Just in time for Halloween, Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection is out on DVD and Blu-ray today. And EW has an exclusive look at the behind-the-scenes extras that come with the special edition release — including the featurette, “The Birds: Hitchock’s Monster Movie,” which focuses on the influence of Hitchcock’s classic film on other horror movies.
Get a sneak peak of “Monster Movie” — with an appearance by John Carpenter — below!
There is no finer sight for a trick-or-treater (or accompanying parent) than the neighborhood haunted house. Lots of folks these days hang a puffy spider or stick a witch in a tree or spread that cottony web across a front door. But the real heroes of Halloween are those who transform their humble abodes into something epically terrifying. The new documentary The American Scream, which premieres on the Chiller Network on Oct. 28 and is now playing in theaters in select cities, chronicles the herculean efforts of three passionate home haunters living within a stone’s throw of one another in an idyllic New England neighborhood. Directed by Michael Stephenson, whose last effort was 2009′s terrifically amusing Best Worst Movie about the making of Troll 2, it won Best Documentary after premiering at Fantastic Fest last month in Austin, Texas.
Check out the exclusive trailer of The American Scream if you dare…. (If you dare root for guys who remind you of your salt-of-the-Earth fathers. If you dare succumb to all the nostalgia of the season. If you dare consider taking your own 4-year-old to her first haunted house this year and risk her complaining of nightmares and asking to sleep in the big bed just this one more night.) READ FULL STORY »
For anyone who doesn’t happen to follow limb-dismembering, mechanized-torture horror films, the fact that the sixth entry in the Saw series is being released this weekend will seem unremarkable in just about every way. For decades now, gruesome new horror movies have arrived at the multiplex with big fat roman numerals stuck at the end of their titles. Only the most fanatical droolers of the “horror community” are even still counting. I mean, really, who would seriously bother to keep track of how many interchangeably cruddy Friday the 13th sequels there are? Or how many times Freddy Krueger ever came back from the dead to brutalize a new crop of Elm Street kids? Or how often the Halloween franchise has been scavenged, rebooted, Zombie-fied, and generally flogged to death? Quick, can you name all the Texas Chainsaw movies? How about Hellraiser? Who the hell cares?
Like I said, Saw VI sounds like bloody business as usual. But there’s a big difference. Every one of those other series enjoyed a brief period, of maybe two or three years, in which they really connected with an audience, followed by sequels of increasingly diminishing returns, released in a spotty, opportunistic, every-few-years fashion, during which their appeal was bled dry. The Saw series, by contrast, has been a clockwork blockbuster, a squirm-in-your-seat annual carnival for gore freaks. The first one was released on Oct. 29, 2004, and by the time Saw II came out exactly one year later, on Oct. 28, 2005, the series “owned” Halloween. The release date had become part of the brand, almost as if Lionsgate had licensed the holiday. READ FULL STORY »
'Saw': I can't stand to see it. Is that okay?
I mean it: I literally, physiologically cannot bear horror movies in which people are tortured. I get sick to my stomach. I feel like I’m going to faint. I have nightmares for days. My distaste has almost become a phobia. So I don’t watch them. I do all the assignment trading I can so I don’t have to review them. And I count us all lucky that Owen not only has a true appreciation of the genre, but also the deep knowledge of repertory with which to write smartly about what is, after all, a very popular kind of movie.
I admit this here, knowing that one response might be, “It’s your job. Deal with it.” But, see, I’ve been thinking about what makes an honest critic, not to mention a reliable one with whom readers can engage. And I’ve come to the conclusion that owning up to my, let’s call it, weakness is in the end more useful than pretending I can be businesslike about a movie experience that repels me.
Perhaps if it were any other sore spot, shared by professional critics and regular movie-goers alike–maybe a particular love or hatred of chick flicks or underdog sports stories, slow-moving Iranian tales about little kids or quick-talking British pics about colorful thugs — I’d be fine keeping my secret to myself. But my horror when it comes to Saw is too visceral.
And that’s why I’ve spilled my guts. Now you spill yours.
Photo Credit: Steve Wilkie