“I’m pretty happy with who I am. I like myself and what I’m doing. I don`t need to be the world’s greatest director or the most famous — or the richest. I don’t need to make a whole lot of great films. I can do my job and I can do it pretty well. This is the realization I’ve come to, later in life. It’s called growing up.”
~~John Carpenter
Check out John Carpenter’s latest film The Ward now playing on VOD. Come meet John Carpenter at this year’s Fright Night Film Fest in Kentucky on July 22 – 24th.
“I don`t want to be in the mainstream. I don`t want to be a part of the demographics. I want to be an individual. I wear each of my films as a badge of pride. That`s why I cherish all my bad reviews. If the critics start liking my movies, then I`m in deep trouble.” ~~John Carpenter
Check out John Carpenter’s latest film The Ward now playing on VOD. Come meet John Carpenter at this year’s Fright Night Film Fest in Kentucky on July 22 – 24th.
This week, Warren Ellis, writer of Transmetropolitan, Global Frequency, Black Summer, and Planetary, provides us with our inspirational quote of the week. This video was taken during Ellis’ trip to North Carolina in 2006 at the Heroes Convention in Charlotte. In it – he discusses the writing process and how a writer should go about writing one’s stories. Watch and learn.
J.J.Abrams has been doing press junkets to get the word out on his splended filmmaking kids on an adventure throwback flick 0 Super 8. In a recent interview with Bloody Disgusting.com, he dropped an interesting metaphor for how he understood the importance of the human element in a movie like Super 8.
“There’s a stupid thing that I do sometimes when I’m doodling, which I’m always doing, which [is] I draw like a circle, and then I…shade it, and draw a little horizon line so it goes from just being this circle to being a…three-dimensional [object]“, he began.
“But then…whenever I draw a little figure next to it of a certain size, maybe very small, suddenly that circle…becomes this thing of scale. It’s weird how suddenly… there’s an importance to it, only because of the person, the figure that’s standing there. There’s a weird thing that happens, when you connect a person to an event…Suddenly the event has [a] different meaning.”
Please visit Bloody Disgusting for the complete interview. Check out our review for Super 8 right here on Mutantville.com.
The good scribes over at Slasher Studios have just posted a link to an interview with Eli Roth from the Daily News Los Angeles in which he discloses a list of his favorite horror films. Some of his choices seem to be no-brainers but a couple might surprise you. Check out the trailers to his choices below and then hop over to Daily News Los Angeles to read the complete interview with Mr.Roth.
“Sleepaway Camp” (1983): Ah, “Sleepaway Camp.” I remember watching this film at a sleepover with Lenny Mead and a bunch of friends in the mid-’80s, and when the movie ended we literally stood up out of our chairs and screamed at the top of our lungs until we ran out of air. I will not say why – and don’t go looking up the spoilers on the Internet because that will take all the fun away. Treat yourself to a wonderful surprise.
Back in January of this year, the Mutantville Players had the chance to join several of our friends on the set of Michael Sharpe’s second directorial effort – Deviling. After months in post-production, the first official trailer for Deviling has hit the internet. Check out the video below. For more information on Deviling visit the official Facebook fangpage by clicking here.
Wes Craven’s latest horror effort Scream 4 will hit screens nationwide in less than twenty-four hours. It has been over a decade since the last installment of Scream was released – Scream 3 – in 2000 – but the effects that the post-modern series has had on the horror genre is still being felt today. Will Scream 4 have the same paradigm shifting affect on the genre as it’s progenitor?
In 1972, Wes Craven teamed with Sean Cunningham to create The Last House on the Left on a very meager budget of $90,000. Last House on the Left was originally rated X by the MPAA. Sean Cunningham acquired an official “R” rated greenband and slapped it on the front of the film without approval from the MPAA. The film went on to spawn countless imitators and wound up being banned in Australia and the UK and earned it’s infamous reputation several times over. In 2009, Craven’s first film was remade as a much slicker production and went on to make over $45 million worldwide.
