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'[REC] 2' Finally Headed to DVD/Blu-Ray! ...in Spain and Japan.

By Horror Squad Staff (Subscribe to Horror Squad Staff's posts), Posted Mar 4th 2010 1:25PM
Filed under: Horror
[Written by Luke Mullen.]

First, there was [REC] and it was good. Then there was Quarantine which wasn't too bad and hopefully alerted some people to the existence of [REC]. And then there was [REC] 2, the long-awaited sequel that US fans are still clamoring to see. A few of the lucky ones may have been able to catch it at the Toronto film festival or here in Austin at Fantastic Fest, but the majority of horror lovers have had to patiently await some news of a US release.

Sadly, I have no such news. As Bloody Disgusting reported, after its premiere at Toronto, Sony picked up the rights to distribute [REC] 2 on home video. With no indications of a theatrical release, it looks like we're at Sony's mercy to see the sequel finally hit American shores.

But wait! There may be hope yet!
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An In-Depth Review of 'Suspiria' on UK Blu-ray

By Horror Squad Staff (Subscribe to Horror Squad Staff's posts), Posted Mar 1st 2010 4:35PM
Filed under: DVDs, DVD Reviews, Horror
[Written by HS staffer Luke Mullen, who isn't in our system but will be soon.]

Horror Squad's own Alison Nastasi alerted eager horror fans to the impending release of a Blu-ray edition of Suspiria first announced way back in November. The new disc was released about a month ago and is currently available in the UK courtesy of Cine-Excess, a new arm of Nouveaux Pictures. I ordered a copy the day it came out and have been looking forward to really digging into it to see what it has to offer. I should mention up front that this Blu-ray disc is region B locked, meaning that it will NOT play in a US PS3 or other standalone Blu-ray players. It will ONLY play in region B machines, which are used in Europe, and in region-free players.

I'm not going to summarize Suspiria, or really talk about the film itself much at all. If you're reading Horror Squad, I would hope you've heard of it even if you may not have seen it. If by some chance you've been living under a rock for the last 30 or so years, though, Suspiria is an Italian horror film set in Germany and filmed in English directed by Dario Argento, a member of the holy trinity of Italian horror masters alongside Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci. Suspiria is easily one of Argento's best, and if you haven't seen it, you really should take the time to check it out.

What follows is a fairly in-depth look at the Blu-ray, feel free to skip to the end for a more succinct summary with less technical jargon.
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Review: The Crazies

By Horror Squad Staff (Subscribe to Horror Squad Staff's posts), Posted Feb 26th 2010 5:55PM
Filed under: Movie Reviews, Reviews, Horror

[Review by Luke Mullen.]

Ogden Marsh, Iowa is a small town with a Cheers vibe. Everybody knows your name. There's just the one doctor in town, a short main drag, and a small sheriff's station. It's the kind of town you might want to raise a family in, sending your kids down the street to Ogden Marsh School, home of the Tigers. It may as well be Mayberry. That's why it's so disturbing when you see the friends and neighbors you know so well start to kill each other.

The Crazies, based on the 1973 film of the same name, isn't a zombie film, but it evokes a lot of the same fears. The people you once knew, drank beer with, watched football with, they're not themselves anymore. They've changed, seemingly capable of anything. And before it's all over, you might just have to kill a few of them to survive.

The story focuses on Sheriff David Dutton, played by Timothy Olyphant, his deputy, Russell, and his wife, Judy, the town doctor, and her teenage assistant, Becca. Dutton quickly discovers the source of the infection spreading through his town, but before he has much chance to do anything about it, the military rushes in, canvassing the town and establishing a quarantine perimeter around. The townsfolk are all rounded up and tested, the sick separated from the healthy. But, as is so often the case, things go terribly wrong.
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A Walk Through the New 'Elm Street'

By Horror Squad Staff (Subscribe to Horror Squad Staff's posts), Posted Feb 22nd 2010 7:03PM
Filed under: Celebrity Interviews, Movie News, News/Reactions, Interviews, Horror


By William Goss

Several journalists were invited to the Chicago-based set of Platinum Dunes' remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street last June, and at this point, we're all standing in the trailer where an uncomfortable Jackie Earle Haley has been sitting for the better part of what will take more than three hours.

"We've gotten [the process] down to three hours and twenty [minutes]," said make-up artist Andrew Clement. "Every day, we shave a couple minutes off of it. It had started at six hours; we were working it all out, didn't have the coloring and all of our choices done, so it was just seeing what it was all about."

