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Inferno – Blu-ray Review – Arrow Video
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Inferno
Director: Dario Argento
Cast: Leigh McCloskey, Irene Miracle, Eleonora Giorgi
Review by Brian M. Sammons
This isn’t my favorite Argento film. In fact, it’s not even my favorite “Three Mothers” film by Argento. But just like something else that’s wonderful and Italian, namely pizza, there is really no such thing as awful Argento because even when he’s not great he’s still pretty damn good. Such is the case here. But wait, could it be that you don’t know what Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy is? Well let’s get to that.
Back in 1977 Dario gave the world a true macabre, nightmarish masterpiece with his film, Suspira. It was giallo, black-glove fun mixed with images right out of a techno colored fever dream, with black magic aplenty and one hell of an evil witch called The Mother of Sorrow. What we all soon learned after watching that movie, other than Argento was a true maestro of horror, was that this was only the beginning of the haunting trilogy of three mothers of evil.
In 1980 Argento returned to give his evil mothers some love with Inferno. This time the story was set in New York and revolved around the youngest, but most wicked mother/sister/witch/whatever; the Mother of Darkness. However beyond that I can’t say much. I do so not only in an attempt to avoid spoilers, but also because the story was an odd combination of confusing and boring. I say boring because the story moves at a leisurely pace at best while there’s confusion mostly in the motivation of the various characters. People come to the large apartment building the evil mother is hiding in, either by accident or actively looking for the witch, and then one by one they get bumped off in creative, sometimes hilarious ways. My favorite is a woman who gets pelted with lots of real, live, angry cats, like a scene out of Hitchcock’s The Birds, except with felines. Here’s hoping they were at least declawed.
Yet as weird and slow moving as the story is, Argento’s style is in top form. The man’s use of colors, lighting, and other visual candy is simply beautiful and has to be seen to believe. In this day of directors all aping the hyper kinetic thirty-cuts-a-minuet MTV music video style of movie making, it’s nice to see a movie where the director has actual talent and tons of skill. The old phrase of “they just don’t make them like that any more” has never been clearer. That alone makes this movie mandatory viewing.
Luckily for new fright fans and old terror film lovers alike, the good people at Arrow Video in the UK have put out a truly amazing looking Blu-ray edition of this movie that really showcases Argento’s style. In addition to looking great, they add a bunch of neat-o extras to the disc. There’s a 20 minute interview with actress and screenwriter Daria Nicolodi who co-wrote Suspiria and acted in Inferno. There’s the basic 15 minute making of featurette, a 30 minute question and answer session about the movie, and the oddest, and most interesting bit; a 15 minute documentary on a movie called The Black Cat that was made in 1989 and was an “unofficial” end to the Three Mothers trilogy by another director, Luigi Cozzi. I had never heard of this film so it was nice to learn about it.
Like all Arrow Video BDs and DVDs I’ve ever seen, this one is great. Its top of the line quality with plenty of extras tossed in. There is simply nothing better out there. If you are an Argento fan then this is the Blu-ray of Inferno to get.
Brothel – Psychological Ghost Story
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Mystic Pictures in association with Vanguard Cinema has announced the North American DVD release of the supernatural erotic thriller Brothel starring Serena Scott Thomas (The World is Not Enough), Grace Zabriskie (Big Love), Brett Cullen (Ghost Rider), Bruce Payne (Warlock III) and Timothy V Murphy (National Treasure: Book of Secrets).
Description: In an attempt to stay close to the love of her life, recently passed, Julianne (Serena Scott Thomas) chooses to become the mistress of death …
Brothel is a psychological ghost story about a woman who flees her life in the city after a tragic loss. In an old mining town stands an abandoned brothel from the turn of the century. Julianne purchases the brothel to turn it into a hotel, but as she begins its restoration, her shattered psyche takes on the personas of the four prostitutes and their Madam (Grace Zabriskie) who once inhabited the hotel. The harder they push her to face her past, the faster she runs away from reality toward the land of ghosts.
