Bill and I got the opportunity to live out our dreams and be talking heads in a documentary about the unmade George Romero Resident Evil script.
Here’s the trailer!
Look for this movie soon! The IMDB page is up and I’ll share more info when I get it.
I am happy to report that the latest Halloween Horrors month on Horror and Sons has an article by me on the weird and wonderous Litan. Check it out!
There are so many great writers this month and I’m excited that I can share this little known movie with the readers of this great site.
In the review, I said: “Seeing as how this is running in the month of Halloween, I have to confess that this movie won’t be spooky for everyone. Yet, I’ve been obsessed by age as of late, by life change, by legacy. I don’t know if it even matters sometimes. What matters? I’m not sure. I just know that movies make me feel things, deep and meaningful things, and this movie brought me a flood of joy and as there’s a dearth of that in this current timeline, I wanted to share it with you.”
B&S About Movies is the one thing in my writing career — I pretty much write from when I get up until when I go to bed for people who pay me — that is outside of making money. I like that there are no ads on the site and the most commerce that intrudes on this page is mentioning what label sent me a film to review.
I don’t ever want to run ads, but if I could make just a little bit doing this, I’d be happy. Or at least feel like the hours I spend every week weren’t me writing for an audience of one.
There are four ways you can help:
If you sent money before, good news! I have time set aside in December to post movies for several of you:
Thanks so much for reading and being part of this site. And let me know what you want to see!
Sam
A mysterious older woman seeks revenge on the corrupt legal guardian who destroyed her life.
London/Toronto/Tallinn, October 13: THE G, from writer/director Karl R. Hearne and 3Buck Productions, starring Dale Dickey (Hell or High Water, Winter’s Bone, True Blood) has been Officially Selected for the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. In competition, it will celebrate its World Premiere on November 11th.
In further news, levelFILM has acquired all rights for Canadian distribution with a release date scheduled for 2024.
Ann Hunter (aka “The G”, played by Dale Dickey) and her husband retired to an unnamed American suburb 10 years ago to be near his family. But one day out of the blue they are snatched from their home by a corrupt legal guardian who believes they have hidden wealth. Their home and assets are legally stripped from them and they are put in a prison-like “eldercare facility,” victims of an exploding old age industry. Trapped in a corrupt and terrifying system, THE G begins to show her true mettle as she and her loyal granddaughter fight to get them out… and get revenge on the people who did this.
A “winter-noir” based on real events/inspired by the filmmaker’s own family experience, THE G is an original portrait of a fierce older woman in the kind of role that a woman is rarely cast in. A highly atmospheric blend of suspense, dark humor, and moving human relationships that confronts age-related issues head on, THE G is driven by one astonishing main character, rivetingly portrayed by Dale Dickey, “One of Hollywood’s Great Scene-Stealers” (Vanity Fair, Fall 2022).
THE G also stars Romane Denis (True North, Slut in a Good Way), Roc Lafortune (Beastly, I’m Not There, Pluto Nash), Bruce Ramsay (Alive, Collateral Damage) and Jonathan Koensgen (FUBAR, Reacher).
The film is line-produced by José Lacelle (Enter The Void, Racer), edited by Arthur Tarnowski (Bestsellers, The Sacrifice Game) with music by Philippe Brault (The Fireflies are Gone, Maria Chapdelaine) and sound design by Pierre-Jules Audet (Arrival).
Writer/director Karl R. Hearne says, “This film is a “winter-noir” based on real-world elder scams, and inspired by my own grandmother’s story and character. It’s about a woman who- regardless of her age or situation- refuses to accept that her life is over. In a world where the elderly are frequently marginalised, neglected or abused, I think of this film as a revenge story against old age itself… old age being a condition that my grandmother once said she “would not tolerate.”
“At levelFILM, we strive to partner with talented creators and share their stories like this one to ensure they find their Canadian (and beyond!) audiences,” said Olivier Gauthier-Mercier, VP of Distribution at levelFILM. “THE G speaks to an unfortunately all-too-common human experience through incredible performances driven with heart.”
