A Special Halloween Movie Treat........................

As I'm reviewing the blog I just posted about some of my favourite scary movies, my son asks me "hey did you post about The Book Of Zombie" yet?

Well it was on my list, and I just didn't get it posted up there. I'm almost ashamed of myself since this is a film that I actually worked on!!!

This film is not actually out yet. It's currently in post production and ready for our foley artists to take their crack at it and do the sound overs and clean it up on their end.


This is my wife (aka the paisley penguin) on set between takes with one of our actors.













This is our D.P. and another production member, Adam getting set up for the next shot. In the background is one of our actresses and to the left of our D.P. is another soundie that I worked with on the film.









Just me taking a break in between takes. I think this was about 2 or 3 in the morning and I was starting to feel it.

BTW- Our unofficial sponsor on this shoot was Rock Star Energy Drinks. Yum Yum.







This is me and Marcel our special effects/make up guy horsing around on the bar set with machette's. We had just blown a huge amount of fog juice from the smoker and decided we needed to duel. It was an off day so it wasn't a shoot day, but a day of set building instead.


So go to the official website for The Book Of Zombie and check out our trailer and the other fun stuff on the website. There's merchandise and a link to our MySpace Page and a link to our D.P.'s production blog as well. I have that same link to the production blog on my posting page.

We hope to have this released next year in time for Halloween. You need to be patient...........indie film makers only have so much money to get things done unlike the big studios.

My Favourite Scary Movies

So in honour of my fav holiday every year I thought I'd put out this list of some of my favourite scary/suspense movies.

First up on my list is Scream. I really loved this movie when it came out. I think I saw it in the theatre at least twice. I loved the way it poked fun of the horror film genre.

I really thought that it was a smart move to have Wes Craven do a cameo as Fred the janitor in one of the scenes and to be wearing the original Freddy Kruger sweater.

I actually liked all 3 of the Scream movies. They made sense and they had a direction. Thankfully it only took 3 of them to finally conclude everything. I don't think that series could have been drug out any further.*addendum-as I finish this I see that Wes Craven is currently in talks for a possible Scream 4.*



Next up is Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. Sure I read the book as a kid and sure it was intriguing. Let's face it though, Tim Burton has a way of taking a subject and making it into something really fucking awesome.

This film reunited Burton with Johnny Depp and Martin Landau. It also had Michael Gough and Christopher Lee which he cast in films on a regular basis.





Now this was one that I just saw recently. I must say that I went into it expecting it to be more like Descent. I was a bit off on that one. They did come out the same year and have the same kind of theme.

This film wasn't a total loss however. It had a good plot to it, but not much of a back story. I was a little lost on the origins of the cave until later on in the film.

Definitely watch The Cave. It has some moments, but not nearly as scary as I thought it would be.








This is another Carpenter classic. I actually just watched it today on tv. One of the characters uses the word "totally" so often in one scene that it's almost annoying. This was 1978 and I think it was in there as we were coming up on the 1980's and the beginnings of the Valley Girl era.

One of the directors of the film that I worked on had pointed out that there is a scene in the beginning where you can see cigarette smoke drift onto the scene from a smoke that John Carpenter had lit while filming. Kind of fun to look for these things when watching films.

This was the film that really gave Jamie Lee Curtis her jump start in the industry as well cuz lets face it, no one ever remembers you from bit parts that you do in tv series unless your a reoccurring character.



I actually never saw this film in the theatre. The first time I saw it was on HBO (in it's heyday) while staying over at a friends house. Bunch of kids staying up after midnite in the middle of winter and the wood stove cranking out heat and wood popping like Chinese fireworks at the wrong time during a slasher flick...........ah good times.

This film did better out of the theatre as a cult film, which is too bad since it had a decent plot..............guy slashes up folks that celebrate Valentines Day.

The most memorable parts for me are finding that body in the dryer in the laundromat and the some of the scenes in the mine shaft towards the end. If you can get your hands on it, watch it. Beware the fact that some disappointment will come.........apparently the only version of this film out has 9 minutes of missing blood and gore footage.


This was one of those so-so films. It reminded me more of that film Cat People with Nastassja Kinski, but with some kind or weird mother/son insestual overtone.

