What originally happened to H.R. Giger’s initial conceptual designs for the “face-hugger” creature in the 1979 film “Alien?” If you know that the answer is that they were seized by U.S. Customs, then you should head over to the Halloween Catalog Trivia challenge and use your horror trivia brilliance to unlock the fun special video footage.

The films covered include Child’s Play, 28 Weeks Later, The Hills Have Eyes, Pumpkinhead, Jeepers Creepers, The Omen, Misery, Turistas, Hannibal, and the classic Alien.

I always felt like H. R. Giger just knew how to make really great-looking alien monster people-eater terrifying kind of art. He has fallen afoul of the law a lot though. Most Blue Blood readers probably know that H. R. Geiger’s artwork was the center of the controversy over distribution of The Dead Kennedys’ album Frankenchrist.

Everyone ready for Halloween?

Quarantine opens in theaters everywhere today. Check out this video about this classic style horror flick about the modern day dangers of being trapped between chemical warfare and the CDC. The video features star Jennifer Carpenter, writer/director John Erick Dowdle, writer Drew Dowdle, actor Johnathon Schaech, actor Jay Hernandez, yours truly, and more.

What would you do if you thought you might be in danger of being killed by people infected with a mysterious disease? What would you do if you were trapped with the people who might murder you and an illness which might kill you if you catch it? What would you do if you were quarantined?

In this original Blue Blood interview, Combichrist frontman Andy LaPlegua and I are drinking beer in, err, Mexico. I interview Andy LaPlegua about his Frost EP Sent to Destroy. We talk about horror movies, fetish, and what a dead hand smells like. How cute we look can be credited to Forrest Black who directed the video.

Asylum comes out on DVD in a few days and this is the red band trailer for the horror movie. I am really squeamish about anything to do with eyeballs. I think I was scarred by seeing Clockwork Orange at a young age.

This week the movie The Ruins comes out on DVD. I always found Mayan history really interesting, especially the idea that there was an ancient very advanced culture which could just disappear with only a few descendants and cultural and physical artifacts to tell their tale. The characters in The Ruins go seeking a vacation adventure in Mayan archeological hiking. What they find is a carnivorous and sentient plant, bent on destroying them. I don’t think a super-intelligent hungry vine is really what ended the society of the Maya, but watching humans being stalked by a vegetable can be good viewing fun. I couldn’t help thinking of Little Shop of Horrors while watching though. (more…)

One Missed Call is a movie based on the Japanese horror film Chakushin Ari where people receive phone calls, apparently from their future selves, with information about how and when they will die. The flick stars Los Angeles DJ Shannyn Sossamon and actor/writer/director Edward Burns.

It’s kind of funny that I love love love the aesthetic of the new Captivity movie, yet I’m kinda not cool with the subject matter. I’m not too comfortable with it being censored either, though.

I know people have been complaining, since before I was born, about violence in movies being okay, while sexuality is censored. But I have to say, why is it that if someone puts their cock in a beautiful woman’s mouth, the movie is probably going to get an X and thus limited distro and thus limited financing and production values? But dismember the same woman slowly and the discussion becomes R or NC-17? Is it really okay to broadcast horrors, the likes of which most people will never ever see in person, to seventeen-year-olds, but healthy sexuality, of a sort most people will experience, takes another year of maturing for audiences to be able to handle it? What kind of a society are we going to have when we show teenagers torture porn like Hostel before we let them see, if you can forgive me for invoking normalcy, normal sex?

Full disclosure: Obviously, you all can’t have missed the advertisements Captivity bought on a number sites I work on, including this one. And, yes, if you went to the premiere party at Los Angeles meat market Privilege, you probably spotted around half a dozen hotties you recognized from BlueBlood.com, along with various other contributors.

It bums me out, on a number of levels, that the premiere party was billed as ground-breakingly outrageous and nasty. This seems to show a simultaneous lack of respect for the performers and desire to profit from them. Although the cigarette smoke-stained off-white interior of Privilege generally plays host to more vanilla smutsters, Los Angeles has seen tattooed hotties doing BDSM once or twice before. In point of fact, the club is essentially a tent erected by where the Coconut Teazer nightclub used to stand. So that very location has probably been host to more than its share of tattooed hotties with fetish gear over the years. The most ground-breaking aspect was probably that it is unusual for a movie to not screen at its own premiere.

