Ahh, it's fucking October. FINALLY!! This is the month when horror fans 'tis the season by watching copious amounts of fright films until that fateful Halloween night. Once it's over, we depressingly get up, throw away the rotted pumpkin and mope around for another 365 days, wearing nothing but a robe and a frown. (I'm assuming that I'm not the only one who does this.) This October, we have a pretty great lineup in DVD releases, particularly for those of you into the indie-horror genre. So hold out your goody-bags and hope that none of these titles have a razorblade hidden in them.




Plot:
A man who specializes in debunking paranormal occurrences checks into the fabled room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel. Soon after settling in, he confronts genuine terror.

Opinion:
Check out our review HERE!



Plot:
Urban Exploration. The practice of investigating areas not designed for public use. But strange things can happen in the dark, closed-off areas of history beneath the streets of Moscow, and what started as a way for Nate (Daniel Caltagirone) to escape his grief quickly turns into a journey that forces him to confront it head-on, with nothing less than his eternal destiny hanging in the balance. Featuring Music from The Crystal Method.

Opinion:
A Horror/Thriller with music from the Crystal Method? Sure!



According to a popular magazine, the 58th spookiest place in the world is the Ashbrooke Barn in the small town known as Blood Creek. Local legend states that if you perform a specific ritual in the barn and the old house up the road, you'll see visions of Zeke Ashbrooke, a farmer who went mad and hung himself, his wife and children. Rumour has it that Zeke's wife - now known as The Dark Lady - still roams the woods of Blood Creek. This summer five young campers will venture to Blood Creek and accept a dare that could cost them their lives.

Opinion: Sounds like your typical b-horror fare. Some reviews praise it for its low budget accommodations, while others totally bash it. I suppose we'll see!



Plot:
The vampire comes to England to seduce a visitor's fiance and inflict havoc in the foreign land.

Opinion:
I hear they also made a book out of it.



Plot:
A Sci-Fi entertainment show investigates an alien abduction in rural england, in Jake West's bloody b-film.

Opinion:
This movie was fucking hilarious. Check back this week for our review!



Plot:
On a flight from Los Angeles to Paris, a mad scientist on the run from the CIA is transporting a coffin containing the body of a colleague infected with a genetically modified virus. While the 747 crosses a violent thunderstorm, the instability of the aircraft allows the corpse to get out of its container. The flesh-eating zombie quickly starts to spread the virus, infecting many of the passengers which now will have to fight for their lives stranded in the air with no way out...

Opinion:
Originally titled "Plane Dead," this movie has been getting lots of praise. Check back this week for our review!



Plot:
Every town has a local legend. Not all of them are deadly. Headed to Miami to celebrate winter break, a group of four college students from New Jersey take a detour into the bowels of rural West Virginia. There, the unwitting friends uncover a grotesque legend that stains the fabric of Rolling Glen, a sleepy backwoods town: the legend of Ray Williams, a black truck driver from Maine, on his way to Texas to make a delivery, brutally beaten by a band of locals after stopping off in town for a drink, his body left for dead in an empty cornfield and never found. They learn of crooked sheriff Earl Taggart, who helped acquit the locals involved in the attack, and who still lords over the small village with an iron fist. Fifteen years later, whispers of the Williams incident still float through the tired walls and eaves of Rolling Glen. As the four friends quickly find out, some believe Williams still roams the woods on the outskirts of town, surviving on the slaughter of wildlife. Others claim to have seen Williams in person, a looming figure with a ghostly white visage, purportedly a makeshift cast to mask the scars and wounds left from the merciless assault. They have a name for Williams now: Plasterhead. Soon, the four friends find themselves holed up in an abandoned farmhouse, mired in a macabre web of terror. Sheriff Taggart will do anything to keep the truth buried: the truth that Plasterhead is frighteningly real. As these teens will soon learn, true evil has no face.

Opinion:
This movie was a decent little b-horror flick that could've been a lot better. Review up soon!



Plot:
During a bitter family feud, Jodie Hatfield, (Amy Manson) and her boyfriend Ricky McCoy, (Bradley Taylor) decide to leave town to avoid being found out, but are soon caught in the act. Wanting vengeance, he seeks out the monster Pumpkinhead, and resurrects it seek revenge on the family. Despite being warned away by the ghost of Ed Harley, (Lance Henriksen) his vengeance plan starts out, and the Hatfield family is soon under siege by the powerful demon. Not accepting the legend of the creature and believing their arch-rivals are the real cause, the two families attempt to go to war, only to be stopped when Pumpkinhead attacks the Hatfield house. Putting aside their differences, they band together to stave off the creature before it's vengeance pact is completed.

Opinion:
Oh Pumpkinhead...you gave your name to a great indie hip hop artist, so for that i'm grateful. As for your sequels...well....



Plot:
Hip-hop meets horror in this wildly unpredictable urban tale directed by Kamal (Jerky Boys) Ahmed. An up-and-coming white rapper Rapurious (Robert Oppel) tempers his music career and a shady past with a steady dose of mind altering drugs. But when his dealer gives him something special, the blond dreadlocked singer soon has a series of murderous hallucinations. Are they really tricks of the mind or is Rapturious really committing these blood-splattered crimes? With a wicked supporting cast including horror film maven Debbie Rochon and Joe Bob Briggs, this slick and stylistic urban tale twists and turns until the demonic truths are uncovered!

Opinion:
While I'm no fan of the Jerky Boys (were prank calls on CD really that funny?), Ahmed's "God Has a Rap Sheet" was an intelligent and non biased film with different cultures, races, and religions clashing. Seeing him do a horror might be a very interesting thing.



Plot:
All the elements that make the Species franchise a favorite with horror and science fiction fans – a sexy young woman with alien DNA, and the mass slaughter she leaves in her wake as she searches for a mate – are present in the series' fourth entry. Lovely Swedish actress Helena Mattsson is the girl with the genes from outer space this time – she's a college professor suffering from blackouts who discovers that the source of her illness is the result of her scientist uncle (Ben Cross, lending a serious note to the proceedings), who created her from a mix of human DNA and the same alien soup that gave life to Syl (Natasha Henstridge, who does not appear in this film) from the first Species. From there, the pair head to Mexico to stop the rapid decline of Miranda's health; the cure, however, unleashes her voracious extraterrestrial side, which stops at nothing to find a partner for procreation. Budgetary issues are the main downfall of The Awakening – the basic premise delivers what the Species series promises, but both script and special effects are undercooked to the point of confusion and/or laughter. However, viewers who expect nothing more than the B-movie thrills of Species 3 should be amused by this picture's low-watt sex and violence.

Opinion:
Honestly, did anyone watch the first two installments of species for any other reason than seeing Natasha Henstridge do it alien style? I never saw the third, but I've heard some good things about the 4th, in that it's just fun and entertaining b-horror. Stay tuned for a review!



Plot:
Samuel North (Nathan Mobley) escapes from Hell to find the person who murdered him, but a team of invincible bounty hunters called REAPERS are sent from the Netherworld to bring him back.

Opinion:
Sounds like "What Dreams May Come" on acid. I'm in.



Stay tuned for next week's DVD releases, and also check back for daily updates including the above releases.