Horror-meister Dario Argento will return to directing later this year, reteaming with his daughter, Asia, for a new Giallo.
First revealed last August by Alan Jones at FrightFest in London, official reports now confirm that Dario Argento will direct Occhiali Neri (Black Glasses), with shooting to take place this spring in Italy.
The film will star his daughter, actor/director (The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things) Asia Argento, as he confirmed on the Criminology Festival website:
“Yes, I will shoot it in the spring. There are many outdoor scenes, surrounded by nature, in winter it is too cold to shoot,” he said. “As announced there will also be Asia. Our paths have crossed many times.”
The pair have previously worked together on films including Trauma, The Stendhal Syndrome and the final film of the Three Mothers trilogy, The Mother of Tears.
Exclusive set report on a new horror movie filmed here in Norway, starring Barbara Crampton.
The mountains around Bjørke are extraordinarily beautiful, forming a soaring, jagged cradle around the small village in the rugged western fjords of Norway. But on the summer evening I visit the location, for the filming of a new British horror movie, The Colour of Madness, at the end of a cloudless and unseasonably hot day, that cradle feels somewhat more ominous.
Maybe it’s the décor of the cabin that the crew are holed up inside that helps create the atmosphere, a typical small wooden structure, with verging-on-kitsch late 1950s/early 1960s furniture. Look a little closer, however, and odd details begin to stand out; strange little betentacled knick-knacks, resembling unearthly octopi, and what’s that over the fireplace? Is that a grisly painting of one of H.P. Lovecraft’s Elder Gods?
A mysterious looking piece of set design
Clearly, dark deeds are afoot on the sweltering, busy set, underlined by the familiar appearance of a petite, graceful figure: Barbara Crampton, the much-loved star of classic genre films such as Re-Animator, From Beyond and We Are Still Here. The actor stands behind the cameras and prepares to shoot a short scene but makes a point of introducing herself to me and Jon, who’s here with me to snap some behind the scenes photos. Then the cameras are rolling, and Crampton is consoling a distraught character played by Sophie Stevens (The Haunted), handing her what looked to me like a suspicious glass of water. I spent some time talking in detail with Crampton about her life and career, so look out for that in an upcoming piece.
Star Barbara Crampton chats with Out of Dave’s Head’s editor
With Crampton’s shot in the can, the co-directors, Andy Collier and Toor Mian then busy themselves setting up a tricky POV shot from beneath a glass table, as Stevens’ character succumbs to unconsciousness, spilling the water she’s been drinking across its surface. I got the feeling water wouldn’t be the only liquid spilled during the film’s creepy storyline.
Co-Director Toor Mian (right) watches a shot being filmed
Shooting reached a break and the cast and crew gathered outside in the cooler air, with the mountains looming over us in the gathering darkness. I ask the directors what brought them to Norway? Had they always planned to film here? “Not at all,” says Mian, munching on some Norwegian-style bacalao, as part of a late crew dinner on the gently rolling hillside. “Originally, we set the story in Scotland, but honestly, so many productions have shot there recently, and we really wanted to avoid any kind of Wicker Man-feel, in terms of the look of the film. Plus, my Mum is Norwegian, so now here we are filming in the most expensive country on Earth!”
Directors Toor Mian & Andy Collier plot ghastly acts
“But it really feels right to be shooting here,” Mian says. “Because there’s such a big connection in the story between the sort of Lovecraftian Cthulhu elements and all the water around us! Plus, you know, look at this place!” He finishes on this point, indicating to the breathtaking natural scenery. “We get so much bang for our production bucks!”
Outside the cabin, on location in Bjørke, Norway
And how have they found filming in Bjørke? “Norway’s been great, not at all intrusive and really fluid!” Mian says. “And Bjørke’s been very easy to film in,” Collier adds. “We thought shooting in a tiny place like this might attract lots of local attention, but everyone has been brilliant. We were filming down at the harbour one day and this guy came in on his boat. He started asking a bit about the film, really interested in it all, but when he realised he’d be in shot he just said he’d move his boat somewhere else… and off he went!”
The inhabitants of this cabin clearly shop at Cthulhu-R-Us
Watching them in cramped, hot conditions, I noted the two directors keep a focused but light-hearted set. How do they split duties? “I tend to be more technical,” Collier replies. “Working on DOP stuff and with the camera.” “While I usually work more with the actors,” Mian finishes. Does this lead to any kind of tension between the two of them, I wonder? They both laugh and simultaneously reply “Only sexual tension!” I get the feeling they’ve been asked this before.
