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Quick Links Aykroyd's Great-Grandfather Held Seances and His Father Wrote Books About Ghosts Aykroyd's Original Ghostbusters Script Was Set in the Future Ghostbusters' Enormous Success Encouraged Aykroyd Aykroyd Continues His Love of the Paranormal Dan Aykroyd's childhood influence helped shape Ghostbusters' concept, combining comedy with his passion for the paranormal. The original script was darker but wisely pared down for the best chance at financial success. Ghostbusters' enormous success spurred Aykrord to pursue more supernatural projects despite some later box-office bombs.

Ghostbusters has been lauded since its 1984 release for its perfect marriage of comedy and the supernatural. The film seemed, at first glance, to be a random, zany premise like the ones stars Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray used to write for Saturday Night Live. However, its foundation and original screenplay have much deeper roots for Aykroyd. Born in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1952, Aykroyd comes from a long family lineage...

Level 33 Entertainment has announced the upcoming release of Cold Meat, being described as “a serial killer survival thriller with a killer hook set during a dangerous snow blizzard.”

Cold Meat will be playing in limited theaters and arriving On Demand February 23.

The film premiered at FrightFest London 2023, where it was nominated for a slew of awards including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor (Allen Leech), and Best Scare.

Cold Meat is opening in the following theaters:

The Boedecker Theater – Boulder, Co Cinema 14 Chatham Powered by Emagine, Chicago, Il Emagine Woodhaven 10, Woodhaven, Mi Galaxy Mission Grove 18, Riverside, CA Emagine Rogers 18, Rogers, Mn Galaxy Monroe 12, Monroe, Wa

In the upcoming indie, “While passing through the Colorado Rockies, David stops for a meal at a diner and ends up heroically saving a young waitress from her violent ex-husband. David hits the road again amid a dangerous blizzard, and one false move sends...

Jerry Lewis, known for his comedic roles, wanted to prove himself in a dramatic part, which led him to star in The Day the Clown Cried. The film attempted to inject humor into the Holocaust, a sensitive subject, and tell the story of a circus clown in a Nazi internment camp. The film was never released due to creative conflicts and Lewis' dissatisfaction with the final product, but its concept has influenced subsequent films like Life is Beautiful and Jakob the Liar.

There was an idea for a film that would be a drama with all the pathos and gravitas of a dramatic movie but with a sweet person at the center, showing the horrors of war. The famed Jerry Lewis was tapped to star, and it would be his entry into the world of serious drama. The film was shot and shelved. But why?

There are many rumors about The Day the Clown Cried,...

Norman Lear, creator of iconic sitcoms like All in the Family, has passed away at the age of 101. Lear's career started in his 30s and he left an indelible impact on American television. All in the Family was a critically acclaimed and influential show that introduced lasting episode structures in family comedy.

Television icon Norman Lear has passed away. A television talent for decades, Lear is the creator behind several classic sitcoms including All in the Family. The producer was nominated for copious Emmy awards, throughout his decades-long career.

According to Variety, Lear has died at the age of 101. Lear passed on Tuesday, December 5, reportedly dying in his Los Angeles home of natural causes. A statement from Lear’s family praised Lear’s “life of creativity, tenacity, and empathy.” Check out the full statement from the family below:

Thank you for the moving outpouring of love and support in honor of our wonderful husband,...

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“Is You In There, Zombie?”

By Raymond Benson

There are a handful of Hollywood movies out there that successfully combined comedy with the horror genre. Surprisingly, truly good ones are few and far between. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) is perhaps the quintessential example of the genre mashup. It provided genuine thrills and some frights mixed in with hilarious comedic bits. A more recent one that comes to mind is of course the 1984 megahit, Ghostbusters. There is no question that this Bill Murray vehicle owes a great deal to the 1940 romp, The Ghost Breakers, considered one of Bob Hope’s most beloved early pictures.

Based on the 1909 stage play, The Ghost Breaker, by Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard, the 1940 movie is actually a remake of previous adaptations. Both Cecil B. DeMille and Alfred E. Green made silent films of the play in 1914 and 1922, respectively,...

To mark the 40th anniversary of Wipers’ second album, Youth of America, the group has put together a commemorative vinyl reissue with Jackpot Records that features several previously unreleased tracks.

The LP represented a progression for the band, which stepped away from the succinctly catchy punk songs of their previous release, Is This Real?, and explored sprawling, heavily textured songs, some of which surpassed the 10-minute mark. The record, Youth of America — Anniversary Edition: 1981 — 2021, will come out on the first of Record Store Day’s two drops this year, June 12th.

We’ve got a big week of home media releases ahead of us, so I hope that your wallets are ready to suffer a whole lot of abuse this Tuesday, because there are a ton of must-own titles headed home that genre fans are definitely going to want to add to their collections. We have two new Vestron Video Collector’s Series releases to look forward to—David Cronenberg’s Shivers and Little Monsters (1989)—and for the first time ever, Wes Craven’s Vampire in Brooklyn is being released on Blu-ray.

