because we all need some levity…

Having trouble dealing with the fact that we’re down to one Corey?

Can’t accept the fact that some very bad films won’t get made now?

Don’t wait another second and BUY The Corey Haim RIP Coping Kit.

The kit comes with several key items to get you out of the blues, including…

1) The lost script for Lost Boys 3 and 4, created by Hollywood veteran writers such as Sulla, Shadi, and Chris

2) A License to Drive – only applicable in Guam, the last U.S. jurisdiction where Mr. Haim was allowed to still drive.

3) The Coreys: The Entire Series on DVD (note, we do not accept returns on this last item)

4) Drug Addiction for Dummies (signed copy)

5) Seven feet of rope – in case you can’t sell The Coreys DVD

Similar kits have helped fan(atics) of River Phoenix and Kurt Cobain, order NOW!

Many have probably already heard that Corey Haim was found dead this morning.  Speculation has immediately turned to drugs, but we’ll see with the final autopsy report.   But I’m saddened as another piece of childhood slips away.  Haim the person was sketchy at best, but the movies he was in, and always the incredibly long odds that perhaps he would create more fun cinematic moments, were memorable.

For horror movie fans, it will always come back to Haim’s portrayal of Sam in The Lost Boys.  In 1987, I was just a few years junior to Sam.  The idea of meeting up and joining the Frog Bros. and fighting vampires at night while enjoying California by day was a common dream.  And of course Sam was the kid who was smart and knew what was going on when older charactesr, including his brother, were generally clueless.  What is more, COMIC BOOKS contributed to his knowledge.  Being smarter than adults based on comic books, what more does any kid to justify that ongoing mail subsription to The Amazing Spiderman, The Indredible Hulk, and Dr. Strange?  Not that I read all of those of back then of course…

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Daybreakers
Director: The Spierig Brothers
Starring: Sam Neill, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe

Synopsis: An alternate world, where vampires outnumber humans, struggles with an impending shortage of blood.

Verdict: In the movie’s 90-minute running time, there are perhaps five minutes of footage that won’t make you want to kill yourself.

What if someone told you there was a movie concerning an alternate reality where everyone on Earth was a vampire? How would you react? If you were me, you’d probably wave your hands in the air and scream, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” Now, what if that same person told you that said movie inexplicably found a way to make the very idea of vampires boring as hell?

That’s pretty much how it goes with Daybreakers, the new film from the Brothers Spierig, the same folks responsible for the totally gorey and hilarious homage to Peter Jackson, Undead. Their new film is about a society where, well, the majority of the population has turned into vampires. The dwindling human population is their cattle, captured, hooked up to machines, and sucked dry of all the gooey red stuff inside of them. Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) works for the corporation tasked with finding a suitable alternative to human blood, since the human population is falling to zero. One day, Dalton encounters a group of humans, instantly sympathizes with them because he drinks animal blood just like Edward “Homo Explosion” Cullen, and embarks on a journey to solve the “blood” problem – one way or another.

A stupid image from this stupid movie, stupid.

The only problem with all this is that at no point was I, the viewer, given a single reason to care about what transpired on screen. How did we, as a movie-going public, move from a silent masterpiece like Nosferatu, whose title character is a bald, feral ghoul who can illicit terror simply by moving from one side of the screen to the other, to a movie where vampires are unsympathetic corporate fat cats who look human, act human, live like humans, and for all intents and purposes might as well be human? Where’s the horror in that? It’s not scary.

