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@txhorrorflix-blog
I'm a big fan of William Browning Spencer's novel, Resume With Monsters. When I met Jessica Gardner at a web show event, she dropped his name not knowing this about me. Well, I've read the source material for this short film by Jessica Gardner, and now I've watched her adaptation. All's I can say is Florida or Texas, VERY creepy & unsettling stuff. Subtly so, like the finer smoke notes of Texas BBQ. It's of a genre vein I like to call "Southern decay."
TEDDY, by Kevin Sommerfield & Steve Goltz.
Wisconsin - known for cheddar, and... authentic slasher-revenge horror? Mayhaps! A lean and meaty 12 minutes, TEDDY is a treat topped with genuine Wisconsin cheese. Sharp editing, excellent timing, surprisingly good acting, and a spare, witty script make it fun. It definitely harkens back to the slasher flix of the 80s.
Texas Horror Flix's philosophy is to post all, praise few. To paraphrase Tiffany in Bride of Chucky, we'll promote almost anything independent, but we only make sweet verbal love to the rare.
We like it.
Even if it is from Wisconsin... we just wish it was from Texas, we got nothing against WI per se :)
Safe*House trailer.
Embedded video for those who ain't keen on clickin' through... DELICIOUS!
Looks juicy! Don't know 'bout y'all, but that's how we likes OUR meat!
Created by: Bosswench Films & Josie Collier
Submitted by: Robert Lambert
Teaser for I See You, created by Austinite-Texan William Instone.
Creepy, compelling shots.
JON, IndieGoGo plea for finishing funds.
Austin, Texas Creator (director, writer, producer) William Instone.
Texas genre productions & my hobbyist role
I've got a real soft spot for the underdog. Thing is, underdogs don't want to visualize themselves in that way... I suppose it connotes weakness, or evokes sympathy. I disagree, but I'm not here to argue that level of perception.
I want to help tell the stories of the hundreds of Texas genre productions that are going on, right now in Texas. The web shows. The short films. The indie flicks. The ultra-low-budget. The artwork. The writing. The dealing. The business. The underground & guerrilla.
Horror is just the tip of the iceberg. I talk mainly horror because it's what I "know" best. It is also the red-headed stepchild of genre, and that burns me up a little because of the careers launched and the hours of genuinely escapist yet incredibly emotional nature of horror. I chose Texas horror because I saw a duality to exploit: Texas horror, as subgenre, and Texas broadly conceived as a subgenre to many: noir, the neo-noir, the Western, comedy, melodrama... Is there a Texas subgenre to be found in science fiction, fantasy? I dunno. Doesn't mean there aren't productions of those genres taking place or planned in Texas; doesn't mean there aren't Texans doing the work.
I'm here for that purpose: my mission is to promote, publicize, talk, generate BUZZ, and be the best goddamn Texas genre pimp out there. For free, because it is a hobby, and maybe it'll sprout wings made of green paper. Who knows, but I am, right now, doing it because I like it, because I wanna, and because I kinda have a need to be liked.
The Big Kids & the Cool Kids & the In Crowd don't need help (but I would of course help them) - the worst thought in my mind as a former "creative wannabe" is that there is so much out there being made and not getting any attention. A goddamned shame, that.
Drop me a line. Reach out. Send me your blurbs. Maybe I'll post the raw info, maybe I can craft an Examiner article out of it. Either way it's gonna get tweeted and Facebooked. I have no ego, no horse in this race, no dog in this hunt, so everyone with a legitimate interest and some decent 4-1-1 will be a part of the effort.
Join me, won't ya?
Terror Tuesday! Final? Never. Promises made, promises broken.
At the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz tonight:
Friday the 13th (Part 4): The Final Chapter.
Sold out. One of my favs. Putting "final" in any title guarantees it is not.
Check out my Twitter pals' Big Ass Fan Site.
Oh, and be a mensch by visiting my Examiner.com column.
Still paying for it: 'Grave Encounters' TW On Demand.
Found footage... such a tricky canvas. When it works, if you are into it, it's at least partly because it *looks* somewhat authentic: non-acting, effects, a kind of logic to its existence and reveal. The thing is when working with a new chain on an old bar there's a serious risk of binding up the saw: and the kickback can be messy. The new chain here is HD recording, oiled with cheap overly-ambitious FX, cutting into balsa.
Perhaps the conceit for 'Grave Encounters' is the meta-mocumentary: the juxtapositions of self-referential irony, modern film structure, and found footage narrative. This is incredibly difficult to pull off, as it requires a deep sense of internally-consistent logic and demands significant buy in from the audience.*
'Grave Encounters' is nothing more than wink-wink, nudge-nudge cleverness, delivered with all the tact of a pneumatic bolt to the skull, and without a basin for a tidy bleed. 'Grave Encounters' starts off strong: looks good, sounds good, is good. At about the half way point two things happen that begin the bind-up.
