News

Set in a world where every door creaks and there isn’t a single well-lit location, “Tarot” is little more than a clearinghouse of horror clichés.

Co-written, directed and executive produced by Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg (the podcast series “Classified”), the supernatural thriller repeatedly leverages the genre’s laziest mood-setting and suspense-building devices to keep its audience on the edge of their seats. But even featuring a moderately charming ensemble led by “Spider-Man: Homecoming” breakout Jacob Batalon, the film’s PG-13 rating — and lack of virtually any characters other than its doomed protagonists — severely limits the efficacy of those techniques and tropes even when they’re deployed skillfully.

Batalon plays Paxton, the wisecracker among a studiously diverse college-age friend group that rents a remote mansion to celebrate the birthday of Elise (Larsen Thompson). Scouring their rental for booze, the group foolishly breaks into a room marked “Keep Out,” where...

Universal has struggled to in recent years to bring back its classic horror franchises like Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolfman, The Mummy, etc., attempts that were perhaps too literal. But thanks to the filmmaking collective known as Radio Silence they have, with Abigail, perhaps stumbled onto a way to keep the party going. In this case it is back to the immortal vampire story to end them all, Dracula, but here the bloodsucking title star is his 12-year-old daughter, not the infamous man himself who is reduced to a mere cameo.

Last year the studio tried a variation on the tale with Renfield, which starred Nicholas Hoult as the sidekick to Nicolas Cage’s campy take on the legend but lost its way. I am happy to report that using a blend of a heist flick married to ghoulish and grand over-the-top supernatural bloodletting does the trick in Abigail, a movie...

If you thought you'd seen the last of Hercule Poirot, think again. Agatha Christie's famous Belgian detective, who has appeared in countless of her mystery novels, returns in "A Haunting in Venice," which is set to premiere on Sept. 15. The movie is based on Christie's 1969 novel "Hallowe'en Party," which revolves around Poirot embroiled in another murder mystery. The original story takes place at a Halloween party, while the upcoming adaptation sees the detective at a séance.

"A Haunting in Venice" coproducer and director Kenneth Branagh is set to reprise his role as Poirot for the third time in the upcoming film. He first made his debut as Poirot in the star-studded 2017 film "Murder on the Orient Express." Five years later, he returned as Poirot in the 2022 movie "Death on the Nile," which also had a stacked cast. The third film in the Branagh trilogy will also feature huge stars...

Stars: Katy Brand, Lee Latchford-Evans, Robert Portal, Nicholas Vince, Ian Virgo, Cheryl Burniston, Lockhart Ogilvie, Natasha Killip, Nathan Vlough, Joe Hallett | Written by Chris Regan | Directed by Darren Berry

Brit horror Paintball Massacre sees a bunch of old school friends go on a paintball trip miles away from civilization. Things go horribly wrong when they discover that not only are their old school “friends” playing the game but also a cold-blooded masked killer…

High school reunions in movies never go right do they? Be it comedy or horror, school reunions tend to feature people harbouring unforgiven betrayals, long-standing hatreds, and stir up emotions that many have buried deep, forgetting the traumas of school life until they come face to face with people long-since forgotten. Its even worse when one of the class mates has turned into a total psychopath and want to take hatred of their school “friends” to a whole new level.

Robert Bloch and Milton Subotsky may have helped to codify the Giallo in this murder thriller but the results are not up to even the shaky standards of Amicus. That said, horror fans are going to flock to get their hands on a big color & ‘scope release that’s gone missing for decades. It’s a significant ‘save’ by Kino Lorber.

The Psychopath

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1966 / Color / 2:35 widescreen Techniscope / 82 min. / Street Date April 10, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Patrick Wymark, Margaret Johnston, John Standing, Alexander Knox, Judy Huxtable, Don Borisenko, Thorley Walters, Robert Crewdson, Harold Lang, Gina Gianelli, Greta Farrer, John Harvey.

Cinematography: John Wilcox

Film Editor: Oswald Hafenrichter

Art Direction: Bill Constable

Original Music: Elisabeth Lutyens

Written by Robert Bloch

Produced by Max Rosenberg, Milton Subotsky

Directed by Freddie Francis

A look at the cast and crew of The Psychopath raises one’s hopes. Good actors Patrick...

Jackson "Jackie" Hunsicker, who co-wrote the screenplay for Ten Little Indians, which starred Donald Pleasence and Brenda Vaccaro in a 1989 big-screen adaptation of the famed Agatha Christie novel, has died. She was 69.

Hunsicker died Friday in Studio City after a recurring battle with cancer, her cousin Ned Nalle announced.

