NSFW: Foul language.

Recently, I mentioned my neverending plan to see The Goddess of 1967. There are others on the list as well, like Stalag 17, a laserdisc which still sits at the foot of my bed, waiting to be watched. But, luckily, I can be happy with my cinematic to-do list without much guilt. Maybe there's a shocked face here or there from a friend, but that's it.

The same cannot be said for Diablo Cody, who just blogged about one of her to-watch movies, and how she got one of the most embarrassing, yet truly cool reasons to stop putting it off. She's never seen An American Werewolf in London, and Edgar Wright gave her a copy for her birthday with this written on the front: "Diablo, please watch my movie. John Landis." It was written by the man himself, and not Edgar pretending. That's the ultimate motivation.

So, in honor of embarrassment in the face of classic filmmakers, here's a Stars in Rewind for Landis' classic.

Last weekend brought the tragic news that the Aston Martin featured in the upcoming 007 movie Quantun of Solace was wrecked beyond repair. It turns out that's not the only danger on the set of the film, currently shooting in Italy: On Wednesday, a James Bond stuntman crashed while performing a chase scene in the area, and is currently in critical condition. suffering minor injuries It's probably better that this stuff is happening now, considering how many people were ready to pounce on the last film in order to prevent Daniel Craig from taking the reins from Pierce Brosnan. Now that the franchise appears to have a newfound groove, Quantum has a lot of positive buzz. So why does it seem like the set is suddenly cursed?

Accidents of varying degrees are commonplace on large scale film shoots, but the sense of peril can impact the final result in different ways. In the Twilight Zone movie, the helicopter accident during the John Landis-directed sequence killed three actors, causing Hollywood to avoid similar stunts for many years to come. The stuntman who suffered burns on 60% of his body on the Mission: Impossible III set, however, couldn't affect that movie, even when he decided to sue Tom Cruise. In the case of Quantum of Solace, subversively, the accidents might be a positive indicator of the sheer intensity that director Marc Forster hopes to bring to the film.

Since I devoured MTV on a daily basis, John Landis was the first director that I became familiar with. I'd seen The Making of Thriller about 300 times, so his face was permanently etched into my brain. Unfortunately, like a number of directors, Landis was huge in the late 70s and 80s, and then his work hit a sharp decline. It's been 10 years since he put out a movie (Don Rickles docs aside), and the last two were Susan's Plan and the movie I still haven't forgiven him for -- Blues Brothers 2000. But now he's not only getting into Epic Proportions -- Variety reports that he will direct Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines.

Landis will develop the feature with scribe Joel Eisenberg, which details the publishing life of the man behind Mad Magazine. The film will focus on "an anti-establishment group of artists and writers, led by a reluctant Gaines and cohort Al Feldstein, as they produce their comicbooks. At the peak of his success, Gaines became a First Amendment figurehead due to his unapologetic testimony before a Senate subcommittee investigating juvenile delinquency."

Will this bring Landis back to respectable feature fare? Or, will Gaines' story fall in the once-great hands of the Thriller director?

Multiple sources are reporting today that Universal has invited John Landis into the office for a couple of meetings about potentially directing The Wolf Man, probably at the behest of the film's creature effects maestro Rick Baker, who Landis worked with on the seminal modern werewolf picture, An American Werewolf in London, many full moons ago. There are reports that the studio was taken aback by the hissy fit that the usually compliant Harry Knowles went into over the studio's almost-sealed deal with Brett Ratner to take over the project that Mark Romanek has inconveniently exited, and so now they're keeping their options open by meeting with a whole host of potential candidates. I don't really buy that -- there's no way the Universal brass actually takes fanboy reaction that seriously, but nevertheless, here we are, and I'm left with one question: John Landis -- really?

Landis has been persona non grata in Hollywood for a long, long time -- being negligent enough to allow Jennifer Jason Leigh's dad to be decapitated on your movie set is a great way to have your phone calls go unreturned -- but he did get at least a couple of comeback opportunities in the 90s, most notably the chance to helm a third Beverly Hills Cop film, and he bungled that opportunity fabulously. BHCIII is one of the worst big-budget action-comedy films I've ever seen in my life, so lifeless and listless and such a franchise-killer that even Jerry Bruckheimer will tell you, if you ask, that he wouldn't be involved in a fourth one if they begged him. Landis's 1992 vampire film, Innocent Blood, was also a hokey disappointment. Still, some swear by the man who brought us Trading Places, Three Amigos and American Werewolf, and would be giddy at the thought of his return to the brass ring. Are you one of those people?

