How much would you pay to game with your favorite online personality? For Imane “Pokimane” Anys, the answer for multiple people out there is “over $30,000.” Fans, AKA internet strangers, are currently in a low-key bidding war for an exclusive one-on-one gaming session with the Twitch icon as she auctions off her time…
How much would you pay to game with your favorite online personality? For Imane “Pokimane” Anys, the answer for multiple people out there is “over $30,000.” Fans, AKA internet strangers, are currently in a low-key bidding war for an exclusive one-on-one gaming session with the Twitch icon as she auctions off her time…
Nearly ten years have gone by since it was first announced that Precious director Lee Daniels would be taking the helm of a exorcism movie that was being referred to as the time as Demon House. Back in 2022, the project – with the new title of The Deliverance – was picked up by the Netflix streaming service for $65 million. It has since made its way through production and is set to reach select theatres on August 16th, before reaching Netflix two weeks later, on August 30th. With those dates swiftly approaching, a trailer for The Deliverance has arrived online and can be seen in the embed above.
Daniels’ The United States vs. Billie Holiday star Andra Day takes on the lead role of Ebony, “the mother of an Indiana family whose children purportedly became demonically possessed in a thriller inspired by an actual case.” Here’s the film’s synopsis: Ebony Jackson, a struggling single mother fighting her personal demons, moves her family into a new home for a fresh start. But when strange occurrences inside the home raise the suspicions of Child Protective Services and threaten to tear the family apart, Ebony soon finds herself locked in a battle for her life and the souls of her children.
As for the true story behind it all, Variety reported, “In a case widely covered at the time, Latoya Ammons and her three children experienced strange incidents in their Gary, IN, home that grew progressively worse, with the children levitating, becoming violent with one another and speaking in growls and deep voices with no recollection afterward. Skeptics abounded, but the Gary Police Department, Department of Child Services and the local church and hospital all became involved, filing reports that took the supernatural occurrences seriously. Officers, doctors and social workers said they witnessed many of the incidents, including one in which her 9-year-old son walked backward up a wall. The Indianapolis Star covered it closely as the Department of Child Services investigated it.“
Also in the cast of The Deliverance are Glenn Close (Fatal Attraction), Omar Epps (The Devil You Know), Demi Singleton (King Richard), Miss Lawrence (Star), Anthony B. Jenkins (The Wonder Years), Rob Morgan (Don’t Look Up), Caleb McLaughlin (Stranger Things), and Aunjanue Ellis (Lovecraft Country). Here’s come character information: “McLaughlin will play the son of Ebony, at an older age. Close will play Ebony’s mother. Morgan will play the boyfriend of Ebony. And Smith plays Asia, who is Ebony’s best friend.”
Octavia Spencer had been cast to play a clergy member who tries to help Day’s character navigate through the hauntings and the exorcisms, but she had to drop out of the project and was replaced by Precious‘s Mo’Nique.
Drafts of the screenplay were written by both Dave Coggeshall and Elijah Bynum, then Daniels rewrote it himself. Thomas Westfall also receives a writing credit. Daniels is producing the film with Tucker Tooley, Pam Williams, Todd Crites, and Jackson Nguyen. Greg Renker Hilary Shor, Jackie Shenoo, and Gregoire Gensollen are executive producing.
What did you think of the trailer for The Deliverance? Will you be watching this movie next month? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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We got a ton of awesome slasher movies in the 1980s, and one that isn’t nearly as popular as it should be is the 1981 film Madman (get it HERE) – so it’s cool to hear that Vinegar Syndrome and author Matt Serafini are celebrating this undersung classic with the publication of a novelization! The limited edition hardcover release is going for the price of $49.99 and can be purchased at THIS LINK.
