Round-Up: BENEATH LONDON Exclusive Excerpt, DEAD RISING: WATCHTOWER, THE REDWOOD MASSACRE Trailer

Titan Books has provided us with an exclusive excerpt from James P. Blaylock's Beneath London, which will hit stores next week. Also in this round-up: international release details for Dead Rising: Watchtower and a trailer for The Redwood Massacre.

James P. Blaylock's Beneath London: "When the sudden collapse of the Victoria Embankment uncovers a passage to an unknown realm beneath London, Langdon St. Ives sets out explore it, not knowing that a brilliant and wealthy psychopathic murderer is working to keep the underworld’s secrets hidden for reasons of his own. Assumed to be dead and buried deep beneath London, St. Ives lives secretly on the streets of the great city where he, Alice St. Ives, and their stalwart friends investigate a string of ghastly crimes: the gruesome death of a witch in a forest hovel, the kidnapping of a blind, psychic girl who can see into the human soul, and the grim horrors of a secret hospital where experiments in medical electricity and the development of human, vampiric fungi serve the strange, murderous ends of St. Ives’s greatest and most dangerous nemesis."

To learn more about Beneath London, which comes out on June 9th from Titan Books, visit:

• http://titanbooks.com/beneath-london-7656/

Prologue
The Dark Realm

The distances that stretched away on three sides of the great cavern lay in perpetual half-darkness, with absolute darkness above, the invisible ceiling of the cavern supported by limestone columns as big around as forest oaks. Now and then Beaumont could discern the pale tips of stalactites overhead, conical shadows standing out against the darkness. He could hear the sound of ambitious bats skittering about, which meant that night was falling in the surface world. The ruins of a stone wall built in a long-forgotten time were just visible to the southeast, according to the compass that Beaumont carried in his pocket.

The track he followed ascended to a secret passage on Hampstead Heath very near the Highgate Ponds. It was a four-hour journey, and he intended to complete it before the moon rose over London. He rarely had need of a torch to find his way topside, although he carried one of his own making beneath his oilskin cloak, which he wore against the wet of the upper reaches where the underground London Rivers, the Tyburn and the Westbourne and the Fleet, leaked through their brick-and-mortar floor and through the cracks and crevices in the limestone below, forming other nameless rivers in the world beneath.

Behind him stood the stone dwelling to which his father had added a stick-and-thatch roof many years ago, the thatch well preserved in the dry air in this part of the underworld. The structure itself, which his father had called simply ‘the hut’ was built of stone blocks and was ancient beyond measure. Minutes ago it had been cheerful with lamplight. Beaumont had a plentiful supply of lamp oil in the hut, as well as food – jerk meat and salt pork and dried peas, and there was sometimes a feral pig to shoot, although no way to keep the meat fresh. It had to be butchered and hauled topside. It was a mistake to leave a pig carcass close by and so invite unwanted guests out of the darkness. He had seen the leviathan itself not far from this very spot when he was a lad, an immense reptile four fathoms in length with teeth around its snout like the tines of a harrow. Today he had left his rifle in the hovel, wrapped in oilcloth, along with several torches. He had no safe place to stow it topside, and no reason to carry it topside in any event.

The ground stretching away roundabout him glowed with a pale green luminosity now, reminding Beaumont of the wings of the moths that swarmed around gas lamps late at night in London alleys – ‘toad light,’ Beaumont’s father had called the glow when he had first allowed Beaumont to accompany him to the underworld. The ‘toads’ were in fact mushrooms, some of enormous girth and as tall as a grown man – much taller than Beaumont, who was a dwarf – although these monsters grew only in the deep, nether regions. The older, dried-out toads burned well and were plentiful enough for warmth and cooking both.

Those toads that were living glowed with an inner light, brighter on the rare occasions that they were freshly fed with meat, dim and small if they subsisted on the wet muck of the cavern floor. Fields of smaller toads grew in the shallows of the subterranean ponds where Beaumont sometimes fished. These were the brightest of the lot, dining on blind cavefish that swarmed in the depths. When he was a child, his father had told him that the toads were nasty-minded pookies, fashioned by elves at midnight, but Beaumont didn’t hold with elves. He had never seen one, neither in the underworld nor topside, and he had no reason to believe what he hadn’t seen with his own eyes.

After an hour of steady travel he entered a bright patch of toads, where he could check his pocket watch, which he had pinched from an old gent in Borough Market. It was past eight o’clock in the morning on the surface. He was weary of the darkness and the silence, which he had endured for three days now. He saw nearby a pool of water glowing with toad light. A misty cascade fell into it from the darkness above, geysering up in the center and casting out a circle of small waves. Despite his weariness, Beaumont stepped across the muddy fringe of the pool to look within – to do some fishing, as he thought of it, although not for the swimming variety of fish.

