Looks like our DNS set up wasn’t quite right and gosh darn it took down the entire site. Too much drinking, not enough Yoda-ing! Anyhow all is fixed now but there might be some delays until everyone’s DNS gets it.
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We love movies here at the Last Movie Outpost. We love the stars in them as well, especially stars who are willing to give their time to talk to the likes of us. With that, we love Cortney Palm, because she is one of those stars.
She was polite enough to give us an interview back in March, to talk about her new movie due out Beyond Paranormal. Well, the movie is now out and streaming on Amazon and she was kind enough to chat with us again.
I asked her for a video chat, completely expecting her to say no, but she said yes. Initially, we got the dates all wrong but this weekend we managed to catch up and speak.
Here is the interview. We talk about her, some of biography details from IMDb, Beyond Paranormal, and then I fire a quick 20 questions at her which she actually seemed to enjoy.
When the interview was over, she was kind enough to carry on chatting, so I’ve added that as an extra bit which I didn’t really edit all that well, but it was nice to just chat with her.
She was genuinely the nicest person you could speak to. Very down-to-earth, very well-spoken, and friendly with it. No diva, she was just nice.
You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Beyond Paranormal is streaming on Amazon. I have seen it twice now, once because Cortney was in it and a second time before the interview. It’s an interesting movie with a complex story, sometimes I thought it was a bit too clever for its own good.
However, as Cortney said in the interview, it’s supposed to be more fun than a straight horror. This does change the dynamic of it and I think I will watch it again and probably get more out of it.
Cortney says it’s worth watching just for her skimpy outfits, and this I do agree with!
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31 Days Of Horror returns to Last Movie Outpost as we tackle From Beyond, a horror fest that we rate highly
From Beyond is another classic, directed by Stuart Gordon and based on a Lovecraft story. Jeffrey Combs is in it as Crawford, the assistant to the mad scientist, Dr. Edward Pretorius.
Together they have invented a nifty little gadget that stimulates the pineal gland, in between Pretorius’ side hobby of torturing young co-eds he brings home for some light S&M.
The machine is called “The Resonator” and once it’s fired up at the start of the film, all kinds of unintended consequences kick-off. The good Doctor gets his head bitten off by a creature from a dimension that is next door to our own. It now has access to our world and vice versa thanks to the resonator.
Crawford beats feet, and ends up at the nuthatch when he tries to explain what happened. This is after the cops go to the house and find that Dr. Pretorious is a lot shorter than he used to be. Luckily for Crawford (and us), Barbara Crampton is a Doc at the loony-bin and believes his story.
Using some horror movie logic she decides it would be best for him to go back to the scene of the incident and relive his trauma. For good measure, Ken Foree joins the duo as a cop involved in the case. He’s there to make sure Crawford doesn’t go insane and murder again while Doctor McMichaels makes him re-enact and explain what happened the night Dr. Pretorius got decaffeinated.
After forcing Crawford to put the machine back in working order, things go sideways as Doctor McMichaels is seduced by the pleasure of the resonator. Dr. Pretorius is now part of the other world and wants the three to join him in a dimension of pleasure… or so he says.
From Beyond is a lot of fun. Unlike Re-Animator, this is not a comedy-horror film. It is creepy all the way through. The ambiance is excellent, with a building dread. Even better, we get to see Crampton, God bless her, in some extremely sexy S&M leather gear. Verily!
All the practical special effects are outstanding and look disgusting. The movie is a slimy, gore-soaked bloodbath.
This is one of my favorite horror films. Do yourself a solid and watch it this month.
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Three years ago, director David Gordon Green and producer Jason Blum took on a challenge: reboot the classic horror movie Halloween (1978) with a new sequel that basically ignored all the other sequels and remakes, some nine in all, which had come out in the last 40 years. 2018’s Halloween was a resounding success, both creatively and commercially, acting as a direct sequel to the John Carpenter milestone and dispensing with all the canon (good or bad), and baggage that had built up in the previous decades.
Now that Gordon and Blum have proved that their experiment was viable—and are continuing it with Halloween Kills (which opens this week) and Halloween Ends (which is slated to arrive next year)—the next question naturally arises. Which creatively exhausted, financially depleted, or simply long-dormant horror tentpole could benefit from the same treatment?
There are surprisingly a number of respected, venerable horror titles that could possibly fit the bill, and indeed some of them may be in line for the Halloween-style reboot already. Let’s take a look and see how these could be made to work…
We’re going to start with one of two projects that’s already in motion, and this first one is from the same team—Blum, Green and screenwriter Danny McBride—that brought you the new Halloween. Yes, they’re tackling the holiest (pun intended) of horror icons next time, with another trilogy that is intended to serve as a direct follow-up to the original 1973 masterpiece from director William Friedkin.
