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Blu-ray.com reports that Scream Factory has announced that they’ll be bringing four horror movies to 4K in February – and each one of these is a cool title that a lot of genre fans will be picking up. Scream Factory’s February 4K line-up consists of Ghosts of Mars (2001), Humanoids from the Deep (1980), Galaxy of Terror (1981), and Sick (2022)!

Directed by John Carpenter from a screenplay he wrote with Larry Sulkis, Ghosts of Mars is one of the least popular films in Carpenter’s filmography… but still, it’s Carpenter, so that means a 4K release is going to be a must-buy for a good number of fans. Here’s the synopsis: Long inhabited by human settlers, the Red Planet has become the manifest destiny of an over-populated Earth. Nearly 640,000 people now live and work all over Mars, mining the planet for its abundant natural resources. But one of those...

If you are a horror fan then there is a big chance that you might have heard about the horror streaming service Shudder, and if you have its subscription you might be wondering what’s in store for you in September 2024. Don’t worry there is a host of new and old horror movies coming to the service in the upcoming month and we have listed the 10 best movies coming to Shudder in September 2024.

Candyman (September 1)

Candyman is a gothic supernatural horror film written and directed by Bernard Rose. Based on a short story titled The Forbidden by Clive Barker, the 1992 film follows the story of Helen as she investigates a local legend of the Candyman but her investigation takes a dark turn when a series of brutal murders start happening. Candyman stars Tony Todd, Virginia Madsen, Bernard Rose, Kasi Lemmons, Vanessa Estelle Williams, Xander Berkeley, Stanley DeSantis, and Ted Raimi.

“Some secrets are meant to stay buried” says the ad line for “Strictly Confidential.” But you’d need a sizable underground bunker to contain all the effortfully shocking revelations sprung in this very silly sudser, which starts out looking like an erotic thriller-mystery, then descends into a series of flashback-laden explication monologues more apt for “Dynasty” than Agatha Christie.

Damian Hurley’s directorial feature, with famous mum Elizabeth top-billed and producing, provides several hardbodied younger performers opportunity to model clothes and approximate recognizable human emotions on the coastline of tax haven island nation Saint Kitts and Nevis. But what was likely an enjoyable working Caribbean vacation for cast and crew proves somewhat labored for viewers. Nonetheless, watched in the right spirit, with appropriate libations, it could prove quite entertaining … if not in the way presumably intended. Lionsgate is releasing to U.S. theaters, digital and on-demand platforms on April 5.

A...

This fall marks 30 awards seasons I’ve covered, not only as neutral observer, which is my main gig, but also as a fervent film fan, quietly cheering on my filmmaking heroes who sometimes manage to put their teams on the field. Sometimes they even manage to win.

But most of the time, I’ve spent the past 30 years hoping, not hyping.

I’ve hoped that the achievements that seem special to me also resonate with voters for the Oscars, Golden Globes, various guilds and critics’ groups. It doesn’t matter, if you care passionately about great cinema, you never hit the “off” button. But I’ve done so in the context of equal attention to everything, no playing favorites, let the fastest horse win at the gate.

I have also managed to personally avoid the predictions game, which now seems to almost dominate coverage across all publications, including this one.

A new episode of The Manson Brothers Show, the video series hosted by the writers/stars of the horror comedy The Manson Brothers Midnight Zombie Massacre – Chris Margetis (Stone Manson) and Mike Carey (Skull Manson) – has just been released, and in this one the Boys are looking back at the 1981 sci-fi horror film Galaxy of Terror (watch it Here). To find out what they had to say about Galaxy of Terror, check out the video embedded above!

Directed by Bruce D. Clark, who wrote the script with Marc Siegler, and produced by Roger Corman, Galaxy of Terror has the following synopsis: As a lone spaceship proceeds on its long voyage across space, the crew are surprised to encounter a strange pyramid form. Surprise turns to horror as one by one, they discover that their darkest nightmares are all starting to become real. The pyramid has to be behind it all somehow,...

Stars: Brion James, Richard Crystal, Zalman King, Robert Walden, Mark Goddard, Charles Siebert, Stefan Gierasch, Alice Ghostley, Ray Young, Bill Adler | Written and Directed by Jeff Lieberman

Showing as part of this year’s Fantasia Midnights program, Synapse Films premiered their restoration of writer/director Jeff Lieberman’s cult favorite Blue Sunshine. The 1977 film about former hippies suffering from homicidal acid flashbacks will be getting a 4K release at an undisclosed future date, and the image quality is noticeably better than on my DVD. But, what about the actual film? Glad you asked…

Blue Sunshine begins at a party where one of the guests is doing an impersonation of Rodan. “The artist?” asks one of the guests. “No, the monster” But a real monster is about to show up as Frannie loses his wig and his mind and begins shoving guests into the fireplace.

