Think the slasher heyday is over? Horror filmmaker Ian Messenger from CatchMeKillMe Productions argues that this might not be the case in a brand new Inspiring Scares.

“The slasher boom stopped dead in its tracks in 1993 after the release of Friday The 13th: Jason Goes To Hell. Don’t get me wrong, we had a few slasher’s here and there (Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer) but they honestly just didn’t stirke me the same as the slasher’s of old. The sub-genre attempted to revive itself with the dreadful Jason X and then again with Freddy vs. Jason – both attempts seemingly failed to get the public interested in the darkest corner of cinema’s basement, the slasher film.

After Freddy vs. Jason’s release in 2003 there was real movement from our beloved slasher’s until 2006, enter Adam Green and his film Hatchet. When I first saw the preview for Hatchet, a swamp in New Orleans, a creepy little song played in the background and some letters faded onto the screen “Old School American Horror”, then a quick glimpse of a screaming Victor Crowley and the preview ended. My knee-jerk reaction? I laughed. I knew it was going to be a slasher film and I thought they should just let the dream die.

I’m so glad they didn’t let the dream die. Hatchet renewed my faith in slasher films, I wanted more when the film ended. All of a sudden I had an insatiable thirst for blood, guts, and gore again. It’s everything the movie’s in the 80’s and early 90’s were, but this film KNEW it was campy.

They poked fun at the excessive amounts of blood, one shot shows a tree off in the distance and all of a sudden a gallon of blood splashes against it. Adam Green knew these films shouldn’t be overly serious but he also knew how to make his monster scary.

Victor Crowley took fans by the throat and ripped them along for a ride we hadn’t been on in years. The film was so successful at doing it’s job properly it has spawned two sequel, one of which is currently in post-production.

If you want some good old fashioned American horror look no further then the Hatchet series. Boobs, blood, and guts – It’s all here. Upon my 4th or 5th viewing of the movie, I thought to myself that maybe I could do this. I’d never really considered film making as an option before this. When the movie finished I turned on the “Making Of” feature and I was stunned to see Adam Green, a guy like me, talking about movies the same way I did. He explained the route he took to horror film glory and I decided right then I would do the same thing.

I shut off the DVD and opened up my laptop and started consuming all things horror. I was overloading my brain hoping that a monster would come lurking out of the dark recesses of my brain. He didn’t. No monster, no slasher. I went for days spinning the ideas in my head but honestly they all sucked. Then finally I brought the idea up to a friend, we sat down and began discussing what scared us and it started to happen. We began piecing together a horrible creation – his mask, his weapon, his tale, and then he was born.

The Hog was created (4 or 5 variations of the same script) and we went out and filmed. Not a film class between us but we did it and I owe it all to Adam Green and Hatchet.

A side note to this story, I would later go on to propose to my now wife at the premiere of Adam Green’s premiere of Chillerama which resulted in us (my wife and I) meeting the man himself.”

Check out the awesome Catch Me Kill Me Films at the Youtube link below:
www.YouTube.com/CatchMeKillMeFilms

“Slasher fans, are you ready for a brand new Inspiring Scares from Slasher Studios? Today we are featuring award winning writer-director Lucas Masson (BABY-SITTING) and the influences that have played a role in his life to shape him into one of France’s hottest up-and-coming horror filmmakers.

The two things that really drew me into the world of horror were JAWS and horror movie trailers.

I was around 4 when I first watched JAWS. That was one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen (I only watched disney movies at that age…). But it also was the most exciting experience ever. There was something so thrilling about this huge monster that could appear at any time and cause absolute chaos among human characters. I was pretty lucid and knew that it was a movie and that the shark and death scenes were fake. I then realized that nothing else in life could give you such extreme sensations and make you live so many adventures, all the while being in absolute safety, than a movie; and more specifically: a horror movie.

I also found amazing the fact that an enormous robotic shark was created for a shooting (and I had no Idea all the trouble it caused to Spielberg at that time). That’s the aspect of the movie that really got me determined to make my own ones, because I wanted to understand and reproduce all the tricks they used for the action and death scenes (how to film them, how special effects worked, etc.).

A few years later, when I was 9, my parents (whom let me watch JAWS at 4) forbid me to watch SCREAM and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. This wasn’t a smart move, as it only made me want to see the movies even more, and at a point it almost drove me crazy. We had a Channel on which we could pay to watch movies one or two months before they were released. And it had SCREAM and WES CRAVEN’S NEW NIGHTMARE. Movie trailers were hence played all day long to promote the films. As they were the only things I was allowed to see, I was constantly watching them. They were made-for-tv trailers and probably weren’t really good, but the frustration of seeing some images but still not enough was exquisite. The preview from NEW NIGHTMARE was particularly creepy. You saw Freddy materializing inside a bed from which he ripped the sheets with his claws… it could seem normal when you already know the series, but as a kid, it gets you really curious and excited to know what the hell is going on in the film. I think seeing so little of both movies helped me be more inventive. I was trying to mentally recreate the scenes from every shot I saw in those trailers until my brain hurt.