Starting tonight and running through December 17th, Edgar Wright is taking control of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Wright, director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, is programming a festival of his favorite movies, and it's a wonderful and eclectic bunch. He's calling the fest "The Wright Stuff," (also the name of a universally beloved screenwriting column on this very site), and he will be on hand to introduce several screenings with special guests. As always at the New Beverly, one of Los Angeles' absolute treasures, every screening is a double feature.

I'll just tell you about the screenings with special guests, all of which start at 7:30. But don't forget to check the website for all show dates and times. Tonight, Edgar and songwriter Paul Williams will kick off the event with two musicals -- Bugsy Malone and Brian DePalma's Phantom of the Paradise. December 5th, the first feature is Flash Gordon, with special guest (and ex-Bond) Timothy Dalton. The second feature is Mario Bava's Danger Diabolik, introduced by Edgar and the great Joe Dante. On December 7th, Edgar will introduce The Last Boy Scout and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with one of the finest action screenplay writers of our time -- Shane Black. December 10 is John Landis' An American Werewolf in London and Tremors (which I spouted my love for here). Landis will help Wright introduce his film. December 12th is Top Secret! (almost as funny as Airplane and The Naked Gun, in my opinion) and Woody Allen's Bananas, with David Zucker on hand. December 14th is the Roger Ebert - penned Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and Head, hosted by Wright and Micky Dolenz of The Monkees. And on December 16th, Wright will introduce Evil Dead 2 and an all time favorite of mine -- the Coen Brothers' Raising Arizona.

Here is a press release from Edgar with his thoughts on the included films. If you live in the Los Angeles area, there's really no excuse to miss this. See you there!

If you were to ask the 9-year-old version of me what the scariest movie ever made was, he would say it was Twilight Zone: The Movie -- a film so terrifying that I was reduced to tears merely by my father's description of it.

Specifically, he was telling us about the opening sequence, the one that begins with Albert Brooks and Dan Aykroyd listening to "Midnight Special" on a cassette tape and ends with Aykroyd saying, "You wanna see something really scary?" and then making good on his pledge. For some reason, the way my dad retold this story -- which really is a good campfire-type story, when you think about it -- scared the living daylights out of me. I immediately freaked out, sobbing and screaming. The mere idea of the story tormented me, to the extent that I couldn't actually watch the movie for years to come.

(If the preceding anecdote gives you the impression that I was a total pansy as a child, that impression is accurate.)

I did finally watch the film a couple times as a teenager and young adult, and again recently when it was released on DVD for the first time. That prologue with Aykroyd and Brooks? Still pretty great. You don't know it's going to have a scary ending because most of it is just the two men talking about old TV shows and their favorite Twilight Zone episodes. That "You wanna see something really scary?" bit comes as a shock, an abrupt change in tone that exemplifies The Twilight Zone's single best attribute: the ability to surprise us.

I don't believe in movies being tampered with at all after their initial release, whether it's 'flashlights instead of shotguns' or the smallest visual touch-ups. I just think it's a terrible precedent to set and sort of fundamentally at odds with the point of film, which is to freeze a story in a certain place and time. The only time I usually change my position on this is with films like Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, which are completely raped by the studios in their theatrical release, and only really exist in the director's cut. I might also make an exception in the case of Twilight Zone: The Movie -- a solid, scary anthology film that's near-ruined by a couple of ridiculous and outlandish scenes that should be snipped out. I'm talking about those bookends -- an opening one in which a couple of guys traveling in a car along a lonely road get into a discussion about The Twilight Zone show and then one of them turns into the stupidest, most un-scary monster of all-time, and a closing one in which the monster returns for no reason whatsoever except to make us say 'Ooh, there's the monster from the beginning!'

Here's hoping there's a 'bookend-free' edition I can choose in the upcoming, long-awaited DVD release of the film from Warner Home Video. Looks doubtful, though -- aside from some cover art and a firm release date of October 9, there's very little detail given on the Amazon page. Surely they'll load it up with some TV show tie-ins, but I really wouldn't expect much else, although I'm pretty sure they could get Joe Dante to sit down and do a commentary for it. John Landis? Probably not.