Jerry narrowly avoids becoming his next...

Director Jeff Lieberman’s acid-laced horror satire about a killer strain of LSD could have been the plot of the squarer-than-square Dragnet in 1968: party-goers are helping themselves to a brand of Psilocybin that results in murder sprees. And that’s not all, the drug makes your hair fall out (that’ll show those damn hippies). Zalman King and Deborah Winters star, and Lieberman wrote the uniquely plotted screenplay.

The post Blue Sunshine appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Favorite director Don Siegel is in fine form in this 1967 TV movie, a keeper with qualities not seen in Hollywood’s mega-westerns of the day. Henry Fonda’s ragged drifter is hunted by a gang of railroad deputies, and chief deputy Michael Parks doesn’t intercede because he can’t control his own men. A great screenplay, Siegel’s direction, plus committed performances make it stand out: Anne Baxter, Dan Duryea, Sal Mineo, Bernie Hamilton and Madlyn Rhue.

Stranger on the Run

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1967 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 97 min. / Street Date July 27, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Henry Fonda, Anne Baxter, Michael Parks, Dan Duryea, Sal Mineo, Tom Reese, Walter Burke, Lloyd Bochner, Michael Burns, Bernie Hamilton, Zalman King, Madlyn Rhue, Rodolfo Acosta, Rex Holman.

Cinematography: Bud Thackery

Art Director: William D. DeCinces

Stunts: Buddy Van Horn

Film Editor: Richard G. Wray

Original Music: Leonard Rosenman

Written by...

Patricia Louisianna Knop, a television and film screenwriter best known for co-writing the 1986 drama “9 1/2 Weeks,” died Aug. 7 from undisclosed causes. She was 78.

Knop’s daughter, artist Gillian Lefkowitz, announced the news last week. “Rip to my incredible mother ♥️ magical thinker, treasure seeker, writer, painter, sculpture, dreamer, builder, creator of so many things, lover of life,” Lefkowtiz wrote on Instagram. “You will be missed and beyond. It’s an end of an incredible era.”

Knop’s first credited screenplay was for the 1976 adaptation of “The Passover Plot,” followed by “Lady Oscar,” from director Jacques Demy in 1979. But she was best known for several film and television projects, mainly erotic dramas, that she wrote or co-produced in the 1980s and 1990s while working with her husband, producer Zalman King.

Also Read: All 21 Richard Linklater Movies Ranked, From Worst to Best (Photos)

Among these projects were “9 1/2 Weeks,” starring Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger.

Patricia Louisiana Knop, a film screenwriter and television producer known for 9 1/2 Weeks, Wild Orchid and the Showtime series Red Shoe Diaries, died at age 78 on Aug. 7 in Santa Monica, Calif. from what her publicist said was a lengthy illness.

She was married for 46 years to producer/director Zalman King, who collaborated with her on many projects, including the scripts for Wild Orchid and 9 1/2 Weeks. He died in 2012.

Knop was born on Oct. 23, 1940 in Muskegon, Michigan. As a teenager longing for adventure, she wrote to the captain of a boat docked in Florida, and asked if she might join his crew. He said yes, so she boarded a train and made the long journey alone, only to discover that the captain had no idea who she was and what he had agreed to. However, he took her on.

At sea, she met and fell in love with fellow crewman Zalman King Lefkowitz.

Screenwriter Patricia Louisianna Knop, who collaborated with her producer-director husband Zalman King on erotically-charged films of the late 1980s and 1990s including “Siesta” and “9 1/2 Weeks,” died Aug. 7 in Santa Monica after a lengthy illness.

“9 1/2 Weeks,” starring Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger, was directed by Adrian Lyne, co-produced by King and co-written by Knop. The film proved controversial for its explicit S&m-theme and was heavily cut before its U.S. release.

Her writing credits also include “Delta of Venus,” “Wild Orchid” and “Red Shoe Diaries.” King directed “Wild Orchid” and the pair collaborated on the screenplay for the film starring Rourke and Jacqueline Bisset, which also had to be cut in order to obtain an R-rating.

Knop’s other screenplays included “Lady Oscar” and “Silence of the North.”

Knop met King on a Caribbean-bound schooner in 1961, and King began acting on TV shows. Knop also co-wrote the book for Broadway...

