Category Archives: Movies

Halloween TV Marathons: AMC, Antenna TV, Showtime Beyond

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Continuing our look at U.S. cable-TV station that will be celebrating Halloween this year, this time we shine the spotlight on a couple of basic-cable channels and a pay-TV one, all with something to offer.

amc_logoAMC—home of The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead—spends All Hallows’ Eve celebrating the monstrous acts of unstoppable serial killer Michael Myers (aka The Shape) with an all-day Halloween marathon. John Carpenter’s chilling 1978 masterpiece Halloween starts the day at 9:00 a.m. (ET), with Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode just trying to survive the night and Donald Pleasance trying to put a bullet between the eyes of her silent, murderous escaped patient. Then Curtis and Pleasance return for more Shape-bashing in 1981’s Halloween II (which is set immediately after the original). It’s followed by immediate encores of Halloween I and II.

AMC skips over the sole non-Michael entry in the franchise, 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and picks up the narrative with Donald Pleasance back on the case in 1988’s Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, to prevent Michael from killing Laurie’s daughter, Jamie (played by a young Danielle Harris). And in 1989’s Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, Pleasance uses Jamie as bait(!) to trap Michael. (Hey, now who’s the bad guy—huh, Dr, Loomis?) The night ends with a second rerun of Halloween (three showings in one day!).

antenna_tv_logoAntenna TV—home to reruns of genre shows like The Addams Family, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch—is running an all-day marathon of Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes, starting at 3:00 a.m. (ET) and continuing right up to 11:00 p.m. A decade-long (1955–1965) anthology series in the vein of The Twilight Zone, AHP dealt with thriller and mystery stories rather than fantasy and science fiction, and every episode featured Hitchcock as on-screen host in dark-humored introductions (he even directed 18 of them). Probably its most famous episode is “Lamb to the Slaughter,” adapted from a story by Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG), about a housewife who murders her husband with a frozen leg of lamb—but it’s not part of this marathon! What the hell, Antenna? Well, at least they’re running AHP’s adaptation of Ambrose Bierce’s classic short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” so that’s something.

showtime-beyondShowtime Beyond—the horror- and fantasy-themed movie channel—kicks off Halloween on Sunday night, with the 11:00 p.m. (ET) showing of 2015’s The Funhouse Massacre, starring horror legend Robert (Freddy Krueger) Englund. It’s followed by 2014’s millennials vs. man-eating bear film Backcountry; 2015’s torture-porn tattoo-artist flick Anarchy Parlor; the 2004 wedding horror Zombie Honeymoon; the urban fantasy Walter; 2013’s Space Warriors, about a group of young space cadets rescuing astronauts; 2006’s magic-man The Illusionist, starring Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, and Paul Giamatti; 2015’s The Wicked Within, with Sienna Guillory (Jill Valentine of the Resident Evil movies) starring in a sort of Satan meets The Usual Suspects mash-up.

The 2014 malevolent-ghost story Jessabelle pops in afterward, followed by Blair Witch Project director Eduardo Sanchez’s 2008’s Chinese-ghost story, Seventh Moon; the 2015 monster-at-the-beach film Blood Sand; and an encore of The Illusionist. The evening’s programming consists of the 2014 hit It Follows; The Hills Have Eyes (either the Wes Craven original from 1977 or the Alexandre Aja 2006 remake—Beyond’s schedule doesn’t say); and the telekinetic-killer thriller Patrick (either the 1973 original or the 2013 remake). The night ends with an encore of The Wicked Within.

An okay lineup for these stations. But if you want to experience real horror, you can take a trip over to the Hallmark Channel—which starts running its Countdown to Christmas 2016 movie marathon tonight.

Fifty-six days of overly schmaltzy Christmas movies—God help us all!

