“Rabbit season!”
“Duck season!”
“Rabbit season!”
“Duck season!”

It goes on like this for some time until a disheveled young girl in a pea soup-stained nightgown approaches, slaps them both senseless and growls, “exorcism season.”

Who knew? I must’ve missed the memo but it seems for the last couple of years that January has become the time to release exorcism movies. On the one hand, I’m pretty happy about having some of my favorite kind of supernatural horror to start the year. On the other hand, last year’s inaugural celebration of internal deviltry, “the Rite” was no great shakes.

This year’s entry, “the Devil Inside” sets the bar even lower.

The film starts in 1989 with a recording of a 911 call and “police footage” of a triple murder. More exactly, it’s an unauthorized exorcism of Maria Rossi (Suzan Crowley) that leaves two priests and a nun dead. Fast forward twenty years and we find Maria’s daughter Isabella (Fernanda Andrade) working with filmmaker Michael (Ionut Grama) trying to get to the bottom of what’s going on with her mom. Their efforts take them to the Vatican where they meet Ben (Simon Quarterman) and David (Evan Helmuth), a pair of rogue exorcists. The pair introduces Isabella and Michael to the world of spiritual warfare and agrees to examine Maria in order to determine if she’s possessed.

Of course, she is.

“The Devil Inside” is the first feature from director William Brent Bell since 2006’s “Stay Alive”. “Devil” is a movie that sleepwalks through most of the first half before it stirs groggily in the middle and then stumbles through the last act before it finally lurches abruptly to a stop. Fortunately, its journey isn’t difficult one since it cribs earlier exorcism (“The Last Exorcism” and “the Rite”) and found footage (“Paranormal Activity”) films. As I’ve said before, “great directors pay homage, lesser directors steal,” and brother, does this movie feel stolen. Plot points and signature shots are lifted from better movies and they aren’t hard to spot. And if that weren’t enough – despite the claims of its marketing – the movie just isn’t scary. If anything, it’s predictable: you can almost pick out where the jump scares are coming. Granted, it’s not all bad but I’d pin it close to about 98% bad. There were a few nice touches which I think only made things more frustrating..

The acting – as I am fond of saying – was solid. The actors did well with what they had but it wasn’t much. You could have just as easily pulled any of their characters from the Big Book of Horror Clichés: the Daughter Searching for Answers, the troubled Priests, the hapless Cameraman. This is a movie that simply gives us placeholders that simply move us through the story but no one to care about. Of course, that’s an unfortunate conceit of horror stories: you don’t need characters, just someone to walk through, make bad decisions and get abused. You certainly get that here.

“The Devil Inside” is what we’ve come to expect from big studio horror: a tired formula in new togs. It’s a disappointing start to the New Year. Maybe next season will be better.

The horror comedy “All American Zombie Drugs” will be playing two charity screenings at the Angelika Dallas December 9th and 10th with the proceeds going to Operation Kindness. Described as “Dude Where’s My Car” meets “Pineapple Express” with zombies, it’s an award winning feature film from this year’s AOF International Film Festival written and directed by Alex Ballar and stars Beau Nelson, Wolfgang Weber and Susan Graham.

Tickets for the event are $10 at the box office. A Q&A session with Ballar, Nelson and Weber will follow each screening. For more information, please visit http://www.twistedcentral.com, http://www.operationkindness.org, or http://www.zombiedrugs.com.

Such is the case with “the Thing”.

“The Thing” is a prequel to the 1982 film by John Carpenter of the same name, which itself was a remake of the 1954 movie, “The Thing From Another World”. In it, paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is asked by her friend Adam (Eric Christian Olsen) to join a Norwegian science team in Antarctica that has made a remarkable discovery. With little details and even less time to decide, she accepts the offer and travels to the bottom of the world to see what the scientists have found. The secret hiding beneath the ice is a spaceship thousands of years old. And an alien. While Kate advises caution in regards to the alien, the head of the Norwegian team, Dr. Halversen (Ulrich Thomsen) insists on getting invasive tissue samples. Things seem okay for a time but soon the dritt really hits the fan when the alien escapes.