Hunsicker also wrote and directed The Frog Prince (1988), starring Helen Hunt, and Oddball Hall (1990), a comedy starring Don Ameche and Burgess Meredith. Those films, as well as Ten Little Indians, were made for the Cannon Group.

She also wrote for the 1995 ABC series The Marshal, starring...

The Christmas season is a special time for many. A chance for friends to gather and spread cheer, or clans to gather in the warm glow of familial love. Sometimes, however, the warm glow cools down, love turns to hate, and the carving knife is put to more insidious uses. Welcome to ABC’s Home for the Holidays (1972), a fun murder mystery filled with proto-slasher goodness.

Originally broadcast November 28th as part of the ABC Tuesday Movie of the Week, Home for the Holidays was up against CBS’s Hawaii Five-o and NBC’s The Bold Ones: The New Doctors (whatever that was) and had a solid showing, as ABC often did with this particular brand. However, you won’t find any Snoopies or undernourished trees in this Holiday special.

Let’s open our eggnog soaked TV Guide and see what’s going on around the tree:

Home For The Holidays (Tuesday,...

The Laplace demon is a mathematical theory, which supposes that, if someone knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, they could predict everything down to the smallest detail. Quite a creepy supposition (hence 'demon'), and the basis for The Laplace's Demon, a strange nightmare and philosophical exercise, a kind of extended Twilight Zone episode that evokes Rod Sterling, Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, classic gothic tropes, and Italian-style noir. A team of scientists, who believe they might have cracked the code, are invited to the mysterious island home of the renowned and reclusive Professor Cornelius. Arriving at the luxurious mansion, their host 'introduces' himself via videotape, and tells them they are part of his new experiment, trapped in the mansion (along...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

As the summer continues to roll on, that means we have another great week of horror and sci-fi home entertainment releases to look forward to. The folks at Scream Factory are keeping themselves plenty busy this Tuesday, as they’re resurrecting both The Lawnmower Man and Island of Terror on Blu-ray, as well as their high-def The Paul Naschy Collection, and Arrow Video has put together an incredible two-disc limited Blu-ray set of Dario Argento’s directorial debut, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, that any fan of the Master of Horror will want to add to their collections. And, if you missed it in theaters, the horror/sci-fi thriller Life will be available on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD formats, too.

Other notable releases for June 20th include the Hack-o-Lantern limited edition Blu-ray, Patchwork, Under the Dome: The Complete Series, Ten Little Indians,...

Dark Horse's The Strange Case of the Disappearing Man comic book series tops today's Horror Highlights, which also includes Wizard World Cleveland, new releases (respectively) from Cavity Colors and Blue Underground, Apocalypse Kiss, and the New Jersey Horror Con.

The Strange Case of the Disappearing Man Comic Book Series: Press Release: "Milwaukie, Ore., (March 14, 2017)—Victorian horror fans, rejoice! Dark Horse is delighted to announce the follow-up to 2011’s cult classic The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde, with The Strange Case of the Disappearing Man. Mr. Hyde’s Cole Haddon brings fans even more Thomas Adye adventures, while Sebastián Cabrol (Thief: Tales from the City, Caliban) lends his beautiful art to the story, and Hernán Cabrera (Caliban) brings the art to life with his gorgeously grotesque color palette.

The Strange Case of the Disappearing Man finds Inspector Thomas Adye of Scotland Yard struggling to return to normalcy after his run-in with...

Finally, the mole is back...in a big way.

Everyone at NCIS is under fire on NCIS: Los Angeles Season 8 Episode 13.

It's kind of like Ten Little Indians, as one agent after another gets picked off framed for crimes they didn't commit.

Only NCIS is aware of the mole. So none of the arresting officers at several different agencies have any inclination to look past the slam-dunk cases which they've been handed by some anonymous source, no matter how unlikely.

All this time hunting for the mole, and now it seems as if the mole is headed straight at us.

Hetty [to Kensi] Permalink: All this time hunting for the mole, and now it seems as if the mole is headed straight at us. Added: January 15, 2017

Let's start with poor Granger.

He's looked and sounded like hell for months. He woke up drugged with the woman who had been targeting him beaten...

Stars: Edward DeRuiter, Jenna Parker, Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau, Clarissa Thibeaux, Travis Lincoln Cox | Written and Directed by Emile Edwin Smith

By now you probably all know I have a soft spot for ridiculous shark movies, be they from Roger Corman, The Asylum, Syfy or anyone else… Which is why I always Have to subject myself to whatever treasures this disparate genre provide. Be it a Zombie Shark, Ghost Shark, Sharknado, Sharktopus, a 3-Head Shark, a Swamp Shark etc., etc…. whatever!?!

