Now these up and coming movies really do excite me, Anchor Bay, IDT entertainment presents an anthology film series which we unite some of the best and biggest directors in horror for a minimum of 13 original one hour films.
Directors
Mick Garris
Robert Rodriguez
George A. Romero
Frank Darabont
Joe Dante
John Carpenter
John Landis
Don Coscarelli
Stuart Gordon
Tobe Hooper
Roger Corman
Hideo Nakata
Larry Cohen
Dario Argento
TBC
Guillermo Del Toro
David Cronenberg, Eli Roth, Lucky McKee, Dwayne Jenkins, William Lustig, Robert Parigi, Richard Kelly, Bill Malone, Tim Sullivan, Rob Zombie, Tom McLoughlin and Bryan Singer all are part of the master of horror group but scheduling differences have kept them from participating.
Filming begins in April, Mick Garris will executive produce, with Anchor Bay handling DVD releases. No theatrical release, straight to DVD, but many of the director's features will air on cable first, than eventually arrive on DVD before the end of the year. Budget for each movie is around $1.5 million, should be really interesting to see what some of these director's can create. No cast confirmed so far for any feature, just Dick Miller will appear in Dante's piece.
Quote form John Landis
“It’s really funny the way these projects began. There was this television documentary called MASTERS OF HORROR, and it was about George Romero, Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Guillermo del Toro and myself, and a whole bunch of horror movie directors. Mick Garris called everybody and said, ‘Hey, we should have a dinner and call it the "Masters of Horror Dinner!" ’ So we met in the Valley last year: Guillermo, Tobe, myself, Sam Raimi and Carpenter, David Cronenberg was there once…a whole bunch of people, and it was very fun, because we got very silly and it was like: ‘The Masters of Horror have coffee!’ or ‘The Masters of Horror order dessert!’
"We’ve done that four or five times now, with different people every time," Landis continues. "But the good thing Garris did was he put together a deal with this company [IDT, which owns Anchor Bay Entertainment] to make a series of movies called MASTERS OF HORROR—which I think is a really stupid label—where each one of us is supposed to direct a movie, so now we are doing it. [See previous story here.] They are giving us a budget of $1.5 million for each film, and with that money we can basically do anything we want, as long as it’s shot in Vancouver, with the same crew. And it has to be scary, somehow!
"I’m doing the first one," Landis continues, "and John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Sam Raimi, George Romero and Hideo [RINGU] Nakata are all doing one. They’re trying to make it much more international now. It’s an interesting deal because Anchor Bay owns the DVD rights only for the United States, so we are free to do whatever we want on everything else. So we might do a feature, cutting together two or three episodes, or something for cable television. What’s fun is that because it’s DVD, there’s no censorship at all, so MASTERS OF HORROR is going to be pretty gruesome and outrageous."
Sounds interesting, especially with wash-outs like Landis and Carpenter. Curious to see if they still have any clue what Horror is all about.
Why the hell Eli Roth was ever considered is beyond me. He wouldn't be worthy of even looking 1/2 those guys in the eye, especially having ripped them all off at some point.
Gender: Male Location: Welfare Kingdom of California
I'm glad to see Larry Cohen in that list. Despite the fact his films can be bizzare or very low budget he makes quite entertaining horror films. Most of his work would be categorize as cult, but I'm glad he is being recognize as a horror director.
I missed most of this panel, including the beginning, which was on the new television miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s Desperation. I came in just in time to hear someone describe Henry Thomas’s role as the Janet Lee role and say that Ron Perlman has “a condition” which is funny because years ago my husband decided that he’d be ideal to play Marv in Sin City if Mickey Rourke wasn’t available. But I digress. The rest of the panel was primarily about Masters of Horror, airing on Showtime in October with a marathon tentatively planned for Halloween.
Apparently Showtime has rules about violence and children. To wit, children cannot kill children. Children can kill adults and adults can kill children, however. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t explained how this rule effected the series, but we’ll find out in October...
It was Guillermo del Toro who called the directors involved in the project “the Masters of Horror,” and the name stuck. Despite being legendary, most of them don’t have the pull to make the movies they really want to make, so they’re all thrilled to be working on this project.
The movies are all shooting in Canada and therefore the casting is limited to two Americans per, so Joe Dante’s picture will sadly not include Dick Miller.
