Midnight Movies

After Dark Horrorfest III: 8 Films to Die For
January 9-15, 2009

Autopsy
Director: Adam Gierasch, Ashley Schneider, Jessica Lowndes, Ross McCall, Jenette Goldstein, Robert LaSardo, Michael Bowen
Starring: Robert Patrick
Plot: A car accident lands a man in an odd hospital with a deranged staff that’s not interested in healing its patients.
 

The Broken
Director: Sean Ellis
Starring: Lena Headey, Richard Jenkins, Asier Newman, Michelle Duncan, Melvil Poupaud
Plot: A British woman tracks down a woman who appears to be her exact double.
Trailer

Butterfly Effect: Revelation
Director: Seth Grossman
Starring: Rachel Miner, Chris Carmack, Sonya A. Avakian
Plot: A man who travels back in time changes the past enough that he creates a serial killer that he now must stop.

Dying Breed
Director: Jody Dwyer
Starring: Nathan Phillips, Leigh Whannell, Mirrah Foulkes, Melanie Vallejo, Bille Brown, Ken Radley
Plot: A team of Australian naturalists attempting to prove the existence of a Tasmanian tiger encounter a community of bloodthirsty cannibals.
 
From Within
Director: Phedon Papamichael
Starring: Elizabeth Rice, Thomas Dekker, Adam Goldberg, Jared Harris, Kelly Blatz, Laura Allen, Rumer Willis
Plot: A small town is shaken by a series of apparent suicides that turn out to be the result of a parasitic element that moves from person to person.

Perkins’ 14
Director: Craig Singer
Starring: Patrick O’Kane, Shayla Beesley, Mihaela Mihut, Michale Graves, Gregory O’Connor, Katherine Pawlak, Richard Brake, Craig Robert Young, Trey Farley
Plot: A paranoid man kidnaps 14 people and brainwashes them into becoming his personal bodyguards. When he’s arrested, though, the police inadvertently unleash the army of psychos on the town.

Slaughter (AKA Faithless)
Director: Stewart Hopewell
Starring: Antonia Bernath, Lucy Holt, Craig Robert Young, Maxim Knight, Amy Shiels, C.J. Singer
Plot: A woman fleeing from an abusive relationship ends up staying at a friend’s house where murder is afoot.

Voices
Director: Ki-hwan Oh
Starring: Jin-seo Yun, Gi-woong Park, Ki-woo Lee, Nae-sang Ahn, Yu-seon Ham, In-gi Jeong, Yu-mi Jeong
Plot: In this Korean supernatural thriller, an epidemic of violence strikes when friends and family members begin turning on one another.

 For more information: www.horrorfestonline.com

A Sad day for all monster movie fans…

LOS ANGELES – Forrest J Ackerman, the sometime actor, literary agent, magazine editor and full-time bon vivant who discovered author Ray Bradbury and was widely credited with coining the term “sci-fi,” has died. He was 92.

Ackerman died Thursday [Dec. 4, 2008] of heart failure at his Los Angeles home, said Kevin Burns, head of Prometheus Entertainment and a trustee of Ackerman’s estate.

Although only marginally known to readers of mainstream literature, Ackerman was legendary in science-fiction circles as the founding editor of the pulp magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. He was also the owner of a huge private collection of science-fiction movie and literary memorabilia that for years filled every nook and cranny of a hillside mansion overlooking Los Angeles.

“He became the Pied Piper, the spiritual leader, of everything science fiction, fantasy and horror,” Burns said Friday.

Every Saturday morning that he was home, Ackerman would open up the house to anyone who wanted to view his treasures. He sold some pieces and gave others away when he moved to a smaller house in 2002, but he continued to let people visit him every Saturday for as long as his health permitted.

“My wife used to say, ‘How can you let strangers into our home?’ But what’s the point of having a collection like this if you can’t let people enjoy it?” an exuberant Ackerman told The Associated Press as he conducted a spirited tour of the mansion on his 85th birthday.

His collection once included more than 50,000 books, thousands of science-fiction magazines and such items as Bela Lugosi’s cape from the 1931 film “Dracula.”

His greatest achievement, however, was likely discovering Bradbury, author of the literary classics “Fahrenheit 451″ and “The Martian Chronicles.” Ackerman had placed a flyer in a Los Angeles bookstore for a science-fiction club he was founding and a teenage Bradbury showed up.

Later, Ackerman gave Bradbury the money to start his own science-fiction magazine, Futuria Fantasia, and paid the author’s way to New York for an authors meeting that Bradbury said helped launch his career.

“I hadn’t published yet, and I met a lot of these people who encouraged me and helped me get my career started, and that was all because of Forry Ackerman,” the author told the AP in 2005.

Later, as a literary agent, Ackerman represented Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and numerous other science-fiction writers.

He said the term “sci-fi” came to him in 1954 when he was listening to a car radio and heard an announcer mention the word “hi-fi.”

“My dear wife said, ‘Forget it, Forry, it will never catch on,’” he recalled.

Soon he was using it in Famous Monsters of Filmland, the magazine he helped found in 1958 and edited for 25 years.

Ackerman himself appeared in numerous films over the years, usually in bit parts. His credits include “Queen of Blood,” “Dracula vs. Frankenstein,” “Amazon Women on the Moon,” “Vampirella,” “Transylvania Twist,” “The Howling” and the Michael Jackson “Thriller” video. More recently, he appeared in 2007’s “The Dead Undead” and 2006’s “The Boneyard Collection.”

Ackerman returned briefly to Famous Monsters of Filmland in the 1990s, but he quickly fell out with the publisher over creative differences. He sued and was awarded a judgment of more than $375,000.