This time round we’ve got killer sharks and an environmental message in Ice Sharks. A Syfy channel originjal movie from The Asylum (so its a low-budget double-header) which sees a team of expert scientists are studying the effects of climate change on marine life at a research station deep in the Arctic. Suddenly, out of nowhere, hell breaks loose when a new breed of aggressive, ravenous sharks suddenly crack through...

Ten strangers. One hotel. One item on the agenda: murder. Tensions escalate as the body count rises in Peter Collinson's And Then There Were None, a 1974 adaptation of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians that's coming out on Blu-ray with a new HD master from Scorpion Releasing, Variety Films, and Kino Video in 2017.

From Scorpion Releasing: "Scorpion Releasing, in conjunction with Variety Films, coming in 2017, from a brand new 2016 HD master, Peter Collinson's Ten Little Indians (aka And There Were None) starring Oliver Reed, Richard Attenborough, Herbert Lom, Elke Sommers, Maria Rohm, Stephane Audran, Charles Aznavour, Gert Frobe, Adolfo Celi and Orson Welles. It will be released on DVD and BluRay, and sold at retailers via Kino."

Synopsis (via Blu-ray.com): "A group is invited, under false pretenses, to an isolated hotel in the Iranian desert. After dinner, a cassette tape accuses them all of crimes that they have gotten away with.

Three decades before strong, competent and powerful female action heroes like Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, Black Widow in The Avengers and Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens finally became fixtures in film, there was Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Aliens. The actress debuted Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley in director Ridley Scott's moody 1979 sci-fi/horror masterwork Alien, deftly eluding a monstrous, murderous and nearly indestructible extraterrestrial life form. But it wasn't until that film's long-gestating sequel Aliens arrived in 1986, written and directed by future action auteur James Cameron, that Ripley truly emerged as an ass-kicking action heroine...

Three decades before strong, competent and powerful female action heroes like Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, Black Widow in The Avengers and Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens finally became fixtures in film, there was Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Aliens. The actress debuted Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley in director Ridley Scott's moody 1979 sci-fi/horror masterwork Alien, deftly eluding a monstrous, murderous and nearly indestructible extraterrestrial life form. But it wasn't until that film's long-gestating sequel Aliens arrived in 1986, written and directed by future action auteur James Cameron, that Ripley truly emerged as an ass-kicking action heroine...

Life, as the Jurassic Park genius Ian Malcolm once said, tends to find a way. Perhaps encouraged by the star-studded ensemble at hand, Sony Pictures has opted to ship Daniel Espinosa’s new sci-fi movie to a much more competitive release window – Memorial Day weekend.

Once on course to enter Earth’s orbit on March 24, 2017, Deadline reports that Espinosa’s space thriller will now open opposite long-awaited sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales on May 26. There’s also Universal’s genre comedy – rumored to be titled The Something – to contend with, which orders Zach Galifianakis, Bill Hader and Seth Rogen into the inky blackness of space.

But Sony is clearly confident it’s on to a winner – and with Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Rebecca Ferguson set to star, can you really blame them? Pitched as Alien meets Ten Little Indians, the script for Life hails...

One of the more anticipated franchise refreshes on the way is that of "The Nice Guys" writer/director Shane Black's ambition to reignite the "Predator" franchise with a new event film which is now targeting a February 9th 2018 release.

Production on the new film is slated to begin this October from a script Black is co-writing with Fred Dekker. Dekker recently appeared on The Movie Crypt Podcast (via EW) and revealed some more details about the project which he says won't adopt the "And Then There Were None" (aka. "Ten Little Indians") approach of a single location and killing off characters one by one which the original "Predator" also used.

Instead, the new one will involve different characters from all over the world and he compares the tone of it to James Cameron's 1986 classic "Aliens":

"If you think of the first Predator as Alien, ours is much more Aliens.

Shane Black's The Predator has been one of the hottest movie titles in the news cycle as of late, and the last few days brought a number of updates and clarifications on the Shane Black-directed sequel/reboot. Let's get right to it: 1. Black told Den of Geek that the film's "sensibility will be part noir, part mystery and part Close Encounters." "The feeling I loved about Close Encounters was, you had this ordinary guy, Roy Neary, to whom this is all new. I think the danger of a Predator sequel is that it's not new to anybody anymore. 'Oh, look honey - another Predator. Yeah, we had one of those last year. Gagh, is he in the barn again? Oh God, he's had the sheep.' You know? That's the danger. That it's too familiar - we have to find a way to make him mysterious again." 2. Co-screenwriter...

Creating a slasher movie in 1986 wasn’t a monumental feat, as the horror genre had seen its fair share of cinematic killers over the years, but it was a culmination of many elements that made April Fool’s Day one of the best of its era. With a focused and experienced director at the helm, a clever script filled with laughs and unexpected thrills, and an affable ensemble of actors who were infectiously likeable and endlessly talented, April Fool’s Day is an underappreciated gem and is truly unlike any other genre film of its, or any, time.