The Exorcist has not fared all too well in the franchise business, with four movies made in its wake—three of them outright disasters and only one of them (The Exorcist III) considered worthy of the name. A short-lived TV series also got high marks, but was cancelled after two little-seen seasons.
Green intends to make a direct sequel to the first film, again apparently ignoring all the films that came out since then, in which Leslie Odom Jr. will play a father whose child has been possessed by a demon, leading Odom Jr. to turn to Ellen Burstyn’s Chris MacNeil for help. Burstyn has already been signed on to reprise her role, although to date Linda Blair—who played MacNeil’s possessed child Regan in the original—is not involved. At least we can be assured that Green isn’t attempting a remake, which had been long speculated. But endeavoring to recapture the terrifying brilliance of The Exorcist is a tall order, nonetheless.
This reboot of Clive Barker’s signature tale (the original novella, The Hellbound Heart, was first published in 1986) is already in production and perhaps not a moment too soon—or maybe a few decades too late. Following the generally well-received original film in 1988 (which Barker adapted and directed himself) and a fairly impressive sequel (1988’s Hellbound: Hellraiser II), the franchise descended into a seemingly endless stream of dreck with six of its nine sequels going direct-to-video and at least two of them seemingly made just to keep the rights to the brand.
A straight remake has been mooted for years, with Barker himself involved at one point or another, and a Hellraiser TV show was announced by HBO in 2020, although little has been heard from it since. At the same time, a reboot film was unveiled by Miramax and Hulu, with David Bruckner (this year’s excellent The Night House) directing, David S. Goyer (Foundation) onboard as a writer and producer, and Barker involved as well. Goyer recently stated that the film is going “back to the source,” meaning Barker’s original novella, with Jamie Clayton (Sense8) cast as the “Hell Priest” (aka Pinhead). It remains to be seen whether there is enough interest to launch a whole new series of films.
Richard Donner’s fourth film and major breakthrough as a director (it landed him the gig directing Superman) was also one of the most successful “Satanic” horror films to follow in the wake of The Exorcist, while also capitalizing on the “end times” hysteria driven by books like Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth. Sadly, the succeeding sequels to Donner’s excellent thriller failed to live up to their own, uh, prophecies.
Damien: Omen II (1978) offered up nearly a dozen creative death scenes but little else as the Antichrist entered puberty, but The Final Conflict (1981), with Sam Neill as an adult Damien, didn’t even show us the long-awaited title bout between the son of Satan and a reborn Jesus Christ. An unwatchable fourth film (produced as a TV movie), a lifeless 2006 remake of the original, and an already-forgotten 2016 TV series didn’t do Junior any favors either. With the proper budgets and talent, however, a new series of sequels could perhaps effectively visualize Damien’s rise to power, the Rapture and the apocalyptic battle with Christ. Think about it, in the current political climate wouldn’t a new direct sequel to The Omen about a middle-aged American demagogue rising to apocalyptic power be the stuff of nightmares?
Still, all that religious mumbo-jumbo might leave that Left Behind taste in everyone’s mouth.
Yes, everyone has a favorite entry or two (or at least a guilty pleasure) in the long-running Friday the 13th saga, but this is a series that was running on fumes almost from the get-go. For Chrissakes, even the 1980 original isn’t exactly a great movie. Nonetheless, it’s renowned for its plentiful gore and that immortal, shocking ending. So returning to that ending could be interesting, particularly since the mythology of the original series has been nearly as snarled and convoluted as that of Halloween. So why not pretend that the (quick count) 11 succeeding films never happened? Pick up right where the first film left off and re-introduce Jason in a creative new fashion.
It’s a good idea on paper, but as late as 2017, a standard prequel/reboot had been in the works with directors like David Bruckner and Breck Eisner attached, while a production company owned by LeBron James was in the mix in 2018. All of that became moot, however, this year when the original film’s screenwriter, Victor Miller, won back the rights to that very first screenplay. There’s a lot that Miller doesn’t own though, including the adult version of Jason, and there are other stakeholders involved that may keep the hockey-masked murderer off the screen for a while to come.
Ira Levin’s 1967 novel, Rosemary’s Baby, changed the course of the horror genre: a massive bestseller, it made horror a much more viable brand for publishers and helped pave the way for future hits like The Exorcist and authors like Stephen King. Similarly, the 1968 movie adapted and directed by Roman Polanski was also a tremendous box office success that elevated horror beyond drive-ins and seedy B-movie gutters into something more high-profile.
Levin and Polanski both went on to more success in their respective careers (Polanski’s tragic history and personal criminal behavior notwithstanding), but not much else was done with their singular creation. A 1976 TV-movie, Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby, which brought back Ruth Gordon in her Oscar-winning role as Minnie Castevet (but recast all the other major characters), was poorly conceived and now forgotten. Meanwhile a 2014 miniseries starring Zoe Saldana took a number of liberties with the novel while stretching it out to four unnecessary hours. Even Levin’s own literary sequel, 1997’s Son of Rosemary, took some bizarre twists and turns and ended with both books apparently being all a dream.
