Notícias

One of David Cronenberg‘s most beloved films is getting a brand-new ultra-high-definition treatment. Blu-ray.com has revealed that the label Second Sight is going to be releasing new Blu-rays and 4K Blu-rays of Scanners. The sci-fi thriller, which features powerful telepaths, is sealed in history as having one of (if not The best) head explosion scenes. And you can now see it in every gory detail when the new physical media is released on March 31.

Scanners stars Jennifer O’Neill, Stephen Lack, Patrick McGoohan, Lawrence Dane, and Michael Ironside. Following his 1975 film Shivers, Cronenberg penned a treatment for a sci-fi story called Telepathy 2000. The basic idea of the plot concerned a protagonist named Harley Quinn raping a woman telepathically in a subway before revealing itself as a spy story of corporate espionage. The evil Cytodyne Amalgamate Corporation deliberately bred Scanners as a government program to overtake the world. This idea...

An X-Men: The Animated Series fan-favorite's underrated horror experience is headed to a new streaming home.

Per Tubi, 1981's Happy Birthday to Me is set to hack its way onto the streaming platform's catalog of free movies and TV shows on January 1. The classic slasher may not be as well known as the likes of Friday the 13th or Halloween, although several of its leading actors, such as Lenore Zann, are sure to be instantly recognizable to audiences.

Related Brendan Fraser's 21-Year-Old Looney Tunes Movie Gets Free Streaming Home

The Looney Tunes are getting "Back in Action" with a new streaming home for one of their most underrated feature film experiences.

Directed by J. Lee Thompson from a script written by Timothy Bond, Peter Jobin, John Saxton, and an uncredited John Beaird, 1981's Happy Birthday to Me starred Melissa Sue Anderson as Virginia Wainwright, a high school senior...

When Randal Kleiser‘s “The Blue Lagoon” was released in 1981, it was an instant sensation; the beautifully photographed tale of sexual awakening between two teenagers (Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins) set against the backdrop of a tropical island paradise combined prurience and elegance in a potent cocktail that audiences couldn’t get enough of at the time. Its $60-million gross against a $5-million budget couldn’t be ignored — especially by other filmmakers looking to replicate its success.

As was so often the case, Italian filmmakers were particularly aggressive in their plagiarism, with films like the now-forgotten “Due gocce d’acqua salata” blatantly ripping off both the premise and the marketing of “The Blue Lagoon.” But the most well-known “Blue Lagoon” imitator came from an unlikely location for an exotic travelogue centered on sensual exploration: Canada.

“Paradise,” which was released in 1982 by now-defunct distributor Avco-Embassy, was the brainchild of producer Robert Lantos,...

It’s time for a new episode of the Real Slashers video series, and with this one we’re heading back into the glorious ’80s to look at a film that was released during the slasher boom of 1981: Happy Birthday to Me (watch it Here)! This movie was directed by J. Lee Thompson, whose previous credits included the classics The Guns of Navarone and Cape Fear (not to mention Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes). To hear all about his contribution to the ’80s slasher era, check out the video embedded above.

From here, Thompson would go on to make several films with Charles Bronson, including 10 to Midnight and Death Wish 4: The Crackdown, as well as King Solomon’s Mines and the Chuck Norris adventure Firewalker.

Scripted by Timothy Bond, Peter Jobin, and John Saxton, Happy Birthday to Me...

Maple Syrup Massacre is an editorial series where Joe Lipsett dissects the themes, conventions and contributions of new and classic Canadian horror films. Spoilers follow…

In the first two entries of this series – on Adam MacDonald’s Backcountry and Grant Harvey’s Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning – we spent a fair amount of time talking about the Canadian relationship to wilderness.

The outdoors – whether it be woods, open plains, mountain ranges, or desert valleys – has a mythic quality in Western and horror films. For Canadians, the wilderness is a massive part of our identity: the country has a relatively small population in a massive geographical region of 9M square kilometers.

For reference, that’s 3.9 people per square kilometer, compared to the US’s 35.3. So yeah, we’re a fairly small population in a giant geographical area.

In Australia, the vast majority of the population hugs the coast in order to...

In just a couple days, season 2 of the Chucky TV series is going to begin airing on Syfy and USA Network – so we thought this was the perfect time to look back at one of the most popular entries in the Chucky / Child’s Play franchise, the 1998 film Bride of Chucky (watch it Here)! We dig into the making of the movie with the new episode of the Wtf Happened to This Horror Movie? video series, and you can find out all about it in the embed above.

