Friday, October 30, 2015

Concert Review: GHOST Haunts Salt Lake City

Shock Till You Drop
Concert Review: GHOST Haunts Salt Lake City

Ghostshot3

PHOTO COPYRIGHT JOHN McMURTRIE 2015

Theatrical rock heroes GHOST rocked Salt Lake City and SHOCK was there.

A mere three blocks from one of the largest theological epicenters in America, the force of nature known as GHOST stormed into Salt Lake City rock palace The Depot  on Wednesday night in all their Satanic glory and laid waste to a full house of adoring followers.

The Swedish band’s infamous live show has become incredibly honed in the last three years and it’s clear that the band’s success is being put right back into the production The huge backdrop, the crazy lighting rig, the new masks for the Nameless Ghouls, newly minted frontman Papa Emeritus III’s multiple costume changes; all a staggering site.

Visually and aesthetically the band may seem extreme, but what is most remarkable is their sense of melody and willingness to embrace a more gentle music at times to deliver their dark message.

Papa III speaks words of truth.

The GHOST look may say ‘Satanic KISS’ but the music is pure old school rock, with a sound hearkening back to bands like Coven, Arthur Brown, Roky Erickson, and in particular Blue Oyster Cult. The more aggressive stuff rears its head at key moments, with a heavier sound pointing occasionally to bands like Megadeth and in particular, Mercyful Fate.

As a long-time supporter of the Papa and The Nameless Ghouls, beginning with their demo, it’s been quite a sight to see this confrontational (albeit tongue in cheek) band skyrocket into Grammy-winning mainstream popularity. With the new album “Meloria” selling briskly and the video for their single “Cerice” nearing a whopping two and a half million views, there seems to be no cap on their success.

Factor in the band’s appearance on Stephen Colbert (tonight in fact! October 30th!), as well as their impending arena tour with IRON MAIDEN, and I think it’s safe to say GHOST(s) do indeed exist…

Need more proof? Check out this clip from the show!

The post Concert Review: GHOST Haunts Salt Lake City appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

Screenwriter John August on SCARY STORIES Feature Film

Shock Till You Drop
Screenwriter John August on SCARY STORIES Feature Film

ScaryStories4

ScaryStories6 An update on the long in development feature film version of children’s horror classic.

Remember SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK, Alvin Schwartz’s horrifying children’s books with illustrations by Stephen Gammell designed to shave at least three years off your childhood?

Of course you do.

And remember when Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, the scribblers behind the SAW films, were prepping the long in gestation film version?

So do we.

But that was then. What about now?

Crave’s William Bibbiani caught up with BIG FISH screenwriter John August, who is the new pen attached to the impending picture, during a Writer’s Guild of America Q&A and the writer had this to say:

“I am still working on it, yeah. As a screenwriter I have no fortunetelling ability to know whether the movie is going to [go into production] or if the movie is going to be good, but I can say that I’m really excited with what we’ve been able to do so far and if we are able to make the movie I kind of hope we’ll be able to make, it’s going to be something great, and a very unique movie that we haven’t seen before.”

But August had so much more to reveal about the subject.

And you can read all about it via Crave’s exclusive interview HERE..

ScaryStories2

The post Screenwriter John August on SCARY STORIES Feature Film appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

Eerie Psychodrama ONE EYED GIRL to Hit Blu/DVD in December

Shock Till You Drop
Eerie Psychodrama ONE EYED GIRL to Hit Blu/DVD in December

OneEye2

OneEye1

Award-winning psychological thriller to release this December.

SHOCK has just learned that first-time director Nick Matthews’ jet-black psychological horror film ONE EYED GIRL will hit Blu-ray and DVD on December 8th from Dark Sky Films.

Horror fans who appreciate slow-burning, atmospheric, elegant and emotionally wrenching cinema, films along the lines of MAGIC, MAGIC, ANGEL HEART and MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, would be wise to circle the date on your creepy calendars…

Here’s the synopsis:

Travis is a young psychiatrist on the brink of a nervous breakdown after the death of a patient to whom he was inappropriately close. But his life appears to take a change for the better when he meets Grace, a mysterious teenager and the representative of a secret church that promises salvation to even the most troubled of its members.

Intrigued, Travis joins the group and meets its leader, the charismatic Father Jay, who indoctrinates him into the sect’s sometimes radical practices. But when a series of tragedies befalls Father Jay and his flock, Travis must decide if his loyalty truly lies with Father Jay, the ever-elusive Grace, or himself.

OneEye3

ONE EYED GIRL stars Mark Leonard Winter (THE FEAR OF DARKNESS), Tilda Cobham-Hervey (GIRL ASLEEP), Steve Le Marquand (VERTICAL LIMIT), Craig Behenna (THE BABADOOK) and Sara West (THE DAUGHTER).

