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Folks, I just got done digging through the dustiest, crustiest, mustiest box of 80s schlock that I could get my hands on and… Well, I found something I needed to share with you guys. Now, the art of making an original horror film with unique ideas, clever storytelling, and engaging characters to bounce off a scary antagonist can be damning if not extremely difficult. And this movie is proof that sometimes it can be Too difficult because it has none of those things. 1980’s The Boogey Man (watch it Here) is the story of a pair of siblings as they battle with the trauma of their childhood and the return of an evil entity that once possessed them in a blood-soaked trance. The movie was written, directed, and produced by German actor Ulli Lommel and starred his then wife (Suzanna Love) and her brother Nick Love as the film’s main protagonists.

Vinegar Syndrome’s annual “Halfway to Black Friday” sale is now live through Memorial Day Weekend, and as always, it’s a Huge celebration for fans of the label.

The “Halfway to Black Friday” sale is live through Monday at 11:59pm Est, and for starters, you can take advantage by saving 50% off nearly Everything in Vinegar’s shop.

The cornerstones of the celebration include Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls on 4K Uhd, exclusively restored by Vs and featuring a consummate selection of extras.

Ulli Lommel’s notorious horror classic, The Boogeyman makes its worldwide Uhd debut, freshly scanned and restored by Vs from its 35mm original negative and featuring a fresh slate of interviews along with a heaping helping of archival goodies.

Three weird and nasty Spanish rarities have been freshly scanned and restored by Vs and collected in Villages of the Damned: Three Horrors from Spain.

And Lamberto Bava...

Home video label Vinegar Syndrome just launched their Flash Pre-Order for Halfway to Black Friday 2023, and included in the mix are several brand new horror releases.

The Flash Pre-Order runs now until 11:59 Pm, Est on Sunday and it includes Six new releases, including horror films A Blade in the Dark (1983) and The Boogeyman (1980).

Here’s the full rundown, straight from Vinegar Syndrome…

“We couldn’t be more excited to kick off this Pre-Order with the reveal of our next Vsu, Paul Verhoeven’s incredible Showgirls (1995), which makes its US 4K Uhd debut, exclusively restored by Vinegar Syndrome, with no digital tinkering or smoothing plaguing cinematographer Jost Vacano’s stunning visuals.

“On the “regular” Vs side, we’re elated to at long last offer Lamberto Bava’s giallo masterpiece, A Blade In The Dark (1983), newly and exclusively restored by Vs, in 4K from its Super 16mm original negative, and available...

Germany has given the world some of its finest filmmakers, Lotte Reiniger, Ernst Lubitsch, Douglas Sirk, Wim Wenders, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, to name but a few, as well as groundbreaking movements like German Expressionism and New German Cinema. The country has also produced some of the best horror movies in history, from terrifying silent classics about the supernatural to gripping crime thrillers and nerve-shredding cyberpunk tales.

While it's impossible to cover the depth and breadth of German horror movies in a short list, we can touch on some of the greats. Listed below are the 12 best German horror movies. All of these films prove that horror has always been political, mining the fears and anxieties of the times in which they were created to make a point about the world around us and that the genre has always been — and always will be — a vital part of movie history.

For quite some time we’ve heard Quentin Tarantino would venture into a new medium with The Video Archives Podcast, which doubles in interest as a reunion with Pulp Fiction… well, what he did on the movie remains ambiguous, so we’ll simply say former collaborator Roger Avary after a supposed rift. (We might have Bret Easton Ellis to thank—not often you can type that.) It, in the man’s words, would be two former video-store clerks taking “one movie from that era, the ‘70s, ‘80s, or the ‘90s, the time of the store, and just kind of examine it, and it’ll be us and a guest and they’ll examine it too. They’re a customer and we’ll just talk about stuff.”

The first episode has finally arrived, their project already bigger than promised: two movies, with the promise of three in future installments. (The first...

Tetrovideo have announced the release of the German disturbing extreme films Melancholie der Engel (2009) and Carcinoma (2014) directed by controversial filmmaker Marian Dora. Both of which are coming in a limited/numbered Dvdpack edition (Slipcase + DVD + Card) and in a ultralimited/numered Mediabook Gold edition (Slipcase + DVD + 20 pag booklet) with French, Italian and English subtitles.

The two titles will be available for pre-order Now along with the new edition of XXX Dark Web (2020), the extreme cult anthology film will be available in a Mediabook Gold edition (Slipcase + DVD + 20 pag booklet) limited to preorder.

Melancholie Der Engel

Melancholie der Engel is a shocking independent extreme film about perversions and depravity. The film is directed, shot and edited by Marian Dora and co-written by Dora and Carsten Frank.

Two friends meet again to share their last days in an old house where everything happened a long time ago. They gather a group of people,...

TetroVideo have announced the release of giallo horror Nightmare Symphony, the psychological horror The Bad Man and the shocking experimental dramatic art film Debris Documentar. Nightmare Symphony is coming to Blu-ray while The Bad Man and Debris Documentar are coming in a limited Digipack edition including a DVD and a Collector’s card: only 150 copies for The Bad Man and 300 copies for Marian Dora’s film are planned.