THE G will celebrate its World Premiere at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival on November 11
Since it’s the Halloween month of October, Deaf Crocodile is thrilled to announce its acquisition of 3 rarely-seen Eastern European genre classics for release in 2024 in newly-restored versions, co-presented with Seagull Films:
The fourth release by legendary Russian fantasy master Aleksandr Ptushko following Ilya Muromets, Sampo and The Tale of Tsar Saltan: his final film Ruslan and Ludmila, a 2-part, 2-1/2 hour epic fantasy in a gorgeous new 4K restoration.
Belarusian director Valeri Rubinchik’s long-unseen folk horror masterpiece The Savage Hunt of King Stakh, in a new restoration of the 2-hour director’s cut.
Georgian filmmaker Georgiy Daneliya’s surreal, comic sci-fi gem Kin-Daz-Dza!, available for the first time ever in North America.
Deaf Crocodile plans to release the 3 films in Spring – Summer 2024:
Ruslan and Ludmila – 1972, Mosfilm, 150 min. The final film from Russian fantasy master Aleksandr Ptushko (ILYA MUROMETS, SAMPO), Ruslan and Ludmila was a glorious and magical summation of his career: a 2-1/2 hour greatest hits package filled with the sweeping lyricism, bejeweled visual F/X and mythic storytelling that put him on par with Walt Disney, Ray Harryhausen and Mario Bava. Based on an epic fairy tale written in 1820 by Alexander Pushkin (Ptushko had previously adapted Pushkin’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan, and half-jokingly said they were related), the film opens with the seemingly-joyous marriage of bogatyr (warrior) Ruslan (Valeri Kozinets) to Ludmila (Natalya Petrova), the daughter of Prince Vladimir. (Like his earlier Ilya Muromets, the action of the film is set during the legendary era of the Kyivan Rus’ culture that pre-dated both modern Ukraine and Russia.) On their wedding night, Ludmila is spirited away by the long-bearded wizard Chernomor (Vladimir Fyodorov), and taken to his sinister palace where she’s held prisoner. On their epic quest to rescue her, Ruslan and his three rivals encounter some of Ptushko’s most unforgettable imagery: a giant’s monstrous, decapitated head slumbering on an open plain, magic rings and stone warriors, sorcery and sacrifice, all in the hope of reuniting lost lovers. Newly restored by Mosfilm for release by Deaf Crocodile and Seagull Films. In Russian with English subtitles.
“One of Ptushko’s richest works, a compendium of all the techniques and special effects he had developed in previous films. His miniature work reached its peak here, especially in the model of Chernomor’s icy kingdom with its gloomy castle perched atop a craggy cliff. Just as memorable are the sequences of Ruslan riding through the haunted woodlands at sunset …” – Alan Upchurch, Video Watchdog.
The Savage Hunt of King Stakha (1980, Belarusfilm, 126 min. Dir. Valeri Rubinchik): “We have more ghosts than live people,” murmurs the pale, haunted mistress of the mansion of Marsh Firs (Elena Dimitrova) to a scholar of ancient folklore (Boris Plotnikov) who has arrived at her castle to research the bloody legend of King Stakh, a murdered 15th century nobleman whose spirit supposedly thunders through the local woodlands. (The Wild Hunt is a fixture of northern European folklore in which a sinister figure leads a chase followed by ghostly companions.) Part folk horror, part supernatural mystery, King Stakh is a melancholy, chilling mixture of Terry Gilliam, Italian Gothic Horror, 1960s Hammer Films and The Wicker Man – and a major rediscovery for genre fans. The longer the young scholar stays in this mysterious house of “shadow, gloom, madness and death,” the more strange and surreal the imagery becomes: a mad widow in a white wig; a man bleeding spontaneously from his skull; a dwarf hiding in a decayed doll’s house; screeching ravens and maniacal puppet shows. Based on the novel by Belarusian writer Uladzimir Karatkievich, the long-unavailable King Stakh has recently been restored from the original film elements in its extended 126 min. Director’s Cut by Deaf Crocodile and Seagull Films for its first-ever U.S. release. (In Russian with English subtitles.)
