ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - August 31st

"HALLOWEEN" released in 2007

He has been silent for nearly fifteen years... until one Halloween, Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) brutally massacres the staff at Smith's Grove Sanitarium and continues killing his way back to his childhood town of Haddonfield, Illinois. In dogged pursuit is his former psychologist, Dr Sam Loomis (Malcom McDowell), who believes he knows exactly what is drawing Michael back to the scene of his first murders, in Rob Zombie's reinterpretation of John Carpenter's cult classic, Halloween!

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Already showing signs of psychopathic tendencies, ten-year-old Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch) lives in a broken home with his single mother Deborah (Sheri Moon Zombie), older sister Judith (Hanna R. Hall), and Deborah's violent alcoholic boyfriend, Ronnie (William Forsythe). While at school, Michael is confronted by school bully Wesley (Daryl Sabara), who teases him with flyers featuring Deborah advertising a local strip club. Getting into a fight, Principal Chambers (Richard Lynch) has a meeting with Deborah and child psychologist Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), who explains that after searching Michael's locker they found numerous Polaroids of dead and tortured animals - seemingly done by Michael. Waiting outside, Michael quickly flees the school and later ambushes Wesley in the woods, beating him to death with a heavy tree branch while wearing his Halloween clown mask. Later that night while Deborah is at work, Michael returns from trick or treating to yet more taunts from Ronnie and Judith. Waiting for Ronnie to fall asleep, Michael duct tapes Ronnie to the recliner and slits his throat with a kitchen knife. Michael later bludgeons Judith's boyfriend Steve (Adam Weisman) to death with a baseball bat in the kitchen, before going upstairs to his sister's room. Wearing a pale-white mask dropped ealier by Steve, Michael stabs Judith and continues butchering her even as Judith crawls down the hallway to escape him. Only his baby sister, Angel, is spared. Michael patiently waits on the doorstep for his mother to return and discover the massacre. After one of the longest trials in the state’s history, Michael is found guilty of first degree murder and sent to Smith's Grove Sanitarium, under the care of Loomis. Michael initially cooperates with Dr. Loomis (claiming no memory of the murders while exhibiting a strange fixation for his papier-mâché masks) and is regularly visited by Deborah; until one day Michael explodes and viciously murders a nurse in front of Loomis and Deborah. Unable to bare the grief, Deborah later kills herself, and after fifteen years of not being able to get Michael to even speak, Loomis decides he has had enough too, and tells him he is leaving. That night, Michael (Mane) escapes from Smith Grove, murdering the entire staff with his bare hands, including a kindly custodian Ismael Cruz (Danny Trejo). Alerted to Michael's escape, Loomis immediately heads to Haddonfield, believing Michael will try to murder his remaining sister, now living with her adoptive parents as Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton). As night falls on Halloween, Loomis races to get to Laurie before Michael finishes his bloody family business!

[Loomis speaking at a lecture]
Dr. Samuel Loomis: These eyes will deceive you, they will destroy you. They will take from you, your innocence, your pride, and eventually your soul. These eyes do not see what you and I see. Behind these eyes one finds only blackness, the absence of light, these are of a psychopath. 

Top:   A young Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch) kills his first victim;

Above:   15-years later, Dr Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) still can't reach Michael (now played by Tyler Mane)

After the release of 2002's Halloween: Resurrection, executive producer Moustapha Akkad and Dimension Films spent the next four years trying to develop the next installment in the franchise. Originally there was going to be another sequel entitled "Halloween: Retribution" starring Lindy Booth but the idea was scrapped. At one point, Dimension considered making a crossover film featuring Pinhead from the Hellraiser series, following in the footsteps of New Line Cinema's horror crossover Freddy vs. Jason (2003). A poll was held on the official site, but response from fans was negative and the studio dropped the concept. The studio was on the verge of green-lighting another film, this time a prequel set within Michael Myers' early days at the asylum, called "Halloween: The Missing Years". The inclusion of the plot-line about Michael Myers' early days at the mental asylum under the care of Sam Loomis is a nod to a plot-line added in by John Carpenter for the television viewing of the original Halloween (1978). As told by Carpenter, when the original film was first sold to television, they demanded added scenes to replace the edited portions of the murder scenes. So Carpenter recalled Donald Pleasence, the original Sam Loomis to film scenes of him at the hospital taking care of Michael. Production of a sequel was halted in November 2005, when producer Moustapha Akkad was tragically killed along with his daughter, Rima Al Akkad Monla, in the Amman bombings in Jordan. His son Malek Akkad, who had been a producer on the Halloween films with his father since 1995's Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, would eventually dedicate the Halloween remake to his father.

At the beginning of 2006, Bob Weinstein approached Rob Zombie, fresh off the success of House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, about rebooting the series with a remake. Zombie, who was a fan of the original Halloween and a friend of John Carpenter, jumped at the chance to make a Halloween film. In an interview, Zombie said he went into the meeting with the Weinstein's with two films in mind; one being strictly just Myers and his childhood, then the remake. Unfortunately, they shot the first idea down, but it does explain why in the remake that the first half of the film focuses on Myers's childhood. Before Dimension went public with the news on June 4th, 2006, Zombie felt obligated to inform John Carpenter, out of respect, of the plans to remake his film. Carpenter's request was for Zombie was simple; to "make [the film] his own". Zombie's intention was to reinvent Michael Myers because, in his opinion, the character, along with Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and Pinhead, had become too familiar to audiences, and as a result, less scary.  A deeper back story would add "new life" to the character, as Zombie put it, and further explained that he wanted Michael to be true to what a psychopath really is, wanting the mask to be a way for Michael to "hide".

[Loomis speaking at a lecture]
Dr. Samuel Loomis: The darkest souls are not those which choose to exist within the hell of the abyss, but those which choose to move silently among us.