All three titles will be available for pre-order on June 1st.

Nightmare Symphony (Italy – 2020)

Nightmare Symphony is a giallo horror film co-directed by Domiziano Cristopharo and Daniele Trani (Dop in “Across the River”). Produced by Ulkurzu and Hh Kosova and written by the well-known italian screenwriter Antonio Tentori, Nightmare Symphony is a tribute to Lucio Fulci’s Nightmare Concert/A Cat in the Brain, in which Fulci himself played a tortured horror filmmaker haunted by his own bloody horror film visions.

In Nightmare Symphony,...

For the last two weeks, we here at Daily Dead have been doing our best to laud and commemorate the 40th anniversaries of all the great horror and science fiction films that were released throughout the year 1980. And as we get set to wrap up our extensive coverage today and tomorrow, we thought it might be fun to reach out to some fantastic voices in the realm of genre entertainment.

So, for today’s Class of 1980 celebration, we will be featuring the likes of Kelli Maroney, Bill Moseley, Adrian Roe, Ben Rock, Axelle Carolyn, Drew McWeeny, April Wolfe, Graham Skipper, and Brian Collins all discussing a variety of notable horror and sci-fi movies from 1980, including Dressed to Kill, The Changeling, The Visitor, The Apple, Friday the 13th, The Boogeyman, Mad Max, Battle Beyond the Stars, and The Fog.

And be sure to head back tomorrow for part two of our final Class of 1980 celebration,...

Sometimes you come around on a film; perhaps not a complete 180 degrees, but somewhere over 90 and enough to make one reevaluate previous harsh judgments. And so it is with The Boogey Man (1980), German art house director Ulli Lommel’s paean to psychic residue and familial discourse as filtered through a ludicrous mash-up of The Exorcist, Halloween, and The Amityville Horror. Once attuned to its peculiar charms, it’s hard to resist.

Distributed by The Jerry Gross Organization (Zombie) in early November, The Boogey Man was a huge success – probably baffling Lommel and definitely baffling the critics, who were none too kind at the time (nor are most now). Made for a paltry $300,000, the film brought in between $25 and 35 million, depending on which accountant you ask. Big numbers for a film filled with technical inconsistency, mostly poor acting, and enough plot for three films.

Little Lacey and Willy are stuck at...

The Boogeyman ‘Original 1980 Motion Picture Soundtrack’ LP One Way Static Records proudly presents: Ulli Lommel’s ‘The Boogeyman’ (Original 1980 Motion Picture Soundtrack by Tim Krog & Synthe-Sound-Trax). Ulli Lommel was a German writer, actor and director. In the sixties he took up roles in films by ‘Russ Meyer’ and ‘Rainer Werner Fassbinder’ which resulted in …

The post The Boogeyman (Original 1980 Motion Picture Soundtrack) – First time Available! appeared first on Hnn | Horrornews.net. Copyrights 2008-2018 - Horrornews.net...

Beki Probst, Katriel Schory and Jiri Menzel will also receive Berlinale Cameras.

Source: Murray Pictures/Berlin Film Festival

‘Songwriter’

Erik Poppe’s Anders Breivik drama ‘U - July 22’ has been added to the competition line-up for 2018 Berlin Film Festival, it was announced today (6 Feb) at the official programme press conference.

Dieter Kosslick, in his penultimate year as festival director, also revealed that the final Berlinale Special title will be Ed Sheeran documentary Songwriter, directed by Murray Cummings. Both films will have their world premieres in Berlin.

It was announced that Willem Dafoe, Beki Probst, Katriel Schory and Jiri Menzel will be honoured at the event, which runs from 15 Feb-25 Feb.

Dafoe, nominated for an Oscar this year for The Florida Project, will be presented with an Honorary Golden Bear on February 20 before a screening of Daniel Nettheim’s 2011 film The Hunter. The festival will screen 10 of his films, including Antichrist, Mississipi Burning and [link...

Rupert Everett’s The Happy Prince and Pernille Fischer Christensen’s Unga Astrid picked for Berlinale Special.

Source: Wiki Commons

Steven Soderbergh, José Padilha

Five more films have joined the main lieups of the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 15 - 25). A further six films have been selected for the programme of the Berlinale Special.

Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane will get an out of competition world premiere. It stars Claire Foy, Joshua Leonard, Jay Pharoah and Juno Temple and was reportedly shot on iPhone.

Also premiering out of competition is José Padilha’s true story thriller 7 Days In Entebbe, starring Rosamund Pike, Daniel Brühl and Eddie Marsan.

New films from Lav Diaz and Alonso Ruizpalacios will play in competition.

Rupert Everett’s Oscar Wilde biopic The Happy Prince and Becoming Astrid by Pernille Fischer Christensen have been added to the Berlinale Special Gala section.

