Horror Guy

This is Creepin' Me Out

The fiends over at Bloody Disgusting stumbled across this video clip on YouTube. It's short, soundless and one of the creepiest, freak-outiest pieces of film I've seen in a while. Anyone know if this is real or just one of those crazy marketing moves for some upcoming fright flick?
UPDATE: I recently learned that this is a promo for Wrong Turn 2 - Dead End. If you pause it at about the 18 second mark you can see the logo for the film.

Horror Guy's Review of Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Was sittin' at home alone and decided to pop this one into the player and see if it was as enjoyable as I had been told. It was. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is about as 'fun' of a horror flick as you're bound to find these days. It's not only pays homage to the slasher greats of films past, but directly references them as if they all exist within the same, self-contained, serial killer-ridden universe. We see shots of Crystal Lake, Springwood and Haddonfield as the voice over narration recaps the events of the franchise slasher flicks we've grown to love and loathe over the years as tho they were reading from the evening news teleprompter. From there we are introduced to Leslie Vernon, a man who claims to be the next big serial slasher and who has invited a camera crew to film his exploits as he sets out to make a name for himself. As one might guess, horror and hilarity ensue. Think Christopher Guest turning his mockumentary style loose on Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. The flick has it's ups (most notably the casting coup of Robert Englund as 'the Ahab') and a few downs, but overall it's a solid, entertaining film that this Horror Guy would recommend to any fan of the genre. It's far and away better than a lot of the sludge being pumped out on the big screen lately.

Pieces, 08/09/2007

Horror happenin's abound! Let's sift thru some of the pieces...

...I started reading Max Brooks' World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War a while back, but got interrupted by a couple of 'must read' book releases. Now I'm back on track with it and it is screaming along at a quick pace and I'm really getting into this author's style. I really recommend the book, but if you are not the reading type I understand it is currently under development as a flick.

...did a gal down in South Texas really kill a chupacabra?

...the second trailer for Rob Zombie's Halloween is up over at HalloweenMovies.com. This one looks like it's gonna be good!

...check it out ghoulies & beasties--if yer gonna be in the NYC area this Halloween season, you might wanna drop in and check out NIGHTMARE: Ghost Stories - New York's Most Horrifying Haunted House. Check out their site and see what the likes of The New York Times, ABC News, The New Yorker and MTV have to say about this spooktacular event.

...the fine folks over at Silver Storm Productions dropped the Horror Guy a message that their new fright flick Awaken the Dead will be available via Brain Damage Films this November. Looks like it might be worth checkin' out.

Heat-Shaped Box = Book-Shaped Thrills

When I first learned that relative new kid on the horror block Joe Hill is the eldest son of the legendary Stephen King, I hoped that his debut novel Heart-Shaped Box would be at least as good as his dad's stuff. I can safely say that it screamed at the top of its literary lungs as it blew past any expectations I had and set a new standard for what I want in a scary story.
Clocking in at 384 pages, HSB is a lean, mean story that opens with a simple premise; a ghost for sale on the Internet is purchased by aging rock star Judas Coyne, a collector of all things macabre. As happens all to often in tales such as this, Coyne finds that he has purchased way more than he bargained for.....but maybe not more than he deserves. What follows is a non-stop thriller of a story that I literally had trouble putting down until I got to the (very satisfying) end.
Heart-Shaped Box is cinematic to the point that I found myself musing over how easily this could be directly adapted to the big screen, so it came as no surprise to learn that Warner Bros. has recently picked up the movie rights. I have my reservations, tho; too many recent book-to-screen adaptations have ended up gutting the source material to the point that the story is unrecognizable. Here's hoping the Warners do it justice.