Over at the Classic Horror Film Boards (no relation to Classic-Horror.com), Tom Weaver reported that Ben Chapman, the actor who performed as the Creature in the on-land sequences of Creature from the Black Lagoon, died this morning (February 21st) of undisclosed causes. He was 82.

Ben's death has particular meaning here at Classic-Horror, because he was one of the first interviews we ran, all the way back in 2002. You can read it here.(read more...)

Diary of the Dead, George A. Romero's latest zombie opus, opens in limited release on Friday, February 15th. We managed to catch up with one of the film's stars, Shawn Roberts. No stranger to the Dead series, Roberts previously appeared as the doomed Mike in the first section of Land of the Dead. Now he's back, this time playing a member of a team of filmmakers in the middle of making a zombie movie when the dead really do start rising. The crew hits the road, trying to document the outbreak even as they run for their lives.(read more...)

Roy Scheider, the actor who famously exclaimed "We're gonna need a bigger boat" in Jaws (1975), died Sunday at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital. He was 75 years old. The cause of death has not been disclosed, but Scheider had been undergoing treatment for multiple myleoma for the past two years at the University's Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy. Scheider made his feature debut in a horror film, Del Tenney's 1962 vengeance-from-beyond-the-grave romp The Curse of the Living Corpse. Between Oscar nods for his turns in 1971's The French Connection and 1979's All That Jazz, he appeared in Steven Spielberg's blockbuster shark flick Jaws (1975) and its immediate sequel, Jeannot Szwarc's Jaws 2 (1978). In 1991, Scheider played the mysterious Dr. Benway in David Cronenberg's 1993 adaptation of William Burrough's Naked Lunch.(read more...)