Read more: Robert Pattinson, Christian Petzold movies join Berlin Film Festival Competition

23 of the 24 titles...

According to a variety of sources, including Bloody-Disgusting, famed German cult filmmaker Ulli Lommel has passed away this weekend after suffering heart failure at the age of 72.

His most well known movie is probably The Boogeyman, a 1980 supernatural horror pic starring Suzanna Love, John Carradine and Ron James. Lommel also wrote the script for the film, which follows two siblings targeted by the ghost of their mother’s boyfriend, whose soul was once imprisoned in a mirror.

The Boogeyman was a financial success and spawned two sequels. What’s most interesting, however, is that Lommel was actually working on a new TV series entitled Boogeyman Chronicles. He’d already directed the first episode, too, which is intended to air in 2018. It’s unknown how exactly it’ll fit in with the film, but there’s something exciting about revisiting old franchises and properties, especially with the original director attached.

In recent years,...

Sad news for you this Sunday afternoon as multiple sources web-wide are confirming that prolific film director Ulli Lommel has passed away at age 72 due to heart failure. Lommel has dozens of film credits under his belt but will no doubt be best remembered by fans for his wonderfully obscure 1980 film The Boogey […]

The post Rest in Peace: Director Ulli Lommel appeared first on Dread Central.

By Jacob Oller

A murderer’s house should feel like one. ased on the same real-life horrors as Fritz Lang’s M, 1973’s The Tenderness of Wolves, directed by Ulli Lommel, constricts its protagonist to a tight, uncomfortably shot apartment. Full of strange angles, interesting camera movements, and other cinematic techniques used to emphasize the apartment’s dimensions, Lommel’s film explores […]

The article The Best Laid Floor Plans: ‘The Tenderness of Wolves’ and Space appeared first on Film School Rejects.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. Courtesy of Janus Film.On the occasion of a comprehensive retrospective the Tiff Bell Lightbox (October 28 - December 23), the need to summarize the thirty plus films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder seems not just daunting, but reductive. How to simplify someone who both evolved and contradicted himself? While typically turning out three films per year between 1966 and his death in 1982, the year 1974 seems like one of the German director’s most unified, at least in terms of one preoccupation: marriage. This particular year seems as possibly a mid-way between Fassbinder’s working out-the-kinks genre exercises (The American Soldier, Love Is Colder Than Death) and the later, lavish international co-productions based on esteemed literary works (Despair, Querelle). The diversity upon which the holy union is depicted can be detected if just judging by each of the three’s own source material; Ali: Fear Eats the Soul a...

An ongoing column that draws clear lines between high art cinema and low trash exploitation. Genre cinema has often been thought to be the antithesis of the arthouse. Sure, people accept that there are artistically inclined genre films but these are often thought to be the exception and not the rule. While these lines have…

The post The Art of Trash: Ulli Lommel’s The Tenderness Of The Wolves appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

Donald Trump vs. Starbucks' War on Christmas. The War on Christmas: The movies that come to mind We're still in November, but the War on Christmas – according to online buzz, a second cousin once removed of the War on Cops – has begun. Weeping and gritting of teeth has seized certain population segments in the U.S.A. (and perhaps other countries as well) after Fox News, that beacon of intellectual freedom at the end of the cable news tunnel, announced that … Starbucks' holiday season cups are a) red b) devoid of Christmas decorations. Could it be a satanic conspiracy disguised as politically correct inclusiveness? The result of a communist takeover at the Seattle-headquartered company? Cruel and unusual Christian persecution in the form of paper cups? Your guess is as good as mine. Far-right Republican icon, U.S. presidential candidate, and 2015 political circus ringmaster Donald Trump seems to think that Starbucks...

At long last, a worthy digital transfer has been granted the rather grim and horrific Tenderness of the Wolves, an obscure title from the extensive universe of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, here serving as producer. The fourth title assembled under Fassbinder’s production company Tango-Film, Ulli Lommel takes on directorial duty for what stands as the his most notable title. But Lommel’s contributions take a back seat to leading star and screenwriter Kurt Raab. Both members of Fassbinder’s extensive cinematic troupe, having starred in 1969’s Love is Colder Than Death, along with several future affiliations, the film’s production history proves to have its own potent elements dictating the final memorable outcome.

Padded out with a ton of notable Fassbinder faces, it’s a wonder this title isn’t more well-known, even as a cult favorite. But its explicit homosexual content, derided as harmful and negative at the time,...