Definitely not one of the best film adaptations of a Stephen King novel. That tends to happen to his books anyway.

The highlight of this film is Alice Krige. She is most noted for her role as the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact and again in the Star Trek:Voyager episode called End Game.

Definitely peep this one!! There are cameo appearances by Clive Barker, Stephen King, Joe Dante, John Landis and Tobe Hooper (who by the way is in production right now on "From A Buick 8").





This movie is a must see!! This movie kept me on the edge of my couch!!!

Director/Writer Neil Marshall brought this film to us. He is responsible for "Dog Soldiers" and is currently working on a film called "Drive".

This one is about a group of ladies that are some serious cavers. They end up in an uncharted cave thanks to a friend that thought the cave they were supposed to dive into was too easy and the terror begins there.


John Landis always puts out a films that are fun to watch. This is one of my favs by him. A great mix of comedy and horror.

The opening sequence is one that has always stuck out in my mind with the characters walking through the English moors at nite with just the moonlight to guide them until they come across the Slaughtered Lamb pub.

Again one of the best animal/slasher films of my lifetime.

Oh and An American Werewolf In Paris wasn't able to touch this film as cool and entertaining as it was.







Again another Stephen King book ruined by Hollywood. I do have to say that of all the SK books that have been made into films, this is my favourite.

There was so much more to the book that just wasn't in the film. This one is on my list for one fact only: I think I was 13 when this one came to the theatre. There is this scene at the end where Christine is under some crates at Darnell's and all of a sudden she roars out from under these crates and the headlights come on and the engine is howling like a cat in the dryer..............at that very moment imagine if you can an 13 year old boy jumping straight up from his theatre seat and screaming: Jesus Mother Fucking Christ!!!! in front of his parents and a theatre full of strangers. Yeah........good times.



I'm not sure that I would consider this a horror film as I would psychological slaughterhouse.

When you combine horror with space you get some pretty fucking freaky films. This one was no exception.

The highlight of this film is Sam Neill. This guy really brought his piece and laid it down for this one.

His character joins a rescue ship going out to Neptune to recover a ship called the Event Horizon which had disappeared 7 years earlier without a trace. Seems it's back now and wherever it was it has brought evil back with it. The longer the rescue crew spends on the Event Horizon the more they encounter the evil within the ship.




This is actually a remake of a Vincent Price film. I have not seen the original, but this one was pretty damn good in my humble opinion. This has Geoffrey Rush in the lead role as Stephen Price which in the original film was Frederick Loren.

This film offers $1 million per person to who ever can stay the night in a house with a notorious past.

It's only fault is the ending. The special effects team did a great job of working with the director and writer on keeping the audience on the edge and then at the end it seemed as if they needed some kind of apperitional gimick which kind of turned me off.

I'm a sucker for horror films so I watch it again periodically.




Kubrick did wonders for this film adaptation of the Stephen King novel. His first brilliant move was to get Jack Nicholson to be in this one. Brilliant!!!

No special effect gimmicks in this one. Just a good old fashioned haunting.

And the creepy connection between Scatman Crothers character and the kid in this film...........man that is the other half of the tension in this film!!! Fucking awesome!!!









I know what you're thinking right now.........why did this douche bag put this piece of shite on his list?!!

Well I do work for a cruise line. I was really into this film from the very beginning when all those guests are on the bow dancing and having a great time when those Nazi hijackers slaughtered them via that cable that made Ginsu look like training wheels for Jack the Ripper.



This is the remake of the original John Carpenter film of the same name.

This one is pretty scary and I like that John Carpenter was behind it 100% and was one of the producers on this project.

I like the cast in this film: Tom Welling and Selma Blair and Maggie Grace.

The fog effects in this film are just goddamned creepy!!!










Like I said before when you combine space and horror you get some scary mother fuckin' shit!!!

The tag line for this film was: In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

How true was that!!! Great cast great original script work and one of my fav directors: Ridley Scott.

I was 9 when this film came out. I lived about 100 yards from a movie theatre and I walked up there to see it and was told I could see it by myself. I had to come back with my parents to see it. Man was that one awesome film!!! This is one franchise that just couldn't top the original. Not even with James "I'm The King Of The World" Cameron helming the sequel.

Ridley Scott, you ARE the king. Thanks for bringing me movie nightmares. I'm still smiling.....................

