Nov 21 2012

Hartford Flick Fest at New Theatre

Hartford Flick Fest at new Spotlight Theatres – Dec. 6 – 9

Four-day international film festival will screen more than 25 independent films, host industry panels, awards gala and more at brand-new venue on Front Street

HARTFORD — The Hartford Flick Fest is returning to Connecticut’s capital city in its fourth year, and will be hosted by the new Spotlight Theatres – Front Street. The four-day international film festival will be held Thursday, Dec. 6, through Sunday, Dec. 9.

The festival’s opening night gala, awards reception, industry panels and film screenings will be held at Hartford’s new premiere movie destination, Spotlight Theatres (39 Front St.).

Formerly known as the Silk City Flick Fest, the Hartford Flick Fest’s new name honors the city that has embraced it over the past few years. First held in Manchester, Conn., in 2009, the festival moved to Hartford in 2010 to support its growth, and to take advantage of the city’s burgeoning arts scene and nightlife – hosting many film screenings, panel discussions, workshops, filmmaker question-and-answer sessions, and parties over the course of a busy and entertaining weekend.

Movies have been submitted to HFF this year by filmmakers from New York to California, and from all around the world – including entries from the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic. More than 25 films will be screened during the festival.

Tickets will be available at the door for all film screenings, parties and panels. More information to come as the schedule is finalized. Check out the festival’s website, hartfordflickfest.com

Oct 26 2012

Winners of the SILENT HILL: REVELATION 3D Signed posters

The New England Horror Writers are proud to announce that Cort Kern, of Illinois, and Rob Smales, of Massachusetts, have each won a Silent Hill: Revelation 3D poster signed by the two stars Adelaide Clemens (X-men Origins: Wolverine) and Kit Harington (television series Game of Thrones), director and writer Michael J. Bassett (Solomon Kane), and producer Samuel Hadida (True Romance).

The movie opens in theaters today. Check out the movies’ Facebook page by clicking here.

Oct 12 2012

The NEHW at Rock and Shock

The New England Horror Writers will be appearing at Rock and Shock this weekend. There will be plenty of members manning the booth all weekend. They will be selling and signing their books.Epitaphs is one book in particular which will be on hand. It’s the first anthology produced by the NEHW. This Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of this collection being published. Here are the authors who have stories in Epitaphs that will be at the convention this weekend: Mike Arruda, Scott Goudsward, Stacey Longo, Paul McMahon, Kurt Newton, L.L. Soares, K. Allen Wood, and Trisha Wooldridge. Tracy L. Carbone, the editor of the anthology, will also be on-hand.

Other NEHW members, who will be at the convention, are Ashleigh Homon, Adam Cesare, Bracken Macleod, David Price, Gene Munson, Jason Harris, Jack Haringa, Jan Kozlowski, Kelli Jones, Kristi Petersen Schoonover, Matt Bechtel, Patrick Rahall, Rebekah Murphy, Rob Watts, T.J. May, Paul Tremblay, Bob Booth, and Jennifer Yarter-Polmatier.

They will also be four panels that the NEHW members will be involved in. This is the second year the organization has been on different panels. This year on the Women in Horror panel members , Carbone, Longo, and Wooldridge will be joined by Heather Langenkamp of Nightmare on Elm Street fame and Lisa Marie of Sleepy Hollow and Mars Attacks! fame.

The other panels will be “Breaking into the Biz” with Harris, May, Bechtel, and Schoonover, and “Horror in the Movies” with Harris, Longo, Soares, and Macleod.

Oct 11 2012

Doug Bradley Talks about Pinhead, Masks, and Clive Barker

By Jason Harris

Doug Bradley

Doug Bradley, best known for the role of Pinhead in the Hellraiser movies, doesn’t think of himself as a horror icon. He jokingly said it sounds like there was a morning where there was a letter on his doorstep stating, “Dear Mr. Bradley, you are now a fully accredited horror icon with a membership card enclosed.”

