Archive for March, 2008

 


A Nightmare on Elm Street (Infinifilm Edition)

Mar 28, 2008 in A Nightmare on Elm Street

A Nightmare on Elm Street (Infinifilm Edition)
Tagline: If Nancy doesn’t wake up screaming, she won’t wake up at all
Released: 1984
Starring Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Johnny Depp, Ronee Blakley, Amanda Wyss, and Robert Englund
Directed by Wes Craven
Written by Wes Craven

Format: DVD
Distributed by New Line Cinema
DVD Release Date: September 26, 2006

Features:
Remastered Picture – Restored from the original film negative
Dolby Digital 5.1-EX Surround sound and DTS-ES 6.1 surround sound

All-Access Pass:
“Never Sleep Again” – The making of A Nightmare on Elm Street

Beyond the Movie:
“The House That Freddy Built: The Legacy of New Line Horror”
“Night Terrors: The Origin of Wes Craven’s Nightmares”

Infinifilm Interactive Features:
Pop-up prompts, Nightmare Fact Track and video clips
Exclusive Infinifilm ROM content

Additional Features:
Feature length commentary with Wes Craven, Bob Shaye (Producer/New Line Founder), Robert Englund, Heather Langenkamp, Amanda Wyss, Ronee Blakley, Sara Risher (New Line Co-Producer)
Archived audio commentary with Wes Craven, Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, and cinematographer Jacques Haitkin
Alternative Endings
Trivia Challenge
Theatrical Trailer

Premise: Dig your claws into the chilling masterpiece that spawned the greatest horror franchise in film history – now remastered and featuring hours of new Infinifilm extras. Starring Robert Englund as infamous horror icon Freddy Krueger, this “insomnia-inducing” (Kirk Ellis, The Hollywood Reporter) original from director Wes Craven “goes straight to the heart of terror” (Jim Emerson, Seattle Times).

When her best friend Tina is brutally murdered, teenager Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) suspects the killer isn’t Tina’s boyfriend but rather a much more horrifying figure from her dreams. Convinced that this vicious murderer is stalking her friends and killing them as they sleep, Nancy enters a desperate race against time to bring him out of dream world and stop the bloodbath… before she falls asleep and becomes his next victim!

Plot Breakdown (spoilers): Fifteen-year-old girl Tina Grey (Amanda Wyss) has a disturbing nightmare in which she is being stalked through a dark boiler room by a figure with distinctive razor-sharp knives for fingers on his right hand. Just as he catches her however, she wakes up screaming, only to discover four razor cuts in her nightdress identical to the cuts in her dream. The next day, she finds out that her friend Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) experienced the same dream. That night, Tina, Nancy and Nancy’s boyfriend Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp) have a sleep-over to make a distraught Tina feel better. Tina’s rebellious boyfriend, Rod Lane, crashes the party and goes to bed with Tina in her mother’s bedroom. Later that night, Tina has another nightmare, and this time the killer catches her and brutally murders her. Rod wakes up to find Tina being cut open by invisible knives and then dragged across the ceiling. Rod, being the only other person in the room at the time, is suspected of the killing, and is arrested the next day by Nancy’s father Donald Thompson (John Saxon), a police lieutenant.

Later, Nancy has three sadistically violent nightmares where she is viciously stalked, then attacked by the same terrifying figure that attacked Tina. These nightmares lead her to talk to Rod in prison, who tells her what he saw in Tina’s mother’s bedroom. Much to the dismay of her mother Marge (Ronee Blakley), Nancy becomes increasingly convinced that the figure appearing in her dreams is the same person who killed Tina. After having a prophetic dream in which the horrific figure visits Rod in jail, Nancy, and a skeptical Glen, rush to the police station in the middle of the night to check on him, only to find that he’s been strangled by his own bed sheets. To everyone except Nancy, it appears to be a suicide.