Decorating for Halloween................this is MY own Christmas

Well it's been a while sine my last post. I haven't come across anything or done anything in a while that I saw fit to post about.

So Halloween is almost upon us. This is my favourite holiday. It's like my own Christmas.

I happen to be an October baby and celebrate just a few days before Halloween.

Here are some of my fav decorations this year.

On the left here is the SS Bloody Mary. This is my one and only decoration at work. I thought it was appropriate since I work for a cruise line.


I would have decorated more at work like I did last year, but this year I'm taking Halloween off.

This is the McFarlane Headless Horseman from Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. I actually leave this out all year round. This combined two of my favourite things: McFarlane figures and my favourite Tim Burton film.





So this is my scarecrow. I wanted something that would be really scary. So being a movie geek and a Halloween freak I went back to Tim Burton on this as well. The face of this scarecrow is the same face that's on the scarecrow in the beginning scene of Sleepy Hollow. I don't have the dark available to me 24/7 to keep it ominous looking, but I do have a fogger to keep things cloudy and mysterious.





This year I picked a cool new Halloween toy. It's called a Webcaster. No it's not an internet tool. Basically it's a hot glue gun with an air hose hookup. So as your hot glue is coming out the front of the gun, you have an air pipe with 120 psi of air shooting that hot glue onto what every you want to form cobwebs.

This is our front door and as you can see I've planted some rather large inhabitants in there.



We live in a condo so we have to get creative. This is one of my wifes planter boxes with some skull fencing and some decayed bones. Don't worry I didn't dig anyone up for this display. This is the Bag O' Bones set from one of the local Halloween stores that sets up near us every year.

They look pretty real and I get a lot of compliments on them from neighbours and visitors.





My wife has been wanting a really creepy looking bust to have out in the house somewhere. We found this one at Michaels, a local craft store.

This one was the coolest and I think the most fitting since it's a vampire. They had some others, but they weren't as cool as this one.

I'm not sure we named him yet. I think he looks like a Montesque or some other kind of creepy sounding name.

Let's face it, Carl the vampire just doesn't bring any fear into my head.






This is the other portion of our mantle. We have some more skulls acting as bookends on some rather scary looking books.

Ok so they're not scary books. We took some of our regular books and took the papercovers off of them so we could sit them out with their regular black spines and covers exposed.





This is one of last years displays. I searched everywhere for a really scary looking pumpkin and finally found this one at a costume and display store near the mall.

So there he sits with my pirate skull and a bottle of Vampire wine in the midst of the fog.

Try the wine. It's really pretty good. Not available in stores year round, but available straight from the vineyard year round.





I really like bats, and this guy is no exception. Again I picked him up in the Halloween store a few miles down the road.

He looks alright just hanging out in a freshly fogged front porch.







Now this sign is hanging on my front door. To my neighbours it means that I know how to decorate. The first time they saw it last Halloween they were kind of freaked out by it.

This year I had a Jehovah's Witness come to my door becuase of it and wanted to tell me all about the word and leave me with some reading materials. Apparantly I really need to be saved for decorating in preparation of a day that we celebrate the dead.

I let him know as politely as possible that I don't need saving or his reading materials and that he should probably leave. He kind of looked like that late nite talk show host, Tom Greene, but dressed in all black.



This is one of my favourite set ups. This is the bar in our dining room.

The only thing wrong here that I would change is the roses. The leaves and the stems shouldn't be as green as they are for being black roses. Bad me for buying them that way, but really who wasn't thinking when they made them?













This is the bookshelf over our garden window. This is kind of cool. We pulled the paper covers off the books so that we would have a bunch of black and brown spined books up there to give it that "old" and creepy look. The rats running around are particularly interesting.






Here is a our gargoyle door knocker.He got in the way when I douched the entry way with the webcaster gun, but then I decided that he should get all covered too.

Have I mentioned that I really love that web gun? It effin' rocks.












This is one of those vintage photos that changes from a normal picture to something scary when you move about the room. It's hanging over the bar.

I think this guy might be related to my uncle Stan somehow. My uncle reminds me of Lurch from the Addams Family.

Well I hope that you all enjoy your Halloween. Decorate and have fun. Go out and scare someone!!!