Written and directed by Joe Giannone, Madman has the following synopsis: Betsy’s final summer as a camp counselor at North Sea Cottages was supposed to be one long farewell to the only life she’d ever known. But her world takes an ominous turn when a campfire story unwittingly unleashes a crazed killer. While Betsy contends with a complicated love life and the pressures of an uncertain future, the chilling legend of Madman Marz- a psychotic farmer with an axe to grind- is reborn, targeting Betsy and her friends. One by one the counselors are stalked across the sprawling campground, and Betsy is about to discover that her problems are nothing compared to the evil waiting for her in the dark of the woods.
The movie has been one of my favorites for decades now. It stars Tony Fish, Harriet Bass, Seth Jones, Jan Claire, Alex Murphy, Jimmy Steele, Carl Fredericks, and Michael Sullivan, with Gaylen Ross of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (going by the name Alexis Dubin) as heroine Betsy and Paul Ehler as the slasher Madman Marz.
The hardcover edition of Serafini’s novelization has a page count of 156 and is cloth-bound, coming in a hard slipcase designed by Robert Sammelin. This edition is limited to just 500 units, and as of this writing, more than half of those units have already been sold. So if you want to secure a copy, you should probably head over to Vinegar Syndrome and do so as soon as possible.
Are you a fan of Madman, and will you be buying a copy of the Matt Serafini-written novelization from Vinegar Syndrome? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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Way back in the 80s and 90s, there was one spin-off horror genre that consistently produced some highly memorable movies, often for better… Or worse; Comedy Horror. The genre has been hugely popular ever since it introduced audiences to films such as Dr. Pickle and Mr. Pryde and The Monster from the mid 20s, all the way to classic titles such as Young Frankenstein and The Rocky Horror Picture Show from the 70s. In the early 2000s the genre started poking fun at horror movies in general, plus specifically the Scream series, with the popular but ridiculous Scary Movie franchise. While those movies were fun, they were basically a polished piss-take of better movies and lacked the kitsch and schlocky fun of earlier, more inventive entries. Which brings us nicely to the Re-Animator series, which has its roots firmly set in those 20s and 30s flicks, with a sprinkle of influence from the likes of Evil Dead, The Howling and The Revenge of Frankenstein thrown in for good measure. The first movie was released to much praise from both critics and horror fans alike. Reviewers lauded the movies’ “indigenous American Junkiness” and picked out Jeffrey Combs’ performance in particular, with The New York Times saying, “The big noise is Combs, a small, compact man of terrific intensity and concentration.” Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator is rightly considered to be one of the greatest ‘80s horror movies. Not many other horror movies up until that point had successfully combined gore, humor, and horror quite like the first movie did. What made Re-Animator original is that it took the fear of death and poked fun at it, so with the success of the first movie, a sequel was inevitable. However, did part two manage to breathe new life into the series, or was re-animating it for a sequel a bad idea? Stick around, you wonderful gore-hounds, as we find out here on WTF Happened to Bride of Re-Animator.
In an interview from August 1986, Re-Animator director Stuart Gordon said that, “If we do a sequel to Re-Animator, we’ll call it Bride of Re-Animator.” He already had several ideas for the sequel and had indicated that it would be a homage to Bride of Frankenstein and because of the chosen title, Megan Halsey from the first movie would have to play a prominent role in the follow-up. One unused idea for the sequel would see Bruce Abbot’s Dan Cain taking the job of a buildings supervisor to continue secretly working on the body of Meg Halsey at night. When government agents discover his whereabouts, they whisk him off to the White House where he’s reunited with Herbert West, and instructed to reanimate the President of the United States. While this idea was also considered for the unmade sequel, House of Re-Animator, but ultimately not used, it would have been a fun premise for the series nonetheless.
Ultimately, Stuart Gordon didn’t return to the director’s chair for Bride of Re-Animator (get it HERE), with the task of continuing the series going to the first movie’s producer, Brian Yuzna, who’s most prominent movie as director was the fun, gruesome orgy cult movie Society from 1989. The film was officially slated to begin in June 1989, and because pre-production had only begun a few months earlier, the filmmakers had a small window of time to finish the script, hire cast and crew, and begin prepping the visual effects.