In an effort to help her daughter, Nancy’s mother takes her to a dream therapy clinic to ensure she gets some sleep. Once again, she has a horrendous nightmare. This time, her arm is badly cut, but she finds that she has brought something out from her dream: the killer’s battered hat. It arouses concern, but also other feelings in Nancy’s mother, who is clearly hiding a secret. Eventually, Marge, increasingly drink-sodden, reveals to Nancy that the owner of the hat, and the killer, was a man named Fred Krueger (Robert Englund), a child murderer who killed at least twenty children over a decade earlier. Furious, vengeful parents burned him alive in his boiler room hideout when he was released from prison on a technicality. Now, it appears he is manipulating the dreams of their children to exact his revenge from beyond the grave. Nancy’s mother reassures her that Krueger can’t hurt anyone, pulling Krueger’s knife-fingered glove from a hiding place in the furnace, reinforcing this supposed fact.

After days of not sleeping, Nancy devises a plan with Glen to catch Krueger. However, Glen succumbs to sleep and is viciously killed by being sucked into his bed and shot back up in a fountain of blood. Later that same night, Nancy, convinced she can carry Krueger out of her nightmare like she did the hat, sets various booby traps throughout her house, all while her mother sleeps from her consistent drinking. When ready, Nancy falls asleep and confronts Krueger, successfully holding onto him as she awakens. Nancy is then left alone with Freddy after pulling him into the real world. She runs through her house and forces him into the booby traps she had set earlier, effectively battering the supernatural killer. After setting Freddy on fire, Nancy locks him in the basement, and finally gets her skeptical father and the police to help. When arriving on the scene, they find Freddy has escaped and follow his fiery footsteps that lead upstairs. As Nancy and her father find the footsteps’ endpoint, they witness Freddy smothering Marge with his flaming body, disappearing to leave her corpse to sink into the bed and fade away. After sending her father out of the room, Nancy turns her back on the horrific scene and calls to Krueger, knowing he’s still there and that she is still dreaming. Freddy rises back up from the bed and threatens to kill her. In response, Nancy faces down Krueger and turns her back on him, draining him of all energy and destroying him. She then leaves her mother’s bedroom and appears outside her house, unaffected from the events of the last few weeks. Marge soon joins her daughter at the front door and sends her off to school with her seemingly alive friends, who had just driven up in Glen’s car. When Nancy gets into the car, the doors lock, trapping her inside. Freddy possesses Glen’s car and makes him and the gang drive away, with Nancy screaming for help at her indifferent mother. As Marge watches the car drive off, Freddy’s gloved hand bursts through the door’s window and pulls her through.
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A Nightmare on Elm Street (Special) #1

Mar 25, 2008 in A Nightmare on Elm Street

A Nightmare on Elm Street (Special) #1
Written by Brian Pulido
Art by Juan Jose Ryp
Released: 2005
Publisher: Avatar Press

Premise: In 2005, Avatar Press began releasing titles from New Line Cinema’s “House of Horror” license, which includes A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Platinum Dune’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. To kick off their titles, Avatar released one-shot “special” issues serving as an introduction to the New Line characters and premises.

After the events of Freddy vs. Jason, the adults of Springwood have turned the town into a police state, out to suppress any knowledge of Freddy so their kids don’t keep dying. If teens are afraid of Freddy he can invade their dreams and murder them, but as a lost secret, he is powerless. Emily, a rebellious teen and aspiring journalist wants to blow the lid off Springwood’s secret and tell it to the world. When her best friend Lindsay is abducted by police, Emily enlists aid from Alex and Sandy that leads them to Westin Hills Psychiatric Center. As Freddy hunts them one by one, Emily comes closer to the truth. Will she survive to tell it? This is bleeding-edge horror as only Lady Death creator Brian Pulido can deliver it with art by detail master, super-star Juan Jose Ryp.

