Friday 30 December 2016

Competition: Win Satanic on DVD

Satanic is out on DVD on January 2nd And to celebrate we have a great competition for you and 3 copies of the DVD to give away.

Synopsis:
Four friends on their way to Coachella stop off in Los Angeles to tour true-crime Satanic Panic-era sites, only to find themselves interrupting an apparent human sacrifice.

They save the young victim, but she turns out to be much more dangerous than the cult from which she escaped, unleashing an evil spirit who will hunt the friends down one by one...

Starring Sarah Hyland (Modern Family), Justin Chon (Twilight Saga), Clara Mamet (Bad Neighbours 2), and Anthony Carrigan (Gotham).


Check out the release on Amazon by clicking the links below:
Satanic [DVD] [2016]

To enter all you have to do is answer this easy question...


Competition Closed

Terms and conditions
1. Closing date 09-01-17
2. No alternative prize is available
3. When the competition ends as indicated on this page, any and all entries received after this point will not count and emails blacklisted due to not checking this page first.
4. Winners will be chosen randomly and will be informed via email.

Tuesday 13 December 2016

Film News (UK): Horror Channel kicks off 2017 with seven premieres including WE ARE STILL HERE


There are seven fearful film premieres on Horror Channel in January 2017, including the UK TV premiere of Ted Geoghegan’s terrifyingly taut ghost story WE ARE STILL HERE, starring horror icon Barbara Crampton. There are also network premieres for Roman Polanski’s supernatural biblical puzzler THE NINTH GATE, starring Johnny Depp and Daniel Stamm’s possession nightmare THE LAST EXORCISM, produced by Eli Roth.

Horror Channel are also giving a UK TV premiere to Daniel Stamm’s intriguing remake of 13 BELOVED, 13 SINS, starring Ron Perlman. Other UK TV firsts include Quilez’s Colombia-shot supernatural suspenser OUT OF THE DARK; and Steve Wolsh’s monster mayhem thriller MUCK. Lluis David Brooks’ siege thriller ATM receives its Network premiere.


Fri 8 Jan @ 22:55 – MUCK (2015) * UK TV Premiere


After escaping from a possessed ancient burial ground underneath the Cape Cod marshes, Mia (Lauren Francesca) and her friends take shelter in an abandoned house. Unfortunately, the house has an evil spirit of its own. They are now trapped between malevolent entities, forcing them to stay and fight, or go back the way they came. Also stars Kane Hodder.


Sat 9 Jan @ 21:00 – THE NINTH GATE (1999) *Network Premiere


Corso (Johnny Depp), who finds rare books for wealthy collectors, is hired by Balkan (Frank Langella) to locate a book of satanic invocation, reportedly written by the Devil himself. The search takes Corso all over Europe and into various conflicts with other maniacal collectors (Lena Olin and Barbara Jefford), and a mysterious, nameless Girl (Emmanuelle Seigner). Corso learns that the book contains clues to a puzzle that will allow people to call up the devil, and certain people will stop at nothing to find the missing parts of the formula…


Friday 13 Jan @ 21:00 – 13 SINS (2014) *UK TV Premiere


What better way to celebrate Friday the 13th than with 13 SINS? Heavily in debt and with a pregnant fiancĂ©e, an autistic brother, and an ailing father to care for, down-on-his-luck salesman Elliot (Mark Webber) is thrown an unusual lifeline. A mysterious phone caller offers him cash for completing thirteen challenges, each more difficult than the one before. However, should he fail one, he loses everything. As the stakes rise, Elliot must decide whether the risk is worth the reward. Ron Perlman is the detective drawn into Elliot's increasingly destructive game…


Sat 14 Jan @ 22:50 – WE ARE STILL HERE (2015) *UK TV Premiere


The producers of THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL and CHEAP THRILLS serve up a tense ghost story in the Italianate Lucio Fulci/Pupi Avati tradition. After their teenage son is killed in a car crash, Paul and Anne (Barbara Crampton) move to the New England countryside to start a new life. But the grieving couple unknowingly becomes the prey of a family of vengeful spirits that reside in their converted funeral parlour home. And so begins a terrifying fight back against the living hiding a terrible secret, and the malicious dead demanding a sacrifice that threatens to pull their cursed souls into hell.


Fri 20 Jan @ 21:00 – ATM (2012) *Network Premiere


One late night after an office party, co-workers David (Brian Geraghty), Emily (Alice Eve) and Corey (Josh Peck) make a late-night stop at an ATM. What should be a routine transaction turns into a desperate struggle for survival when an unknown man appears outside the vestibule. With the wintry temperatures dipping below freezing, and the morning sunrise still hours away, they have no choice but to play the man's deadly game of cat-and-mouse.