Patricia Louisianna Knop, a producer and screenwriter who worked on the erotic film 9 1/2 Weeks, died Aug. 7 in Santa Monica after a long illness. She was 78.

Knop's daughter Gillian Lefkowitz confirmed the death on social media, writing, "Rip to my incredible mother, magical thinker, treasure seeker, writer, painter, sculpture, dreamer, builder, creator of so many things, lover of life. You will be missed and beyond. It's the end of an incredible era."

The writer was a widow of producer-writer Zalman King, who died in 2012.

Knop and King were co-writers on the controversial drama 9 1/2 ...

Patricia Louisianna Knop, a producer and screenwriter who worked on the erotic film 9 1/2 Weeks, died Aug. 7 in Santa Monica after a long illness. She was 78.

Knop's daughter Gillian Lefkowitz confirmed the death on social media, writing, "Rip to my incredible mother, magical thinker, treasure seeker, writer, painter, sculpture, dreamer, builder, creator of so many things, lover of life. You will be missed and beyond. It's the end of an incredible era."

The writer was a widow of producer-writer Zalman King, who died in 2012.

Knop and King were co-writers on the controversial drama 9 1/2 ...

While it may not be a Friday, Tuesday the 13th does have a bit of a nice ring to it, too, which makes it a perfect day to add some great genre Blu-rays and DVDs to your home entertainment collections. Scream Factory is doing the (dark) lord’s work yet again this week with their Collector’s Edition of Vice Squad (which I cannot wait to check out) as well as their stunning Steelbooks for both Galaxy of Terror and Forbidden World.

For those of you who enjoy “talkies” (a phrase we coined in our house for our favorite dialogue-heavy films), Radioland Murders arrives on Blu for the first time ever this week, and the third season of Riverdale hits both formats on Tuesday as well.

Other notable releases for August 13th include Avengers: Endgame, The Velocipastor (ahead of its Blu-ray release on September 17th), A Dark Place, Devil Music,...

Rebecca Clough Apr 20, 2019

Bible stories make for varying cinema. Here are the best Bible movies about Jesus Christ himself...

The Biblical epic appears to be back in a big way. Not only has Mary Magdalene hit UK cinemas just in time for Easter, 2018’s offerings also include the recently released Paul, Apostle of Christ (which rather confusingly features ex-Jesus Jim Caviezel as his pal Luke) and the upcoming Pontius Pilate, starring Eric Roberts.

Religion can make for contentious filmmaking: too earnest and the movie feels sanctimonious and dull, too irreverent and you risk making “a holocaust movie that has the power to destroy souls eternally” as a nun once told Martin Scorsese, who directed 1988's The Last Temptation of Christ. Here are the top 25 movies about the man we can thank for the enormous amount of chocolate we eat at various intervals throughout the year:

25. Gospel Road: A Story Of...

Courtesy of James B. HarrisIt’s a Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles and 89-year-old writer/director/producer James B. Harris (Some Call It Loving, 1973; Fast-Walking, 1982) has agreed to meet me for brunch at Coogie’s Cafe. Coogie’s is exactly the sort of unassuming American diner where girls in pink velvet jackets and shimmery silver skirts go to blend in with the Pepto-Bismol-colored booths. There are a pair of flat screen TVs on the wall, which are mercifully muted. A radio in some far-off corner of the kitchen can be heard playing inoffensive pop tunes of yesteryear. It is also the sort of quiet place where someone like Harris is well-known, well-liked, and referred to as “Mr. James” by the entire waitstaff. The impression is one of polite reverence and earned familiarity, built up over time and solidified through an appreciation of his impressive filmography, as well as his continued business.

As horror fans, we are constantly seeking out the new and the different. Because the genre is marked by so much sameness—sequels, franchises, remakes, copies of copies—it can sometimes be a challenge to find those horror films that truly carve out their own space. They don’t even have to be great movies, necessarily; many times, “different” is enough to make us happy.

With that in mind, here are 10 horror movies currently available on the terrific streaming service Shudder that are, if nothing else, different from almost anything else you’ll watch this October. They vary in quality from title to title, but what even the roughest among them lacks in technical polish, it more than makes up for in sheer maniac insanity. After you’ve cycled through all your favorites this October, why not add a little Wtf to your lineup?

1. Beyond the Darkness (1979, dir. Joe D...

Veteran film producer Evzen Kolar, whose credits include the 1997 Harvey Keitel drama “City of Industry,” has died in Los Angeles at age 67, his family announced Monday. The Czech-born filmmaker also produced the 1993 Leslie Nielsen-Rob Schneider comedy “Surf Ninjas” through his Kpi Entertainment production company and director Zalman King’s “Delta of Venus.” In addition, he produced John Avildsen’s 1999 Jean-Claude Van Damme action movie “Inferno” (a.k.a. “Desert Heat”), Bruce Beresford’s 2001 period drama “Bride of the Wind,” and John Irvin’s 2003 comedy “The Boys and Girls from County Clare” starring Colm Meaney, Bernard Hill and Andrea Corr.

