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I hate to say it, but I don’t think Hysterical Psycho was released to the public as first time director Dan Fogler intended. When the film first starts up, there’s an anecdotal voice-over that informs us the final product was supposed to be mostly black and white, but “since the post production house screwed it up, it shall forever be known as the red-headed stepchild version.” It’s a disappointing shame, too, because the black and white filter would have absolutely fit Fogler’s intended atmosphere, blending off-broadway overproduction with bloody, vile brutality. Incomparably independent in every sense of the word (estimated budget of $150,000), this bizarre horror comedy has been sitting around since 2009, but thanks to the emerging Video On Demand marketplace, Fogler’s passion project is finally reaching nationwide audiences – but is it truly ready?

Playing as a Hitchcockian mystery and horror homage all wrapped in one,...

After making his directorial debut with horror-comedy Hysterical Psycho, Dan Fogler returns behind the helm for his sophomore feature, co-directing the upcoming comedy, Don Peyote.

Fogler and co-director Michael Canzoniero have assembled a brilliant supporting cast to join the former on screen, and in case you’re in need of any persuading, the first trailer has just launched over on Yahoo Movies.

Warren Allman is an unemployed stoner who finally finds a purpose in life after an unpleasant encounter with a homeless man preaching the end is near. Fueled by vivid apocalyptic dreams, Warren becomes obsessed with 2012 doomsday theories and decides to make a documentary on the subject while his fiancé is busy planning their wedding.

Fogler leads the ensemble cast, recruiting Wallace Shawn, Speed Levitch, Abel Ferrara, Pinchbeck, Jay Baruchel, Josh Duhamel, Topher Grace, and of course Anne Hathaway along for the ride.

Fogler and Canzoniero are directing from a script they co-wrote,...

Funnyman Dan Fogler is looking to embrace his more sinister side with the new film Hysterical Psycho, and we have your first details and artwork! Go ahead, kids! Yuck it up!

Directed by Fogler, Hysterical Psycho stars Noah Bean, Lennon Parham, Deborah S. Craig, Kelly Hutchinson, Ariel Shafir, Sarah Saltzberg, and Gilbert Gottfried.

Look for it on February 18th via Indican Pictures.

Synopsis

The feature debut of Dan Fogler offers up a Hitchcockian homage mixed with fart jokes that will leave you peeing your pants from both comic laughter and horror-induced cringing.

Follow along as Strange Lenny and his merry band of misfits take a trip to the woods of Maine to visit Moon Lake. Unbeknownst to them, Moon Lake is imbued with “lunar radiation” that can unbalance any mind unfortunate enough to come near it. Of course, our nubile youngsters travel to this bed of lunacy, and surprise, surprise...

We like to get together with Dan Fogler every few months to chat about his latest projects and get a few updates on some older ones. I had the pleasure of sitting down with him just before Thanksgiving to discuss his new graphic novel Moon Lake 2, which is now available from the fine folks at Archaia. I loved the madcap lunacy of the first volume but this one has somehow managed to top the insanity with even more sex, violence and twisted humor. Check out the video below to see what Dan has to say about this project, as well as a little update on the long overdue Hysterical Psycho. And check back in a few days for the second part of the interview where we discuss some of his upcoming film projects!

And for all you New Yorkers reading this right now, Dan Fogler will be at Forbidden Planet...

Even our most casual readers seem to know that we are big fans of Dan Fogler at Wamg. I love chatting with the man and our interviews always seem to go off topic in the best possible way. I recently got the chance to talk with him about a slew of projects he is working on.

Hellbenders

Man Up

 

Hysterical Psycho & Moon Lake At Comic Con

 

Don Peyote

 

Fathered!

@Mrdanfogler talks Twitter

Randomness

As I already said, our interviews tend to go way off topic. Here are some random but strangely hilarious moments from our chat.

Dan Fogler On Sculpture

Dan talks about a new hobby he picked up.

We also talked a lot about Take Me Home Tonight & the awesomely 80s Atomic Tom music video. I will post that footage when the film is released on DVD, Blu-Ray & VOD on July 19th!

