i walked with a zombie Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I hate it when someone comes up with an idea so simple and clever that I want to kick myself for not thinking of it first. Curse you, Adam Green! His next feature is called Frozen, and here's what it's about: Three poor folks who are stuck on a chair lift. High off the ground. In the freezing cold. Like for days. (Think on that premise for a few minutes. I think it's nifty. Like Open Water with hypothermia instead of sharks.) Frozen will be the first production for a company called A Bigger Boat, which is run by Peter Block, who had a real knack for horror films when he worked for Lionsgate. So this is good news all around.

Andy Fickman directs mostly family-type comedies, so what's he doing remaking RKO classics like The Body Snatcher and I Walked With a Zombie? Check out this interview to find out. Almost two years ago I wrote about a new horror flick called Amusement. Looks like it's finally ready for DVD. Cool: Bloody-D has a Top 13 Best Kills list -- complete with clips! Hey wow, Dark Castle to do a non-remake. And then just for fun let's watch the adorable Stacie Ponder go nutso on Amityville and Sleepaway Camp. Plus Saw is infinitely better than Psycho. This poll proves it. Anyone remember that awful horror flick Stay Alive? This poor sap does.

...oh, and you'll never guess who's playing Thor. Seriously, never.

P.S. Guess what's coming out on October 23rd, 2009. Here's a hint: Saw 6.

For those who've been wondering when those guys at Twisted Pictures were going to stand up and do something a little different from the Saw series, here it is: Something new. Something different. Ready for it? A bunch of horror remakes. What? Horror remakes are hot ... these ... days... Aren't they?

At least the Saw producers are going back farther than 1986 for their remake fodder. According to Variety, Twisted has made a deal to remake four of the dusty old RKO chillers. Which ones? These ones: I Walked With a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 1943) The Body Snatcher (Robert Wise, 1945), Bedlam (Mark Robson, 1946) and a mystery title ... as yet unchosen! Creeeeepyyyy! Producer Mark Burg sums it up rather succinctly: "We've thought a long time about how to update these classic titles to make them commercial ... If these films go well, we hope it leads to more."

Plus hey, since the movies exist already, you barely need half a screenwriter! Still, let's give the Twisted boys a little credit. They could easily coast by on the Saw series alone, but they're trying to branch out into new territory. (Well, if making four horror remakes really counts as "new territory.") It's got to be better than the alternative: Twisted also produced the quick-vanishing Dead Silence and the still-shelved Catacombs.

To make a horror movie today without color is probably inconceivable; how else could you possibly depict all that blood and gore without red? But there was once a time when horror depended on moods, on light and shadow, and black-and-white provided the perfect palette. Dracula's castle never gained much by adding color. So what if a couple of tapestries show up on the walls? The important things are the creaks and cobwebs and the darkness. Moreover, black-and-white movies play better on TV: On dark nights when the lights are all off; they're more like tingly campfire tales told with flashlights, cozy but creepy.

For my top seven, I decided to start at the sound era, since many silent-era films used color tinting and could not be called true black-and-white. I wish I could have spared room for Tod Browning's Freaks (1932), the anthology film Dead of Night (1945), Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby's original The Thing (1951), Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), 'Herk' Harvey's Carnival of Souls (1962), Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965), Abel Ferrara's The Addiction (1995) and many others.

Vampyr (1932, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
When scholars are forced to discuss horror films, they grudgingly mention this and F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) -- but don't hold that against the films. Vampyr is not only one of the greatest of all horror films, but one of the flat-out spookiest. It concerns a dreamy young man who reads occult books. During his travels, he checks into an inn, receives a warning from a ghost and finds himself in the middle of a mystery involving two sisters. Dreyer provides all kinds of chilling, startlingly simple effects using shadows and off-screen sounds. A climactic shot has had scholars buzzing for decades: A point-of-view shot from a corpse, shot through a little window in the lid of a coffin. Dreyer made this between two other masterpieces, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and his witchcraft drama Day of Wrath (1943).

   • Big Momma's House 2 - In Martin Lawrence's desperate minstrel show, the comedian reprises his role as undercover FBI agent Malcolm Turner, again donning a fat suit to become the sassy, black Southern matron Big Momma. He has to stop a potentially destructive computer hacker, and the movie is broad, shameless and pandering in most every respect. Lawrence appears to assume that we automatically like him and Big Momma, and does little to endear them to us any further. Incessant mugging, weak slapstick and Teflon catchphrases fill in the many cracks of its already shaky foundation, leaving a hammy house of horrors that should have been condemned when it was still a half-baked pitch.
    • Grandma's Boy - Adam Sandler's longtime second-banana, Allen Covert, gets his shot at a lead in this stoner comedy, but despite his appealing, aw-shucks demeanor, the movie, about a 36-year-old video game tester who moves in with his grandmother and her two roommates, is just irredeemably stupid. It is sad to see three lovely ladies like Doris Roberts, Shirley Jones and Shirley Knight stooping for laughs like this, though based on the fact that practically no one saw it in theaters (or will go out of their way to rent the DVD), it is a very minor tragedy.