The catalyst behind Ulli Lommel's perverse horror masterpiece might be writer-actor-art director Kurt Raab. He's almost too convincing as Fritz Haarmann, an infamous real-life serial killer of young men who masks his abominable activities behind a snitch relationship with the police. He's an obscene cross between Peter Lorre's child-murderer and the ghoul Nosferatu. Tenderness of the Wolves Region B Blu-ray + Pal DVD Arrow Video (UK) 1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 80 min. / Die Zärtlichkeit der Wölfe / Street Date November 2, 2015 / £12.99 Starring Kurt Raab, Jeff Roden, Margit Carstensen, Ingrid Caven, Wolfgang Schenck, Brigitte Mira, Rainer Hauer, Barbara Bertram, Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Cinematography Jürgen Jürges Production Design Kurt Raab Makeup Elfie Kruse Editing Thea Eymèsz Original Music Peter Raben Written by Kurt Raab Produced by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michael Fengler Directed by Ulli Lommel

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Movie horrors can't compete with real life any more, in an overcrowded, often hostile world that seems to encourage terrible crimes.

Stars: Kurt Raab, Jeff Roden, Margit Carstensen, Ingrid Caven, Wolfgang Schenck, Brigitte Mira, Rainer Hauer, Barbara Bertram, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Heinrich Giskes, Friedrich Karl Praetorius | Written by Kurt Raab | Directed by Uli Lommel

Normally films about serial killers focus on the creation of a monster, often focusing on the hero hunting them down and stopping them. What if the serial killer is somebody we become sympathetic to? That is the focus of Tenderness of the Wolves, aka Die Zärtlichkeit der Wölfe, the latest film to get the Arrow Video Blu-ray treatment…

Tenderness of the Wolves is based on the real life story of Fritz Haarmann a known thief and known gay man, at a time when it was illegal to be in Germany. Given a special license by the police to act for them as an informer, his illegal actions were often ignored. When too many young men were going...

Stars: Suzanna Love, Nicholas Love, Ron James, John Carradine, Raymond Boyden, Felicite Morgan, Bill Rayburn, Llewelyn Thomas | Written by Ulli Lommel, Suzanna Love, David Herschel | Directed by Ulli Lommel

88 Films have really been treating horror fans well lately with their recent titles and they are keeping that trend going with their latest release in their Slasher Classics Collection, The Bogey Man. A film that actually made it onto the Video Nasty list, Ulli Lommel’s horror film isn’t what you would call a conventional slasher but it’s a good one none the less.

When Lacey (Suzanna Love) witnesses her brother Willy (Nicholas Love) kill a man through the reflection of a mirror they are both haunted by the memory and leaving them with a fear of mirrors and Willy unable to speak ever since. Twenty years later when the mirror is shattered the man’s evil spirit is...

With all the good press big budget films get today, We sometimes forget that out there in the cinematic shadows lay some of the worst movies ever laid to film. Today we take you on a voyage into a world of shoddy production value and atrocious acting. Welcome to the… Ten Worst (and undoubtedly Strangest) Movies Ever Made!

*Summaries Courtesy of IMDb*

10. Plan 9 from Outer Space

Premiered: 1958

Directed By: Edward D. Wood Jr.

Summary: Aliens resurrect dead humans as zombies and vampires to stop human kind from creating the Solaranite (a sort of sun-driven bomb).

9. Troll 2

Premiered: 1990

Directed By: Claudio Fragasso

Summary: A young child is terrified to discover that a planned family trip is to be haunted by vile plant-eating monsters out of his worst nightmare.

8. Santa Claus

Premiered: 1959

Directed By: Rene Cardona

Summary: With the aid of Merlin, Santa Claus must defeat the evil machinations of...

Much fun is to be had with inept directors, whether is is wetting yourself laughing at their terrible films or putting out a petition for them to retire. What is amusing to note about inept directors is their profligacy and intestinal fortitude. The critics may hate them but they keep on beavering away adding new inept films to their repertoire whether people like it or not.

Most of the directors in this list are cult directors. There may be terrible directors working in mainstream Hollywood. I don’t know mainstream so I can’t comment upon them, but I would be interested if you told me about them below. Feel free to add your very own inept director and enjoy the list!

10. Ulli Lommel

Given a break by Fassbinder as an actor, Lommel starred in many Fassbinder films which I quite enjoy, being a student of the German language. When Fassbinder died,...

No, we are not talking about the 1980 Ulli Lommel flick, the awful 2005 flick (or its senseless sequels, though the third wasn't too bad), or even the failed worm-eating WWE grappler. What we have here could be the most terrifying iteration of the mythical character yet, if only because it's on a kids' channel.

According to Deadline, Nickelodeon Original Films has acquired the supernatural family pitch Boogeymen from writer John Sullivan. Described as a Men in Black-style adventure (Ugh!) involving a fearful kid who partners up with the Boogeyman to investigate paranormal activity (double Ugh!), the film has Howard Deutch (Pretty In Pink) attached to direct.

Look for more on this one unfortunately soon. I just feel dirty.

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DVD Release Date: Aug. 27, 2013

Price: DVD $69.95

Studio: Criterion

R. W. Fassbinder's Beware of a Holy Whore (1971)

From the very beginning of his incandescent career, the New German Cinema enfant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder (World on a Wire) refused to play by the rules. His politically charged, experimental first films, made at an astonishingly rapid rate between 1969 and 1971, were influenced by the work of the antiteater, an avant-garde stage troupe that he had helped found in Munich.

