Whenever Scott and I aren't out fighting crime together, we tend to be chatting each other up about horror films, as he has often either pointed me towards many a overlooked gem or brought to my attention the best titles currently making the festival rounds.

Whether or not Weinberg was the one who got me initially amped up for [REC], I can't accurately recall, but the point is that I can support his many praises over the film, and I think it's safe to say that we're both cautiously optimistic about the forthcoming American remake, Quarantine. It seems that Sony's smarter minds are also prone to cautious optimism, as Shock Till You Drop informs us that the film's release has been bumped up a week, from October 17th to October 10th.

Now, the 10th is a crowded weekend - we also have a crime thriller, a family adventure, and a teen sex romp - but what's important is that not only do none of those films appeal to the same horror-seeking demographic as Quarantine, whereas video game adaptation Max Payne might on the 17th, but the move gives it an extra week to rake it in until Saw V comes around and effectively dominates the market come the 24th.

As for me, I'm still curious about Quarantine director John Erick Dowdle's previous film, the still-unreleased The Poughkeepsie Tapes. Is it some sort of staring contest between them and the equally delayed All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, or what?

More than once in recent weeks, I've found myself subjected to the bonanza of pre-show 'entertainment' at a local multiplex, the arguable best portion of which has been a fake trailer for a new Sprint phone, a spot unabashedly proud of both spoofing the nature of product placement and succumbing to it.

So when I first heard of a film called Text - about killer text messages - I assumed it was likewise a joke, a hoax, a ruse, a cunning attempt to trick me. I mean, doesn't that sound like the one faux trailer that didn't make it into Grindhouse? Alas, if Fangoria is to be believed, it's no joke...

In addition to being a fine horror site (where you can watch full movies for free if you like!), FEARnet is also a movies-on-demand channel that's available to Comcast subscribers. Generally the FEARnet cable channel offers old-school time-wasters like Leprechaun, Wishmaster and Child's Play ... which is great when you're in the mood to flip through some options and settle in for a nasty little horror flick.

Anyway,as of right now FEARnet is offering their very first "original" movie! It's a flick called Catacombs -- and yes, horror fans, it's that one with Shannyn Sossamon that's been sitting on a shelf at Lionsgate Central for the past two years. I haven't seen the movie yet (probably later tonight!), but I think it's pretty nifty that the channel has a "first-run" title to offer the viewers. Even if it sucks, Catacombs is definitely a horror movie you haven't seen yet, plus it's a freebie anyway.

Here's what the IMDb says about Catacombs: "On her first trip to Paris, a young woman hits a party in the Catacombs, the 200-mile labyrinth of limestone tunnels under the city that's lined with the remains of 7 million people. Separated from her friends, she becomes convinced that someone or something is chasing her." The flick was cooked up by writer / directors Tomm Coker and David Elliot. (The former is a comic book artist and the latter wrote The Watcher.) It's also a Twisted Pictures production, which means it comes from the same checkbook that birthed the Saw series. (Lionsgate will release the flick on DVD early next year.)

So let's say you're dying to see Catacombs now ... but you don't get the FEARnet cable channel. Well FEARnot, because if you really want to watch the flick (online, for free), you can do so right here starting on October 31. (Full disclosure: I write horror reviews for the FEARnet website, just so you know. But I'd be sharing the news on FREE NEW horror movies no matter where they were hosted.)

No, not Guillermo Del Toro! That guy's busy enough! I'm talking about the Oscar-winning bad-ass actor known as Benicio Del Toro. A while back we informed you that the guy would be starring in a new version of The Wolf Man for Universal. and director Mark Romanek. Well, the flick is still on the way (fortunately), but Benny has some other projects to get through first -- including two Soderbergh films in which he'll play Che Guevara!

But back to the wolfy stuff. Del Toro will play Lawrence Talbot in Romanek's new rendition, and the behind-the-scenes info just keeps getting better and better. Not only does the adaptation come from the man who wrote Seven and Sleepy Hollow -- but according to the actor (and the MTV Movies Blog) the legendary Anthony Hopkins has just joined the cast. It's been a rumor up till now, but the actor semi-confirms it: "I think so," he says. Universal seems to have May 2009 penciled in for the return of The Wolf Man, but why not bump it a few months? A big-budget Wolf Man re-do ... that's got the Halloween season written all over it.

Once a filmmaker becomes established enough to make big-time (and mega-profitable) blockbusters, his next move is to set up a production shingle and ghost-produce a bunch of horror movies. It seems to work pretty well for Michael Bay and Sam Raimi, so why not Bryan Singer too? Yep, the director of The Usual Suspects, Superman Returns and the only two X-Men movies worth a damn is on board as a producer on Michael Doughtery's Trick 'r Treat -- which I do believe just got bumped out of its October release slot and stuck on a shelf somewhere. (This will mark Mr. Dougherty's first time behind the director's chair, although he did write Urban Legends: Bloody Mary, so let's hope he learned a few lessons on that one.)

So with no release date in sight, now seems the perfect time to release a trailer. And here it is. And while you all know I'm a little biased where the fright flicks are concerned, I'll just go ahead and toss out an opinion anyway: The trailer looks pretty slick. The WB release boasts a pretty solid cast for a basic horror flick: On board are no less than Anna Paquin, Dylan Baker, Leslie Bibb and Brian Cox ... in addition to a bunch of photogenic newcomers I know nothing about. The promo clip is kind of all over the place, but the IMDb indicates that we're looking at sort of an anthology piece in which four separate stories interweave during one hellacious Halloween eve. Sounds like fun to me. Too bad Warner took away its release date.