Evzen Kolar, a veteran film executive who also produced such movies as Surf Ninjas and City of Industry, has died. He was 67.

Kolar died Tuesday in Los Angeles after a brief illness, publicist Jan Kean announced.

In 1993, Kolar launched the production company Kpi Entertainment, where he produced Surf Ninjas (1993), starring Rob Schneider; the Zalman King erotic drama Delta of Venus (1995); City of Industry (1997), starring Harvey Keitel and Stephen Dorff; John Avildsen's Inferno (1999), with Jean-Claude Van Damme; and the Bruce Beresford period costume drama Bride of the Wind (2001).

Kolar also produced the Samuel Goldwyn...

Weird is a very comfortable word in Jeff Lieberman’s lexicon. From the night crawler nastiness of Squirm (1976) to his mountaintop massacre Just Before Dawn (1981), his films are always a little left of the norm and all the better for it. And in between those two, he decided to take a run at a paranoia thriller nursing a major ‘60s hangover, pulsating with psychotic, Kojakian ex hippies. Welcome to Blue Sunshine (1978), a film more potent than the brown acid your great uncle said he took at Woodstock. (Although he probably wasn’t even there.)

Released Stateside in May (after a stop across the pond at the BFI the previous November) by Cinema Shares International (the fine folks behind Soul Brothers of Kung Fu), Blue Sunshine’s limited run and puzzled looks from critics saw it quickly fade away into cultdom, where it resided for decades with Lieberman’s other films...

Looks like we totally called it after watching the Fifty Shades Darker teaser trailer yesterday, because now the full trailer is out and it looks like everyone’s favorite Bella and Edward avatars, Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), are going less “Red Room” and more Red Shoe Diaries for their second of three ostensibly erotic adventures.

Aside from the lacy butterfly mask Ana dons before some sort of decadent one-percent soiree one can only hope culminates in a black-magic blood ritual—again, paging Zalman King—there’s not a lot of Bdsm to titillate viewers in this new trailer. Instead, it seems that the power has shifted in Ana’s direction after deciding to give her sexy billionaire boyfriend a second chance. “This time,” she says, “No rules. No punishments. And no more secrets.” (But where’s the fun in that?) We even see him sleeping...

Jeff Lieberman's Blue Sunshine is a fascinating bit of drug paranoia horror from the end of the era of free love. The film has recently been recovered and restored from the original 35mm negatives discovered in 2014. It's been on home video before, most notably in a limited edition DVD release from Anchor Bay in the early days of DVD, but never has it had this kind of treatment. It is a bizarre little gem from a decade of bizarre little gems, and it feels akin to the work of Cronenberg and De Palma in its themes and execution, but never quite gets the same kind of recognition. Jerry “Zippy” Zipkin (portrayed by Red Shoe Diaries creator, Zalman King) is a regular Joe who gets...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

★★☆☆☆ If Wikipedia is to be believed, the orchid family is one of the two largest families of flowering plants known to man; they're everywhere, going wild without a whisper of a care and making love in expensive hotels. But sadly, not all orchids are quite so relaxed; some lack self-confidence and need a little help to loosen up and explore their flowering sexuality and this (almost) truth seems to be the pungent metaphor at the centre of Zalman King's exceedingly odd, but still pretty awful Wild Orchid. Emily Reed (Carré Otis) is a polite young Mid-Western lawyer who heads to New York to seek her fortune and sexual awakening.

MoreHorror.com

Orgy of the Damned, directed by Creep Creepersin, is a fun and romantic, yet dark and erotic take on vampires with a unique visual style that pays homage to the classic European exploitation films.

Check out the interview by Dawna Lee Heising with actor Domiziano Arcangeli, who plays a 300 year old vampire in the film, below the official details.

From The Press Release:

Orgy of The Damned is beautiful to look at and enjoyable to watch, this new movie is sure to make a name for itself and quickly become a cult classic. It has many key motives that make it a compelling choice for every cult movie lover. From its dark and brooding tale of vampires to its usage of today’s Hollywood club scene, the film uniquely portrays a quite unusual and incestuous family of vamps and how they spend their time. They are existentially bored,...