If you’re a Stephen King fan, Paramount has assembled a 5-Movie Collection on Blu that includes both iterations of Pet Sematary, Silver Bullet, The Stand, and The Dead Zone. Kl Studio Classics is showing some love this Tuesday to the horror comedy The Ghost Breakers featuring Bob Hope, and Dark Sky Films is set to release Luz: The Flower of Evil this week,...

Arrow Video is excited to announce the August slate of titles on their subscription-based Arrow Video Channel, including the action-packed black-and-white nautical nightmare Lake Michigan Monster, the uncut version of Argento's Tenebrae and Stephen King's Children of the Corn.

Lake Michigan Monster has been acclaimed at film festivals around the globe, taking home the Gold Audience Award for Best International Film at Fantasia, Best Visual Effects - Feature at FilmQuest, Best Ensemble Cast at GenreBlast and Best Wisconsin Film at the Beloit International Film Festival. Writer, director and star Ryland Brickson Cole Tews has crafted an inventive and irreverent homage to the classic monster films of yore with the bizarre Captain Seafield, joined by a colorful crew of misfits on a mission to slay the sea beast that killed his father.

Lake Michigan Monster and Inferno of Torture will be available August 3rd on the Arrow Video Channel in the US and the UK.

Arrow Video announced a killer August lineup for their video channel, including Children of the Corn, the uncut version of Tenebrae, and much more:

London, UK - Arrow Video is excited to announce the August slate of titles on their subscription-based Arrow Video Channel, including the action-packed black-and-white nautical nightmare Lake Michigan Monster, the uncut version of Argento's Tenebrae and Stephen King's Children of the Corn.

Lake Michigan Monster has been acclaimed at film festivals around the globe, taking home the Gold Audience Award for Best International Film at Fantasia, Best Visual Effects - Feature at FilmQuest, Best Ensemble Cast at GenreBlast and Best Wisconsin Film at the Beloit International Film Festival. Writer, director and star Ryland Brickson Cole Tews has crafted an inventive and irreverent homage to the classic monster films of yore with the bizarre Captain Seafield, joined by a colourful crew of misfits on a mission...

Director, writer and producer Sam Raimi may be best known to mainstream audiences for directing blockbuster movies like the original Spider-Man trilogy (with Tobey Maguire) and Oz the Great and Powerful. But Raimi got his start making one of the greatest independent horror movies of all time: The Evil Dead. Shot quick and dirty, the film became an instant classic and spawned a franchise encompassing more movies, TV, comics and video games.

Raimi has dipped in and out of the horror genre over the years, while moving into bigger movies and different genres (he’ll revisit the Marvel universe soon too with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), but his new project, an anthology series called 50 States of Fright, seems like a return to the kind of pulp, story-driven, no-frills horror with which he started his career.

The premise is simple: the show aims to adapt scary folk...

Quibi, the Jeffrey Katzenberg-backed 2020-launching streaming platform designed for short-form stories, has announced a most intriguing offering amongst its deep backlog, a horror anthology series, titled 50 States of Fright, which has corralled quite the cast and crew, notably with genre legend Sam Raimi–the movie maestro of the Evil Dead cinematic and television franchise and crucial comic book cinema of the Spider-Man Trilogy–tapped to develop and even direct an entry.

Rachel Brosnahan, Travis Fimmel, Christina Ricci, Asa Butterfield, Jacob Batalon, Ming-Na Wen, Taissa Farmiga, John Marshall Jones and Ron Livingston are just some of the names lined up to fill 50 States of Fright’s anthology episodes. With the average runtime of approximately 10 minutes, each episode culls content from American urban legends and folklore.

50 States of Fright will manifest via Gunpowder & Sky’s horror brand, Alter, which will produce with Diga Studios and Pod 3.

50 States of Fright...

For those of you out there that might not know, Elvira Mistress of the Dark has appeared in two pinball machines in the past, 1989’s Elvira and the Party Monsters, and 1996’s Scared Stiff. And this past Halloween she got another dubbed Elvira: House of Horrors. The new pinball game integrates campy movies (including several […]

The post Elvira Plays New Pinball Game Elvira: House Of Horrors appeared first on Dread Central.

New horror brand Alter, in association with Diga Studios and Pod 3, has teamed up to release a new anthology series called 50 States of Fright which explores the country's urban legends. Directed and co-written by Sam Raimi, the cast includes Taissa Farmiga, Christina Ricci, and Rachel Brosnahan, just to name a few. Also: FrightFest's Halloween event details, The Fan's debut of Blu-ray, and production and release details announced for Necropolis: Legion.

