Ivan Reitman’s harmless chick-flick comedy, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, starred Uma Thurman as the jealous superhero girlfriend unwisely dumped by Luke Wilson. Meanwhile, Bollywood’s own superhero adventure, Krrish, earned an Indian record of £8.3 million in its first week of release. Featuring a masked singing and dancing hero (Hrithik Roshan) saving the world from a mad scientist, around one-third of the film’s takings came from overseas, mostly in the UK and US.
Based on Patrick Süskind’s best-selling novel, Ben Whishaw played the Parisian serial killer with heightened olfactory sense in German director Tom Tykwer’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.
Olivia Bonamy and Michaël Cohen were the married couple menaced by feral schoolchildren in their remote Romanian mansion in the French production lls (Them), supposedly based on a true story.
A blonde angel (Rie Rasmussen) gave a man (Jamel Debbouze) contemplating suicide his life back in Luc Besson’s pretentious Angel-A, while Virginia Madsen played a mysterious blonde who may or may not have been the Angel of Death in Robert Altman’s final film, A Prairie Home Companion. Penelope Cruz was haunted by the ghost of her dead mother (Carmen Maura) in Pedro Almodovar’s offbeat family drama Volver.
Over a weekend in November, Freestyle Releasing/After Dark Films offered a “horror fest” of independent films under the umbrella title 8 Films to Die For, plus Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror, starring Snoop Dog, Danny Trejo and Jason Alexander, which quickly came and went.
The same month, cinemagoers got a sneak preview of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when the first trailer was released with the animated Happy Feet.
Gerard Butler, Sarah Polley and Stellan Skarsgård starred in the mythological saga of Beowulf & Grendel, while Eragon was based on the successful young adult fantasy book series and featured some nice-looking CGI dragons and shameless scene-stealing by Jeremy Irons and John Malkovich, who obviously realised how terrible the script was.
Based on the popular series of YA novels by Anthony Horowitz, Stormbreaker (aka Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker) introduced the teenage super-spy (Alex Pettyfer) battling Mickey Rourke’s crazed computer genius, and two thirteen-year-old friends discovered a teen mermaid (Sara Paxton) in Aquamarine.
Veterans Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney added a much-needed touch of class to the Ben Stiller fantasy/comedy Night at the Museum, also featuring Robin Williams, Owen Wilson and Ricky Gervais. It stayed in the #1 slot for two weeks at Christmas.
Adam Sandler’s office workaholic discovered that he could take control of his life with a universal remote invented by Christopher Walken’s crazy scientist in Frank Coraci’s crass comedy Click.
John Favreau’s children’s adventure Zathura: A Space Adventure was a SF follow-up to Jumanji and also based on a book by Chris Van Allsburg, while Charlotte’s Web was based on E. B. White’s classic children’s novel and starred Dakota Fanning as the girl befriended by the titular spider (voiced by Julia Roberts).
Tim Allen’s deputy DA found himself transforming into a were-pooch in Brian Robbins’ contemporary remake of Walt Disney’s The Shaggy Dog, while Allen’s Santa had to prevent Jack Frost (a mugging Martin Short) from hijacking Christmas in Michael Lembeck’s The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, also from Disney. The busy Allen also turned up as Captain Zoom, who (along with Chevy Chase and Courtney Cox) instructed four children with special powers how to be accepted in the dire superhero comedy Zoom.
Britain’s Aardman Studios eschewed its usual claymation technique for computer graphics with DreamWorks’ derivative mouse-out-of-water adventure Flushed Away, featuring the voices of Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet and Sir Ian McKellen, and the likeable rodent Scrat and his prehistoric friends from the original were forced to flee the melting polar ice caps in the cartoon comedy sequel Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties was a reworking of The Prince and the Pauper as the fat ginger cat (a CGI creation voiced by Bill Murray) was accidentally switched with an upper-crust British feline.
Featuring the voices of Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep, John A. Davis’ children’s animated adventure The Ant Bully was produced by Tom Hanks and released in some Imax theatres in very impressive 3-D. Ricardo Montalban replaced the late Marlon Brando as the voice of the Head of the Ant Council, while genre artist Bob Eggleton worked on the film’s designs.
Also shown in selected venues in 3-D, Gil Kenan’s Monster House was a disappointing motion-capture animated children’s adventure in which a trio of children found themselves trapped in a living house that ate anyone who ventured inside. Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg were executive producers.