Jerry Cavallaro . www.JerryCavallaro.com...

Dan Fogler is probably best known these days for his roles in "Fanboys" and "Balls of Fury," but it's his role as writer and director of "Hysterical Psycho" that set the stage for his first project in the comics world, Archaia's "Moon Lake" graphic novel.

I had a chance to sit down with Fogler during New York Comic Con to discuss the book, have a few laughs, and take a little tour of "Moon Lake" with the creator as my guide.

"It's like an anthology," said Fogler of how "Moon Lake" connects with the world he created for the wild horror film he wrote and directed. "'Hysterical Psycho' could be one of the many stories that happen at Moon Lake."

"The region of Moon Lake has been inherently evil since the beginning of time," he intoned in classic horror-narrator voice. "It's intertwined with our own history."

While Fogler...

Archaia and Dan Fogler have announced original graphic novel horror anthology Moon Lake. The publisher is working with the writer and director and his company Unkatush, Inc. on the hardback collection. The stories are all set around the titular lake, which was the setting of Fogler movie Hysterical Psycho. "The idea for the graphic novel came from wanting to expand the world of Hysterical Psycho," said Fogler. "The tone of the film is like Alfred Hitchcock on acid meets Evil Dead, so I thought, why not do Hitchcock Presents on acid, (more)...

Recently, I posted an interview with Dan Fogler (Fanboys, Balls of Fury) about his Atom.com webseries M’Larky. The first season just ended (Watch Here) so I thought I’d post some of the other cool stuff Dan mentioned during our interview.

In the video below, Dan breaks the news about his new film Don Peyote. This is his second feature as a writer/director but unlike Hysterical Psycho Dan also stars in this one. After the interview, I got to see some footage from the film and it is going to surprise you. This is a very different role for Dan and his comparison to Woody Allen is spot on. The film also has some rather surprising cameos by Jay Baruchel and Anne Hathaway. They are still deep in production on this but I have no doubt that this is going to be one very interesting flick.

Dan...

Last Tuesday night I went to Bar 13 for a preview of Atom.com’s newest original web series, M’Larky. Dan Fogler (Balls Of Fury, Fanboys) created the series, which he also stars in along with Josh Warren, Tj Hassan, Jeffrey Ross, Gilbert Gottfried, and Ariel Shafir. Here is the plot according to the official Facebook page:

Jon M’larky is a renegade cop who partners up with Chicago Cubbs, a man torn with revenge over the death of his cousin Gel Roy, to take down the worlds most notorious drug lord Toblerone. Produced by Studio 13.

This description does not do the show justice because it is far more insane. The show is a barrage of hilarious and over the top homages to classic cop movies and TV shows told through green screen action, video game footage and one-liners. The storyline is extremely loose but that is only to fit...

What is a romantic comedy, exactly? I’ll attempt to answer that briefly by explaining how I define a romantic comedy. Of course, there has to be romance and there has to be comedy, but more importantly the story needs to be primarily focused on the development of a romantic relationship. So, why do I bother to bring this up when it seems so obvious that Love Happens is a romantic comedy? Because it’s not.

So the film has romance and it has comedy, but the primary focus of the story is Not the romantic relationship between Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston, as the marketing of the film would have you believe. Love Happens is a much deeper story than the average rom-com, but for the sake of reviewing the film, we’ll just assume it fits nicely into my abnormally strict definition of what make a romantic comedy.

One of the best things about writing for this site is getting to meet some really awesome people. I first spoke with Dan Fogler back at Tribeca when he was promoting his insane horror-comedy ‘Hysterical Psycho’. I met up with him again in June to talk more about the film but we unfortunately had to cut the interview short. We finally met up late last week to finish it up. I filmed over 90 minutes and still have a ton of great stuff to edit but I wanted to post some stuff now.

In the first video, Dan has a special introduction for our site and then announces some big news regarding ‘Hysterical Psycho’. (Spoiler: It’s coming to theaters!) The second video kills the rumor that he plans to fill John Candy’s shoes in the supposed remake of ‘Uncle Buck’. The third video is all about some more films...