Top:   Friends, Annie Brackett (Danielle Harris), Laurie Strode (Taylor Scout-Compton) and Lynda (Hanna Hill);

Above:   In a scene inspired by the original film, Michael pins Lynda's boyfriend Bob (Nick Mennell) to the wall with a butchers knife!

Although Zombie was opposed to casting anybody from the previous Halloween films, he always had a part in mind for Danielle Harris (who played Jamie Lloyd in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers). Originally Zombie wanted Danielle Harris to play Laurie Strode and Sheri Moon Zombie to play Laurie's friend, Lynda. But ultimately Harris chose to play the role of Annie Brackett, and Moon Zombie playing Michael's struggling single mother Deborah (the role of Lynda was eventually played by Kristina Klebe). After first considering John Hurt, Malcolm McDowell was given the role of Dr. Samuel Loomis, leaving only the pivotal role of Laurie Strode yet be filled. Scout Taylor-Compton endured a long audition process, but as director Zombie explains, "Scout was my first choice. There was just something about her; she had a genuine quality. She didn't seem actor-y." Of all the female leads (all the girls are supposed to be in high school including Judith Myers, played by Hanna R. Hall), only Taylor-Compton was actually a teenager at the time of filming (she was 18 at the time of production), much like how Jamie Lee Curtis who played Laurie in the original Halloween, who was only 19. Zombie completed casting with a large number of frequent collaborators; Danny Trejo as Danny Trejo, William Forsythe as Ronnie, and Bill Moseley, Tom Towles, Leslie Easterbrook, and Ken Foree as the three guards and the trucker that Michael kills while escaping. Tyler Mane also reunited with his Devil's Rejects director to play the titular role of the older Michael Myers. There was also an online competition for a "walk-on role" for Halloween, which was won by Heather Bowen and played the role of a news reporter who covered Michael's arrest but her scene was cut from the film and does not appear in the deleted scenes.

When Halloween had it's first test screenings in June, 2007, the reaction was mostly negative - especially the rape scene of one of Smith's Grove female inmates during Michael's original escape sequence. The studio quickly ordered Zombie to shoot alternate scenes, included a new escape for Michael from the hospital as well as an alternate ending where Loomis survives and Myers is gunned down by Brackett's men in front of the Myers house. Also cut from the test screening workprint was Danny Trejo's death scene. Zombie lobbied Dimension Films, stating it was important to show how brutal and uncompassionate the character truly is. Zombie won and was allowed to put the scene back in the final cut. Halloween would not be released on Halloween weekend, as was the original, for fear of going head to head with Saw IV, and instead was scheduled for released two months earlier. However, approximately four days before the theatrical release of the film, a workprint version of Halloween appeared online and was circulated around various BitTorrent sites. Upon hearing of the leaked copy, Zombie stated that whatever version had been leaked was an older version of the film (the test screening version) that differed from the final release. The leak of Zombie's workprint led to speculation that the film's box office success could be damaged, as director Eli Roth attributed the financial failure of his film, Hostel: Part II, to the leaking of a workprint online, but instead Zombie's Halloween proved to be the highest grossing film of the franchise (not counting for inflation), grossing almost $60 million in the US alone.

TRIVIA:   John Carpenter has not seen the film and said he would not criticize the film because Rob Zombie is a friend of his.

Top:   Writer/Director Rob Zombie with Tyler Mane and Daeg Faerch;

Above:   Zombie inside Michael's cell set. 

Critics however were less enthusiastic for Zombie's re-imagining of Halloween, with New York Daily News critic Jack Matthews believing the film lacked tension, and went more for cheap shocks — focusing more on enhancing the "imagery of violence" — than real attempts to scare the audience; he gave the film one and a half stars out of five. Dennis Harvey's, from Variety magazine, opinion was that the film failed to deliver on the suspense; he also felt that you could not tell one teenage character from the next, whereas in Carpenter's original each teenager had real personalities. Peter Hartlaub, of the San Francisco Chronicle, was more measured in his review writing he felt Zombie was successful in both "[putting] his own spin on Halloween, while at the same time paying tribute to Carpenter's film"; he thought Zombie managed to make Michael Myers almost "sympathetic" as a child, but that the last third of the film felt more like a montage of scenes with Halloween slipping into "slasher-film logic". Critic Matthew Turner believed the first half of the film, which featured the prequel elements of Michael as a child, were better played than the remake elements of the second half. In short, Turner stated that performances from the cast were "superb", with Malcolm McDowell being perfectly cast as Dr. Loomis, but that the film lacked the scare value of Carpenter’s original. But it was Bill Gibron, of PopMatters, review that states he believes, "that audiences and critics cannot compare Carpenter's film to Zombie's remake; where Carpenter focused more on the citizens of Haddonfield—with Michael acting as a true "boogeyman"—Zombie focuses more on Michael himself, successfully forcing the audience to experience all of the elements that Michael went through that would result in his "desire for death".

With impressive box office numbers, Halloween producer Malek Akkad confirmed at 2008's 30 Years of Terror Convention that a sequel was in the works, with Zombie officially signing on to direct in December of that year. Zombie explained that with the sequel he was no longer bound by a sense of needing to retain any "John Carpenter-ness", as he "felt free to do whatever" after encouraged by Akkad to ignore any rules they had set for him on the previous film and make the vision for Halloween II his own. Unfortunately, Halloween II was not a success at the box office and received even worse reviews than it's predecessor when released in 2009. The future of the franchise was once again in doubt, with many false starts with various writers and directors to come up with a satisfactory story. Then, on May 23, 2016, horror fans were shocked and ecstatic when it was announced that Miramax and Blumhouse Productions were developing a new Halloween film with John Carpenter set to produce the project and act as creative consultant. Carpenter later stated, "Thirty-eight years after the original Halloween, I'm going to help to try to make the 10th sequel the scariest of them all!". And for the millions of Halloween fans around the world, we can't wait to see what they'll come up with!