Tim Burton’s classic The Nightmare Before Christmas was reissued for the Holiday Season in Disney Digital 3-D.
Although the original King Kong (1933) never won a single Oscar, Peter Jackson’s overlong and self-indulgent remake picked up no less than three (Visual Effects, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing) at the 78th Academy Awards, presented on March 5th in Hollywood. It was mostly a night for independent films, although Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit collected the award for Animated Feature, and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe won for Make-up.
2006 became the year that we finally said “goodbye” to the VHS (“Vertical Helical Scan”) cassette. The revolutionary home entertainment format went the way of Sony’s Betamax tapes and laserdiscs when DVD, new high-definition formats and the emerging video game consoles finally replaced it after thirty years. When the studios stopped manufacturing the tapes, retailers were left with no choice but to pull the plug on the format.
Peter Jackson’s overblown King Kong remake became even more bloated with a three-disc “Deluxe Extended Edition” on DVD that included nearly forty minutes of deleted scenes, 230 new visual effects and a mind-numbing six hours of original special features. Thankfully, it was only available for a limited time.
Meanwhile, Jackson’s ongoing lawsuit against New Line Cinema over revenue disclosure from The Fellowship of the Ring resulted in further delays in green lighting the studio’s Lord of the Rings prequel, The Hobbit.
Warner Bros’ Hollywood Legends of Horror Collection was a three-disc DVD compilation of classic 1930s MGM horrors. Mark of the Vampire, The Mask of Fu Manchu, Doctor X, The Return of Doctor X, Mad Love and The Devil Doll featured commentaries by Kim Newman and Stephen Jones, Greg Mank, Scott McQueen, director Vincent Sherman and Steve Haberman.
Sony Pictures’ Icons of Horror: Boris Karloff was a two-disc collection containing Columbia Pictures’ The Black Room, The Man They Could Not Hang, Before I Hang and The Boogie Man Will Get You, all making their DVD debut. If that wasn’t enough, then Universal’s three-disc The Boris Karloff Collection bought together such disparate titles as Night Key, Tower of London (1939), The Climax (in Technicolor), The Strange Door and The Black Castle, all featuring the screen’s “Master of Horror”. Disappointingly, both sets were extremely light on extras.
The two-disc 75th Anniversary editions of Universal’s Frankenstein and Dracula contained all the familiar bonus features, along with two new documentaries about stars Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi and audio commentaries by Rudy Behlmer, Sir Christopher Frayling, David J. Skal and Steve Haberman.
Universal also finally released a long-awaited two-disc set of Inner Sanctum Mysteries: The Complete Collection, featuring all six films in the “B” movie series (1943–45) based on the old radio series and starring Lon Chaney, Jr.
Fox’s The Mr Moto Collection Vol.1 starred Peter Lorre as the inscrutable Japanese investigator in Thank You Mr Moto, Think Fast Mr Moto, Mr Moto Takes a Chance and Mysterious Mr Moto. Meanwhile, The Charlie Chan Collection Vol.1 featured Earl Derr Biggers’ Honolulu-based detective in Charlie Chan in London, Charlie Chan in Paris, Charlie Chan in Egypt and Charlie Chan in Shanghai, all starring Warner Oland. The set also included Fran Trece, the Spanish-language version of the “lost” entry in the series, Charlie Chan Carries On.
An
chor Bay Entertainment’s six-disc “Ultimate Collection of Video Nasties”, Box of the Banned 2, contained five hardcore horror films from the 1970s and ’80s (The Witch Who Came from the Sea, Contamination, Tenebrae, Don’t Go Near the Park and Evilspeak) along with David Gregory’s documentary Ban the Sadist Videos 2 and various other extras.
From Britain’s DD Home Entertainment, Hammer Horror: The Early Classics was a box set featuring The Quatermass Experiment, Quatermass 2, X The Unknown and Four Sided Triangle. Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense: The Complete Collection collected all thirteen feature-length episodes of the 1970s TV series, and The Peter Gushing Collection brought together The Abominable Snowman, Island of Terror, The Blood Beast Terror and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell.
Released under the distributor’s “Classic Horror” label, Blood of the Vampire, Corridors of Blood and the obscure Daughter of Darkness all featured informative booklets written by Jonathan Rigby and Marcus Hearn.