Kin-Dza-Dza! (1986, Mosfilm, 135 min. Dir. Georgiy Daneliya.): Imagine Andrei Tarkovsky circa Solaris directing Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and you’ll come close to the existential weirdness of the wonderfully loopy Soviet-era sci-fi comedy Kin-Dza-Dza! Two average Muscovites – a plainspoken construction foreman (Stanislav Lyubshin) and a Georgian violin student (Levan Gabriadze) – encounter an odd homeless man on the street who asks, “Tell me the number of your planet in the Tentura?” In a flash, they’re teleported across the universe to the planet Pluke in the Kin-Dza-Dza galaxy – a Tatooine-like desert world whose inhabitants are hilariously noncommunicative (their main words are “ku” for good and “kyu” for very bad) and where common wooden matches are tremendously valuable. A deadpan, absurdist mixture of Kurt Vonnegut, Monty Python, Samuel Beckett and Jodorowsky’s never-made Dune where alien cultures are even more haphazard and WTF? than our own, the film is also a savage satire of bureaucratic idiocy and dysfunction no matter what political system you’re living under – or what planet you’re living on. Recently restored by Mosfilm for its first-ever U.S. release by Deaf Crocodile and Seagull Films. In Russian with English subtitles.
“Possibly the most underrated science fiction film of the past 50 years … A collapsed Ferris wheel provides a home for destitute desert dwellers. Graves are marked by balloons containing the deceased’s final breath. The colour of your trousers signifies social status, so they are powerful barter items… There is no convoluted plot, but instead a convoluted universe, and its incredulous victims ready to point out the farcicality therein.” – Joel Blackledge, Little White Lies
For more information, visit the Deaf Crocodile website.
November is the annual Mill Creek Month and this year I’ve picked two different sets. I’d love to have you write for the site and here are the movies that you can choose from.
Sci-Fi Classics: Choose from fifty science fiction movies, which you can find on this Letterboxd or IMDB list. You can get the set from Amazon. There are some used ones for $3.49!
The Swingin’ Seventies: Choose from fifty movies from the 1970s, which you can find on this Letterboxd or IMDB list. You can get the set from Amazon. There are some used ones for $3.47!
Movies include:
AND!
On Thanksgiving, the site will celebrate like it’s the 70s and we;’e watching WOR. Giant monsters all day, so send in your favorite.
October 1: Seasonal offerings kicks off with Shocktober 31. 31 days, 31 movies. This October ARROW is bringing back the infamous Shocktober 31 and highlighting some of our favorite horror titles streaming on ARROW each day, guaranteed to make your Halloween go with a scream. From J-horror to giallo, slashers galore, cannibals, witches and more, this spooky season on ARROW has everything you need to carve a pumpkin to, party with or to make sure that you don’t get a wink of sleep! Titles include: Dark Water, Two Witches, Blood and Black Lace.
October 6: ARROW wishes a belated birthday to Elvira Mistress of the Dark. When her great aunt dies, famed horror hostess Elvira heads for the uptight new England town of Falwell to claim her inheritance of a haunted house, a witch’s cookbook and a punk rock poodle. But once the stuffy locals get an eyeful of the scream queen’s ample assets, all hell busts out & breaks loose.
Don’t Look!: ARROW’s Scariest!: Want a movie to scare the life out of you this Halloween? You’ve come to the right place! Don’t Look! collects together all the scariest films on ARROW that will send shivers down your spine until you’re jumping out of your seat. For a Halloween you’ll never forget – because you were chewing off your fingernails while perched on the edge of your seat – Enjoy… if you dare! Titles include: Two Witches, Edge of the Axe, Dementer.