This year I was awarded with my first experience at a fully robust film festival. I’ve been to the occasional movie screening or two, but unfortunately have never managed to get to multiple flicks at one particular event. So it is with great excitement that I can relay to you a roundup of the movies I was lucky enough to attend at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.

Cropsey

If you’ve checked out my piece on the film (read it here), which I naturally encourage you to do, the sheer enthusiasm I have for this documentary is likely obvious. When I initially read the concept (filmmakers investigating their own hometown’s urban legend), I almost expected a ghost hunter kind of thing and wasn’t too hip to it. Thankfully, Cropsey is much smarter, more intriguing and more heartbreaking than a first person hunt for ghouls.

It’s a film modeled after such instant classics as “American Graffiti” and “Dazed and Confused.” It features big names like Topher Grace, Anna Faris and Michelle Trachtenberg. So, why haven’t we seen “Kids in America” yet?

If you’re looking for the answer, you might want to start inside Dan Fogler’s nose.

“That is called ‘Young Americans’ now,” the “Balls of Fury” funnyman told me recently when I asked what had happened to the hilarious-looking film whose set I visited in early 2007. “I think that is going to open this year…there’s a lot of talk about it now, but nothing is solidified.”

Unfortunately, the tale of “Young Americans”/”Kids in America” is a long and twisted one that began when Grace was a red-hot actor on the verge of “Spider-Man 3″ superstardom; after he poured himself into writing, producing and starring in the Eighties-set film...

At the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of his directorial debut, actor-turned-filmmaker Dan Fogler ("Balls of Fury," "Fanboys") wanted to kick-off the Q & A by thanking his friends, family and most of all, his fiancé for "keeping me sane." "Well, she's not doing a good job," Fogler's mother yelled from the back of the theater, demonstrating that humor has been passed down in the Fogler family, and nuttiness -- who's to say? And it serves him well -- "Hysterical Psycho" is the kind of crazed slasher film/comedy that Alfred Hitchcock would've made had the famed auteur been able to fully indulge in all his alleged perversities onscreen. Fogler actually made the film in preparation for an acting role as the young Hitchcock, corralling the members of a theater company he started with his friends from Boston University called Stage 13 and taking $200,000 to shoot in the snowy woods of Maine. (The trailer is here.

Dan Fogler is probably the best possible subject for a video interview. Not because he gave me all that much to look at-- the morning after the Tribeca premiere of his movie, Hysterical Psycho, he didn't remove his sunglasses-- but because his facial expressions and turns of phrase are virtually impossible to transcribe properly. Not to mention the Hitchcock impression-- and trust me, you want to watch this video for the Hitchcock impression. Or you could actually check out Hysterical Psycho to see it, since the movie is not only Fogler's directorial debut, but also features him in three roles-- a psychiatrist during the film's prologue, an animated Hitchcock-esque alien in the main part of the film, and himself, the director, in the very meta ending. If that's not enough to intrigue you about this movie, here's how he describes the way they plotted the thing: "The train was in...

In the course of covering Dan Fogler’s Hysterical Psycho at the Tribeca Film Festival (see our review here), Fango chatted up actor Nicholas De Cegli (a.k.a. Nicky Dee, pictured left), who plays “The Giant” in Psycho. He has also appeared in several movies by cult fave Abel Ferrara, and gave us the scoop that the director will soon be revisiting a classic horror icon.

“It’s a takeoff on Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, with Forest Whitaker as Dr. Jekyll and 50 Cent as Mr. Hyde,” the actor tells us, adding, “It's gonna be played totally straight. In this movie, it’s the rich white people who get terrorized, and I’m going to be playing one of those white guys. This is a really great project; he wrote it as a modern-day version of the story, and he’s just waiting for the green light on it.

Dan Fogler is a funny guy, something most people who've seen Balls of Fury or Fanboys would probably already know, but he might also be the last person one might think to tackle the horror genre for his directorial debut, being that he's never appeared in a horror movie as an actor himself. That being said, Hysterical Psycho , which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in the Midnight section last weekend, is a spoof on the famous horror cliché of a group of people stranded in a cabin in the woods and being slaughtered one at a time. To make the movie, Fogler and members of his theater troupe Stage 13 piled into a Winnebago, and traveled up to Maine where they shot the movie on a shoe-string budget, mostly in black and white, reviving many of the horror movie stereotypes...

