Penny Dreadful
Donuts, Cron-nuts and a reboot I’m on board with
REBOOT ON THE OTHER FOOT
They’re rebooting Halloween and I’m not even allowed to be angry about it. John Carpenter, cult horror hero and director of the original, is attached and he’s teamed up with my favourite modern horror producer Jason Blum to make a tenth Halloween movie, due in 2017. The bastards. Carpenter, who’ll exec produce, has talked before about how focusing too much on Michael Myers’ motivation and connection to the victims made the sequels less scary. I couldn’t agree more – the original faceless, motiveless unstoppable killer lurking among the clean washing and white picket fences was a clear message to suburbia: no one is safe. So now when he says, “I’m going to help to try to make the 10th sequel the scariest of them all,” he only bloody might. Urgh.
A GEM IN WOLF’S CLOTHING
The best thing I’ve seen in ages is a movie about a bloke who likes to dress up as a wolf called Peachfuzz. Creep, which screened at FrightFest 2014 but is now on Netflix, written by and starring Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice, is a very weird, deeply unsettling bit of “Mumblegore” that I couldn’t recommend more. It’s a hand-held two-hander, where Brice plays a freelance cameraman hired to make a video diary for a bloke who says he’s dying of cancer and wants to leave a record for his unborn child. It’s funny, frighteningly awkward and has a devastating ending. Plans are already in the works for a second and third instalment and while I can’t imagine how this would play out, it’s a Jason Blum film, and the man knows how to build a franchise. Check it out – and watch for Peachfuzz costumes at Halloween.
THROUGH THE KEYHOLE
The Winchester Mystery House is an incredible building in San Jose, California. It’s huge, has more than 100 rooms and comes with an amazing backstory. And now it’s going to be the basis for a movie, starring Helen Mirren. Story time: Sarah Winchester was the heir to the fortune generated though the production of Winchester shotguns. When her father-in-law and husband died in quick succession she suddenly inherited millions but was consumed with grief. The tale goes that she visited a medium who suggested she was cursed by the people killed by Winchester guns – the only way to break the curse was to begin building work on a house and to never stop. So she bought a big piece of a land and employed builders to go to work based on her own plans. They didn’t stop for 38 years. As a result the house is nuts – full of staircases which go nowhere, doors opening onto sheer drops, secret rooms with tricks, codes and puzzles built into the architecture. I’ve seen it and it’s amazing. The Spierig brothers (Predestination, Daybreakers) are attached to direct and it’s not clear yet what the actual story will be, but the myth is rich. Here’s hoping for 13 Ghosts meets Grand Designs via Bowling For Columbine.
PALME D’ONUT
Veteran Brit director Ken Loach might have bagged the top prize at the glamorous Cannes Film Festival this year, but what about Attack Of The Killer Donuts? Premiering at the Cannes Marché (the market place, where films come to be bought and sold) AOTKD is a B-movie throwback in which a botched experiment transforms benign Krispy Kremes into murderous munchies bent on destroying donut shop workers and coffee-crammed cops alike. Have a familiar ring to it? Don’t let your eyes glaze over. Bizarrely, reviews suggest it’s not actually that bad. According to The Hollywood Reporter it doesn’t quite satisfy like Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes but is way tastier than The Attack Of The Giant Moussaka...