Also on October 6: Calamity of Snakes
October 11: Ever since his debut was heralded as “a young master’s first masterpiece” by none other than Ingmar Bergman, director Lukas Moodysson has been hailed internationally as one of Sweden’s greatest filmmaking talents, delighting and confounding audiences in equal measure. With his eagerly anticipated new film Together 99 showing at this year’s BFI London Film Festival, ARROW offers a chance to reacquaint yourself with Moodyson’s unique and eclectic oeuvre in No Compromise: The Lukas Moodysson Collection. Moodysson’s eclectic filmography can now be appreciated as the work of a singular filmmaking voice, as avowedly uncompromising and unabashedly political as it is keenly observed, deeply felt and frequently hilarious. Titles Include: Fucking Åmål, Together, Mammoth.
October 13: The Initiation, Rewind of Die AKA House of VHS
Jed Shepherd Selects: Jed Shepherd, the co-writer and producer of horror sensations Host and Dashcam, and one of the writers and directors of Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge, picks out his favorite titles from the ARROW catalogue, with a mix of cult chills, iconic sci-fi and out a really out-there documentary. Titles include: The Grand Tour, Gwilliam, Who Killed Captain Alex, The Witch Who Came from the Sea.
October 20: So Funny It’s Frightening allows you to celebrate Halloween in a fun way, not in a give yourself nightmares for weeks way? Then So Funny It’s Frightening is for you. Full of films that feature monsters, the supernatural and maybe even a smidge of gore (maybe more than a smidge…) but also packed full of laughs and silliness to take the sharp edge off and leaving you grinning wider than your jack-o-lantern. Titles include: Elvira Mistress of the Dark, Hotel Poseidon, Crow Hand.
Also on October 20: The Necro Files
October 23: Go back to the beginning of the Hellraiser franchise in glorious 4K with Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II
October 27: C.H.U.D., A Serbian Film
Head over to ARROW to start watching now. Subscriptions are available for $6.99 monthly or $69.99 yearly.
ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Samsung TVs, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.
With a slickly designed and user-friendly interface, and an unparalleled roster of quality content from westerns to giallo to Asian cinema, trailers, Midnight Movies, filmmaker picks and much, much more, ARROW is the place to go for the very best in on-demand entertainment.
Here’s what’s playing on Shudder this month. Click on any title with a hyperlink to see our review.
October 1: Dead End, Lake Mungo, The Gate, May, Lords of Salem, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Evil Dead II
October 2: Spirit Halloween, Hell House LLC: The Director’s Cut, Hell House LLC: The Abaddon Hotel, Hell House LLC III: Lake of Firew
October 6: V/H/S/85
October 9: Dog Soldiers, All Hallows’ Eve, All Hallows’ Eve 2
October 10: The Last Drive-In on a Tuesday at 10 PM showing Halloween (1978)
October 13: The Puppetman, Creepshow season 4
October 16: Lockdown Tower
October 20: Night of the Hunted, Joe Bob’s Helloween
October 23: Kidnapped, The Midnight Man
October 27: What Evil Lurks
October 30: Hell House LLC Origins
October 31: The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula season 5, Saw, Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV, Saw V, Saw VI, Saw 3D
Remember when Shudder was the home for Halloween?
Anyways…if you don’t have Shudder, plans start at under $5 a month. You can get the first week free when you visit Shudder.
Tonight at the Riverside Drive-In is the Drive-In Super Monster Rama! For just $30 ($15 a night), you get eight astounding movies!
Night one: Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs!, Impulse and Shriek of the Mutilated
Here are the recipes that I’ll be bringing.
Pleasant Valley Dew
Yeti
Night two: Humanoids from the Deep, Grizzly, Piranha and Day of the Animals
Honey Bear
Pre-work: To make the syrup use the following ingredients:
To make the drink:
Tentacle Painkiller
You can hang out with some of the biggest movie fans ever, get great food, buy movies, get a drink from me and so much more. See you tonight!