Director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr’s first foray into feature film territory is a fine one. Perhaps it’s a regional trademark, but the feel of the movie reminded me a lot of the Swedish film, “Let the Right One In”. The colors are cool and the exteriors are beautifully shot. In close, he did a great job of creating a tense and claustrophobic atmosphere. The actors are solid across the board. Winstead – a new favorite of mine since her turn in “Scott Pilgrim vs the World” does a top-notch job as the paleontologist forced into a heroic, leader role. Joel Edgerton – last seen in the MMA-drama “Warrior” – is a serviceable stand-in for Kurt Russell-like pilot. A good chunk of the rest of the cast are Norwegian actors that I’m not terribly familiar with and, to me, they add a nice yet subtle layer of realism to the film. Early on, as they are setting up the story, all of the dialogue is in Norwegian. Big deal, you may say but it’s not a far stretch to imagine them doing the entire sequence in heavily-accented English. I happen to think it makes a positive difference.

If there is anything that I’m on the fence about, it would be the amount that this film cribs from Carpenter’s version. As a prequel that takes place immediately before the events in his film, it’s understandable that the feel is similar and that Heijningen went to great lengths to recreate it. However, there were points in the film where they not just copied the look, but also the scenes. It occasionally felt like a disappointing stumble as this film walked a fine line between paying homage and outright copying from what came before it. Genre fans will probably have a good time picking out all the nods to the Carpenter version and non-fans will just have a great movie to watch.

“The Thing” is a lot like finding a great hangout in a seedy looking little bar or a four star meal in a little mom and pop joint. Maybe you’re not expecting much from the first glance but if you take the time to investigate, you may just find yourself a real gem.

Similarly, the movie “Straw Dogs” is a placeholder until something entertaining comes along.

“Straw Dogs” is a remake of Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 film of the same name. In it, we meet David (James Marsden) and Amy (Kate Bosworth), a screenwriter and his actress wife as they head to her hometown in the Deep South. All eyes are on them, of course, as they come rolling into the heart of small-town America in a classic Jag. Immediately, the first of many conflicts is set up here. They step into a local tavern for a bite to eat and we are introduced to a group of Amy’s old guy friends, headed up by her chiseled ex-boyfriend, Charlie (Alexander Skarsgård). We also meet the town’s former high school football coach, Tom Heddon (James Woods) who now maintains a constant perch at the local bar. Most are happy to see Amy but aren’t quite sure how to take big city David and he’s not too sure what to make of the townspeople. A few things are certain: one, there’s something going on between Amy and Charlie and that something really bad is going to happen really soon.

The promotional material for the movie has the tagline, “Everyone has a breaking point.” I think mine was about a half hour into the film. Efficiently, blame can be laid at the feet of director Rod Lurie, who also wrote the screenplay. The movie played out like a disjointed collection of scenes that, for the most part, just showed us how unpleasant or flawed each of the characters was. After a while, it was study in tedium as if each particular point had to be beaten into the audience’s brain. As I am unfamiliar with the Peckinpah’s original, I’m not sure if it was his device or Lurie’s but it left me wanting to shout at the screen, “OK, I get it! Move along.” Despite what I consider a major shortcoming, Lurie’s decision to bring the story from England to a football-centric town in Mississippi is genius. It provided the perfect background for the story.

Performance-wise, the cast holds up their end of the deal well. I found it interesting that Marsden and Bosworth were once again paired as a dysfunctional couple (the first time being in “Superman Returns”). Still, they do it well. Marsden, once again, brings a likeable but somewhat stuffy air to his character and it is exactly what is needed. Bosworth gives a well-rounded performance in a difficult role. Skarsgård also gives us a multi-faceted performance as the former high-school football star now resigned to his life now as a roofer. Buried in all this is also a nice little performance by James Woods, barely recognizable under his age makeup.

“Straw Dogs” is a frustrating and disappointing mess of a movie. A bit like its namesake, may look like something worthwhile, but is ultimately only something to be discarded.

But this wasn’t always the case.

Long before the “civilized” and sanitized now, fairy tales were not meant for children. They were filled with adults doing adult things learning lessons that usually involved the spilling of blood – much like the Troy Nixey-helmed and Guillermo Del Toro-penned “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”.
A remake and somewhat of a reimagining of a 1973 Made-For-TV movie, “Dark” follows a young girl, Sally (Bailee Madison) sent to live with her father (Guy Pearce) and his girlfriend, Kim (Katie Holmes) in the big creepy house they are renovating. Obviously unhappy there, little Sally takes to wandering the grounds and finds a basement that was previously undiscovered. As they delve into it, Sally’s imagination is caught by a bolted furnace door; behind it, she hears voices and they want to be her friend. Of course, voices coming from behind bolted furnace doors in creepy basements are rarely a good thing and such is the case here as the creatures dwelling there in the dark come out to wreak havoc.

