John Carpenter’s The Fog was released in February of 1980 but the story takes place in April 21st 1980, the 100th Anniversary of the small Town of Antonio Bay. So with Today being the 21st of April it seemed like a good time to go back and pay tribute to this great film!

After the success of Halloween Carpenter decided to take on the classic ghost story after seeing a distant fog bank while on vacation one night. That planted the seed that would become The Fog. The film is about the small seaside town of Antonio Bay that’s about to celebrate their 100th anniversary. However the anniversary mysteriously falls on the same anniversary as the sinking of the Elizabeth Dane, a clipper ship that followed a false fire on the shore to their doom and crashed on the rocks and sunk taking the entire crew with her.

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Transworld’s Haunted Attraction & Halloween show was this past weekend and I’m exhausted! Its always a race to get everything done in time for the show and then its 3 days of insanity that goes by way too fast! I had a great time and picked up quite a bit of business as well! I made a new video for the show detailing some of the work I’ve done in the last year. The music comes from a somewhat famous movie and I will give the first 2 people who can email me with the title of that movie a Free 2012 Rogues Hollow T-shirt! Watch the video below then email me at christopher@rogueshollow.com if you know the score!

We have a few filming projects coming up this spring and I’ve already scheduled 2 haunts for filming during the season. If you are a haunt interested in having Rogues Hollow Film your event and create a trailer with it then contact us soon to book now!

Why do people seem to like this movie? There’s been some positive reviews from some horror sites that I thought should have known better. The first Laid to Rest is a passable slasher flick with bad acting, a interesting killer and amazing gore effects. While its nothing to write home about it is a fairly fun film though far from a great one. So I finally got around to watching the sequel and Its like a completely different movie. The killer somehow survives the end of the first film and is picked up by an shadowy organization of people that seem to be there solely to support Chromeskull with his mission. Apparently the company motto is: Step 1 Kill people, Step 2 ?, and Step 3 profit. Its never really clear why this organization exists or why its supporting ChromeSkull. The lead douche CEO is terrible actor, Brian Austen Green who wants to take over ChromeSkull’s place and be head of the organization for some reason. Danielle Harris is along just to egg on Green to be the top killer.

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About 2 years ago one of my clients needed a piece of art for a Valentine’s weekend promotion. I shot some cool photos of a bloody heart in a box of candy and that became their art for the show. This year they are doing it again so I thought I’d take a stab at making a video to go with the artwork just to see what I could come up with. So one evening I took my camera, some Valentine’s Day trappings, such as candy, bubbly, love letters, and the like to a nice run down location I had access to. I was inspired by the opening of American Horror Story and even mimicked their flashlight in the dark effect for the very beginning of the short. I’m very happy with the result and It does tell a pretty dark story in less than a minute. Unfortunately the client decided they didn’t need it this year so I’m just releasing it here on the site and on YouTube. Watch it below and let me know what you think!

Comment on YouTube or here on the blog. I’ve also made some wallpapers for the video for a variety of formats including Ipads and Iphones which you can download here!

 

I’m a huge fan of 70′s and 80′s horror movies and I still run across the occasional retro flick I haven’t seen. Recently I came upon a great forgotten slasher gem called Night School starring the very beautiful Rachel Ward. Someone is beheading women and leaving their heads in some strange places. A detective assigned to the case soon finds a link between the victims, they all attended night school at a local girls college. Suspicion falls upon a college professor who apparently spends all his spare time having affairs with as many students as possible. He’s also diddling his research assistant played by Rachel Ward. The story takes some twists and turns and has some amazing kill scenes. You’ll probably see the twist ending coming long before its revealed but its still well worth your time.

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It’s that time of year again! Christmas is this weekend and its time for this years Christmas Nightmares episode! After last years quickly put together episode we decided to invest some time and money into this one. Brian Lashchuk and I wrote up a script, storyboards and decided to actually try our hand at some special effects. Luckily we were able to get some help from a professional cinematographer named Keith Slawinski who helped us make our movie look amazing! We also got some valuable advice from Jon Shroyer on how to shoot out effects shots. Brian was able to find a family that wanted to get murdered in our little movie and they did a fantastic job considering they aren’t actors at all. it was a lot of work but a lot of fun too! So check it out and below and let us know what you think!