Brothel will be released on September 28, 2010 and is available to pre-order from all major retailers and rental outlets.
Special Cemetery Dance Bentley Little Issue
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Cemetery Dance #64, The Bentley Little Special Issue, is now shipping. The issue features two brand new short stories by Little, an in-depth interview conducted by legendary The Horror Show editor and wonderful writer, David Silva, as well as Little-related non-fiction by Kealan Patrick Burke, Steve Vernon, and Mark Sieber.
Graced by another magnificent Stacy Drum cover (inspired by Bentley Little’s short story “The Mailman”), this special issue features fiction by Brian Knight, Shaun Jeffrey, Benjamin Percy, and Simon Strantzas, as well as excerpts by Stephen King and Brian James Freeman, and Part Three of Douglas Clegg’s brilliant serial, The Innocents at the Museum of Antiquities.
This issue also features Steve Vernon’s look at the rising star of Brian Knight, the launch of a new graphic novel column by Dark Horse editor Scott Allie, a feature look at The New Dead anthology, as well as non-fiction from Cemetery Dance regulars Ed Gorman, Thomas F. Monteleone, Michael Marano, Don D’Auria, Ellen Datlow, Robert Morrish, and Mark Sieber.
This issue is packed full with 136 pages of horror and suspense for every type of reader – all for the low price of just $5,
Fiction
- “The Wheel” by Bentley Little
- “We” by Bentley Little
- “An Excerpt from Blockade Billy” by Stephen King
- “The Innocents at the Museum of Antiquities: Part Three” by Douglas Clegg
- “Out of Touch” by Simon Strantzas
- “The Long Black Coat” by Benjamin Percy
- “An Excerpt from The Painted Darkness” by Brian James Freeman
- “In Darkness” by Shaun Jeffrey
- “Deathbed” by Brian Knight
Special Features
- “A Conversation with Bentley Little” by David B. Silva
- “The Indispensable Bentley Little” by Mark Sieber
- “Little Stories, Large Shadows: The Short Fiction of Bentley Little” by Steve Vernon
- “Feature Review: His Father’s Son by Bentley Little” by Kealan Patrick Burke
- “A Conversation with Brian James Freeman” by Norman Prentiss
- “The New Dead: A Feature Look” by Brian James Freeman
- “New Voices: Brian Knight” by Steve Vernon
- “Horror in Comics” by Wayne Edwards
- “A Few Words with Paul Mackman, producer of Aliens vs. Predator” by Brian James Freeman
The Usual Suspects
- “Words from the Editor” by Richard Chizmar
- “Stephen King News: From The Dead Zone” by Bev Vincent
- “Editorial Perspectives” by Don D’Auria
- “The Mothers and Fathers Italian Association” by Thomas F. Monteleone
- “Fine Points” by Ed Gorman
- “Drawing on Your Nightmares” by Scott Allie
- “MediaDrome” by Michael Marano
- “The Last Ten Things I’ve Read” by Ellen Datlow
- “Spotlight on Publishing” by Robert Morrish
- “Horror Drive-In” by Mark Sieber
- “Cemetery Dance Reviews” edited by Nanci Kalanta
- “The Final Question” by Brian James Freeman (featuring Bentley Little, Ramsey Campbell, Nancy Holder, Robert Booth, Rocky Wood, David B. Silva, John R. Little, Norman L. Rubenstein)
You can order directly from Cemetery Dance here: Bentley Little Special
Survival Of The Dead – DVD Review
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Survival Of The Dead
Director: George A. Romero
Cast: Alan Van Spang, Kenneth Welsh, Kathleen Munroe
Review by Brian M. Sammons
This is a review that I really don’t want to write. Why? Because I am a George Romero fan, and a zombie movie fan, but especially a Romero zombie movie fan. At least I was, but ever since he finished his original …Of The Dead trilogy, the quality of Romero’s cavorting corpse cinema has been in steady decline. Yet while both land and Diary Of The Dead had some good things to balance out the bad, Survival is an unredeemable disaster from start to finish. I never thought I’d say that about any Romero movie, other than Bruiser, and especially not one of his zombie flicks, but that is the long and short of it. However if you want some reasons as to why this movie makes me so sad, read on.