While Del Toro only produced and wrote the screenplay (along with his writing partner for “Mimic”, Matthew Robbins), his fingerprints are all over the film. Visually, the film harkens a bit to “Pan’s Labyrinth” and thematically, it treads the well-worn fairy tale paths that Del Toro loves so much. But at the end of the day, this is Nixey’s baby and he should be a proud poppa. He gives us a darkly atmospheric fairy tale with just a dash of gothic horror; precisely what fairy tales would be if they had not been ceded over as children’s stories all those years ago. More remarkable though is that that he gives us something very rare: an R-rated movie, not because of violence or nudity, but because it is scary. In early interviews, Del Toro called it their “badge of honor” from the MPAA. I’d be inclined to agree with him. It’s not the cheap kind of scary that makes you jump in your seat; it’s the classic kind of scary that grinds slowly in the pit of your stomach.

Immediately, that brings to mind that there are some people who will groan that this method is either new or original. To me, it’s kind of like faulting a Lamborghini for having four wheels and an engine because “it’s been done before.” Yes, what we have here has been done before – for centuries even – but it has been done well, which is more than could be said for many of its genre siblings. You have a smart and solid script from Del Toro and Robbins that, much like Goldilocks’ porridge, is neither too hot or too cold but just right. The cast is equally spot on. Both Pearce and Holmes are more than equal to their roles and I think what I liked best about them is that while both play obviously very successful people, they are not glamorous. Despite the opulent setting, they both seem very plain in comparison and to me that is a welcome change from the usual parade of chiseled abs and cosmetically altered figures. Madison, as Sally, is a little treasure. Much like Isabelle Furman’s wonderful turn in 2009’s “Orphan”, Madison proves herself to be a very capable young actress.

“Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” is an exceptional update of an age-old tale about blood and things that go bump in the night; the moral of it is that you don’t want to miss it.

But one day, relief will come.
Just not today.
Today, we get “Final Destination 5”.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of any of the “Final Destination” movies, I can break them all down for you like this. The film opens by introducing a set of young and attractive stereotypes, who soon they find themselves in the middle of a spectacular action set piece in which most all of them meeting bloody ends. But this is only a premonition, which allows them to avoid the mayhem. However, they discover that they were meant to die and Death is now “stalking them to set the books right.” The rest of the movie is a waiting game – not to see who dies, but to see how they die. The lead up to each death is a tedious stream of red herrings leading up to a freakishly improbable death. It usually ends with a couple of “survivors” who end up dying anyway just because no one really cheats Death.

For the most part, that’s what we get with the fifth installment of a film series that should have stopped after the first. Character-wise, we have the nice but conflicted Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto), his corporate-minded friend Pete (Miles Fisher), Sam’s nice girlfriend Emma (Emma Bell), Pete’s girlfriend and boss’ daughter Candice (Ellen Wroe), the vaguely slutty Olivia (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood), nerdy lothario, Isaac (P.J. Byrne), the token minority Nathan (Arlen Escarpeta) and lastly, the slightly overbearing and slightly dim boss Dennis (David Koechner). The big opening set piece is a suspension bridge collapse as the group is on their way to a corporate retreat. Sam has a vision and saves his friend – only after we get a glimpse into what should have been. That, of course, gets the ball rolling on the massive Rube Goldberg machine of death that every movie in the series has been so far.

Individually, the parts are solid. The cast is everything they need to be. D’Agosto and Bell are appropriately cute and endearing. Fisher eerily transforms into Tom Cruise as the movie goes along (which is ironic since he played Tom Cruise in “Superhero Movie”) and it’s actually a good thing as his character goes through the most complex journey in the film. This is due to the addition of a tweak to the original formula. In this installment, we find out from the creepy coroner (played to perfection by genre great Tony Todd) that if the survivors kill someone to essentially take their place, then they get the life of the person they killed. This addition made for a very interesting, very intense climax. Unfortunately, for me, it’s not enough to salvage this movie. Despite enjoying the first film and still finding the concept interesting, I consider the subsequent movies to be exercises in laziness. While I’m sure it’s very tough work to make the same movie over and over and over and over again – only different – it’s not something I’d want to sit through.

Another sticking point I had with this movie was the 3-D. Although it was shot with 3-D cameras (thus avoiding the post-conversion mess) and the kills look generally fantastic with the extra dimension, I have a hard time accepting a 3-D movie where the majority of the scenes are in office buildings or similarly mundane locations.