Directed by Ronny Yu from a screenplay by Don Mancini, Bride of Chucky has the following synopsis:

After being cut apart, killer doll Chucky is resurrected by Tiffany, an ex-girlfriend of the serial murderer whose soul is inside the toy. Following an argument, Chucky kills Tiffany and transfers her soul into a bride doll. To find the magical amulet that can restore them both to human form,...

Killer Collectibles highlights five of the most exciting new horror products released each and every week, from toys and apparel to artwork, records, and much more.

Here are the coolest horror collectibles unveiled this week!

Stranger Things: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book from Insight Editions

Insight Editions has released Stranger Things: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book, which will cost you 67.50. It’s illustrated by Stranger Things artist Kyle Lambert, while The Babadook book designer Simon Arizpe handled the paper engineering and Matthew Reinhart (Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy) served as creative director.

Happy Birthday to Me Blu-ray from Kino Lorber

Happy Birthday to Me will slash onto Blu-ray on October 18 via Kino Lorber. The 1981 film is presented in high definition with 5.1 Surround & 2.0 Lossless audio.

J. Lee Thompson (Cape Fear) directs from as script by John C.W. Saxton (Class of 1984), Peter Jobin, and Timothy Bond (Friday the 13th: The Series). Melissa Sue Anderson,...

Some more sad news this week, as we’ve learned from Child’s Play creator Don Mancini that Bride of Chucky actor Lawrence Dane has passed away. Dane was 84 years old. “Dane passed away March 21 at his home in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, with his wife, Laurel, and family members at his side after a long battle […]

The post ‘Bride of Chucky’ and ‘Scanners’ Actor Lawrence Dane Has Passed Away appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Lawrence Dane, a veteran Canadian actor who had roles in classic television series such as Mod Squad, Bonanza, and The F.B.I., has died. He was 84. As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Dane passed away on Monday, March 21, at his home in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was surrounded by his wife, Laurel, and other family members. Born in Masson, Quebec, on April 3, 1937, Dane began his acting career on the stage, acting as an old policeman in Lynne Gorman’s production of Our Town in 1958. His on-screen career started the following year after landing a guest role in the Canadian drama The Unforeseen. He would go on to appear in other Canadian series, such as R.C.M.P., Encounter, Festival, and First Person. In 1965, Dane headed to Los Angeles, where he found a niche playing bad guys in various U.S. series, including Bonanza, Mannix,...

If you were being pursued by a wily killer in the woods, could you survive? Don’t look for me alive, that’s for certain; at the first sign of trouble I would be tangled up in a bush, or drown in five inches of water. Let’s not even start on the deadly wildlife, chopping wood, making a fire, or the inconvenience of being slain on holidays. That last point is a bit of a sticky one for the protagonists of Rituals (1977), a Canadian spin on Deliverance that would probably pair better with Jeff Lieberman’s Just Before Dawn (1981). And if you’ve seen that intense shocker, you’ll know you’re in good company.

Released in Canada in July, a full year before the States, Rituals received some good notices but performed poorly with audiences, and was quickly forgotten. But time has a path to redemption, especially for films that deserve that reappreciation.

Hello, dear readers! We’re back with a brand-new batch of home media releases for this week, and there’s definitely something for everyone in Tuesday’s Blu-ray and DVD titles. If you missed it when it was released late last year, you can finally catch up with Spell this week, and for those of you who are looking to add some more classic titles to your personal collections, there’s certainly an array of films headed home this week that surely fit that bill.

Kino Lorber is showing some love to Frank Darabont’s Buried Alive this Tuesday, and Code Red is keeping themselves busy with a pair of cult titles headed to Blu as well: Just Before Dawn and The Devil’s Wedding Night. Other notable releases for January 12th include Rituals, Go/Don’t Go, It Cuts Deep, Devilman: Special Edition, and a Double Feature Blu-ray for both Zombieland films.

Man versus Nature, Man versus Beast, Man versus Food; all mythical in status to varying degrees and most represented on the silver screen. Of Unknown Origin (1983) tackles the middle myth with a tongue firmly planted in its giant rat infested cheek and is an obsessive tour through a domestic hellscape.

Released in November by Warner Brothers, and produced in conjunction with some of that glorious Canadian tax shelter money (you’re welcome, eh), Of Unknown Origin only made back a quarter of its $4 million budget. It didn’t wow the critics either, although Peter Weller (Robocop) was singled out for his wry performance as the put upon vermin victim.

Bart Hughes (Weller) has it all; the perfect wife (Shannon Tweed, in her feature film debut) and son, a high paying job, and a beautiful brownstone in New York. (Read: Montreal. Tax coin. Beauty.) Wife and child head off for a...

