We had to share this – this is a pretty good spoof on the classic song “The Rhythm is Gonna Get You” by Gloria Estefan. Don’t know it?? Check it here. But for all of you gore hounds that love and adore and cherish and appreciate the amazing music by Gloria Estefan as much as we do here at LAHorror.com, you’ll certainly enjoy this:
That rhythm got you didn’t it??
Check out more from Grumpy Panda at their official website.
Who doesn’t enjoy a quick slasher flick? Call me sadistic, but nothing cheers me up more than cramming a whole bunch of death in a real short amount of time – something that Slasher Studios‘ short film, “Teddy,” has no problem doing at all.
The set up is classic: a group of friends having a party weekend when things start to go horribly wrong. Not only do they accidentally run over an old man on their way to the woods, but they then find themselves being stalked by the old man’s demented stuffed bear wielding son, Teddy. Needless to say, things don’t work out too well for these fun loving teens.
What makes “Teddy” so enjoyable is its rapid fire pace. An 11-minute run time is really not a lot, yet “Teddy” manages to establish motive for the title killer, introduce our victims, give us a blood splattering car crash, slam about 20 beers, show a pretty raunchy sex scene, as well as multiple murders that even Jason himself would be proud of. Let me just say this without giving away too much: nobody’s ass is safe in this movie. Don’t believe me? Well see for yourself…
Well, was it too scary to…bear? What I love about this piece is our killer. Much like the horror classics we know and love, Teddy is mysterious and could probably use a feature or two to really get to the bottom of his troubles. I mean, who is this guy and what’s with his demented bear? It’s eerie and unsettling, and while the mystery makes the story stronger, my morbid curiosity would love to learn more. While it works as a short, it easily has all the pieces to grow into a much larger project.
That being said, mad props goes to filmmakers Kevin Sommerfield and Steve Goltz. Slashers are always great fun and it’s always exciting to see new disturbing characters and deaths thrown into the world of horror. Who knows, a couple years down the road maybe we’ll get to see some more of Teddy, but until then? Well, bust open a PBR and keep partying…
Please be sure to check out “Teddy” on Facebook, as well as SlasherStudios.com on Facebook. Also follow SlasherStudios.com on Twitter.
Well, summer is nearing its end, sadly, and pretty soon the weather will be getting colder. It’s a damn shame, too because who doesn’t enjoy sitting out in the sun, cracking open an ice-cold beer and taking a whopping bite of a delicious, juicy flame grilled cheeseburger? Well, maybe we’ll skip the burger this time, because if “Summer of the Zombies,” the new short film from Owlet Pictures, teaches us anything, it’s that meat really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be…even if you’re a flesh eating zombie.
Writer/Directors Ashleigh Nichols and Eddie Beasley have certainly taken a classic horror genre and given it a new twist in their 10 minute tale, taking the oft flesh eating villains we all know and love and making them much more appealing to a progressive crowd. You see, our protagonist in this tale (a zombie, naturally), has a hard time buying into the fact that she’s supposed to eat flesh like the rest of her fellow corpses. Catch my drift? Vegetarian Zombies.
“We were literally drinking with friends and we were just talking…I think we said the combo of words vegetarian and zombie, and we just knew instantly that we needed to go home and write it, like, immediately. And shoot it immediately and get it out there. It was literally just the wine talking,” Nichols said laughing.
“It’s been received really well; we’ve managed to play at different horror film festivals and we’ve also played at some comedy festivals. It’s mixed audiences, everyone seems to enjoy it,” Beasley said.
And why not? The film is plenty gory, oddly heartwarming and full of laugh out loud moments. Not to mention an ending that would make George Romero giddy with delight. And in that same breath, the film is overflowing with social commentary from the very first shot to the closing credit song. This, however, was not an intentional choice by the filmmakers.
“I don’t think we ever really tried to come up with any kind of serious message that people could take away from it. We came up an idea we wanted to have fun with,” Beasley said. “Neither one of us are full vegetarians or anything,” added Nichols.
Well, I guess I don’t feel too bad eating my burger anymore…
Nichols and Beasley are currently in production on a comedic web series entitled “Mall Joggers.” Nichols also produced the underground hit “The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulu.” Be sure to follow Owlet Pictures on Twitter.
Matthew Wade was one of our first featured horror artists on LAHorror.com, and his films are truly an experience. His style is unique and the stories he tells are full of mystery, thought provoking imagery and haunting sounds. We shared several of his short films in our interview with Wade, but he’s back with a project that will be his biggest one yet.