Written by Danilo Bach and directed by Fred Walton, April Fool’s Day follows a group of college students—Kit (Amy Steel), Rob (Ken Olandt), Nikki (Deborah Goodrich), Chaz (Clayton Rohner), Arch (Tom Wilson), Harvey (Jay Baker), Skip (Griffin O’Neal), and Nan (Leah Pinsent)—who head out to their pal Muffy...

A "lesser" Mario Bava is still a fountain of great filmmaking; and this annihilating melodrama sees a score of greedy folk wiped out at an island retreat, for fun and profit. Shot (and stabbed) through with Bava's visual imagination, it's a sexy, memorable murder thriller. With an authoritative Tim Lucas commentary. 5 Dolls for an August Moon Region B Blu-ray + Pal DVD Arrow Video (UK) 1970 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 81 min. / Street Date February 1, 2016 / 5 bambole per la luna d'agosto / Available from Amazon UK £14.99 Starring William Berger, Ira von Fürstenberg, Edwige Fenech, Howard Ross, Helena Ronee, Teodoro Corrà, Ely Galleani, Edith Meloni, Mauro Bosco, Maurice Poli Cinematography Antonio Rinaldi Production Designer Giuseppe Aldrovandi, Giulia Mafai Film Editor Mario Bava Original Music Piero Umiliani Writing credits Mario di Nardo Produced by Luigi Alessi Directed by Mario Bava

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The experts say that Mario Bava kicked off the giallo parade with his 1964 Blood and Black Lace...

When we think about Italian horror one of the master,s and arguably the best, would be Mario Bava. Even his lesser films have a certain style that make them still enticing to the viewer, and Five Dolls for an August Moon is a good example of that. Just how does this oddity fair with Arrow Video’s Blu-ray release..?

On a weekend retreat on a private Island a wealthy industrialist, George Stark (Teodora Corra) has gathered a group of friends. One of these being a scientist who holds the key to a discovery that could make them all rich. As he tries to put the deal together, it’s not long before the group start dying one by one, but who is the culprit behind the murders?

Five Dolls for an August Moon is an homage of a kind to Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians and while it...

When one looks back at mid ‘70s to early ‘80s horror, it’s quite surprising to see how many Canadian made films are nestled among fan favorites. Titles such as Black Christmas, Shivers, Prom Night, Happy Birthday to Me, and My Bloody Valentine continue to delight and shock veteran horror lovers or those just starting their jagged journey down the terror path. There is one, however, that due to a troubled production and poor distribution, seems relegated to the discount bins of time. Today, we’re pulling back the curtain on, uh, Curtains (1983), an unsung slasher weirder than a sack full of rabid beavers.

Released by Jensen Farley Pictures in March of ’83 in the Us, and September of ’84 by Norstar Releasing in (my home and) native land, Curtains received a very limited release in both countries, but coming as it did at a time when the Canadian film industry had...

After tallying up all the blood and gore in director Quentin Tarantino's new film, a conservative watchdog group is telling its audience that it really hates The Hateful Eight, and that they will, too. "It's Ten Little Indians for sociopaths and sadists. A snuff film with big-name stars," says Dan Gainor, vp of business and culture for the Media Research Center, an nonprofit organization founded in 1987 by frequent Fox News guest Brent Bozell. According to the Mrc, The Hateful Eight contains "49 acts of brutal violence — shootings, stabbings, a hanging, torture, forced gay oral sex and several

read more...

For the last couple of decades film fans have been bemoaning the lack of flicks set in the old wild West. Many even remarked that the “horse opera” or “oater” was a dead genre, that its heydays were nearly twenty five years ago (Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven took Oscar gold in 1992). At the end of 2015, the corpse of the Western, seems to have been revived. And who are the “mad scientists”, well “mad movie makers” perhaps, shocking this corpse back to life via their electrifying talents? Well, Oscar winner Alejandro Inarritu, fresh off his Birdman triumph, puts Leonardo DiCaprio through the wringer (emotional and physical) in The Revenant, which we’ll discuss in length when it gallops into theatres in a couple of weeks. The film that’s out on Christmas Day (in a very special limited release) comes from the ultimate movie fanatic turned film maker Quentin Tarantino. Now...

Two westerns in one year, both starring Kurt Russell?! So glad we live in such a golden age.

Earlier in the fall, Russell cowboy'd his way into the grizzly horror-western "Bone Tomahawk." Now, he's reuniting with his "Death Proof" director Quentin Tarantino for the hotly-anticipated "The Hateful Eight." In what plays out like a John Ford western by way of "Ten Little Indians," Russell stars as John "The Hangman" Ruth, an ill-tempered bounty hunter who, along with his bounty, finds himself in close quarters with some truly violent and untrusting folk.

