One night in Austin a few months back I was hanging out in front of the Alamo Drafthouse movie theater waiting for my next Fantastic Fest movie to begin, and (as often happens at film festivals) I struck up a conversation with a hardcore handful of horror freaks. I leaned over to introduce myself and one of the guys said "Scott Weinberg? You reviewed my movie!" -- to which I replied "Adam Green? I liked your movie!" Two weeks later, we were married.

Just kidding. Adam and I did, however, become good pals with one very important thing in common: We demand high quality from our horror flicks, whether they're Overpriced PG-13 Studio Remake Part 4 or Tiny Little Horror Indie That Needs Some Love. So with the announcement that Mr. Green's Hatchet will be hitting semi-wide theatrical release (on September 7!) courtesy of Anchor Bay, I figured it was time to nail Green down and demand a few answers from the guy. Here's how our chat went down:

Cinematical: One doesn't write & direct a movie like Hatchet without having some very intensive slasher training early in life. What were the flicks that turned you from a normal New England kiddie into a raving horror fanatic? Did your parents support your twisted habit?

Adam Green: I was lucky enough to have an older brother who shared the splatter flicks with me and I had parents who were cool and involved enough in my life to allow me to see them. I think my folks appreciated that I looked at these movies as a creative outlet ... almost like magic shows if you will. When I would see a knife go through someone, it never scared me as much as it challenged me. "How did they do that?" I was always a good kid and I never really got in trouble or (even worse) became that weird kid who watches horror movies all the time and doesn't talk to anybody. (You know the guy, I'm sure he was in your class, too!) I think if I had ever shown signs of this stuff having a negative impact on me then my parents would have put the kibosh on it. I'm sure now, seeing what is happening with Hatchet, they are glad they supported my horror habit. My earliest memories of horror are Friday the 13th Part 2, John Carpenter's The Thing, Halloween, An American Werewolf in London, and A Nightmare On Elm Street ... and Hatchet is so obviously inspired by those films that I may as well have made it in 1984.

My favorite film from the Tribeca Film Festival this year was Zak Penn's The Grand, mainly because I love spontaneous comedy and this film was filled with it. When I sat down with Penn during the festival, his film hadn't been picked up yet, but Variety tells us today that none other than Anchor Bay Entertainment has acquired all North American rights to the flick with plans to distribute via a platform release (which means it will arrive in a limited amount of cities before expanding depending on how well it does) early next year. It's a bit of a surprise move for Anchor Bay seeing as they're more known for getting behind horror flicks (like recent festival favorites Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon and Hatchet) than comedy, but obviously they're looking to expand their repertoire.

Penn is slowly lining up an interesting career for himself. On one hand, he's the go-to guy for comic book adaptations, having penned X-Men 3: The Last Stand, Elektra and next summer's The Incredible Hulk. But then he involves himself with these little passion projects as a director, like the little-seen mockumentary Incident at Loch Ness and The Grand. Starring a lot of people (Ray Romano, David Cross, Werner Herzog, Woody Harrelson and Cheryl Hines, to name a few), pic is a mockumentary which follows a group of people looking to score big at a poker tournament in Las Vegas. If you're a fan of shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm or anything that Christopher Guest puts out, then this flick should be right up your alley. For more, feel free to check out my review of The Grand from Tribeca.

Last week Elite Entertainment, the company that released the definitive DVD editions of both Re-Animator (1985) and Night of the Living Dead (1968), has announced a new DVD set sure to have horror fans salivating through their pointy teeth. It's a three-disc set called The Fearmakers Collection, which contains half-hour documentaries on ten horror filmmakers: Jack Arnold (The Creature from the Black Lagoon), Tod Browning (Dracula and Freaks), William Castle (House on Haunted Hill), Roger Corman (The Masque of the Red Death), Terence Fisher (Horror of Dracula), Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Roman Polanski (Rosemary's Baby), Jacques Tourneur (Cat People), silent-era director Roland West (The Bat) and Robert Wise (The Haunting). Each episode contains interviews with filmmakers, actors and other experts. The set is based on the book The Fearmakers, by John McCarty, and will be released May 8 with a $29.98 price tag. Elite has even posted a Youtube page full of preview clips.

But wait! Did I mention Re-Animator? Anchor Bay Entertainment has simultaneously announced a new series of remastered Special Edition DVDs (most of its signature titles are now out of print), starting with Stuart Gordon's 1985 film as well as Don Coscarelli's Phantasm (1978). The new Re-Animator disc promises a brand-new transfer, remastered Dolby Digital sound, a new 70-minute documentary and scads of other goodies. True blue (green?) fans will want to hang on to their Elite edition, however, because the one thing it doesn't have is the longer, 95-minute version of the film. Anchor Bay's DVD will contain only Gordon's official director's cut, which runs 86 minutes, while Elite's disc has both versions. Still, this new one will definitely be worth a look. It streets March 20 and retails for $24.98. And act fast: Anchor Bay is printing only 50,000 copies.