While surfing the movie web ether today, I came across a gem that you guys might enjoy. There's a website out there called Trailers From Hell, and the kicker -- it isn't some out-of-nowhere fan web space -- it comes from Joe Dante's Metaluna Productions. Yes, the Dante responsible for Gremlins, Explorers and Innerspace. According to the director himself: "The bromide about these old trailers is that they were better than the movies they promoted. That's only true in some cases, but they did deliver in-your-face excitement and breathless hyperbole at a pace the movies never could." Covering everything from music done "Electronovision" style to horror films, the trailers display what Dante calls "shameless cinematic hucksterism."

What's especially cool -- the site doesn't just have trailers, but well-known names doing commentaries on them. Dante offers two -- The Terror and The Unearthly, while Shaun of the Dead's Edgar Wright chats about the low-budget greatness of Danger: Diabolik, Hocus Pocus helmer Mick Garris tackles House on Haunted Hill and Animal House header John Landis talks about seeing The T.A.M.I. Show live, in his youth. With a well-known name behind the site, I imagine that this is only the beginning as he gets more names involved. There are already 5 more that are coming soon -- Dante on The Incredible Petrified World, Garris on X - The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, Landis on The Fall of the Roman Empire, Wright on Dr. Terror's House of Horrors and a new name -- Pet Sematary director Mary Lambert on Village of the Damned. I'm hoping that they sweeten the pot with some Mystery Science Theater sort of voice-overs in the future, but either way, it's a great way to uncover some old, and sometimes forgotten pulpy goodness.

[via Cartoon Brew]

Every once in a while, I wonder what's going on with John Landis. The man was popular cinema gold in the 80's -- at least for horror and comedy. There's Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Trading Places, Spies Like Us, ¡Three Amigos! and Coming to America on the funny side of things, not to mention Michael Jackson's mini-movie Thriller and of course, American Werewolf in London. Then the 90's hit, with Oscar, and things were never the same. While he's got a few films in the works that we can hope for, perhaps the better flick to look forward to is a new documentary on some old and loved material.

Horror writer Paul Davis has pulled together a documentary called Beware the Moon: Remembering 'An American Werewolf in London'. Using nine locations from the film, he interviewed practically everyone and covered production from its conception in '69 to its release in '81. (Their MySpace site says that this includes star David Naughton, but he's strangely missing from the IMDb appearance list.) If you head over to MySpace, you can also see a bunch of brief clips, to give you a feel for the doc and what they're chattering about, as well as a bare-bones teaser trailer and a slew of photos that include production shots and rare photos from the original film. But that's not all, the latest word from HorrorHound Weekend is that Universal Home Entertainment has picked up the distribution rights. While this is great for Davis' project, I imagine it could mean great things for the fans as well -- they have the rights to Werewolf too. This could mean a double-DVD set with the film and the doc, and maybe a new disc release with added features. For now you'll have to satiate yourself with the clips, unless Universal decides to get speedy -- all of the other release dates are in 2008.

OK, OK, the Masters of Horror series plays on cable television, which means it's definitely more of TV Squad's domain than it is Cinematical's ... so I'll just share a quick press release, mention a bunch of horror movie directors, and then move on.

Bloody-Disgusting.com was kind enough to share a Masters of Horror Season 2 press release with us, and it's stuffed with genre names we all know and love. Returning to direct a second episode will be Dario Argento (Suspiria), John Carpenter (Halloween), Joe Dante (The Howling), Mick Garris (Sleepwalkers), Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator), Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and John Landis (An American Werewolf in London). Newcomers to the Masters roster include Brad Anderson (Session 9), Ernest Dickerson (Demon Knight), and Tom Holland (Fright Night). Writers/inspirations include include Brett Hanley (Frailty), Sam Hamm (Batman), F. Paul Wilson, Ambrose Bierce, Clive Barker, and Edgar Allen Poe.

IDT and Showtime are promising 13 new episodes, which is a little bit confusing since there are only ten directors mentioned, but I guess we'll be getting some new announcements soon. Hungry for some pre-release plot synopses? Check 'em right here.