Despite the film's excessive violence and gunplay, the former child star compared the shooting experience to, um, well, we'll let him explain:

"It's a bit like doing a Disney movie," Russell said. "[Doing] a Disney movie in the 60s -- It was a slightly different zeitgeist then. You're creating the bubble. The bubble can be this big or this small.

Agatha Christie is one of the most successful mystery novelists in history, and now another of her novels will get the big screen treatment again. The Imitation Game director, Morten Tyldum to helm And Then There Were None. Deadline reported the news that 20th Century Fox has acquired the rights to the story, and that they've secured Morten Tyldum to direct the adaptation of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. The book is the all-time best selling mystery, with over 100 million copies sold. The 1939 novel, also known as Ten Little Indians, tells the story of 10 strangers who head to a mansion on a secluded island after believing they were invited by various acquaintances, or a stranger named U.N. Owen. The party commences once they all arrive, but soon, each of them is accused of a murder that they.ve gone unpunished for, and the group is forced...

'And Then There Were None' movie with Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, June Duprez, Louis Hayward and Roland Young. 'And Then There Were None' movie remake to be directed by Oscar nominee Morten Tyldum One of the best-known Agatha Christie novels, And Then There Were None will be getting another big-screen transfer. 20th Century Fox has acquired the movie rights to the literary suspense thriller first published in the U.K. (as Ten Little Niggers) in 1939. Morten Tyldum, this year's Best Director Academy Award nominee for The Imitation Game, is reportedly set to direct. The source for this story is Deadline.com, which adds that Tyldum himself “helped hone the pitch” for the acquisition while Eric Heisserer (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010, The Thing 2011) will handle the screenplay adaptation. And Then There Were None is supposed to have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, thus holding the...

Still the best-selling novelist of all time with over two billion books sold (beaten only by the Bible and Shakespeare), Dame Agatha Christie's singularly most famous mystery is set to get another film adaptation.

"The Imitation Game" director Morten Tyldum has been hired to helm a new film version of "And Then There Were None" which 20th Century Fox has just acquired the feature film rights to.

Eric Heisserer ("The Thing," "Final Destination 5") has been hired to pen the script for the new version which Shawn Levy, Dan Levine, Dan Cohen and Hilary Strong will produce. The new one which reportedly boasts a "take that got the Christie estate excited."

The story follows ten strangers who are invited to an isolated island for a dinner party at the behest of a mysterious host. It's soon revealed they have been cut off from the mainland, and one of the...

Stars: Heather Morris, Ryan Doom, Perez Hilton, Chad Addison, Tess Christiansen, Tatum Miranda, Skyler Vallo, Jason Tobias, Marci Miller, Johnny Ramey | Written by Laura Brennan | Directed by Anthony Diblasi

I thought that writer/director Anthony Diblasi had given up on the horror genre after he chose to helm Wuthering High School – a teen movie, more accurately a TV movie, take on the classic novel – and to be fair I thought it wouldn’t be much of a loss. You see, beyond his first film Dread, which was based on the short story of the same name by Clive Barker, I have pretty much disliked every movie he has made, including his two of his previous Frightfest-screened movies, Cassadaga and Missionary. However… and here’s where I eat my words (and my razor-edged hat if needs be) he hits it out of the park with Most Likely to Die.

With tongue placed firmly in cheek,...

Stars: Alix Elizabeth Gitter, Erick Avari, Steve Bacic, James C. Burns, James Cavlo, Tadhg Kelly, James Ralph, Tara Westwood, Jade Ramsey, Nikita Ramsey | Written by Cam Cannon, Rachel Long, Brian Pittman | Directed by Brett Donowho

Recently orphaned teen Jordan is sent to live with her aunt and uncle in the small town of Silver Falls. Clashing with her newfound guardians, Jordan develops a burgeoning friendship with a curious classmate that leads to a shocking discovery; according to local legend, two young twins who were killed by their father have cast a dark spell over Silver Falls. When Jordan finds a mysterious ring, the murdered girls’ restless spirits begin to shadow her every move. Meanwhile, Jordan’s concerned aunt and uncle refer her to a therapist who sees medication and hospitalization as the only solution to her problems. As the frightened teen fights to prove her sanity, a killer draws near.