Like most hardcore horror fans I have a big spot in my heart for bad, cheesy horror flicks. Movies that the occasional horror viewer wouldn’t waste 5 minutes on are often some of my favorites. Being a kid of the 80′s there were a lot of great cheesy horror films for me and my friends. On TV we had quite possibly the pinnacle of bad horror television called Freddy’s Nightmares.

By 1988 New Line Cinema was trying to squeeze out every drop of marketing blood they could out of the Nightmare on Elm Street Franchise. They had posters, games, toys and even a talking doll, which I still have. It was crazy how much they tried to make a child killer appeal to kids. So the next logical step was a tv series for Freddy. Thus was born Freddy’s Nightmares which saw Freddy acting as a crypt keeper of sorts presiding over 2 stories per episode that were loosely connected to each other.

For lovers of Cheese this series is gold. The acting is often over the top, the sets are the most cardboard you’ve ever seen and since its the late 80′s, everything seems to be layered in bright colors, bad fashion and big hair. The show literally looked like they spent about 10 bucks on the production design from week to week. The sequences with Freddy were lit in a bright red and green and usually heavily shadowed. These sequence were probably the most artistic moments of the show and that’s not saying much.

The first episode of the series “No More Mr. Nice Guy” was the best one. It basically tells the origin story of Freddy and has some decent production design behind it for a 80′s syndicated tv series. However from there it went downhill and fast. The show did see some stars pass through its dusty sets, including Brad Pitt, Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order SVU) and Lori Petty who enjoyed a brief career back in the 90′s.

I know I’ve said it before but the 80′s were weird. I don’t think I’ll ever see a serial killing crazy character like Freddy become a icon again in my lifetime. Today we live in a overly sensitive climate where people are offended by the dumbest things. Freddy was marketed to kids and I was one of them. When I was in 3rd and 4th grade I had posters of this guy, a toy glove and the films on VHS. I watched this crappy TV series every week not to watch the sub par stories but to see Freddy!

Freddy’s Nightmares isn’t available to watch online and I don’t look for it to ever be put on DVD. I’m sure this is a series that even the people involved would like to forget. The only release it ever saw was a few episodes being put on VHS back in the late 80′s and I imagine are pretty hard to find. I’m pretty sure I still have a couple at buried in boxes at my parents house. However you still can see some episodes on Youtube.com so seek them out and settle in for some classic 80′s cheese.

Last year about the same time as the Nightmare on Elm Street Remake came out I came across the trailer below. A long time NOES fan took it upon himself to make a new vision of Freddy Krueger that was familiar yet different enough to feel like a new take on the character. Chris Johnson basically came up with the concept that a bunch of Hollywood writers and producers couldn’t and provided us with a glimpse of how you can breath new life into Freddy. View it then read my further comments below:

Its pretty impressive for a fan made trailer. Chris Johnson has been playing dress up as Freddy since he was a kid and has apparently made multiple fan films when he was a teenager so its pretty amazing he’s taken that passion so far. The concept of Freddy still smoldering and on fire is a pretty amazing one as is the glowing hot finger blades. Those would have been very interesting additions for a new version of the character. Chris plays Freddy in the trailer as well but I don’t think he’s the right body type for the character. Freddy should be a skinny emaciated figure, not a bulky monster.

I didn’t hate the remake that platinum dunes release in 2010 but It didn’t feel like a Freddy movie that I grew up with. They changed the characters back story but removed that part about him being a “child killer” so why does he have a glove with knives on it? Instead he’s a full on child molester this time out and entirely unsympathetic. They brought in a director that apparently didn’t have any real passion for the character so we got a story that looked great but had pretty dull characters. More than anything though they sucked out all the humor. Sure Freddy became a total joke by the time Nightmare 3 hit theaters but the remake took out all of Freddy’s humor and made him totally despicable and that didn’t really work for me that well. I still see some things I like in the remake but upon a couple additional viewings since it was released It just doesn’t hold up well and it definitely fails to reboot the character.

Platinum Dunes has already said they’re getting out of the horror game entirely so I don’t think we’ll see a continuation of the Remake anytime soon nor will we see a part 2 of the one movie Platinum Dunes did get right, Friday the 13th. Oh well. Lets hope that next time these character see screen time they get someone like Chris Johnson to direct who will bring the love of the character with him and give us a remake we deserve. Wishful thinking…