The story, such as it is, is about a small island off the coast of Pennsylvania oddly populated by a bunch of Irish people living the simple country life when the undead plague hits. Half the residents of the island belong to one clan who want to do the sensible thing and kill the zombies as they pop up. The other half, also belong to a single clan, want to keep the zombies locked up, or chained up doing really stupid stuff like delivering the mail, mowing the lawn, and chopping wood (yeah, great idea, give the zombie an axe), until a cure can be discovered. This leads to a civil war of sorts between the living. Into this clan war comes a group of soldiers, the same soldiers last seen robbing the “heroes” of Diary Of The Dead. Now all this, while a bit silly, doesn’t sound all that bad, so why do I cry every time I think of this movie? Wow, where to begin?
The acting is atrocious. Not one actor looks like they have any business being in front of a camera, or hell even on the stage of the local community college. I’m not just trying to be snarky, but I cannot stress enough how bad the acting is. Yet I can’t blame these hapless thespians for ruining this movie alone, I can’t even place all the blame on them for the incredibly cheesy characters they are portraying. No, sadly the script has a lot to do with that too. The dialog is laughably bad, the situations thoroughly unbelievable, and worst of all, the zombie gags fall completely flat.
What’s a “zombie gag?” That’s a memorable bit of gory good fun where a zombie either kills someone, or is killed, in a spectacular way. Previous Romero zombie movies had tons of these, but Survival has not a single one. Oh, you will remember plenty of gore scenes from this movie, but for all the wrong reasons. Namely the special effects are HORRIBLE! The makeup, what little is used, looks like what you would see in your neighborhood haunted house at Halloween, but the biggest offender is the completely phony looking CGI effects. There are not words enough to describe how bad the Grade-Z computer effects look, so I’m not going to even try.
Ha, who am I kidding?
I live to piss all over bad CGI, so let me say that the computer animation in The Last Starfighter looked more believable than the splat effects in Survival, and have you seen that 1984 classic recently? Yeah, that looks better than what they’ve got here. And hey, did I mention the zombie chick riding a horse? Yes, you read that right, there’s a horse riding zombie. Man the questions that brings up are legion. How does the zombie girl get up on the horse? Does she just stay up there forever? Did she die on the horse? Why does the horse allow some rotting dead thing to ride it all around? Most importantly, who the hell thought it was a good idea to have a zombie on horseback in this movie?
Now despite this deeply flawed film, Magnolia Home Entertainment did a good job bring this move out on disc. There are three options to choose from, a rather bare bones DVD, a two disc Ultimate Edition DVD loaded with extras, and a nice looking Blu-ray with even more goodies. But does it really matter what extras a specific edition has when the movie they’re all about is this bad? No, it doesn’t so moving on…
I can not recommend this movie, not even a little bit. It is the one Romero zombie movie I will not be keeping in my movie library and honestly, I’m going to try like hell to forget that I ever saw this movie. I never thought I’d say this, but I do hope that George never makes another zombie movie, because if the declining quality trend continues, I can’t even begin to image how bad the next …Of The Dead movie will be. Whatever, consider this movie thoroughly drenched in Skip It sauce.
Apex Releases The Blackness Within
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Apex Publications has announced the release of Stoker Award-nominated editor Gill Ainsworth’s latest anthology, The Blackness Within: Stories of the Pagan God Moccus.