Archer: Season 6

Airs Thursdays at 10m Et on Fxx, starting January 8th

When it was first announced, Archer Vice, Aka the completely serialized fifth season of Archer, blew minds. The notion of a popular comedy ditching its usual episodic-with-bits-of-serialization format, changing the occupations of its entire cast, and completely changing the locale for an entire season was a radical one, though admittedly one totally in keeping with creator Adam Reed’s anarchic comic sensibility. The reality of actually watching Archer Vice was a little less exciting; the use of a season-long story sapped some of the series’ vitality and memorability, making for a frustrating week-to-week viewing experience.

It wasn’t a huge surprise, then, when Reed announced that Archer would “de-boot” back to its status quo for its sixth season. Indeed, season six opens with the status quo of the first four seasons completely restored – well, almost. In the...

Murder mysteries are so commonplace on TV that each week offers seemingly dozens of them on police procedural series and detective shows. But in the movies, whodunits are surprisingly rare, and really good ones rarer still. There's really only a handful of movies that excel in offering the viewer the pleasure of solving the crime along with a charismatic sleuth, often with an all-star cast of suspects hamming it up as they try not to appear guilty.

One of the best was "Murder on the Orient Express," released 40 years ago this week, on November 24, 1974. Like many films adapted from Agatha Christie novels, this one featured an eccentric but meticulous investigator (in this case, Albert Finney as Belgian epicure Hercule Poirot), a glamorous and claustrophobic setting (here, the famous luxury train from Istanbul to Paris), and a tricky murder plot with an outrageous solution. The film won an Oscar for passenger...

Stars: Sharlto Copley, Thomas Kretschmann, Josie Ho, Joseph Morgan, Erin Richards, Max Wrottesley, Márta Szabó, Balázs Szitás, Zsuzsanna Szabados, Tofi Seffer | Written by Eddie Borey, Chris Borey | Directed by Gonzalo López-Gallego

On paper Open Grave sounded like yet another “homage” to the likes of Buried. After all its the tale of a man who wakes up on the titular open grave – that alone was enough to spark comparisons for me. How wrong could I have been…

Directed by Gonzalo López-Gallego (Apollo 18), Open Grave stars Sharlto Copley (District 9, The A-Team) as a man who wakes up in a pit full of corpses with no memory. He’s rescued by a mute Chinese woman who leads him back to a house where there are four other people who have all “awoke” with the same loss of memory and total lack of idea who they are and why they are there.

★★☆☆☆The last two films in Arnold Schwarzenegger's comeback tour have provided schlocky but enjoyable titillation, with The Last Stand edging out Escape Plan as the better of the two. Directed by David Ayer, Sabotage (2014) has loftier ambitions, but despite some solid work from its leading man the film is tripped up by its messily executed plot. Loosely based on Agatha Christie's novel Ten Little Indians (yes really), Schwarzenegger stars as John 'Breacher' Wharton, leader of an elite team of DEA agents looking to swindle $10 million from a cartel. What initially looks to be a successful heist proves anything but; the stolen loot goes missing, and the team fall under heavy scrutiny from their superiors.

Stars: Lexi Giovagnoli, Wesley Scott, Debbie Rochon, Natalie Peyton, Blair Jackson, Elyse Bigler, Melody Herron, Jesse Ferraro, Kiarra Hogan, Chris Hlozek, Payton Wood, Fabian Watkins, Elle Lamont | Written and Directed by Jake Helgren

Quick question. This is 2014 right? You wouldn’t guess that from watching Varsity Blood!

It would seem that the trend for producing horror movies that harken back to the 80s and the golden age of the slasher, has officially become the “norm” for modern examples of the genre. Every month there seems to be another slasher movie that hits DVD and/or VOD which looks and feels like the self-referential post-Scream years never happened. But I’m not complaining, oh no! As a Huge fan of slasher movies (even the likes of Iced and Terror at Tenkiller) I relish the opportunity to watch each and every new entry into the much-maligned genre.

Thankfully the quality of modern slashers has,...

Here's another installment featuring Joe Dante's reviews from his stint as a critic for Film Bulletin circa 1969-1974. Our thanks to Video Watchdog and Tim Lucas for his editorial embellishments!

Which one is the werewolf? Finding the answer makes a neat gimmick, smart promotion of which should make this otherwise tame British import a strong contender in ballyhoo markets. Rating: PG.

This British horror mystery has a good audience‑participation gimmick going for it: a "Werewolf Break," during which the story stops to allow viewers to shout out the name of whichever suspicious character they think is the werewolf that's been wiping out other cast members. Reminiscent of the sort of surefire gimmickry that William Castle specialized in during the early '60s, this bit is being shrewdly promoted by the always showmanship‑minded Cinerama Releasing, and should boost The Beast Must Die to good grosses in fast saturation playoff.

I’m back! It’s been a long time and I apologise for that, moving house turned out to be a far far longer process than I anticipated or had been led to believe. Three weeks turned into six, six weeks turned into three months and now here we are.

