HELLRAISER. Not many need to be told that Clive Barker’s
directorial debut was an instant sensation when it burst onto the cinematic
landscape in 1987, spawning a character that would become an icon, eight sequels,
and a capital-C career. Like HALLOWEEN, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST and other
classics in the horror pantheon, the title alone conveys it all. But this doesn't seem to be the case with his follow-up,
1990’s NIGHTBREED, nor 1995’s LORD OF ILLUSIONS. For while Barker’s seen
varying degrees of filmic success post-HELLRAISER as a producer (GODS AND MONSTERS,
most notably), these two later works, which he also both wrote and directed,
never seemed to fully capitalize on the great promise shown in his auspicious
arrival.
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For a movie about the fallibility of
memory, Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 hyper-violent Martian sci-fi trip TOTAL RECALL
was overflowing with unforgettable moments: The tri-boobed prostitute; Robotic Jonnycab’s
inexplicably murderous response to being stiffed out of a fare; Deformed chest foetus Kuato (parodied recently
on a SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE skit with Andy Samberg portraying the mutated rebel
leader); The nostril evacuation of Quaid’s (Arnold Schwarzenegger) glowing tracking
device; and everything sculpted at the bygone height of animatronic artistry by
the great Rob Bottin (THE THING) and his team. Remember
all that? Great, now forget it.
While admittedly not for all, the realm of surrealist, pure
cinema is often exemplary at evoking a journey in an audience. It can be a
sensory plunge into another realm; one consistently surprising, often befuddling, but sometimes transforming your element from start to finish. Calvin
Lee Reeder’s THE OREGONIAN, having flown under the radar since its premiere at
2011’s Sundance Film Festival, opens tomorrow at Brooklyn’s 
How do you make a genre film about a family trying to
survive in a postapocalyptic environment against vicious enemies stand out? You
focus on the family instead of the enemies, and compelling human drama over
bloodshed. That’s what director/co-writer Justin McConnell did with THE
COLLAPSED, out this week on DVD from Anchor Bay, and he discusses how he made
it happen below.
If you’re a serious, all consuming fan of Rod Serling’s
powerful and influential THE TWILIGHT ZONE (1959 – 1964, CBS) then you feel ,
as I do, that there were no bad episodes in its five season run. Certainly,
some were stronger than others, but even at its thinnest, the dark,
fantastical, moral and melancholy world sculpted by Serling and his stable of
creative collaborators was infinitely superior and ahead of anything else on
television at that time—and arguably, anything since its demise.
Fourteen years after winning one of his many Best Makeup
Oscars for the first MEN IN BLACK, monster master Rick Baker is back with a
whole new menagerie in MEN IN BLACK 3 (in theaters today from Columbia). And as he told Fango over the course of
our interview, some of his ideas for the original film wound up in the new
sequel.
Continuing our discussion with PARANORMAL ACTIVITY director and CHERNOBYL DIARIES producer Oren Peli, begun 
Beki Ingram says working in Robert Kurtzman’s shop prior to
her stint on FACE OFF prepared her for dealing with the pressure cooker
atmosphere of the reality TV competition.