VHS Flashback: Paragon Video

I recently reviewed the new DVD release of Boarding House for my Killer B's on DVD mini-feature over on Cinematical.com (check it out here). I first saw this movie on VHS from Paragon Video, a long defunct label whose magnificently lurid box covers graced video stores everywhere during the hey day of VHS. Paragon was one of those companies responsible for making obscure trash cinema available to the common man, and God bless 'em for it.

I found this way cool gallery of Paragon tape box covers over at the Critical Condition website, and phrases like "adjust tracking for best picture" and of course "be kind rewind" have been running through my head ever since. Some of these I've seen, some I haven't, but the art really grabs the imagination. Iconic 42nd Street gore flick Dr. Butcher, M.D. is there, as is something called Death Promise whose cover is obviously done by comics legend Neil Adams, and you can see art for minor classics like Blood on Satan's Claw, Tombs of the Blind Dead, Kiss Me Kill Me and Silent Night Bloody Night. This stuff is awesome.

Here's the Paragon Video logo as it appeared onscreen.

Whatever happened to Dark Floors?

I got to wondering tonight what happened to Dark Floors. I do the weekly Trailer Park column over at Cinematical.com and I did a write up on the Dark Floors preview back in December. The film got its world premiere in its native Finland on February 6, and has since been released in Iceland and Estonia (I'm embarrassed to say I don't even know where that is) but I haven't heard any news of a U.S. release. Well, the Internet is a pretty awesome thing and I quickly learned (thanks to an article over at Bloody-disgusting.com) that the film has been picked up by Ghost House Underground, a new direct-to-video branch of Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures that will be releasing the film in October.

Dark Floors stars the band Lordi, a Finnish rock group who wear some very cool and downright horrific monster costumes as part of their act. When a man removes hist autistic daughter from her doctor's care and attempts to the leave the hospital, they and a handful of others step off the elevator onto a floor that shouldn't exist. The place is strewn with corpses, and they find themselves stalked by monstrous demons, played by the members of Lordi. This looks awesome enough for me to ignore the slight resemblance to Silent Hill. I checked out the movie's official site which is a pretty cool Flash driven affair. Take a look at the trailer below, and beneath that you'll find a Lordi video that proves they've seen The Evil Dead in Finland.

The Andromeda Strain - Memorial Day on A&E

I've known the 1971 version of The Andromeda Strain for decades. Today it's charmingly dated, a prime example of relatively hardware-free pre-Star Wars science fiction. Based on a novel by Michael Crichton and directed by Robert Wise (whose incredible resume includes such far ranging projects as The Haunting, The Sound of Music, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture) the film tells the story of a group of specialists assembled by the government to combat a virus of extraterrestrial origin, a virus so lethal that it could destroy every living thing on the planet.

A&E will be broadcasting a new adaptation starting at 9:00 PM eastern/8:00 PM central on Memorial day, Monday, May 26, 2008 and continuing on May 27. The cast has plenty of familiar faces including Benjamin Bratt, Eric McCormack, Daniel Dae Kim and Ricky Schroeder and the show's official website is pretty cool and worth a look. Obviously this will be a slicker take on the story, and I'm curious enough that I've already set the DVR so I won't miss it. Check out the trailer:

New Posters For THE HAPPENING

We've got a pair of new posters for M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening which opens on Friday June 13. I have to say I prefer the aerial view German poster to the warped city poster. Click on either image for a closer look.

Latest Red Band Trailer for M. Night Shyamalan's THE HAPPENING

In case you don't know, a red band trailer indicates R-rated content, as opposed to the standard green band ones you see in theaters. My fingers are crossed that this is a return to greatness for Shyamalan. I loved The Sixth Sense and Signs, really liked Unbreakable, and was so disappointed by The Village that I still haven't seen Lady in the Water. Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel and John Leguizamo star in this film about an apocalyptic phenomenon that results in a massive outbreak of suicide.

An Indiana Jones Knock Off You May Have Missed

The interwebs are abuzz this week with all things Jonesian. Indiana that is. Harrison Ford is dusting off his bullwhip (so that's what they're calling it now) for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which opens this Friday. This is the first new installment the series has seen in nearly twenty years, and by this time next week an amount equal to the combined gross national product of several European countries will have been forked over to see it.

Like any hugely successful film, Raiders of the Lost Ark and its sequels have spawned imitators. Tomb Raider added feminine curves and pouty lips to the swashbuckling adventurer, The Mummy used an alleged remake of a Universal monster flick as an excuse to delve into Jones-like territory, and Tales of the Gold Monkey (anybody else remember that one?) briefly brought Jones style adventure to the small screen. This new film has already spawned it's own imitator by way of a public domain literary character, resulting in The Asylum's Allan Quatermain and the Temple of the Skulls.