The first choke point is the fizzling of the story. There's not enough meat to carry 90+ minutes. It's half a slab of ribs, and sadly moves from homage to directly derivative of better entries. However, there are some decent chills (funhouse variety, and TxHF likes 'em) and rising tension. It's a creepy abandoned haunted insane asylum, a la House on Haunted Hill (1999), a TxHF fave: that SHOULD be plenty scary. So it is for a bit, and there is a dry and effective satirical stripe to hold some interest early on.
The second, and returning to the HD concerns, is the beginning of a string of laughably bad CGI/compositing effects: a big not-scary flash of light, which is supposedly supernatural wrath. HD is unforgiving of the badly blended compositing because there are more lines of resolution and more frames: it just stands out like a severed thumb on a birthday cake.
At any rate, it all finally ends. If you paid to see it, you may want your money back. If you got the idea it was badass because it was at Tribeca, remember that it's easy to end up bloated and ill from eating festival fare. You may also wonder, given the ending, a) where the fake crew found atomic batteries for the lights & cameras, not to mention the apparently never ending tapes; b) who found and mailed the footage to the producers; and c) why the producers didn't mark it Return to Sender.
TxHF gives it a grade of Lunch Meat.
*Unclear on the concept of good v. bad meta-moc? Very well, by way of comparison:
'Undocumented' does the meta-moc to great effect; as does 'Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon'. Check those out before bothering with 'Grave Encounters'.
Semi-retraction: 'Insidious' no longer scary
TxHF has now watched 'Insidious' four times.
It is no longer scary: unlike Paranormal Activity as a franchise, there are no other funhouse chills and thrills to locate in the frames. What you see it what you get, and there's nothing more to find. In other words, it is thin, which only serves to elucidate the glaring dullness of Leigh Whannel's script and the inconsistent direction of James Wan.
The third act tromp into The Further is laughable: the film would be better had these scenes been inferred or expressed in (gasp) CGI. Wan... a good word, very descriptive, more so than you'd think.
'Insidious' proves that a) 'Saw' was a one-off fluke of a success, an exception to the now-established rule (cf. 'Dead Silence'); b) the strengths of Paranormal Activity lay in the found-footage mode of delivery, and those strengths do not necessarily transfer to the traditional production paradigm; and c) a scary movie does not always remain scary if there's nothing more to observe within the tableau - I'll call it extinction of fear, a curve.
Frontiers of #txhorror #texashorror #TxHF @TxHorrorFlix
As the work continues to renovate and relaunch TexasHorrorFlix.com as a webzine, #TxHF content, such that it is will be limited to general bloviations in the 140-character broadcast social medium known as Twitter. The challenge for @TxHorrorFlix will be to invoke and promote #TxHF, #txhorror, #texas, #booyall, &c. to trending status.
We want more followers before relaunch - because it is our goal to monetize as an advertising outlet at the local level as much as the national level. Why? We want revenues and trade accounts so that we can bring you more content, in a variety of media, categorized and better organized; and, offer opportunities for paid correspondence and contributions! Moreover, we want to attend openings, previews, critics' screenings, conferences, and festivals.
In short we want to improve the experience and drive the subgenre of Texas horror home to you, for your enjoyment and understanding. Texas is our home, horror our passion, and we're taking it to the next level.
Stay tuned. And of course follow us on Twitter.
Not bad for such an unforgiving medium... there's no delete, no cut-and-paste, no drag-and-drop. Just the blade and the flesh.
It occurs to me...
That I am holding back in completing my magnum opus-thesis of bloggy dread, the "What is it, Texas horror?"
I posted some of the concepts as bullet points the other day and I wasn't pleased with the presentation. Yeah, it may be a blog, and it may get no eyeballs at all, but I've got standards, see?
Further I was posed an interesting question the other day:
Are there really that many [Texas horror movies] to justify a blog?
I answered absolutely in the affirmative, and I meant it. I didn't bother much to explain that I like to blather on about my paragon Texas horror flick, all horror flix in general, or that I've developed a rather complicated categorical system for stuffing the box.
To that end I have begun work on an appendix (in the literary sense, not the literal vestigial organ sense) that will tie into the final thesis as a catalogue of Texas horror. Anyway, guess I better get hoppin'.
You are hereby invited to submit to me your thoughts. If it makes you feel better, I can publicly deride your choices. Some people are into that sorta thing.
Perish the thought...
Have I given the impression that I like/love every horror movie I see?
Lest that myth further propagate...
My Soul to Take is soulless and only takes your time and patience.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) should have been allowed to sleep through the rest of my pre-dementia years.
Piranha (2010) is a virtual aquarium of giddy gore; campy performances and cameos; disturbing bits involving sexy bits (and gloriously gratuitous T & A unnecessarily filthied by hideous circumstances); some wasted moments in terms of timing; AND cartoonish, slapdash, overused CGI.
And Deep Rising was nowhere near as B-movie good as I remembered.
That is all.