So how about it? While we don’t want to see the original movie remade again, certainly a direct sequel (or sequels) detailing what did happen to little Adrian, his mother, the Castevets and their cult could be a formidable horror experience. The term itself, “Rosemary’s baby,” remains ingrained in pop culture.
Who would have thought that Stephen King’s 1977 short story, originally published in Penthouse magazine and taking up a mere 30 pages or so in his classic Night Shift collection, would be the unholy progenitor of one of the longest-running franchises in horror history? After some 37 years and 11 films, the highest rating any of the entries were able to muster on Rotten Tomatoes (if reviewed at all) was a measly 33 percent, and that was for the original, which was a lousy piece of junk to begin with.
We’re not going to even pretend we’ve watched any of these pictures beyond the first, and from what we understand, there’s little or no continuity among them anyway. Yet the original tale is creepy enough (if far from King’s best), so conceivably the whole thing could be rebooted from scratch and perhaps even given the kind of folk-horror angle that has been back in fashion in recent times. Or since the original has nostalgic value, imagine coming back on the same town 40 years after “the children” took over and may have been replaced by other generations. No, it doesn’t make sense, but a screenwriter could hammer out the logistics. The name alone still has some kind of cache, after all. Someone’s been watching these things for nearly four decades!
Along with Zack Snyder’s 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, the 2003 “re-imagining” of Tobe Hooper’s seminal 1974 classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre proved to Hollywood that iconic horror brand names could be repackaged for maximum box office appeal while fending off naysayers who decried the potential desecration of the genre’s tentpoles. Fortunately, the 2003 Massacre was quite an effective film on its own, even if it didn’t quite match the nightmarish surrealism of the original.
Then again, few films have, including all seven other titles that fall under the Texas Chain Saw umbrella. Even Hooper’s own, long-delayed 1986 sequel is only intermittently gripping, while more recent misfires like 2013’s Texas Chainsaw 3D and 2017’s Leatherface have only continued to sully the brand. Now the franchise seems to be going the Halloween route. There’s an alleged “direct” sequel to the original film, shot last year and directed by someone named David Blue Garcia, and it’s slated to be released by Netflix at a yet-to-be-determined date.
Incredibly, The Howling is another horror series that somehow lasted for 30 years, encompassing eight films (not to mention the three novels by author Gary Brandner on which the movies are loosely based) that have almost all gone direct-to-video and bear little resemblance or relation to the much loved 1981 classic directed by Joe Dante and featuring groundbreaking transformation effects by Rob Bottin.
The legendarily bad Howling II…Your Sister is a Werewolf was the first and last more-or-less direct sequel to the Dante film. But since the franchise has been dormant since 2011, the time is probably ripe for a full-on remake/reboot rather than a direct sequel to the now 40-year-old original, although any new film can certainly make plentiful references to the Dante movie. It director Andy Muschietti was supposedly going to direct a remake for Netflix, although his current involvement with DC’s The Flash has clearly set that aside for now, with no updates since early 2020.
Hey, why not? The list of adaptations, reboots, reimaginings, and sequels related to these two iconic monsters is far too long to go into, with too many different twists and turns to their long, winding roads onscreen, so rather than a direct sequel to anything, we’d love to see—imagine this—a faithful adaptation of the original source material.
Francis Coppola’s 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula, while a superb film on its own, didn’t quite live up to its title, while Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was actually extremely faithful, only way too jacked up on histrionics (with Robert De Niro, let’s face it, miscast as the Creature). We’d love to see Guillermo Del Toro’s long-awaited take on the latter, with sequels akin to Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein to follow.
As for the Count, he’s been mostly relegated to cartoon antics in the Hotel Transylvania series, so any reboot would need to make him as dark, decrepit (at least at first), and menacing as Stoker originally envisioned him. Whether a Blumhouse reboot directed by Karyn Kusama, first announced in March 2020, can raise Dracula from his cinematic coffin remains to be seen.
Halloween Kills opens in theaters and begins streaming on Peacock this Friday (October 15).
The post Horror Movies That Should Get the Halloween Reboot Treatment appeared first on Den of Geek.
Back 4 Blood is the spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead in every way that matters most, but first-time players may be surprised to learn that each of the game’s playable cleaners actually come equipped with unique skills and abilities that make them so much more than interchangeable survivors.
While Back 4 Blood does a surprisingly good job of balancing those cleaners in a way that makes it easy to justify inviting any of them to the party, the fact of the matter is that there are just some cleaners that feel more powerful than others (at least at this early stage of the game).