Aging much better than a freezer burnt, half eaten cake, Happy Birthday to Me (1981) stands out as one of the better ones from the golden era of slashers, when the major studios weren’t afraid to throw some blood soaked (Canadian) coin at a B level concept, and in the process giving it some A list icing.

The Canadian ties? Filmed in Montreal when tax credits were still flying fast and furious, Happy was one of Columbia Pictures early ‘80s ventures into the horror world. (Graduation Day, released the same year, was the breadwinner of the two.) Recruiting the Canadian producing juggernaut of Andre Link and John Dunning (David Cronenberg’s cohorts on his mid ‘70s output, Shivers and Rabid), Columbia was guaranteed a good return on their investment. Of course, the Canuck connection doesn’t stop there – the cast includes such faces of Canadiana as Lawrence Dane (Scanners), Jack Blum...

Two 1980's science fiction efforts from the 'eighties: Millennium is an expensive book adaptation with Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd navigating a time travel story about body snatchers from the future. R.O.T.O.R is direct to video and strictly from hunger. Oh, the agony… However, both films surely have lessons to teach the budding filmmaker who thinks moviemaking is easy. Millennium and R.O.T.O.R. Blu-ray Color Scream Factory Street Date February 23, 2016 / 26.99

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Scream Factory plumbs the depths of the MGM library, which includes not only the holdings of United Artists, Orion and the old American-International Pictures, but also an alphabet soup of smaller outfits that were bought up in the 1990s. The independent productions seen on this Scream Factory Blu-ray double bill give us two kinds of science fiction properties. One is an expensive Canadian production with a big star, and the other is a...

You love the horror, suspense thriller, action and science fiction films that make up the world of Canadian cult cinema affectionately known as Canuxploitation.

You’ve watched the entire David Cronenberg genre filmography (if not, please do so now as The Brood, Scanners and The Fly are three of the greatest horror films ever made).

You’ve seen Black Christmas and The Changeling and watched a slasher-ific marathon of Prom Night, Terror Train, Happy Birthday to Me and My Bloody Valentine.

You caught up with Cube, the Ginger Snaps series, Splice, Hobo with a Shotgun and WolfCop all while keeping close tabs on the works of Astron-6.

Yet your hunger for Canadian genre film productions and co-productions cannot be satiated.

To aid you in your deeper exploration of the field, following is a chronological look at a number of Canadian genre films that simply don’t get enough attention.

****

The Groundstar Conspiracy...

Lesleh Donaldson with Cinema Retro columnist Todd Garbarini.

By Todd Garbarini

Richard Ciupka’s unfairly maligned 1983 horror film Curtains was screened recently as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Scary Movies 7 exhibition that also included screenings of Lucky McKee’s new film All Cheerleaders Die, Michele Soavi’s highly regarded Cemetery Man (1994), Eli Roth’s new film The Green Inferno, John D. Hancock’s ultra creepy Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971), the New York premiere of Clive Barker’s 1990 film Nightbreed - the Cabal Cut, and Peter Carter’s brilliant Rituals (1977), better known as The Creeper, which stars Hal Holbrook and Lawrence Dane in a film that is clearly influenced by John Boorman’s Deliverance (1971) but easily stands on its own as a strong piece of independent filmmaking.

Appearing in person at the Curtains screening was actress Lesleh Donaldson who played Christie Burns, the ice skater in the film.

Top 10 Ryan Lambie 24 Apr 2013 - 07:37

From remote typing to making giraffes run around in a zoo, here's Ryan's pick of 10 strange and unnerving paranormal powers in cinema...

Telekinesis. Mind over matter. Distant mental influence. Whatever you care to call the paranormal ability to move chairs, bend spoons and cook ready meals with the power of thought, such phenomena are a common presence in popular culture.

This list is devoted to a few of the weird and sometimes unsettling use of paranormal abilities in movies. These are the unlikely and surprising uses of powers, and some of them could be quite useful in everyday life, if we were lucky enough to possess them - who wouldn't like to be able to do a day's typing without even having to get out of bed? If there are any scientists reading this (who just happen to be working in the field of...

Scanners, one of the most iconic horror films of the Eighties from legendary director David Cronenberg (Cosmopolis, A History of Violence, The Fly), is heading to Blu-ray for the first time in a highly collectible limited edition steelbook thanks to Second Sight Films.