“How the Sky Will Melt” follows a girl returning home from a tour after one of her band mates passes away and her struggle to cope with the loss of her friend. However, after making a strange discovery, things begin to change…
“She finds this box that has all of these little glass vials in it that are filled with different colors of liquid, and when they’re messed with or broken or played with, it kind of alters the state of everything around them,” Wade told LAHorror.com. Sounds far out, right? If you’ve seen Wade’s work, then you know it’s not going to be a cake walk for these characters and that many things aren’t going to be as they may seem. Wade also recently released a promotional short for the film, which can be seen below.
“[It’s] very ambiguous because that’s kinda the style we’re going with the movie,” Wade said. And in case you were wondering about those waning sounds and the raw feel, it’s a personal choice and one that’s rarely seen in the digital age.
“All of the noise and the background music and stuff [were] done on the analog sound equipment that we wanted to use because that was part of our deal with the movie. We’re gonna make it on film and we’re gonna do all the sound track stuff on eights, and we’re gonna do all of the music, like the scoring, on old analog equipment,” Wade said. Refreshing, isn’t it?
The film is in the last legs of its Kickstarter in order to raise money for film, transportation and loads of in-camera effects and creature design. You can meet Wade himself on their Kickstarter page, get a glimpse at some concept art, as well as other work that has led to this. And if you haven’t read our first piece on Wade, click the link at the top of this story because his films are unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.
For more on this project and Wade’s other works, please visit his official website.
It seems like so long ago, but there was a time when video stores were abundant and horror had its own isle in the store. Remember browsing through the boxes, scoping out the monsters and slasher pictures and renting the movie with the most terrifying image? Well, we certainly do, and LAHorror.com’s featured writer and artist, C.J. Duke, does as well.
“The earliest I was really exposed to horror was just seeing the art in videos. Back when it was actual art, not Photoshop,” Duke told LAHorror.com. Yes, actual drawings and paintings. And it shows in his work. Duke uses his skill to create images and cover art for horror projects and films. He illustrates with care, using colored pencils and grabbing his inspiration from a variety of horror genres. “I just think back to the old video store really, looking back at the images that inspired me as a kid, seeing how they’d lay things out and how they were presented.”
One of his commissioned works draws on the 70s and early 80s exploitation flicks. “That was actually for an independent magazine called ‘Dirty Boogie.’ You are looking at the cover for the last issue…[The publisher] mentioned ‘Last House on the Left’ and ‘Hills Have Eyes,’” Duke explained.
However, doing commissioned work is only part of the process. Duke often creates pieces to promote his own projects as well as the projects of others. A friend of his made an independent horror film entitled “Winter Lights,” and as a gift Duke created the VHS artwork (and the media box itself)- it certainly looks like something you’d see at a Blockbuster.
But Duke isn’t just an artist. As an active horror writer himself, Duke already has poster art up for scripts he’s shopping around and developing. “The Cauldron,” Duke’s “someday script…” film, is in the vein of fantasy horror and the images themselves have a certain amount of intrigue.
Duke’s current feature project, “Pop N’ Crisp,” is an 80s style horror comedy written by Duke. He shot a teaser scene from the film and is currently seeking the means to film the entire project. “It’s basically an amalgamation of every single 80s ad campaign come back to kill us,” Duke said. Check out some of the promo art here.
Gotta love that 80s vibe – I have the sneaking suspicion that things don’t work out well for these two guys. And when it comes to future projects from C.J. Duke? ”Horror. Absolutely horror. I jump between horror comedy or serious horror fantasy or straight slasher, but it’s always horror,” he said. Our kinda guy.
You can check out more of C.J. Dukes work at his art page here.
Happy Sunday!
Thought we’d start the week right by sharing a nasty little horror flick by Joe Sanchez, called “The Baby.” It’s a quick one but it’s full of emotion and creeps. And besides, what better way is there to start your Sunday morning by watching a horror flick?? Enjoy horror lovers, we’ll be bringing new stuff all week!
The baby! The baby!!
No film is scarier than the things that can happen in real life. It seems that every day, somewhere in the world, horror movies become reality and we’re reminded just how fragile life can be. After all, art imitates life and life imitates art – true horror fans know this. But filmmaker and documentarian, Edward Payson, allegedly stumbled upon something that may be too frightening to pass up. While Payson’s first documentary, “Unsigned,” dove into the life of several bands trying to make it big in Los Angeles, his second documentary, “The Cohasset Snuff Film,” is much more controversial and nasty.
In 2009, a 17-year-old boy named Colin Mason allegedly murdered three of his classmates in a small town in Massachusetts. Mason, an amateur filmmaker himself, videotaped each murder and broadcast them onto the internet for his own sick pleasure. While nearly all of the footage has been destroyed and the murders covered up, Payson and fellow documentarian, Kevin McCarthy, went on a search for the tapes and claim to have found them. While LAHorror.com hasn’t been able to personally verify the footage’s authenticity, Payson and McCarthy plan on proving it to the world in their new movie, “The Cohasset Snuff Film.”