Collected in Eclipse Series 39: Early Fassbinder are five of those fascinating and confrontational works; whether a self-conscious meditation on American crime movies, a scathing indictment of xenophobia in contemporary Germany, or an off-the-wall look at the dysfunctional relationships on film sets, each is a startling glimpse into the mind of a twenty-something man who would become one of the cinema’s most prolific artists.

Love Is Colder Than Death (1969)

For his debut, Fassbinder fashioned an acerbic,...

While slasher cinema owes a stylistic debt to Bob Clark's 1974 classic Black Christmas, it was John Carpenter's 1978 masterpiece Halloween that kicked the genre into overdrive, with dozens of productions and studios stumbling all over each other to get a piece of the slasher pie. One low-budget entry unfairly labeled a Halloween knock-off is Ulli Lommel's 1980 film The Boogeyman – a fascinating, stylish and entertaining little flick that I think deserves more love than it tends to get. Lommel began his film career as an actor and protégé of legendary German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who produced Lommel's acclaimed 1973 film The Tenderness of Wolves – a psychodrama based on the real-life exploits of serial killer Fritz Haarmann. Lommel's cinematic fascination with serial killers would continue much later in his career... but I'll get to that later. After directing a couple of oddball art films, Lommel took the helm of The Boogeyman,...

That's right, "Disaster Movie," at least according to IMDb users who voted. The comedy, a send-up of disaster flicks, received 55,112 votes. But here's the more interesting part. Paris Hilton topped the charts with two movies appearing in the Top 10 namely "The Hottie & the Nottie" and 2006's "Pledge This."

So without further adieu, here's your Top 100 Worst Movies of All Time!

Rank Rating Title Votes

1. 1.9 Disaster Movie (2008) 55,112

2. 1.9 The Hottie & the Nottie (2008) 27,996

3. 1.9 Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004) 20,247

4. 1.9 Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) 27,348

5. 1.9 Pledge This! (2006) 13,121

6. 1.9 Die Hard Dracula (1998) 2,641

7. 1.9 Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010) 4,842

8. 1.9 Anne B. Real (2003) 3,325

9. 1.9 From Justin to Kelly (2003) 21,887

10. 1.9 Going Overboard (1989) 7,713

11. 1.9 Track of the Moon Beast (1976) 2,272

12. 1.9 Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues (1985) 2,021

13. 1.9 The Maize: The Movie (2004) 2,284

14. 1.9 The Pod People (1983) 3,089

15. 1.9 The Wild World of Batwoman (1966) 3,097

16. 1.9 Turks in Space (2006) 9,634

17. 1.9 Who's Your Caddy? (2007) 12,991

18. 1.9 The Creeping Terror (1964) 2,764

19. 1.9 Crossover (2006) 8,350

20. 1.9 Girl in Gold Boots (1968) 2,532

21. 2.0 Miss Castaway and the Island Girls (2004) 1,945

22. 2.0 Space Mutiny (1988) 4,376

23. 2.0 Daniel - Der Zauberer (2004) 12,159

24. 2.0 The Starfighters (1964) 2,726

25. 2.0 Fat Slags...

The Profane Exhibit is an anthology of 13 horror films from different countries. My favorite German director, Uwe Boll, made his about that really sick story about an Austrian father who locked his daughter in the basement and raped her.

You Know Boll has been dying to make a film about this since he first heard the story in 2008. Apparently, an Austrian man decided to rape his daughter, repeatedly, and locked her in a basement for 24 years. 24 Years. She had kids down there, and everything. Neighbors didn't know, no one knew. Even his wife, the girl's mother, claimed not to know exactly what happened. How fucked is that?

So fucked that Boll knew he needed to film it.

I'm not sure excatly what The Profane Exhibit is, except that is seems to be some kind of anthology of short horror frolm 13 different directors. Interesting to note, one of the directors is a woman,...

With a title like Low Budget Hell: Making Movies With John Waters, this memoir by Robert Maier is going to appeal instantly to fans of the iconic cult movie director. However, Maier’s book also goes way beyond just working with Waters and is an absolute must read for anybody interested in the making of independent movies, from the makers themselves to the people who just love watching them.

Clearly, though, the main selling point is Maier’s unabashed recollections of making films with Waters, all the way from Female Trouble to Cry-Baby. For a long time, the two young filmmakers were very close friends. So, Maier is able to paint a portrait of Waters that fans of his always knew existed, but that he would never divulge himself.

Waters has always been extremely crafty in creating his public persona of the quirky, outsider oddball. However, one only has to...

Actor best known for her nuanced portrayal of a faded screen idol in Veronika Voss, directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

According to the German actor and writer Peter Berling, the most important thing for the director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was "to surround himself with people who needed him for their own survival … from the beginning he wanted to create a 'family', something he himself never had". One devoted member of this family was Rosel Zech, who has died of bone cancer aged 69.