CopAt the ripe age of twenty-six—the two were born within days of each other in 1928—James B. Harris and Stanley Kubrick formed Harris-Kubrick Productions. With Kubrick leading the charge behind the camera and Harris acting as the right-hand-man producer, the duo completed three major critical successes: The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), and Lolita (1962). But where Kubrick’s subsequent work has achieved a supreme, hall-of-fame stature, Harris’s own directorial career—consisting of five excellent movies made across a four-decade span—remains, despite the valiant effort of a few notable English-language critics (Michael Atkinson, Jonathan Rosenbaum), on the relative sidelines. The latest attempt to boost Harris’s reputation: BAMcinématek’s week-long retrospective of Harris’s producing and directing output, selected by “Overdue” co-programmers Nick Pinkerton and Nicolas Rapold.Harris and Kubrick stopped working together amidst a pre-production disagreement during the making of what would become Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb...

Well before the mainstream fascination with the soft-core sexual sensibilities of Fifty Shades of Grey, one of the more notable alums of such boundary pushing was American filmmaker Zalman King. After producing the infamous sensation that was Adrian Lyne’s 9 ½ Weeks, King moved into filmmaking himself, debuting in 1988 with Two Moon Junction, before collaborating with his wife Patricia Louisiana Knopp on what stands as his most high profile title with Wild Orchid in 1989, reuniting him with Weeks stars Mickey Rourke. As is often the case with cinema seriously interested in exploring eroticism and titillation, the title suffers from a lot of misplaced energy. Character development and its semblance of a narrative appear to be roughly hewn afterthoughts, its most pronounced moments revolving around extremely stylized sexual congress between several different characters (and stylized in the vein of what we see on display in Verhoeven’s Showgirls).

Emily (Carre Otis) has...

Universal Pictures released their new drama/thriller flick, "The Boy Next Door" into theaters today, and the top,major movie critics have delivered their reviews. It turns out that most of them just didn't take to it too well, giving it an overall 31 score out of a possible 100 across 27 reviews at the Metacritic.com site. The movie stars: Kristin Chenoweth, John Corbett, Jennifer Lopez and Ryan Guzman. We've added blurbs from a couple of the critics, below. Claudia Puig at USA Today, gave it a 63 score, stating: "Predictable and foolishly unsuspecting characters react in ways that make you want to shake them. But there's an undeniable sense of silly fun in this erotic thriller." Leah Greenblatt from Entertainment Weekly, gave it a 58 grade. He said: "Boy's premise reeks of stalker-movie mothballs, and it's too timid to fully dive into the high camp it hints at. Instead, this cookie just crumbles.

Director Kimani Ray Smith's gore-laden horror comedy Evil Feed hits On Demand and digital outlets in the UK this August 25th courtesy of Solo Media, and to celebrate we have a Thoroughly Nsfw trailer right here that's sure to whet your appetite for more. Bon appétit!

Evil Feed stars Laci J. Mailey ("Arrow," "Falling Skies"), Terry Chen (Cabin in the Woods, Snakes on a Plane), Shirleyanne Mason (Zalman King’s Body Language), Alain Chanoine (Punisher: War Zone, Blade: Trinity), Carrie Genzel (Jennifer’s Body, Watchmen), and Derek Gilroy (Elysium, "Supernatural").

The film is directed by Kimani Ray Smith.

Synopsis

The Long Pig Restaurant, known in the underground world for its cannibalistic cuisine, has a new star attraction, the “Pit of Gore,” where bloodthirsty customers get to watch their prospective meals being tenderized as captured elite fighters are forced to battle to the death as their “Tendertainment!”

In the vein of Grindhouse cinema,...

FEARnet sat down recently with 1990’s bombshell and prolific actress Sherilyn Fenn on the set of director Hank Braxtan’s creature feature Unnatural to chat about the film, as well as the legacy of ‘Twin Peaks’, the David Lynch-created series and film that rocketed her to stardom, 1998’s erotic feature Two Moon Junction in which she starred, and much more. Read on.

Helmed by Braxtan (who’s upcoming psychological horror feature Chemical Peel is due out via Lionsgate this coming October), Unnatural was produced by Ron Carlson with cinematography by Marc Carter and editing by filmmaker Mike Mendez (Big-Ass Spider), and was shot this past January and February on location in Fairbanks, Alaska. In addition to Fenn, the cast includes James Remar (‘Dexter’), Ray Wise (Jeepers Creepers 2, ‘Twin Peaks’), Graham Greene (The Green Mile), Q’orianka Kilcher (‘Sons of Anarchy’) and Ivana Korab.

“They had sent me the script,...