It doesn’t help matters much that the script is utterly moronic. You should probably skip the rest of this review if you plan on watching the movie because I’m just going to spoil the whole stupid thing. At the beginning of the movie, we witness a vampire write a suicide note, then off herself by going out into the sunlight, or so the directors would like us to believe. As Dalton discovers later in the film, immolation by sunlight returns a vampire to human form, but only as long as they have some water on hand to keep from overcooking. Continue reading »

Update on the Marge Simpson as Lenore painting!  I printed out a still from the Tree House of Horror and did a light sketch on a canvas.  Some artists HATE using any sort of sketching material that does not involve paint, fearing that the lines will show through.  But I sketch lightly and use a very soft pencil or charcoal.  I also tend to use a lot of paint on the canvas (if I am using water color or expect paint to be thinly applied I don’t sketch anything in advance).  I ran into one problem in this painting just…being…too…big!  I had to bend Marge’s hair over too far to still fit on 2 canvases (one of these is 3 feet tall too!).  So the solution was to add a third canvas.  This way it looks natural and isn’t cramped.  Yes, yes, the original painting this is based off of had two canvases, but I think it will be even better with three.    Here’s the sketch…

Today I want to talk about a character in a movie that just came out. I saw the midnight showing for The Crazies and I could not help but notice the emotions that run throughout this movie. But, one character in this film has a very different character arc than most people. I find him a very fascinating person and a very heroic person… his name is Deputy Russell Clank.

His personality is that of a close friend to Sheriff Dutton. It can be implied that Clank has been his friend for a very long time and they have been through hell and back together. You can tell right off the bat that Clank is very loyal to Dutton and that he takes his job seriously and he’s very devoted. He’s also pretty funny. He is the definition of a true small-town American hero. Even during the beginning stages of the outbreak, he is very loyal and very outgoing. But, in one of the saddest and probably one of the more emotional points in the movie, he turns.

Unfortunately Clank has the sickness that causes him to go crazy. After shooting a government official in the head (Dutton being mad because he could have given them information), Clank decides to take matters into his own hands and grab Dutton’s gun and holds him and his wife hostage. He tells them to walk while he follows behind him aiming the gun at them. It’s a kick in the nuts to the audience because we fell in love with his character and he saved Dutton many times before that moment and to see him turn into a ‘crazy’ was just too hard for us to handle.

However, his loyalty will always be there. In a stunning (it gave me shivers) move, Clank prevents the crazies from reaching his head and his thinking and he turns back to the good side. In one of the best confrontations Dutton reasons with him and takes the gun from him and than Clank offers to distract the military while Dutton and his wife escape. No matter what, he is the Deputy and he will do what the Sheriff says and he sacrificed himself to save them. He didn’t die a ‘crazy,’ he died a true American hero. He’s one the best heroes in a horror movie.

Commission ideas never cease to amaze me.  You think us artists are creative, well, you should see the messages we get!  I happen to know a big fan of The Simpsons.  A few years back I did a smaller 11″ by 14″ painting for her.  The shot was of Homer having a crayon reinserted into his brain up through his nose.

The painting was surprisingly difficult, requiring broad swaths of canvas the exact same color and very fine brush work to properly outline Homer and surrounding objects.  Who knew that The Simpsons would be so tough to paint?  Here’s the picture…

I bring this up because I’m just about to start another commission for this same customer, a much cooler one!  Most of us horror fans have watched The Treehouse of Horror every hear.  One of the best episodes was The Raven, which was a full blown reading of the classic poem by Edgar Allen Poe.  In the episode there’s a shot of Marge as Lost Lenore.  My painting will be based on that…two separate canvases and all.

Stephen King has proven that he can tell a really great horror story; he puts thought and character development into each tale he crafts. Even some of his short stories are well-known and pretty frightening in terms of description and content… and Cycle of the Werewolf is not exception. I really enjoyed this and unlike most of his short stories, this one is not bundled together into a compilation book but rather a stand along book. The story is about a werewolf that viciously attacks citizens of a small town known as Tarker Mills. This story also centers on an eleven-year-old crippled boy named Marty Coslaw who inevitably confronts the werewolf. Little does he know that the werewolf is actually the town reverend, Lester Lowe.

It is very rare to find a really good werewolf book and I think that king really nailed this story. Much like his short work, King really makes the characters three-dimensional and given that it is a short story, he does it quit well. From the beginning few pages to the last pages I was really captivated and really into the book. I even liked how he kept with the ‘cycle’ aspect of the book following the werewolf from month to month.

