Let's play devil's advocate. Brief Encounters got remade in the 70s. It's almost as if we like telling the same stories again and again.

To say Hollywood is creatively bereft is a satisfyingly hyperbolic simplification. It simply has no need to work harder. An audience gets the films it deserves, and there is no separate box office revenue for 'watched ironically'. The money drips down into smaller, idiosyncratic projects, so everyone gets to watch the kind of films they like. That's the theory, certainly, so do the ends justify the means?

Let's just assume, for a second, that the Naked Gun remake is an averagely amusing comedy; not terrible by any means but clearly not a patch on the original. Would a new idea from the same cast and crew make the same money? Possibly. Identity Thief ("...another Hollywood comedy content to dance in a field of shit"– Den Of  Geek) took a US gross of $134,455,175 according to IMDb. It's perfectly possible to make dross and earn bucketloads of cash, and indeed do this repeatedly.

So, given this, wouldn't it be lovely if filmmakers stopped trying to lure unwary cinema goers into their remake with the vague hope that it might not be That Bad? Sure, but it won't happen unless audiences stop going to see such films, and there is some allure in a revisit of a much-loved concept, even if we know it's going to punch our childhood right in its big wide eyes.

Remakes are a fact of film for this and many other reasons. Hence, here are ten films which we'd like to be left alone, but almost certainly won't be.

1. Tremors

A great low budget B-movie monster yarn, Tremors wasn't a hit on its original release, but found an audience on VHS. This is precisely the sort of film that gets remade on a bigger budget. You can say it's bringing the original to a wider audience, and the director will almost certainly be quoted as saying, "We really respect the original, those guys did great work, but I think we've come at it with a modern sensibility, updating it for the 21st century."

What this means is, "We've made some CGI enhancements to the monsters and a twist ending that will annoy people, and all the supporting characters are paper-thin redshirt halfwits, apart from the stoner guy who will probably be Oscar nominated in three years' time and deeply regret being involved in this film."

Vague plans to remake Tremors existed in 2009, but nothing has been heard since, hopefully because no one is listening.

2. Groundhog Day

Nothing is sacred, even the most irritating candidate for a remake ever. When this happens, on top of all the anger based on the actual film, the number of crap "Hey look, it's happening again" jokes that will ensue will cause people to try to bite their own eyes out in frustration.

3. Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure

Here's how this one goes down: the proposed sequel enters development hell, costs spiral and Keanu Reeves' box office appeal decreases after 27 Ronin (the cheaper sequel to 47 Ronin). The plans become a reboot featuring cameos from Reeves and Alex Winter, and - because someone thought it was a good idea at the time – Shane Carruth is brought in as a time travel consultant. Reviews are unanimously along the lines of "The world is not ready for Primer with dick and fart jokes".

4. Con Air

Simon West's bravura bout of mangasmic mayhem is like an old, violent friend you like to slip into from time to time. What better way to bring it to a larger audience than knocking all the rough edges off it and making it a delightful 12A family funfest?

The film will star someone deemed the new Channing Tatum, and Bruce Willis will cameo in his now familiar "Five Minutes of Bruce Willis But With Dead Eyes" role.

5. The Breakfast Club

Remaking The Breakfast Club would be pointless, because it isn't as if there hasn't been a good high school comedy since. People keep on making them, and people keep on liking them. While search engine results for 'Breakfast Club remake' suggest that audiences believe a remake to be inevitable – and, potentially, quite good – it's worth noting that every few years there's usually a pretty good teen comedy made, and that these are neither sequels nor remakes: Heathers, American Pie, Mean Girls, 21 Jump Street, Napoleon Dynamite, Superbad...the list goes on.

Given that the genre continues to be a fertile source of stories, why bother remaking an old one?

Well, same reason anyone remakes something – they think they've got an new twist on the story, and the studio knows that even if it's awful they'll at least suck in the morbidly curious.

6. Basic Instinct

Seeing as every other Paul Verhoeven film is getting remade, Basic Instinct is probably going to be next by virtue of it being a surer bet than Showgirls. While it will be difficult to top Basic Instinct 2's Stan Collymore cameo, and despite Brian De Palma's erotic thriller Passion being received about as well as a willy in the mail, the time is probably right for Ewan McGregor to step into Michael Douglas' shoes, having the requisite acting chops, willingness to get his bum out, and that endearing "Not quite American but not quite anything else either" accent that remains uniquely his.

7. Lawrence Of Arabia

If the few forthcoming Biblical epics (Noah, Exodus) do well, attention will be focused on other films that involve sand and buttock-sapping running times. Someone will see Peter O'Toole's face during the Oscars, then someone else will do the maths, and realise that – rather than one film that no one has the patience to watch at Christmas – they can make several shorter films and increase their box office takings.