“[Mason] plans and videotapes the murders of three classmates. He blogs about it and it really makes you kind of see inside his head—as a serial killer—and what he’s thinking and why he does what he does…why serial killers do what they do,” Payson told LAHorror.com of the footage. And while the footage itself has eluded us, we did stumble on a video blog entry of Jacyln Mccoy, one of the victim’s friends reacting to the murders.
What Payson has done is interview the people who supposedly were there, get professional opinions on the murders and simply show the public exactly what was going on in the mind of this madman. This film could be an important piece of an already mysterious puzzle, and while the film does include the Colin Mason murder tapes, don’t expect “Blair Witch” type handicam. “This will…make you throw up. It’s not shaky cam all the time or anything like that,” Payson said. And from what we’ve seen, every gory detail is caught.
The High School Killer, Colin Mason
“The killer in the movie actually explains how everyday normal people become psychopaths and how it’s so easy when people say, ‘How could that happen here?’ And he explains, ‘This is how it happens here. Everybody in high school…has this mentality that if you’re not in my click, then you don’t exist to me,” Payson said of Mason’s motives and thought-process. And truer words have never been spoken. While there will undoubtedly be efforts to ban or debunk the film’s release, the filmmakers still intend on getting a limited theatrical run come Halloween. (We’ll tell you how you can help that happen in a future story on LAHorror.com).
Now, whether or not you agree or disagree with Payson sharing this footage, he’s more than just a documentarian. Payson also has several other horror projects in the works that are worth a look. His action/horror/thriller, “Fury: The Tales of Ronan Pierce,” is currently in post-production and certainly sounds badass. Payson describes it as “really fast cars, really fast girls and lots of blood and gore.” Throw Kane Hodder and R.A. Mihailoff in the mix too? Yeah, sign me up bro.
Payson is also in production for his new web series, “Edward Pason’s Sunday Night Slaughters,” a 12-episode horror series that promises a little bit for everyone. “There’s werewolves, there’s cannibals, there’s demonic possession, there’s crazy Christians…each one’s completely different with a different cast of people,” Payson said. The series plans on utilizing a variety of different make-up artists, several DPs and guest directors. If you have a love for the disgusting as much as we do, help this project take off by checking out the link above and hearing from Edward Payson himself. Check it out horror lovers!
Be sure to check out “The Cohasset Snuff Film,” “Fury: The Tales of Ronan Pierce” and “Edward Payson’s Sunday Night Slaughters” on Facebook.
Christopher Villa and his Robot.
Since this website went live a couple of months ago, we’ve had the pleasure of meeting some of LA’s most talented, inspiring and absolutely terrifying horror artists. From actors to writers to filmmakers and more, we’ve met someone for nearly every platform of horror art and expression. But, today’s featured artist, a gentleman by the name of Christopher Villa, shows us just how deep a love for horror can go and how it can manifest itself in a variety of different platforms.
“I had a real inclination towards the darker side of art…my whole family has always looked at me as not only the black sheep, but the dark sheep,” Villa told LAHorror.com lightheartedly. And who can blame them? Villa not only shares the same birthday as one of his greatest inspirations, Edgar Allen Poe, but has also spent his entire career feeding his fascination of horror. He utilizes multiple mediums to satisfy his inner darkness in both the form of a hobby and a profession.
“I really had a career in the theater for more than 30 years as a choreographer of stage combat and duels and fight scenes and slap-stick comedy, but through the whole period, I always worked on some type of project that had access to the darker sides of my own nature, whether it was a drawing or sculptures or something else,” Villa said. And through those various forms of expression Villa has created a diverse portfolio of horrific pieces, which include poetry, sculpture, paintings, music and plays.
“In terms of creativity as an artist, I felt like if I ever get blocked up in one area, all I had to do was just switch media and that block no longer existed, and I would pursue that particular style of art for a while until I got blocked up there…and everything kind of steered off to the dark side no matter what I tried to do,” Villa said.
And Villa has truly embraced that dark side and let it steer his creativity. He is open to its energy and allows it to take hold of his artistic process. Take for instance his sculptures, “Yargoth” and “Garg.” Based on characters from one of his own plays, these pieces were crafted with a free form process led by the imagination. “I don’t really sketch that [many] pre-production sketches in my art. I really like to let my hands kind of tell me where I’m going with it. My hands created the gargoyle that you see,” Villa explained of his process. Each figure stands at roughly 11 inches tall, though Villa has been commissioned to do work much larger than that (see the picture at the top of this story if you don’t believe us).