In terms of the cast, it wasn’t just a tight turnaround to prep the VFX and get everything else in place; the movie was also in danger of losing its leading man before the cameras had even started rolling. Jeffrey Combs was already attached to star in The Pit and the Pendulum, so it was looking unlikely that he would be able to reprise his role as Dr. Herbert West. However, fate soon played its part and due to the production being pushed back on Pendulum, Combs was swiftly hired to play the mad scientist again. Director Yuzna originally considered Night of the Living Dead 1990 legend Patricia Tallman for the role of the bride, but ultimately went with Halloween 4 star Kathleen Kinmont instead. Rounding out the cast are Bruce Abbott as Dr. Dan Cain, Claude Earl Jones as Lt. Leslie Chapman, Fabiana Udenio as Francesca Danelli, David Gale as Dr. Carl Hill and Mary Sheldon as Meg Halsey. Production on the movie was relatively short, with principal photography beginning in June 1989 and finishing by the following month, on July 18th.
So with the first movie being such a well received cult classic, could Yuzna’s follow up continue the macabre mayhem and bring some of its own charm and depraved goodness to the series? Well, after having revisited the sequel for this video, it’s safe to say that while there is some gory goodness to behold, there’s so many plot holes that it soon becomes apparent that some movies don’t necessarily need a sequel. The movie’s plot shifts forwards eight months from the events of the Miskatonic Massacre, in the first movie. Herbert West and Dan Cain are the only two survivors of the first movie and have somehow managed to escape the situation without any legal ramifications or at least being arrested. After working during the Internal conflict in Peru, where the two men have multiple bodies to experiment on, they find themselves back in Massachusetts, working in the Miskatonic University again, as if nothing ever happened just eight months prior.
West discovers that not only can he re-animate the dead, but he can also re-animate individual body parts; meaning he can therefore create the perfect woman! Of course, such a potentially risky venture would be nigh on impossible to take on alone so he enlists an initially reluctant Cain to help out. West eventually wins Cain over as he has the heart of his fiancee, and plans to use this as the heart for his perfect lady; plus it also means Cain gets his fiancee back. The plot complications don’t end there though. No siree. A journalist that Cain met in Peru, Fabiana Udenio’s Francesca, rocks up in Massachusetts, and her and Cain begin to get it on. However, once the Bride is re-animated and given life, she doesn’t take too kindly to her fella having a new lady in his life. Cain is subsequently torn between the undead monster with the heart of his former beau, and the real life, living human he’s just started dating. Tricky…
If the plot of the movie stopped there we’d be onto a bizarre, love-triangle centered winner, but unfortunately the narrative is muddled with further contrivances thrown in. We also get the somewhat unlikely return of Dr. Carl Hill, despite him being just a head, plus a vengeful police officer whose wife was animated during the Miskatonic Massacre. The movie gets lost within these various plot threads and although there’s some fun to be had in Dr Hill’s revenge on West, plus the cop ultimately becoming zombified, it’s just too much for the writers to successfully shoe-horn in. Luckily, what we do get are some great VFX that save the movie from being a mess, and at least elevate it to becoming a load of fun, if nothing more. The practical effects look great and fit within the messed up action perfectly. With the likes of Robert Kurtzman, Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero involved, you know you’re in for a treat, and the bride, in the way she moves and is stitched together, looks great. We also get a wonderful mix of weird creatures and monsters which all lead to a pretty chaotic finale. It doesn’t match the Miskatonic Massacre of the first movie, and despite some great visuals, the movie leaves you wondering what could have been had it featured some tighter writing.