Plot Breakdown (spoilers): At Springwood High School, Lindsay awakens from a Freddy influenced nightmare in class, frightening the other classmates and her friend, Emily. Before anyone can react however, two men in black suits escort Lindsay out of class. Emily, worried for her friend, finds Lindsay’s brother Alex and tells him of Lindsay’s “episode.” Joined by mutual friend Sandy, the three friends witness an unmarked van leaving the school in haste, the passengers recognized by Emily as the men who were last seen with Lindsay. Emily coerces Alex into taking in his car, insistent that they follow them. The trio covertly follows and watches the unmarked van drive to Westin Hills, where Alex and Emily later sneak inside, leaving Sandy to watch over Alex’s car. After nightfall, Sandy falls asleep waiting for her two friends to return. While dreaming, she is confronted by Krueger, who uses her love of food against her by making her balloon and popping her, resulting in a gore-filled bloodbath. Meanwhile, Emily and Alex search the institution for Lindsay and find her sedated with the other comatose patients from Freddy vs. Jason. Emily, horrified, takes pictures of the scene, just as Lindsay is killed in her sleep. While Emily takes the pictures, Alex panics and tries to find pills to calm him in the next room. In his rush, he begins swallowing whatever pills he can find, which causes him to lose consciousness and die at Freddy’s hands. Emily, trying to elude the Westin Hills staff, quickly finds a computer terminal where she tries to upload her pictures to the internet and warn others about what is happening in Springwood. The Westin Hills staff cut the power however, and confronts Emily about what she knows. An attendant explains that her actions could have unleashed Freddy upon the world and that it is Springwood’s responsibility to keep him contained, their actions justified. While the attendant talks with Emily, one of the nurses injects her with a drug that forces her to fall asleep, and subsequently die in her nightmare. The Westin Hills attendant destroys Emily’s camera, commenting that “she brought this on herself.” In the dreamworld, Freddy gloats and remarks he’s been away from his kids for far too long.
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Demons

Mar 21, 2008 in Uncategorized

Demons
Tagline: They will make cemeteries their cathedrals and the cities will be your tombs.
Released: 1985
Starring Urbando Barberini, Natasha Hovey, Karl Zinny, and Fiore Argento
Directed by Lamberto Bava
Written by Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava, Franco Ferrini, and Dardano Sacchetti

Format: DVD
Distributed by Anchor Bay
DVD Release Date: September 25, 2007

Features:
Anamorphic Widescreen Presentation
Dolby Surround 5.1, Dolby Surround 2.0
Audio Commentary with Director Lamberto Bava, Mechanical and Transformation artist Sergio Stivaletti, and journalist Loris Curci
Behind the Scenes Footage
Trailers

Premise: They will make cemeteries their cathedrals and the cities will be your tombs! In 1985, Italian horror masters Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava unleashed this landmark splatter shocker about a group of strangers invited to a sneak preview at a mysterious movie theater, only to be trapped inside and transformed one-by-one into carnage-crazed monsters. It’s a one-of-a-kind combination of creepy terror and relentless gore-orgy, featuring a pounding soundtrack of ‘80s metal, a throbbing score by Claudio Simonetti (SUSPIRIA), and gut-churning special effects by Sergio Stivaletti (CEMETARY MAN, PHENOMENA). This is DEMONS as you’ve never seen it before, with every blood-drenched frame now fully remastered for the ultimate in ooze-spewing, flesh-flaying, spine-ripping madness!

Plot Breakdown: When Cheryl and her friend Kathy arrive in a subway station, they come across a mysterious man in a metal mask handing out flyers advertising the opening of a new theater. The two friends decide to visit the theater, where they sit down to a horror film along with a small group of other moviegoers. Meanwhile, a prostitute who cut herself on a metal mask hanging in the lobby goes to the bathroom to inspect her wound. Her cut festers and mutates, turning her into a ravenous demon that is able to transform others into demons with just a scratch. The demon plague spreads rapidly, forcing the desperate moviegoers to fight for their lives against a legion of hell-spawned beasts. With the help of two young men, George and Ken, Cheryl and Kathy must find a way to escape the madness before they too become hideous demons.
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Friday the 13th: Jason vs. Jason X #2

Mar 21, 2008 in Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th: Jason vs. Jason X #2
Written by Mike Wolfer
Art by Mike Wolfer
Released: 2006
Publisher: Avatar Press

Premise: In 2005, Avatar Press began releasing titles from New Line Cinema’s “House of Horror” license, which includes A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Platinum Dune’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

It’s the battle royale as the regenerated Jason Voorhees and the futuristic Jason X fight to the death in a gut-spilling horror spectacle! As the titanic clash cuts down all those around them, the pilotless space cruiser that serves as the Jasons’ battle arena descends toward Earth 2 and an impact that neither combatant can hope to survive. But will a fiery and certain death halt the terrifying showdown, as both Jason and Jason X struggle to rip their most vital secret from the undead corpse of the other? Only one shall survive in a shocking and horrifying finale as you have never seen or dared to guess!

