> Director Max Minghella (Spiral: From the Book of Saw, Horns) wears his cinematic influences on his sleeves with sophomore feature effort Shell, a body horror dark comedy written by Jack Stanley (The Passenger). > > Elisabeth Moss (The Invisible Man) finds herself embarking on a scary new beauty treatment as aging actor Samantha Lake. She quickly befriends Zoe Shannon (Kate Hudson), CEO of health & wellness company Shell. When their patients start to go missing, including starlet Chloe Benson (Kaia Gerber), Samantha realizes Shell may be protecting a monstrous secret. > >The escapist love letter to ’90s cinema leans into dark comedy, but embraces everything from Paul Verhoeven to Soapdish, Species, and Sliver, if that’s any indicator of genre range here. Bloody Disgusting spoke with Minghella, who made his feature directorial debut with 2018’s Teen Spirit, about the genre-bender out of TIFF, where the film had its World Premiere.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/17574706

> > “That was never going to work for Tim,” Abdy said about making the “Beetlejuice” sequel for streaming. “You’re talking about a visionary artist whose films demand to be seen on a big screen.” > > > >The big issue between Burton and the studio was that the projected budget for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” at one point was around $147 million, largely due to “star salaries and producer fees.” That’s when De Luca and Abdy approached Burton and said he could make the sequel for an exclusive theatrical release as long as he got the budget down below the $100 million mark. They worked together to greenlight “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” for $99 million, with Burton and cast members Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Jenna Ortega and Catherine O’Hara agreeing to less money up front but sizable back end deals that will now surely pay off since the sequel is a box office hit.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/17520035

> > # Kevin Smith reveals how and why KillRoy Was Here became an NFT release > ====================================================================== > > Two years after his horror anthology KillRoy Was Here received an NFT release, Kevin Smith has revealed exactly how and why that happened > > By Cody Hamman > > September 16th 2024, 9:14am > > Two years have passed since Kevin Smith's horror anthology KillRoy Was Here made its way out into the world as an NFT -- and to this day, the only people who have seen the movie are those who have either bought the NFT, been given access to one of the NFTs, or attended a special screening. Which means so few people have seen KillRoy Was Here, it could almost be described as Smith's "lost movie." Now, while speaking to Entertainment Weekly and promoting his new film The 4:30 Movie, Smith has revealed exactly how and why the movie became an NFT release. > > Directed by Smith from a script he wrote with Andy McElfresh, KillRoy Was Here was made on a minuscule budget as a project with film students at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. The movie is a throwback anthology horror film featuring a creature that kills evil adults at the behest of victimized kids. The creature at the heart of the story is KillRoy, inspired by the "Kilroy was here" graffiti that became popular during World War II, showing a long-nosed man peeking over a fence. In this case, KillRoy started out as a Florida man named Roy Huggins, who was a soldier in the Vietnam War, not World War II, and when he was captured by enemy soldiers he got loose, killed a whole lot of people, and cannibalized one of the corpses. He had to be locked up in a mental institution, and when the place caught on fire Roy was left to burn. Now he's a supernatural being who stalks the Florida swamps, and his burns have left him looking a lot like that figure in the Kilroy graffiti. They say he has a psychic connection to kids, and if someone says his name three times he'll show up with his machete and start hacking away at anyone who has wronged a child. > > The cast includes Harley Quinn Smith, Jason Mewes, Chris Jericho, Betty Aberlin, Ralph Garman, Daisy McElfresh, and Justin Kucsulain. > > Smith told Entertainment Weekly, "We made this movie KillRoy Was Here with the kids at the Ringling College of Art and Design. I wound up with possession of the movie. When it was all done, I had this movie; perfectly watchable, Creepshow type of movie. So I reached out to Shudder and I was like, 'Hey man, you guys wanna run this? It's a Kevin Smith original, kind of horror movie. 30 grand.' That was it. Shudder was like, 'This is terrible. This isn't good enough for Shudder.' Then our producer on the movie, David (Shapiro), he goes, 'I met with this company, they are interested in buying a movie to release as an NFT. The first movie to release as an NFT, and what they wanna do is use it to showcase their blockchain technology.' And I was like, 'Oh, all right.' Perhaps this is another version of indie film, this is a new playground to go play in. Company paid us over a million dollars. I made a million dollars off of this movie. 'Not good enough for Shudder.'" Now, with that explanation, the whole NFT release strategy finally makes sense. > > KillRoy Was Here may not meet up to Shudder's standards, but here's hoping more of Smith's fans will have the chance to see the movie eventually. > >

> 2024 marks the 75th anniversary of the iconic board game Clue, one of Hasbro's most recognizable properties throughout its existence. From fun nights with friends and family to the big screen with the surprising 1985 hit starring Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, and Christopher Lloyd, among others, the tabletop deduction game has delighted with its simple yet effective cases, asking players to find the who, the what, and the where of a murder. Countless versions of the classic formula have been introduced throughout the years, including editions based on popular shows like Wednesday and Scooby-Doo. Now, The Op Games is bringing the Staten Island vampires into a whodunnit of their own with the new Clue: What We Do in the Shadows Edition and Collider can reveal an exclusive look at the game available now at major retailers. > > Lest you fear that the vampire housemates and their familiar Guillermo are going to be killing each other in this edition, fret not, as the goal of the game is not to find the killer, but the hider. Laszlo's cursed 100% witch skin hat, a frequent target of Nick Kroll's Simon the Devious, has once again gone missing. With Simon not around, though, one of the housemates is responsible for stashing the hat away somewhere in the Vampire Residence, and it's up to players to figure out who hid it, where it's located, and with what object it's obscured. Nandor, Nadja, Laszlo, Colin Robinson, Guillermo, and The Guide are all potential suspects, while the board itself features locations from the show like the Fancy Room and the attic where Baron Afanas once stayed. > > Everything from the board to the tokens, character movers, cards, and even the note sheets in the game is given a What We Do in the Shadows makeover, bringing the Vampire Residence to life as well as other iconic moments and locales from the series. The objects used to hide Laszlo's cursed hat are given grey and black etched pieces to place in each room and range from floorboards to the possessed Nadja doll. Intrigue cards also bring back memories from the show's five-season run thus far, with visits to the wellness club and invoking the classic "Bat!" granting players an advantage.