Sat 21 Jan @ 21:00 – OUT OF THE DARK (2014) *UK TV Premiere


Sarah Harriman (Julia Stiles) has moved her family – husband Paul (Scott Speedman) and sprightly daughter Hannah (Pixie Davies) – to a small Colombian town to work at the paper mill her father (Stephen Rea) owns. As they settle into their home, surrounded by a forbidding jungle landscape, Hannah begins to act strangely and suddenly disappears. As Sarah and Paul frantically search for her, they delve deeper into the town’s superstitions and discover a shocking secret about their family; a secret they must uncover in order to save their daughter.


Sat 29 Jan @ 21:00 – THE LAST EXORCISM (2012) *Network Premiere


Disillusioned by years of defrauding poor believers out of their hard-earned cash, evangelist preacher Cotton Marcus has decided to put the record straight by starring in a fly-on-the-wall documentary exposing the con tricks of his demon-busting trade. A letter from a poor southern farmer begging for help in driving evil off his land seems to give Cotton the perfect opportunity to expose the phoniness of his satanic ministry. But then he meets the farmer’s disturbed young daughter, Nell, and everything changes. Produced by Eli Roth.

www.horrorchannel.co.uk | twitter.com/horror_channel | facebook.com/horrorchannel

Thursday 8 December 2016

Interview with Kurt Brokaw By David Kempf


Professor Kurt Brokaw has taught advertising courses at The New School for 32 consecutive years. He's senior film critic of The Independent and has taught film and literature courses at the 92nd Street Y for the past 14 years. He was an original "Mad Man" starting in 1961, and has been a copywriter and creative supervisor at three top-ten New York ad agencies as well as creative director at RCA Records. Kurt holds M.S.and B.S. degrees from The University of Wisconsin, and authored the trade bestseller, "A Night In Transylvania: The Dracula Scrapbook," a cross-cultural history of Dracula.



Interview with Kurt Brokaw By David Kempf

Tell us how you became interested in the Dracula legend.

Horror movies were a genre passion since writing for my Indianapolis high school newspaper 1952-56, and becoming the film reviewer for the U of Wisconsin student newspaper 56-61. My undergrad/grad majors were in advertising, and I migrated to Madison Avenue as a “Mad Man” for 30 years. One high spot was developing a television commercial for Vanish (bathroom cleaner) with master magician Harry Blackstone, Jr.
In ’75 I was on assignment for The Monster Times, a well-remembered fanzine in Manhattan, researching a long Transylvania travelog and Vlad Dracul history, and photographing all the key sites.

 Later that year, I was curating and hosting a film series in Scarsdale (north of Manhattan) called Preacher Features, with local ministers, priests and rabbis giving their take on art films. On impulse I decided to try a slide show with music plus a screening of “Horror of Dracula.” And instead of inviting a local clergy person, I invited Radu Florescu, the mainstream Dracula scholar along with Raymond McNally, to come down from Boston. To my astonishment he accepted, the local paper gave it a big play, and we sold out a huge community hall.

An editor from Grosset & Dunlap publishers was there, and tasked me to expand The Monster times travelog into a book-length exploration of the historical figure, plus Bram Stoker’s fictional legend and all nine yards of popular culture. That became “A Night in Transylvania: The Dracula Scrapbook,” launched in ’76 on the 500th anniversary of Vlad’s death, with an intro by Florescu and McNally. Their support plus friendships with Jeanne Youngson who ran The Count Dracula Society and The Vampire Empire in New York City, and Elizabeth Wilson, an eminent Dracula scholar based at the University of Newfoundland, helped the book enjoy healthy runs in hardcover and trade paper.


How much research on Dracula did you do before going to Transylvania?

The key texts were Florescu and McNally’s “In Search of Dracula” and their “Dracula: A Biography of Vlad the Impaler 1531-76.” A favorite film book was and is Lotte Eisner’s “The Haunted Screen” on early German cinema. And because I partly worked my way through college and early parenthood as a magician at children’s birthday parties, I studied The Vampire Block routines, a classic magic illusion that can entertain all ages. I’ve also watched automatons perform in the Robert Houdin museum in Paris as well as in Ricky Jay’s superb stage performances, and while these mechanical moving dolls aren’t vampires, they’re a kind of special Undead.


What is your favorite Dracula movie?