Check out the trailer below…

The post Eerie Psychodrama ONE EYED GIRL to Hit Blu/DVD in December appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

Chris Alexander’s Top 5 Halloween Picks

Shock Till You Drop
Chris Alexander’s Top 5 Halloween Picks

Derringer2

Derringer1

SHOCK editor picks 5 Halloween horror flicks to watch this weekend.

SHOCK editor Chris Alexander was on legendary Toronto radio station Q107 this morning, sitting in with the gang on Derringer in the Morning to talk all things horror.

One of the components of the half-hour appearance was for Chris to partake in the show’s “List-O-Mania” segment and pick his 5 favorite flicks to watch on Halloween.

Here’s that list. Enjoy…and have a Happy (and safe) Halloween!

The post Chris Alexander’s Top 5 Halloween Picks appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

Audio Interview: Anne Serling Talks About THE TWILIGHT ZONE

Shock Till You Drop
Audio Interview: Anne Serling Talks About THE TWILIGHT ZONE

RodShock1

TZshock In this exclusive audio interview, SHOCK talks to Anne Serling about her father Rod Serling and his landmark TV show THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

Anne Serling is the youngest daughter of maverick television writer and visionary Rod Serling, creator of the greatest series the small screen has ever seen or will ever see, THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

And though her beloved father passed 40 years ago (June 28th, 1975 to be exact), Anne took many years to process her grief as well as her feelings about her dad’s life and work, the result of which was her haunting memoir AS I KNEW HIM: MY DAD, ROD SERLING. Released in 2013 and still selling briskly, the critically acclaimed book collects Anne’s memories of her gentle father as well as unearthed letters from her grandparents to her dad while he was fighting in WWII, an experience that scarred him both emotionally and physically and hard-wired his deep, abiding sense of morality, justice and  unshakable melancholy, all elements that marked the best of THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

Here, in this exclusive audio interview, SHOCK editor Chris Alexander talks to Anne about her father, her book and her reflections on the dark fantasy entertainment that changed, and continues to change, the world.

Enjoy…

To connect with Anne Serling and read more about AS I KNEW HIM, visit her OFFICIAL SITE.

The post Audio Interview: Anne Serling Talks About THE TWILIGHT ZONE appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

Jekyll and Hyde (2015)

AnythingHorror Central
Jekyll and Hyde (2015)

JAH7I’ve seen the billboards for this 10-part series on the UK’s ITV channel my way to work more than once, but never really gave it much consideration, despite the obvious horror connections. Why? Because Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde has been done to death almost as much as Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood and Dracula. Jekyll and Hyde has been in movies, TV miniseries, comic books, cartoons, on stage as both straight drama and musical (my own favourite was a drug-fuelled comedy in 1982 called JEKYLL AND HYDE… TOGETHER AGAIN, which I thought was hilarious when I was 16 but which I haven’t dared revisit because I know I would find it a piece of shit now, though the movie did end with a scene of  Stevenson literally spinning in his grave).

(Oh, and I’ve got to give a special nod to what was probably the worst adaptation, DO NO HARM, which I reviewed here, an NBC series which was so bad they cancelled it after the second episode, after I reviewed it. I HAVE THE POWER!)

Someone was paid to come up with this...

Someone was paid to come up with this…

To the best of my knowledge an entirely faithful adaptation of Stevenson’s original novel has never been done (few realise that the original story was told from the perspective of an outside character, and he (and the reader) never realised until the end that Jekyll and Hyde were the same person – that was a twist has long since been eroded, and really could never been done now and be able to surprise anyone. And there have been liberties taken with the details to the story, where Hyde, initially described as a weedy, verminous creature, and we’ve gotten some huge, bestial creatures, especially in looser adaptations like LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, and of course, THE INCREDIBLE HULK, where the metaphorical inner beast of the civilised man is made more explicit.

Yeah, yeah, we get the connection...

Yeah, yeah, we get the connection…

And the strange thing is that when someone tries for a more faithful adaptation of a classic tale, people’s perceptions have already been influence by other examples. When Francis ford Coppolla brought out his version of Dracula, some critics complained that he had changed the story by having his vampires appear in the daytime unharmed, when in fact the original Stoker novel never said that vampires would die or crumble to dust in daylight, that was just something started by NOSFERATU, and was adopted and accepted as a feature of vampires ever since. reviewers praised how Guy Ritchie made the partnership of Holmes and Watson as equals in his SHERLOCK HOLMES movies instead of making Watson the bumbling idiot everyone thought him to be, simply because that was how he was portrayed in the classic Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone. And of course, Frankenstein’s Monster was never originally an unintelligent creature as Boris Karloff made him to be.

But I digress. I gave the first episode of JEKYLL AND HYDE a watch last night, just to see how bad it would be, because without knowing anything about it, I fully expected an adaptation leaning towards some young romance bullshit.