He credits his appearances at conventions for helping him become known to his fans since he isn’t recognizable with the make-up on.

“I have always said that every actor’s biggest enemy is anonymity.”

Pinhead

He is known more as Pinhead then the character of Lylesburg in Nightbreed.

There’s always an interest in Nightbreed and that interest has been raised recently with the attempt to restore it back to the movie Clive Barker intended to have released in 1990, Bradley said.

Bradley and Barker became friends in high school in Liverpool back in the 60s when they were in a play together. He describes his friend as “the most extraordinary person I’ve met.” He says he “tries not to throw the word genius around lightly,” but he does apply it in Barker’s case.

Bradley said people expect Barker “to be weird and fucked up and sacrificing virgins [and] biting the heads off live chickens. For all I know, he may do all of that,” he jokingly said.

He considers Barker, “very funny, very witty” and a person with an “extraordinary imagination to be able to produce the movies that he has, the short stories, the novels, and his artwork.” He’s “a person with a tremendous sense of the absurd and the ridiculous.”

“For all these decades, it has been a privilege to be close to that process,” Bradley said.

Barker is one of the reasons he turned down portraying Pinhead in the ninth installment of the franchise, Hellraiser: Revelations, which came out last year.

“I didn’t feel like the movie was in anyway, shape, or form a serious attempt to move the franchise forward nor reinvigorate it in any way, shape, or form. I felt it was something of an insult to the franchise, to Clive, to me, to all the people who had worked so hard on the series over the years.”

Bradley hasn’t seen the movie, which had a microscopic budget and a brief shooting schedule, he said. He has heard about the movie from fans and nothing of what he is hearing about it is good, he said.

When he first became Pinhead, it took him five to six hours in the make-up chair, but it was shortened to about three to four hours by the time he made the eighth movie in the franchise. The longest time he was in the make-up for was 18 hours. It all depended on what was needed of him, he said. He could be needed for one scene or for several.

These days he is enjoying just acting and doesn’t have any aspirations to direct.

“I wouldn’t shy away from the possibility of directing, but it’s not something I have a desire to do necessarily.”

Besides acting, he has written a screenplay and a book. The impetus for his book, Behind the Mask of a Horror Actor, “goes back to his relationship with Clive” and how they were always working together for ten years in the theater before Hellraiser.

“We were always using masks one way or another as part of our work. I always had a fascination for it before I came to Pinhead so I guess I just had the ideas in my head …”

When asked about writing an autobiography, he isn’t thinking about writing one because it feels to him if you write one “your life and career are over,” which he feels he is nowhere near that point yet.

“If you are writing your autobiography, you want to make yourself sound as interesting as possible. You want to make your life story as interesting as possible. I don’t know if we’re necessarily capable of telling the truth about ourselves.”

Bradley recently read Lance Henriksen’s autobiography, Not Bad for a Human.

“He has an amazing story to tell particularly in terms of his early life and his journey into the profession. I truly enjoyed reading it.”

Bradley will be attending Rock and Shock this weekend at the DCU Convention Center & The Palladium in Worcester, MA.

Oct 8 2012

My Trip to Haddonfield

By Rob Watts

As a fan of many classic movies, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting a great deal of filming locations to those films. As a child I got to swim at the beach from Jaws in Martha’s Vineyard. I had the pleasure of visiting The Amityville Horror house in Toms River, New Jersey. Heck, I live within ten minutes of various movie locations in Boston where such films as The Town, The Departed, and Good Will Hunting were filmed. My absolute favorite location visited however was South Pasadena, California where the majority of John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN was filmed.

Rob Watts in front of The Wallace home where Laurie’s friend babysat. Photo by Shannon Watts.

Unlike a lot of filming locations, the neighborhood of South Pasadena was used primarily “as is.” There was very little film trickery involved as the town of “Haddonfield” had (has) a charm and beauty of its own that needed very little set dressing. Aside from bags of painted leaves being thrown around within frame to establish autumn in Illinois, very little else was manipulated. Upon first visit to the now iconic neighborhood, I was shocked to see just how much of it resembled that as it was in the film, even more than thirty years later.

