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As the ’80s came to a close, so too did the first wave of the slasher cycle. While they would continue to be produced into the next decade, 1989 was the last gasp of a dying genre. Returning franchises and hopeful upstarts alike struggled to make an impact. We all know you can never really kill a slasher, but it would take Scream‘s reinvention of the concept in 1996 to renew broad interest.

Cutting Class, another ’89 entry in the subgenre, marked the directorial debut — and, as it turned out, sole directorial effort — from Rospo Pallenberg, who notably co-wrote Excalibur, contributed uncredited rewrites on Exorcist II: The Heretic, and served as a “creative associate” on Deliverance. Despite his pedigree, Pallenberg did not write the script; that was the work of Steve Slavkin, who would go on to create Nickelodeon’s pivotal series Salute Your Shorts.

The plot finds prototypical girl-next-door Paula in...

Great news for fans of CBS’ short-lived BrainDead: Robert and Michelle King are bringing similar sci-fi absurdity to The Bite, their satirical Covid drama premiering Friday, May 21 on Spectrum.

Like many series have in the past year, The Bite centers on the Covid-19 pandemic — but this is a fictional strain of the virus that seems to turn infected people into something very zombie-like. (“Zombies are fictional,” Steven Pasquale’s CDC doc says in the trailer below, but we’re not sure how else he’d explain the virus’ thrashing, purple-faced victims.)

More from TVLineLena Headey to Lead Beacon 23 Series Adaptation at Spectrum and Amcl.

Gold Derby can exclusively reveal the 2020 Emmy Awards submissions for Best Drama Series nominees. The eight contenders are “Better Call Saul,” “The Crown,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Killing Eve,” “The Mandalorian,” “Ozark,” “Stranger Things” and “Succession.”

See 2020 Emmy nominations complete list: All the nominees for the 72nd Emmy Awards

Each series enters six episodes from this past season for voters to watch on the Television Academy online platform. Here are the 48 choices across all of the programs:

“Better Call Saul” (AMC) – “The Guy for This,” “Wexler v. Goodman,” “Jmm,” “Bagman,” “Bad Choice Road,” “Something Unforgivable”

“The Crown” (Netflix) – “Margaretology,” “Aberfan,” “Bubbikins,” “Tywysog Cymru,” “Moondust,” “Cri de Coeur”

“The Handmaid’s Tale” (Hulu) – “Unknown Caller,” “Household,” “Unfit,” “Heroic,” “Sacrifice,” “Mayday”

“Killing Eve” (BBC America) – “Meetings Have Biscuits,” “Still Got It,” “Are You From Pinner?,” “End of Game,” “Beautiful Monster,” “Are You Leading or Am I?”

“The Mandalorian” (Disney +) – “The Mandalorian,” “The Child,” “The Sin,...

The whole programme, curated into thematic slots, can be accessed until 13 May. The Go Short International Short Film Festival in Nijmegen, Netherlands, which is taking place online from 15 April-13 May, has announced its award winners. In the European Competition, the Go Short Award for Best Fiction went to Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Neves Marques for The Bite, a story set in a house in the Atlantic Forest and a genetically modified mosquito factory near São Paulo, where a polyamorous, non-binary relationship struggles to survive an epidemic spreading across Brazil. The work was originally commissioned by the Pérez Art Museum of Miami as a double-channel film and six-channel sound installation. A Special Mention went to Anton Bialas for At the Entrance of the Night (France). In the animation section, Genius Loci by French filmmaker Adrien Meriqeau bagged the main award. The film tells the story of a loner in search...

The Movies

The Curse

The life of a farmer can be difficult, especially if that farmer is watering his crops with contaminated “toilet water” that came from the inside of a meteorite that crashed on his property. Farmer Nathan thought life was going was going great with his new cheating wife, empty headed kid, step-kids being smarter than him, and his strict Christian views. Unfortunately, a meteor just had to strike down on his property with no real scientific inspection from anyone for at least ¾ of the movie.

Farmer Nathan then starts noticing his vegetables filled with maggots, diseased cattle, terrible tasting tap water, and his new wife with an infection on her face. Farmer Nathan does what any farmer trying to make a living would do in such a terrible situation. Nothing.

Did you Know? Italian gore filmmaker Lucio Fulci is credited as the Associate Producer under the name Louis Fulci?...

In this special episode of Off The Shelf, Ryan and Brian take a look at the new DVD and Blu-ray releases for Tuesday, February 23rd 2016.