In 1984, Wes Craven was stuck with a script that had been rejected by every studio in Hollywood until Bob Shaye at New Line cinema gave him the green-light. Craven’s movie about a child murderer that kills teens in their sleep was entitled A Nightmare on Elm Street and the killer named Freddy Kruger went on to become a cultural icon that haunted children’s nightmares for the next twenty-five years. A Nightmare On Elm Street went on to become one of the most successful franchises of all time, reinvigorating New Line Cinema and breathing fresh breath into the waning slasher subgenre. ANOES was remade in 2010 starring Jackie Earle Haley from a less than stellar script and left fans wishing the nightmare had ended long ago.
In 1996, the horror genre was all but dead, having been driven into the ground by mindless sequels that chose pop culture sensibilities over quality stories and new ideas. Craven teamed with writer Kevin Williamson to create Scream, a tale of teens plagued by a killer that was obsessed with horror movies. Scream revitalized the horror genre and kickstarted the slasher genre by infusing it with a post-modern self aware sensibility. Scream went on to gross over $173 million worldwide and spawned two sequels each one grossing nearly $200 million worldwide. Two sequels that is – until now.
This weekend, Craven and Williamson revisit the franchise that once saved horror from obscurity. Will the latest installment of the Scream series have the same effect? It’s unrealistic to expect paradigm shifting films on every outing from a filmmaker – so here’s to hoping that Scream 4 is just a good slasher film that will scare the crap out of us and leave us hoping for more.
For his dedication to the craft of filmmaking and by leading the way from guerrilla filmmaking in obscurity to helming the highest grossing horror films of the year, Wes Craven has been chosen as MVP’s Inspirational Filmmaker of the Week! Craven’s resume is filled with massive hits that changed the horror genre forever as well as quiet gems that slipped by almost unnoticed such as The Serpent and the Rainbow, The People Under the Stairs, A New Nightmare, and Red Eye. Craven has shown us time and again that all it takes to make a good horror film is a good idea and the vision to see it through to the end.
This week, Mutantville Productions honors independent filmmaker Kevin Smith yet again for his innovations in the film industry. Kevin Smith spent years trying to raise funds to shoot his first horror film Red State and then decided he didn’t want to spend any time trying to find a distributor instead choosing to announce at this year’s Sundance Festival that he would take the movie on the road himself. Smith unveiled his master plan to take Red State on a six week road tour months prior to its nationwide release in an effort to stir up positive word of mouth. Here’s the kicker – Smith refused to spend so much as a dime on advertising.
Smith reasoned what is the point in shooting a movie for four million dollars and then adding the expense of twenty million dollars in advertising to the overhead cost? Smith was greeted with jeers and unbridled skepticism from the Hollywood press and media. They were simply unprepared to deal with anyone that thinks outside of the very small and very crowded box that is the mainstream movie market.
This weekend you can see the first installment of Tales From Mutantville at the Twelfth Annual Nevermore Film Festivalat the Carolina Theatre in Durham. But did you know that Scarecrow At Midnight was filmed entirely on location at the one and only Myers House NC? Kenny Caperton, owner of the Myers House NC, invited Mutantville Productions out to his home in Hillsborough last October to film Scarecrow At Midnight.
In 1978 John Carpenter took a budget of $320,000, a small cast and an even smaller crew and created what would become known as THE seminal slasher film of modern horror – Halloween. John Carpenter’s Halloween went on to gross over $47 million in the US and $60 million worldwide. It has since grossed countless millions more on endless home video, DVD and blu ray incarnations making it the most profitable independent movie of all time (that is until the The Blair With Project in 1999 (BWP later being replaced by Paranormal Activity in 2009)).
In 2007, while on a trip to California to see the premiere of Rob Zombie’s Halloween, Smashing Pumpkins superfan Kenny Caperton decided to walk the streets of Pasadena and revisit the birthplace of a slasher legend. It was on this particular tour of the original Halloween filming locations that Kenny decided what better way was there to preserve the memory of the “Myers House” than by building his own. By 2008, Kenny made that inspiration a reality as construction began on his new home – an almost exact replica of the “Myers House” from John Carpenter’s Halloween.
