This is a pretty cool series. You can find a lot of lectures from various intellectuals on youtube with the added bonus of some neat artwork to accompany the discussions. Check em out, explore, debate, think, whatever.

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Piranha 3D opens tonight. It looks like a lot of fun. I feel a little trepidation only from the fact that this is a post-converted 3D movie (it’s nearly impossible to shoot 3D around water due to the reflections and lighting). Normally, that’s a game changer, but c’mon, it’s flying fish….I’m going to have to see it. So what we have is a movie that was designed to be in 3D, shot in 2D, and then converted to 3D in post. That might be a first? I’ll be interested to see how well Aja pulls that off.

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We’ve got 2 awesome contests for all of you!

Contest 1: The Splattercast is participating in the 2010 International Zombie Photo Cookie Model Search being put on by Myphotocookie.com, author James Cheetham, and Girls & Corpses Magazine.

All you need to do is submit a high quality head shot of yourself to splattercast@deadlantern.com , the Splattercast hosts will then select a winner to represent Dead Lantern against a bunch of other horror podcasts. You’ll be zombified and have a chance to get your face on a delicious cookie! And with the full backing of the Splattercast Legions, you’ll have a good chance of winning, fo sho!

So take a photo of yourself and send it in! We’ll need to make a decision by the end of next week, so don’t miss out!

Contest 2: Dude, we’re totally going to be whoring the Dead Lantern name at a few upcoming conventions, including Flashback Weekend and Horror Hound. To do that, we need some swell t-shirts that will get us noticed and get us chicks!

Unfortunately, we’re creatively bankrupt and have no t-shirt ideas. If you think you can crack out a nifty design for us, send us a graphic at splattercast@deadlantern.com The winning designer will receive a free copy of Outpost Doom and a grab bag of all sorts of horror goodies. We’re not looking for anything complex and we’re very easy to please.

p.s. The printing company has told us that the DVD’s are finished. Now we’re just waiting for them to be shipped.

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There’s a show tonight on the History Channel (7pm central time) about the Gates of Hell. According to my DVR, some scholars investigate 6 locations alleged to be the actual entrances to Hell. Sounds pretty cool. Check it out if you got time. It’s also being replayed later this evening in case you miss the premiere.

Gates of Hell

There are six places on Earth believed to be actual entrances into Hell. They include a volcano in Iceland, a cave in the jungles of Central America, and a lake of fire in Africa. According to ancient myth and Christian legend, each is a passage to a terrifying underworld for the damned. Even today, some believe they are still portals. Eerily, they share striking similarities. We’ll visit these six locations, and along the way, reveal how the concept of Hell emerged in history and why it still evokes fear today.

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Checking my DVR this morning I noticed the first episode of Season 2 of Scream Queens was saved.

We live in a world of reality TV. Some of it is good, some of it is bad, but every once in a while there is a genre show that catches the eye. Scream Queens is a show on  VH1. The premise is simple: a big group of women are put through the paces of various horror movie scenarios in order to be crowned the top Scream Queen.

Last season, Shawnee Smith and James Gunn were judges. Gunn directed the various scenes and worked with the girls. Some of the actresses were awful, and some were pretty good. The “prize” for winning the show is a role in a Saw film. I suppose one could rightly argue that the manufactured drama of the show is pretty awful, but as an interesting look into how the filmmaking process works and how directors create a horror movie in Hollywood, it’s fun to watch. Watching women be chased by monsters while screaming their heads off and then getting to see the “final” footage is pretty neat.

Last year it was James Gunn doing the directing, this year it’s Tim Sullivan of the 2001 Maniacs films fame. Jamie King replaces Shawnee Smith as the resident “Scream Queen” that helps the young actresses along. Maybe this isn’t your thing, but I like watching things that show how films are made. And really, can you complain about seeing a bunch of half-naked women being doused in fake blood while screaming for their lives?

The first episode is posted on VH1′s website, so if you get bored, give it a shot.

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Just a reminder to horror fans interested in the beginnings of the genre. Tomorrow at 12:30 pm, TCM is showing Thirteen Women, a pre-code film from 1932 that many people have called the first proto-slasher.

The story centers around the great Myrna Loy as she murders a bunch of female boarding school roomies. It’s not a straight horror film, of course, but it is a film that has been seen as being the “first” of many themes and conventions that would become standard in slasher films 40 years down the road. The film also has a legendary, mythic quality to it for being Peg Entwistle’s only on-screen role. She would become infamous for committing suicide off the Hollywoodland sign shortly before the film’s premiere. And it upset the high brows of the times:

The New York Times reviewer wrote “Some of RKO-Radio’s most comely actresses are permitting themselves to be lured into highly improbable situations with guns, knives and a mystic letter signed by Swami Yogadachi. It is horror without laughter, horror that is too awful to be modish and too stark to save itself from a headlong plunge into hokum.” Variety mirrored the same sentiment with its verdict: “Between covers it was fast light reading, thanks to the writing, but on celluloid it deteriorates into an unreasonably far-fetched wholesale butcher shop drama which no amount of good acting could save.”

