eyes (and the camera lenses) of a bunch of film students who head off into the woods to make a horror flick ... and end up making the nastiest horror documentary ever imagined. So yeah, it's a zombie flick crossed with the visual approach of The Blair Witch Project. But it's also quite a bit more than that.

Start injecting caffeine into your veins, boys and girls, because the first eight Midnight Madness titles have been revealed for the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival. The biggest name title has got to be George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, in which the esteemed documenter of the dead goes back to his roots and tells a zombie origin story. Produced independently, Romero follows a kid named Jason (Joshua Close), who "obsessively films the madness" all around him as the dead return to life. I liked Land of the Dead, but I'd love to see what Romero does without studio interference.

Stuart Gordon is the other name director in the program and he's represented by Stuck. Not a traditional horror film, it's inspired by a true incident in which a nurse in Fort Worth, Texas (not far from where I lived at the time) struck a homeless man, drove home, parked in her garage, went to bed, and patiently waited until morning before calling the cops -- all with the hapless, bleeding man stuck in her windshield. Gordon has fictionalized the story, added some black humor, and cast Mena Suvari and Stephen Rea. Again, this sounds like it could be deadly good.

Also screening: Wilson Yip's Hong Kong action pic Flashpoint, starring Donnie Yen; highly-praised Japanese superhero comedy Dainipponjin; Xavier Gens' blood-soaked thriller Frontière(s); French "madwoman attacks trapped pregnant woman" suspense flick À l'intérieur; futuristic Japanese animated action film Vexille; and British gore-fest The Devil's Chair. Complete descriptions are available at the festival's site; you can also follow along with programmer Colin Geddes' blog. Two more titles are yet to be announced for Midnight Madness, which kicks off Friday, September 7.

[ Via Twitch ]

Even if George Romero's latest film, Diary of the Dead, fails to satisfy, horror fans can rest assured that there's another Romero film on the horizon, though it's from another Romero entirely. The Screening is the new film from G. Cameron Romero, son of the man who developed shuffling, flesh-eating zombies into an art form. The tradition of fathers passing the horror film bug to their sons is a proud one going back as far as Lon Chaneys Sr. and Jr.

The movie's plot, which sounds similar to the Masters of Horror episode Cigarette Burns, centers around a series of disturbing films that seem to have an adverse effect on anyone who sees them. The last time they were shown was at the trial of the filmmaker, and the entire jury has since gone mad. The movie has an official website where you can register for updates on the film and possibly win an iPod. There's a Myspace page as well, and an article over at Twitch Film has several downloadable versions of the trailer.

Debbie Rochon's presence in the cast doesn't fill me with optimism. The last time I remember seeing her was in the abomination that was the Night of the Living Dead 30th Anniversary Edition, a project whose purpose was to shore up the copyright on the classic zombie film by adding new and unnecessary footage, and a far less compelling score. None of the other thespians in the trailer seem ready to set the world afire, but the cursed films within the film do look disturbing. What does everyone think; is Young Romero a worthy successor to the throne?