Aside from the length of time it takes, moving house was a real eye opener in other areas too. Specifically in terms of how I inform you week on week of all of this wonderful content available to stream and then how you have to put up with lacklustre delivery from various ISPs. I was living in someone else’s house on a connection that was not my own, not wanting to name names but there is one of the big three ISP’s in the UK which boasts about having one of, if not the, fastest broadband delivery on...

With Hollywood these days the old adage “everything old is new again” seems to really apply to those golden 1980′s (ugh, I feel ancient!). Kids shows from the era like “Transformers” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” are big blockbuster flicks at the multiplex. And there have already been remakes of 80′s flicks the first couple of months of 2014 with Robocop and Endless Love. Of course, there’s the stars of that decade. In two weeks we’ll see Kevin Costner in his fourth feature film in less than ten months with Draft Day. Then there’s the big action icons, and nobody dominated the big screen then more than rivals Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger (who joined forces in the Expendables series and last year’s Escape Plan. But Arnold stepped away from the sound stages for the governor’s mansion for several years while Vin Diesel and Dwayne “the...

Sabotage

Directed by: David Ayer

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Olivia Williams, Mireille Enos, Sam Worthington, Joe Manganiello

Running Time: 1 hr 49 mins

Rating: R

Release Date: March 28, 2014

Plot: After they rob a drug cartel, members of a DEA task force (led by Schwarzenegger) begin to drop one-by-one.

Who’S It For? Schwarzenegger geeks, or anyone who expects more than just spectacle from the former governor.

Overall

In Sabotage, Arnold Schwarzengger continues to expand his 2.0 image as he is reincarnated in the face of his first-name basis nostalgia. Aligning himself with director David Ayer’s embrace of real-life gruesomeness, where no image of blood or guts is spared in the recognizing of occupational hazard brutality, Schwarzengger expresses the corrosive qualities of testosterone, and the destructive paths that can come from living a life that feeds on primal elements. His character, Breacher, leads a team of DEA agents who treat testosterone like a steroid,...

After a questionable political career as the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger is very much an actor again. Even Arnold's age can only be identified through the use of high-powered electron microscopes, the beefy thespian has been been making a ton of movies recently -- from the Sylvester Stallone team-up movie "Escape Plan" (woof) to the never-ending "Expendables" movies (the third is due out in August). The latest is "Sabotage," a murder mystery action movie set in the world of the DEA.

The movie has a pretty loaded roster of bad-asses in the form of supporting actors Sam Worthington, Terrence Howard, Joe Manganiello, Harold Perrineau, Martin Donovan, Max Martini and Josh Holloway, all of whom pack plenty of firepower (if you know what I mean) with Mireille Enos and Olivia Williams ensuring that it's not a total sausage fest. There are many, many cases of ammunition spent in this movie.

Stars: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Michelle Dockery, Lupita Nyong’o, Scoot McNairy, Anson Mount, Corey Stoll, Linus Roache | Written by John W. Richardson, Chris Roach | Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

From Jaume Collet-Serra (Unknown) comes Non-Stop, a new action thriller starring Liam Neeson as Bill Marks, a burned-out veteran of the Air Marshals service who views his assignments not as a life-saving duty, but as a desk job in the sky. However, today’s flight will be no routine trip – shortly into the transatlantic journey from New York to London, he receives a series of mysterious text messages ordering him to have the government transfer $150 million into a secret account, or a passenger will die every 20 minutes…

Given Liam Neeson’s current status as action-star extraordinaire, it’s not to hard to determine just what to expect from Non-Stop: plenty of action, Liam Neeson waxing lyrical about the situation and...

Director David Ayer really knocked it out of the park with End of Watch, and everything points to him doing it yet again with Sabotage, a loose adaption of Agatha Christies mystery Ten Little Indians. Judging from the unrelentingly brutal trailer below, this will be quite the ride, especially with a delightfully foul mouthed Arnie on top form. via IGN Released: 28th March (U.S.)/ 25th April (Irl)/ 9th May (U.K.) Synopsis: Members of an elite DEA task force find themselves being taken down one by one after they rob a drug cartel safe house.

(Cbr) March 28th will see a big-time battle at the box office: action vs. epic, Arnold Schwarzenegger vs. Russell Crowe and David Ayers and Darren Aronofsky. In other words, the action picture "Sabotage" has been moved from its original April 11 release to March 28, where it will compete with "Noah". Based on Agatha Christie’s "Ten Little Indians", "Sabotage" (formerly known as "Ten") also stars Joe Manganiello, Sam Worthington, Josh Holloway, Harold Perrineau, Olivia Williams, Max Martini, Mireille Enos and Terrence Howard. Here’s the official synopsis: In “Sabotage”, Arnold Schwarzenegger leads an elite DEA task force that takes on the world’s...