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Follow-Up Criterion Collection Flash Sale News Love on Netflix Anchor Bay / TWC: Hateful Eight Blu-ray Road show version? Warner Archive: Susan Slept Here Kino – Certain Fury, American Dreamer Episode Links & Notes The Adventures of Gumby: 60’s Series Volume 1 Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! Season One Part One [The Bees] Big Sleep [Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things] The Curse / Curse II: The Bite Demonoid Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song Entertainment Extraction Fargo: Season 2 The Good Dinosaur The Graduate Gumby: 60’s Series V1 I Knew Her Well Jesus Of Nazareth: The Complete Miniseries Key Largo The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar Millennium / R.O.T.O.R. Moonwalkers Pauline at the Beach Secret in Their Eyes The Serpent and the Rainbow Shaun the Sheep: Season...

This week delivers up a wealth of joy. Cannibal Women! Zombies! Curses! Sinful Dwarfs! Doctor Who! So let’s dive in and see just how we’re going to spend our week!

Cannibal Women In The Avocado Jungle Of Death

With a title like that, do you even need to know more? Yeah? Well, it stars 1982 Playboy Playmate of the Year Shannon Tweed. And Adrienne Barbeau from Swamp Thing and Creepshow. (Fun Fact: Adrienne Barbeau played Rizzo in the original Broadway production of Grease! And got a Tony nom for it! What!) And Bill Maher, before he got all respectable with his own HBO show and all. To avoid an avocado shortage, an anthropology professor (Tweed!) heads into the avocado jungle of Southern California to confront the man-eating Piranha Women tribe. How the cannibals are affecting the avocado crops is anyone’s guess. But, hey, I live in SoCal, and...

February’s home entertainment releases are ending on a high note, so genre fans should get their wallets ready in anticipation of all the great horror and sci-fi titles coming our way on the 23rd. Scream Factory has several fantastic releases planned for this Tuesday, including the highly anticipated Blu-ray for Wes Craven’s The Serpent and the Rainbow as well as double features of The Curse / Curse II: The Bite and Millennium / R.O.T.O.R.

Candyman director Bernard Rose’s latest endeavor—the modern interpretation of the classic Frankenstein tale—hits Blu and DVD this week, and the cult classic Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things is getting an HD overhaul this Tuesday as well.

Other notable Blu-ray and DVD releases on February 23rd include The Bees, Bigfoot Vs. Zombies, Moonwalkers, Demonoid, American Horror Project: Volume One and Upsidedown Cross.

Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (Vci Entertainment,...

Ahead of Scream Factory’s February 23rd home media release of The Curse and Curse II: The Bite double feature, we’ve been provided with three Blu-ray copies to give away to Daily Dead readers.

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Prize Details: (3) Winners will receive (1) Blu-ray copy of The Curse and Curse II: The Bite double feature.

How to Enter: For a chance to win, email [email protected] with the subject “The Curse / Curse II: The Bite Contest”. Be sure to include your name and mailing address.

Entry Details: The contest will end at 12:01am Est on February 26th. This contest is only open to those who are eighteen years of age or older that live in the United States. Only one entry per household will be accepted.

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“The Curse

Life on the family dairy farm is difficult for young Zach Hayes (Wil Wheaton, Stand by Me): hard work, long hours and the normal family squabbles.

Take a double shot of '80s horror with The Curse and Curse II: The Bite on Blu-ray from Scream Factory on February 23rd. Below, we have a Blu-ray clip and official trailer for The Curse as well as a Blu-ray clip from Curse II: The Bite.

Press Release: On February 23rd, get ready for a double dose of ‘80s horror with the release of The Curse and Curse II from Scream Factory! Available on Blu-ray for the first time, fans can pre-order their copies of this double feature by visiting ShoutFactory.com.

The Curse

Life on the family dairy farm is difficult for young Zach Hayes (Wil Wheaton, Stand by Me): hard work, long hours and the normal family squabbles. But after an ice-blue meteor plunges through the midnight sky and lands on their property, it gets worse. Zach and the local doctor discover that something inside the...

Last November, Scream Factory announced that The Curse and Curse II: The Bite would be released as a double feature on Blu-ray on February 23rd. Now in 2016, the Blu-ray is available to pre-order on Shout Factory's website.

Press Release: On February 23rd, get ready for a double dose of ‘80s horror with the release of The Curse and Curse II from Scream Factory! Available on Blu-ray for the first time, fans can pre-order their copies of this double feature by visiting ShoutFactory.com.