Sadly, Veronika Voss (1982), in which Zech became a Fassbinder star, was the director's penultimate film, released less than four months before his death, at the age of 37, of a drug overdose. "I never felt so comfortable with any other director," Zech declared. "We were just at the beginning and had many plans together." One of these was a biopic of the writer and activist Rosa Luxemburg, the uncompleted...

The reason I do what I do for Killer Film is because of one man: Chas Balun. Some of you may have never heard of him, but if you were a horror fan growing up in the 80′s and 90′s, he was the rebel reviewer you looked up to who never pandered to filmmakers and studios. His work in Fangoria magazine was perfection, and his column in Gorezone, Piece ‘O Mind, is the stuff of legend. Sadly, we lost Chas. late in 2009 to cancer, but I was lucky enough to become good friends with him, and every article I publish has a little of his style and charisma in them.

Here is a sample of his massive writing skills, taken from his book The Connoisseur’s Guide to the Contemporary Horror Film, which is a foreword into my interview with director Ulli Lommel.

An ambitious thriller with an intriguing storyline...

I really am a glass is half full kind of guy. I look past director’s not-so amazing films and concentrate on when they were on fire and hitting their marks. Filmmaker Ulli Lommel was rocking and rolling in the 80′s with one diverse horror movie after another. There is nothing more exciting for me than introducing an obscure flick to a new audience. Ulli Lommel granted me a rare interview on The Devonsville Terror, a tale of witchcraft, which was quite daring at the time considering American audiences were in the midst of a slasher craze.

Jason Bene: Within the horror community you are best known for your 1980 film The Boogeyman. I have always had a soft spot for The Devonsville Terror and respected the fact that you were making something fresh and original. What made you decide to do a modern day witchcraft movie?

Ulli Lommel: I...

If you're hiking in the woods of an area in Kentucky named Caveland you're probably just asking for bad things to happen. Pelt purports to tell the tale of the bad things that befell seven hikers in July of 1991 when they decided to go camping in the woods of Caveland, Kentucky.

Sudden, gory death hides behind every bush. When beautiful Jennifer and her friends embark on a backpacking excursion deep into the woods, they come chest to chest with an evil as old as the trees. Listen...above the crackling of the campfire...is that the sound of a twig snapping or your best girlfriend's neck? The interlopers discover that when the locals warn you not to trespass, it's a warning you should heed.

Justin Welborn (The Crazies, The Final Destination), Ashley Watkins, and Travis Goodman star in this horror feature from director Richard Swindell, who also wrote the film with Oscar D. Gomez.

He's got plans to direct a couple of titans of American literature  - namely William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian - but it seems that James Franco's next directorial effort will take him to the true crime section of the bookstore, with the news that he's set to adapt Philip Carlo's The Night Stalker, and also play its subject, serial killer Richard Ramirez.Ramirez, currently awaiting execution in California, was responsible for a catalogue of appalling murders in the mid 1980s, and has been the subject of intense scrutiny for killer-philes ever since. A salacious version of his story was released only last year in the form of Ulli Lommel's Night Stalker, but screenwriter Nicolas Constantine promises the current version will not dwell on the gory details."This isn't a horror film," he explains. "Nor does it glorify Ramirez in any way.

With all the good press big budget films get today, We sometimes forget that out there in the cinematic shadows lay some of the worst movies ever laid to film. Today, B3K takes you on a voyage into a world of shoddy production value and atrocious acting. Welcome to… The Top Ten Worst Movies Ever Made.

*Summaries Courtesy of IMDb*

10. Plan 9 from Outer Space

Premiered: 1958

Directed By: Edward D. Wood Jr.

Summary: Aliens resurrect dead humans as zombies and vampires to stop human kind from creating the Solaranite (a sort of sun-driven bomb).

9. Troll 2

Premiered: 1990

Directed By: Claudio Fragasso

Summary: A young child is terrified to discover that a planned family trip is to be haunted by vile plant-eating monsters out of his worst nightmare.

8. Santa Claus

Premiered: 1959

Directed By: Rene Cardona

Summary: With the aid of Merlin, Santa Claus must defeat the evil machinations of the devil Pitch to ruin Christmas.

New DVD celebrates the 80s heyday of video nasties - a genre that didn't quite corrupt the nation's youth … or its dogs

Hard to believe now, but back in the early 1980s Britain was under attack. A sustained attack from a foe more insidious and corrupting than anything that had assailed our shores before; a demonic force that destroyed our mental health, that could deprave all who came into contact with it. Highly scientific studies proved beyond all doubt the peril we were all in, especially our children and even our pets. This was the menace that came from something called a "Video Nasty".

There are two things you should know about that opening paragraph: firstly, everything in it was at one time believed by our leaders of the day (yes, even the bit about pets). And second, they were completely wrong on every count. It was a shameful period in our recent history,...