Despite all the rules, I have a feeling these will be some of the best horror movies in recent history. (A little bit on Tobe Hooper’s contribution can be found below in the Mortuary section.)
Lucky McKee
Lucky McKee directed May. I watched five minutes of the movie (in the middle, don’t ask) and had nightmares for weeks. My husband is still trying to convince me to watch the rest.
McKee showed clips of four movies during his panel.
The Lost, which he produced, is based on a Jack Ketchum novel. It doesn’t look finished. There is no soundtrack music and the dialogue sound mix was uneven. I really wasn’t able to form an opinion on it one way or another. McKee would like to make a few more Ketchum books, saying, “He doesn’t pull any punches.”
All Cheerleaders Die was a collaboration between McKee and Chris Siverston, director of The Lost, in 1999. It looks really awful, but possibly hilarious. Who knows – Evil Dead and Bad Taste both look pretty bad at first glance.
McKee wrote Roman at the same time as the script for May. The movie is directed by May herself, Angela Bettis, and stars McKee. He said Roman and May are brother-sister stories. They come from the same emotional world. I write them both with the intention of making one of them my first film, and once I got the opportunity to make May, I didn’t really want to direct Roman. Elaborating on the writing process, he added [I’m a] big fan of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein [and] I tried to draw on my life as much as possible. Basically just visualizing emotions. Everybody feels lonely. I listened to a lot of Nirvana music. I know that sounds weird but it was inspirational.
Mortuary
The original title for Mortuary, another collaboration between Tobe Hooper and writers Adam Gierasch and Jace Anderson (Toolbox Murders) was Six Feet Under. So that should tell you how long they’ve been thinking about this picture, since they changed it when the HBO series premiered.
The basic premise is a family moves across the country to take over a mortuary, living onsite; the house is in terrible disrepair, there’s some sort of sentient fungus, and the dead bodies get back up and wreak havoc with the family and a group of local teens.
I’ll let the creative team speak for themselves:
TH: What appealed to me is that it’s scary. It’s a real wild ride.
AG: It’s got fungus, zombies, cute chicks...
JA: Lots of vomit.
AG: Yeah, everything that makes life worth living.
TH: This family moves across the country and takes the mortuary over.
AG: And hijinks ensue. One of the things Tobe is so good at is he can direct a sense of panic like nobody. And he worked these kids into a frenzy.
TH: I did like in Chainsaw, a six-minute chase. The final music cue that carries the chase is 29 minutes long.
JA: The original script was set in Arkham, Massachusetts.
AG: After the location scout Tobe said let’s do what we did in Toolbox and write the movie around the location. It’s this quintessential haunted house but behind it is this hill that’s covered in cactuses.
(The hill was burnt when the location scout was done. After the five months of rain LA had this past winter, the hill was verdant.)
JA: This historical mansion was cut into ten pieces and moved [to Pomona, California]. The location scouts said, “Don’t renovate it! Let us shoot here.”
AG: There was another spooky mansion right next to it. There were these ghost hunters next door and the equipment they were using, it was like the tape recorders they give you in fourth grade. Any ghost you record with that isn’t a good ghost.
According to Hooper, Echo Bridge, a new distribution company that formerly ran UPN, will distribute. They promise a theatrical release, and have already secured a guarantee in Europe because of Cannes. There is an R rated version and a PG version. (I assume he meant PG-13. Here’s hoping.) We have about two months until post-production, including CGI, is completed.
On Return of the Living Dead, Tobe said What happened was I got the job for Dan O’Bannon because Lifeforce came along.
On The Thing: It was going to be this sarcophagus that they find on the South Pole and when this expedition is coming there’s no radio contact in this geodesic dome and when the plane is coming in there’s a white out and they crash land and there’s nothing but this sarcophagus. [It has hieroglyphs on it.] “Don’t open this,” it turns out it says. There was more of “Who Goes There,” the short story.
On Texas Chainsaw Massacre: It was gonna be about a troll that lives under a bridge and a house that morphs and then I thought it should be more grounded in reality. And it all fell together when I saw a chainsaw, I thought, you can do a lot of damage with these things.
Hooper’s Masters of Horror movie shoots in July. It’s based on “Dance of the Dead”, takes place post-World War III, and is not yet cast.