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   25%

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WES CRAVEN

In Memoriam

He was counted amongst the giants in the horror genre; George A Romero, Dario Argento, Tobe Hooper, Stephen King, Lucio Fulci... and Wes Craven. In a career spanning 43 years, Craven has delivered some of the most spine chilling horror films, created three hugely successful horror franchises, and introduced two of the biggest icons still in horror today; Ghostface and Freddy Krueger. Sadly, one year ago today, Wes Craven passed away at his home in Los Angeles, at age 76. He was survived by his third wife, Iya Labunka. But he left behind a legacy of 28 feature films (and either wrote, produced, or photographed/edited another 25 films), created 3 television shows, and was the proud father of two children; Jonathan and Jessica Craven. Join us as we take a look back on the fascinating life of the "King of Horror", Wes Craven.

Born on August 2nd, 1939, to Caroline (née Miller) and Paul Eugene Craven, the young Wesley Earl Craven was raised in a strict Baptist family in Cleveland, Ohio. He had a highly dysfunctional relationship with his parents, mainly having been raised by his severe, hyper-religious mother (whom he never allowed to watch any of his films) and never having a close relationship with his distant, violent-tempered father. Craven later earned an undergraduate degree in English and Psychology from Wheaton College in Illinois and a master's degree in Philosophy and Writing from Johns Hopkins University. At 25, Craven married his first wife, Bonnie Broecker in 1964, their first son, Jonathan being born a year later. Craven would later remark that it was his mother's judgmental influence that caused him to be too terrified to talk to a girl until he was at college and lead him to marry, in his opinion, too young (and arguably contributed to the angry, bleak themes of his early films). Craven briefly taught English at Westminster College and was a humanities professor at Clarkson College of Technology (later named Clarkson University) in Potsdam, New York, additionally teaching at Madrid-Waddington High School in Madrid, New York. It was during this time that Craven's second child, Jessica, was born in 1968.

When his friend Tom Chapin informed him of a messenger position at a New York City post-production company run by his brother, future folk-rock star Harry Chapin, Craven moved to Manhattan with his first creative job in the film industry being a sound editor for Chapin's firm. Recalling his early training, Craven said in 1994, "Harry was a fantastic film editor and producer of industrials. He taught me The Chapin Method [of editing]: 'Nuts and bolts! Nuts and bolts! Get rid of the shit!'" Craven afterward became the firm's assistant manager, and broke into film editing with You've Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You'll Lose That Beat (1971). Sadly in 1970, Craven and Bonnie divorced, with Craven also leaving the academic world behind for good to concentrate solely on a filmmaking career.

In the documentary Inside Deep Throat, Craven says on camera he made "many hard core X-rated films" under various pseudonyms during the early 1970's, most of his early known work involved writing, film editing or both. In early 1971, Craven was approached by director Sean S Cunningham to synchronize the dailies from the three- to four-day re-shoot of his feature film Together (from footage shot for Cunningham's earlier version, The Art of Marriage), which also featured a young Marilyn Chambers, billed under her real name, Marilyn Briggs, before she starred in Behind the Green Door. Craven then became assistant editor, and he and Cunningham had to mix under sparse conditions and no money. Luckily, numerous erotic scenes shot with Chambers "aroused" the interest of Hallmark Releasing, whom bought the film for $10,000. Together proved to be a hugely successful film, grossing over $100,000, the second for Cunningham and the first for the 33-year old Craven.

Cunningham was offered $90,000 by Hallmark to do a "scary film", with Cunningham serving as producer and Craven as debut writer and director. The original script was intended to be a graphic 'hardcore' film, with all actors and crew being committed to filming it as such, and was shot entirely on location in New York City, as well as Long Island and rural locations outside of Westport, Connecticut. The Last House on the Left would be heavily censored in many countries on it's release in 1972, and was particularly controversial in the United Kingdom, where it was refused a certificate for cinema release by the BBFC in 1974 due to "scenes of sadism and violence". But Craven's debut film proved incredibly successful at the box offcie (grossing over $3 million against a $87,000 budget) and with the critics, with Roger Ebert giving the film four and a half stars, writing,"Last House on the Left is a tough, bitter little sleeper of a movie that's about four times as good as you'd expect. There is a moment of such sheer and unexpected terror that it beats anything in the heart-in-the-mouth line since Alan Arkin jumped out of the darkness at Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark." Despite the early success, it would be another five years before Craven would direct another film, The Hills Have Eyes, in 1977.

Craven's reputation as a successful horror director was cemented by the $25 million performance of The Hills Have Eyes at the box office. After serving as a cinematographer on The Evolution of Snuff (with Roman Polanski) and Here Come the Tigers (directed by friend Sean S Cunningham), Craven was approached by TV producers Max A. Keller and Micheline H. Keller and worked on three projects with the duo between 1978-81; Stranger in Our House (later released in cinemas as Summer of Fear), Kent State, and Deadly Blessing. The following year, Craven would direct his first (and only) science fiction film, Swamp Thing. Filming primarily on location in Charleston, South Carolina, and nearby Johns Island (standing in for the Florida Everglades), and starred Adrienne Barbeau, Dick Durock, Louis Jourdan, and Ray Wise. Craven was very proud in delivering the movie on time and on budget at $2.5 million, and was yet another hit for Craven. Also in 1982, Craven married a woman who would become known professionally as actress Mimi Craven (the two would later divorce in 1987, with Wes Craven stating in interviews that the marriage dissolved after he discovered it "was no longer anything but a sham" - amid rumors his wife was having an affair with his Deadly Blessing star, Sharon Stone!). After Swamp Thing, Craven directed his last TV movie, the supernatural horror film Invitation to Hell, before starting production on the film that would ultimately bring him worldwide acclaim and introduce one of horror's biggest legends!