Director: Ulli Lommel Writers: Ulli Lommel, Richard Hell, Robert Madero Starring: Carole Bouquet, Richard Hell, Ulli Lommel, Andy Warhol During my teens, I feasted on a steady diet of punk rock movies, everything from Rock 'n' Roll High School to Suburbia, The Decline of Western Civilization to Dogs in Space to Sid and Nancy to Rude Boy to Another State of Mind to The Blank Generation (1976) to Border Radio to Breaking Glass to The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle to Gleaming the Cube to Jubilee to The Last Pogo to Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains to Liquid Sky to The Punk Rock Movie to Repo Man to Surf Nazis Must Die to Thrashin’ to Urgh! A Music War to Stop Making Sense…but one film that always eluded me was Ulli Lommel’s Blank Generation (not to be confused with Ivan Kral’s 1976 documentary The Blank GenerationBlank Generation on DVD.

1980 was an amazing time of ups and downs. Jimmy Carter was President, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back was released, John Bonham of Led Zeppelin died of alcohol poisoning, comedian Richard Pryor was badly burned trying to freebase cocaine, and Ulli Lommel's Blank Generation was unleashed on an unsuspecting populace.

Yes, that Ulli Lommel. Some 30 years ago he was honing his craft on Blank Generation, the story of Nada (Carole Bouquet), a beautiful French journalist on assignment in New York, who records the life and work of an up-and-coming punk rock star, Billy (portrayed by legendary punk pioneer Richard Hell). Soon she enters into a volatile relationship with him and must decide whether to continue with it or return to her lover, a fellow journalist trying to track down the elusive Andy Warhol.

Here's a look at Blank Generation as it can only be interpreted by Trembles:

Wet Blanket Generator!

It's not a huge list of home video releases this week, but some pretty huge films are on it, including The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which is getting a midnight release this Saturday morning, March 20th. But we know that's not what you're here for -- more than likely you'll be picking up flicks like The Fourth Kind, Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy, and/or (our pick of the week) Ninja Assassin.

The most offbeat entry is definitely Blurred Realities, another trilogy, but this time only one is true horror: American Zombie, a documentary about high-functioning zombies living in Los Angeles and their struggles to gain acceptance in human society. The other two parts of the trio are The Hole Story and American Shopper, both of which are also pseudo-docs about a "black hole" that opens up on the surface of North Long Lake in Minnesota and one man's passionate and...

Although his films are hated by the vast majority of those unfortunate enough to stumble across them, German-born filmmaker Ulli Lommel keeps pumping them out like there’s no tomorrow. His latest endeavors have been of the “true crime” variety: “Son of Sam”, “Green River Killer”, and “B.T.K. Killer” are just a few of the offerings he’s bestowed upon the movie-going public over the past few years, and if his next project is any indication, the man doesn’t plan to cease and desist anytime soon. Lommel’s 2010 yarn “D.C. Sniper” chronicles the wave of terror that gripped the Maryland/Virginia area during October of 2002. Genre Veteran Ken Foree will portray John Allen Muhammad, the disturbed mastermind behind these horrific highway shootings. Personally, I have no interest in the film, as the subject matter is a little too fresh in our collective memory to be considered as cinematic entertainment,...

News that Ken Foree is starring in a movie about the DC Sniper shootings would normally prove promising. Except DC Sniper is the latest from Ulli Lommel, the master of plotless, no-budget, factually inaccurate, pseudo-art exploitation flicks about real-life mass murderers. On the plus side, this does not look like the typical artsy-fartsy crappola we've come to expect from Lommel. On the other hand, just wait until you see the trailer. Oh, my.

The DC Sniper (also referred to as the Beltway Sniper by the media) committed a three-week reign of terror throughout the DC/Maryland/ Virginia area in October 2002. Ten innocent people were murdered. Three more suffered serious gunshot wounds. It was a feeding frenzy for the media that led to a public panic. The arrests revealed that there were two snipers working together: 42-year-old John Allen Muhammad (played by Foree in the film) and 17-year-old John Malvo. Muhammed...

The first decade of the new millennium has come to an end, and that means it is now time for film sites all over the web to begin posting their various retrospectives and lists recalling the decade that was. I generally as a rule dislike such lists because they are always so subjective. Then I said screw it and took it upon myself to do one of my own naming the ten worst horror movies of the past decade. Besides, people love bitching on the Internet about lists like this, and who am I to deny readers yet another excuse to get into pointless flame wars over personal opinions.

Of course, this list is just my personal opinion which is not legally binding ... unless Proposition 304 passes. And we all pray that it will.

I set two rules when putting this list together: Only horror movies that received fairly wide theatrical...

Could it be that after years of making no-budget, nearly plotless, factually inaccurate, pseudo-art films based on the exploits of real-life mass murders (like Nightstalker, review here), Ulli Lommel is actually about to try his hand at making a real motion picture, albeit still a really low budget and possibly factually inaccurate film based on a real-life serial killer? How else does one explain Ken Foree signing on to star in Lommel's take on the DC Sniper?

Granted that Ken Foree is hardly a huge name, but considering the no-name talent Lommel has had star in his output the last few years, signing Ken Foree is akin to Uwe Boll wrangling Tom Cruise to star as "Bounty Bob" in his big screen version of Miner 2049er.