The idea for this film came from an Off Broadway play Dan Fogler was starring in and Thomas Sullivan was producing. When Fogler was cast as a young Hitchcock in Number Thirteen, he used the opportunity as character study to experience directing a feature horror film. The cast are mostly friends of Fogler and members of his NYC based theatre company Stage 13. The synopsis promises “bloody, fun-filled kills and inventive animation,” a perfect recipe for a successful midnight crowd pleaser.

In case you missed our earlier report, Fanboys and Balls of Fury star Dan Fogler is showing his directorial debut Hysterical Psycho at the Tribeca Film Festival this year. I sat down with him the day after that film's premiere (and after-party) and talked a lot about his venture into horror, but I also couldn't resist getting a post-mortem on Fanboys. You may remember the endless drama over that film's release, involving the Weinstein Company threatening to never release the thing and Star Wars fanboys everywhere dubbing the company's chief "Darth Weinstein." Then the movie was released to critical disdain, leaving the filmmakers frustrated that their original film never saw the light of day. I asked Fogler how he felt about the movie's release in the end, and he put it simply: "They totally missed the boat with that one." He continued, "That movie left a bad taste in a...

The title of Hysterical Psycho (currently playing the Tribeca Film Festival) refers to at least one of the characters and is a pretty good description of the movie itself as well. It’s a berserk, over-the-top, wildly uneven assault of humorous and homagistic horror that’s decidedly not for all tastes—but those who do enjoy its flavor are gonna eat it up.

The feature writing/directing debut of actor Dan Fogler (recently seen paying tribute to a different strain of genre worship in Fanboys) offers up a Hitchcock homage and a fart joke in its first minute, conveyed via old-fashioned black-and-white animation—a fair indication of the breadth and variety of influences at work here. The sequence that follows offers up a history of Moon Lake, which is imbued with “lunar radiation” that can unbalance any mind unfortunate enough to come near it. After a brief color interlude, cut...

Actor Dan Fogler takes a trip off the deep end in Hysterical Psycho , his directorial debut which is now showing at the Tribeca Film Festival ( get showtimes ). Fogler and NYC theater troupe Stage 13 created a hilarious horror lampoon of the stuck-in-a-cabin-with-the-phone-lines-cut-and-the-car-battery-dead ilk. The site of some ancient, angry goings-down between the moon and the earth, rural Moon Lake now holds the strongest amount of insanity-inducing lunar radiation on the planet. When a New York theater troupe travels to those snowy woods to "find themselves," one by one, each member begins to get killed. But who is the killer among them? Did the lunar radiation turn one of the thespians into a crazy killer? And what's up with the groundskeeper and his deaf-mute...

The Eighth Annual Tribeca Film Festival is currently in-progress in New York City (through May 3), and the Fangoria crew is out in force. While you can look for expanded reviews and coverage from the fest to roll out over the next week, we've got our first exclusive video direct from the World Premier of Hysterical Psycho.

Fango's own Michael Gingold caught up with actor Dan Fogler (Fanboys, Balls Of Fury) who donned the writer/director cap for the first time with the film. In addition, actors Ariel Shafir (Bride Wars), Noah Bean (Damages, Fringe), and Randy Baruh joined in to discuss their experiences making this satirical tale of a theatre group faced with evil in a "cabin in the woods."...

I'm not going to review Hysterical Psycho, and believe me, you don't really want me to. Not because my opinions aren't fascinating and important, of course, but when it comes to Hysterical Psycho, my opinion doesn't matter at all. The only opinion that matters is yours, and whether or not you're willing to follow Dan Fogler and company on this crazy spiral into the absurd. Even if you've liked Fogler in his roles in movies like Fanboys and Balls of Fury, it probably won't prepare you for this film, which features Fogler only fleetingly in three different roles. Instead it's the members of his theater company, Stage 13, who take the lead in this spin on the classic horror trope of horny teenagers getting murdered in the woods. Everything about it is a spoof, from the fact that the actors most definitely aren't teenagers to overheated zoom-ins on key clues. But...