Kim Newman and Stephen Jones contributed the booklets to the Network DVD releases of James Whale’s The Old Dark House, The Medusa Touch, and Hammer’s Countess Dracula, Hands of the Ripper and Twins of Evil, along with audio commentaries that also featured director Jack Gold and actresses Ingrid Pitt and Angharad Rees.
A two-disc special edition of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, included three documentaries, a vintage featurette and an excerpt from The Andy Williams Show featuring Davis singing the title song.
The two-disc special edition of The Green Mile featured more than two hours of bonus material, including a new half-hour documentary, Stephen King: Storyteller, that included interviews with Frank Darabont, William Goldman, Tom Hanks, Stephen Jones, Lawrence Kasdan, Kim Newman, David J. Schow, Peter Straub, Bernie Wright-son and King himself.
Original cast members Anne Francis, Earl Holliman, Richard Anderson, Warren Stevens and Robby the Robot reunited in mid-November for a 50th Anniversary screening of MGM’s 1956 classic Forbidden Planet at the American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. The remastered DVD also featured three documentary supplements plus outtakes and test scenes. Additionally, the two-disc tin set included The Invisible Boy and a 1958 episode of TV’s The Thin Man featuring Robby, along with collector’s cards and a 3.5-inch tall model of the screen’s most iconic robot.
New label Casa Negra Entertainment began releasing classic Mexican horror films in restored subtitled versions on DVD. Remastered and uncut, The Brainiac had never officially been released on DVD before, while “The Vampire Collection” showcased the classic El Vampiro and its sequel El Ataud del Vampiro on a two-disc set. A bonus on Black Pit ofDr MIMisterios de Ultratumba was the original English continuity script, while The Witch’s Mirror and The Curse of the Crying Woman both included the English-language dub tracks.
The first direct-to-DVD release from Warner Bros’ specialty horror division Raw Feed, John Shiban’s Rest Stop featured Jaimie Alexander menaced by yet another backwoods psycho.
Set in a world of murderous children, Clive Barker’s The Plague was actually co-written and directed by Hal Masonberg.
I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer was released directly to DVD, while the similarly-distributed The Tooth Fairy was scripted by TV veteran Stephen J. Cannell, amongst others.
From Retro Shock-O-Rama Cinema, Joe Sarno’s cult 1974 vampire film The Devil’s Plaything was released in a widescreen version with a new mini-documentary about the director and an insert booklet by Michael J. Bowen.
Bill Moseley, Tim Thomerson, Phil Fondacarro and Tommy Chong all made special appearances in Charles Band’s Evil Bong, and Monarch of the MoonlDestination Mars!, released on the Dark Horse Indie label, was a two-disc DVD set spoofing 1950s sci-fi films.
The Munsters Two-Movie Fright Vest paired Munster Go Home! with the TV movie The Munsters’ Revenge. From Paramount came a three-disc set, The Wild Wild West: The Complete First Season (1965–66), and a second volume of The Time Tunnel (1966–67) featuring fifteen episodes over four discs.
Superman: The 1948 and 1950 Theatrical Serial Collection from Warner Bros, was a four-disc DVD set that included all the chapters from both The Adventures of Superman and Atom Man vs. Superman (both starring Kirk Alyn as The Man of Steel).
When released on DVD in the UK, Point Pleasant: The Complete Series included five previously unaired episodes of the disappointing Fox series.
I Was a Teenage Movie Maker collected all forty-one 16mm amateur movies made by Don Glut between 1953–69.
Anchor Bay’s Halloween: 25 Years of Terror was a two-disc tribute to the “slasher” movie franchise, featuring interviews with more than eighty celebrities, including John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis, Clive Barker, Rob Zombie and many others.
Made without a grain of talent or humour, A. Susan Svehla’s dire Terror in the Tropics incorporated plenty of copyright-free footage of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney, Jr into a distinctly amateur production about the reading of a will on eerie Fog Island. Many of the characters were named after old actors, and this even included dinosaur footage from the silent Lost World.
Fans of the old horror stars were much better served by The Witch’s Dungeon: 40 Years of Chills. Directed by Dennis Vincent and hosted by Zacherley the “Cool Ghoul”, the documentary traced the history of Cortlandt Hull’s Connecticut-based horror museum and the films and actors who inspired it with the help on-screen appearances by Christopher Lee, Sara Karloff, Ron Chaney, Bela Lugosi Jr, Dick Smith, Tom Savini, Caroline Munro, Forrest J Ackerman, Bob Burns, Ben Chapman, Ricou Browning and a host of others.