Anyway, both the MPAA, which rates movies, and a variety of watchdog groups have objected to Captivity’s presentation well before they started planning a premiere. After Dark Films pulled thirty of their billboards from Los Angeles and more than fourteen hundred taxi cab adverts, the creative for which featured the slogan “Capture, Confinement, Torture, Termination.” over very beautiful stylized photos of a very small portion of a scene involving a woman. I can’t emphasize enough how great the color scheme of those advertisements was. Meanwhile, the MPAA jerked the movie company around on when the film was even going to be rated. After Dark Films co-founder Courtney Solomon claims the MPAA rigmarole with Captivity is just about the MPAA maintaining their position of power. “They needed a whipping boy. They’re not about protecting parents or kids. They’re about keeping their power in Hollywood.” The upshot of this was that a schedule May 18 release date became a July 13 release date. While releasing a horror flick on Friday the 13th is always nifty, any organization which can keep audiences away from a product is scary. And not scary in an entertaining way, scary in a bad way.

A quick history lesson: The Motion Picture Association of America was founded in 1922 as a trade association. Although the initial industry concerns it dealt with had more to do with copyright and contract standardization, over the years, it has become almost synonymous with the ratings system it devised. Many industries choose to police themselves, partly out of decency, and partly out of a desire to take care of it internally before outsiders do it for them. So the MPAA ratings board determines whether a movie will receive wide release as a PG flick or the financial death knell of an NC-17. Representatives of the six major studios sit on the board. These studios includes Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Warner Brothers.

Now, the opening weekend gross for Captivity was only a bit over a million bucks, which is pretty terrible for a major studio release and brought the movie in at a ranking of #12 for domestic releases that weekend. In all fairness, the flicks Captivity was beaten out by were Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Transformers, Ratatouille, Live Free or Die Hard, License to Wed, 1408, Evan Almighty, Knocked Up, Sicko, Ocean’s Thirteen, and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Had the movie been able to open as planned, if the MPAA had not hung them up, then it might have been able to do better against the movies opening that weekend. Although a $1.4 mill opening is lackluster for any theatrical release, especially a heavily advertised one, had Captivity opened May 18 with the same total, it would have ranked #8. Then again, maybe it would have gotten its ass kicked by Shrek and Spider-Man, just like everybody else.

Part of the difficulty I have parsing out my feelings on the brouhaha is that it is difficult to figure out whether an After Dark Films release counts as a major motion picture or a plucky little guy trying to make it. Captivity is “co-released” by Lionsgate, but Lionsgate leaves all the responsibility for potentially problematic promo on After Dark’s doorstep. I’m not sure what “co-releasing” means exactly, but Lionsgate has a market capitalization of one point three five billion dollars and an estimated four hundred full time employees. Which I would not categorize as small or independent. I think it is important to note that the distro on a partner-produced movie like Captivity is a microscopic portion of the business of a behemoth like Lionsgate, which is responsible for very enjoyable and successful projects such as the Academy-award-nominated The Cooler and innovative DVD packaging and distribution for projects ranging from cutting edge fare like Weeds to cult classics like King of New York. Then again, if you inflicted the Care Bears movie on your kids, that is partly Lionsgate’s responsibility too.

According to the New York Times, Courtney Solomon, who put himself on the map by optioning Dungeons & Dragons and parlaying that into a much-lambasted directorial turn, “persuaded the director of Captivity, Roland Joffé, the much-honored filmmaker behind The Mission and The Killing Fields, to undertake reshoots. These added explicit torture, including a so-called “milkshake” scene that involves body parts and a blender, to a picture that was largely psychological in its thrust when After Dark acquired the rights to it.” Both to the New York Times and in other media outlet, Solomon chortles about what a freakshow his premiere is going to be and how upset he hopes women’s groups get about his movie. The National Organization for Women said, on the record, that they were not going to protest to give him press.

So, having delved into the issues involved, here is my summary take on it. First, if After Dark Films is looking for a modern audience for their movies, it is a bit antiquated to act like BDSM and tattoos are outrageous fringe culture. I’m sick of this sort of marginalizing nonsense from people who would like to make a dollar off of my scene. Secondly, because of the major studio makeup of the MPAA, I feel it can’t really be objective. I like having ratings on things as a viewing guide, but I dislike the way the ratings system leads to unwarranted limitations on distribution and I particularly dislike the way the current rating system encourages violence against women in place of human sexuality. It will be a chilly day in Hellywood before I deliberately view torture porn like Captivity, but I don’t think a project like that should have its success determined by whether or not its producers can convince a half dozen really biased businesspeople that violence against women is appropriate viewing for teens. Thirdly, although I kind of liked the Captivity billboards, I was personally revolted by the Saw signage at the San Diego Comic Con and I think movie producers, and everyone really, should pay attention to what they put in an advertisement people will not be able to avoid. I do not want strangers telling me what I can see in my media. I deeply believe that that becomes a slippery slope to total destruction of the free speech rights granted to all Americans by the First Amendment, but I also do not want strangers forcing me, or forcing children, to see things they do not wish to see or should not see. This means that adverts, in public places, for potentially upsetting products, should be honest about what the products are, without ramming the product down the throats of the unwilling.