I’d recently watched the pair’s previous film, Charismata, and noted the callbacks to Alan Parker’s 1987 psychological horror, Angel Heart, as well as the visual cues taken from David Fincher’s Seven. What could they tell me about any such inspirations for their latest work?
“Nicolas Winding Refn!” says Collier, without missing a beat, before Mian adds “I think Drive is a big influence on this film, in terms of the way we’re approaching the narrative.” “And definitely The Neon Demon for the visuals.” Collier finishes. The pair obviously enjoy working together, as they weave in and out of each other’s sentences.
“But another big inspiration is John Carpenter’s The Thing,” says Mian. “We’re going full-on with practical effects, loads of Cthulhu monster tentacles and all kinds of horrible stuff!” “Films like The Howling, those great 80s horror movies with all the practical effects, all very tangible, that’s really the essence of what we’re going for!” Collier adds enthusiastically.
And what can you tell us about the plot of The Colour of Madness? “Not much!” says Collier. “Or we’d have to kill you!” Mian jokes, or at least I hope he was joking.
Barbara Crampton (right) practices some lines of dialogue in Norwegian
“One of our characters, Issac, played by Ludovic Hughes, returns to the remote Norwegian island where he grew up, after his mother dies,” continues Mian. “But on coming back with his pregnant wife they find things aren’t very welcoming and they quickly find themselves involved in a nightmare situation involving a Pagan cult, and, well… other things… ha ha.”
I wanted to move forward, to talk about what these two likeable creators have lined up for the future. “Well, there’s a film called Perpetual,” Mian offers. “That’s probably our next film.” I tell them I had read up about it and am intrigued by the potentially controversial plot, involving a small-town cop hunting a serial killer who leaves behind what seem to be Islamic terror calling cards in what’s left of his victims.
“Yeah, it’s a bit in limbo at the moment,” explains Collier, somewhat wearily. “We had some strong studio interest, but then they got cold feet over the subject matter. We’re quite prepped on it though, so as soon as the financing comes together, we’re good to go.”
“Plus we have a sort of medieval western we’re working on,” Mian adds. “The locations here would be perfect for that, so maybe we could even shoot that in Norway too.”
Maybe someone should advise Sophie Stevens not to drink that water
“We learn from each of our films,” Collier concludes, as the actors are dismissed for the day and wander off in the now-inky black Norwegian darkness while the crew wraps and prepares for a long night shoot the following evening. “And we’re getting more confident. The Colour of Madness is a big leap from Charismata, and I think horror fans will find a lot in it to get excited about!”
As Jon and I finished our visit and drove away into the night, we left feeling excited at what horrors these directors and their hard-working crew would unleash on the screen, and kept an extra-sharp eye out for tentacles as we drove past the nearby lake…
The Colour of Madness is now in post-production and will be released in 2020.
Warner Bros. have just dropped the trailer for Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining and, well, it’s quite something…
You can’t fault the studio’s bravery here, choosing to lean so much into Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1980 film by reusing footage and recreating sets. If nothing else it’s a bold statement of intent.
King’s sequel novel has proven to be highly divisive, eliciting equal amounts of love and scorn (nothing unusual there, of course, when tampering with a property so firmly lodged in the public psyche), but director Mike Flanagan has some serious scare chops as the writer/director of Netflix’s big hit series, The Haunting of Hill House (as well as the adaptation of King’s “unfilmable,” Gerald’s Game.
That’s certainly an intriguing trailer, and for those of you unfamiliar with the book, here the official synopsis for the movie:
Struggling with alcoholism, Danny Torrance remains traumatized by the sinister events that occurred at the Overlook Hotel when he was a child. He soon finds a new purpose when he forms a psychic connection with a girl who shares his shining ability.
Doctor Sleep will open on November 8th when we’ll all get the opportunity to love it or hate it. Which side do you think you’ll come down on?
First of all, let’s get your goosebumps raised with this…
Well, if that doesn’t get you excited for Andy Muschietti’s It: Chapter Two then it’s possible you’re as dead as the old lady in that super-creepy sequence at the beginning of the trailer.
It: Chapter One took pretty much everyone by surprise when it became a box-office smash in 2017, and now the same director is back with a fabulous cast of all-grown-up Derry Losers Club kids including Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy and Bill Hader. Along with the return of Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise the Clown, of course.
It is a particular favourite book of many Stephen King fans (including me) so we can only hope Muschietti does the same good work on this second chapter. The trailer certainly bodes well, as that sequence between grown-up Beverly and the not-what-she-seems Mrs Kersh got my skin all kinds of crawling.