David J. Schow, scribe of New Line’s TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE prequel, tells Fango that Lukas Ettlin, director of photography of Stefan Avalos’ THE GHOSTS OF EDENDALE, will serve as DP on the Jonathan (DARKNESS FALLS) Liebesman-directed saw flick. The production is slated to go before the cameras in Texas by September. In regards to the casting rumors concerning Leatherface, an actor has not yet been decided upon, although Schow confirms what we first reported here: that R.A. (LEATHERFACE: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III) Mihailoff’s name has been brought up. In regard to that possibility, Schow states, “No one has ever played Leatherface twice! It would set a precedent.”
In further news, the writer reveals that director Larry (IT’S ALIVE) Cohen has been tapped to direct Schow’s script “Pick Me Up” for Showtime’s MASTERS OF HORROR series. Casting is currently underway, with Cohen to commence principal photography late this month in Vancouver.
News on the Masters of Horror series that will be gracing the Showtime network this fall has been sparse to say the least. Today that all changes. AICN is reporting that Variety has run a huge insert that was bundled with each and every issue and in that insert was a complete breakdown of all 13 of the first season episodes. SWEET!
Here is just a few of them:
”Cigarette Burns,” dir. John Carpenter
Screenplay by Drew McWeeny & Scott Swan
Jimmy Sweetman knows how to find rare film prints. However, nothing could prepare him for the daunting search for LA FIN DU MONDE, a film allegedly shown only once and rumored to have driven its audience into a murderous frenzy before the theater mysteriously erupted in flames. Working for a shadowy patron, Jimmy’s increasingly obsessive investigation becomes nightmarish and deadly. Finally he discovers LA FIN DU MONDE’s infamy is well deserved. This supernatural CHINATOWN is a chilling look at the power of cinema and the lengths to which we will go to satiate our private demons.
”Incident On And Off A Mountain Road,” dir. Don Coscarelli
Screenplay by Don Coscarelli & Stephen Romano
Based on Joe R. Lansdale’s short story of the same title, this film pits Ellen (Bree Turner), a seemingly defenseless young woman, against Moonface, a deformed and demented serial killer. As the story cuts back and forth in time, we slowly discover that our heroine is not as helpless or as innocent as she initially seems. Trained by her abusive husband, Bruce (Ethan Embry), to be a survivalist, instructed to use any and every available object as a weapon in a time of need, Ellen gets to test the real-life application of these lessons. Ultimately, chained to the floor of Moonface’s horrific cabin with a most unsavory roommate (Anghus Scrimm), she races against the clock to free herself before she meets a grisly fate. This gritty film pits a strong female protagonist against evil incarnate.
Saw a pannel for this series at teh Comic Con in San Diego, looks awesome.
John Landis, Stuart Gording, Don Castelenati(direct of Phantasm, forgive the spelling) and some other guy was there talking about it and they showed a clip. Can't wait.
It looks like the folks at Horror.com got the hook up when it comes to Masters of Horrors.
From video interviews to a set visit on a episode titled Chocolate with director Mick Garris and star Henry Thomas . This series has some of the biggest names in horror from John Carpenter(The Thing,),Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), George Romero(Creepshow) and even Roger Corman (The Pit & the Pendulm) to name a few .
There are rumors we may get to see episodes from David Cronenberg (Videodrome)and Asian madman Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer). The series will start on the Showtime cable network this fall and is set for special editon DVD treatment after that .
Does one movie make him a "master", though? Besides, it wasn't even a full-flegded Horror. I thought it was horribly dated, unfunny, and I don't need to see it again because I remember how flat it was. Nice make-up and werewolf transformation, but I think it's a little overrated, and Landis made 1,000's of bombs after this...mostly in his failed brand of comedy.
Well, there are other people slated to direct who have done even less important works in horror. It seems they're just grabbing anyone who has made a noteworthy horror film at some point and having them make an episode.
Alot of directors have bombs, especially when they've made as many movies as Landis has, to his credit, he's made numerous successful films as well, such as Kentucky Fried Movie, Animal House, Blues Brothers, Coming to America, and of course, American Werewolf...
Amazon Women on the Moon is a guilty pleasure for me, personally, thought it was damn funny.
But yeah, they seem pretty leniante when it comes to who they consider "masters" of horror. I guess anyone who had any impact on the genre is enough to be considered a master to them.
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Last edited by BackFire on Jul 25th, 2005 at 08:59 PM
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Masters of Horror!
Feb 11th, 2005 12:19 PM
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