The original Lawrence Of Arabia was 216 minutes long, which means that there's a trilogy out there with T.E. Lawrence's nickname on it.

Only, because the original had no speaking parts for women, it will now star Jennifer Lawrence.

If I'm honest, I would watch that.

8. Scream

Horror classics get rebooted and remade. The Exorcist is a rare exception, and even that spawned sequels and a prequel. The Thing, The Evil Dead, Nightmare On Elm Street, The Hitcher, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, The Amityville Horror and The Omen have been remade to little critical acclaim but decent box office returns. Scream is considered a modern classic, and as such will almost certainly get remade quite badly at some point. Expect it sometime after the Poltergeist remake, expect to leave the cinema feeling like you've been slowly filled up with cement.

9. Alien

The year is 2018. With Ridley Scott executive producing, fans' fears were not remotely assuaged. Technically, the film was Prometheus 3, but the script – written and directed by debutant Chobe Renton – was set on another ship contemporaneously with the events of the 1979 original. The ensuing three hours was a decent, well-made but ultimately hollow experience marred by unconvincing characters, huge plot holes, and dialogue such as "The only way to survive is to not die for ages".

10. Psycho

Platinum Dunes acquire the rights to Psycho when an executive accidentally backs his right nut on a game of Bejewelled Blitz, and then has to hastily backtrack. Michael Bay's churnmongers then announce their intention to do a remake of the 1998 Gus Van Sant film, and everyone in the world simultaneously decides to cover all their facial sensory organs in Tipp-Ex.

Skyfall is the most commercially successful Bond movie of all time, and isn't far behind critically either. So it's little surprise that key members of the team are returning for Bond 24. Daniel Craig will of course return in the lead role, and Sam Mendes will direct once again. Furthermore, screenwriter John Logan has been tasked with writing the screenplay to the eagerly-anticipated follow up.

In a recent interview, Logan has been chatting about the project, and how it will tie into Skyfall. "My goal is to write a great movie that's appropriate, to build on what we did on Skyfall, but make it its own unique animal", he said. "The themes, ideas and the characters from Skyfall can obviously continue on, because it is a franchise, and it is an ongoing story. So I think there's resonance from Skyfall in the new movie".

He continued by addressing his love of the franchise. "I grew up on the Bond movies, the first one I saw was Diamonds are Forever when I was a kid. I just loved them to pieces. I love all the elements, from the books – mostly from the novels. Going back to Ian Fleming is where I started with Skyfall – and there's certainly elements of the movies and the novels that we brought into the new movie".

There has been some speculation as to whether Blofeld and specter would perhaps feature (not least thanks to legal issues over the years), but Logan would only say that "I think our villain's appropriate to the story we're telling". Time will tell.

Bond 24 is set for release on October 23rd 2015.

IGN

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Whether it’s animation, singing, or acting on screen and stage, E.G. Daily’s work always entails her voice.
From Rugrats to a singing career spanning four decades to Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure to Tanzi, a play about professional wrestling and feminism, her voice has always been a key part of her success. This Monday she returns to one of her most famous roles, Buttercup, in a new Powerpuff Girls special airing on Cartoon Network. Daily was kind enough to talk to us about Powerpuff Girls, her wide-reaching body of work, and her connection to street artist Mr. Brainwash.

Den of Geek: You have such a wonderful voice; do people in public recognize you for it?

Thank you. They don’t usually recognize my regular voice. Most of the voices I’m known for I alter, I tweak up or tweak down or push somehow. [Because of The Voice] I would say now more people are recognizing my own voice, but mostly it’s the cartoons. I could be on line at the movies and talk like myself and nobody knows who I am and then I can go, [as Tommy Pickles] “I’d like some popcorn please” and everyone turns around.

You’ve done a lot of singing and voice acting along with screen and stage performances. Do you view yourself as primarily one of those or a mixture?

I view myself as an artist, and that for me always entails the voice. Whether it’s acting and being in character and altering my voice or using my voice for that char. Singing involves my voice, using it to communicate the song. I do voice overs which involves my voice where I get to be all these different characters through my voice. And then I get to listen closely to my inner voice which tells me what to do, what not to do. I sort of feel like I’m a little bit of everything. Genuinely, I couldn’t say that I’m more an actress than singer or more a voice over artist than an actress. I just constantly like to keep busy doing one thing or another that’s artistic, where it’s all an expression using my voice.

Along with being on The Voice, you appeared on Saturday Night Live as a musical guest. How was that experience?