Kino Lorber has come on to handle packaged media and digital distribution to the Zalman King Company library.

The catalogue will be marketed under a dedicated Zalman King label and the deal kicks off in June with the erotic TV series Red Shoe Diaries that launched the career of David Duchovny,

In July, the new label will release the DVD version of Pleasure Or Pain, the last film that King wrote and directed before his death in 2012. DVD packages of the four additional seasons of Red Shoe Diaries, 66 episodes in all, will follow toward the end of 2014 and through 2015.

Kino Lorber has come on to handle packaged media and digital distribution to the Zalman King Company library.

The catalogue will be marketed under a dedicated Zalman King label and the deal kicks off in June with the erotic TV series Red Shoe Diaries that launched the career of David Duchovny,

In July, the new label will release the DVD version of Pleasure Or Pain, the last film that King wrote and directed before his death in 2012. DVD packages of the four additional seasons of Red Shoe Diaries, 66 episodes in all, will follow toward the end of 2014 and through 2015.

Stars: Jamie Murray, Will Payne, Chris Waller, Sacha Parkinson, Sean Power | Written by Matt Venne | Directed by Eduardo Rodriguez

Originally lensed in 1985, Fright Night, from writer/director Tom Holland (Child’s Play), went on to become a favourite amongst my generation and to this day is still held in very warm regard. The sequel, which followed in 1987, wasn’t as successful as the original, yet remains a much sought after title on DVD and Blu-ray. The original film was remade in 2011 starring Colin Farrell in the vampire role and Fright Night 2: New Blood is a sequel to that remake. With me so far?

Well now it gets a little confusing. This iteration of Fright Night 2 is a remake of the Original Fright Night, not the sequel or the remake, which also throws the legend of Countess Elizabeth Bathory into the mix. Still with me?

Gerri Dandridge (Murray) is a...

Ever since humanity learned to doodle on the walls of the caves it called home, we have been treated to depictions of sex and the human body in art. It is hardwired into our DNA to enjoy the sexual act, and it’s nearly impossible to look away when we see it presented on screen.

Filmmakers who portray sex and nudity in their pictures walk a fine line: if you can justify the inclusion of bare skin, like the recent Palme d’Or winner Blue Is The Warmest Colour, a feature that chronicles the love affair between an underage student and her female teacher in graphic detail, then you have earned respectability while also appealing to the baser desires of moviegoers; however, if you fail to justify excessive amounts of nudity and sex in your feature, then you have crossed the line from being an artist to a purveyor of smut,...

Along with some exclusive and really bloody new stills, we have a special guest blog on tap for you guys from director Spencer Parsons about his new film, Saturday Morning Mystery; old cartoons; and much, much more! Dig it!

Truth be known, I’m more of a Buford Files guy than a Scooby-Doo guy, probably because that one ripped off Smokey and the Bandit, and every episode took place in a swamp, with way more opportunity for moss monsters. But man alive, ‘70s TV barfed up a ton of these Scooby wanna bes about ghost-chasers-with-dogs. And all of them got repeated endlessly through the ‘80s in syndication, even the ones that didn’t last a whole season. Shows like Clue Club, Butch Cassidy and Goober and the Ghost Chasers, plus less dog-centric mystery team cartoons like Fangface, Speed Buggy, or The New Shmoo. There were more, and I could go on,...

Genre sales label Wtf will be bringing its latest horror offering, Evil Feed, to this year's American Film Market, and we have a few stills and some artwork for you. Check it out. Scratch your head and ask yourself, really, Wtf?

Evil Feed is directed by Kimani Ray Smith and stars Laci J Mailey ("Arrow," "Falling Skies"), Terry Chen (Elysium, Cabin in the Woods, The A-Team, Snakes on a Plane, I, Robot), Shirleyanne Mason (Zalman King’s Body Language), Alain Chanoine (Immortals, Punisher War Zone, Blade Trinity), Carrie Genzel (Jennifer’s Body, Watchmen), and Derek Gilroy (Elysium, "Supernatural").

Check out the goods below courtesy of Bloody Disgusting.

Synopsis

The Long Pig Restaurant is the ultimate underground restaurant sensation, where only the richest can taste the most refined meals and worldwide best…cannibalistic haute cuisine. Newly run by an overachieving son who delicately put his father to retirement by severing his head,...

Cinematographer at the forefront of digital experimentation and celebrated for his avant-garde work with Gus van Sant

The cinematographer Harris Savides, who has died of brain cancer aged 55, brought an evocative aesthetic to films made by some of the world's most adventurous directors. His goal was to capture what he called a "heightened reality" through a visual style that was understated to the point of being subliminal: "I don't think you can ever make a movie that looks amazing when you're trying to make it look amazing," he said.