From the Press Release:

The cult classic horror Scanners comes to Blu-ray as a limited edition steelbook along with a DVD release on 8 April 2013 complete with a slew of brilliant new special features including:

• My Art Keeps Me Sane – Interview with star Stephen Lack

• The Eye Of Scanners – Interview with cinematographer Mark Irwin

• The Chaos Of Scanners – Interview with executive producer Pierre David

• Exploding Brains & Popping Veins – Interview with makeup effects artist Stephen Dupuis

• Bad Guy Dane – Interview with actor Lawrence Dane

Scanners II: The New Order and Scanners III: The Takeover will also be released for the first time on Blu-ray only as single releases on...

According to Deadline, David Cronenberg's science-fiction horror classic Scanners may be headed to the small screen. The Weinstein Co.'s Dimension Films is developing a drama series adaptation of the movies about a group of people with telepathic and telekinetic abilities, with The Hills Have Eyes writer-director Alexandre Aja signed to executive produce the series and potentially direct the pilot. Bob Weinstein conceived the plan with Aja to convert the property into a TV show.

The TV series would be in place of the recently rumored remake headed for theaters. Dimension is already in talks with potential showrunners to create and run the series.

Scanners was released January 14th, 1981 and stars Jennifer O'Neill, Stephen Lack, Patrick McGoohan, Lawrence Dane, Michael Ironside, Robert A. Silverman, Lee Broker, Mavor Moore. The film is directed by David Cronenberg.

Scanners was released in 2009.

For years fans have been hoping that Rituals - starring Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild), Robin Gammell (Lipstick) and Lawrence Dane (Scanners) - would finally arrive to DVD. Hope was risen when Code Red teased about a release for years! ....Well it looks like some good news is finally in sight for fans of this little known horror chiller from the 80's. 

According to the Navarre Distribution Services website, Rituals will be arriving to DVD on April 5, 2011! However, you better get your copy quick. Anyone remember Final Exam or Savage Streets with Linda Blair. Those films were released by Navarre for Code Red Entertainment. However, those films became quickly discontinued and the value at times on these films shot up to $100! So if you are intent on getting a copy for your collection, you better do so soon after the film's initial release, unless you're willing to fork over that...

I'm a little late on posting the list this week (I usually hit you with it on Sunday), but didn't want to miss my next-to-last pre-Thanksgiving chance to say "Gobble, Gobble! Motherfucker!" (Thankskilling, see below) again. Below the jump you'll find the full list of titles arriving in-stores this week in our weekly version of the famous Fangoria Chopping List.

Note: Some product descriptions provided by Amazon. Clickable links lead to Amazon.com

Basement Jack

Karen Cook was your average high school student... until the night evil invaded her life. She would soon be known as the lone survivor of a seven-day killing spree perpetrated by a seventeen year old boy the world would come to call "Basement Jack". For the next eleven years, Karen Cook lived in fear that one day Basement Jack would be released. Then, a court hearing in 2006 found that Jack Riley had not received a...

Curious to know what frightful films and devilish discs will be available to view in the privacy of your own digital dungeon this week? Fango's got you covered.

Below the jump you'll find the full list of titles arriving in-stores this Tuesday, October 13, 2009 in our weekly version of the famous Fangoria Chopping List. It's another Big week, with Sam Raimi's Drag Me To Hell hitting the market, along with some long-awaited classics including The Stepfather, Hardware, and more.

Note: Clickable links lead to Amazon.com

Angels Vs. Demons: Fact Or Fiction?

The Vatican has condemned it. Readers around the world love it. And now we separate the fact from the fiction in Dan Brown’s controversial bestseller Angels & Demons. We examine the cutting-edge science of anti-matter and question the historical accuracy of theology, conspiracies, symbolism and cults as described by the The Da Vinci Code author. Includes bonus feature:...

We've all used the expression "they just don't make 'em like they used to," but in the case of Happy Birthday to Me, it's more than just a cliche. And now that the film is being re-released with the full restored score, we can hear it just like it was intended to sound.

Bo Harwood and Lance Rubin composed the film’s haunting orchestral score. Happy Birthday to Me was directed by Academy Award® nominee J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone, 10 to Midnight, Murphy’s Law) and stars Emmy Award® nominee Melissa Sue Anderson (“Little House on the Prairie,” “Midnight Offerings”) and Golden Globe Award® winner and Hollywood legend Glenn Ford (3:10 to Yuma, Blackboard Jungle, The Big Heat, Superman), along with such familiar co-stars as Lawrence Dane (Scanners, Of Unknown Origin, Bride of Chucky), Daytime Emmy Award® winner Tracy Bregman (“The Bold and the Beautiful,” “The Young and...