ABRUPTIO: Support the online crowdfunder

"ABRUPTIO" is a feature film using puppets. It was written, produced and directed by experienced husband and wife team, Evan and Kerry Marlowe.

**Update** Thanks to all the support for this Crowdfunding campaign, "Abruptio" has moved into the next stage of production! I, for one, am so excited! 


The film is an homage to 70s horror and centres around a man (puppet) waking to find that he has had an explosive device implanted into his neck by a devious mastermind. He must do what he's instructed, no matter how unsavoury, or risk being blown up!


Viewers will be familiar with many of the cast (which includes some personal favourites of mine) including James Marsters, Robert Englund, Sid Haig, Jordan Peele, Hana Mae Lee, Christopher McDonald and Rich Fulcher.


Prop and effects nerds like me will also recognise the name of creature creator Jeff Farley who has worked on many well-known titles including 1989's Pet Sematrary.


The film is nearing the next stages and, if like me you fancy helping out, Kerry Marlowe has recently set up an online crowd fund on Seed&Spark to keep the project moving on (and finance some more fake blood, which I'm fully on board with).


You can find the fund over on www.seedandspark.com - here
You can also find more information about the project at www.abruptio.com


Let's help get this movie made!

[Image: www.abruptio.com]

Hani

High Plains Invaders

"High Plains Invaders" (2009, Richard Beattie, Castel Film Romania, Muse Entertainment Enterprises, Syfy) is a science fiction, made-for-TV film set in the Wild West.

Sam Danville (James Marsters) is a train robber due to be hanged for his crimes in a small Western town. While standing at the hangman's noose, watched by his jilted flame, Abigail (Cindy Sampson), the town is overrun by violent alien creatures and Sam ends up acting as a hero to try to save the town from the monsters.

My hands have to go up in the air here; I'm a huge fan of James Marsters and have been since I was about 16 or so. I'll watch anything that he's in. I listen to his music, I own all the Dresden Files audio books he's narrated and I once met him at a convention and, luckily for him, I was too nervous to say anything coherent at him.

But, I have to make myself clear, here. This is actually a pretty solid made-for-tv Syfy Channel monster/Western mash-up. And I'm not being biased. Yes, it's corny, the dialogue is formulaic and the special effects are low budget so the cast are limited to battling one beastie at a time. But it's well done, sets a good pace and enjoys some pretty nice alien design. The run time is only 87 minutes so the film does not overstay its welcome and, as well as our hero, there is a pretty solid collection of characters.

The film enjoys a "Saturday early evening" feel that is common to most Syfy productions and, although not particularly scary, manages to pull it off as a low-budget monster/cowboy movie without becoming dull.

Also, occasionally, it's nice to see James Marsters play a hero. Even if he's also a wanted criminal at the same time.

[Image: Syfy]

Hani 

Shadow Puppets

"Shadow Puppets" (2007, Shoreline Entertainment, Angel Entertainment, Michael Winnick) is a haunted insane asylum flick.

A woman (Jolene Blalock) awakes alone in a padded cell with no memory of who she is, wearing only a vest top and shorts. She eventually becomes aware of a man (James Marsters) in another cell. He too cannot remember who he is and is also wearing a vest top and shorts.

They decide to trust one another and go on a tour of the apparently abandoned building. They find several other people, all in the same state of dress and with apparent amnesia. Some are locked up in slightly more worrying ways, and so the group let them out dubiously. Amongst the crowd are the ever awesome and combative Tony Todd, Marc Winnick, Natasha Alam, Diahnna Nicole Baxter, Richard Whiten and Jennie Ford.

During this, they are being hunted down, and some killed, by a living shadow. It appears to have heat vision and is hungry for people...

For a sense of roundness, despite all the characters having supposed  amnesia(!), you have the nerd, the vixen, the scary guy, the one who just dies first, the moan-y chick who's probably talking sense, the hero, the heroine... etc... etc....