Dear LATINHORRORphiles:

I got a pair of tickets for tonight's midnight screening of Dan Fogler 's new horror film, Hysterical Psycho (Tribeca Film Festival) from my friends at Fangoria Magazine. I am looking for a true horror fan to join me as my guest to the screening. The first horrorphile to reach back out to me, and confirm he/she can attend, will score the second ticket to the screening.

More about Hysterical Psycho here --

http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/Hysterical_Psycho.html

Please reply back to this message with your email address and/or cell phone and I will contact the lucky winner with all relevant details. The winner will also get a complimentary entree into our next HORRORphlies #3 screening (Dtb).

There will be Sangre!

Edwin Pagan

Latin Horror

http://www.latinhorror.com/

"Scaring Up A Revolution"...

The Tribeca Film Festival [1] is already underway this week in New York, and one of the things that the festival has become known for over the years is debuting feature films directed by well-known actors. This year one of the movies that is playing at Tribeca is a first-time film from Dan Fogler (Balls of Fury, Fanboys). The movie is a horror-comedy called Hysterical Psycho that parodies the "trapped in a cabin in the woods" subgenre popularized by films like The Evil Dead. A trailer for the film has now hit the web, and while it doesn't show off a ton of footage, I still thought it was pretty amusing. Fogler also wrote a short piece proclaiming his love for Hitchcock in The Huffington Post [2]. Check out the trailer below and if you happen to catch the movie this week at Tribeca, let us know what you thought! [1] http://www.

I must confess that when going over the lineup for this year’s edition of Tribeca that I glossed entirely over all references to Dan Fogler’s Hysterical Psycho, pretty much hating the title and assuming that I would hate the film as well. Well, doing a little bit of catch-up today and saw that the fine lads at Chud had scored themselves a first look at the trailer for the thing and while there’s nothing in there to make me think that the actual movie is going to be great I’ve got to say: Hot damn, they cut themselves one fantastic promo.

In this side-splitting horror send-up, a theater troupe takes a trip up state to the Moonlake Inn Motel, but its nearby lake is full of mind altering lunar radiation, and one of the troupe members is already on the path to insanity. Put them together...

With the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival right around the corner, it was only a matter of time before some goodies started slipping out to the press from their fresh crop of horror offerings!

Today we got our hands on a couple of stills from Dan Folger's horror comedy Hysterical Psycho which will be part of the Festival's Midnight series. You'll find them below along with the trailer for your viewing pleasure!

For a full list of this year's features, visit the official 2009 Tribeca Film Festival site.

Official Synopsis

Hysterical Psycho, directed and written by Dan Fogler (USA): In this side-splitting horror send-up, a theater troupe takes a trip to a country cabin, but its nearby lake is full of lunar radiation, and one of the troupe members is straight-up crazy. Put them together and you get one psycho thespian! Full of bloody, fun-filled kills, a deaf-mute chick, and some big boobs,...

Dan Fogler, actor and playwright, steps behind the camera to tell a tale of insanity and horror in grainy black and white. Part of theatre troupe Stage 13 Dan Fogler meant for "Hysterical Psycho," to be a an acting exercise for his cast, but the film blossomed into something grander. Set to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, this April 24, the film will offer a deaf mute sister for laughs and various offings of characters that will entertain those fortunate enough to live in the New York greater metropolitan area. Have a look at the trailer and synopsis for the film; then, pray that Tony award winning Fogler makes his way over to the sunny west coast or finds wider distribution for his cabin-in-the-woods thriller.

A synopsis for "Hysterical Psycho," here...

The site of some ancient, angry goings-down between the moon and the earth, rural Moon Lake now holds the strongest...

