Here’s a small selection of the horror and genre news that caught our eye during the last week…
How The Walking Dead Plans To Keep That Big Death Under Wraps
(Spoilers follow, so look away now if you’re not up to date.)
There was much moaning among Walking Dead fans at the recent season six finale, where big bad Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) introduced one of the cast members to the business end of Lucille, his barbed wire wrapped baseball bat, and the fact that we don’t yet know whose head was hit for a home run.
In an effort to thwart the dastardly internet and prevent spoilers, it appears that a death scene was filmed for each and every potential victim, just in case any rogue set pictures are leaked, and that even the cast members are not completely sure at this point which of them will be nursing a fatal headache this October when the show returns to our screens
Fulci’s Gates Of Hell Gets The Comic Treatment
Hot on the heels of their sold out first issue of Lucio Fulci’s zombie masterpiece Zombie Flesh Eaters, Eibon Press have announced that a comic book adaptation of his film City of the Living Dead will be released with the title Gates of Hell, which of course was the movie’s US release name back in 1983.
Art, illustrations and writing will be handled by Stephen Romana, Derek Rook and Ander Zarate and the comic will be out later this year, along with a second run of Zombie.
Rabid Dogs Gets DVD Release On 1 August
Eric Hannezo’s new film Rabid Dogs, which screened at last year’s FrightFest and stars Lambert Wilson (The Matrix Reloaded) and Guillaume Gouix (The Returned), is released on DVD on 1 August.
The synopsis for this one sounds promising. A bank job goes wrong. Four armed robbers take refuge in a shopping centre—shots are fired, panic ensues. Surrounded, the criminals shoot a man and take a woman hostage. Cornered, they hijack a car. At the wheel a father is on his way to hospital with his sick child. Out of control, on the run, their escape turns into a merciless manhunt. For these rabid dogs, there is no turning back.
Based on an earlier film of the same name directed by the legendary Mario Bava, Rabid Dogs has been described as ‘every bit as nasty and pessimistic as its predecessor’ so should be perfect This Is Horror fare.
John Fallon’s The Shelter Picked Up For Distribution
Writer, Actor and Director John Fallon’s atmospheric film The Shelter has been picked up for a theatrical and digital release in the United States and Canada by Uncork’d Entertainment.
The Shelter stars Michael Pare (Eddie and the Cruisers, The Virgin Suicides) as Thomas Jacobs, a widower and homeless man who finds shelter one night when he falls upon a vast two story house with the lights on and an inviting open front door. He strolls in and makes himself at home, but what at first seems like a lucky break turns out to be a cruel twist of fate when he realizes that the house won’t let him leave.
The Shelter has been picking up very favourable reviews, not least from This Is Horror and critics at the 2015 London FrightFest and will be released later this year.
Henry Rollins Auditioned For The Walking Dead’s Negan
In a double helping of Walking Dead news this week, former Black Flag singer Henry Rollins has revealed that he auditioned for the role of Negan, which eventually went to Jeffrey Dean Morgan of course, and the look of the character of Negan in the comic book was actually based on him.
In an interview with Forbes, Rollins said “I was up for the role of Negan because Charlie Adlard, who worked on the comic book, based that guy on me and so I was a shoo-in for an audition. I went for the audition and there were five pages of really cool dialogue with all these curses and it was beautiful, but I didn’t get it. I later saw a photograph of the guy who did get it and he looks almost exactly like the comic book rendering.”
Though Jeffrey Dean Morgan looks like he’s going to be a fantastic Negan, we here at This Is Horror can’t help but wonder what Rollins would have been like.
RICHARD COSGROVE