“Final Destination 5” is cinematic déjà vu. It’s a raincloud on the horizon, full of promise, but not much else.

The festival runs from 2PM – 7PM at the historic Texas Theater and features films either created by LBGT filmmakers or of gay interest. On this year’s slate of films is “George’s Intervention” by director J.T. Seaton (featuring genre veteran, Lynn Lowry) and the vampire comedy, “Bite Marks” by writer/director Mark Besssenger.

Additionally, three shorts will also be presented “Cupcake” by Rebecca Thompson, “metsastymmaa” by Nalle Mielonen and “I Was a Tranny Werewolf” by Lola Rocknrolla.

Half of all ticket sales will be donated to Youth First Texas, a non-profit Dallas organization which helps provide youth in the LGBTQ community counseling and support, activities, leadership opportunities and educational support. For more information, visit them online here.

At least that’s what some people say.

Some people might say that man, in his natural state, prefers the balance found in a matriarchal belief system. Others still might say that man was created as a result of biological happenstance and natural selection. One thing that could be agreed upon is that Lucky McKee’s “The Woman” is a potent movie.

Meet the Cleek family – Chris (Sean Bridger), Belle (Angela Bettis), Peg (Lauren Ashley Carter), Brian (Zack Rand) and little Darlin’ (Shyla Molhusen) – and something’s just not right with them. While the rest of the community may see a perfect family, a current of fear runs through them. Chris, a lawyer in the small town they live outside of, rules his family. One day, while he is out hunting, he comes across a feral woman (Pollyanna McIntosh). Driven primarily by lust, he captures the woman and chains her up in his cellar with the intent to “civilize” her.

“The Woman” drives its knuckle into the cultural pressure-point of male/female relations. If audiences find it disturbing, it is because it cuts so close to the beliefs that many people have: men are the undisputed kings of their castles and women are there only to service them. It’s a foundational notion that underlies much of how our society operates. This movie takes that notion and expounds upon it to a grotesque and unfortunately realistic conclusion. McKee, expanding on the universe created by writer Jack Ketcham, expertly reveals to us things that we might ordinarily turn a blind eye to. It could be looked to as an allegory of the “white man’s burden,” of bringing – or rather – forcing our culture on the “savages.” In this case, it is also highlights the disparity in the relationship between men and women.

In addition to McKee’s sure guiding hand, his cast does an exceptional job of bringing this story to life. Bridger, as the family patriarch brings a dangerous calm to the role, like calm ocean waters filled with sharks. Bettis, as the long-suffering but cowed wife, brings a mutli-faceted performance as Chris’ wife that garners both sympathy and scorn. McIntosh is downright fearless as “the woman” expressing volumes with just a look. Topping the list for me, though, was the performance of young Zack Rand. As Chris’ only son, it’s easy to see him initially as just another victim of his father’s domineering hand. However, as the movie progresses, you see the depths to which his soul is poisoned by his father’s teachings and attitudes. His eyes hold a seething contempt for his sisters, his mother and just other women in general. I personally felt it was a first class performance for the actor in his first film.

“The Woman” is an extended gut punch. It is an unflinching, uncompromising film that will challenge you, possible disturb you and definitely entertain you. And in the end, that’s what you’re looking for.

TerrorScribe: Are you excited to be coming to Texas Frightmare Weekend?

Robert Englund: I’m looking forward… I’ve worked in Dallas as an actor many times. I’ve done a great TV movie with Lea Thompson and of course all of us actors eventually have to show up and get kicked between the legs by Chuck Norris as a bad guy. But I’ve worked there many times and I’ve done publicity there and I’ve opened big giant amusement parks for Halloween. I love coming there and meeting the fans because I’ve done so many movies in the South and in Texas. I always get a little bonus, sort of, one on one with fans that remember my early career when I was always playing rednecks and best friends and good ol’ boys in the South. They remember all my movies with Jeff Bridges and Sally Fields and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jan Michael Vincent and Pamela Sue Martin and Henry Fonda and Susan Sarandon when we were all running around with our CB radios and our baseball hats and just being good ol’ boys. It’s fun because people will come up to me, not only with the great horror memorabilia that I love to see and sign but also they’ll bring some of that stuff around which is always a hoot.

TS: Do you miss playing those redneck roles?