Halloween TV Marathons 2016: Chiller TV and Syfy

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The day of spooks and monsters, tricks and treats, and horror movie marathons on television is almost upon us, so I thought now would be the perfect time to see what some of the cable-TV networks—at least those in the United States—are offering viewers for Halloween. We’ll start with a look at what’s on the schedule for two of the most well-known genre-related stations on October 31st…

chiller-logoChiller TV gets its Halloween programming under way this year on Sunday (October 30), with a 9:00 p.m. (ET) showing of 1986’s Poltergeist II: The Other Side, starring Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, and Heather O’Rourke. Poltergeist III from 1988 follows, with O’Rourke’s Carol Anne moving the ghostly action to Chicago. Rising from the film crypt after it are 1988’s Pumpkinhead, with genre master Lance Henriksen, and 1993’s Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings, followed by 1990’s Flatliners, starring Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, and Kevin Bacon (and which is getting a 2017 sequel with Sutherland, Ellen Page, and Nina Dobrev of The Vampire Diaries). Bacon returns in 1999’s Stir of Echoes, with Rob Lowe picking up the spirit-seeing mantle in 2007’s Stir of Echoes 2: The Homecoming.

Then in the afternoon the movies get shifted around for a string of reruns that carry us into the evening: Pumpkinhead, Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings, Poltergeist II: The Other Side, and Poltergeist III. Halloween wraps up with the broadcast of 1999’s “found footage” trendsetter The Blair Witch Project, with Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard; and 2000’s Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, starring Jeffrey Donovan (Burn Notice) and Kim Director (Gotham).

A disappointing lineup, wouldn’t you say? With all the movies at Chiller’s disposal you’d expect them to put together something more exciting for their most important holiday of the year. No Hellraiser or Evil Dead? No Tremors? No Halloween?! Not even an appearance from Chiller’s own productions, Steve Niles’ Remains, The Monkey’s Paw (with Stephen Lang of the recent thriller Don’t Breathe), or Brian Keene’s Ghoul? Definitely a missed opportunity.

syfy-logoOver at Chiller’s sister network, The Syfy Channel—home to such TV series as Channel Zero, Van Helsing, Z Nation, and The Magicians, as well as those goofy Sharknado movies—things are a little more interesting. It, too, has its Halloween programming carry over from Sunday night, with the 11:00 p.m. (ET) showing of the 2011 home-invasion horror You’re Next. It’s followed by 2013’s Grave Halloween, set in Japan’s notorious “suicide forest” (the same setting of the recent film The Forest), and an encore of You’re Next. Then comes a trio of episodes from Rod Serling’s classic Twilight Zone series: “The Man in the Bottle,” “Nervous Man in a $4 Room,” and “A Thing About Machines.” Then it’s encores of—yep, you guessed it—Grave Halloween and You’re Next.

The heart of the marathon starts at 10:30 a.m. (ET), with the 2012 Joss Whedon–produced The Cabin in the Woods, with Chris (Thor) Hemsworth; 2003’s hillbilly-cannibals flick Wrong Turn, with Eliza Dushku and Jeremy Sisto; 2012’s creepy home-movies monster Sinister, with Ethan Hawke; 2003’s Jeepers Creepers 2, starring Ray Wise (and yes, there’s a Jeepers Creepers 3 in development); the other popular home-invasion film, 2008’s The Strangers, with Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler; and 2009’s walking-dead comedy Zombieland, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson. The night wraps up with a repeat showing of The Cabin in the Woods.

Set your DVRs now!

Art Fans Show Love for Painting Legend Bob Larkin

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blood_feudIf you’re a fan of comic books, or movies, or pulp fiction heroes, Bob Larkin is a painter whose work you recognize immediately; in addition to the covers he’s provided for my Saga of Pandora Zwieback novels Blood Feud and Blood Reign, he built a career on painting covers and movie posters for just about every publishing house and film studio for more than four decades. And some of that work has recently been promoted online by longtime fans of his incredible output.

First off, the horror site Camera Viscera shined the spotlight on Bob’s movie-poster work, in their latest installment of “Artists Behind the Image.” From Roger Corman (New Concorde Studios) to Lloyd Kaufman (Troma Studios), from low-budget horror to Jackie Chan kung-fu classics, Bob painted an amazing number of pieces—like those for Piranha, Piranha 2, Night of the Creeps, and Humanoids From the Deep (aka Monster)—that helped to get cinephiles into theaters. You can check out those and more at Camera Viscera.

Meanwhile, over at YouTube, a German fan going by the name “Jmedia” assembled “Bob Larkin: The Gallery”: a video montage of Bob’s covers and posters—and even wrote the score for it! Bob was overjoyed to see it (although he did point out to me that one of the pieces shown isn’t by him). Go give it a look!