Plot Breakdown (spoilers): Jason and Jason X battle, each wanting what the other possesses. Melda, stunned by what she is witnessing, manages to escape the bloody scene and tries to find help among the S.S. Fun Club’s flight crew. While she searches for assistance, the two Jasons continue their conflict, killing spectators, bystanders, and any others who get in their way. When the ship’s android captain is destroyed, Melda is forced to take control of the vessel, and with the help of android attendant “Alice”, forces it to crash land on nearby Earth 2. Both Melda and Alice survive the devastating crash however, as does the warring Jasons. With the ship exploding behind them, Melda and Alice escape into the woods unnoticed, leaving the two villains to their fates. Jason and Jason X fight inexhaustibly, until Jason X gains the advantage and rips off Jason’s head. Jason X tears open Jason’s skull and takes out the part of his brain he is missing. He then absorbs the missing piece, completing a memory of him and his mother. Now whole, Jason X sets his sights on his new killing ground.
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Friday the 13th: Jason vs. Jason X #1

Mar 21, 2008 in Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th: Jason vs. Jason X #1
Written by Mike Wolfer
Art by Mike Wolfer
Released: 2006
Publisher: Avatar Press

Premise: In 2005, Avatar Press began releasing titles from New Line Cinema’s “House of Horror” license, which includes A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Platinum Dune’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The gore-drenched showdown of a lifetime erupts in the depths of space as the undead, mass-murderer Jason Voorhees is reborn to face the cybernetically-enhanced and unstoppable future version of himself! As Jason X stalks the halls of an interstellar pleasure cruiser, a deep-space salvage team make their way into the remnants of the space catamaran Grendel, where the Uber-Jason was created. Hoping to gut the ship of its most valuable assets, the team instead unwittingly revives a curse that transcends time itself and reawakens the one, original Jason Voorhees. Jason’s divided reign of terror will be short-lived, however, as both halves of Earth’s most dreaded serial killer are drawn to one another for a confrontation that can have only one victor… And one survivor!

Plot Breakdown (spoilers): Following the events of Jason X (Special) #1, a deep-space salvage team docks with the burned out hull of the Grendel, where a chunk of Jason’s original head floats in zero gravity. When the team reinstates backup power and artificial gravity, Jason’s head falls onto the medical bed where Jason X was created, activating the medical computer. The computer, unable to rebuild its subject from the limited matter, sends its medical nanites to collect tissue from the bodies of Grendel’s dead crew, Jason’s victims. It isn’t long before the original Jason Voorhees is reborn. Afterward, he systematically slaughters the salvage team, all while sensing a vague memory of his mother, and indirectly, Jason X’s presence. Aboard the salvage team’s ship, the pilot, Melda, watches the team’s life sign readings vanish. In response, she undocks the ship and flies away at maximum speed, unaware that Jason has already boarded. Jason sabotages the ship’s systems, forcing Melda to dock with the passing S.S. Fun Club, a party vessel. After docking, Melda instructs the Fun Club’s maintenance crew to begin work, while she investigates what the ship offers. Jason emerges soon after, kills the maintenance crew and follows her. Melda manages to visit a couple of floors before she is confronted by the newly arrived, rampaging Jason X. She turns to leave, but is blocked by Jason. Jason and Jason X notice the other, each sensing the other Jason holds a part of the whole. The two juggernauts engage each other, while Melda looks on in horror.
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Jason X (Special) #1

Mar 14, 2008 in Friday the 13th

Jason X (Special) #1
Written by Brian Pulido
Art by Sebastian Fiumara
Released: 2005
Publisher: Avatar Press

Premise: In 2005, Avatar Press began releasing titles from New Line Cinema’s “House of Horror” license, which includes A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Platinum Dune’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. To kick off their titles, Avatar released one-shot “special” issues serving as an introduction to the New Line characters and premises.