Thankfully, I was wrong.

Someone's been eating their Wheaties...

Someone’s been eating their Wheaties…

We get a brief opening shot of Victorian London, and a familiar-looking figure in a cloak and top hat causing some general mayhem, and for once, it’s not Charlie Sheen’s great-great grandfather but the original Two Face himself, ;s Edward Hyde… and then, we cut to the 1930s, and the balmy backcountry of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where we meet Doctor Robert Jekyll (Tom Bateman, DA VINCI’S DEMONS), who is working in a clinic with his adoptive father Dr Najaran (Ace Bhatti). A runaway truck crashes into the clinic and pins a young girl underneath it, and Jekyll rushes over and tries to lift the vehicle up to free her. And to everyone;s astonishment, he succeeds – but then a manic glee eclipses his face, and he begins pressing his foot down on the poor girl’s face, though he quickly regains his composure as the girl is rescued and Dr Najaran takes him away to give him his medicine for his “special condition”.

Bet you can’t guess what his special condition is, could you?

These are your grandfather's Men in Black - so naturally Will Smith wouldn't have been allowed to join

These are your grandfather’s Men in Black – so naturally Will Smith wouldn’t have been allowed to join…

Meanwhile somewhere else, three men in gas masks and sporting wicked-looking weapons track down this fucked-up looking creature called a Harbinger and kill it, though not before it warns them that something powerful is coming. The men’s boss, Bulstrode (Richard E Grant, HUDSON HAWK – yeah, I’ll reference his worst movie!), runs a secret organisation called MI-0 (MI-5 deal with domestic threats to the Crown, MI-6 with overseas threats, and if you guessed that MI-0 deal with the supernatural, give yourself a cigar or cocaine or something). These proto-Men in Black are aware of young Jekyll’s existence, and obviously know more than Jekyll himself will know.

Dinner didn't end well.

Dinner didn’t end well.

News of Jekyll’s heroic save of the girl reaches London, and a lawyer named Max Utterson (Christian McKay, ME AND ORSON WELLES) contacts Jekyll in order to finally dispose of the outstanding estate of the original Jekyll. Young Jekyll makes his way to London, runs into damsels in distress and rescues them (and steals kisses as well, which is definitely bad sport, old boy). He probably should have stayed in Ceylon, however, as his adoptive family are attacked by ghouls led by the undead Captain Dance (Enzo Cilenti, THE FOURTH KIND), Bulstrode’s rival with his organisation called Tenebrae, who are also interested in Jekyll.

Needless to say, Dance’s encounter with the family doesn’t end well for them. And when news of their deaths reaches Jekyll, he, um, hulks out, and goes on a bender that would kill Nick Nolte, along his way meeting some underworld types who remember the original Hyde and his taste for sex and violence…

Somebody put him on the Naughty Step!

Somebody put him on the Naughty Step!

When the first episode was broadcast, ITV and the TV watchdog Ofcom received hundreds of complaints that the show was too gruesome and violent for the time when it was broadcast (Sunday night at 6:30pm), though the channel has refused to reschedule it and the show’s creator and writer Charlie Higson advised people to “grow up”. I’d have to agree. Based on what I’ve seen and learned, the show will lean more towards a MEN IN BLACK theme of monsters among us, as well as making Jekyll/Hyde more like the aforementioned Incredible Hulk than an allegory about drug addiction and repressed sexual psychology. We’ll also be seeing more monsters in future episodes, and who doesn’t want to see more monsters?

Son of Eraserhead Strikes!

Son of Eraserhead Strikes!

The look of the show is very stylised and both modern (the fight scenes are the now-ubiquitous fast/slow motion sequences) and old-fashioned (where we’ll zoom in on a faded poster of a steamship and then cut away to actual steamship), and hopefully we’ll get a bit of dieselpunk going, which at least makes a refreshing change from the brass steampunk look. The cast is fine, particularly Bateman as Jekyll/Hyde (am I the only one who looks at him and sees mark Ruffalo, yet another nod to the Hulk connection?)
There’s no news as yet as to when it will be broadcast outside of the UK, but I expect we’ll hear soon. Below there’s a clip from the opening episode that’ll give you a taste of what’s to come.

Deggsy’s Summary: 

Director: Various

Plot: 4 out of 5 stars

Gore: 2 out of 10 skulls

Zombie Mayhem: 0 out of 5 brains (so far, though; we may see zombies later)

Reviewed by Deggsy. Don’t make him hungry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s hungry. Especially when you see him eat a McRib Sandwich…

Jekyll and Hyde ITV


Filed under: Deggsy's Corner, New Horror Releases, New Posting, TV Horror

Thursday, October 29, 2015

TV Recap: AMERICAN HORROR STORY: HOTEL Episode 504, ‘Devil’s Night’

Shock Till You Drop
TV Recap: AMERICAN HORROR STORY: HOTEL Episode 504, ‘Devil’s Night’

AHS

AHS_504_0149d_hires1 Alyse Wax recaps last night’s episode of AMERICAN HORROR STORY.

