Haunted Newsreel

Thanks to Mark Shostrom for the heads-up on this one. John "The Unimonster" Stevenson has posted a petition online, asking the executives at Universal Studios to fund a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame for makeup guru Jack Pierce. Pierce created the legendary designs for Frankenstein's Monster, Ardath Bey, and The Wolf Man, before getting unsummarily booted during the studio's transition to Universal-International in the late 1940s.(read more...)

A sunny spring afternoon may not seem like the best time to visit the set of a vampire show, but Moonlight vampires don’t burst into flames at the first hint of UV light.  They just have to wear sunglasses and they suffer from heat exhaustion if they spend too long in the daylight.  Of course, rehydrating a vampire takes something a little stronger than Gatorade.

Moonlight stars Alex O’Loughlin as vampire Mick St. John who works as a private investigator.  He’s in love with Beth Turner (Sophia Myles), a mortal woman and a reporter.  Together, they solve crimes.  The show also features Jason Dohring as Mick’s best friend, the hedonistic vampire Josef.  Eric Winters recently joined the cast as Assistant District Attorney Ben Talbot, the guy who shows up at all the crime scenes Mick and Beth crash.(read more...)

Death, to most people, is a fairly abstract concept. Pathologists, though, deal with the physical reality of death. They face daily reminders that the human body is easily broken. Reminders that every one of us has an expiration date.

Pathology, a new horror-thriller which came out in limited release on April 18th, gives us a look at a group of medical students that deal with death by pushing their own lives to the limits. Drugs, twisted sex and murder are just recreational activities for these characters.

“We've numbed ourselves to what death is to many people - to whatever that provokes,” says Michael Weston, who plays Dr. Jake Gallo. “And that numbness has caused us to try and find out what really makes us alive. My character has a bunch of friends that he corrals into this 'game' of murder. ”(read more...)

Criterion Collection has announced the upcoming release of a two-disc special edition of Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1932 undead opus Vampyr. The film itself will be presented in its original 1.19:1 aspect ratio (pillarboxed) from a new, restored high-definition transfer of the 1998 restoration done by Martin Koerber and the Cineteca di Bologna. An English-text version of the film will be an option, but purists will still be able to watch it with the original German. Additionally, the English subtitles have been retranslated and improved from past releases of the film.(read more...)