What is ‘VLOG’?

Vodpod videos no longer available. more about “Brooke Marks Speaks Out! video“, posted with vodpod

Yesterday, Bloody-Disgusting ran an article about a possible online viral marketing campaign for some unknown, upcoming horror flick.  B-D’s article was basically a cut-and-paste of an e-mail sent in by one of their readers, outlining some pretty weird stuff that had been going on involving an ongoing video blog by Brooke Marks.

Go read that article (and follow its instructions) at Bloody-Disgusting them come back here.  I’ll wait…

Back?  Okay.

B-D either didn’t know anything else about it at the time, or they weren’t saying.  But I just found something called VLOG on Break.com.  What’s VLOG?  Well…

VLOG n. \ short for video blog
1. An online personal journal that displays video posting of one or more individuals.
2. The new extreme-horror film from the producers of Saw, exclusively on Break.com
3. An investigation into the death of real-life internet vlogger Brooke Marks, and when you see what happened to her and her friends you won’t believe your f**king eyes

So there you have it.  VLOG is some sort of online anthology horror film, released in chapters on Break.com with new videos apparently being released daily.  I’m sure it’ll probably suck, but at least someone out there’s trying to do something somewhat original, right?

This is my favorite picture EVER.

This picture contains three of my all-time favorite things: Hot girls, tattoos and vampires.

Actually, every picture of Kat Von D contains two out of three of those. And two out of three ain’t bad, am I right?

If you’re wondering, the picture is from an upcoming movie called The Bleeding that’s about, well, vampires I guess. And I’m assuming that Miss Von D is playing one of those vampires. Here’s the very brief synopsis of the movie from Bloody-Disgusting:

The story centers on an ex-Army Ranger searching for the killer of his parents who discovers a family of vampires in a former chemical weapons factory-turned-nightclub.

Simple enough, I guess. The movie, which marks Von D’s film debut, also boasts the all-star cast of Vinnie Jones, Michael Madsen, Armand Assante and, er, DMX. And this guy.

You can find lots more pics from the film at Bloody-D.

‘Martyrs’ trailer: What’s the French word for “awesome?”

FRESH UPDATE STYLEZ: Um, that YouTube video isn’t working anymore, but luckily, there are other teasers online (obtained more legally, I guess).  I wrote about those here, so ch-ch-check it out.

This upcoming French horror flick was apparently a big hit at Cannes this year and has been bought up by the Weinsteins for US distribution (which means, we’ll probably get to see it via Dimension Extreme and not in theaters).

France. A night at the beginning of the 1970s. Lucie, a little girl missing for over a year, is discovered wandering by the side of a country road. Near catatonic, she can say nothing about what has happened to her. The cops quickly find the place in which she’s been incarcerated – a disused slaughterhouse. Every indication is that she never once left the empty, freezing room in which she was imprisoned. Filthy, starving, dehydrated, the child’s body nonetheless bears no traces of sexual abuse – this was no pedophile abduction, but something far stranger. What happened in that icy room? And how did Lucie escape?

The French are on a roll, so let’s keep and eye out for this one.

[Video via Gnolad; synopsis via B-D]

Greatest Musical Ever? Yes. Greatest. Musical. Ever.

So it’s been about eight years since I last went to Universal Studios in Orlando and I haven’t been to Universal Studios Hollywood since never. And now, I’m really itching to go. First, they got rid of that sort of lame Back to the Future ride (that was still awesome just because it was a Back to the Future Ride) to make room for what looks to be a really fun Simpsons ride.

And now, Universal Hollywood is getting a new show called Creature from the Black Lagoon: The Musical.

Which, basically, is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. Creature From the Black Lagoon seems to be the redheaded stepchild of Universal Monster Movies, I guess because you can’t see the visage of a Lugosi or Karloff or Raines under all that make-up, but as far as pure filmmaking goes, it stands head-and-shoulders above the other well-known Universal Monster fare, with the exception of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, which research shows, are the greatest movies ever.

The sequels to Creature are also pretty solid, as opposed to, say, The Ghost of Frankenstein. So color me excited that this movie is getting made into a musical. Because I’d like to see the Gill Man sing. Who wouldn’t?

Unfortunately for me, this seems to be only opening in Universal’s Hollywood theme park, so I’ll either have to wait a while, or walk a very long ways to see it.

