While genre fans get their very own festival later in September with Austin's increasingly big Fantastic Fest, the Toronto International Film Festival is not to be left out, with a selection of big horror premieres set for their Midnight Madness strand. And as ever, the announcement's been accompanied with the unveiling of some big-name films to sit along those that have appeared over the last few years, like "Jennifer's Body," "Insidious," "Super," "The Raid" and "Kill List."
First up is "Lords of Salem," the latest from metaller-turned-movie-director Rob Zombie. Having squandered some of his goodwill from horror fans gathered on films like "House of 1000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects" on his "Halloween" remake and its sequel, he's back to his own fare with a film starring his wife, Sherri Moon Zombie, with some appropriately creepy images. Read the official synopsis below, and see images above and below.
Rock star-turned-horror maven Rob Zombie conjures up a nerve-wracking chiller about a Salem hard-rock radio DJ (Sherri Moon Zombie) whose playing of a sinister heavy metal song awakens a coven of witches from the 17th century.
Next up is "The ABCs of Death," an exciting endeavor from Drafthouse Films, where twenty-six filmmakers from around the world (including a competition winner) have been commissioned to make brief, gory, horror shorts revolving around their particular letter of the alphabet. With names like Ben Wheatley, Angela Bettis, Ti West, Adam Wingard, Jorge Michel Grau, Srdjan Spasojevic and Nacho Vigalondo involved, you can bet we'll be paying attention when the film premieres at TIFF next month. Read the synopsis below.
It was a cinematic challenge like no other: twenty-six directors from around the world — all connected to fantastic or horror cinema — each shot a short film about death based on a word starting with a selected letter from the alphabet, showcasing death in all its vicious wonder and brutal beauty. Directors include the warped minds behind Hobo With a Shotgun, You're Next, Tokyo Gore Police and A Serbian Film, to name just a few.
And finally, there's "John Who Dies at the End," an oddball post-modern horror that premiered at Sundance earlier in the year. Marking the return of "Bubba Ho-Tep" and "Phantasm" director Don Coscarelli and starring Paul Giamatti and Clancy Brown, we called it an "odd and engaging genre treat" when we caught it in Park City. Once more for luck, check out the synopsis underneath.
Ancient evils, trans-dimensional bugs, meat monsters and Clancy Brown are just a few of the freakish denizens of this phantasmagorical mindbender from the director of Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep.