So while the best Back 4 Blood character may end up being the one you feel most comfortable with, here’s our current power ranking of each of the game’s playable heroes.
If you want to unlock every cleaner in Back 4 Blood, you’ll need to finish the first chapter of Act 1 in the game’s campaign. Once you’ve completed those four levels, you should unlock a special cutscene that introduces you to the previously locked cleaners. After that, you’ll have full access to the game’s (current) roster of playable characters.
Abilities:
Team Bonus: +25 Stamina
Recovers 10 Stamina for Every Ridden Killed
+10% Damage Resistance
Holly is the best “melee” cleaner in Back 4 Blood by some distance. Her stamina recovery ability and natural damaged resistance mean she is uniquely capable of stepping into the fray and living to see another day.
Ultimately, though, Holly is a somewhat limited character whose weaker team bonus and incredibly specific skill set mean that you really have to commit to a somewhat limited playstyle in order to get the most out of what she brings to the table. She’s not terrible, but there are certainly safer options.
Abilities:
Team Bonus: +10% Weak Spot Damage
Precision Kills Increase Damage by 5% (up to 50%). This Temporary Effect is Lost if Jim Takes Damage
+25% ADS Speed
Jim excels at two things: battling special enemies and sniping. To be fair, having Jim in your party certainly makes it easier to deal with some of the most powerful (and annoying) enemies in the game.
However, Jim is ultimately another one of those characters who feels comparatively limited when you start talking about the overall value they bring to the team. I feel like Jim could certainly help you out of some jams, but he’s a hard sell as a first choice.
Abilities:
Team Bonus: +25% Use Speed
Ability to Sense Hazards
+1 Quick Inventory Slot
To get the “negative” side of the conversation out of the way, Karlee’s slightly lower ranking on this list comes down to the very specific nature of her abilities and how they’re best used in conduction with other character abilities you will absolutely want to have access to at higher difficulty levels.
However, Karlee is an interesting option. Her additional inventory slot is shockingly useful, as is her buff to a team’s “use speed,” which is one of those attributes you don’t think about as often until it’s getting you out of a bad situation.
Abilities:
Team Bonus: +5% Increased Movement Speed
Can Break Grabs Every 60 Seconds
+25% Stamina Regeneration
Evangelo is really the first Back 4 Blood cleaner that we’re looking at who feels generally useful in the vast majority of situations. He offers a great team bonus, and his stamina regeneration ability is nice (if not necessarily game-changing).
What really makes Evangelo interesting, though, is his escape ability. That makes him one of the best options for solo players as well as a solid teammate.
Abilities:
Team Bonus: +10 Increased Health
Accuracy Increases by 20% for 5 seconds After a Precision Kill
+10% Damage Increase
As you can probably tell by his abilities, Walker is a pure damage dealer who will certainly be a popular pick for solo players but brings enough to the party to justify a spot on most team rosters.
Honestly, the biggest “problem” with Walker is that you could argue there’s another cleaner in the game that offers more from a DPS perspective.
Abilities:
Team Bonus: +1 Extra Life
Instantly Revive a Teammate (Once Per Level)
+1 Support Inventory Slot
In case you can’t tell, Mom’s “team skill” is reason enough to add her to just about any group composition. Her instant revival ability is also absurdly powerful, even if the “once per level” limit means that you do need to be careful with it.
As you can tell, though, Mom’s revival-focused abilities mean that you’re weirdly almost depending on your teammates to fall at some point in order to get the most out of her. While that will happen at higher difficulty settings, you might not get as much out of her during “easier” runs.
Abilities:
Team Bonus: +25% Trauma Resistance
Can Heal Each Ally Once Per Level For 25 HP
+20% Healing Efficiency
In a way, it’s almost a shame that Doc is as useful as she is. There’s a degree to which you’re almost going to feel compelled to add her to most parties.
Doc is simply the best overall healer in the game, which means that she’s also a nearly irreplaceable part of most team comps. Her +20% healing skill is honestly enough to put her in the “must-have” conversation. Everything else she can do is just all the more reason to justify bringing her into battle.
Abilities:
Team Bonus: +10% Ammo Capacity
Bonus Chance to Find Extra Ammo After Kills
+1 Offensive Inventory Slot
If you play Back 4 Blood at higher difficulty levels, you will run out of ammo at some point. It’s why a lot of the most prized cards in the game emphasize ammo preservation/regeneration, and it’s why Hoffman is the most valuable overall cleaner in the game at this time.
Hoffman is essentially a support character whose unique abilities will increase your party’s damage output in the long run while also increasing your general chances for survival. It’s that unique combination of support and DPS that makes him irreplaceable.
The post Back 4 Blood: Every Cleaner Ranked appeared first on Den of Geek.