50 States of Fright Release Details: "Quibi, Gunpowder & Sky’s new horror brand, Alter, that explores the human condition through warped perspectives, along with Diga Studios and Pod 3 announced today that Rachel Brosnahan, Travis Fimmel, Christina Ricci, Jacob Batalon, Ming-Na Wen, Taissa Farmiga, Asa Butterfield, John Marshall Jones, and Ron Livingston will each star in an episode of the upcoming horror anthology series, “50 States of Fright.” The first season of “50 States of Fright” will explore stories based on urban legends from Colorado,...

Joseph Baxter Michael Ahr Dec 18, 2019

50 States of Fright, an urban legends-based horror anthology series bound for Quibi, reveals an impressive cast roster.

Quibi, the Jeffrey Katzenberg-backed 2020-launching streaming platform designed for short-form stories, has announced a most intriguing offering amongst its 40-project-deep backlog, a horror anthology series, titled 50 States of Fright, which has corralled quite the cast and crew, notably with genre legend Sam Raimi – the movie maestro of the Evil Dead cinematic and television franchise and crucial comic book cinema of the Spider-Man Trilogy – tapped to develop and even direct an entry.

Rachel Brosnahan, Travis Fimmel, Christina Ricci, Asa Butterfield, Jacob Batalon, Ming-Na Wen, Taissa Farmiga, John Marshall Jones and Ron Livingston are just some of the names lined up to fill 50 States of Fright’s anthology episodes, which each culling content from American urban legends and folklore.

The official greenlight has been given for 50 States of Fright,...

It's been years in the making and even more years of rumors before that, but on Friday, September 13th Stern Pinball finally teased their new Elvira pinball game, Elvira's House of Horrors. There is talk that this new release will use a production model close to Stern's Batman '66 or The Beatles machine, which more limited than the typical Stern release.

The taunting is over! The haunting begins! #WelcomeBackpic.twitter.com/OnmxCb4kKK

— Stern Pinball (@sternpinballinc) September 13, 2019

The teaser isn't much, but if this video is teasing anything, it's that the new Elvira game is going to drenched in queen-of-Halloween-haunted-house themed fun.

Cassandra Peterson announced the news 3 months ago that there would be a follow up to her immensely popular, dare I say, legendary pinball machines, Elvira and the Party Monsters (1989) and Scared Stiff (1996), both of which are top rated games in the eyes of collectors and players alike.

"And.

After a quiet week of home media releases, April 23rd comes roaring back with a cavalcade of new titles hitting Blu-ray and DVD this Tuesday, including the 40th Anniversary 4K Edition of Alien, just in time for Alien Day on April 26th. Escape Room is also hitting multiple formats this week, and for those of you who dig on cult horror, we have two great films featuring some of the genre’s biggest talents being celebrated by Kino Lorber: The Strange Door and Scream and Scream Again.

Arrow Video has put together a Special Edition release of Scared Stiff that comes home on Tuesday, and for those of you who enjoy folk horror, be sure to check out Hagazussa when it hits both Blu and DVD.

Other notable releases for April 23rd include the 4K release of The Witch, I Spit On Your Grave: Déjà Vu, Destroyer, Backyard Epics, and 1st Summoning.

Scared Stiff (1987) will be available on Blu-ray April 23rd from Arrow Video

TV star Mary Page Keller (Pretty Little Liars) appears alongside Andrew Stevens as a couple terrorized by an age-old curse in this much-underrated late-80s offering from director Richard Friedman.

Keller plays Kate Christopher, a singer who moves into an old colonial mansion with her son and psychologist boyfriend David (Stevens). But when they make a strange and gruesome discovery in the boarded-up attic, it soon becomes clear that the mansion carries with it a dark and blood-stained past and one that is about to terrorize them in the present.

The second feature helmed by Richard Friedman, who went on to direct such genre favourites as Doom Asylum and Phantom of the Mall: Eric s Revenge, Scared Stiff (Aka The Masterson Curse) builds to an astonishing practical FX-laden climax sure to please fans of 80s horror. >/p>

Special...

Stars: Jason Gedrick, Paul Sorvino, Erin O’Brien, Kira Reed Lorsch, Treva Etienne, Tim DeZarn, Neraida Bega, Dee Dee Sorvino, Vince Lozano, Chris Coppola, Matthew Alan Brady, Asante Jones, Tomas Johansson, Jackie Falcon | Written by Nathan Illsley | Directed by Richard Friedman

Richard Friedman, whom genre fans will know as the director of Arrow Video titles Doom Asylum and Scared Stiff, helms this cop drama starring Jason Gedrick – an actor who’s probably most well-known for the Iron Eagle franchise of the 80s but whom also starred in one of the most underrated TV cop shows of the 90s, Ez Streets. Friedman is no stranger to cop dramas either, having helmed episodes of Silk Stalkings and Baywatch Nights alongside a myriad of genre television.

With Acts of Desperation Friedman manages to parlay all his experiences into one film; the ridiculousness of films like Doom Asylum and Phantom of the Mall melded...