The hardware store (as it is today). Photo by Shannon Watts.

You don’t have to travel far around town to see most of the locations either, as much of the daytime hours scenes were all filmed within streets of each other. For instance, the street where Laurie Strode is walking to school after dropping the keys off at the Myers house (Meridian Ave), leads directly to the hardware store that was broken into later in the day. Incidentally, the actual Myers house was moved and restored directly across the street from the hardware store (now a picture framing store) and is currently a doctor’s office located at 1000 Mission Street.

Rob Watts on the steps of the Myers House. Photo by Shannon Watts.

If you walk back down Meridian Ave., you will be walking in the direction of the streets where Laurie and her friends walked home from school. You’ll want to look for Magnolia Street, Montrose Ave., and Highland Street. These are the streets which were most visible throughout the first half of the movie. Probably the most iconic location from the film, and believe me it’s still there, is the famous hedge where Michael Myers hid behind as the girls approached him. It’s a little tricky to find at first because most houses on the street have similar hedges, but if you travel down Montrose Ave, going through Oxley Street, you will stumble upon the giant hedge. Just make sure no one is standing behind it waiting for you.

The babysitting scene street . N Orange Grove Ave
The babysitting scene street. N Orange Grove Ave. Photo by Shannon Watts.

The last half of the film, where the girls were babysitting, was oddly enough filmed on the corner of Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood. Although you’d never know it from watching the film, directly behind the camera crew was a bustling nightlife. It was a bit odd for me to look in the opposite direction of the street from the film and find a KFC and Blockbuster Video (because I’m sure Laurie Strode could have run in there for help if she really needed it.) But that was the genius of John Carpenter. He had a knack for taking a side street of Los Angeles’ most happening neighborhood and have it appear as a modest suburban town in the middle of America.

The street where Myers drove behind the girls. Photo by Shannon Watts.

The two houses where Jamie Lee Curtis’ character and her friend babysat are located at 1530 and 1537 North Orange Grove Street, off Sunset Blvd. The home where Laurie Strode babysat looks almost identical as it did in the movie. The house across the street has been updated a great deal over the years but still maintains some resemblance to how it did in the movie.

Rob Watts in front of the Doyle House (Jamie Lee’s). Photo by Shannon Watts.

So if you are ever in the West Hollywood or South Pasadena area of California and you love the original Halloweenthen it’s worth a venture around the filming locations of this incredible film. Just be respectful to the homeowners and respect their privacy. And for God sake, if you see a guy walking around in a rubber mask, RUN!

The creepy staircase in the Myers house. Photo by Shannon Watts.

Oct 7 2012

The Birth of ‘Dark Discussions’

The Birth of Dark Discussions

By Philip Perron

If you miss your favorite ESPN show, go get it on a podcast. If you want to hear news from some of the biggest news agencies in the world, you can get it through a podcast and listen to it a day later. Podcasting has been a spectacular if not largely known medium that provides programming for those folks who prefer to listen to their favorite topics when they want and wherever they want.

Though satellite radio has been a great phenomenon where folks are able to listen to an eclectic mix of shows on books, movies, sports, news, finance, and even cooking, niche audiences still may not be fulfilled with what they really want to listen to. What about themes such as video games, gardening, or even something as specific as horror movies? This is where podcasting really has promise. Not only is it free, it requires nothing more than an audio digital device, a laptop, or even a smart phone.

As an avid fan of the arts, specifically books and movies, I was always visiting websites to read about the production of Martin Scorcese’s latest film or the progress of the next Stephen King novel. Then one day I came across an audio review on the film Cloverfield as well as an audio round table discussion about the film No Country for Old Men. Afterwards, I saw that these audio files were also being streamed from Apple’s iTune’s store for free.

Getting programs on my little iPod was a convenient way to listen to programs I wanted to listen to while doing my daily walks in the woods or working out or commuting to work. And with the wide variety of programming available I was able to search for shows discussing upcoming books and movies. And yet even more specifically books and movies within the horror and techno genres.