Now you gotta see it, right? It’s a film that has rarely been screened, seen, and isn’t on DVD, so I’m pretty excited to check it out tomorrow afternoon. Be sure to check your local listings and don’t miss it!

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When Deejay and I realized that we needed to bring the Splattercast back after our 2 month hiatus, one of the criteria was to make the show interesting again. In order to do that, we started consciously selecting “good” movies. Or at least, more of them than had been occurring in the past. I think we’ve generally been living up to that commitment. The past few episodes discussing Peeping Tom, Psycho, and Onibaba have been quality discussions. And even with shitty movies like Bloodsucking Freaks, at least there is an inherent interesting angle to that movie that allows us to talk about chicks in the kitchen.

As I was thinking about topics that podcasts generally haven’t touched on (that I’m aware of, anyway), one pretty big one came to mind: horror films directed by masters of film. I’m talking stuff made by dudes who are considered giants of the entire industry, not just a genre director. For example, Stanley Kubrick and The Shining. He’s not known as a “horror director” per se, yet it’s an example of a giant of film dabbling into our beloved genre. It’s always interesting when this happens; when a big director tries stepping into the black waters of horror. Some do it amazingly well, others fall flat on their face and head back to their traditional drama comfort zones. In any event, I thought it would be great to devote an entire month to spotlighting this rare phenomenon. Here’s a list of some names and films I’m batting around. Nothing is finalized yet, but expect to see/hear discussion on these filmmakers next month:

The Avenging Conscience (1914) d. D.W. Griffith: Griffith codified the conventions of narrative cinema. His most famous film, The Birth of a Nation (1915), actually inspired the reformation of the Ku Klux Klan. The guy is a giant of cinema, but a year before Nation, he made a film based on Edgar Allen Poe tales.

Dracula (1992) d. Francis Ford Coppola: Everyone knows of the Godfather films and Apocalypse Now (arguably a horror film itself), and if I wanted to be super geeky I’d be all like “Dementia 13, losers”, but I wanted to select films of director’s at the top of their game. This is obviously the most “mainstream” of all the films we’ll be talking about, but I think that’s alright. It’s good to have a modern spectacle thrown into the art house lot. Plus, Deejay is going to love Winona Ryder’s see through nightgown.

Nosferatu, the Vampyre (1979) d. Werner Herzog: Klaus Kinski stars as Dracula in Herzog’s ode to Stoker and Murnau.Herzog is an unbelievable director and theorist who has an actual passion for the horror genre even though he rarely dabbles in the genre. His take on Dracula (the Nosferatu title and Kinski’s look is inspired by Murnau’s film, even though the names and events are from Stoker’s novel) is dreamy and surreal.

Phobia (1980) d. John Huston: Huston was a giant of the Classical Hollywood Style. This is the guy who made The Maltese Falcon remake, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and The African Queen, amongst others. In 1980 he made his first and only foray in the horror genre with a film about a doctor trying to cure his patients of their worst fears only to find the patients dying one by one.

Spirits of the Dead (1969) d. Federico Fellini (and others): A Poe anthology featuring a segment by one of the most revered and influential filmmakers of all time, Fellini. Fellini’s short is about an alcoholic actor who is seeing visions of a strange woman who may or may not be leading him to his death. Vadim and Malle also contribute.  A very interesting French/Italian horror anthology

Other films of interest that we might talk about: Jean Renoir’s Experiment in Evil, Mervyn LeRoy’s The Bad Seed, Multiple Maniacs, John Waters’ ode to H.G. Lewis’ Two Thousand Maniacs in typical over the top disgusting Waters fashion.

The goal here is to talk about horror movies you don’t get on other podcasts. We’re going to class it up a bit next month. If there is a film of particular interest you think fits our programming next month, leave us a message.

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After all the slurpage of how great the new Elm Street is, it went nuclear in it’s 2nd weekend, dropping 72% of it’s business. If you know anything about box office numbers you know that’s a truly awful drop, even amongst horror films. But still, that isn’t as bad as PD’s Friday the 13th remake which dropped a mind numbing 80% during it’s 2nd week. Obviously, audiences sure aren’t warming to these films. Even the PD apologists have to look at these diminishing returns and question their “popularity” don’t they? I mean, maybe when people say these movies suck, it’s just not possible to hide behind the “non-hardcore horror fans love them” conventional wisdom. These films simply get people in the door the first weekend based on their names and then vanish into the night. Unlike something like Paranormal Activity, which actually connected with horror and non-horror fans and grossed over 100 million dollars over the course of months.

I’m about to head off to work, but I hope to write up a lengthier post on this topic, perhaps tonight. I’ll leave the question to you guys for now:

Is Platinum Dunes actually popular or do they just make a buck off of the name?

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