He had always been a lucky fisherman, as had his father been, finding castaway treasures that had fallen from the underground rivers and sewers that lay in the floor of the world above. There had been gold and silver rings aplenty, some with jewels, and all manner of coins, including crown and half-crown pieces and enough gold guineas to fill a leather bag, which was buried in the hut under rocks for safe keeping.

He took out a torch and used the stick end to shift the stones, and saw straightaway a fused ball of coins the size of a large orange. He waded out into the water and picked it up, then quickly waded back out again and shook the water from his oiled boots. Crouching by the edge of the pool, he broke up the ball of coins against a rock, swirling mud and debris from them, and carefully collecting them again from the bottom. He counted them as he did so: one hundred and forty-two Spanish doubloons. That they had come to this place was uncommonly strange: birds of a feather, mayhaps, the way they were gathered together. But they were clearly meant for Beaumont to find and no one else, which he knew absolutely because he had found them.

He stowed them away and set out again, moving upward along a muddy game trail that had been trodden flat by feral pigs, some of them prodigiously large, judging from their hoof-prints. But these prints were old enough. They didn’t signify. And pigs were a noisy lot that stank; they wouldn’t take him unawares.

Just as he was telling himself this, he saw the impression of a boot-print, half trodden out by the passing of the pigs. He stood still, unsettled in his mind. Rarely had he seen such a thing before, not this far beneath, not unless it was a print of his own boot, which this was not. He tried to recall how long had it been since he had taken this particular way to the surface – two years, perhaps. He moved on slowly, peering at the ground until he found a print of the toe of the boot, almost too faint to make out in the dim light, for the nearest cluster of toads was now a good way ahead of him. He had to be certain, however, of the thing that he feared – he was surprised to feel his heart beating so – and so he removed his cape and drew a torch out of his bundle, lighting the beeswax-soaked rope with a lucifer match and shading his eyes from the brightness.

The shallow print was plain in the light of the torch – a hobnailed boot, the nails forming the five outer points of a pentagram and the five inner crossings. Beaumont quenched the torch in a shallow pool before moving on again as silently as he could, anxious now to make his way toward the surface, and not at all anxious to meet the man whose boot had left its mark in the mud – a man whom he had believed to be dead.
He rounded a bend in the path, but stopped at the sight of a man who reclined on an enormous clump of vibrantly luminescent toads, his flesh and hair and beard aglow with the moth-green hue. The stalks had affixed themselves to him, his right hand and forearm deeply imbedded in the pale sponge. A broad, fungal cap had crept down over his forehead, although his face was still clear of it, and would remain so, for the toads would allow him to breathe.

Beaumont had seen pigs kept alive thus, wounded pigs that had stumbled in among the toads and were imprisoned by them, sustained for years, perhaps forever. He could see the slow heaving of the man’s chest as he drew air into his lungs. His fob-chain was still secure in the pocket of the vest, stained green-black from fungal secretions, the fabric of the vest half rotted away where the chain was pinned to it by what looked to be a ruby stud, although the stone was more black than red in the strange light. A yard away from the imprisoned figure sat the telltale shoe, its hobnailed pentagram visible on the sole.

Was the man asleep? Or was this a mere semblance of sleep, a wakeful death? Perhaps it would be a kindness to shoot him, although he owed the man no kindness. It wasn’t in Beaumont to kill a man, however, even this man, who was already as good as dead. But certainly it made no sense to leave such a man in possession of a pocket watch and chain. He stepped as close as he needed to and hooked the stick-end of the torch beneath the fob-chain. With a careful circular motion he turned three loops of chain around the stick, lifting the watch out of its pocket.

“Father Time lives topside, you honor,” he said in a low voice. “He has no influence here below.” And with that he jerked the barrel upward and away, snatching the watch out of the vest pocket and tearing the chain stud away from the vest.

In that moment the eyes of the captive fluttered opened, glowing green and unnaturally wide, a look of terror within them, but without, thank God, any hint of recognition.

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Dead Rising: Watchtower International Release Details: Press Release -- "Content Media is set to release the highly anticipated Dead Rising: Watchtower internationally, presented by Legendary Digital, available to rent or own on all major digital platforms on selected dates worldwide across Europe, Asia, Australasia, South America and Africa from July 1st 2015. The international release follows its US release through Sony’s Crackle streaming service in March.