Busy little update today including a pair of comedy's in the Nick Frost-led Cuban Fury and Kevin Hart's next comedy About Last Night, both of which scored R ratings. Then there's the Alex Pettyfer and Gabriella Wilde remake of Endless Love, the young adult adaptation Vampire Academy and Veronica Mars: The Movie, all of which, yup, received PG-13 ratings. Rounding out the bulletin is David Ayer's loose adaptation of Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians", Sabotage starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and the horror film Afflicted, which I caught in Toronto last year (read my review here). The complete bulletin is directly below. About Last Night Rated R For sexual content, language and brief drug use. Release Date: February 14, 2014 Afflicted Rated R For disturbing bloody violence, and language. Release Date: Tba 2014 Alan Partridge Rated R For language, brief violence and nudity. Almost Home Rated G Boys Of Abu Ghraib...

Open Road Films has moved up the release date for David Ayer's action thriller "Sabotage," a loose adaptation of Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians".

Originally slated for April 11th, it has now been moved up a full two weeks to March 28th, opening opposite Biblical epic "Noah" and the comedy sequel "A Haunted House 2".

Arnold Schwarzenegger leads a DEA task force who heists a drug cartel safe house, only to start getting picked off one-by-one by an unknown assassin. Sam Worthington, Olivia Williams, Mireille Enos, Harold Perrineau, Terrence Howard, Joe Manganiello, Max Martini and Josh Holloway also star.

Source: Screen...

By Ernie Magnotta

Over the years, Friday the 13th has been called many things. Upon its release in May of 1980, critics who reviewed the low budget, independent wonder called it everything from a blatant Halloween clone (which director Sean Cunningham never denied it was) to an overly violent dead teenager movie made with no apparent talent or intelligence.

Gene Siskel was so outraged by the film that he called Cunningham “one of the most despicable creatures ever to infest the movie business.” Siskel even went so far as to publish the home address of actress Betsy Palmer (who gives a magnificent performance in the film) and he encouraged fans to write to her and express their disappointment in her taking a role in such a ghastly film.

Why did this creepy little horror film strike such a negative chord in critics all over the country? To answer that question, we...

The first trailer has arrived online for David Ayer’s Sabotage, in which Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as the leader of an elite DEA taskforce, charged with taking on the world’s most fearsome drug cartels. Loosely based on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, the film sees Arnie’s team pull off a heist on a cartel safehouse, only for their number to start falling prey to an unseen assassin. Needless to say, Arnie isn’t about to take that lying down, and it isn’t long before all hell is breaking loose in a hail of gunfire and spent...

.

An Arnold Schwarzenegger film loosely based on the classic Agatha Christie story Ten Little Indians? Colour me intrigued.

Sabotage is the new film by David Ayer, who previously brought us End of Watch. It centers on a group of DEA agents who bust a cartel safe house and discover millions of dollars hidden within. A mysterious assassin then begins picking them off one by one. The trailer sells it well, with a nicely picked cast of tough men and women and plenty of gritty action. I hope this one does better than Arnold’s other post-Governor flicks.

Sabotage stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sam Worthington, Joe Manganiello, Olivia Williams, Mireille Enos, Harold Perrineau, Terrence Howard, Max Martini, Josh Holloway, and opens on April 11, 2014.

Check out the trailer right after the jump folks!

Sabotage has released a new trailer.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sam Worthington and Terrence Howard star in David Ayer's action thriller.

Loosely based on Agatha Christie's classic mystery Ten Little Indians, it centres around an elite DEA task force led by Schwarzenegger.

After the bust of a major cartel, the team start being picked off one by one.

Joe Manganiello, Harold Perrineau, Terrence Howard, Max Martini, Josh Holloway, Olivia Williams and Mireille Enos also feature in the movie.

The film was originally titled Ten.

Sabotage will open in the Us on April 11, 2014 and the UK on April 25.

Gallery - Arnold Schwarzenegger's 20 best one-liners...

Open Road Films have unveiled the first trailer for "End of Watch" director David Ayer's "Sabotage" opening in April.

A loose spin on Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians"/"And Then There Were None," the story follows a DEA task force who heists a drug cartel safe house, only to start getting picked off one-by-one by an unknown assassin.

It's a robust looking trailer - Ayer's talent for gritty visuals mixed with a strong cast and tried and true formula.

There's also some major surprises - The Killing's Mirelle Enos showing off some killer abs, Olivia Williams with a flattering new haircut, and an almost unrecognisable Sam Worthington who is bald and donning a hillbilly-style goatee for his role.