SWC_Larkin_SketchbookBut it’s not just his painting skills that are impressive—Bob’s also one hell of a pencil artist, as you’ll see if you order a copy of SWC’s The Bob Larkin Sketchbook. It’s a collection of some of Bob’s incredible pencil drawings, and what you’ll discover when you see them is how wide-ranging his subjects are. Sci-fi, horror, Westerns, pulp adventure, crime fiction, movie merchandise, even wrestling stars—as we say on the book’s back cover, there really is little that he hasn’t painted. And the sketchbook features three pieces created especially for it: the Pandora Zwieback cover art; a portrait of Patricia Savage, the fightin’ cousin of pulp fiction’s top-tier adventurer, Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze; and a two-page spread in which Doc faces off against another Golden Age crimefighter—The Shadow!

The Bob Larkin Sketchbook is available in print and digital formats. Visit its product page for ordering information, as well as sample pages.

And to see more of Bob’s stunning work, pay a visit to his art blog, Bob Larkin: The Illustrated Man.

You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Movie

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sharknado-4-poster-1Like Christmas and Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, it seems that a new annual tradition has been added to the world’s list of celebrations—except this one involves high-velocity tornadoes and man-eating fish from the deep!

Tonight is the SyFy Channel broadcast premiere of Sharknado: The 4th Awakens, the latest entry in the bizarrely popular film franchise produced by low-budget “mockbuster” movie studio The Asylum. Franchise regulars Ian Ziering and Tara Reid return to battle the forces of nature, this time alongside guest stars David Hasselhoff (Knight Rider, Baywatch), Gary Busey (Predator 2), former supermodel Cheryl Tiegs, and Tommy Davidson (In Living Color). By the time the fight’s over, the Las Vegas Strip will never look the same—and will probably reek from the stench of decaying shark meat broiling in the Nevada sun. Ugh.

blood_feudSpeaking of the terrifying creatures that hunt mankind, and the plucky humans who battle them, have you met Pandora Zwieback, star of my StarWarp Concepts novel series The Saga of Pandora Zwieback? Pan is a 16-year-old Goth girl who’s spent the last decade being treated for mental health problems because she can see monsters. It’s only after she meets an immortal shape-shifter named Annie that Pan discovers she’s never been ill—her so-called “monstervision” is actually a supernatural gift that allows her to see into Gothopolis, the not-so-mythical shadow world that exists right alongside the human world. You’ll find Pan in the following titles:

The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0: A free, downloadable comic that serves as an introduction to Pan and Annie—with an 8-page story written by me and illustrated by Eliseu Gouveia—as well as Pan’s first novel, Blood Feud (via a pair of preview chapters).

Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1: This critically acclaimed novel is the beginning of Pan’s story, explaining how she, her parents and friends, and Annie are drawn into a conflict among warring vampire clans searching for the key to an ultimate weapon (or so the legend goes)—a key that just so happens to have been delivered to the horror-themed museum owned by Pan’s father. It’s a character-driven action-fest that leads immediately into the second novel:

Blood-Reign-FinalCvrBlood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2: Pan and Annie face even greater challenges as the vampire clans draw up plans to go to war with humanity. Leading the charge is a fallen angel named Zaqiel, whose previous attempt at subjugating the world was stopped by Annie—who, back in the day, was Zaqiel’s lover! But Pan isn’t about to let some ancient monster win the day, not when the lives of her parents and friends—along with those of every human on the planet—are at stake, so she leads a charge of her own. But whose side is going to emerge the victor remains to be seen…

The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1: A spinoff from the novel series, this 56-page, full-color comic special finds the teenaged Goth adventuress battling vampires and a jealous, man-stealing siren. It features stories by me and Sholly Fisch (Scooby-Doo Team-Up), art by Eliseu Gouveia (The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0), comic-art legend Ernie Colon (Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld), and Elizabeth Watasin (Charm School), and cover art by award-winning artist Henar Torinos (Mala Estrella).

Blood Feud, Blood Reign, and the Pan Annual are available in print and digital formats. Pandora Zwieback #0 is a digital exclusive. Visit their respective product pages for ordering information, as well as sample pages and chapters.