A Nightmare on Elm Street was partly inspired by an article printed in the LA Times in the 1970's about a group of Khmer refugees, who, after fleeing to the United States, started suffering disturbing nightmares, after which they refused to sleep; some men even died! For the film's villain, Freddy Krueger, Craven drew heavily from his own experiences in early life. One night, a young Craven saw an elderly man walking on the sidewalk outside the window of his home. The man stopped to glance at a startled Craven and walked off. Craven would base the character based on the memories of that man, and later named him Freddy Krueger, after a bully that used to torment Craven at school. Craven strove to make Krueger different from other horror-film villains of the era. "A lot of the killers were wearing masks: Leatherface, Michael Myers, Jason," Craven recalled in 2014. "I wanted my villain to have a 'mask,' but be able to talk and taunt and threaten. So I thought of him being burned and scarred." Writing the screenplay after finishing production on Swamp Thing, Craven pitched the script to several studios, but each one of them rejected it for different reasons. The first studio to show interest was Walt Disney Productions, although they wanted Craven to tone down the content to make it suitable for children and pre-teens, which Craven declined. Another early suitor was Paramount Pictures; however the studios passed on the project due to Nightmare on Elm Street's similarity to Dreamscape (1984). It would also be rejected by Universal, with Craven (by now in desperate personal and financial straits) later framing their rejection letter on the wall of his office.

Finally, the fledgling and independent New Line Cinema corporation, led by producer Bob Shaye — which had up to that point only distributed films, rather than making its own — gave the project the go-ahead. Although New Line has gone on to make much bigger and more profitable films, Nightmare holds such an important place in the company's history that the studio is often referred to as "The House That Freddy Built". With principal photography beginning in June 1984, the shoot was fraught tension and tight shooting schedules. At one point, with the deadline rapidly approaching, Craven enlisted his old friend Sean S Cunningham to direct one of the films chase sequences (but remained uncredited). Craven originally planned for the film to have a more evocative ending: Nancy kills Krueger by ceasing to believe in him, then awakes to discover that everything that happened in the film was an elongated nightmare. However, Robert Shaye demanded a twist ending, in which Krueger disappears and the film all appears to have been a dream, only for the audience to discover that they are watching a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream, where Freddy reappears as a car that "kidnaps" Nancy and her friends, followed by Freddy reaching through a window on the front door to pull Nancy's mother inside. Craven, never intending A Nightmare on Elm Street to be an ongoing series, later dropped out of developing the sequel Freddy's Revenge, which strained Craven's relationship with Shaye for the next ten years.

A Nightmare on Elm Street was a huge international success, and Craven was now a highly in demand filmmaker, with Warner Bros. quickly hand-picking Craven to helm their next sci-fi horror film, Deadly Friend. However, Craven and the studio would have differing opinions on the direction of the movie, with studio head Mark Canton demanding gorier/scarier scenes with script re-writes and reshoots. Craven's next studio movie would be The Serpent and the Rainbow for Universal studios. Based on the best selling book of the same name, author Wade Davis sold the film rights on the condition that director Peter Weir would helm the picture with Mel Gibson starring - although Craven would ultimately end up directing with Bill Pullman starring. Craven's next film for Universal was intended to be the first film in franchise (similar to the Nightmare on Elm Street series), Shocker, with Mitch Pileggi as the evil antagonist Horace Pinker. Unfortunately after the lukewarm box office reception of Shocker, the idea of a trilogy was dropped. Craven's final film with Universal, which would also be his most successful film made during his tenure with the studio, was The People Under the Stairs. Three years later, Craven would again team with Bob Shaye and New Line Cinema to bring a very different Freddy Krueger to the screen with Wes Craven's New Nightmare, and teamed with Eddie Murphy the next year on the horror-comedy Vampire in Brooklyn - unfortunately neither of these big studio films performed well at the box office and received mediocre reviews from the critics. But Craven was yet to experience a career revival with his next project, a film he very nearly turned down!

Written and developed under the working title Scarey Movie by aspiring screenwriter Kevin Williamson, the screenplay was picked up by Bob and Harvey Weinstein through their genre production label Dimension Films. Bob Weinstein approached Craven early in the planning stages, because he felt Craven's previous work in the genre that combined horror and comedy would make him the perfect person to bring Williamson's script to screen. Craven was reluctant, even considering distancing himself from the horror genre as he was growing weary of the inherent misogyny and violence. Craven was approached again but continued to pass in spite of repeated requests, continuing to develop a remake of The Haunting. However, two important elements would convince Craven to direct Scarey Movie; the production of The Haunting collapased, and Drew Barrymore had signed on to the film. When he heard an established actress wanted to be involved, Craven reasoned that Scarey Movie might be different from other films of the genre he had previously undertaken, and he contacted Weinstein to accept the job.

Principal photography for Scream took place over eight weeks between April 15 and June 8, 1996, on a budget of $15 million, with filming, at Craven's insistence, taking place in the Californian cities of Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, and the nearby Tomales Bay (the Weinsteins wanted to film in Vancouver as it was estimated that they could save $1 million in costs compared to shooting in the United States). The progress of filming was criticized early on by Bob Weinstein, who disliked the Ghostface mask (believing it was not "scary"), and, upon reviewing the dailies footage of the opening scene, the studio was concerned that the film was progressing in an unwanted direction to the point they considered dropping Craven from the project. To assuage their concerns, Craven and editor Patrick Lussier, developed a rough, workprint version of the opening 13 minutes of the film to demonstrate how the completed film might turn out. After viewing the new footage, the studio was content to let Craven continue as director and Weinstein, having seen the mask in action, was satisfied that it could be scary after all. The retitled Scream held its premiere on December 18, 1996 at the AMC Avco theater in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, to high critical praise and a grossing nearly $100 million in the box office alone - quite an achievement since it was the Christmas period where seasonal and family films were more prevalent. When Scream's first weekend takings amounted to only $6 million, it was considered that this release date gamble had failed, but the following week, takings did not drop but increased and continued to increase in the following weeks! Film4 cited Craven's own Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) and its cast of self-aware characters as inspiration for Scream, but declared that while New Nightmare was a "noble failure – pretty smart, but crucially not very scary" that Scream was "not merely clever...it is, from its breathtaking opening sequence (with Barrymore as the woman in peril) onwards, simply terrifying."