As well as trying to find their way out of the asylum, avoid or vanquish the monster and find out who they are, they also attempt to solve the mystery of what has happened to them.

Will they escape? Can they trust one another? Will they like what they find out about themselves? Watch and see!

The special effects are computer generated and low budget. Some of the scene dialogue is a bit 'by the numbers' but Jolene Blalock shines as the lead character and the cast as a whole are really very well rounded. And when can you not love Tony Todd getting angry?

I'm a James Marsters fan. Any movie he is in I'll watch. Any movie he's in running around in a state of undress is really a bonus. It's nice to see him playing a role in his own accent and a human too! Although, as usual, he's not all he appears....

There's a twist which you may not see coming if you keep away from the internet. The characters are built up well to make each look suspicious, and the setting is spot on!

Not a huge fan of the end, and poor James gets the worst of the special effects for his big exit! Some shadow spokes through the nipples? Really?!

There is one really fun scene in the lab though, which they used in the trailer.

The start might make you jump if you're not expecting it. But all in all, it's not a very scary movie. But it has promise, and I wouldn't chuck it out of my collection, even if it's just so I can own things with Mr. Marsters in that don't involve bleached hair...

A good yarn.

[Picture: Shoreline Entertainment]

Hani

The House on Haunted Hill (1999)

"The House on Haunted Hill" (1999, William Malone, Warner Bros., Dark Castle Entertainment) is the modern remake of the 1959 classic by William Castle which starred Vincent Price.
Everyone who is anyone knows the basic plot to this classic haunted house horror: 5 people who don't know one another are randomly invited to the birthday party of Evelyn Price (Famke Janssen) and her 'loving' husband Stephen Price (Geoffrey Rush) in an old, disused insane asylum where in the 1930s many patients were murdered and mutilated by Dr. Vannacutt (Jeffrey Combs). The challenge is to survive the night and the final guest standing will receive a $1 million reward.
The house is leased to the Prices (who are named as a nod to the great Vincent Price) by Watson Pritchett (Chris Kattan), a great-great-relation of someone or other, and now owner of the 'house'. Pritchett is twitchy; he wants his money and he wants out. Having lost many family and friends to the house, he knows what's going to happen.

The five guests enter. Evelyn, in a rage at her guestlist being rewritten, goes to her room. And Price entertains the party for a while. Some spooky stuff happens, Pritchett gets drunk and then the full blown terror begins as the house locks down and makes its claim on the visitors.
I love this film for many reasons. Let me list them:

• James Marsters (Spike from 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer') cameos as a camera-man in Price's horror theme park... yum
• Price has a horror theme park!
• The music score in this film is fabulous!
• Geoffrey Rush does a killer Vincent Price impression, and I just loved the tension between Stephen and Evelyn; especially the bedroom scene which was a great homage to the original film
• The ghosts are scary
• The characters are somewhat believable; I even decided to like a few of them, never something I do in horror films as they tend to die off...
• The twists in the plot are well placed. Some are not even obvious
• It's gorey!
• It keeps a lot of the original themes but updates them without tredding on Castle's toes (Evelyn's backstabbing and then Stephen's payback for instance)

But one impressive change to the original, is that the ghosts are actually real! In the 1959 version we discover that the house is in fact not really haunted, and that Frederick Loren (he was not called Stephen Price in the original) has elaborately set up the whole thing. While Price has indeed set up some of the happenings in the film, he loses control quickly when he discovers the house is truly haunted.
The only major error, in my view, is the giant smoke/goo/ghost/dead folk ball of evil that forms at the end to get our last two survivors. It's just too much. Spooky happenings, bloody corpses and psychotic surgeons were enough! Why did they need to emalgamate them all into one big blob?

Although I do love the ending! How the hell do they get down? I don't know, but it's a good finished-yet-unfinished end.

Also, who knew pencils could grow and were also so dangerous?! Well, unless you've seen 'Evil Dead'.... ;)

[Picture: Warner Bros.]

Hani