Trick-or-Treat

The candy bowl is full and we’ll be decorating our house this weekend. Horror films are usually playing at night, and The Misfits remain in heavy rotation. What’s that mean? Well, I guess it means we are horror nerds. But it also means it’s nearly Halloween! As always, here are your yearly batch of seasonal tricks and treats.

On Screen

• Hellboy: Sword of Storms: A brand new animated Hellboy TV-movie! Skim through the rest of the blog for more info and production tidbits. I believe they are already underway on a second movie. For fans who may have missed it, also check out the Sci-Fi Channel’s premiere episode of another Mignola fav: The Amazing Screw-On Head!
• 8 Films to Die For: Though not in time for Halloween, this is a real treat. 8 films deemed too graphic and horrifying will be screened in participating theaters across the country for one weekend only (November 17-19). Judging by some of the trailers, it looks like a mixed bag; but it seems like there will be a couple winners.
• Day of the Dead remake: Jeez. Another remake of a Romero zombie movie. This look pretty fantastically awful. Pair up a vapid Mena Suvari, and a film that bears little-to-no resemblance to it’s predecessor (itself not that great), and what do you get? DOA.
• Halloween back in theaters: All is not lost, the original Halloween is back in theaters for October 30-31.
• Underground: Classic horror and sci-fi movies on TCM hosted by Rob Zombie. Some past films include: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Mudhoney, and Plan 9 From Outer Space. The program actually has a pretty nice website with lots of info on the films.
• FEARnet: Comcast is launching its own horror-themed OnDemand service this Halloween. In a partnership with Sony, they will essentially have access to all the Sony, Columbia Pictures, MGM, and Lionsgate libraries. This has the potential to be pretty good. Also interesting: though everything I’ve heard about this has said it will be an OnDemand service, a new message on my home Comcast box said that FEARnet will be added to my service as channel 166 (may be different for you) on October 31. If this will be its own channel as well, I’m interested to see what sort of programming they plan on having, or if it will just be wall-to-wall films.

Printed Matter

• The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead: A surprisingly fun read from none other than Mel Brooks’ son, Max Brooks. I’m not saying it’s going to change your life —that is, unless zombies do actually take over—but it was far better, and well thought out, than I imagined it would be.
• War of the Worlds covers: An oldie, but a goodie; scans of many editions of H.G. Wells’ classic.
• When Animals Attack!: Creature Feature poster fun from Posterwire. (via Rob)

On The Player

• Forbidden Crypts Of Haunted Music: A frighteningly large collection of Halloween music and campy themes from film, TV, comics, and er… other. (via Smallest Photo)
• Old Time Horror Radio: Ghost, Monsters, Mad Scientists, and More! Classic radio dramas and chilling tales. Some really great stuff here.

Miscellany

• Paper Toys: Loads of awesome paper masks and Halloween toys (in PDF format) for your printing pleasure. (via Smallest Photo)
• Crazy Pumpkin Carving: Thoroughly detailed pumpkin carving tutorials from artist, Ray Villafane.
• Vintage Halloween photo pool: Lots of great Halloween fun, like this and this.
• 50 Dark Movies, Hidden in a Painting: Fun M&M’s seasonal promotion for their dark chocolate candies. Can you find all 50?
• MAKE: Blog Halloween Archives: Expansive collection of posts and writings for Halloween tricks, hacks, costumes, and so much more. Worth a good looooooong look.
• Bloodshots: An Austin-based 48 hour horror filmmaking competition. Damn! I will be there the weekend before the screening. We’ve done plenty of weekend film competitions before, but I love the idea of a horror-only one. I hope someone starts this in Philly.

This is probably all for me this year. Have a safe (and scary) Hallloween. If you are in Philadelphia treat-or-treating, stop by… I think we bought too much candy.

• Posted at 2:22 pm in Books, Entertainment, Film, Music, Random, Web
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