I was then sure I wanted to do genre films. And it got me really passionate about movie trailers too. I actually edit trailers in addition to making movies now and I’m really happy about it.”

Lucas’ film BABY-SITTING is currently making the festival rounds and the trailer for the short horror flick can be viewed below.

To start off the weekend, we are taking a look at independent horror filmmaker Brad Sykes (writer and director of the CAMP BLOOD trilogy as well as many other horror films) as he looks at the film that changed the way he looked at horror and how he continues to make horror today.

“In 1989, at the tender age of fourteen, I experienced two life-changing events: I got my first video camera (a Chinon Hi-8 to be exact) and saw Peter Jackson’s splatterific horror-action-comedy BAD TASTE. Up till this point, I had digested all the 70’s American classics, most of them multiple times: DAWN OF THE DEAD, HALLOWEEN, TEXAS CHAINSAW, etc. but none of those could have prepared me for this over-the-top gore epic from New Zealand of all places. I first read about the film in the pages of the late, great Gorezone (who of course showed plenty of bloody photos) and it wasn’t long before I found the VHS on the new release wall at my local mom and pop – featuring the famous alien flipping the bird on the cover.

After that first viewing, there was no turning back – this was not only my favorite movie EVER, it was the movie that really made me start thinking seriously about going out and shooting my own stuff. Like THE EVIL DEAD, BAD TASTE was technically accomplished, but still had that homemade charm that encouraged you to go out and try to make your own horror movie. It was truly inspirational film for me, with its improvised camerawork, handcrafted effects, and utterly original plotting, and the general devil-may-care attitude of the whole project. For me, BAD TASTE was the movie that screamed: “Yes, if you get a group of like-minded (i.e. crazy) friends together and work really, really hard, you too might be able to make something as demented and entertaining as this!”

So I did, or at least I tried. One of the first projects I attempted – mostly in my backyard – was a shot for shot remake of BAD TASTE. Though that remained incomplete, I also announced a sequel: BAD TASTE II : THE AFTERTASTE (I’m still hoping Peter Jackson will go back to his roots and make this one).

I kept shooting, though, eventually turning my backyard hobby into a Hollywood career. Ironically, in 1999, less than 10 years after that first viewing of BAD TASTE, I found out that my microbudget slasher movie CAMP BLOOD was going to be distributed by Dead-Alive Productions (wonder where they got that name?), who had just a few years earlier released Peter Jackson’s second feature, MEET THE FEEBLES, in the US. Talk about being in good company! At that moment, I felt everything had come full circle, and nowadays, having fans tell me that some of my humble horror epics have inspired them to pick up a camera makes me feel that in some way I am continuing the BAD TASTE indie tradition myself – even if I have yet to top that classic alien puke-drinking scene.”

To check out some of Brad’s films:
http://www.nightfall-pictures.com/

Are you ready for a brand new Inspiring Scares? Today’s write up comes from horror filmmaker Damian Morter, the writer and director of “The Eschatrilogy” which is currently doing the festival rounds in the UK and US.

“I have been a film fanatic since my father bought me home an Orion release VHS of “The Terminator” I was 5 years old. We watched it together, me perched on his lap. The film terrified me, I had no clue who this giant man was in real life, to me…he was that unstoppable killing machine. It was the fear that excited me, the not knowing what was coming next. My father would bring home all the latest horror films, even waking me up and letting me come down to watch one with him (to my mother’s horror some years later), Carpenter’s Halloween and The Thing were also two of my favourites as was The Wicker Man, again sat with my father, the feeling of protection as the terror played out before my very eyes kept me firmly locked in my seat. My imagination stated running wild as I was introduced to this frightening world outside of the disney channel and Knight Rider, it was now Sky Movies and Nightbreed! I used to imagine my own monsters, make sketches and paintings, I used to design posters and vhs covers for my imaginary movies, penciling every detail even down to the BBFC 18 certificate logo on the bottom right hand side of the box! I was so obsessed with movies and the escape into all these different frightening and fantastical worlds, I used to walk 3 miles to a local VHS store, just to look at the boxes and read the synopsis of every movie in there, the more frightening the cover, the more enticing it became, a trait Ive heard is common from late 70’s early 80’s born filmmakers, and man were those cases cool! Ive been inspired by too many movies to mention, of all genres, budget and cultures and I like to think there is a little piece of everyone of them now in my own work…”

To check out Damian’s work:
IMDB page: THE ESCHATRILOGY
Website: www.safehousepicturesuk.com