The 2009 Tribeca Film Festival gets underway today in New York City, showcasing a number of notable genre features. In conjunction with the fest, we’re offering free tickets to three of the movies: Dan Fogler’s horror satire Hysterical Psycho, Daniel Benmayor’s survival thriller Paintball and Anders Banke’s Newsmakers, a remake of Johnnie To’s acclaimed Hong Kong crime thriller Breaking News.

The screenings available are as follows:

Hysterical Psycho (pictured): Saturday, April 25 at 11:59 p.m.; Friday, May 1 at 11:59 p.m.

Paintball: Friday, April 24 at 11 p.m.; Monday, April 27 at 10:45 p.m.

Newsmakers: Thursday, April 30 at 2 p.m.; Friday, May 1 at 11:45 p.m.

We’re giving away 10 tickets each, and accepting five more standby names for each screening to assure all tickets are claimed. Tickets will be held at the door and given to the 10 winners until 15 minutes before each screening; after that,...

Dan Fogler will premiere his directorial debut on "Hysterical Psycho" at the Tribeca Film Festival next week. The film is a spoof of cabin in the woods movies, made with Fogler's theater group Stage 13. We now have the trailer for "Psycho" and you can check it out below. Plot: In this side-splitting horror send-up, a theater troupe takes a trip up state to the Moonlake Inn Motel, but its nearby lake is full of mind altering lunar radiation, and one of the troupe members is already on the path to insanity. Fogler will not only make his directorial debut, but writing debut as well. He is best known for roles in such films as "Good Luck Chuck," "Balls of Fury," "Kung Fu Panda" and "Fanboys." Trailer: If you cannot see the player, click here.

This year's eighth annual Tribeca Film Festival opens today with a bevy of selections from 33 countries. Including a mountain of premieres (48 world premieres, 5 international, 14 North American, 2 U.S.) along with 81 directors presenting their projects at the New York City-based festival, Tribeca has a lot going on, though inexplicably, less than previous years.

Running from April 23 - May 3, some of the more interesting films are below: The Girlfriend Experience: "Steven Soderbergh reaffirms his position as a master director with this portrait of a $2,000-an-hour Manhattan escort. With adult film star Sasha Grey as his lead, Soderbergh takes us into the life of a woman who provides her clients the true "girlfriend experience," not just your average date. Sophisticated, worldly, well-dressed, and well-versed in the topics of pre-election politics and issues, Grey's call girl and her accepting trainer boyfriend (Chris Santos) provide us the storyline that guides us through the capitalist underbelly of our society.

Two and a half hours west of Detroit sits the city of Grand Rapids—an unspectacular Midwestern location, but the one where director Philippe Martinez has opted to shoot The Chaos Experiment (a.k.a. The Steam Experiment, the title under which it will be released internationally). With a cast that features such names as Val Kilmer, Armand Assante, Eric Roberts and Patrick Muldoon, along with Quinn Duffy and sexy actresses Eve Mauro, Megan Brown and Cordelia Reynolds, it’s unsurprising that, as Fango arrives on set at 9:00 on a cold Wednesday evening, an excited crowd is gathered behind mildly perturbed-looking security guards, eager to catch a glimpse at the sort of movie stars that rarely set foot in their hometown.

Fango is led to the set where an uneventful bar scene featuring Assante and Martinez’s daughter (making a cameo as a barmaid—the director, whose sister Karinne...

A few days ago I saw this trailer pop up over at Chud and today the fine publicists working on the Tribeca Film Festival run of Dan Fogler's directorial debut Hysterical Psycho were kind enough to send us over a copy of the trailer that fits nicely into our own video player. The trailer is admittedly wild and crazy and all sorts of seizure inducing psychosis, but it also appears to be a lot of fun. I'm interested to see what comes out of Dan Fogler -- yes, Tony award-winning Balls of Fury and Fanboys star Dan Fogler -- will do in his first work as a director. Before you check out the trailer (or after, your choice), here is the film's official synopsis: In this side-splitting horror send-up, a theater troupe takes a trip up state to the Moonlake Inn Motel, but its nearby lake is full of mind altering lunar radiation, and...