Click here to see the full-size awesome teaser poster for the show over at ShockTillYouDrop (it’s their exclusive and my morals are too high to just steal it).

I Spit On Your Remake.

According to ShockTillYouDrop, somebody in Hollywood is making a remake of another horror movie. Weird, huh?!

This time, it’s Meir Zarchi’s I Spit On Your Grave. Which, okay, isn’t technically a horror flick, it’s a revenge flick, but for some reason the two always get grouped together. What’s up with that anyway?

In case you didn’t know…

The film follows Jennifer, a writer who is working on a new novel and needs to get out of the city to finish it. She hires a riverside apartment in upstate New York to finish her novel, attracting the attention of a number of rowdy male locals. They catch Jenifer one day and strip her naked for the village idiot (Matthew) and rape her. Jennifer is later attacked and raped a further two times by the four degenerates, and her novel is also destroyed. But Jennifer slowly recovers and in her now-twisted, psychotic mind, she then begins to seek revenge on the four men who raped her.

Basically, it’s a movie about rape, novel-destroying, and revenge that involved wiener-cutting. And it’s kind of awesome. I honestly can’t imagine why anyone would want to remake the movie. Part of its charm (though I’m not sure that the word “charm” can be applied to a movie with an extended rape sequence) is its low-budget, very 70s, very exploitation-type feel to it. To see it cleaned up using “today’s latest technology!” would kind of ruin the effect of the film.

Also — and I have the data to back this up — nine out of ten dentists agree that rape is bad and people don’t like watching it on film. So while STYD’s article states that a theatrical release is being considered for the remake, I can’t imagine it getting a wide, mainstream release unless things are significantly altered from the original.

So do yourself a favor and go pick up Elite Entertainment’s great Millennium Edition DVD of the film and see what all the fuss is about. And if you need further prodding, here’s bgutta, live from the ShockTillYouDrop.com comments section:

the first film was okay and a remake well….. WHY IN THE HELL IS HOOLYWOOD REMAKEING OLD **** i think people need to come up with new **** i dont think anyone saw the first one but me the three other people that saw it with me and the people who made it need i say more, i think not but if you have nothing else to do watch the original and make your own jugdement its not all that great and its not all that and a bag of chips.

How can you argue with that, really?

* * * * *

UPDATE: My very favorite film news site, CHUD.com and they’re freshly re-animated Creature Corner reported this same thing earlier this afternoon. What I’d like to point out is that they also called their post “I Spit On Your Remake.” Now, I’d never think that CHUD was plagiarizing my oh-so-clever title since this blog has a readership of roughly 3.5 and I doubt that Russ Fischer is one of those. And, of course, I published my article late last night, so I didn’t copy from them either. What this means is that we’re both suffering from very uncreative post titles. I’m going to go Google “I Spit On Your Remake” and see how many hits I get regarding this same subject.

Yep, a lot.

Inside Halloween 2.

The title to this post is going to seem a lot cleverer here in a minute after you’ve read what I have to say below.

You know that unwanted and unwarranted Halloween remake that Rob Zombie made last year that everyone hated? Well, sorry haters, but it made a shit ton of money. And since those Weinstein boys were involved, we’ve got a sequel coming our way. Because apparently their swimming pool full of money was getting low and they need a sure-fire thing to fill it up again.

And who better than apparent gorehounds Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, co-directors of the awesome French horror flick, Inside? Well, according to SchockTilYouDrop.com, that’s what’s happening. I kind of hate the idea that these guys are having to jump on the remake bandwagon like every other successful foreign filmmaker, but they’ve gotta do what they’ve gotta do. The duo were previously attached to Weinstein’s upcoming Hellraiser remake and, as they explain in the new issue of Rue Morgue Magazine in a great interview, there’s really no market for horror in France, so if they want to continue to get money to work in the genre, they’ve gotta come Stateside. And do whatever Bob and Harvey want them to, I guess.

Here’s a shocker: I’m in the minority in that I actually liked Rob Zombie’s Halloween. I didn’t love it and I still think that it was completely unnecessary, but for what it is, I enjoyed it. And since it did make so much money, it was inevitable that a sequel would be in the works. So I’m just glad that they got someone who seems to have some talent to work on the sequel, instead of just churning one out by a talentless hack (keep in mind that I’m basing this only on viewing Inside; for all I know, these guys could be one-trick ponies, but reading their interview in Rue Morgue makes me think that these guys at least have an appreciation for the genre).