> Ageing and death are perhaps the foundation of all horror, but this droll French chamber piece, adapted from an 1839 novella by Aleksey Tolstoy, puts a devious spin on that. The titular “vourdalak” – a kind of Mitteleuropean vampire – is Gorcha, wizened patriarch of a family of forest-dwelling peasants, who is driven to feed on the blood of those he loves the most. With the film incarnating this beastie in the form of a toothy puppet resembling Norman Tebbit (voiced by director Adrian Beau), it’s a cruel but funny metaphor for parental authority and late-life dependency. Obviously they didn’t have assisted living in early modern Bohemia. > > ... > > Beau could have adapted this as straight gothic. Instead, he opts for an enjoyable high-strung comedy that, with him often shooting through Hammer-style soft gauze, skims pastiche. D’Urfé’s court manners are ridiculously superfluous in the rustic setting, exposed as hypocritical when he roughly pursues Sdenka, and then redundant in the face of the ghoulish paterfamilias scoffing at him down the dinner table.

Trailer

IMDb

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/16589411

> > The old eat the young. That is the back-of-a-beermat pitch for new Channel 4 drama Generation Z. And because the Z stands for zombie, the eating is meant literally. “I loved the idea of a horror story about societal breakdown, told from the perspective of different generations,” says its writer-director Ben Wheatley. “Once I started writing it, I couldn’t stop.” > > > >The film-maker’s first original series for TV begins with an army convoy crashing outside a care home. The subsequent chemical leak turns the residents into marauding monsters who attack local youngsters. “It’s a bit of a Brexit metaphor,” admits Wheatley. “But it’s by no means binary. We discuss it from each generation’s viewpoint, exploring the notion that boomers have ruined the lives of the young. Because it’s a genre piece, that’s basically by biting their hands and eating their brains.” > > > > ... > > > > “I love telly and watch a lot of it – Battlestar Galactica, The Sopranos and Deadwood were the golden age for me – so I was keen to play with a different train set,” he says. “It was exciting to write in longer form, rather than the sprint that is a film script. In terms of production values and cinematic scale, TV has closed the gap on film. It’s like the difference between a single and an album. Actors move freely between the two now. The skillset’s no different. Any stigma has long gone.” > > > > Fittingly for a series punctuated by gruesome deaths, he’s assembled a killer cast. Playing the pensioners are veterans such as Sue Johnston and Anita Dobson. “Sue’s first day on set, she was biting someone’s nose off,” he says. “They got to do stuff they don’t usually do, running around covered in gore, and had a blast doing it.” The gore is created the old-fashioned way. “Everything is practical, with prosthetics or models. There are very few CG effects. When arms are ripped off and blood spurts, there are people pumping plasma just out of shot. We use jelly when organs need to be edible. It’s all very visceral.” > > > > ... > > > > Generation Z is coming to Channel 4 this autumn.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/16563475

> > John Carpenter's The Thing as performed by the claymated, Antarctic cast of the hit children's animation Pingu. > > IMDb

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/16411743

> > The first trailer for new vampire thriller The Radleys, starring Line of Duty's Kelly Macdonald, has been released. > > > >Adapted from Matt Haig's novel of the same name, the film centres around a married couple who are hiding a dark secret from their children: they're vampires. > > > > The film will receive its world premiere at the upcoming Edinburgh International Film Festival on Tuesday, August 20. Sky has also confirmed The Radleys will then be released on Sky Cinema and in cinemas on October 18. > > > > ... > > > > "The Radleys are an ordinary family who hold a dark secret... they are abstaining vampires," reads the official synopsis for the film. > > > >"As if being a teenager wasn't bad enough, bloodthirsty instincts take over the teens of the family, revealing the terrifying truth and opening the door for an extended family member to re-enter and upend The Radleys' once perfect slice of suburbia." > > Trailer

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/16340845

> > The Laundry Files started with an element of situational comedy juxtaposed on a background of nightmarish horror: the government agency for protecting us from the likes of Cthulhu turns out to be just another secret civil service bureaucracy with forms, committee meetings, and an obsession with secrecy. Into which we inject a narrator who is a brash young hacker-nerd from the late 90s dot-com culture (who has been conscripted willy-nilly into something structured a lot like a very 1950s-ish Len Deighton spy agency, if updated in line with health and safety and HR legislation). “The inappropriate hero” is one of the classic humorous narrative forms because it gives us a sympathetic viewpoint from which to explore the lunacy of a situation, and there’s plenty of humor in any bureaucracy (as the early Dilbert cartoon strips illustrated, before it jumped the shark circa 1998). > > > >By the eighth book in the Laundry Files, Bob isn’t an outsider anymore; indeed, he’s at the lower end of senior management, representing the agency in public. But there’s still plenty of situational humor to be extracted by watching how a government deals with a whole new bureaucracy it was hitherto unaware it possessed. > > > >And then, of course, there’s the horror element. Like humor, horror is a tone you can apply to any other genre of fiction. (You can have a horror-spy crossover, or horror on top of SF, or horror on top of historical fiction, or . . .) And I find combining horror and humor particularly useful because the one contrasts with the other to great effect.