Set to premiere on Sunday, September 10th on FOX is The Orville, an hour-long sci-fi dramedy created by Seth MacFarlane (who also co-stars) and featuring a talented ensemble including Adrianne Palicki, Scott Grimes, Penny Johnson Jerald, Chad L. Coleman, J. Lee, Mark Jackson, and more. During the 2017 Comic-Con, Daily Dead briefly chatted with the trio of executive producers behind The Orville—Brannon Braga, Jason Clark, and David A. Goodman—and they discussed the balance of humor and heart in the new series, collaborating with MacFarlane, and more.
If you’ve ever watched a single episode of any one of Seth MacFarlane’s animated shows, from Family Guy to American Dad to the now-defunct Cleveland Show, it should come as no surprise that his appreciation for pop culture—and particularly, sci-fi entertainment—runs deep, which makes his newest network TV endeavor The Orville something of a dream come true for the multi-hyphenate MacFarlane, who is ready to venture into new territories this fall.
I can still remember going to see James Gunn’s debut feature Slither on opening night in March of 2006. It was to be my birthday movie, so myself and a group of friends all got together at the movie theater, ready to check out what Gunn had in store for us. I was the only one among us with an awareness of his work, having followed his career as a screenwriter during his days at Troma through The Specials, the two live-action Scooby-Doo movies, and, most notably, his 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. Because I knew what to expect from a James Gunn movie, naturally I loved Slither. My friends did, too. The rest of the nearly empty theater seemed puzzled and disgusted by it, though, and I knew that night that the movie was going to die a quick death.
All right, gang, I’m going to need for you to bear with me as I take an abrupt left turn for this month’s column. I’ve been wanting to do a John Carpenter movie for a while now, but the problem is that he doesn’t have many “B-sides” that people haven’t talked about ad nauseum. Our very own Patrick Bromley recently covered one of his more relatively obscure entries with Prince of Darkness, and Scott Drebit gave his take on that one with the William Shatner mask. So, to find new territory, I had to go back to 1979, a year after Carpenter released his breakthrough masterpiece, but just before he churned out a series of classics in the early ’80s that would cement his legacy as one of the greatest horror directors of all time.
Over the last few years, Graham Skipper has contributed his acting talents to a variety of genre projects, including Almost Human, 20 Seconds to Live, Tales of Halloween, The Mind’s Eye, Carnage Park, Beyond the Gates, The Devil’s Dolls, and last year’s Space Clown, which marked his first time at the helm of a feature film as well. Skipper also recently completed another genre feature, Sequence Break, and he celebrated the world premiere of the film as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival's impressive slate for 2017.
Daily Dead caught up with Skipper a few days ago, and he talked about transitioning into the role of director, the inspiration behind Sequence Break, his experiences collaborating with his cast and crew, and much more.
While in San Diego covering this year’s Comic-Con pop culture extravaganza, Daily Dead had the opportunity to chat with Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten, the executive producers behind the upcoming comedy series Ghosted, which co-stars Craig Robinson and Adam Scott as an unlikely duo who team up to take on supernatural forces.
A contemporary twist to a well-trodden tale, Hammer’s Dracula A.D 1972 tried to breath new life into the Count by transporting him from the grim gravestones of Transylvania to the stomping grounds of swinging London. To mirror the modern approach to the film, composer Mike Vickers replaced the classic orchestral scores of the past with a collection of modernist, pop-jazz-styled rhythms. With Death Waltz resurrecting the Count for a limited vinyl reissue, the label unearthed graphic artist Silver Ferox to bring a fresh and frightful concept for the cover artwork.
No one does big, beautiful, and weird sci-fi epics quite like filmmaker Luc Besson. He set the bar for modern, stunning-yet-kitschy futuristic fantasy cinema with The Fifth Element in 1997, and now he returns to the realm of the strange and unusual two decades later with Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets, which truly feels unlike any other movie you’ll catch on the big screen at your local multiplexes for the rest of the summer movie season.
If anyone wrote the book on complicated parental relations, it’s Anthony Perkins. While Mother is nowhere to be found, this time around Tony is having Daddy issues in How Awful About Allan (1970), an effective, low key TV thriller directed by Curtis Harrington (The Dead Don’t Die). As long as you can leave Norman up in his room, you should have a good time.
The exploitation films of the ‘70s always offered up the goods to everyone. And by goods I mean a whole lot of sex and violence, and if you were so inclined to notice behind fogged up eyewear, pulpy takes on the relevant social issues of the day. Not all were created equal, of course; they can’t all be clever variants of the form such as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, or Foxy Brown. However, they almost all deal with female empowerment and Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973) more than checks off all the boxes, squeezing every last drop of pulp from its sci-fi fruit.
Set to premiere later this fall on FOX is Ghosted, a paranormal-infused comedy which co-stars Craig Robinson and Adam Scott as a pair of recruits for an organization tasked with investigating unknown phenomena in the Los Angeles area. While in San Diego for this year’s Comic-Con, Daily Dead had the opportunity to speak with both Scott and Robinson, as well as with their other Ghosted co-star Ally Walker, about their involvement in the upcoming show, what we can expect from their characters, and much more.
When a filmmaker creates a number of movies that qualify for masterpiece status, it becomes nearly impossible to quantifiably conclude which one stands above the rest as his or her single greatest achievement.
Earlier in 2017, acclaimed hip hop artist Flying Lotus (who is also known as Steve) celebrated the world premiere of his directorial debut, Kuso, at the Sundance Film Festival, and now, the film is heading home exclusively to Shudder today (and it also begins a one-week engagement at Cinefamily in Los Angeles too). Daily Dead had the chance to speak with Steve about transitioning from the realm of music to filmmaker, taking chances as an artist, working with his cast and more.
There are some authors who transcend genre so fully that classification becomes a moot point. Kelly Link is one example. Link’s writing style mirrors other authors - Angela Carter, Shirley Jackson and Neil Gaiman come to mind - but only superficially; her words are her own. The moods swing wildly, from whimsical to melancholic to deranged, though her voice always comes through. She writes as if talking in her sleep, lackadaisical and sparse, strange but deeply evocative. Yet what truly sets her apart from other genre authors is her incredible understanding of the human mind.
Before the big horror and poliziotteschi boom of the mid 70s and 80s, Italy’s number one genre export was the immortal spaghetti western. Violent, cynical, and churned out by the hundreds, spaghetti westerns we the genre for mercenary Italian directors to shoot. Considering their often cruel tones and gory scenes (An ear-removal scene in Sergio Corbucci’s Django caused the film to be banned in the UK for 27 years), it should come as no surprise that if you look deep enough into any given horror maestro’s filmography, you’re bound to find at least one film packed with spurs and six-guns.