Writer Brian Pulido, the bloody maestro, teams up with artist Sebastian (Hypothetical Lizard) Fiumara on Jason X, the horror story of a twisted super-powered amalgamation of Jason Voorhees and future technology! Set in 2455, Uber-Jason is brought to Earth II. Kristen, a bio-engineer, needs tissue samples from Uber-Jason in the hopes that his regenerative abilities can save her and her loved ones. She is convinced she can contain his rage. Big mistake! Uber-Jason unleashes a torrent of high-tech terror and gore!

Plot Breakdown (spoilers): Continuing from the end of Jason X, what looks like a meteor crashes on Earth II in 2455. The couple who watched the “falling star,” investigates the scene, and turned on by their discovery, begin to have sex. Uber-Jason emerges from the crash site and kills the couple. However, the scene quickly changes, and Jason finds himself back at Camp Crystal Lake on present day earth. He continues his slaughter, killing all those present. Again, the scene shifts and Jason sees his mother’s grave. While determining his situation, Jason is swallowed up by nanite technology. Afterward, it is revealed that Jason is imprisoned in a scientific lab and being tested on. Kristen, a bio-engineer, works quickly to gather a sample of Jason’s tissue. She and her android assistant, Michelle, discuss Jason’s regenerative abilities, and reveal that the surviving crew from Jason X are dead. Kristen, convinced Jason could “help” her situation, manipulated their holo-decks remotely. When the crew thought they had set a course for Earth II, they in fact set a course for Kristen’s lab instead. She has little time to mourn the crew’s passing however, as Jason breaks free from his restraints and begins to destroy the lab. After taking out Michelle, he sets his sights on Kristen, with his mother’s “voice” driving his actions. Unlike before, Jason’s mother’s voice can be heard by those near him. Kristen escapes his grasp and makes it to a medical bay, where her lover, Neil, lays severely injured from a prior injury. She uses the nanites to inject him with Jason’s tissue sample, in the hopes he will regain his health, so they can repopulate the world they are on. Knowing time is short; she lures Jason to a launch pad and tricks him into a shuttle, which she then launches into deep space. Kristen returns to an awakened Neil, thinking her gamble paid off. Neil quickly turns the tables on her, stabbing her in the stomach and revealing Jason’s mother is in control. In mother’s “voice”, he blames her for their situation and slits his own throat, leaving both to die on the floor. Meanwhile, Jason’s shuttle makes contact with a ship called S.S. Fun Club and docks. After the bay doors open, Jason begins killing the partiers aboard.
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Halloween: NightDance #2

Mar 12, 2008 in Halloween

Halloween: NightDance #2
Written by Stefan Hutchinson
Art by Tim Seeley
Released: March 2008
Publisher: Devil’s Due Publishing
Story: Chapter Two: The Silent Clown

Premise: Halloween: NightDance is a four issue mini-series based around the Halloween mythos, with Michael Myers haunting the small town of Russellville, Illinois. This series takes place within the new continuity set into motion with Halloween: H20 and Halloween: Resurrection.

Plot Breakdown (spoilers): At the Halloween carnival, Lisa and her two friends, Sean and Nikki, are enjoying themselves. Lisa stares off into space thinking about an event involving young Daniel. The hurt boy is unconscious at the bottom of stairs, with Lisa at his side, her hands covered with blood. She is soon interrupted by her friends however, and the group decides to ride the carousel. While riding, Lisa notices a shape, Michael Myers, watching them. Panicked, she gets off the ride and sees nothing where the shape stood. Nikki, annoyed by the attention Sean pays Lisa, leaves for home. Meanwhile, Michael stands inside the hall of mirrors, seeing himself as a six-year-old in his Halloween clown costume, then seeing himself as an adult clown, and then seeing Judith. When seeing Judith, he strikes out and shatters the mirror. Later, after shrugging off her feelings of dread, Lisa decides to open her letter from Daniel. Inside, she finds a photograph of a girl who looks like her, with the name Judith written on it in red crayon. Two other crayon drawings accompany the photo, a drawing of a Jack O’ Lantern eating Judith and another depicting Lisa’s death. She and Sean gasp at the horrific drawings. On the other side of town, Ryan arrives at the hospital with the unconscious girl he hit with his car the previous night. The unconscious girl dreams of checking out the house where the “hacksaw incident” happened years ago (as referenced in the original Halloween). She and her boyfriend, Ben, investigate the house, where they discover Michael Myers in the shadows. Meanwhile, Nikki arrives home and begins to make a Jack O’ Lantern. Before she can finish the second eye, she is interrupted by a knock at the door. She opens it and is attacked by Michael. Myers strangles her, shoves an apple in her mouth, draws a clown face on her with red lipstick, and then stabs her in the throat. Back at the hospital, Ryan is distressed about his wife’s whereabouts, and after the police discount his Michael Myers theory, escapes into town. He does not make it far though, taking refuge under a neighborhood tree, not noticing Michael carrying Nikki’s body behind him.
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Halloween: Resurrection