When asked if he ever wanted to just run around the neighborhood with the make-up on, the future Freddy Krueger said no. "There is a strong temptation to just rip it off my face, though."
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Review: Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever

By Horror Squad Staff (Subscribe to Horror Squad Staff's posts), Posted Feb 16th 2010 11:45AM
Filed under: Movie Reviews, Reviews, Horror
By Todd Gilchrist

The end of Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever is pretty much a disaster, but if you can get there from the beginning of the film you may not mind. Ti West's disowned sequel to Eli Roth's 2002 cult movie indisputably falls apart in its final scenes, but the writer-director of The House of the Devil has an unerring ear for naturalism, even when firmly ensconced in teen comedy territory, and makes the most of material that otherwise might not deserve such attention to detail. All of which means that this may not be the best follow-up for new fans of the filmmaker, but Cabin Fever 2 is far from the "complete disaster" status that for three years made it the black sheep of Lionsgate's often-lackluster catalogue.

The film stars Noah Segan (The Brothers Bloom) as John, a high school senior who wants to ask his friend Cassie (Alexi Wasser) to the prom but is paralyzed by the prospect of a beatdown by her psycho sometime-ex-boyfriend Marc (Marc Senter). His buddy Alex (Rusty Kelley) manages to score himself a date after comforting a forlorn stripper named Liz (Regan Deal), but their plans for a perfect night are dashed when the entire populace of the school succumbs to a bizarre, deadly disease. Fleeing from military forces determined to contain the outbreak, not mention decaying, highly-contagious members of their graduating class, John, Cassie and Alex fight to escape their school before flying bullets – or worse yet, blood – prevent them from seeing the next morning.
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'Mortis Rex' Brings the Horror to Ancient Rome

By Horror Squad Staff (Subscribe to Horror Squad Staff's posts), Posted Oct 28th 2009 9:03AM
Filed under: Movie News, News/Reactions, Horror
By Elisabeth Rappe

Historical settings are severely underused in films today. Once upon a time in a cheesier Hollywood, you could find pulpy adventures set among knights, Vikings, or cowboys. They were horribly inaccurate, but I admire and appreciate their desire to just run with another time or place. Nowadays, historical films are considered too expensive. No one makes a movie set in Rome or medieval England just for fun. But I think we're starting to see a shift towards that mentality (after all, how much more expensive are Roman breastplates over CG?) with films like Centurion, Ironclad, Season of the Witch and now a little project called Mortis Rex.

Variety has the scoop on this intriguing movie-to-be, which will be the directorial debut of Hellboy writer Peter Briggs. Mortis Rex is set in 122 A.D. (or C.E. if we want to be proper), and centers on a disgraced Roman war hero. He's given the chance to redeem his reputation when he is sent to a Roman garrison that's being besieged by unexplained and brutal killings.

Sure, it could be lame, but a supernatural thriller set in the days of Hadrian? That's something you don't see every day, and a concept I'd like to see more filmmakers run with. Movies should have as much fun and license with history as literature does. If we're going to plunder the past for new movies, we could at least go back a little further than the 1980s.

A Big, Long Look at Richard Stanley's 'Hardware' Blu-Ray

By Horror Squad Staff (Subscribe to Horror Squad Staff's posts), Posted Oct 27th 2009 9:03AM
Filed under: DVDs, DVD Reviews, Horror
By Todd Gilchrist

Despite their self-appointed pedigree as "The Criterion of Smut," Severin Films has carved a comfortable niche for themselves over the past few years as a reliable distributor of cult classics and obscure, overlooked gems. Unquestionably, their highest-profile release to date was a domestic DVD (and later Blu-ray) for Enzo Castellari's Inglorious Bastards, which inspired Tarantino's film of the same name (albeit different spelling). But they've released and reissued a number of terrific, highly-anticipated movies, almost all of which appeal to a unique and specific audience, even if they don't always register to mainstream viewers with the same excitement or awareness.

All of which brings us to Hardware, one of the company's latest releases. Though I hadn't seen it since it was first released on home video in the early 1990s, Richard Stanley's science fiction-horror film has been celebrated over the last two-plus decades as a modest masterpiece and a true cult classic, thanks in no small part to its small budget, even smaller distribution and minuscule but fervent fan base. Unfortunately, with mainstream "cult" movies like Paranormal Activity and District 9 occupying the head-space of contemporary genre fans, not to mention a great wealth of superior films throughout movie history that explore the same ideas, Hardware is a worth film to revisit primarily to see how well it fueled our feverish imaginations before it fell to the wayside.

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