Countdown to Halloween: Playing Dress Up, Costume Hits and Horrors

The costume stores may be selling out of Dracula and slutty nurse costumes, but hard core geeks have been known to bring their A-Game when it comes to Halloween. And while dressing up yourself can be tons of fun, lucky geeks with candy fetching minions are putting their talents to work creating some amazing costumes for their kids.

Countdown To Halloween: Universal Rebooting Their Monsters

Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan have been tapped by Universal, to serve as the architects on a rebooted classic monsters universe which would include Universal’s most revered movie monsters like Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man, Creature Of The Black Lagoon, The Invisible Man, Bride Of Frankenstein and The Mummy.

Countdown to Halloween: Hammer’s Godzilla And The British Studio’s Best

Hammer Horror Films were atmospheric, moody, bloody, and filled with overt sexual voraciousness. The talk of Warner Bros’ reboot of Godzilla getting a sequel, and maybe crossing over with King Kong has sparked our memory to an online video of what Hammer’s version of Gojira might have looked like. We thought this might be a good time to look back at it, and some of our favorite moments from Hammer themselves.

Countdown to Halloween: Horror Films of the Hollywood Pre-Code Era

Films made between 1930 to 1934 are collectively known as the Hollywood ‘Pre-Code’ era in film history. Today, we’ll take a closer look at what made these films, in particular, the slew of horror films, classics of the genre as we continue our Countdown to Halloween!

Quick history lesson: This era in American film was between the introduction of sound in the late 1920′s and the enforcement of the Hays Code (Motion Picture Production Code) in July of 1934. From 1930 to 1934, compliance with any Code was merely a verbal agreement; which in Hollywood means close to nothing. Therefore, Hollywood experimented further than it had before; showcasing the loosest of morals, and newfound freedom of expression.

Universal Monsters Reboots Will Ditch The Horror For Action-Adventure

Universal has been planning to reboot its Universal Monsters characters in a shared universe for quite some time now. We now know that the studio plans to anchor their classic monsters in a series of interconnected action-adventure movies, not horror films. That’s the angle we knew the studio was planning with the new Mummy movie, to be directed by Alex Kurtzman.

Universal Has A Date For Their New Classic Monster Film

Universal has now set a release date of April 21, 2017 for an untitled Monster Franchise Film that will open in theaters the year after The Mummy property revival. This new Classic Monster Cinematic Universe is being overseen under the guidance of Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan.

10 Bizarre Foreign Posters for American Movies…

Film posters are amazing. Not only do they help advertise to people quickly and easily the content of any film, they also are truly stunning pieces of art in themselves looking great displayed on our walls. However, this is not always the case. Some posters confuse us, so a bad film is made out to be good, while some don’t really tell us anything about the movie and others lose the plot entirely showing us random images or awful art and leave us thinking about what mental state the artist could have been when they devised this monster of a poster. For some reason some of the best examples of these types of poster come from abroad in non-English speaking countries and this is what I want to focus on here, those posters that with out the internet’s help would be lost in a trash can for all time. This week we focus on the Horror genre.

Daniel Radcliffe in Talks to play Igor in New Frankenstein

There will no doubt be mixed views about the THR news that Daniel Radcliffe is in final negotiations to play Igor, the famous hunchbacked assistant of Doctor Frankenstein. This is a tale that has gone through countless cinematic retreads and revamps since its inception by Mary Shelly all those years ago, and has even had successful theater runs, the most recent starring UK Sherlock star Bennedict Cumberbatch, and US Elementary star Jonny Lee Miller. But Igor himself was actually a cinematic creation and became immortalized in our minds because of great performances from the likes of Dwight Frye, Bela Lugosi and many more that all helped to create this hunchbacked helper.

1931’s FRANKENSTEIN – Dwight Frye as ‘Fritz ‘aka the first Igor…

Max Landis (Chronicle) is on writing duties, while Paul McGuigan (director of Lucky Number Slevin and Push) is at the helm to direct. Max’s own father John Landis (Blues Brothers, Thriller) is on hand in a producing role. So if nothing else this new version has some pretty good talent behind the camera.  Max Brooks version of this tale is told from Igors perspective. Aint It Cool News has a great interview with Max about his plans. One of the more interesting things said was his plan to make the film a version we have never seen before.

[quote] “That’s when the idea came to me: instead of trying to do some high minded ‘revisionist’ Frankenstein, why not try to stay true to a version that only lives in the zeitgeist, and has NEVER REALLY EXISTED.

And why not do it in an intelligent, hopefully, thoughtful way, about friendship and science, genius and madness, love and ambition, life and death?

Why not use that imaginary, fairy dust framework of ‘guy with hunchbacked assistant makes monster’ and make it fun, sad, scary and hopefully, I really hope this, moving.”  [/quote]

This seems like a really fun and maybe even more heartwarming version of the story than we have seen before. I doubt it will go as funny as Young Frankenstein, but this will certainly be an exciting version of the tale and this will make a change from the more downbeat versions we have seen in recent years.

On Igor’s appearance:

[quote]He is described as pathologically dirty, with long hair and wearing old clown clothes. (A circus tone permeates much of the project, according to sources.)[/quote]

So quite a departure from the clean cut Mr Potter, but still a great piece of casting if it all goes through. Ratcliffe has also pushed the envelope in the past, most famously on stage in Equus where he performed a nude scene. It is not uncommon for actors to want to break type (Jim Carrey and Elijah Wood have done it countless times) and it normally harbors interesting results. It should be fun to see how Daniel gets to grips with a more horrific, tormented character and how he interprets the circus feel this new Igor is alluding to. When you read about Max’s thoughts on Frankenstein you cannot help but feel his energy for the project. To see if it lives up to his plans we will have to wait, but a more refreshing approach to the tale could be just what movie fans are looking for.

Countdown to Halloween Special: Top Ten B-Movie Monsters

So we here at Grizzly Bomb have a mammoth Countdown to Halloween going on, focusing on some of the greatest Halloween icons to ever terrify humanity. However, here I just want to give a thumbs up to some of the more obscure creatures of the night who have terrified me over the years.

So welcome to our Countdown to Halloween Special – Top 10 B-Movie Monsters. Click on through our new handy Tabber below and prepare yourself for some B-Movie greatness.

Countdown to Halloween #19: Dr. Frankenstein and His Monster

You may not have heard of all of the characters in our Halloween countdown this year, and that’s okay.  We hope the articles have been enlightening if that’s the case.  But our next character is certainly one that everyone is well acquainted with, unless for some reason you’ve been living under a rock your entire life.