Savides shot six features for Gus van Sant and collaborated with David Fincher, Sofia Coppola and Noah Baumbach. While directors frequently turned to him for a visual style redolent of 1970s American and European auteur cinema, Savides was at the forefront of digital experimentation. He shot Fincher's Zodiac (2007), the fastidiously detailed story of the real-life hunt for a serial killer...

Interested in watching cult classics Squirm, Blue Sunshine, and Just Before Dawn on the big screen? How about with director Jeff Lieberman in attendance? You’re in luck if you live in the NYC area or are interested in traveling. The screenings will be taking place this weekend and we have all the details.

The event will take place at the Anthology Film Archives on August 17, 18, and 19 and is presented by Cinema Retro Magazine and David Savage.

Squirm – by Jeff Lieberman – 1976, 92 minutes, 35mm

The undisputed king of killer worm movies! Set in hot, humid, and creepy rural Georgia, Squirm traces the havoc that ensues when downed power lines pump electricity into the soil, creating an army of vicious, deadly earthworms. Despite its over-the-top premise, Squirm is a masterpiece of slow build-up, patiently and enjoyably establishing its characters and its atmospheric milieu…before unleashing the hordes!

Screening Details: Friday 8/17 at 7:00pm,...

It's a pity that Assassin's Bullet, possibly the first Isaac Florentine film to receive a Stateside theatrical release, happens to be one of his weakest. A martial-artist-turned-filmmaker, Florentine (born Yitzhak Florentin) has carved out a niche in the direct-to-video world as an old-school action director with a knack for choreographing and composing fight scenes. Wide-angles lenses, longish shot durations (by contemporary standards, anyway), and a sense of follow-through are the hallmarks of Florentine's action-directing style—an appreciative aesthetic where every element serves the bodies and movements of the athlete-performers (Florentine's leads are more often than not Mma fighters, more than capable of doing their own stunts).

Originally titled Sofia (as in the city), Assassin's Bullet is a sub-De Palma riff on the Bulgarian capital's status as a popular B-movie shooting location. This identity disorder—Sofia is one of contemporary cinema's most filmed cities, yet rarely plays itself— is personified by...

Charlie Sheen has claimed to have come into contact with ghosts. The Anger Management star explained that he has a strong connection to the spiritual world and often sees the ghost of friend Zalman King as well as the father of another close friend. Sheen told Playboy: "When my friend Zalman King died, I went to comfort his widow, Pat. We were making a toast, and I saw Zalman, who'd been dead for four hours, dance through the background. It was a trip... I'm not f**king high or experimenting with (more)...

London, July 11: Charlie Sheen has revealed that he has started seeing the ghosts of dearly departed friends during visits to their grieving families.

The Wall Street star revealed that he has had two eerie encounters in recent months.

"When my friend (writer) Zalman King died, I went to comfort his widow, Pat. We were making a toast and I saw Zalman, who'd been dead for four hours, dance through the background. It was a trip," the Daily Express quoted.

Charlie Sheen claims he can see dead people. The 'Anger Management' star believes that he has started to see the ghosts of dearly departed friends during visits to their grieving families. Charlie revealed that in recent months he has had two eerie encounters that he cannot explain. He said: ''When my friend (writer) Zalman King died, I went to comfort his widow, Pat. We were making a toast and I saw Zalman, who'd been dead for four hours, dance through the background. It was a trip.'' He continued to tell Playboy magazine: ''Another dear friend of mine, Stephanie, her father died. I was at...

Charlie Sheen claims he can see dead people. The 'Anger Management' star believes that he has started to see the ghosts of dearly departed friends during visits to their grieving families. Charlie revealed that in recent months he has had two eerie encounters that he cannot explain. He said: 'When my friend (writer) Zalman King died, I went to comfort his widow, Pat. We were making a toast and I saw Zalman, who'd been dead for four hours, dance through the background. It was a trip.' He continued to tell Playboy magazine: 'Another dear friend of mine, Stephanie, her father died. I was at her house, and he walked past me on the stairwell one...

Los Angeles, July 11: Actor Charlie Sheen has started to see the ghosts of dearly departed friends during visits to their grieving families.

"When my friend (writer) Zalman King died, I went to comfort his widow, Pat. We were making a toast and I saw Zalman, who'd been dead for four hours, dance through the background. It was a trip," contactmusic.com quoted the 46-year-old as saying.

"Another dear friend of mine, Stephanie, her father died. I was at her house,.