With the horror genre, and Craven, hot property again in Hollywood, Dimension Films quickly rushed into production the sequel Scream 2, with principal photography beginning a little more than six months after the release of Scream, with a release date set for December, 12th, 1997. Returning with Craven were main actors Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Jamie Kennedy, and Liev Schreiber (playing heroine Sidney Prescott, retired deputy sheriff Dewey Riley, ambitious news reporter Gale Weathers, film-geek Randy Meeks, and exonerated killer Cotton Weary respectively), joined by newcomers; Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jerry O'Connell, Timothy Olyphant and Laurie Metcalf. Scream 2 was even bigger success than it's predecessor, which led Craven to film the final film in the trilogy, Scream 3 in 2000 (although original writer Kevin Williamson did not write the screenplay for Scream 3 as he directing his first feature film, Teaching Mrs. Tingle). In between the productions of Scream 2 and Scream 3, Craven directed an Academy Award nominated performance from Meryl Streep in his one film made outside the horror genre, Music of the Heart (1999).

As Dimension Films released a slew of horror films branded as "Wes Craven Presents" (including; Wishmaster (1997), Don't Look Down and Carnival of Souls (both in 1998), Dracula 2000 (2000), and They (2002)), it would not be until 2005 that Craven would release his next two pictures; the horror-comedy film Cursed, with Christina Ricci, Jesse Eisenberg and Joshua Jackson, and Red Eye with Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy for DreamWorks Pictures. It was during the production of Red Eye that Craven would marry his third, and final, wife Iya Labunka. After seeing the successful remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror, Craven and his producing partner Marianne Maddalena decided to produce a remake to Craven's own The Hills Have Eyes, personally selecting Alexandre Aja after seeing his film, Haunte Tension. With successful release of 2006's The Hills Have Eyes, Craven, Maddalena, and Sean S Cunningham came together to produce the remake of The Last House on the Left, again, another hit at the box office.

Craven's next project, after a 5-year hiatus (not counting his filming a small segment for the French film Paris, je t'aime), was the supernatural horror film, My Soul to Take. Although it was shot on film, Rogue Pictures decided to take advantage of the growing popularity of 3D and converted the film in post production. Unfortunately the film received largely negative reviews from critics, with a Rotten Tomatoes consensus: "Dull, joyless, and formulaic, My Soul to Take suggests writer/director Wes Craven ended his five-year filmmaking hiatus too soon." The following year, Craven would return to form with what would be his final film, Scream 4. Reuniting Craven with writer Kevin Williamson, producer Bob Weinstein, and the returning cast of Campbell, Arquette, and Cox, Scream 4 was praised by most critics with Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, stating "It's a giddy reminder of everything that made Scream such a fresh scream in the first place," while Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times wrote that "Scream 4 finds a way to live up to its gory past while it carves out new terrors in new ways."

After an undetermined period of illness, the world was shocked when it was announced that Wes Craven had died of brain cancer, at the age of 76. But even as the world mourned the passing of a great filmmaker, many took the time to look over his life's work and access his legacy within the horror genre. After an incredible career, Craven would be forever remembered for creating some of the most iconic villian's in cinematic history, having launched the careers of many young stars - Johnny Depp, Sharon Stone, and Kristy Swanson, to name but a few - and forged lifelong friendships with such contemporaries as Sean S Cunningham and Robert Evans. Wes Craven will forever be missed, but will remain in the hearts of his millions of fans the world over, and will leave a filmography yet to be discovered by the next generations of horror fans to continue his memory well into the future.

Wesley Earl Craven

August 2, 1939 – August 30, 2015

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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - August 29th

"JEEPERS CREEPERS 2" released in 2003

"Every 23 years for 23 days... it gets to eat" You were warned in the first movie, but now, three days after those events, The Creeper (Jonathan Breck) is back and now has his sights on a stranded school bus carrying a high school basketball team and their teachers. One girl in the group however, Minxie Hayes (Nicki Aycox) begins to experience strange visions that just may be enough to save them from the Creeper's clutches, in Victor Salva's Jeepers Creepers 2!

Watch the Jeepers Creepers 2 trailer below!

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As the long spring comes to an end, a young boy named Billy Taggart (Shaun Fleming) is fixing the scarecrows in his father's cornfield. As he's working, Billy encounters the Creeper, disguised as one of the scarecrows. The Creepers abducts Billy right on front od his father Jack Taggart Sr. (Ray Wise) and brother, Jack Jr. (Luke Edwards), carrying his body away into the sky. The following day, a school bus carrying a high school basketball team and cheerleaders suffers a blowout. The chaperones inspect the tire and find it torn apart by a hand-crafted shuriken seemingly constructed from fragments of bone! Getting the bus back on the road, one of the cheerleaders Minxie Hayes (Aycox) has a vision of Darry Jenner (Justin Long) warning them to "go back!", just as the Creeper sprints out of the cornfield and throws another shuriken at the wheels of the bus, disabling it completely. As the students stay on the bus, the coach, Charlie Hanna (Thom Gossom, Jr.) and the bus driver, Betty Borman (Diane Delano) are killed by the Creeper, and then proceeds to attack the bus. Managing to keep him out, the students watch in horror as the Creeper points to a number of students - Dante (Al Santos), Jake (Josh Hammond), Scotty (Eric Nenninger), Bucky (Billy Aaron Brown), and especially Double D (Garikayi Mutambirwa) and Minxie. Minxie collapses and has another vision in which Darry explains the Creeper's nature: that every twenty-third spring, for twenty-three days, it emerges from hibernation and hunts for victims, from whom it selects specific organs and body parts which it then consumes in order to replace those of its own. After hearing numerous police reports, which imply that the authorities are aware of what is going on, the Taggarts' establishes radio contact with the students and Jack Sr. readies himself and his son to battle the Creeper using a makeshift spear with the bone-handled dagger dropped by the Creeper as a speartip. But as the Creeper begins to attack the bus again, the students decide to make a last desperate run from the bus to save themselves. Just who will survive after the Creeper has his "peepers" set on them?