The Curse

Life on the family dairy farm is difficult for young Zach Hayes (Wil Wheaton, Stand by Me): hard work, long hours and the normal family squabbles. But after an ice-blue meteor plunges through the midnight sky and lands on their property, it gets worse. Zach and the local doctor discover that something inside the meteor is infecting the local water on their farm. Fruits,...

Two atmospheric horror gems come to Blu-ray from Scream Factory. Circle February 23rd on your calendars as our friends at Scream Factory have just announced that they will be releasing the double shot of director David Keith’s The Curse and the unrelated but still cool sssssssequel Curse II: The Bite on a single Blu-ray. The…

The post The Curse and Curse II: The Bite Come to Blu-ray appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

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It's billed as a sequel to Cloverfield, but is 10 Cloverfield Lane all it seems? We take a look at the subject of unrelated sequels...

In an era where it's just about impossible to make a high-profile movie without at least something leaking onto the web, producer Jj Abrams seems to have pulled off the ultimate coup in recent months: he and his company Bad Robot have secretly created a follow-up, of sorts, to the 2008 hit monster movie, Cloverfield.

On the 15th January, a trailer landed for 10 Cloverfield Lane, a claustrophobic horror thriller that Abrams described in a statement to Collider as a "blood relative" of that earlier film directed by Matt Reeves.

The premise is this: Mary Elizabeth Winstead's character, Michelle, is injured in a car accident and wakes up in a bunker with 40-something survivalist, Howard (John Goodman).

Howard tells Michelle that some kind of...

Although it's not the New Year yet, Scream Factory's already gearing up for 2016 by announcing two double feature Blu-ray releases for February 23rd: The Curse / Curse II: The Bite and Millennium / R.O.T.O.R.

From Scream Factory: "More retro double features are planned for blu-ray release in the beginning of the new year! Read on for all the details:

The Curse & The Curse II

- The Curse (1987) Young Zach Hayes' (Wil Wheaton, Stand by Me) life on the family dairy farm is what anyone would expect. Hard work, long hours and the normal family squabbles. When an ice-blue meteor plunges through the midnight sky, Zach sees in hand on their property. Zach and the local doctor discover that something inside the meteor is infecting the local water on their farm. Fruits, which looked perfect on the outside are teeming with worms… and Zach's family is beginning to change…...

Odd List Ryan Lambie 6 Nov 2013 - 06:50

From random films with altered names to unrelated storylines, we take a look at 15 incredibly tenuous horror and sci-fi film sequels...

The profit-driven nature of filmmaking usually means that, if a movie's a hit, sequels follow. And it's sometimes the case that, particularly in the realm of low-budget sci-fi and horror, those sequels are trotted out in a rush, or don't have anything to do with the film they're following.

This isn't to say that the sequels on this list are necessarily bad - it's a proper mixed bag of the great, the mediocre and the downright awful - but in each instance, these sequels have only vague links to their predecessors, or worse still, they're entirely different films rebranded to fit an existing franchise.  

Our list is by no means definitive - rather, we've chosen a collection of films that we find the most memorable.

Although his contributions to The Curse are slight, goremeister Lucio Fulci’s unique touch of horror can be seen in this Italian production. As a director, his best days were behind him, but that didn’t mean his talent was completely lost. To call yourself a true fan of someone’s work you really need to watch everything they were involved with; the good and the bad. The Curse has all the earmarks of what was great about spaghetti horror in the 80′s: sloppy make-up FX, a weird storyline and and a broad cast of characters – one of them being Malcolm Danare of Christine (see retrospective here) fame.

Jason Bene: As you are fully aware, the 1980′s were dominated by Stephen King adaptions. It was a nice change of pace to see a story of H.P. Lovecraft’s, The Colour Out of Space, being turned into a feature film. What...

Dread Central’s next final girl, Jill Schoelen, was one of our busiest final girls working in the horror genre. The actress appeared in Wes Craven’s Chiller, The Stepfather, Curse 2: The Bite, The Phantom of the Opera, Popcorn, and When a Stranger Calls Back, firmly cementing her place as a beloved final girl of modern horror history.

The ironic part of it all is that Schoelen’s acting career was kind of a happy accident.

“When I started off in the business, I came in as a singer,” explained Schoelen. “Then from there, I’d get asked to audition for singing parts that had a little bit of acting. That turned into acting auditions that had a little bit of singing, and then it turned into full-blown acting.”

One of Schoelen’s first roles was in one of this writer’s favorite cult comedies of the 80s: DC Cab.