RE: Y’know, I’ve got a movie this weekend that’s playing at the Newport Beach Film Festival and I’m one of Lance Henriksen’s gang… and we go after Robert Patrick. Hal Holbrook’s the star of the movie, so I got to kinda go back to my old ways again which was kinda fun. I kinda did a rustic character on “Bones” last year. I starred on “Bones” and that was kinda fun to do. I’m up for another one right now. It’s fun. I’m getting to play them occasionally again. Funnily, now, I’m so old instead of being the young, tough, kick-ass redneck sidekick now, I’m kinda turning into Gabby Hayes here or Dub Taylor or one of those old guys on “The Dukes of Hazzard”. That’s the kind of parts I’m playing when I’m not playing mad scientists or mad doctors or bad stepfathers. Those are the kinds I’m playing.

TS: You still have some scary roles though. You did “Inkubus”.

RE: “Inkubus” is coming out soon. Yeah, “Inkubus” is great. I’ve been trying to think of a way to really crystalize how to describe it, but it’s sorta like that old John Carpenter movie, “Assault on Precinct 13”. It’s actually contemporary but it’s this old, beat-to-shit 70’s police station and they’re all moving over to the new high-tech facility. It’s the last day at the police station and it’s midnight and it’s this skeleton crew and in I walk.

I confess to, like, a hundred years of crimes – serial killer crimes and everything else –almost like I had my hand into Jack the Ripper, maybe even Jeffery Dahmer. You never quite know. What I think in fact is happening is that my character really needs a new host body and he’s sort of amusing himself. It’s great because he’s a little bit timeless. He’s probably been around for a hundred years. He wears a vest that’s maybe from the 1880’s or the turn of the century. He has an old jacket that could’ve been around in the 20’s and his language is a little bit stilted and it’s kinda interesting and he toys with the people.

I got to work with the great character actor, William Forsythe and Jonathan Silverman from “Single Man” playing against type as an East Coast cop with a five-o’clock shadow and all scruffy, slightly overweight and eating greasy sandwiches in the office. So, it’s real fun. We shot it with that new Canon 151 digital camera which is like the size of a snapshot camera and it’s just great. It can go anywhere. We actually had it on a skateboard for one shot, just pulling this skateboard across this desk while I sat there and they were cross-examining me. This little camera was just being dragged across the front of this desk by the newspaper and my handcuffs and this cup of coffee. It was really cool.

But I do keep my finger in the horror world. I was working on some sci-fi kids cartoons for a while you know – “The Spectacular Spider Man”, I was the Vulture on that and I was The Riddler on the new Batman. I just did a new Cartoon Network show yesterday called “the Regulars” and the Green Lantern show.

I’m busy. I’ve been doing a lot of stuff. There’s one I can’t talk about but I’ve been paired up with some of the biggest names in the genre – men and women – and were going to be sort of the characters in a new phenomenal game that’s going to be coming out. So, this has been great for me to work in that world this year for me because it’s all a new vocabulary and new technology for me with motion capture and everything. I can’t really be more specific than that except to say that it’s gonna be huge and it’s amazing and it’s very complex and fabulous.

TS: So, how are you enjoying the new technology?

RE: Well, you know I’ve worked low-budget with special effects and high-budget as far back as “V” in 1982. We had John Dykstra, if you remember. “V’ brought John Dykstra to network television. “V” was the show that really raised the bar as far as special effects goes on prime time television. Before that, it was just this girl running around in green makeup trying to get William Shatner. It was kinda cheesoid. Even after us I think early shows like “X-files” was a little below us in terms of effects for the first couple seasons.

So, we really, really raised the bar in early CGI and everything else with John Dykstra from “Star Wars”. So, I’ve been around that stuff for a long time, but I gotta tell you this new stuff – the motion capture they were using… vocabulary on the new game I’m working on – they were just using extraordinary… vocabulary that I didn’t know and it was just great learning it. And then once you did you could begin to just second guess what they wanted from you and enhance your performance. It’s a new world. It’s a brave new world and it’s interesting. It’s fascinating.

TS: I see you’re on Twitter as well. Are you embracing the new technology on a personal level as well?