Forrest James Ackerman was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 24, 1916. He fell in love with science-fiction, he once said, when he was 9 years old and saw a magazine called Amazing Stories. He would hold onto that publication for the rest of his life.

Ackerman, who had no children, was preceded in death by his wife, Wendayne.

The 2009 Eerie Horror Film Festival and Screenplay Competition has officially opened its call for entries and is currently seeking submissions from all over the world.

The EERIE HORROR FILM FESTIVAL will take place October 8 - 11, 2009 at the historic Warner Theatre in Erie, Pa.

Submission categories for the 2009 Eerie Horror Film Festival and Screenplay Competition includes Horror Feature, Horror Short, Science Fiction Feature, Science Fiction Short, Suspense Feature, Suspense Short, Student(10 - 17 yrs of age) Horror Feature; Student (10 - 17 yrs of age) Horror Short; Short Length Screenplay; Feature Length Screenplay; Student (10 - 17 yrs of age) Feature Length Screenplay; Student (10 - 17 yrs of age) and Short Length Screenplay.

Overlooked, underrated, and misunderstood, independent horror and science fiction movies have been virtually ignored and shunned by the mainstream film industry since it began more than a century ago.

Through the decades, these films have entertained and thrilled audiences around the world and continue to grow in popularity to this very day, slowly but surely gaining the appreciation and respect that they deserve.

There is an incredible amount of talent in this field that goes unnoticed and unappreciated, and The Eerie Horror Film Festival hopes to to reverse that trend.

Since 2004 the EERIE HORROR FILM FESTIVAL has screened over 260 films and has featured appearances by Jason Mewes (Clerks), Adrienne Barbeau (The Fog), Sid Haig (Devil’s Rejects), Dee Wallace Stone (Cujo), Tony Todd (Candyman), Tom Savini (From Dusk Till Dawn), Kane Hodder (Friday the 13th series), PJ Soles (Halloween), Gunnar Hansen (Texas Chainsaw Massacre ‘74), Ed Neal (Texas Chainsaw Massacre ‘74), Lloyd Kaufman (Toxic Avenger), Tony Moran (Halloween), Eugene Clark (Land of the Dead), Rodrigo Gudino (Rue Morgue Magazine), Joe Pilato (Day of the Dead), Lynn Lowry (The Crazies), Tom Atkins (Halloween III), Charles Cyphers (Halloween), Nancy Loomis (Halloween), Alex Vincent (Child’s Play), Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick (The Omen ‘06), Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes), Kenny Miller (I Was a Teenage Werewolf), Brian Andrews (Halloween), Mark Borchardt (American Movie), John Hancock (Let’s Scare Jessica to Death), Dorothy Tristan (screenwriter), Mark Steensland (The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick), Sean David Morton (Joe Killionaire), Len Kabasinski (Swamp Zombies), Greg Lamberson (Slime City), Debbie Rochon (Hellblock 13), Michael Stanley (Attack of the Beast Creatures), Leonard Lies (Dawn of the Dead), Jim Krut (Dawn of the Dead), Pam Sutch and many, many more!.

For more information about the Eerie Horror Film Festival:

www.eeriehorrorfilmfestival.com
www.myspace.com/eeriehorrorfest
www.myspace.com/eeriehorrorfilmfestival

There are two ways that Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein is regarded. The first believes that the movie represents the end of the Universal Monsters era, with three classic monsters reduced to second-bananas to a slapstick comedy duo. The other viewpoint, which is the more accurate of the two, is that this movie is a classic of comedy-horror. 

Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein deserves classic status because it was the best Universal horror film since The Wolf Man (1941) The other movies that brought together the three monsters such as House Of Frankenstein (1944) or House Of Dracula (1945) barely brought the monsters together at all. By having The Wolf Man pursuing Dracula and the Monster, and at the same time also having Dracula plan to put Costello’s brain into the Frankenstein Monster, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein gives actual reasons for the various characters coming together. 

As far as the acting goes, this film works because the monster actors (Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr & Glenn Strange) play it straight, the Classic Universal monsters are not poked fun at, but treated with respect. Abbott and Costello are very funny, and rely more on slapstick than the verbal routines they were known for. The rest of the cast is solid in support. 

Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein is a must-see for those who are fans of the Classic Universal Monsters.

The New York Horror Film Festival is the largest and most recognized genre film festival which focuses solely on Horror and Science Fiction. Each year the New York Horror Film Fetival celebrates both horror classics and the new horror films & those who created them. The New York Horror Film Festival takes place in October as a week long event at venues throughout New York City and fills the city with special screenings, parties, celebrity guests and free giveaways.

The The New York Horror Film Festival has become a world recognized event, with industry, filmmakers, and press attention from around the world.
The New York Horror Film Festival is extremely competitive, screening around 50-60 films each year.

New York Horror Film Festival Awards are given in the following categories:

Best Feature Film
Best Short Film
Best Cinematography
Best Special Effects
Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Screenplay (Submitted)
Best Screenplay (Screened Film)
Audience Choice
Lifetime Achievement Award

The New York Horror Film Festival has given the Lifetime Achievement Award to one legendary horror filmmaker since 2002. The New York Horror Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award has become one of Americas most highly recognized and respected awards in the genre.

The previous recipients of the New York Horror Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award are

2008 - Frank Henenlotter
2007 - Herschell Gordon Lewis
2006 - Mick Garris
2005 - Roger Corman
2004 - Tobe Hooper
2003 - Tom Savini
2002 - George A. Romero

For more information about the New York Horror Film Festival - http://www.nychorrorfest.com