Unlike its predecessor, Bride of Re-Animator had a very limited theatrical run, only playing in select cinemas and film festivals, so there’s no box office data to analyze for this one, sadly. However, on Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 40% based on twenty critics, with an average rating of 5.17/10. Critically, the film was met with a typically mixed reception with some lamenting it for being too gory, which let’s face it fellow gore-hounds, must be a piss-take, while others praised it for its bizarre zombie creations, and also Jeffrey Combs performance. Variety recommended it to fans of the first film, but noted that the abundance of gore “will turn off” mainstream audiences while The New York Times wrote that, “Bride of Re-Animator is less a sequel to the critically praised 1985 horror film Re-Animator than a rehash based on the same H. P. Lovecraft stories.”. In their book Lurker in the Lobby: A Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft, Andrew Migliore and John Strysik write: “Bride of Re-Animator is a silly film that is fun solely for the fevered performance of Jeffrey Combs. Unlike the original Re-Animator, Bride’s script really suffers from a lack of cohesiveness and undeterminable character motivation.”
For this lover of all things macabre however, The Bride of Re-Animator is a largely disappointing sequel to the classic original. While I had fun with the visual effects and especially the bride, when she’s re-animated and causing all kinds of love-triangle mischief. But, the writing is poor and despite the best efforts of the cast and crew, the movie would have been a far worthier sequel with some ruthless excisions from the script, plus a greater sense of purpose for the characters. Still, it’s amusing watching the grotesque finger creature being crushed by a book on human anatomy! However, as usual, I’d love to know what YOUR opinion is of the movie. Am I being too harsh on the film, or does it indeed waste the talent at its disposal? Let us know in the comments and I’ll see you wonderful gore-hounds next time. Perhaps for Beyond Re-Animator. Thanks for watching!
A couple of the previous episodes of WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
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While always awful for developers, leaks of unreleased games aren’t rare, but usually occur in the days before release. For a big-name, highly anticipated, fully playable game to hit piracy sites two months before it’s due out, however, is astoundingly unusual. That’s what’s happened to Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2…
Abel Ferrara is an eccentric director. Conan O’Brien once had Ferrara scheduled as a guest on his former Late Night show and the comedic host claimed that prior to his segment, Ferrara tried to skip out on the show and Conan’s people had to chase him down and convince him to stay. He complied, and the interview would be a funny but slightly awkward talk show moment. Ferrara certainly seems like someone in the business who does not indulge in the madcap fast lane of Hollywood life. However, the director has said to have experienced a lot of crazy things in his profession, which is what he intends to write about in his upcoming book.
Deadline recently sat down with Ferrara, and the director of Bad Lieutenant, Body Snatchers and King of New York said that his book isn’t going to be so much a memoir as it is a tell-all. His book would be called Scene and is due for release around the middle of next year, in Italy and the U.S. The amused director noted, “I can’t believe I actually got a book (deal).” He explains, “I’m trying to focus it more on the people that I’ve met and all the crazy sh*t in this business and around this business, than on myself. I got some crazy sh*t that’s happened to me for sure.”
Ferrara’s latest film that’s about to be released, Padre Pio, employs some controversial technology methods. As a seemingly traditional director, you’d think that Ferrara wouldn’t partake in certain advancements in filmmaking. However, his new film will feature nearly all of his cast speaking in Italian, except all the actors were originally speaking English and AI was used to switch the languages. Ferrara calls it “the perfect storm… the kids acted in English, they get to watch it in Venice, they get to see it with an audience, they get the movie, they understand what they have to do then they go into the studio and dub it in their own language so they bring a little extra.”
He notes, “It looks like I directed in Italian, it’s very cool.” Ferrara explains why he doesn’t shy away from this technology, “It’s progress… It’s like anything else, why are you gonna assume it’s going to be used to destroy you? What kind of paranoid attitude is that? It’s like the internet — if you use it in a positive way, it’s awesome. You’re gambling all night watching pornography, it’s a disaster.” He added, “I don’t know, maybe it’s the end of the world, but I ain’t that kind of guy, I gotta see it to believe it.”