Legendary Digital presents Dead Rising: Watchtower, a Dead Rising/Contradiction Films Production- directed by Zach Lipovsky (Leprechaun: Origins), written and produced by Tim Carter (Mortal Kombat: Legacy), and executive produced by Tomas Harlan (Mortal Kombat: Legacy) and Lorenzo di Bonaventura (the Transformers franchise). Based on the widely popular Capcom videogame franchise Dead Rising®, Dead Rising: Watchtower features an all-star cast including Jesse Metcalfe (Dallas, John Tucker Must Die), Meghan Ory (Once Upon a Time, Intelligence), Virginia Madsen (Sideways, Candyman), Dennis Haysbert (24; Men, Women & Children) and Rob Riggle (22 Jump Street, The Hangover).

Dead Rising: Watchtower follows Chase Carter (Jesse Metcalfe), a reporter trying to make it big – but the pursuit of his career-defining story leads him into the heart of a zombie-infested warzone. East Mission, Oregon is locked down after police find the bodies of what appear to be victims of a zombie attack. Zombies are not a new phenomenon, but outbreaks are uncommon. Past incidents were only just contained in time and the country is nervous. When two ambitious Net 2.0 reporters, Chase and his colleague Jordan, get inside the quarantine zone to report on a large group of civilians trapped in an inner city dome stadium, they realise they’re waiting for a rescue that isn’t coming.

Many of those abandoned inside are survivors of past outbreaks who carry the zombie virus in their blood. They only survive by taking the antidote once every 24 hours -- a drug called Zombrex. When the local drug supply mysteriously fails, a small crisis explodes into mass panic and catastrophe.

The story unfolds from two perspectives: survivors inside the city and officials and the media on the outside. Unlike virtually all other zombie narratives, the world hasn’t ended. The outbreak is a large-scale natural disaster that the rest of the world watches on TV. After Jordan manages to escape the quarantine zone, she sets out to unravel the conspiracy behind the failed Zombrex, while Chase is trapped inside with a few others like tough loner with a secret Crystal (Meghan Ory) and grief-stricken mother Maggie (Virginia Madsen), battling 
to survive. Their perilous, action-packed journey to escape simultaneously forces them to question what they’re willing to do to survive and, ultimately, their own sense of humanity.

The Dead Rising® game franchise has sold over 8.2 Million copies worldwide. Publisher Capcom has sold 200 Million game copies worldwide, including those from juggernaut series Resident Evil®, Street Fighter® and Mega Man®.

About Legendary Entertainment
Legendary Entertainment is a leading media company with film (Legendary Pictures), television and digital (Legendary Television and Digital Media) and comics (Legendary Comics) divisions dedicated to owning, producing and delivering content to mainstream audiences with a targeted focus on the powerful fandom demographic. Through complete or joint ownership, Legendary has built a library of marquee media properties and has established itself as a trusted brand which consistently delivers high-quality, commercial entertainment including some of the world's most popular intellectual property. In aggregate, Legendary Pictures-associated productions have realized grosses of more than $10 billion worldwide at the box office. To learn more visit: http://www.legendary.com

About Content Media Corporation
Content Media Corporation is a global entertainment media company based in London with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Toronto, which owns and distributes a significant library of film, television and digital assets. Content Film, the film sales division, holds the rights to over 275 feature film titles and helps producers secure financing, marketing and distribution. The division also acquires top-tier documentaries. Content Television is the television sales division, which holds the library rights to 5,000 hours of TV programming incorporating major drama series, non-fiction entertainment, special event programming, kids’ series, TV movies and mini-series. Content Digital licenses over 300 hours of bespoke digital properties, in addition to the existing library, to digital media platforms worldwide, including on-demand, broadband and mobile.www.contentmediacorp.com."

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The Redwood Massacre: Press Release -- "One of the most anticipated fright flicks of 2015 comes to DVD and VOD July 7 from Uncork’d Entertainment. David Ryan Keith’s REDWOOD MASSACRE “epitomizes the 80’s slasher and just adds a dollop more of the red stuff into the mix making it better than the 80’s!*".

Starring Mark Noel (TVs Trinity), Lisa Cameron (My Brother’s Keeper), Lisa Livingstone (TVs Holby City), Rebecca Wilkie (Legion of Evil), and Alec Westwood (TVs Roughnecks), the “chilling” film chronicles the horrific outcome of a group of friends who visit a legendary murder site, Redwood House. What happens next will chill you to the bone.

Official Synopsis: For five adventurous friends, visiting the legendary murder site of the Redwood House has all the hallmarks of being an exciting and thrilling camping weekend away. A popular site for revellers and party goers, each year on the exact date of the famous local family massacre, people from around the country head out to the site to have fun and scare each other. Events take a bloody turn for the worse when the innocent campers discover the Redwood legend is in fact a horrible bloody reality, which turns the unsuspecting victims into prey for a mysterious axe wielding maniac that has remained dormant for 20 years.

*Adam The Movie God Blog"