From Africa to Australasia, from Europe to the US, take a terrifying journey led by world-renowned and up-and-coming authors of horror. See how Moccus, the Celtic God of fecundity, brings His barbaric brutality to the twenty-first century. Experience the nightmare of an apostle unable to live up to His teachings in “Dreaming” and, in “Without Mercy,” witness the torment of those who can. But it doesn’t stop there. Even hundreds of years after Mocuss’s death, His savage reign continues for those who dare to question, as you will discover in “For They Are As Beasts” and “Abattoir Blues.”
Thirteen stories–some menacingly dark, others violent and rapacious–will show you a future where death is a blessing.
Table of Contents:
- Introduction: The New God, The New Order —Gill Ainsworth
- “Secrets of Fatima” —Steven L. Shrewsbury
- “Without Mercy” —Lucas Pederson
- “The Messiah of Mincemeat” —S. Clayton Rhodes
- “Dreaming” —Brenton Tomlinson
- “Daughter of God” —Maxwell Peterson
- “The Free Poor” —Mark Grundy
- “Bad Meat” —Michael Keyton
- “Chain of Hearts” —Eric Gregory
- “Big Game” —Conrad Zero
- “Dance of the Psychopomps” —Joshua McCune
- “Song-Ji and the Wolf” —Paul Williams
- “For They Are as Beasts” –Camille Alexa
- “Abattoir Blues” —Geoffrey W. Cole
- “The Holy Meal” —Moccus Meats
For the next seven days(until September 6th), use the coupon code BLACKNESS20 on checkout to receive 20% off your order. Here’s where to order: The Blackness Within
The Variant Effect – A Free Sci-Fi/Horror Novel
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The Variant Effect, a sci-fi/horror novel by G. Wells Taylor, is now available in one free multi-format eBook download or to order as paperback at Skin Eaters and other locations.
This simultaneous launch celebrates the completion of the Variant Effect Serial that ran from Sept. 2009 until June 2010 and entertained thousands of readers from over 130 countries.
“The old building in a rundown part of town was a perfect place to find a body, but Joe Borland knows they’d never have dragged him out of retirement if it still had its skin. It’s been twenty years since Borland battled the Variant Effect, and twenty since he let his partner get skinned alive. Now they are ordered back into action to meet a terrifying new threat.”
Description: The old building in a rundown part of Metro was a perfect place to find a body, but they wouldn’t have dragged Joe Borland out of retirement if it still had its skin. It’s been 20 years since Borland battled the Variant Effect, and 20 since he let his partner get skinned alive. Now both of them are ordered back into action to meet a terrifying new threat.
Author of Bent Steeple, The Apocalypse Trilogy and Wildclown’s World of Change, G. Wells Taylor delivers a claustrophobic tale of a toxic world where broken soldiers battle manmade monsters.
Get a free copy of The Variant Effect for your digital library at Skin Eaters, GWellsTaylor.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Kobobooks.com, iBookstore, Diesel-eBooks.com and Smashwords.com where all other G. Wells Taylor titles are available as multi-format eBook for $3.99 or to order in paperback.
Suspense Magazine September 2010
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The September 2010 issue of Suspense Magazine is out. This marks the second print edition of Suspense Magazine and the issue is dedicated to debut authors (meaning many milestones have been achieved, but there are more hills to climb to conquer in order to reach the ultimate goal of success).
The featured debut authors include:
- Joan Francis Turner
- Alan Orloff
- Joshua Graham
- Allison Leotta
- Katia Lief
Readers will also find work by Donald Allen Kirch, Nancy Mason, Tiffany Colter, Scott Nicholson, Gillian Scott, Corinna Underwood and many others, covering writing, book reviews, movie reviews, interviews and more. Plus there’s an Author Hall of Fame piece celebrating Peter Benchley.
You can learn more and subscribe here: Suspense Magazine
One more note: Suspense Radio is now live, every Tuesday and Friday night at 6:00 pm Pacific time, with authors being interviewed and much more. You can find out more by visiting Suspense Radio for a full list of guests and the schedule.