SLASH Filmfestival 2023 has five carefully curated programs and various shorts before features bring a total of 48 short films from all corners of the world to Vienna.
With over 34 World, International, European or Austrian premieres the 14th edition of SLASH Filmfestival has its largest short film lineup ever and sees the festival take new initiatives to celebrate the short form in its own right.
In addition to program mainstays Fantastic Shorts Competition Chapters 1 and 2, SLASH is delighted to bring back My First SLASH to continue guiding young viewers and families on their first steps into the diverse world of genre cinema. Fantastic Futures has matured into its own program that celebrates promising film school students while SLASH is also excited to treat viewers to the first-ever Fantastic Flings, a sidebar which will become an annually recurring ‘hook up’ that sees SLASH collaborating with an international film festival for a co-curated program that explores relationships through a genre lens.
For its inaugural edition of Fantastic Flings SLASH is proud to get into bed with Italy’s TOHorror Fantastic Film Fest.
The competitions
With three competitive sections, SLASH continues to reward short film excellence.
A total of 10 shorts make up the Fantastic Shorts competition with what we believe are the freshest and fiercest genre short films from the past year. As always, the winner will be chosen by our most diligent judges – the SLASH audience – and takes home 1,000 € in prize money. Highlights include the Austrian premiere of Liam LoPinto’s The Old Young Crow, a singular ghost story that embraces a hybrid form to celebrate multicultural identity, darkly satirical social comments in the guise of a children’s game gone horribly wrong in Joséphine Darcy Hopkins’ Sweet Tooth, a run in with post-colonial Leatherface in
Bangladesh-set Foreigners Only (Nuhash Humayun), and the Austrian premiere of Hole (Hyein Hwang), the runner up of Cannes’ Cinéfondation competition.
A total of 8 shorts comprise the Fantastic Futures competition, which puts an exclusive spotlight on talented student filmmakers and collectively offers a mouth-watering taste of how fantastic the future of genre cinema is. The program sees the uniquely apocalyptic On the 8th Day taking its world premiere bow in addition to the European premiere of Nathan Ginter’s The Third Ear, a surreal and probing look at self-image. Also in the mix are Austrian premieres of Shengwei Zhou’s nightmarish paper animation Perfect City: The Bravest Kid and the Austrian premiere of homegrown The Hand That Feeds by
Helen Hideko.
Juried by SLASH (the) Industry experts Todd Brown (XYZ Films) and Tania Morissette (Fantasia International Film Festival/ Frontières), the winner will receive 500€ in prize money on top of being awarded a full certificate for Final Draft screenwriting software.
Playing across the aforementioned five programs, SLASH attendees will also discover six Méliès d’argent contenders, which include a colorful clash with inner demons that embody fear of commitment (Amok), a narrow escape from food processing (Remove Hind Legs Before Consumption) and the international premiere of hyper-sensual giallo tribute La Vedova Nera, which has the honor of being the opening night short of SLASH Filmfestival 2023.
All six films are in the running for being crowned best European fantastic short under 25 minutes at SLASH 2023. Doris Bauer (Vienna Shorts) and guest of honor Brandon Cronenberg will decide who wins the Méliès d’argent and is then in the running for the main prize – the Méliès d’or – at Sitges.
The trailer
Our killer short film trailer edited by Joana Gil-Rico should get you in the mood for films that find unique ways of channeling the past, coping with the present and envisioning the future as they take viewers on a surreal, darkly comedic and horrifyingly visceral ride.
To learn more:
SLASH Film festival – general info
SLASH Filmfestival is Austria’s largest event dedicated to Fantastic Cinema. Founded in 2010, it quickly grew in size and scope, attracting close to 15.000 visitors over its 11-day run. Each year’s program is comprised of 50+ Austrian, European or international premieres of highlights from the field of fantastic cinema, ranging from crowd-pleasers to hot docs, from fiercely independent films to heritage revivals.
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