Shudder Canada

I know this post is long overdue, but I finally wanted to weigh on the recent Canadian launch of Shudder. For those who don't know, Shudder is a streaming service similar to Netflix, but exclusively horror. I've been in since the Halloween beta and I have nothing but nice things to say about it.

The first time I took it for a spin, I could immediately see that there was some significant curation going on. Unlike Big Red, where the majority of its horror titles are direct-to-video shovelware, Shudder has many different flavours from many different eras. My eyes immediately latched onto the bevy of older Italian titles (The Bloodstained Butterfly, Death Walks In High Heels, Don't Torture A Duckling) as well as several underrated festival titles (Citadel, S&Man & Sauna) that have hopefully been rescued from obscurity by their inclusion. It did not take me long to fill up a queue with things to watch. Netflix Canada's launch catalogue back in 2010 was a little anemic, but that definitely isn't the case here. 

Shudder has also followed Netflix's lead and started producing their own content. I haven't dived into the French mini-series Beyond The Walls yet, but I certainly intend to in the New Year.

What most impresses me about Shudder is that they are actively providing different kinds of experiences. I have noticed some short films sprinkled in with their content like Izzy Lee's Innsmouth and Jill Gevargizian's The Stylist, as well as the No Sleep produced audio drama Darknest Night, the latter of which I am really enjoying. I also observed that when Rob Zombie's 31 premiered this month, they also included a bunch of behind-the-scenes featurettes.

Shudder offers high value for the money and considering it is half the price of Netflix per month, this is a no-brainer for horror fans. It's kind of a drag that I have to watch it on my laptop because there is no Playstation app yet, but I'm sure they're working to rectify that. As for any horror fans that haven't tried it out yet. Get on that!

Texas Einstein Massacre

Despite being hungover as fuck on Tuesday, I dragged my ass to Hamilton's Trash Cinema (not to be confused with Trash Palace) to see a super obscure slasher from 1988 called Carnage Hall.

A killer in an Albert Einstein mask dispatches the residents of university dorm during an all-night horror movie marathon.

Filmed on video by a group of students attending Texas Christian University, this is the kind of stuff for which the term “z-grade” was coined. However, that doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy myself considerably, even if I was laughing at it as much as I was with it. I feel like the filmmakers were in on the joke though. 

The whole retro/self aware horror movement is all the rage today, so it was a little surreal to see a similarly minded movie of that time. While Carnage Hall isn't a full-on parody, like say 1981's Student Bodies, it does have a good deal of referential comedy. It's completely possible those movie posters and paraphernalia that littered the sets may have already been there before the cameras started shooting. Those trivia game show scenes were certainly pushing it though.

There are RELATIVELY no images of this movie online.

I can't say there was much attempt made at a story here. It was basically just a bunch of scenes and gags strung together, but it did boast a high body count even if the gore was somewhat rudimentary. If this movie had been feature length, it may have been less palatable, but at a scant hour-long I felt it entertained me throughout.

I was surprised that I hadn't at least heard about this movie previously, but then realized while watching why it never got any sort of release. Apart from the pretty snazzy music in the opening credits provided by Jim Wilson, the rest featured instantly recognizable riffs from John Carpenter, John Williams and Danny Elfman. They could've been there for comedic effect, but it's just as likely that is was temp music they never bothered to replace.

Carnage Hall is an amusing little oddity that's definitely worth watching if you are a slasher completist or just get off on silly DIY shot-on-video fare. Just know that you not watching something with any degree of polish. Fortunately, that happens to be my jam! 

Perhaps more importantly, I discovered a new screening series and they've already announced next month's flick -- Hellroller! 

Not only is it about a wheelchair-bound serial killer, but Hellroller also features the trifecta of Mary Woronov, Michelle Bauer AND Elizabeth Kaitan. Try and keep me away!

Trailer Tuesdays: Scream

Good afternoon! Since Wes Craven's classic nineties slasher Scream turned twenty a few days ago, it makes sense to mark the anniversary here on ye olde Trailer Tuesdays.

As you may remember, the coming of Scream was a much needed shot in the arm for the horror industry. Though there were some very cool genre pictures made in the early nineties it was a somewhat stagnated time and Scream brought horror back to the forefront. That is why I can forgive them for bringing the “floating heads” coverbox art trend with them.

