Here’s a small selection of the horror and genre news that caught our eye during the last week…
2015 Shirley Jackson Awards Nominees Announced
The full list of nominees for the 2015 Shirley Jackson awards has been announced. Set to take place on Sunday 10 July at Readercon 27, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Quincy, Massachusetts, the awards have been established to recognise outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic. The awards also look to recognise the legacy of novelist Shirley Jackson (1916-1965), who wrote among other well known titles The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle and short story The Lottery.
The Shirley Jackson Awards are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics and awards are given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology, and the big news is that The Visible Filth by Nathan Ballingrud, published by This Is Horror is up for the novella award!
Head over to http://www.shirleyjacksonawards.org/nominees/ to see the full list of 2015 nominees.
Ascent To Hell Rights Acquired By APL Film
The international sales rights to Rumpus Room Productions and Elpis Film’s thriller/horror, Ascent to Hell have been acquired by APL Film who have been representing the film at Cannes Film Market.
Inspired by the New York Triangle Factory Fire, which left hundreds of female workers dead, Ascent to Hell is a classic ghost story in which Kate, an ambitious commercial real estate agent has her sights set on a big contract, with a wealthy investment manager. The deal is lucrative, but it is suddenly on the rocks as Kate and Mr. Browning, and the rest of the people involved in the deal must survive a mysterious supernatural trap. In order to escape with their lives, Kate must find the clues to the building’s past.
The film stars Azura Skye (One Missed Call), Bill Sage (We Are What We Are) and John Randall Hennigan (aka WWE’s Johnny Nitro) and is directed by Dena Hysell.
UK Trailer released for Even Lambs Have Teeth
A new trailer has been released for Solo Media and Matchbox Films’s revenge thriller Even Lambs Have Teeth.
Dreaming of a trip to New York City the beautiful Sloane and Katie leave for the countryside to earn some money working on an organic farm, but on the way they are kidnapped and abused by a sinister family of small-town psychopaths. When the girls finally escape, they decide to return to the scene of the crime and settle the score.
Even Lambs Have Teeth looks to follow in the footsteps of classic revenge flicks like I Spit On Your Grave and hits UK DVD & Digital platforms on Monday 13 June 2016.
Bates Motel to Feature a Classic Psycho Character
The superb Bates Motel television series has more than done justice to the Psycho mythology originally created by Robert Bloch and brought into popular culture by Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal 1960 movie, but for the first four seasons there has been little crossover into the timelines or events of the films.
This is all set to change in season five however, as executive producer Carlton Curse has confirmed that none other than Marion Crane, played by Janet Leigh in the original film, will be making an appearance in multiple episodes of the next season.
Curse also confirms that season five will be the show’s last, so it makes sense that Norman will be on a collision course with Marion Crane, but as to how this will play out remains to be seen. Whatever happens, though, season five is sure to be a crazy ride.
Idris Elba’s The Dark Tower Costume Revealed
After what seemed like an eternity in pre-production, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower is finally filming in South Africa, and a picture has emerged online of Idris Elba in his Roland Deschain Gunslinger gear.
Elba is in good company in the cast, starring alongside Jackie Earle Haley as vampire leader Sayre and Matthew McConaughey as the iconic Man in Black in director Nikolaj Arcel’s adaptation of King’s sprawling fantasy epic.
The Dark Tower is due in theatres on 17 February 2017.
Dare You Solve the Hellraiser Rubik’s Cube?
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the Hellraiser series (apart from avoid them all after Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth) it’s that messing with the iconic Lament Configuration boxes rarely ends well.
If you’re eager to try and unlock the delights that Pinhead and company may have for you, though, Mezco have created a Rubik’s Cube version of the box that according to their press release apparently has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible combinations. Those of us old enough to remember the Rubik’s Cube from way back when will already know that they’re hell to solve, but now it may quite literally be.
If you’re brave enough to try and solve this rather take on the Lament Configuration the good news is that they’re only $13 and available to pre-order HERE.
RICHARD COSGROVE