In 2009 Kenny decided to shoot a tribute film to John Carpenter’s Halloween and based it in his new home. Kenny wrote the script for Judith and brought in Josh Hasty (Mannequin In Static) to direct. The story of Judith shows how Michael’s sister, Judith Myers, influenced him and leads up to the terrifying opening moments of John Carpenter’s film. Kenny doesn’t mind being called a superfan, but he doesn’t want his house to become the main location for every Halloween fan film out there.
In 2010, Kenny asked Mutantville Productions to come out to the Myers House NC and film an original horror film. MVP filmed for two days over a weekend in mid-October and post-production began almost immediately. The rough cut of the film was completed by mid-November and by December, a work print was submitted to the Nevermore Film Festival committee for consideration.
Scarecrow At Midnight was accepted into the Nevermore Film Festival and will make it’s premiere there. The first installment of the Tales From Mutantville anthology will play during the short film block “When the Stars Begin to Fall” on Saturday the 19th at 12pm NOON and again on Sunday the 20th at 2:10pm. Tickets are $8 and are available at the Carolina Theatre box office (package deals and discounts are available).
Writer/director J.T.McRoberts remarks that “I first met Kenny at the First Annual Myers House Halloween Bash in 2009 and then ran into him again at the Nevermore Film Festival in 2010 and he asked me to shoot something original at his house. That’s what I really admire about Kenny, he loves Halloween and horror films so much that he is willing to open his home to strangers to give them a chance to make their own dreams come true.”
” Kenny and I discussed how we wanted Scarecrow At Midnight to be an homage to John Carpenter’s Halloween. We wanted it to have nothing to do with John Carpenter’s movie other than the fact that we used the same house and set the story on Halloween night. In my mind that makes Scarecrow At Midnight a true homage because it doesn’t focus on the past like a fan film – but instead looks towards the future by creating a new horror myth for a new generation. Maybe one day, someone will want to live in “Sonia’s House” from Scarecrow At Midnight.”
If you’re interested in visiting the Spookhouse, then plan to attend one of their events. Kenny hosts regular celebrations at the Myers House NC including the Annual Myers House NC Halloween Bash. Visit the official Myers House NCwebsite for more information.
John Carpenter first exploded onto the horror scene in 1978 with the seminal slasher flick Halloween. He directed the movie for very little money with a small cast and crew and the final result became nothing less than horror movie history. John Carpenter’s Halloween was at one time the most profitable independent movie ever made and inspired films and filmmakers for generations to come.
Since then, Carpenter has gone on to a roller-coaster ride of triumphs and failures throughout a 30 year career which has brought us such classics as The Fog, The Thing, Carrie, and In The Mouth of Madness. After years of feeling stifled and held back by studio executives, Carpenter walked away from Hollywood in 2001. He returned briefly for the television series Masters of Horror on Showtime and directed John Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns which was voted best horror of 2005 by Mutantville.com.
Away from the cinema since his 2001 release of Ghosts of Mars, Carpenter, like his predecessor George A. Romero, has finally returned to his indie roots by going his own way and making his latest horror film, The Ward. The Ward tells the story of Kristen (played by Amber Heard) who is confined to a mental institution after allegedly setting a house aflame – only to discover that the vengeful ghost of a former patient is killing off the residents one by one.
In discussing his decision to return to filmmaking with The Ward, in a recent interview with Empire Online, Carpenter states “This was the first one that came along that had a small cast, a small budget and a reasonable shooting time in a simplified physical space. In other words, it all took place in one area [and] that was just right for me. That was what I was looking for.”
You can read the rest of Empire’s interview with John Carpenter by clicking this link. Be sure to join the Mutantville Players as we set off on the road to meet John Carpenter at the Fright Night Film Fest in Kentucky this summer! Our first stop on the way to Fright Night – the Nevermore Fundraiser at Retrofantasma tomorrow night. They’re playing a double feature of John Carpenter’s The Thing and James Cameron’s Aliens in 35mm! See you there.
“I’m pretty happy with who I am. I like myself and what I’m doing. I don`t need to be the world’s greatest director or the most famous — or the richest. I don’t need to make a whole lot of great films. I can do my job and I can do it pretty well. This is the realization I’ve come to, later in life. It’s called growing up.” 