Let’s get ready to float down here again when It: Chapter Two opens on September 6.
Regular readers of this site will know that the forthcoming Netflix series of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is highly anticipated around this neck of the (haunted) wood. The brand new teaser trailer has just dropped and it’s rather lovely.
Based on the cult, hit series from Archie Comics, the show tells an updated version of the 90s kid-TV favourite, with less emphasis on humorous shenanigans and more on blood and horror.
The trailer is appropriately spooky and the show, starring Mad Men’s Kiernan Shipka as Sabrina Spellman, who has to decide whether to sign the Devil’s book and become a Bride of Satan on her 16th birthday, looks like a whole heap of horrible fun.
With a great cast including Miranda Otto, Michelle Gomez and Lucy Davis, I can’t wait for this to raise my spirits on October 26th.
I’ve seen many reviews stating that Hereditary is a “new kind of horror”, and similar nonsense. In fact, there’s very little new about Ari Aster’s film, but that doesn’t mean that what he does with it won’t creep the living daylights out of you.
Rather, what Aster and co. do is not wholly rely on what have become the standard, tired tricks of a great deal of modern horror: the jump scare of something appearing in frame, or a door slamming, the sudden burst of sound and music. Instead, we are treated to long moments of dread and unease, surrounded by a film which takes its time exploring the emotions of its central characters and wrapping it all in the universal pain of grief – in particular, how we often don’t deal with it. Only once we’re pulled in by all this does Hereditary blow up with reanimated corpses and family members crawling across the ceiling.
And then, of course, it gives us that much talked about ending, which will really test whether or not the film has you in its hooks.
Hereditary begins quietly, pulling a little Stanley Kubrick Overlook maze trick from The Shining with a model house, but doesn’t do so frivolously: it’s a great unsettling moment, revealing one of the movie’s first pieces of disturbing symbolism, teasing us that there’s something not quite right about this family home. More of the film’s themes are immediately set out as we follow the family preparing for a funeral, for the mother of Toni Collette’s Annie.
Soon enough, both Annie and her two children, Peter and Charlie, are sensing things around the house and at school, and we see the family, rounded off by Gabriel Byrnes’ father, Steve, resolutely not coming to grips with not only this death but also events that have occurred in their lives previously.
Tension builds, and Aster, along with editors Jennifer Lame and Lucian Johnston and committed performances by the cast, allow their film all the time it needs to do so, as we are gradually introduced to wilder events beyond the confines of the house and the family, before one of the truly great shock moments of cinema leads us into a more heightened third act, letting the story fully off the leash in the last fifteen minutes or so. One or two of the final scares and revelations almost threaten to derail the careful build, but by the time they come we’ve been engulfed enough by the family’s deterioration not to stop us from enjoying their obvious pleasures.
It’s difficult to discuss the final five minutes without veering into spoiler territory, but suffice to say the various breadcrumbs laid throughout the previous two hours are brought together in a truly off-kilter way, with an ending which reminded me both of Rosemary’s Baby and of Robert Egger’s modern classic, The Witch, being both truly horrific (as you understand the fates of two of the central characters) and utterly bizarre.
Hereditary allows a few howlers through which occasionally threaten its entry to the hallowed halls of classics such as the aforementioned Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and The Haunting: clunky lines of dialogue here and there (“Dad, it’s the cemetery,” “About what?”), the discovery of a book (“Guide to Spiritualism”) which might as well be labelled “plot device”, and some irritatingly, The Deadly Bees level superimposed flies (yes, I’m being nit-picky, but these elements stand out like sore thumbs in an otherwise classy affair like this).
But despite these caveats, Hereditary works like a dark charm because it picks at a sore scab and works at it: grief is something most of us struggle with, and while we may not conjure up dead loved ones in an effort to deal with that grief – or at least, I presume we don’t – we are given time to empathise with the very real and raw emotions experienced by the film’s family, and the unravelling of that family as a result of their inability to deal with their pain. And that’s true horror, after all, even with the addition of a meddling witch’s coven.
To return to my original point, Hereditary might not actually offer us something new, but it does what it does to a mostly masterful level, where the simple sound of a vocal clicking is made scary, and follows the lead of John Carpenter’s Halloween by using the frame to create unease.
And if you’re unfortunate enough to have dealt with death and the ensuing emotions we’re left with, it will resonate long after a dozen pump-up-the-volume, jump scare Paranormal Nun horror movies have faded into one another.