Here's Blood In Your Egg Nog!

Hey all! You may recall that last year I worked on a little holiday short film for my good friends Serena Whitney and Justin McConnell called Do You See What I See?.

Well, Christmas comes early this year as, after a successful tour of the festival circuit, this short is now available to watch online. Enjoy!

It's Everything I've Ever Wanted!

After a super busy Friday & Saturday, I'm being extremely lazy today and all I could find to post is this wonderfully Japanese gameplay trailer for School Girl Zombie Hunter. Enjoy!

Revisiting The Brain.

This is a post I've been meaning to do for quite some time now, and the Laser Blast screening tonight at The Royal was the kick-in-the-pants I needed to finally get it done.

Event poster by Leigh Young

Six years ago, I did a post gushing over how much I loved Ed Hunt's 1988 creature feature The Brain. Part of the movie's appeal is that it (like many of Hunt's pictures) was shot in my area. So, since then I've been tracking down a lot of the locations used in the movie.

The most striking location in the film is obviously that of the Psychological Research Institute. 

This site is actually the Xerox Research Centre of Canada in Mississauga, Ontario. Those trees in the foreground have all grown in thirty years, so it's now basically obscured from this angle. 

By ridiculous coincidence, my friend Kurt works there and last year he gave me a tour of the place. We walked around the perimeter looking for some of the places used in the film. The doorway and glass panel facade is still the same.

This shot is from where the paper box in the above still was.

Sadly, the area where Willie (Bret Pearson) & Janet (Cynthia Preston) enter the facility, and the parking lot where Verna (George Buza) chases her and Jim (Tom Bresnahan) down were built over when the building was extended sometime in the nineties.

Gone forever :(

Even though some commercials and TV (most notably the pilot for Bill Shatner's TekWar) were shot inside the XRCC, it was not used for The Brain. The interiors of the Institute hallways, front desk and the television studio were shot inside the Ontario Science Centre in North York, Ontario.

All of the industrial interiors were shot at the Canadian General Electric plant in the West End of Toronto. Several sets, including the opening bedroom scene, the Brain control room and the warehouse climax were built in one of the buildings on the CGE site.

Meadowvale High School was pretty easy to find, as it is in fact, Meadowvale Secondary School in Mississauga, Ontario.

The exterior has changed a lot in thirty years, so much that if it wasn't for its close proximity to the XRCC, I'd wonder if it was in fact the actual location. I did go inside, but unfortunately the library isn't public, so it's only open during school hours. 

The only two sequences that weren't shot in the Toronto/Mississauga area were done around Dundas, Ontario. The scene where Jim pushes his car off the cliff is at the quarry there, and the shot where he looks out at the city at night was no doubt Dundas Peak.

The other location I was able to track down was the used car lot Jim walks through toward the end of the movie. It is now a strip mall, but I was able to find it because of the Red Lobster/McDonalds in the background.

As with the XRCC, tree growth has obscured the original angle, but you can see that this is likely the location.

I am still on the hunt for Jay's Burger Bar.

I know it (or its current incarnation) is somewhere in the Lakeshore/Mimico/Long Branch area, but that is some sizable ground to cover and not something I want to take on while it is minus a million degrees outside.

The Mississauga suburbs are just rows and rows of houses that all look the same, so finding Jim's house is unlikely, but maybe someday I'm come across the one that girl tumbles out of at the beginning.

Anyway, that's the tour. I'm pretty stoked about the screening tonight. It is technically a Christmas movie, so I'm killing two brains here!

*Thanks to Kurt Halfyard and Ken Gord for all their assistance in putting together this post.

Trailer Tuesdays: The Silent Partner

This isn't a horror film, and technically not a trailer (because one doesn't exist online apparently) but it is Canadian and of the era I posted about yesterday. Check out this clip from 1978's The Silent Partner starring Elliot Gould & Christopher Plummer.

Yep, that's the Eaton Centre. And I believe this movie featured some of the first footage shot from the then-newly built CN Tower. I've actually seen this movie a few times, and it's bad ass. Track it down if you can.