[in Minxie's vision]
Darry Jenner: [voice speaking backwards, then normally] Every 23rd spring, for 23 days it gets to eat.
Minxie Hayes: Eat what?
[she turns to look at him again, his eyes are gone]
Darry Jenner: Eat us.

Top:   Billy Taggert (Shaun Fleming) encounters the Creeper (Jonathan Breck);

Above:   Minxie (Nicki Aycox) has a vision of earlier victim Darry (Justin Long)

Writer/director Victor Salva wrote the whole "Every 23 years for 23 days it gets to eat" rule in the first movie so there would be no sequel unless the movie was set in the future, and knew the studio wouldn't want that. However producer Francis Ford Coppola found an easy loophole in the rule for the sequel: set it during the same 23 days as the first Jeepers Creepers movie, setting the sequel on the 23rd day for the purpose of not making another sequel. For Jeepers Creepers 2, Salva originally wrote a story where Darry's sister Trish (played by Gina Phillips) and the psychic Jezelle (Patricia Belcher) would hunt down The Creeper, while a school bus full of teens terrorized by The Creeper was just a subplot. But the more Victor Salva worked on the script, the more the bus plot became more interesting and so he decided to scrap Trish and Jezelle story and concentrate the film on the bus instead.

Gina Philips turned down the chance to reprise her role from the first Jeepers Creepers movie, but Justin Long would film a cameo. Also returning from the first film was Jonathan Breck as the titular character, the Creeper. According to Salva the inspiration for the character of Jack Taggart Sr. was Captain Ahab from Herman Melville's Moby Dick, casting Ray Wise as Jack Taggart Sr. (replacing Randy Quaid in the role). Interestingly enough, Meat Loaf was originally considered to play the bus driver (perhaps in part due to the film at one point having the alternative title of "Like A Bat Out Of Hell"!), before the role was filled by Diane Delano.

Minxie Hayes: It isn't dead. It's time ran out.
[Taggert Sr. stabs The Creeper again]
Taggert Sr.: It looks dead to me.

Top:   The teens on the school bus recoil from the Creeper!;

Above:   Jack Taggert Sr. (Ray Wise) is hell bent on revenge after his son's death!

The road scenes were all filmed on a small stretch of private road on the Tejon Ranch in California, while the interiors on the bus were filmed on a makeshift stage in an airport hanger. A total of four school buses were used for the production, including the converted sound stage bus for shooting the interiors; Salva jokingly referring to the school bus as the "Creepers Lunch Box". Salva would later comment that he nearly cut the scene were The Creeper 'flirts' with the teens on the bus, feeling that it might be too comical for the film. He was later glad that he didn't as it was a favorite scene with the screening audiences. In the scene where Izzy, Double D, and Rhonda try to escape The Creeper in the wrecked exterminator truck - Izzy accidentally puts the truck into drive instead of reverse when taking off. According to Travis Schiffner (Izzy) it was completely unintentional, but the take worked well enough that it was left in the film. Later the scene where Ray Wise was banging the hammer on an anvil, one of the sparks landed in his pocket and it caught fire. He performed the scene regardless, not putting the small flame out until Salva called "cut". Usually Salva makes a cameo appearance in all his movies, but because this film has no good spots for him to appear, his face can be seen very briefly on a magazine when the Creeper reaches through the roof of the bus.

One abandoned scene from Jeepers Creepers 2 was after the students abandon the bus and run away from the Creeper, some of the teens were to originally stumble upon an abandoned military bunker with a similar set up as the church from the first film. There, they'd stumble across the Creeper, who is in the middle of eating the dead body of an athlete. This scene was story-boarded and the set was even completely finished, but the scene was ultimately not shot.

GOOF:   When the Creeper is choosing his victims and he climbs sideways up the side of the bus, the guide wires holding him up are visibly seen above him.

Top:   Writer/Director Victor Salva (left) on set with returning actor, Justin Long;

Above:   Salva with the Creeper aka Jonathan Breck

Released in 2003, Jeepers Creepers 2 earned slightly more at the box office than it's predecessor, but was not as well received by the critics.  Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "The sequel has got the creepy bits down cold but lacks a fair share of scares." Roger Ebert, writing for The Chicago Sun-Times, rated the film one out of four stars and said, "Victor Salva's Jeepers Creepers 2 supplies us with a first-class creature, a fourth-rate story, and dialogue possibly created by feeding the screenplay into a pasta maker." However Andy Klein of Variety wrote, "Few things are scarier than a sequel to a bad movie, but, in fact, Jeepers Creepers 2 is substantially better than its predecessor, even while staying strictly within the genre's well-defined boundaries." In September 2015, it was announced that production on Jeepers Creepers 3 would begin filming in April 2016, with a planned 2017 release. Victor Salva will return as the director, Jonathan Breck as The Creeper, and Gina Philips, from the original Jeepers Creepers, is believed to be returning for her first screen role in five years as Trish Jenner.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   23%

ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - August 28th

"THE FINAL DESTINATION" released today in 2009

Death again stalks a fresh group of survivors who have escaped his design with the timely premonition of college student Nick O'Bannon (Bobby Campo). But Death doesn't like to be cheated, and one-by-one the survivors die in various gruesome "accidents" in David R. Ellis' second film (and the first in 3D!) in the franchise, The Final Destination!