UPDATE: The new-yet-reliable horror site known as ShockTillYouDrop.com informs us that the release date change was nothing more than a rumor. Word is that Trick 'r Treat will still open on October 5. (Check out our previous reports on this flick here and here.)

Given that the slasher sub-genre is a fairly one-note affair, you'd have to come up with a pretty novel concept to unleash a fresh example these days. Despite a half-decent cast, a fairly solid body count and a colorful killer, Drive-Thru doesn't even come close to presenting anything worth sitting through. And when a guy who digs almost all of the Friday the 13th sequels knocks a slasher flick, you know you're dealing with a real turkey. Jam-packed with lame acting, stolen plot points and a real lack of energy, Drive-Thru is about as derivative as you can get ... which would be forgivable if only the thing had some FUN to offer. It doesn't.

First-time writer/directors Shane Kuhn and Brendan Cowles may or may not be horror movie fans. It's pretty tough to tell by what goes on in their debut flick. Either they're fans or they wrote the Drive-Thru screenplay immediately after sitting through a triple feature of Halloween, Scream and Killer Klowns from Outer Space -- but if the duo claims to be a pair of horror fanatics, then they owe their viewers a whole lot better than this. When the movie's not doling out a bunch of sloppy kills, it's wandering around aimlessly, tossing in a bunch of arbitrary characters and witless plot threads that go nowhere fast.

Remember that Elisha Cuthbert flick that was causing all sorts of uproar because of his MPAA-rejected billboards that (somehow) got plastered all over California anyway? Well, it sure looks like Lionsgate is feeling no ill effects from the marketing gimmick ratings board's disapproval, because Captivity is still locked in for a May 18 release date. (That'd place it opposite Shrek the Third, although I highly doubt they're going for the same audience.) ComingSoon.net's new horror site has the first look at the just-released Captivity trailer, and while it doesn't give up much in the plot department, it is overloaded with screechy sound effects and a lot of Cuthbert cleavage. Plus you just gotta love how Lionsgate managed to incorporate the "billboard controversy" in the Captivity marketing campaign.

Although the "abduct & torture" motif might feel like it comes from a rough and grungy young upstart, the flick actually comes from a pair of seasoned pros: The director is Roland Joffe, who once directed The Killing Fields, The Mission and ... The Scarlet Letter. (Yikes.) The screenwriter is Larry Cohen, old-school genre pro who also penned Cellular, Phone Booth and a whole bunch of solid genre flicks from the 1970s and '80s. The plot synopsis sounds a whole lot like the original Saw, only this one's a whole lot different: One of the abductees is a female. (And what a female she is!)

At first I thought the "After Dark Horror Festival" ploy was a cool and clever one. Here we have eight low-budget horror flicks that, were it not for this new and somewhat unique release concept, would have premiered anonymously on video or late one night on Showtime -- and that'd be a shame, really. No filmmaker wants his movie to debut on the small screen, and so I applauded Lionsgate and After Dark chief Courtney Solomon for coming up with a new way to showcase the smaller terror flicks. And then I actually sat down and watched the "After Dark" titles, feeling duped and stupid all the way. Putting aside Mike Mendez's The Gravedancers, I'd opine that every one of the AD titles actually deserves a direct-to-video release, but I guess there's more money to be made by slapping together a one-weekend nationwide horror "festival" -- because, as we all know, no genre fans are more loyal than the horror geeks. Way to exploit the fanbase, fellas.

If you can find one original idea, one effective sequence, or one compelling concept in J.S. Cardone's Wicked Little Things, you're officially a more astute movie-watcher than I am. This is a stunningly inert, entirely conventional, and oppressively boring little chestnut, one that just might be worthy of a Sunday afternoon visit, but only if nothing better is on and you've already seen every good horror film ever made. From the script to the performances to the resoundingly uncreative look of the piece, Wicked Little Things feels like something that was written, shot and glued together over the course of one drab and uneventful weekend.

Get it? "Check out?" Cuz it's a horror about a motel where ... Oh, never mind. Click on over to Fangoria for your first peek at the retro-style one-sheet for Nimrod Antal's Vacancy, which stars Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale as a clueless couple who end up at the wrong roadside motel. Well, it's the wrong motel for anyone who doesn't enjoying watching and/or being in underground snuff films.

Seems like just last week that I knew nothing about this flick aside from the title, the director and the cast, but in the past seven days we've received a theatrical trailer, the new poster, and an official website (which currently doesn't offer a whole heckuva lot). The nifty-looking thriller opens wide on April 20, which will put it up against a dozen new releases (some wide, some limited) like Pathfinder, Kickin' It Old Skool, The Nanny Diaries, Severance, The Tripper, In the Land of the Women and Hot Fuzz. (Sounds like a good weekend for a triple feature.)

As I sat down to watch a recent low-budget horror chiller from Lionsgate Films, up popped a brand-new trailer for ... another low-budget horror chiller from Lionsgate FIlms. The first film was The Abandoned, which I didn't like very much, and the trailer was for something called Skinwalkers ... which somehow looks like it could actually be kinda fun. Check out the trailer for yourself to see precisely how insane I am for thinking this movie could be "kinda fun."

Skinwalkers comes from director Jim Isaac (Jason X), a pair of first-time screenwriters, and the guy who penned flicks like Jack, The Negotiator and Assault on Precinct 13. The cast list isn't all that shabby: Elias Koteas, Jason Behr, Rhona Mitra, Kim Coates, Natassia Malthe and Sarah Carter star in this tale of warring werewolves. After sitting on a shelf for quite a few months, Skinwalkers hits screens on March 30. And it's gotta be better than the last few werewolf flicks we got ... right?