Click below to view entire poster

Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for Hysterical Psycho, which will enjoy its premiere in the Midnight Section at this year's Tribeca Film Festival. Actor Dan Fogler (Balls of Fury, Fanboys) makes his directorial debut here with a film described as a "hilarious horror lampoon of the stuck-in-a-cabin-with-the-phone-lines-cut-and-the-car-battery-dead ilk." When a New York theater troupe heads upstate to "find themselves" at the Moon Lake Inn Motel, what they don't realize is that Moon Lake is home to the world's strongest amount of insanity-inducing lunar radiation and that one of the troupe members is already slowly losing their mind. The synopsis promises "bloody, fun-filled kills and inventive animation," and if that's not the perfect recipe for a successful midnight crowd pleaser, then I don't know what is.

Definitely check out the entire freak-tastic poster in the gallery below, and find out more about the...

And here's the rest, including the Midnight Section, all after the break.

Encounters

This collection of engaging and entertaining narrative features and documentaries, a mixture of dark comedies and lighter fare, offers work from returning filmmakers, established talent, and popular subjects, and includes 10 World Premieres. Included in Encounters are performances from Academy Award®-nominated actors Thomas Haden Church, Melissa Leo, Elisabeth Shue; directorial debuts from both Eric Bana and Cheryl Hines (from a screenplay by Adrienne Shelly); stories ranging from an ill-fated man's discovery of inspiration and happiness, dysfunctional families, and unrequited high school crushes to a doc on the emergence of New York’s independent film scene.

• Blank City, directed by Celine Danhier. (USA) - World Premiere, Documentary. Celine Danhier’s kinetic doc mirrors the urgent, anything-goes energy of her subject: the Diy independent film movement that emerged in tandem with punk rock in late ‘70s downtown New York.

The Tribeca Film Festival, which runs April 22 to May 3, 2009, has announced this year's lineup, and it's looking pretty sweet for horror fans!

The Midnight series alone offers seven films that push the boundaries of genre and creativity ranging from a savage game of paintball to the unraveling of an urban legend to a babysitting job gone horribly wrong. Here are the highlights:

Cropsey, directed by Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio, written by Zeman (USA), Documentary: Urban legends - we either dismiss them or accept that they have some grain of truth. Directors Zeman and Brancaccio attempt to uncover one such urban myth as they investigate five missing children and the real-life boogeyman linked to their disappearance in Staten Island during their youth. Will this terrifying journey resolve what has haunted them since childhood?

The House of the Devil, directed and written by Ti West (USA): Set in the early...

The folks behind New York City’s Tribeca Film Festival have announced the lineup of the genre-friendly Midnight section for their 2009 event, which runs April 22-May 3 at assorted Manhattan venues. Among these movies are a quartet of Fango-friendly films making their world premieres.

These features include: The House Of The Devil, from The Roost’s Ti West, about a babysitter (Jocelin Donahue) who takes a job with the wrong family, co-starring Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov and Baghead’s Greta Gerwig (West tells us it’ll have its first show April 25); Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio’s Cropsey, a documentary in which the duo investigate the titular Staten Island urban legend; Hysterical Psycho, written and directed by actor Dan Fogler, in which a theater company treks to a cabin by a lake and runs afoul of bloody murder and other craziness; and Paintball, from Spanish director Daniel Benmayor and writer Mario Schoendorff,...

The folks behind New York City’s Tribeca Film Festival have announced the lineup of the genre-friendly Midnight section for their 2009 event, which runs April 22-May 3 at assorted Manhattan venues. Among these movies are a quartet of Fango-friendly films making their world premieres.

These features include: The House Of The Devil, from The Roost’s Ti West, about a babysitter (Jocelin Donahue) who takes a job with the wrong family, co-starring Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov and Baghead’s Greta Gerwig (West tells us it’ll have its first show April 25); Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio’s Cropsey, a documentary in which the duo investigate the titular Staten Island urban legend; Hysterical Psycho, written and directed by actor Dan Fogler, in which a theater company treks to a cabin by a lake and runs afoul of bloody murder and other craziness; and Paintball, from Spanish director Daniel Benmayor and writer Mario Schoendorff,...