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PLOT: A former storm chaser (Daisy Edgar-Jones) recovering from a tragedy is convinced by a former colleague to help him chase a series of massive twisters rocking central Oklahoma.
REVIEW: Jump back to the summer of 1996. I was fourteen years old and going to see Twister at the old Famous Eight here in good old Montreal, an old suburban movie theatre that was showing a movie in THX for the first time ever. I’ll never forget sitting down with a friend to watch Jan de Bont’s classic and being rocked to the core by the amazing VFX and sound – and it remains a favourite of mine. It had a rock solid cast of characters, all of whom were memorable, plus two perfect regular Joe heroes in Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, with the movie, believe it or not, actually a disaster movie quasi remake of the classic screwball comedy His Girl Friday, with the genders reversed. It shouldn’t have worked as well as it did, but boy, oh boy, I loved watching it. The movie was a runaway smash hit, grossing just shy of $500 million worldwide (in 1996 dollars). It was so popular that it actually kicked off a mini-disaster movie revival, with movies like Dante’s Peak, Volcano, Deep Impact and Armageddon all following in its wake.
Now, twenty-eight years later, Twister is finally getting a quasi-sequel, Twisters, which, to its credit, has some terrific talent involved. That includes two of the most promising rising stars of the moment, Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones, and a unique choice for a director in Minari’s Lee Isaac Chung. But can it live up to the original?
Yes and no.
While Twisters lacks the human touch and characterizations that made the original such an endurable classic, the film does benefit from a few things. For one, this isn’t really a legacy sequel. Those have been hit and miss in the past, and Twisters only has modest connections to the original film. You could walk into this having never heard of the first one and not feel like you were missing anything. While that approach may strike some as disrespectful to the legacy of the original, Lee Isaac Chung, working from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith (and based on a story by Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski), is trying to do his own thing, and it works relatively well.
The reason, of course, is the cast, with Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell two terrific leads to hang this on. Edgar-Jones (who I loved in a cool little horror flick called Fresh) plays Kate, a former storm chaser recovering from a professional tragedy that cost the lives of her old crew, with only Anthony Ramos’s Javi left over. He approaches her, years later, to help him deploy a revolutionary new tracking system, which puts her immediately at odds with Powell’s Tyler Owens. Unlike Javi’s science-minded crew, Owens is a YouTube personality who, along with his colourful gang, seems like a total cowboy, much to Kate’s initial chagrin.
To the movie’s credit, there’s a more formulaic version of it that could have made Powell’s Tyler an antagonist, but instead, they make him a hero. While brash, Tyler’s got a heart of gold. By contrast, Ramos’s Ravi might initially be the shadier one, with him hooked up with a stuck-up storm chaser played by future Superman David Corenswet, who’s clearly up to no good.
The original film pushed the envelope as far as VFX went, and Chung tries many times to top it, using multiple twisters and even a tornado on fire. Alas, the film lacks any of the truly memorable imagery the first film sported, such as that famous flying cow shot or the drive-in theatre screen (playing The Shining) coming apart in a tornado. Bigger isn’t always better.
Yet, Chung does have time to show off some of the grace notes that made Minari such a treat. He truly appreciates down-home Americana, the film stops for a memorable rodeo segment, and the small towns devastated by the titular Twisters have a ring of truth about them.
However, the film also suffers from one thing that’s been bugging me about modern films: the complete avoidance of any physical affection between the leads. The movie largely centers around the deepening relationship between Tyler and Kate. Still, despite the chemistry between the two of them, there’s little to no opportunity for sparks to fly on screen. It’s as if someone along the way decided any hint of romance is reductive, which left a sour taste in my mouth because the movie is begging for it.