I've got a Raiders inspired knock-off that I'm betting you've never heard of. The Ark of the Sun God is a 1983 film that was released on DVD a few years ago as part of a double feature called Tales of Voodoo Vol.4 and misleadingly marketed as a horror film. This Italian/Turkish co-production is directed by Anthony M. Dawson, a.k.a. Antonio Margheriti, maker of such films as the excellent and eerie Barbara Steele film Castle of Blood (1964), and the Pasta Land Chunkblower classic Cannibal Apocalypse (1980), among many others.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the film stars Italian horror film legend David Warbeck. Not all of his movies are classics--I recently watched Warbeck’s Panic (1976), which totally bites--but his presence in Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond has earned him many cool points. Also noteworthy is the appearance of character actor Luciano Pigozzi, who appeared in several other Margheriti flicks, as well as the Mario Bava films Baron Blood and Blood and Black Lace.

Warbeck plays Rick Spear, a cat burglar of some repute who has business in Istanbul. While attempting to steal a rare artifact, Spear is caught and recruited by Lord Dean. The plan is for Spear to locate the Temple of the Sun God, the presumed resting place of Gilgamesh, a king who was half man and half demon. Dean wants Spear to enter the temple using the aforementioned artifact as a key and steal a jeweled scepter. The Brits are concerned about the political implications of the scepter falling into the wrong hands. Unbeknownst to anyone, though, the room is bugged, and the exchange is overheard by an Arab prince and his henchmen, members of the Demons of Gilgamesh who want the scepter for their own purposes.

What follows is kidnapping, murder, gun play, car chases, Indiana Jones-style archeology (particularly in a very Raiders-esque snake pit sequence, and a rather modest tarantula attack), and various other acts of daring do on the part of our hero. The action scenes are fun, though sometimes they seem randomly placed, and their order in the film could probably be rearranged without much trouble. There's even a car chase in which the stunts are achieved using some well done but fairly obvious miniatures.

Little attempt is made to disguise the James Bond connection. While wearing his black cat burglar clothes, Spear very much resembles Sean Connery. He comments to Lord Dean, “Why didn’t you tell me this job called for Roger Moore?” Even Spear’s girlfriend Carol is more often than not referred to as “Pussycat,” possibly a reference to Honor Blackman’s Pussy Galore character from Goldfinger. The entire third act just screams Indiana Jones, right down to the snake pit scene and the Arab sidekick who resembles John Rhys-Davies’ character from Raiders.

Not a masterpiece, but a fun little bit of hokum. The picture is grainy, but watchable, though a few night scenes are hard to make out. The image is letterboxed, but info seems to be lost on the left and right sides of the screen.

Here's the trailer for The Ark of the Sun God:

Evil Head clip

I daresay this clip is priceless (and I hasten to add, probably not safe for work). I found this over at at NOTLP.com, the official web presence of Night of the Living Podcast, a weekly horror movie podcast that I never miss. This is a PG-13 preview for Evil Head, a hardcore porn film parody of the Evil Dead movies from the makers of Repenetrator. The satire is dead on, and if I'm not mistaken that is actual dialog from one of the Evil Dead flicks at the beginning. The black and white is a nice touch too. My only question is will a porn audience go for this? If you're looking to watch some down and dirty smut are you going to sit through an admittedly cool but unerotic horror movie parody? Anyway, check it out:

Dawn of the 3-D Dead

The original 1978 Dawn of the Dead is being retro-fitted as a 3-D film and will be re-released to theaters. The Hollywood Reporter tells us the project is being undertaken by New Amsterdam Entertainment and In-Three who will be using their proprietary dimensionalization software to add depth to what, in my humble opinion, is one of the greatest horror films ever to grace a strip of celluloid.

The only other film ever to be retroactively turned into 3-D is A Nightmare Before Christmas. Nightmare was a stop-motion animated feature and Beowulf, whose amazing 3-D spectacle damn near made me soil myself, was computer generated, so I'm curious how well the process will work on a live action film. Frankly, I'd be glad to see a 2-D version of Dawn on the big screen, but what I'm wondering is will this be a truncated version of the film? Dawn was originally released unrated to theaters, but you can't really get away with that today. Most theater chains will not carry unrated films, and newspapers will not carry ads for them. There was also an R-rated version of the film floating around at one point, so is this the one that's going to get the 3-D treatment? Maybe the uncut version could be resubmitted, but damn, those long lingering scenes of disembowelment would be hard pressed to get an R even today.

Diarrhea of the Dead

In honor of the DVD release of George A. Romero's latest zombie opus Diary of the Dead, here's an early version of the film's poster. Evidently focus groups didn't care for this scatological approach to the walking dead, so the final film took a different approach.

TRAILER: The Strangers

The Strangers opens on May 30, and I'm really hoping the movie is as balls to the wall creepy as the trailer is. Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman play a couple who are the target of a horrifying home invasion by several people wearing masks. Come, partake of the terror...