What made this book different from all the rest of King’s books (or should I say different besides a select group of books) are the illustrations. We’ve seen illustrations in the Dark Tower series and some even in The Stand but these ones are so beautifully drawn and beautifully morbid that it accents the whole story. Each month is in beautiful sketched black and white. I think Berni Wrightson really outdid himself in this book.

If you like short stories and you are in the mood for a pretty tense and overall great story, I would give Cycle of the Werewolf a try. It’s not your typical werewolf film because it doesn’t just focus on the werewolf itself but on the character that would eventually kill him. It’s definitely a good story by the master of horror.

Find it on Amazon.

So back in March of 2009, I reviewed my favorite movie of 2008, Let the Right One In. If you’d like, you can read the review here.

After watching the movie and hearing it was based on a book, I had to get it! However, being in Korea made it extremely difficult to locate it. I looked online and couldn’t find it at Barnes and Noble, nor did I want to pay for it from Amazon. Fortunately for me, the movies popularity lead to the re-release of the book! Imagine if you will, my excitement when I saw the book at a Korean bookstore! Needless to say, I snatched it up right away.

Now, Let the Right One In was the first book by Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist. Despite it being his first novel, I thought it was amazing! Of course, I can’t say anything about the writing since it was translated by someone else, but the story is one that will stay with you forever.

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Carriers
Director: Alex & David Pastor
Starring: Lou Taylor Pucci, Chris Pine, Piper Perabo, Emily VanCamp

Synopsis: Four friends fight to survive in a post-apocalyptic world where a deadly virus has wiped out most of humanity.

Verdict: The film presents some interesting moral dilemmas, but fails to transcend its derivative premise. Watch Zombieland instead.

I’m a huge fan of post-apocalyptic stories. I plowed through Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (we’ll revisit the book later in this review) in two sittings. I’ve seen 28 Days Later more times than I’d like to admit, and I even sat through the lackluster sequel. The idea of a world on its last legs is fascinating to me, so you can imagine how much I anticipated the DVD release of the Pastor brothers’ film, Carriers.

Beam down to the zombies and set your phasers on sucky.

Carriers deals with four friends who have survived a worldwide pandemic: an airborne virus that can also be contracted through contact with the infected’s blood. In order to reach their destination, they have to adhere to a set of strict rules, no matter the cost.

There’s so much wrong with the movie that I might as well start from the top: the film’s title. Below is the definition of a “carrier,” pulled from Dictionary.com:

Immunology. an individual harboring specific pathogenic organisms who, though often immune to the agent harbored, may transmit the disease to others.

Right off the bat, we have problems. A carrier is someone who harbors a disease and transmits it to others. None of the main characters “carry” the disease, and none of them are immune to it. Apparently, the party responsible for naming the film couldn’t be bothered to do the ten seconds of legwork it took for me to find the definition. That’s just lazy.

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We’re back!  We took about a 4 week hiatus as I did some blog redesign, expanded our crack blogging team, and dealt with a bunch of personal life schtuff.  First, the blog has been updated and we’re now more stable than ever before.  We also have a new place to call home, www.horrorart.biz.  I happen to know the owner very well, especially as he’s me.  During the past year my attention has been split between Horrorart.biz and Horrorblogger.com.  This marriage of sites will increase focus, content, and advertising by bringing these two together.  We’re also no longer Horrorblogger.com, but rather A Horror Blog.  Pretty up front name name?  For whatever reason, feedback was that folks tripped up on the term “blogger”.  Seemed pretty obvious to me, but I’m all about listening to what readers want.

Hey, just because you dug a hole and threw dirt on us, didn't mean that we were dead.

With two big site shifts in 4 months, this will be the LAST big change for awhile and we can all settle in and look forward to some stability and great content.  I’ll also be posting and writing about the latest developments in horror art, including the latest specials, upcoming events, and other news.  I have also improved our underlying template and have made it a little more horror-appropriate.

Personal schtuff will be ongoing throughout 2010, but the blog is back regardless.  The big news on my end…I’m going to be a dad for the second time.  Yep, we have our second little monster on the way.  Luckily, there are still many months until Dracula gets more sleep at night than I will.