Despite this, Twisters still works as a good piece of summer entertainment. The pace is lively, and besides Jones, Powell and Ramos, some of the supporting cast members are fun, such as Sasha Lane as one of Tyler’s cronies and Downton Abbey’s Harry Hadden-Paton as an easily frightened (but not cowardly) journalist following Tyler’s crew. But, at the end of the day, the movie is made by the legit movie star appeal of Powell, who seems to be making a bid to be the next Tom Cruise, with him playing the same kind of brash, heroic, upbeat heroes his former Top Gun: Maverick co-star rose to fame as. Twisters isn’t the instant classic the original was, but it’s a good time at the movies.
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At this year’s edition of the Sundance Film Festival, JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray got the chance to watch the psychological thriller A Different Man, which is coming to us from A24. Describing the film as a “blackly comic deconstruction of identity,” Bumbray gave it a 7/10 review that you can read at THIS LINK. A wider audience will have the chance to watch A Different Man when it reaches a nationwide theatrical release on September 20th – and with that date just two months away, a trailer for the film has arrived online. You can check it out in the embed above.
A Different Man stars Sebastian Stan, who is best known for playing the character Bucky / The Winter Soldier in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, along with Renate Reinsve, who received a lot of attention and accolades for her role in the Oscar-nominated Norwegian film The Worst Person in the World, and Adam Pearson, who previously played “The Deformed Man” in the A24 release Under the Skin.
The film was written and directed by Aaron Schimberg, who also directed the 2018 drama Chained for Life, which co-starred Pearson. The story Schimberg crafted for this one centers on aspiring actor Edward (Sebastian Stan), who undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance. But his new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare, as he becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost.
Bumbray’s review wrapped up, “the film goes on about ten minutes too long, with a bizarre epilogue setting the film off towards an anti-climactic conclusion that dilutes some of the impact of what we’ve just seen. Nevertheless, it’s still a thoughtful, intelligent, and sometimes quite funny film, boasting a trio of terrific performances, with Stan at his best.“
A24 funded the film, which was produced by Christine Vachon and Gabriel Mayers of Killer Films, Vanessa McDonnell of Grand Motel Films, and Jason Reif. Stan served as executive producer.
What did you think of the trailer for A Different Man? Will you be catching this movie on the big screen in September? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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Although everyone is looking to Superman as the first major project of James Gunn’s new DC Universe, that honour actually belongs to Creature Commandos. The animated series is expected to debut on Max this December, and executive producer Dean Lorey told The Wrap it will serve as the “first expression” of the new franchise.
“That’s going to be the first expression of James Gunn’s DC Universe. We’re considering that canon, and I think it expresses his perspective, tonally, on where he wants the universe to go,” Lorey said before noting that the show is “nothing new.“
“It’s ‘Suicide Squad.’ He’s done it,” Lorey continued. “People aren’t going to be surprised by what it is, but I think they’ll be really encouraged to see how completely it’s going to inform this new version of the DCU, which I’m very excited about.“
During a presentation at the Annecy Animation Festival last month, James Gunn teased that Creature Commandos picks up directly after the season one finale of Peacemaker, “which leaves Waller with her hands tied operationally, meaning that she’s no longer able to get away with putting human lives on the line to carry out her clandestine morally questionable missions. Instead, she recruits a ragtag band of misfits, not unlike the Suicide Squad and Peacemaker.” Gunn added that the main characters of the series “are actual literal monsters, and I can’t wait for you to meet them. Creating this series has been one of the absolute joys of my life.“
The cast of Creatures Commandos includes Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr., David Harbour as Eric Frankenstein, Indira Varma as The Bride, Maria Bakalova as Princess Ilana Rostovic, Alan Tudyk as Dr. Phosphorus, Zoe Chao as Nina Mazursky, and Steve Agee as John Economos, and Sean Gunn as Weasel.
One of the big goals of the new DC Universe is continuity between all aspects of the franchise, be it live-action movies, television, animation, or video games. Once cast, the same actor is expected to play their role in every medium, and the biggest example of that (so far) is Frank Grillo. In addition to Creature Commandos, the actor will reprise his role in the second season of Peacemaker and will also make an appearance in the upcoming Superman movie.
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