Mar 11, 2008 in Halloween

Halloween: Resurrection
Tagline: Evil Finds Its Way Home
Released: 2002
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Brad Loree, Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Sean Patrick Thomas, Thomas Ian Nicholas, and Tyra Banks
Directed by Rick Rosenthal
Written by Larry Brand and Sean Hood

Format: DVD
Distributed by Dimension Films
DVD Release Date: December 10, 2002

Features:
Special Features:
Widescreen (2.35:1) – Enhanced for 16×9 Televisions
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound
Feature commentary with Director Rick Rosenthal and Editor Robert A. Ferretti
Deleted and Alternate Scenes with Director Commentary
Web Cam Special with Director Commentary
Photo Gallery
Tour of the set with Production Designer Troy Hansen
On the set with Jamie Lee Curtis
Head Cam Featurette
Storyboard Comparisons
Spanish Subtitles
French Track

Premise: Original Halloween star Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween: H20, True Lies) is back and joined by Busta Rhymes (Shaft) and Tyra Banks (Coyote Ugly) in the terrifying Halloween: Resurrection – the latest in this electrifying horror film series! The reality programmers at DangerTainment (Rhymes, Banks) have selected Rudy (Sean Patrick Thomas – Save the Last Dance), Bill (Thomas Ian Nicholas – American Pie 1 & 2) and a group of thrill-seeking teenagers to spend one fun-filled night in the childhood home of serial killer Michael Myers. But the planned live broadcast turns deadly when their evening of excitement becomes a night of terror as Michael himself decides to crash the party!

Plot Breakdown (spoilers): Three years after the events of Halloween: H20, Laurie Strode has been confined to a mental institution on a count of murder. Flashback sequences reveal Laurie did not really decapitate Michael Myers at the end of the previous film, but rather a paramedic with whom Myers forcefully switched clothing and his mask. Laurie pretends to be heavily medicated, but in reality, dodges her pills and prepares herself for the inevitable confrontation with Michael Myers. When Myers finally does appear, Laurie lures him into a trap on the roof of the institution. Before she can kill him for good however, he turns the tables on her, and stabs her in the back. She gives Michael a kiss, tells him she will see him in hell, and falls off the roof to the ground below, dead.

A year later, a group of six college students win a competition to appear on a reality show produced by DangerTainment, on which they are to spend Halloween night in the childhood home of Michael Myers. Their mission is to find out what led him to kill. The investigation is done via live broadcast on the internet, with each student wearing a small camera. The participants think the show is entirely for entertainment purposes, and that the stunt will earn them some publicity and scholarship money. While in the house, the students undercover staged “secrets” of Michael’s insanity, only to inadvertently uncover a subterranean lair where Myers has been living for the past 20 years. The event goes horribly wrong however, when Michael returns home and one by one, kills the students and the crew involved in the broadcast.