RE: It’s not like I live there. No, I travel a lot and I’m a fan so what I do is I’m trying to be real positive at this stage of my life about everything. Like, I just got back from New York and I had to see a show that I’ve been asked to do and I caught some of their shows while I was there so I caught two extraordinary shows so I talked about them to my fans. And I try to be specific to my fans: I just saw a great little movie on InDemand called “In Her Skin” starring Miranda Otto from “Lord of the Rings” and Guy Pierce from “Memento” – two of my favorite actors – and there’s an actress in it, I believe she’s an Irish immigrant to Australia – it’s an Australian film and she plays the villainess in it. She’s sort of equal parts Anthony Hopkins and Jennifer Jason Leigh in “Single White Female” and she’s just brilliant. Her name is Ruth Bradley, I think. She’s just remarkable. I think that’s one of my most recent twitters.

I also just saw the great show, a great kind of dark, creepy ghoulish old-fashioned one man show, produced and conceived of by Teller with his friend Todd Phillips, who plays the host character in it. It’s got magic in it and mentalism and gold ol’ gore and scares and cheap thrills in it and it’s playing on Broadway. It’s called Play Dead and it’s wonderful so I just tweeted about that recently. So, I do play with it. I play with the technology. My wife leads me through.

I’ve had a website forever and my website’s a little creaky now and old school, but only a couple of years ago it was really the coolest spot and I have my calendar on there and people can get my remaindered autobiography on the website. But I also let people know where I’m going, like I’m off this weekend at the Frightmare or “Robert’s on location shooting “Inkubus”” or “Robert’s off to Europe to shoot a horror movie in Italy” or “Robert’s shooting a TV show up in Vancouver.” Whatever I’m up to, I try to let my fans know because they can also look forward to the project as well. So, I’m fine with the new technology but being my age and my generation, it doesn’t run my life.

I have been around long enough to know what I want to do whether it’s going out for sushi or walking the dog on the beach or reading a new good book. We all have limited time. I just recently caught up with the Joe Hill book, so I tweeted about that a little bit. But I also like the time just to lie down in my backyard and read my Joe Hill book. I’m a couple of years behind on that but it was great stuff so I told the fans that it is as good as everybody says. I’m very well read and I’m a huge fan of contemporary literature and I just thought that was an extraordinary piece of work.

I also like having room in my life. I’m like anyone else, I like to go see a good movie when it comes out, I like to try a new Italian restaurant, and I like to walk the dog on the beach. I gotta do the laundry and pick up my wife and water the lawn and mow the lawn and all that kinda stuff too. And go on interviews. I live down south of Los Angeles so that’s always a big… you know, I’m not a kid anymore, I gotta schlepp up to L.A. in rush hour traffic to do a cartoon voice for some new show on the Cartoon Network or an audition or a meeting or a pitch, that takes up a day of my life going up there and coming back. Or I might go up the night before and stay because you want to be fresh so that takes some time out of that so I don’t want to come back after doing that and sit in front of the computer and work and not get paid for it.

I think people tend to forget that as well organized as that can help you be that’s also a lot of work to take home that you aren’t getting paid for. Unless you’re a writer, like you are or a journalist, you’re not really getting paid for that work at home. I so try to keep it separate.

TS: Was “Heart Shaped Box” your first Joe Hill book?

RE: I’ll tell you I just was blown away. And it’s weird because that book has been by the side of my bed for two years and what happened was I got hooked up with… I’ve been reading these great women writers lately and I got turned on – my best friend’s daughter is a wonderful, wonderful writer – and she just keeps turning me on to these great books. She turned me on to Jennifer Egan, so I read all the Jennifer Egan books. Then she turned me onto Julia Glass and I read all the Julia Glass books. Of course, I always want to read other ones – there’s other people I like too – whether I’m catching up on Jonathan Franzen or somebody else, or Ian McEwan, as well as Stephen King and Joe Hill.

But these are all for pleasure. I found all these within the last six months or so all these women have just really been speaking to me. I got some of these books for Christmas and it took me a while to get through them. Barbara Kingsolver’s new book about Frida Kahlo is great. Some of these women are my age and for some weird reason the reference is just so perfect for me when they reference themselves younger or they reference what they’re listening to when they’re driving in their car or what’s on their music mix or tape deck. You know what I’m saying? It makes that world alive for me.

So I’ve really been doing a lot of that and you need time for that and it’s something I really love to do., just like running out and catching a good matinee of a movie. You don’t get everything on Netflix or InDemand so every now and again I run out and check out a little foreign film, some little foreign horror movie. I want to be able to go to a little film festival in a small Tuscan hill town in Italy and hang out with the guys that did Human Centipede and turn them on to really good Italian food and see what they’re all about or see some little dark horror movie from Spain or Japan or hang out with Dario Argento a little bit. I want to be able to have that time in my life and not be sitting in front of the computer screen. I do leave space for that and come back to it, dig in and check emails or PayPal or whatever else it is I’m busy doing.