The interesting thing was that many of the podcasts I listened to were done by amateurs or simply people who did them for fun. Their shows were filled on topics they were passionate about. The discussions were probably the same ones they’d be talking about over a round of beers. They weren’t making any money, they weren’t making any inroads towards a more promising career, they were doing it simply because they loved talking about their focused topic.

Early 2011, I figured I could do it myself. While grabbing burgers with a few guys, I noticed our discussions focused around either sports or genre fiction which included horror, science fiction, fantasy, thriller, techno-thriller, and mystery. And having added a number of genre themed podcasts as part of my weekly listen to-do list, I did my research and started putting together the idea. What resulted was a genre themed topical podcast entitled Dark Discussions Podcast.

Finding two wonderful folks online through various genre themed forums, myself along with Eric Webster, of Ann Arbor, Michigan and Michael Darwin, of Hudson Valley, New York came together and put together a weekly show on topics that anyone from the New England Horror Writer’s group would be familiar with. Not to be tagged as specifically horror, the tag line “Your place for the discussion of horror film, fiction, and all that’s fantastic” seemed to fit.

The podcast basically focused at first on themed discussions or specific movies. Topics such as a retrospective of the director and screenwriter Frank Darabont as well as the franchise of the Planet of the Apes were some of the early weekly episodes. But also films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and John Huston’s Moby Dick have been a focus. It’s true, we are no experts but our perspectives as fans of genre fiction were as well thought out as some of the genre websites and magazines available. And at the worst, we provide another voice on both obscure works and genre classics.

Some of the inventive ways the podcast has expanded were by being contacted by some folks for reviews and promotion. Horror Realm, a convention every September in Pittsburgh, emailed and offered the podcast passes to their convention. M.J. Preston, the author of The Equinox, asked if we’d be interested in a free copy of his novel to review. However, it was co-host Darwin who really got it. While attending Horror Realm 2011 as press, he not only interviewed the film stars of some of horror fans favorite films, but he started interviewing the vendors and independent talent. What resulted was Dark Discussions Podcast helping out folks who need promotion of some really fantastic works that anyone who enjoys horror should know about.

This is where Dark Discussions Podcast in a sense merges with the NEHW group. After Horror Realm 2011, Dark Discussions contacted the folks at both the Rock and Shock and Anthocon conventions and received press passes to attend and promote their events. This is where our podcast became what some would call an unofficial promoter of the folks we met specifically at Anthocon and therefore NEHW. We interviewed such NEHW members as Charles Day, Gregory Norris, and Inanna Arthen. Small presses as Evil Jester Press and By Light Unseen Media, which had tables at Anthocon were also focused on.

So after a year and a half, the podcast keeps going. The listenership grows. And topics as wide ranging as modern novels as Scott Sigler’s Infected and independent cinema as Simon Rumley’s Red, White, and Blue are featured. As an inspiring writer, I know the work folks go through juggling their everyday lives with writing. With Horror Realm come and gone and Rock and Shock and Anthocon coming up, Dark Discussions looks forward to seeing everyone and helping you promote your new and wonderful works. As an inspiring writer, I know the work folks go through juggling their everyday lives with writing.

Oct 7 2012

Chat with a NEHW Co-chair

Author and New England Horror Writer Co-chair Stacey Longo will be on the Writer’s Chatroom (http://writerschatroom.com) on Sunday at 7 p.m. (EST). The chat will be moderated by NEHW member Lisa Haselton.

A lucky chatter can win a copy of Dark Things IV, which contains a story by Longo. You have to be present in the chatroom to win. To log into the chatroom, click here.

Longo will also be at Rock and Shock next weekend where she will be on the Women in Horror panel with Heather Langenkamp at 7 p.m. and on the Horrors in the Movies panel on Sunday at 12 p.m.

Oct 5 2012

Actor Talks about the role of Michael Myers in the Original ‘Halloween’