John wakes to a phone call from Scarlett, asking if she can stay with her grandmother longer. John agrees; he is distracted by blood dripping down the walls. Heading upstairs to investigate, he finds Ms. Evers. She is out of sorts, a little mad, remembering her son, who was killed in 1925. They commiserate over their missing children. 

Evers took her son, Albert, trick-or-treating. She didn’t have time to make him a real costume, so he went as a ghost, a costume he hated. While Evers chats with another mother, Albert is kidnapped and falls victim to the Wineville Chicken Coop Murderer. Evers doesn’t really know exactly what happened to her son. When the cops raided the place, there was only one living boy there. All they found of Albert was a bloody ghost costume. She suddenly remembers she has much to do to prepare for the master’s “autumnal banquet” and scampers off. Later, at the police department, John discovers the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders took place in 1925 – and Miss Evers looks exactly as she did 90 years ago.

The “autumnal banquet” Miss Evers speaks of is an annual gathering of Mr. March’s murder students. Aileen Wuornos, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, and the Zodiac Killer are all in attendance. When Aileen picks him up at the hotel bar, he is too drunk to figure out she isn’t wearing a costume, and doesn’t care about the consequences. She tries to kill him and he fights back, handcuffing her before going down to complain to Liz Taylor. Liz fills him in  on Devil’s Night and gives him his invite to the party. Back in his room, Aileen is gone, but a tuxedo has been left for him.

evan-peters-john-carroll-lynch-march-gacy-ahs-hotel-e1446087708874

John attends the banquet with trepidation. He promises he is just there to arrest Aileen; no one seems too concerned. The group shares in some absinthe, and March introduces himself and his diners. John thinks this is a trick, but the killers all reminisce about how they came to find March as their mentor. Most stumbled upon him while passing through town. March was the first man to treat Aileen with respect; Gacy could have had a higher body count if he had really listened to him; he taught Ramirez to kill indiscriminately. 

Ms. Evers serves dinner. Dahmer is offended that he is given a salad, so she brings him an amuse bouche: a scared young man. Dahmer proceeds to drill into his brain and pour in some acid, so he has a mindless zombie who will never leave him. Despite being handcuffed to the chair, and being drugged, John fires his gun at the madmen. He clips Dahmer, who doesn’t even flinch. “Don’t you get that we’re already dead?” March sees his collection of deviants as the definition of American success. They have made their marks on history; their stories will live on forever. 

Now it is time for dessert. Sally brings in an obnoxious businessman she picked up on the street. After dosing him with a high ball, he was easily led into the murderer’s ball. This will, apparently, buy Sally a year of “being left alone.” Ms. Evers presents a tray of knives; everyone chooses one, then they go into a frenzy stabbing the drugged businessman.

lily-rabe-aileen-wurnos-ahs-hotel-e1446089572761

John starts screaming in a panic. But everyone is gone. He is left in the room, dark and empty, with Sally trying to calm him down. She swears he is hallucinating, and promises she is real, she is his protector, and she isn’t going anywhere.

Meanwhile, Alex has brought Holden home. Jasper, the dog, barks at him like crazy. Alex thinks it is because he doesn’t know Holden. He is distant, awkward. He wants the drapes drawn and his temperature is only 75.5. She hugs him; he is thirsty. Alex goes to get him some juice. By the time she returns, she finds Holden bloody, crouching over Jasper’s corpse. “I don’t feel good. I need my mommy,” he says pitifully. Alex points out that she is his mommy. “My other mommy.”

With few choices, Alex returns to the Hotel Cortez with Holden. He rushes ahead and climbs straight into his coffin. Elizabeth is waiting for Alex. “You must have a lot of questions. I have a lot of answers.” She takes Alex back to her room and promises that she saved Holden; she saved all her children from what she saw as neglect. Elizabeth describes what Holden has as an “ancient virus, a blood disorder.” Alex pulls a gun, demanding she change him back. Elizabeth isn’t scared of the gun and informs her there is no cure. She offers to turn Alex, reuniting her with her true love. All she asks is for her undying loyalty. Alex promises to go to the police and tries to leave. As she does, Tristan appears and punches her. Elizabeth tells him to let her go.

As the episode comes to a close, Alex returns to Elizabeth. She cannot lose her boy again and is ready to be transformed. Elizabeth promises the transition will not be easy, and that she must surrender completely, allow herself to be ripped apart, ravaged. “You will feel like you are dying.” She feeds Alex, and the transformation begins.

The post TV Recap: AMERICAN HORROR STORY: HOTEL Episode 504, ‘Devil’s Night’ appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.