TS: One last question, you’ve obviously been doing genre work for many years, how do you feel about changes in the genre since you first started doing work in the late Seventies.

RE: I’m grateful to the loyalty of the fans because the fans and I, in fact, had to sit in sort of the back of the bus for a while. We didn’t’ get the respect. We were nerds or we were goths or we were fanboys or we were B-movie horror stars and we always sat back by the swinging door in the commissary at the movie studios. Now, those same people, the goth kids, the comic book fans, the horror fans, the horror writers and directors they’re running everything now. They’re sort of controlling popular culture now. We’re in the driver’s seat now and I just think that’s the biggest change.

I think that there’s a little bit too much reliance on digital effects as opposed to solving it first with the writing. Because of the way I was trained in my generation, it all starts with the written word and I think you always have to start with the script first and the story and if that’s not working and that’s not credible and that’s not strong. You can’t just throw images up on the screen and hope that you can keep the audience from not feeling that’s something a little empty or missing. Also, I think we should use the technology more to just enhance regular stuff, just slight enhancements using the new technology. But I’m just so happy and feel so grateful that all these fans that I discovered back in the early Eighties, that their tastes and the stuff that they were obsessed with, have all been vindicated now.

And I see it changing. I think like everything else, especially like music, it splinters. We get into sub-categories. We have horror comedy. We have period horror. You still have slasher films. You have cheap thrills. You have A-film horror. You have science fiction. You have fantasy, different kinds of fantasy. Now we’re experiencing a lot of low-budget sci-fi that’s working out pretty well going back to that South African film and even earlier. It’s great to see people exploiting low-budget sci-fi again as opposed to, for years, all sci-fi films were just these huge expensive films. I think that’s real interesting and that’s a big change and that’s going to be fun to watch how that plays out.

Robert Englund will appear at Texas Frightmare Weekend 2011 – his Q&A session is Saturday, April 30 at 3:00 pm. For tickets and more information, visit TexasFrightmareWeekend.com.

In a perfect world, John Carpenter never makes a movie like “the Ward”.

The film opens in the autumn of 1966 where we see a dazed and disheveled girl, Kristen (Amber Heard), walking down some rural roads until she comes to a farmhouse. She does what any beautiful country girl does at a farmhouse: she burns it down. Naturally, the authorities show up and take her where they would take any dangerous firebug: the local mental hospital. Here, we find that she has been admitted to a ward where the doctor (Jared Harris) is trying new treatments, girls mysteriously disappear and there is possibly a ghost lurking about. Of course, Kristen is going to break out because she’s not crazy.

Sadly, I feel crazy for even leaving the house to go see it.

Track back with me if you will to October and the release of Wes Craven’s “My Soul to Take”. I called that film the worst genre film of 2010. I stand by that. It had a big budget and a legendary director on its side and, at best, it was derivative offal. Similarly, this is easily the front runner for worst genre film of 2011. While “Ward” doesn’t have the same budget “Soul” had or all the 3-D bells and whistles, you have John Carpenter in the big chair directing and that has to count for something. Well, it does, at least for some things. I just don’t think good judgment in making this his first feature film in ten years (his last being “Ghosts of Mars”) was not chief among those things. The script, penned by Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen bludgeons us with its stereotypes, assaults us with its poor logic and tortures us with its big reveal. In short, this horror movie was laughable – literally. This was the first time I’ve ever been in a theater with a serious horror movie playing where the audience was laughing at the climactic confrontation at the end: not quite snickers, not polite chuckles but doubled over in their seat belly-laughter.

Yes, it was that bad.

And I really can’t even tell you why. On the offhand chance you have the disposable income to waste on this farce, I don’t want to spoil the movie so you can have the same “Did they really just go there” look on your face that I did.

The disastrous script aside, Carpenter did the best he could with what he had. The actors top to bottom were solid. Heard got to show off more of the tough chops that she displayed in “Drive Angry” and Jared Harris played his part as Dr. Stringer with just a hint of Sam Neill mixed in.

“The Ward” is an embarrassing addition to Carpenter’s filmography. The audience doesn’t have to be crazy to watch it, but I’m sure it would help. Granted, in a perfect world, that wouldn’t be necessary.