Sara Moyer, the only student left alive, uses her PDA and pen pal on the outside to escape the house and into the adjoining garage, where Myers soon follows. After a brief confrontation, Michael is electrocuted and left to die in a conflagration, which destroys the garage. Only Sara Moyer and Freddie Harris, the host of the show, survive the night’s events. Later, Myers’s severely burnt body is taken to a morgue, where a frightened female mortician slowly opens his body bag. He opens his eyes and the mortician screams, just as the screen goes black.
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Day of the Dead

Mar 09, 2008 in VHS

Day of the Dead
Tagline: The darkest day of horror the world has ever known…
Released: 1985
Starring Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joseph Pilato, Jarlath Conroy, Antoine Dileo, and Sherman Howard
Directed by George A. Romero
Written by George A. Romero

Format: VHS
Distributed by Anchor Bay
VHS Release Date: May 26, 1998

Premise: In this third and final shocker in the legendary trilogy from writer/director George A. Romero (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DAWN OF THE DEAD), a small group of scientists and soldiers have taken refuge in an underground missile silo where they struggle to control the flesh-eating horror that walks the earth above. But will the final battle for the future of the human race be fought among the living or have they forever unleashed the hunger of the dead? Lori Cardille, Joe Pilato, Richard Liberty and Howard Sherman star in this controversial classic with groundbreaking gore effects by Tom Savini and featuring the most intense zombie carnage ever filmed.

If there’s one thing that rarely gets old in the horror genre, it’s zombie films. Yes, they do get over-used in movies and yes sometimes it doesn’t work out, but all of us monster-lovers and gore hounds love those undead brain-munchers just the same. While many directors have careers in depicting the undead on celluloid (and have inspired interest in plenty of today’s rookie filmmakers to take up the genre as well), the godfather and possibly the messiah of zombie films would most definitely be George A. Romero. Romero has a great selection of films, most specifically his Dead series. While the series was chock-full of hot zombie action, what really made them different from other horror flicks were the side stories of the human characters who try to survive as well as satirical stabs at our culture, such as the consequences of mass hysteria in Night of the Living Dead (1968) and consumerisim in Dawn of the Dead (1978).

Plot Breakdown (spoilers): The third film in the series was released in 1985, Day of the Dead. While the sequel took place sometime after Dawn, Day took place on a military base possibly far far away from the city where the infamous zombie-infested mall stood. Also, in the second film the numbers of the walking undead were rising but still had a good number of humans defending themselves from it, but in this installment a rather large percentage of the United States (or possibly the whole planet) has been infected and only several soldiers and a few scientists are left to fight against them. The basic plot of the third film is that survivors of a militia and scientists are stranded and have to defend themselves from the zombies that are not only clawing at the fence that surrounds the base, but also underground, where they also capture the flesh-eating creatures for a (mad)scientist to experiment on. The mad examiner, Dr. Logan, is working on a series of experiments where he tries to contain the small percentage of humanity left in the monsters in order to find a way to not destroy the dead, but to tame them much like you would tame a dog (rather, a dead dog who might be more interested in tearing out your throat and eating it than playing fetch).
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Demons 2

Mar 08, 2008 in Uncategorized

Demons 2
Tagline: A film by Lamberto Bava
Released: 1986
Starring David Knight, Nancy Brilli, Coralina Cataldi Tassoni, and Bobby Rhodes
Directed by Lamberto Bava
Written by Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava

Format: DVD
Distributed by Anchor Bay
DVD Release Date: September 25, 2007

Features:
Anamorphic Widescreen Presentation
Dolby Surround 5.1, Dolby Surround 2.0
Audio Commentary with Director Lamberto Bava, Mechanical and Transformation artist Sergio Stivaletti, and journalist Loris Curci
Trailers

Premise: One year after Demons tore its way through the world’s gore-loving hearts, Italian horror maestros Dario Argento and Lambero Bava returned once again, unleashing a flood of demonic carnage upon the screen. This time, the residents of a luxury high-rise apartment building are transformed into monsters for a gut-spattered siege, complete with acid blood, cannibal kids, zombie dogs, and a birthday party gone horribly wrong. Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni (Argento’s Opera), Bobby Rhodes (Demons) and Asia Argento (in her first film role) star in this insane shock from “The Golden Age of ‘80s Italian Splatter,” now fully remastered.

Plot Breakdown (spoilers): On the night of her birthday party, Sally is watching a horror film on TV about a group of explorers going into the walled-off forbidden zone, where the demons invaded in the first film. The explorers’ curiosity resurrects one of the demons, who then comes out of Sally’s TV to spread its own brand of demonic misery in her high-rise apartment building. Now, the residents in the building must fight for their survival against a swelling wave of blood-thirsty demons.
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