I admit that, although I loved Elisha Cuthbert’s performance and character in the surprisingly awesome The Girl Next Door, I loathed her Kim Bauer character she played on 24. I thought about kicking off this article with a joke about how I thought Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer should have just let her be kept captive and tortured. Heck, that was probably the inspiration for Captivity. For me to want to watch that, however, it would really have to be one of the dungeons on Fucking Machines, where the action is consensual and female pleasure might actually be involved too.

My mama always told me to find something I’m good at and to then apply it in my day-to-day life. I’m one hell of a screamer. Throughout the years, I’ve developed a decent name for my screams on stage with my music, but one day my dream happened. A good friend of mine, Joseph Bishara (Rasputina, Marilyn Manson, 16 Volt, etc.) walked up to me after one of my band Satiate’s shows and asked, if he paid me, would I let him record me, audibly, for some horror movie work. His exact words were “how’d you like to get paid to puke?” I immediately was into the idea for a multitude of reasons. One, I’m a huge horror movie freak. Two, I’ve always wanted to work in horror movies. Lastly, how awesome would it be for someone to ask me what I do for a living and I can go “I get paid to puke and scream.” From this one conversation a few years ago, I get calls from time to time to come down to the studio and track vocals, screams, eerie voices and, yes, weird noises, like gurgling, gargling and yes, puking. Most of my work is featured in movie trailers and TV commercials, some of the more “known” work in my resume is: The Village, Amityville Horror (remake,) Silent Hill, and The Grudge 2. One of my latest treks into the studio was for the After Dark Films Horror Fest, 8 Films to Die For, The Gravedancers.

It’s very challenging work. The first half of the session was vocal pieces that range from simple choral to intense and powerful operatic type vibratos. I recorded pieces in several rooms with different microphones to get different natural analog textures. Then, I also was selected to do the voice for the ghost of Emma, the homicidal wronged lover hell-bent on revenge from the grave. A few of those takes consisted of me mic’d by sitting on the floor and pushing physically along my stomach. Then, comes the hard part, adding in the textures and the free run of ideas. This is the area that Joe tosses me a sound idea and we brainstorm and try to figure out how I can create it. Where the only rule is, the more unnatural sounding, the better. On the recording for this session, we mic’d me in his bathroom gargling first a watered down vanilla yogurt (which looked like a bukkake film gone wrong when we were done,) then beer. It was interesting to know that while moaning during the gurgling of the yogurt, you can get a wet slap of sound, and then while doing it with the beer, you got a hissing foam texture. Both pieces made it into the score to give the actual finished product this uncomfortable sensation.

Now came the hard part, waiting for this movie to come out. There were initial screenings, which got killer reviews. I got to see the work I did placed in the movie, finally. The movie opened and it had such a wonderful cast of characters. Three friends have a friend die. Two of the friends used to be lovers, and one of them is currently married creating tension between the two. The other one is flippant comic smart-ass. After the funeral, they go get drunk and notice a mysterious note telling them to dance for the dead. They blast their little boom box and start dancing, on people’s graves. Well, turns out, it’s a curse. The ghosts of the three graves the friends danced on are super pissed and proceed to haunt the living for a full turn of the moon (that’s 30 days people…) As time passes, the ghosts get stronger. The three ghosts belonged to three people buried in the “crazy” part of the cemetery. One ghost is a pyromaniac child. Another is a physically and sexually abusive man. The last one is the one I did the work for, a woman who’s married lover wouldn’t leave his wife for her, so she butchered them both with an axe. The three finally discover what all the creepy and insane problems are coming from and get help from some paranormal investigators. If you want more, you need to get the movie, but yeah, you get the idea. After being disappointed by so many horror movies, I was glad to see one that actual had me jump in a few moments. It made me so happy to be a small part of it’s magic. So here is a great movie, but no distribution.

Finally After Dark Film’s, Horrorfest 8 Films to Die For, was born. The Gravedancers hit the screen. Emma, what I consider my ghost, is now turning up in places I’d never expect (like in random MySpace pages and message boards) and I’m grinning inwardly, because I loved being a part of this evil ghost, even if it’s only a few minutes of voice or vocals. I loved the idea that these independent filmmakers were coming together to get GOOD horror movies to the people. Something that should be prevalent over the thousands of HORRIBLE remakes and corporate takes on what they think a horror movie fans should love. It still amazes me, that bumping into random people around town, they will start talking about The Gravedancers and how they loved the evil ghosts, when the subject of current horror movies get brought up. Nothing better to see people scream and jump when they are watching a horror movie, even the trailer, when it’s your scream that scares the hell out of them. I love making my mama proud. I get even more sick satisfaction out of the fact when she brags about my work she goes, “Yeah, my daughter gets paid to scream and puke.”