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While attending a race at the McKinley Speedway with his girlfriend Lori Milligan (Shantel VanSanten) and their friends - Hunt Wynorski (Nick Zano) and Janet Cunningham (Haley Webb) - Nick O'Bannon (Campo) has a shocking premonition that there will be a horrific accident on the track that will send debris into the stadium, killing several people and causing the stadium itself to collapse. In his panic, Nick inadvertently starts an argument with Carter Daniels (Justin Welborn), who demands his wife stay as he chases them out of the stadium. Mechanic Andy Kewzer (Andrew Fiscella) and his girlfriend Nadia Monroy (Stephanie Honoré) along with mother Samantha Lane (Krista Allen) also exit the stadium followed by security guard George Lanter (Mykelti Williamson).  When the accident occurs, George prevents Carter from going in after his wife and Nadia is suddenly decapitated by a tire flying out of the stadium! Several days after the disaster, a drunken Carter tries to set a cross ablaze on George's front lawn blaming him for preventing him from saving his wife, but a chain of events causes his tow truck to start driving on its own and as Carter tries to regain control, he is grabbed by the towing chain and is blown up by his truck catching fire with the very gas he was using. The following day, Samantha is finishing up at a beauty parlor when a rock propelled by a lawn mower suddenly impales her eye and kills her. Nick becomes convinced that death is coming after them for evading their fates at the stadium, and convinces Lori and George to what is happening, although Hunt and Janet remain skeptical. After receiving another premonition involving water, Nick tries to warn Hunt, who has gone for one last conquest at the pool, while George and Lori try to find Janet, who becomes immobilized in a malfunctioning car wash - it is Hunt however who the premonition warns of when he has insides ripped out by the pools malfunctioning draining system, while Janet is saved by Lori and George at the last moment. The remaining survivors believe they are now safe from Death's design after saving Janet, until Nick has one more premonition warning that Lori and Janet will be killed in an explosion at a local cinema. Nick this time is determined to use this premonition to cheat Death again to save them!

[yelling at Nick and the other survivors]
Nadia: Have you all lost your fucking mind?
[gets head knocked off by a flying tire]

Top:   Hunt (Nick Zano) , Janet (Haley Webb), and Lori ((Shantel VanSanten) look on as Nick (Bobby Campo) has his first premonition:

Above:   Nadia (Stephanie Honoré) is the first to be claimed by Death!

After the success of Final Destination 3, which was initially planned to be in 3D, Eric Bress wrote a script which impressed producer Craig Perry and Warner Bros. enough to green-light a fourth installment. James Wong was on board to once again direct, but because of scheduling conflicts with Dragonball Evolution, he decided to drop out. Producers then turned to Final Destination 2 director David R. Ellis, who accepted because of the prospect of filming in 3D. Intended to be the last film in franchise, the title was changed to The Final Destination, but this would be the first Final Destination film not to feature Tony Todd as Coroner William Bludworth, due to his scheduling conflicts with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Although shooting was to be done in Vancouver, which was where the previous three films were shot, David R. Ellis convinced the producers to shoot in New Orleans instead to bring business to the city after Hurrican Katrina, and because the budget was already so large, they agreed. Before production moved to New Orleans, the opening crash sequence at "McKinley Speedway" was filmed at Mobile International Speedway in Irvington, Alabama. Among the film's many and varied death scenes, the dual intercut scenes involving Hunt and Janet (played by Nick Zano and Haley Webb respectively) are the most noteworthy; Hunt's death is reminiscent of the Chuck Palahniuk short story "Guts," which is about a boy whose intestines are sucked out by a pool filter's inlet pump when he sits on it. It is also similar to at least one real-life incident in 2007 when a young girl met the same fate and died in 2008 suffering complications after having had small bowel, liver and pancreas transplants. During the car wash scene, Haley Webb actually broke the car window she was pounding on, the actress was that scared! The editors decided to leave the shot in the final film.

TRIVIA:   The film within the film, 'Love Lies Dying', is actually Renny Harlin's The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996).

Top:   Janet is trapped inside her flooded car in the car wash, while (above) Hunt is trapped at the bottom of the pool!

On it's release in 2009, The Final Destination became the highest grossing film in the Destination franchise, and, conversely, received the worst reviews of the series to date. Scott Foundas from LA Weekly reviewed the film as, "[The] set pieces never quite muster the giddy brio of Final Destination 1 and 3 auteur James Wong at his best." and New York Daily News critic Elizabeth Weitzman writing, "With the exception of Williamson, the actors are as disposable as their characters, and there is no story to speak of". Simon Miraudo of Quickflix would go on to write, "Imagine a film that features an endless cavalcade of people being eviscerated in the bloodiest and bone-snappiest of ways, yet which somehow manages to inspire the audience to envy the victims". Australian critics, Jake Wilson (of The Age (Australia)) and Leigh Paatsch (of The Herald Sun (Australia)) were a little kinder in their reviews, respectively writing, "The characters are crash-test dummies, with dialogue to match. Yet Eric Bress' script is mockingly self-aware, framing the film as the ultimate example of violence as entertainment" and "The new film has been expertly shot in 3-D, and the extra dimension does punch-up the impact of the franchise's famously intricate set- piece snuffings". Despite claims by the producers and promotional materials, as well as the film's title, that this would be the final film in the Final Destination series, a sequel, Final Destination 5 would be released two years later in 2011.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   29% 

ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - August 28th

"ROPE" released in 1948

In this second "limited setting" film from master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock (the first being 1944's Lifeboat), Rope was based on the original play by Patrick Hamilton, which was said to be inspired by the real-life murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924 by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. In Hitchcock's version, Rope tells the story of two sociopathic college students Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger) who viciously strangle their classmate David Kentley (Dick Hogan), and then invite the dead man's family and friends, including their mutual mentor Rupert Cadell (James Stewart), to a dinner party at the scene of the crime!