Another day, another trailer for the new Suspiria. Turn on all the lights and feast on this:
There’s really not much to add about this latest slice on intensity since we talked about Suspiria just the other day (see here), but damn, Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Dario Argento’s classic of Italian gothic horror is looking more impressive with everything we hear about it and see from it. I couldn’t be any more sold on this baby.
Which means I’ve reached peak saturation point on PR for Suspiria, and this is definitely the final trailer I’ll be sharing. I want to go into this as cold as possible (especially considering my familiarity with the source material), but suffice to say I’m going to be first in line come November 2nd.
Take a look at the brand new, long-awaited teaser trailer for the remake of Dario Argento’s classic horror, Suspiria:
So let’s be clear on this from the outset: this one is going to divide people. On one hand, the film has tremendous word of mouth: early reaction to just a preview scene of the film, at Cinemacon in Las Vegas, saw viewers outraged, traumatized and, allegedly, vomiting (of course, that could just be a piece of classic old ballyhoo), it has a very intriguing director, Luca Guadagnino, lauded for his previous work including the Oscar-nominated Call Me By Your Name, and the writer is the showrunner of the superb AMC series, The Terror, David Kajganich. Plus the film has a killer (pun intended) cast headed by Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz and Jessica Harper (star of the original).
Alongside this we have the reported reaction of one Quentin Tarantino who, according to an interview with Guadagnino in the Italian publication, La Repubblica, had an emotional response to his film:
“I showed it to Quentin Tarantino. We’ve been friends since our jury duty at the Venice Film Festival. I was nervous but eager to hear his advice. We saw it at his place and his reaction warmed me. He was enthusiastic about it, in the end he was crying and hugged me.”
Well, that’s not too shabby.
Finally, we have a trailer which, is nothing else, is suffused with a peculiar and mysterious atmosphere and some genuinely creepy imagery, and at the very least it certainly isn’t trying to copy Argento’s colour palette, as this is all about your wintry browns and greys. I mean, this thing has a lot going for it, right…!?
On the other hand, these guys are messing with a much-loved, bona fide classic of Italian horror cinema (in fact, of just cinema). Dario Argento’s colour-splashed 1977 original, co-written with the great Daria Nicolodi, has wormed (pun intended again, sorry… if you’ve seen the original) its way into the affections of cinema-lovers for its outrageous visuals, sound and dread-drenched atmosphere.
I held a showing of the original at one my regular Dave’s Music & Movie Nights screenings, here in Norway, a few years back and the reaction of viewers to Argento’s unsettling masterpiece was palpable.
I’ve kind of made peace with the fact that Hollywood is never going to stop with its obsession for remakes, and so long as the originals aren’t hidden from view I’m of the mind that it can be of genuine interest to see artists take a new spin on much-loved favourites. Without this kind of thinking we wouldn’t have John Carpenter’s The Thing or David Cronenberg’s The Fly, and aren’t we all grateful for those!? Of course, the downside to that thinking gives us Gus Van Sant’s Psycho, about which, the less said the better (don’t @ me, okay!?)…
Either way, the new Suspiria from Amazon Studios is a bold move that’s bound to be divisive and might just be something special. Personally, I’m ready to have the shit scared out of me. So, show us what you’ve got come November 2…
Michael Myers slips on the Don Post William Shatner mask once again, in the new trailer for a film in one of the most frequently rebooted film series ever, Halloween.
Take a look at the trailer and we’ll talk…
There’s certainly a lot to pique interest here: David Gordon Green and Danny McBride at the helm (Green directing, McBride co-writing with Green and Jeff Fradley), series creator and underappreciated movie god John Carpenter on music duties, and scream queen legend, Jamie Lee Curtis back as an obviously-ready-to-kick-some-slasher-ass, Laurie Strode.
Necessarily missing of course, will be much-loved and long-departed Donald Pleasance (as Doctor Sam Loomis), but other than that the trailer looks like a lot of fun, already telegraphing a couple of decent scares (that final closet shot is a hoot).
While there’s a decent conversation to be had about whether or not the world actually needs an umpteenth reboot (with this one apparently only acknowledging the original Halloween while ignoring the rest of the six thousand sequels – which should drive long-time fans nicely insane), the trailer at least promises a good time to be had. It looks brutal as a November weekend in Scarborough and there are some truly gorgeous-looking shots!
Halloween opens… not on Halloween, but on October 19th, just to annoy anyone with OCD.
out of dave's head 