Hammer’s “Horror of Dracula” is the one I’ll revisit most often. “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” with Lugosi reprising Dracula turns up when my three grown daughters and son are visiting. (Even my wife will watch that one.) Werner Herzog’s “Nosferatu” with the inimitable Klaus Kinski still stays with me. My #1 contemporary vampire film remains Kathryn Bigelow’s “Near Dark” which my son initially recommended.


Name some of your other favorite horror films.

I reviewed “The Babadook” as senior film critic for The Independent (Independent-magazine.org) quite highly. Ti West’s “House of the Devil” has a teenage-girl-trapped-in-haunted-house sensibility that’s timeless. My Hammer favorites next to “Horror of Dracula” and “Brides of Dracula” are “Hound of the Baskervilles” with Cushing/Lee, and especially “Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde,” with Martine Beswick’s scream queen performance matching young Ralph Bates, who might have grown into another Cushing. “The Mad Magician” with Vincent Price in 3-D was a favorite magic horror. And Julie Adams’ 3-D lake swim in “Creature from the Black Lagoon” still gets my pulse racing.


Why do you think horror films remain popular?

Having unsuccessfully pushing around proposals for similar travel “Nights” books on Frankenstein and The Mummy, I’ve come to believe Dracula films combining sexuality with eternal life will always reign. Frankenstein is a bucket of bolts, and The Mummy is this entombed dusty geezer. But when Frank Langella played Dracula on Broadway against Edward Gorey’s super-stylized black-and-white set, and then mounted this poor trembling gal, opening his shirt and ripping a trail from his neck on down with a sharp fingernail, releasing little rivulets of bright red blood down his handsome bare chest, the audience actually gasped. It was as close to the Grand Guignol as Broadway’s ever gotten.

Also, Anthony Hopkins told me late one winter night after I’d watched him shoot an outdoor scene locally in bitter cold, and then invited me into his trailer for tea, that he could play Hannibal Lector more than once without endangering his career. This wasn’t always the case with actors, as Tony Perkins discovered doing the “Psycho” cycle. The late Don Westlake told my “Pulp Fiction” college class that his 1987 screenplay of “The Stepfather,” a serial killer outing, had big trouble casting the psychopathic lead (finally played by a fine Terry O’Quinn).

But audiences today are more flexible and enlightened, and thus big names can freely take on dicey roles that once would have been too risky. In 2010 Casey Affleck could play the sadistic, lunatic killer Lou Ford in Jim Thompson’s “The Killer Inside Me,” and six years later be up for an Oscar as the mopey loner in “Manchester by the Sea.”


What are your latest projects?

As I’m closing in on 80, I’ve found careers (teaching at The New School and 92nd Street Y, reviewing for The Independent, and collecting/selling 40s paperbacks and 30s/40s pulp magazines through much of my life) that jell. In these pursuits, age has never worked against me, and as I go from “old” to “ancient,” people assume there’s maturity, mystery and wisdom at work. It’s all misdirection and smoke-and-mirrors, but it’s helping keep me young even when everything but my head aches in the morning.


Please in your own words write a paragraph about yourself and your work.

I’ll turn it around a bit: Your interview with my nephew magician and inventor-builder of magic illusions Michael Baker is touching and satisfying. It was my pleasure to introduce young Michael to magic, "most of my beautifully airbrushed equipment was acquired in the early 1950s" and he made magic first his passion and then his lifelong career. I sit at his feet now and consider myself his student, so we’ve come full circle.

Links
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9823486-a-night-in-transylvania
http://www.newschool.edu/public-engagement/faculty-list/?id=4e6a-5935-4e67-3d3d
http://independent-magazine.org/authors/kurt-brokaw/

Friday 2 December 2016

Competition: Win Fear The Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season

Fear The Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season is available on Blu-ray and DVD from 5th December, courtesy of Entertainment One - And to celebrate we have a great competition for you and 2 copies on Bluray to give away.

Synopsis:
After witnessing the burning of Los Angeles, Madison, Travis, Daniel and their grieving families board the ‘Abigail’, still unaware of the true breadth and depth of the apocalypse that surrounds them.

But as Operation Cobalt goes into full effect and the military bombs the Southland to cleanse it of the Infected, the Dead are driven toward the sea. As the group head for ports unknown, they will discover that the water may be no safer than land.

Win This:
Fear the Walking Dead - Season 2 [Blu-ray]

To enter all you have to do is answer this easy question...


Competition Closed

Terms and conditions
1. Closing date 12-12-16
2. No alternative prize is available
3. When the competition ends as indicated on this page, any and all entries received after this point will not count and emails blacklisted due to not checking this page first.
4. Winners will be chosen randomly and will be informed via email.