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In a Manhattan penthouse, two brilliant young aesthetes, Brandon Shaw (Dall) and Phillip Morgan (Granger), strangle to death their former classmate, David (Hogan) and hide his body in a large antique wooden chest in the middle of their apartment. The two then start to prepare for their dinner guests to arrive, including the dead man's father, Mr. Kentley (Cedric Hardwicke), his aunt Mrs. Atwater (Constance Collier), and  fiancée, Janet Walker (Joan Chandler) - as well as Janet's former lover (and David's close friend)  Kenneth Lawrence (Douglas Dick). Their sole purpose to committing the crime and inviting such company afterwards is, for Brandon and Phillip, purely an intellectual exercise; they want to prove their superiority by committing the "perfect murder". Such an idea for the murder having been inspired years earlier by conversations with their prep school housemaster, publisher Rupert Cadell (Stewart), and he too is among the guests at the party, since Brandon in particular feels that he would approve of their "work of art". As the guests all arrive, Brendan not-so-subtly hints to David's absence, which only further antagonizes Phillip who, unlike the calm and in control Brendan, is visibly upset and filled with guilt. A suspicious Rupert quizzes a fidgety Phillip about this and about some of the inconsistencies that have been raised in conversation. For example, Phillip had vehemently denied ever strangling a chicken at the Shaws' farm, but Rupert has personally seen Phillip strangle several. As the evening goes on, David's father and fiancée begin to worry that he has neither arrived nor phoned and Brandon further increases the tension by playing matchmaker between Janet and Kenneth. Mr. Kentley decides to leave and he takes with him some books Brandon has given him, tied together with the same rope Brandon and Phillip used to strangle his son! Convinced that they have proved their intellectual superiority by not being discovered by their dinner guests, Brendan proposes they celebrate - only to have Rupert arrive back at the apartment, who intends to end this game of "cat and mouse" for good!

Brandon: The good Americans usually die young on the battlefield, don't they? Well, the Davids of this world merely occupy space, which is why he was the perfect victim for the perfect murder. Course he, uh, he was a Harvard undergraduate. That might make it justifiable homicide.

Top:   The two murderers, Phillip (Farley Granger) and Brendan (John Dall);

Above:   The dinner guests, including Prof. Rupert Cadell (James Stewart) are unaware a dead body is right in front of them!

The story for Rope was very loosely based on the real-life murder committed by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb (which was also the (fictionalized) subject of Compulsion (1959) and Swoon (1992)), with Patrick Hamilton's stage-play adaptation premiering at the Strand Theatre in 1929. The play was first broadcast on experimental live television by the BBC, on 8 March 1939, having adapted by Hamilton, produced by Dallas Bower, and used long takes - Bower decided on the technique in order to keep the murder chest constantly in shot. Director Alfred Hitchcock later said he saw (or heard about) the long takes of this television production and was inspired to attempt a feature film version. Alfred Hitchcock's Rope is very different from Hamilton's play, although the basic plot is followed rather faithfully. Hitchcock made his own adaptation with Hume Cronyn and they created new dialogue and characters for their adaptation. In addition, fellow screenwriter Arthur Laurents claimed that originally Hitchcock assured him the movie wouldn't show the opening murder itself, therefore creating doubt as to whether the two leading characters actually committed murder and whether the trunk had a corpse inside. Casting frequent leading man James Stewart in the role of Rupert Cadell, Hitchcock offered Stewart a substantial fee of $300,000 from the film's $1.5 million budget to star in Rope. Stewart however would later admit he felt he was miscast as the professor, and his disappointment at his character making his first entrance 28 minutes into the film.

Rope was filmed entirely in-studio (except for the opening credits) with an extraordinary cyclorama in the background was the largest backing ever used on a sound stage. It included models of the Empire State and the Chrysler buildings, numerous chimneys smoke, lights come on in buildings, neon signs light up, and the sunset which slowly unfolds as the movie progresses (the clouds themselves being made out of fibreglass). As well as being Hitchcock's first Technicolor film, it was also his "experimental", carefully designing and storyboarding each shot so it could be seamlessly edited together into one continuious shot! Rope was shot with a total of ten printed takes, ranging from four-and-a-half minutes to just over ten minutes (the maximum amount of film that a camera magazine or projector reel could hold). At the end of the takes, the film alternates between having the camera zoom into a dark object, totally blacking out the lens/screen, and making a conventional cut. However, the second edit, ostensibly one of the conventional ones, was clearly staged and shot to block the camera, but the all-black frames were left out of the final print. Most of the props, and even some of the apartment set's walls, were on casters and the crew had to wheel them out of the way and back into position as the camera moved around the set. Since the filming times were so long, everybody on the set tried their best to avoid any mistakes. At one point in the movie, the camera dolly ran over and broke a cameraman's foot, but to keep filming, he was gagged and dragged off. Another time, a woman puts her glass down but misses the table. A stagehand had to rush up and catch it before the glass hit the ground. Both parts are used in the final cut. On average, Hitchcock only managed to shoot roughly one segment per day. The last four or five segments had to be completely re-shot because Hitchcock wasn't happy with the color of the sunset.

Brandon: I've always wished for more artistic talent. Well, murder can be an art, too. The power to kill can be just as satisfying as the power to create.

Top:   James Stewart on the set of Rope;

Above:   Alfred Hitchcock directs the action

On it's release in 1948, Rope was actually banned in several theaters due to it's homosexual subtext between the characters Brandon and Phillip (homosexuality still being a highly controversial theme for the 1940's). Although Rope made it past the Production Code censors however, during the film's production, those involved described homosexuality as "it". Critics were also divided about Hitchcock's latest picture. In 1948, Variety magazine said "Hitchcock could have chosen a more entertaining subject with which to use the arresting camera and staging technique displayed in Rope." That same year, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times said the "novelty of the picture is not in the drama itself, it being a plainly deliberate and rather thin exercise in suspense, but merely in the method which Mr. Hitchcock has used to stretch the intended tension for the length of the little stunt" for a "story of meager range". Roger Ebert wrote a retrospective in 1984, "Alfred Hitchcock called Rope an 'experiment that didn’t work out', and he was happy to see it kept out of release for most of three decades," but went on to say that "Rope remains one of the most interesting experiments ever attempted by a major director working with big box-office names, and it's worth seeing just for that...".

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   97%