Makeup FX artist Robert Hall (pictured) has been best-known as a director for his ultragory LAID TO REST movies, but he launched his filmmaking career with the gentler but still genre-friendly LIGHTNING BUG. Hall gave Fango the scoop on that movie’s upcoming Blu-ray release, along with a first look at the cover and a few words on his next movie.

LIGHTNING BUG hits hi-def disc January 15, 2013 from Image Entertainment in the U.S. and Anchor Bay in Canada, and will be chock full of previously unseen features. Most notably, Hall tells us, “In addition to the theatrical cut, the disc will include an ‘Extended Cut’ that has never been seen before. It contains an entire subplot with Don Gibb in a hilarious role that was cut from the [previous] Anchor Bay version for time. We’re also working on a retrospective with all-new interviews with the key players that we’re hoping to include if we can get it done in time.”

As for the movie itself, “It has been completely remastered and restored from the original print and color-corrected for Blu-ray, supervised my myself and DP Brandon Trost. We also fixed and enhanced some visual effects shots now that we have that luxury. It has never looked this good.”

LIGHTNING BUG stars Bret Harrison as Green Graves, a teenager with a passion for makeup FX who longs to get out of his small Southern town where people misunderstand and abuse him; HELLRAISER’s Ashley Laurence, Laura Prepon and Kevin Gage co-star. The film was a semi-autobiographical labor of love for Hall, who says, “I’m still proud of it, warts and all. For a first film, I think it’s really strong, and it’s very personal to me. I’ll never make another one like it. I was a bit disappointed that it didn’t find a wider audience or play on cable, but we’re hoping to help that with the new Blu-ray. I think a lot of people assumed it was a horror film, and now we’re trying to market it as what it really is: a coming-of-age story that just happens to have a special appeal to horror buffs. I’m always touched when people come up to me and tell me they had a similar isolated or abusive upbringing and loved horror films, and that it’s their story too. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters, and why I made it in the first place.”

Hall has since moved on to helming straight fright films (and announced a remake of CHOPPING MALL last year), though he notes, “Some of the things I’m working on now are a bit more dramatic, like a new one called ROTTEN FACE. That’s a dramatic piece, but one of the most horrific things I’ve ever read; Jonathan Schaech [the actor who appeared in both LAID TO RESTs as well as QUARANTINE, on which Hall created the FX] and Richard Chizmar wrote the script, and I am super-excited to bring it to life. It’s more in the vein of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM and MARTYRS than LAID TO REST. We start shooting that in October.”  0 0 0 And we’ll bring you more details as they arise; check out a new LIGHTNING BUG trailer below.

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