Yargoth, The Forgotten Guardian
Garg, The Gargoyle
And the true delight of Villa’s work is not only in the pieces themselves, but his entire approach to the creation of art in general. He believes there is no reason for inspired individuals to deny their desire to create. “Art manifests itself through you. Many people have artistic ability, but most of them repress it in order to fit in….there’s a cubicle of society that they want to fit into and I never felt like I had to fit into this cubicle,” Villa said. Take note, young horror lovers.
And on a closing note, we’d like to part ways with Christopher Villa by sharing one of his haunting poems. And if you’re a horror lover like us, we know you’ll love it to death…
To view more of Christopher Villa’s creations and poetry, please visit Capriquarius Arts on Etsy. You can also listen to some of Villa’s original music here.
You may remember our interview with horror filmmaker Nick Everhart and his super freaky puppet short “Slash in the Box.” If you missed that story, then for God’s sake click the link above and watch it, it’s one of the scariest short films we’ve had the pleasure of sharing on LAHorror.com. But on a much lighter and far less gory note, Everhart recently sent us his latest directorial project, a music video from singer/songwriter Cheyenne Jackson. The video stars Jackson (“30 Rock”, “Glee”), Christina Cole (“Dr. Who”) and Rachel Dratch (“SNL”).
“Before You” is not only a catchy and fun song, but it’s an homage to classic Hollywood horror monsters. And as a newly married man myself, I can certainly relate to parts of this music video…Check it out horror lovers!
Kind of makes you miss your mummy, doesn’t it? (Sorry, couldn’t resist!)
Ted Campbell, co-director of “Rigamortis: A Zombie Love Story”
LAHorror.com had the pleasure of reviewing “Rigamortis: A Zombie Love Story” and was able to catch up with one of the film’s directors, Ted Campbell, and one of the film’s producers, Matt Olson. They explained to us the challenges behind the production, which was shot in a mere seven days on a grassroots budget with filmmakers from both the West Coast (Campbell) and the Midwest (Collateral Damage Productions) who largely communicated from their respective locations to create the piece.
“I think that’s one of the amazing things about this film that I hadn’t done before. Ted was working with us from LA; he was not at the auditions,” Olson told LAHorror.com. “We cast Max [Glick] without ever meeting him through an online audition test. We were able to send back and forth versions of the script. The project was conceived on the Internet and designed for the Internet. There were points where Jenny [Stolte, producer] and Dave [Dewes, co-director/producer] were in Michigan, I was in Chicago and Ted was in LA.”
And it certainly came out well—let this kind of collaborative effort be an inspiration to young filmmakers. With some excellent talent behind the script and lyrics as well as amazing music and singing, “Rigamortis” easily has all of the pieces to become a popular musical.
“I would say the glue to the whole entire piece is [composer] Greg [Szydlowski],” Campbell said. “And then discovering Lisa was like ‘holy shit’…And Max was someone I knew as an actor [and] I had worked with before. And when we were talking about it I was like, ‘Well, I know the perfect Parker but I don’t know if he can sing’…but he did a quick little camcorder or iPhone video of him singing, like some Britney Spears song or something,” Campbell recalled laughing.
It’s not good to be a zombie in “Rigamortis”
“Rigamortis” certainly holds its own in terms of talent on both sides of the camera—it’s full of it. And while “Rigamortis” is obviously a zombie movie, it doesn’t exploit the gore factor that is so easy to do. Part of the reason for that can be behind some of the inspirations for the film itself.
“I think one of the main motivations for the lack of gore is because a big inspiration for this movie is Joss Whedon, and ‘Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’ specifically,” Olson explained. “The TV shows that really kind of inspired this kind of thing—‘Buffy,’ ‘Angel,’aren’t gory. They can get the same effect without the gore. We wanted to make something that everyone can kind of watch and enjoy.”
But that doesn’t mean that true zombie fans won’t appreciate it. In fact, while it may be a love story first, the idea of the zombie was hardly lost by the filmmakers.
“It’s one of the few movies where you root for the zombies,” Olson said. “If you’re actually a zombie fan, you’re kind of hard-pressed to find movies where you root for zombies.”
“It’s a hell of a lot of fun…I think there’s definitely a heart at the center of it. It’s not a parody of zombie movies. It’s not a farce…there’s a level of appreciation for the genre in it,” Campbell added.
“Rigamortis: A Zombie Love Story” will be playing at the San Diego Comic-Con this weekend and that’s only the beginning. “I want to make it a feature,” Campbell said. Let’s hope so – we’d be dying to see it…
For more behind the scenes videos, please visit this films official website. ”Rigamortis: A Zombie Love Story” is available for rent and purchase on iTunes. Also be sure to follow @RigamortisMovie.