Written, produced and directed by Paul Davids, The Sci-Fi Boys was anothr feature-length documentary about many of the filmmakers and other creative people who were inspired and championed by Forrest J Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Along with Ackerman himself, those interviewed included Rick Baker, Ray Bradbury, Bob Burns, Roger Corman, Donald F. Glut, Ray Harryhausen, Peter Jackson and John Landis.
In November, Forry Ackerman celebrated his 90th birthday with a party in Los Angeles. Among those attending were Ray Bradbury, Carla Laemmle, Anne Robinson, James Karen, Bobbi Bresse, George Clayton Johnson, David J. Skal, Peter Atkins and Dennis Etchison. Guests received a copy of Famous Monster of Filmland #90, a fac-simile magazine of the original manuscript pages of FM #1.
Jonathan English’s mythological fantasy adventure Minotaur featured guest turns by Tony Todd, Rutger Hauer and an unrecognisable Ingrid Pitt and was released directly to the Sci Fi Channel.
Also from those purveyors of fine flicks, Yancy Butler starred in Basilisk: The Serpent King, a reanimated Dean Cain battled infectious giant beetles carrying a zombie virus in Dead and Deader, and Michael Pare witnessed the battle between Komodo vs. Cobra on a desert island.
Tom Skerritt turned up in the self-descriptive Mammoth, about an alien-possessed museum exhibit (no, really), while Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep (aka Deadly Water), starring Victoria Pratt, Charlie O’Con-nell, Jack Scalia and a giant squid, won its title from an online publicity stunt. Spelunkers Christopher Atkins and Colm Meaney faced Romanian rock-eating rhinoceros beetles in Caved In: Prehistoric Terror.
Casper Van Dien and Lynda Carter found themselves up against some scary Latin American vampires in Slayer, and a prison guard (Jennifer Wiggins) battled a monster assassin working for the Russian mafia in Shapeshifter.
Room 6 was set in a creepy hospital and starred Jerry O’Connell, while Stacy Keach confronted evil ghosts on a deserted island penitentiary in Haunted Prison. Lance Henriksen encountered a big bloodthirsty backwoods creature in Abominable, and he reprised his role from the original film as a ghost in Pumpkinhead III: Ashes to Ashes (filmed back-to-back with a third sequel).
Tobe Hooper directed Mortuary, about an undertaker (Denise Crosby) who took over a creepy funeral home, and Emmanualle Vaugier’s special ops team blew flesh-eating zombies away in House of the Dead 2. Meanwhile, psychic siblings Charis
ma Carpenter and Eric Mabius wanted revenge on the evil that destroyed their hometown twenty years earlier in Voodoo Moon.
A slumming Ben Cross’ mad Nazi scientist created a device that transformed a World War II German soldier into a monstrous killing machine in David Mores’ cheap and cheerful SS Doomtrooper.
A scientific expedition to an unknown world encountered hungry mutants in Savage Planet starring Sean Patrick Flanery, and Jason Connery was the fleet-footed superhero of the Sci Fi Channel’s Stan Lee’s Lightspeed, which was gone in a Flash.
Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King starred Alicia Witt, Julian Sands and Max Von Sydow and was shown in two parts on Sci Fi Channel.
Directed by Mick Garris and scripted by the author himself, Stephen King’s Desperation found a group of typical King characters trapped in the eponymous Nevada desert town controlled by a demonic spirit and Ron Perlman’s psychotic cop. Unfortunately, ABC-TV scheduled its three-hour “movie event” opposite the penultimate episode of that season’s American Idol, with predictable results.
Noah Wyle returned as nerdy bookworm Flynn Carsen, protecting the world’s most treasured supernatural artefacts, in Jonathan Frakes’ The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines on TNT. This time he teamed up with a spirited archaeologist (Gabrielle Anwar) to find a stolen scroll that was said to reveal the location of the legendary diamond mines.
Casper Van Dien’s roguish archaeologist and Leonor Varela’s museum curator tried to beat Malcolm McDowell’s secret Hellfire Council to a collection of Ancient Egyptian tablets with supernatural powers in Hallmark’s The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb.
A widow’s daughter claimed she was murdered in a former life in the Lifetime Movie Network’s Past Tense starring Paula Trickey, and Julie Delpy and Justin Theroux discovered that their new home came with its own 250-year-old ghost in the same network’s The Legend of Lucy Keyes, which was “based on a true story”.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18 Page 8