 

Zalman King, who left a successful acting career to become a triple threat director, producer and writer, has died from cancer at age 70. King is best known for specializing in high end soft-core erotica. He produced the successful 1990s cable TV series Red Shoe Diaries and also wrote and produced the kinky theatrical hit film 9 1/2 Weeks in 1986 starring Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger. Other controversial hit films include Wild Orchid and New Moon Junction. For more click here...

When a pre-x-Files David Duchovny was hired by filmmaker Zalman King ( 9 1/2 Weeks, Wild Orchid, Two Moon Junction) for the Showtime series Red Shoe Diaries, he admits he was a bit on the inexperienced side. “As an actor I was terrible. I was green and I didn’t know it, and he didn’t tell me — which is good. I was blissfully ignorant of my own limitations,” laughs Duchovny. “Zalman just filled me with confidence. When he told me I was great, I believed it, and I started to make my way towards getting better as an actor. For a guy...

Actor and filmmaker/producer Zalman King died last week. Judging from reactions on social media, it appears many people remember him for producing the popular Showtime erotic TV series Red Shoe Diaries. But me, when I heard he had died, my first thought was, "Chickensh*t bingo." Here's why.

The first SXSW Film Festival I covered professionally was in 2006, and although I was writing for Cinematical -- a website with national readership -- I was still interested in the Austin-shot movies. My attention was caught by a documentary about musician Dale Watson called Crazy Again, which screened at the Dobie. I was on a festival press email list for the first time and was even invited to the film's after-party at Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon on Burnet Road. (I didn't go. I didn't want to stop watching all the movies. This is often my problem at film fests.)

Dale Watson...

Though best known as a pioneer in the straight-to-cable softcore sex industry with his long-running Showtime series Red Shoe Diaries, Zalman King began his long career as an actor and had several interesting cult film credits. Born Zalman King Lefkowitz, King began his career acting on TV in the .60s. In 1978, King starred in Blue Sunshine, a weird ‘Hippies Revenge’ shocker from director Jeff Lieberman about Stanford University students who drop bad acid resulting in 10-year delayed homicidal freakouts. In Trip With The Teacher (1974), King played the scuzzy leader of a group of bikers who terrorize a group of female students after their bus breaks down in the desert. Other notable acting credits included the Corman Alien knockoff Galaxy Of Terror (1981) and the bizarre Jesus conspiracy film The Passover Plot (1976).

With a wiry, intense persona as an actor, Zalman King excelled in villain roles, but went behind the camera beginning...

Zalman King, the filmmaker behind a string of popular and steamy erotic thrillers in the ’80s and ’90s, died on Friday at age 70, according to the Associated Press, citing his son-in-law. The cause was cancer. Born Zalman King Lefkowitz, King began his career acting on TV in the ’60s. But his real breakthrough came when he and his wife, Patricia Louisianna Knop, wrote the screenplay for 1986′s 9 1/2 Weeks. Slickly directed by Adrian Lyne and produced by King, the kinky, soft-lit, taboo love story starred Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke and was a hit at the box-office, spawning a slew of racy imitators.

"Released in 1938 and now available in a remastered edition from the Warner Archive Collection, The Great Waltz was one of Louis B Mayer's frequent attempts to bring culture to the American masses by buying up wholesale lots of European talent," writes Dave Kehr in the New York Times. It's a "biographical fantasy woven, with no particular concern for the truth, around the figure of the Austrian composer Johann Strauss." And now out from New Yorker Video, "the 1975 film adaptation of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet stands in roughly the same relation to The Great Waltz as Schoenberg's dissonant, 12-tone compositions do to Strauss's infectious oom-pah-pahs. Schoenberg's unfinished opera is a work of the utmost sobriety and seriousness — a philosophical assertion of monotheism that confirmed Schoenberg's reconversion to Judaism — and it is presented by Straub and Huillet in a form that avoids any theatrical effects (or,...

Los Angeles -- Actor and filmmaker Zalman King, who became known for his erotic work after writing and producing his breakthrough film "9 1/2 Weeks," has died. He was 70.

King's son-in-law Allison Burnett says the filmmaker died Friday morning at his home in Santa Monica, Calif., after a six-year battle with cancer.

Born Zalman King Lefkovitz in 1941, King began his career as an actor in the 1960s. He and wife, Patricia Louisianna Knop, collaborated on the screenplay for "9 1/2 Weeks," which became a cult hit starring Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke.

King's other credits include "Wild Orchid" and "Two Moon Junction," which he wrote and directed.

He is survived by his wife and daughters Chloe King and Gillian Lefkovitz.