In the midst of all of that holiday garbage, horror has proven that it's king of the world as Warner Bros. Pictures and their Will Smith starring post-apocalyptic thriller I Am Legend took over the box office with an astounding estimated $76.5 million this weekend, the biggest December opening ever! If that's not cool enough, next week DreamWorks is releasing Sweeney Todd, so expect the top two slots to be horror! Only time will tell how 20th Century Fox's Aliens vs Predator: Requiem will do, but can you imagine horror taking over Christmas?

MGM/Dimension Films will release Clive Barker Presents: Hellraiser on September 5, 2008. Will Pinhead return along with all of your favorite Cenobites? We'll see. Also, Lionsgate has decided that they will have Saw V ready for October 24, 2008. David Hackl will be directing and hopefully continue this impressive, although maybe too long, run of the franchise.

It only makes sense that a guy in Texas would come up with this ridiculous combination of sex and horror. It appears that the "haunted house" features women wearing neon paint as halloween costumes - and nothing else. Now don't get me wrong, seeing women in neon paint and nothing else does seem like a good time, but in a haunted house? Cmon, haunts are meant to scare, not arouse. I can't go through that broad spectrum of complex emotions in a 10 minute experience. What if I end up getting my synapses crossed forever and end up screaming at the sight of a naked woman and getting turned on in a haunted house? Don't play God here Mr. Texan. Use the KISS principle (not that KISS principle) - Keep It Simple Stupid. I like my haunts scary, and my naked women unscary. Please don't cross that line! And if memory serves me correctly, this failed experiment was already tried by Hell's Delight 2 years back here in Denver. Remember that one? It wasn't so much of a haunt rather than a walk down Colfax at 3am.

Moral of story: there's a time and place for everything. If you want erotic dancers, go to PTs. If you want to be frightened out of your mind, go to a Haunted House. 'Nuff said.

Here's the link to the story:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2007/09/28/nguyen.tx.adult.haunted.house.khou

::jAson::

I saw the third installment of the Resident Evil series last night. I gotta say, I was way more impressed than the last effort in the franchise. It seems the director took some lessons from some other more noteable zombie hooror film cinematography, complete with jumpy high contrast editing. The storyline was evenly laid out with enough twists to keep you interested in more than just watching zombies chew through brains. Character development was lacking, as you don't really find yourself caring whatsoever for the band of survivors, or even the ones left over from the second film, but thats to be expected. There is PLENTY of gore and bloodshed to go around in this film complete with everyone's favorite skinless dobermans, mutated humans, and flesh-eating crows (Hitchcock anyone?). I liked how they throw back a bit to some of the settings from the first film and the overwhelming threat of the Umbrella Corporation is just a homage to evil Big Brotherish companies out here that make you resent them even more. My first thought was any defense contractor firm, such as Lockheed Martin. Or heck, even Haliburton after how much I've been reading them waste millions of taxpayers dollars in the Iraq war. Umbrella Corp is really like that cockroach that just won't die - seemingly more powerful than all the world's governments combined, they have mile deep facilities all over the world serving the best interest of themselves.
The movie is rounded out with better actors and legitimate, creative scares. The only tear that came to my eye was seeing Vegas covered in sand, but that quickly was relieved by zombie terror and the ass kicking of the beautiful Milla Jovovich. Does that woman even age? Incredible.

Also, a movie trailer for the film One Missed Call previews beforehand. Looks like another J-horror film, but one that promises a delivery. And it has Ed Burns in it. THAT guy would NEVER do a bad film. I hope.

::jAson::

BLOG - such an annoying word. I prefer Journaling. maybe e-journing? e-jour? I'll work on that..


A little about myself in case any of you care. I was raised in a little town outside of Cincinnati - the midwest to people who have never really explored their inner hillbilly and ventured outside of Colorado. and if you haven't I don't blame you, you are not missing much. Except some kick-ass haunted houses. I mean really, there's not a lot to do out there and there's waaaaaay to much corn to just EAT, so why not have a corn maze every other acre.

I grew up watching every horror movie you could imagine. Started with the basics and moved onto foreign and independent. My netflix queue is deep in repetition of these fine films. 80's slasher, J-horror, grindhouse, survival suspense (torture porn to some?), remakes, prequels..i love it all. Which inevitably led me to the haunted house industry. I've been dragging my friends to them for as long as I can remember. Hell, my dad brought me to them when I was merely 8 years old. No wonder, huh? So you could imagine my delight in being a Haunted Denver critic this year again.

I have my goals and ambitions in this industry, no doubt. I've been to hundreds of haunts in my lifetime and have been a human sponge. I have done my research and I have my ideas. Because one day, I promise, I will open up my own haunt and will invite you all to come and play inside.

For now, I will be content with being a critic though. And this blog will be dedicated to my Haunted Denver experience this season. Maybe gain a little bit more insight into my reviews, the industry, the gossip, the talk of the town. Check back throughout the month - i'll keep ya posted.

::jAson::

by Brandon Gray September 4, 2007

Halloween was celebrated over the four-day Labor Day weekend to the tune of $30.6 million on approximately 4,100 screens at 3,472 theaters. MGM and The Weinstein Company's remake of the seminal 1978 slasher claimed the highest-grossing Labor Day weekend opening ever, topping Transporter 2's $20.1 million. Additionally, it posted the biggest pure horror or thriller opening of the year, ahead of Disturbia and 1408.

Among the recent spate of remakes of famous horror movies, Halloween's $26.4 million three-day start rates slightly higher than The Amityville Horror but lower than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead. The original Halloween grossed the equivalent of nearly $140 million adjusted for ticket price inflation and, while that success has never been recreated, the franchise has endured for nearly three decades. The Weinsteins previously revived killer Michael Myers in August 1998 with Halloween: H20, which sold around as many tickets out of the gate as the 2007 incarnation and its $55 million final gross would equal about $80 million today, a tally that the new movie won't likely reach.

Okay, so without giving anything away I’m going to tell you what I think of the new Halloween. I was right. Plain and simple. A fact which I love. So it worked out that writer/director Rob Zombie was able to pull it off after all. Using his unique directing style he managed to bridge the gap from the old Carpenter story and add a modern spin with a distinct ‘70s feel. In an age where horror has deteriorated into a torture porn fiesta (has nothing to do with actual porn, see Saw II, Hostel II, Texas Chainsaw: The Beginning– actually, don’t see) and hacks like Eli Roth (just my opinion, not that of HD) make money hand over fist by rehashing the same ideas and pawning them on their own there is nothing cinematic about the genre anymore, no throwbacks, no memorable characters.

Finally the slasher is back, Michael Myers has returned, I’m not talking about it in the euphemistic sense of Friday the 13^th part 63 or Wes Craven’s new, new, nightmare but an homage to what it was like to go to a pack theatre and get the jumps, the screams and the laughs. I think that this bridges the gap as a supplement to the original, a worthy companion to the days before a completely mannish Jamie Lee Curtis.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t take issue, of course there are still some of the same issues why I don’t like the movie but they carry over from the first go around. The bottom line is that it is good enough to bring in fans like me and appease the fanatics that study the film. Is it better than the 1978? Better, I would say no but certainly on par with and it is undeniably the best since… unless, of course, you really have a soft spot for Season of the Witch in which case maybe it isn’t Michael that should’ve been committed. Come on, I’m kidding.