Darth Zwieback: The Vampire Strikes Back

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That’s right, Star Wars fans, today is the U.S. release date for Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens—the latest entry in the space-fantasy series that changed blockbuster movies forever. So, what’s an epic space opera got to do with Pandora Zwieback? Well, who better to be Dark Ladies of the Sith than a couple of Goth girls like Pan and her bestest friend, Sheena McCarthy—right? And with Marvel publishing blank “sketch covers” for its Star Wars titles, the Darth Vader #1 blank was, I thought, the perfect canvas for my latest “masterpiece”:

Goth-Vaders

 

Surprised I’d try to tie in Pan to the biggest sci-fi movie franchise of all time? As a wise Muppet once said, “There is no try. Only do…or do not.” 😀 Also, I was in a drawing kind of mood, and once the sketch idea popped into my head I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see how Pan and Sheena would look in the Star Wars universe.

So, hey, Marvel, when do the girls get their own spin-off series…?

The Pan You Need

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Today is the U.S. release date for Pan, the latest movie adaptation loosely based on the classic novel Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. Starring Levi Miller as Peter, Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy) as Captain Hook, Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [U.S.]) as Tiger Lily, and Hugh Jackman (X-Men: Days of Future Past) as Blackbeard, who’s fighting both Peter and Captain Hook, it looks like one strange production.

blood_feudBut let’s be honest. That movie may be the Pan you want to see, but it’s not the Pan you need. No, my friends, the Pan you need is none other than Pandora Zwieback, teenaged Goth chick, amateur monster hunter, and the star of The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, a series of novels and comic books written by Steven A. Roman (that’s me), the bestselling author of X-Men: The Chaos Engine Trilogy. And it just so happens that you’ll find our Pan in the following titles:

The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0: A free, downloadable comic that serves as an introduction to Pan and Annie—with an 8-page story written by me and illustrated by Eliseu Gouveia—as well as Pan’s first novel, Blood Feud (via a pair of preview chapters). You can access it by clicking on the “Download Free Comic” link you see in the sidebar to the right.

Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1: This critically acclaimed novel is the beginning of Pan’s story, explaining how she, her parents and friends, and Annie are drawn into a conflict among warring vampire clans searching for the key to an ultimate weapon (or so the legend goes)—a key that just so happens to have been delivered to the horror-themed museum owned by Pan’s father. It’s a character-driven action-fest that leads immediately into the second novel:

Blood-Reign-FinalCvrBlood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2: Pan and Annie face even greater challenges as the vampire clans draw up plans to go to war with humanity. Leading the charge is a fallen angel named Zaqiel, whose previous attempt at subjugating the world was stopped by Annie—who, back in the day, was Zaqiel’s lover!

The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1: A spinoff from the novel series, this 56-page, full-color comic special—with cover art by award-winning artist Henar Torinos (Mala Estrella)—finds the teenaged Goth adventuress battling vampires and a jealous, man-stealing siren. It features three original stories of what I’ve termed the “Paniverse”—tales that take place within the fictional universe of The Saga of Pandora Zwieback.

  • “Song of the Siren,” written by me and illustrated by Eliseu Gouveia (The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0) involves Pan and her boyfriend, Javi, attending one of his family’s picnics in Central Park, and running into an ex-girlfriend of Javi’s. An awkward situation, to be sure, made even worse by the realization that with her monstervision, Pan can see the girl is really a siren: a creature from Greek mythology that can hypnotize men with its voice!
  • “After Hours” is by writer Sholly Fisch (Scooby-Doo Team-Up) and comic-art legend Ernie Colon (Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld), and involves a working-class demon dropping by his favorite bar.
  • “Shopping Maul” is a short story written by me, with title-page art by Elizabeth Watasin (writer/artist of Charm School). Pan, Javi, and their friends stop by a Queens mall to do a bit of window-shopping—only to find themselves caught in the middle of a fight between Gothic Lolita vampires and Pan’s monster-hunting mentor, Annie!

Blood Feud, Blood Reign, and the Pandora Zwieback Annual are available in print and digital formats. Pandora Zwieback #0 is a digital exclusive. Visit their respective product pages for ordering information, as well as sample pages and chapters.