For those in need of a refresher, the DC Sniper (also referred to as the Beltway Sniper) committed a three-week reign of terror in October of 2002 throughout the Washington,...

With the titles of the Ghosthouse Underground label filling up the majority of their October horror DVD slate, November brings us Lionsgate's sloppy seconds. I mean, a horror movie getting dumped onto DVD a week or two after Halloween strikes me as an afterthought on the distributor's part. Lionsgate has three such chillers getting the post-Halloween DVD mistreatment.

First up, on November 3rd, is The Beast Within - no relation to the notorious 1982 creature feature about a woman raped by a monster who gives birth to a son that as a teenager transforms into a giant cicada creature. This Beast Within is actually a retitling of a German film originally called Virus Undead from director Wolf Wolff (haven't heard a name like that since Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever director Kaos) about a strain of avian flu that turns victims into zombies.

"Robert is driving with two friends to his hometown,...

Godzilla fought King Kong. Alien battled Predator. Freddy faced off with Jason. Mega Shark duked it out with Giant Octopus. Now we're about to get Dahmer Vs. Gacy. No, it isn't the ultimate Ulli Lommel crossover movie. It's a horror comedy that pits two of the most notorious serial killers of all time against each other and unscrupulous rogue military scientists. Set your taste buds to tasteless.

A secret government program is cloning infamous serial killers and genetically splicing their DNA into a super serial killer for undisclosed purposes. Ultra low budget indie genre movie mainstays Ford Austin and Randal Malone star as the resurrected Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy, respectively. Dahmer Vs. Gacy, also directed by Ford Austin, is slated to be the first of five underground Grindhouse-style films produced by Angry Baby Monkey Pictures. The film is currently in post-production and gearing up for select independent film festivals.

I've got a wacky idea. Indie horror filmmakers Ulli Lommel and Michael Feifer should have a fight, and only the winner is allowed to make any more movies based on the exploits of real-life serial killers. I'd be cheering for Feifer, if only because he at least attempts to make actual movies.

Michael Feifer has been quite the busy beaver of late with two serial killer thrillers debuting on DVD: last month's B.T.K. (review), which Heather found surprisingly effective, and next month's Bundy: A Legacy of Evil (review), which I found to be quite pointless. Feifer has yet another coming to DVD in the form of Drifter: Henry Lee Lucas starring Antonio Sabato, Jr. as the notorious serial killer responsible for 350 murders during his rampage from 1975 to 1983.

Antonio Sabato, Jr. as Henry Lee Lucas? Say what? I know what Henry Lee Lucas looked like. You can slap some scruffy facial hair on Antonio Sabato,...

A little while ago I did an interview with Kane Hodder; in it we discussed a good portion of his out-of-costume acting work: stuff where he doesn’t have a mask on, and such. I brought up his quite good performance in director Michael Feifer’s previous serial killer biopic, Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield. I told him I was looking forward to his and Feifer’s newest collaboration, and a little while later B.T.K. showed up in my mailbox.

You’ve probably noticed the scores I’ve given the film by now. Keep in mind that Hodder’s still the man. His performance as Dennis Rader, the notorious killer on whom the film is based, really elevates the production a great deal, not just in the masterful physicality he exhibits, but in his truly inspired delivery. A lot of the dialogue in B.T.K. is fairly expositional, often telling...

If you have a love of cinema like I once did or if you appreciate competent filmmaking devoid of glaring faults like obvious lights and digital zooms and care about things like composition, acting, writing, direction, costumes, editing, lighting, focus, production values, character development or even the more subjective concepts of heart and decency, I implore you, for the sake of maintaining these invaluable passions, don’t see this film.

I simply cannot begin to describe the ineptitude director Ulli Lommel exhibits. From its opening frames Basline Killer is a soulless, horrid excuse of a film. This is coming from a guy who loves digital photography and Mumblecore. It’s best not even to describe everything that’s wrong with it in detail - it can't be done. I once wrote an 1,800 word diatribe about the Wicker Man remake detailing everything that was wrong with it. I called it the...

• Dark Sky Films gave Fango the scoop on the DVDetails for Plague Town, its first in-house production. The grisly killer-kids flick hits disc May 12.

Directed by DVD documentaries veteran David Gregory from a script he wrote with John Cregan, Plague Town is set in an Irish village where a family of stranded vacationers are terrorized by deformed children. The special features include:

• Audio commentary by Gregory • A Visit to Plague Town making-of featurette • The Sound of Plague Town featurette • Trailer

Retail price is $24.98. The movie will also hit more big screens (and our March Chicago and April La Fango cons) prior to disc; we’ll have that info shortly. See the official website here and read our set-visit report in Fango #281, on sale this month.

• E1 Entertainment, formerly Koch Entertainment, gave Fango the word that it will distribute Critical Mass’ DVDs of Maurice Devereaux’s End Of The Line and...