That was a long time ago, but it was exciting to be a guest. It’s just one of those monumental moments of my career where I was like, “Wow, I get to be on that show, I get to be a musical guest on that show.” It’s pretty incredible. There are pivotal moments of my career and that is one of them.

What would you say are some of your other pivotal moments?

I did a play called Tanzi and that was one of the pivotal moments. I ended up getting a major record deal, I ended up falling in love, and I ended up getting the card for my voice over agent of over 25 years. I would say that particular musical play was very monumental because it brought me so many abundant things.  

The next one was having a number one dance hit song “Say It, Say It,” where I was able to go and tour and go to different countries and sing the song. I got to be on American Bandstand and Saturday Night Live.

I would say the next pivotal moment was an audition I got through the voice over agent for Tommy Pickles; I booked that job. That was pretty monumental. I would say booking Dottie was pretty monumental. A one woman show I did called Listen Closely was really monumental. It was my journey through entertainment and I made it in to a one woman autobiographical musical. And the next was being on The Voice singing “Breathe.”

While preparing for the interview I saw a few mentions to Listen Closely, but no details on it. I was hoping to hear you expand on that.

I started writing a book and it was very raw, very candid. Memoir-like. As I wrote this book, all this raw stuff started coming out of me and I was like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. I called a friend of mine who’s a great editor and writer, and told her I wanted to take this and turn it in to a one-woman autobiographical musical. So we laid out all the pages across the floor of my living room and we took each page and configured it in a way that worked itself out in to the format of the one woman show. We decided what was necessary for the show and we edited it down. Then I hired a director and we tweaked it even more.

It was very cathartic; it was like my life story being told in a musical. All the songs I used for the show were songs that I had written during the times I was going through the things I had written about. So everything was cross connected and very powerful and very cathartic. It was incredible; I ended up doing three six-week runs. It was standing room only. We had people like Paris Hilton and Tobey Maguire showing up toward the end of the run because the word of mouth was so cool and all these people wanted to come. There were no seats left and people were standing against the wall and sitting cross-legged on the floor. It was very powerful.

Thank you for sharing that; there’s not a lot of information about the show and it’s something I’ve been curious about.

Yeah, it’s interesting that you asked that; not many people bring it up. Did you ever see the movie Exit Through the Gift Shop?

Yes!

You did? Did you like it?

I did; it was wonderful. It was my pick for best documentary of the year.

Thierry Guetta, the guy it was turned in to about, the Frenchman. That is actually my cousin, Mr. Brainwash. Mr. Brainwash actually filmed the one woman show for me. So I have this version that’s filmed on three cameras and one day I hope to release that so people can see the whole thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VKK5hmAH-w

On January 20th you have your first Powerpuff Girls special since 2005.

It’s very exciting. The fans have been going nutty, which we like. They’re real excited. There’s going to be a marathon leading up to the special. It’s going to be real exciting to see what happens. I can’t really say a lot about it, but I can say it’s an exciting event and could lead in to a lot more Powerpuff Girls.

When working on Powerpuff Girls, do the three of you all record together or do you record individually?

We all record together because we interact so much that we need each other. Other characters will come in and do their lines as well. We also usually work with the Professor Tom [Kane] and Mojo [Roger L. Jackson], but most of the time it’s the three of us and other characters will drop in. It’s not necessary though. With Rugrats, when we did that, the babies usually recorded together. We didn’t record ever with the grown-ups because we didn’t have a lot of interaction with them.

So I know you’re a parent-

Yes, two daughters. They’re 15 and almost 18.

So they were around the age then for Powerpuff Girls and maybe Rugrats, probably more All Grown Up?

Yeah, they grew up with them. I literally was having babies while I was making Rugrats. They grew up with Rugrats, they grew up with All Grown Up, and they grew up with Powerpuff Girls. They were right along with me growing up with it.

Did they enjoy the shows? Did they know that was you?

Yeah, completely. Everyone knew it was me. I was the Tommy Pickles mom. Everybody knew, but to them it was so exciting, surprisingly. They were used to it, but they were still sweet about it and excited, and so were their friends. I was a cool mom.

A lot of your roles our readers are familiar with tend to be for all ages projects, but looking through your filmography we were shocked to see that you were in The Devil’s Rejects. How did you go from doing children’s cartoons to Rob Zombie horror?

I know, right? I was actually in my voice over agent’s office at the time and she called me in to the room and she goes “You got an offer to do a part in a film.” I said okay, but I didn’t know much about it, and then she hit me with, “But the thing is, they need you to be available today.” I was like, “What? Let me look at the script.” So I looked at the script and I said, “Oh my god, this is so crazy and insane. I love it.” I couldn’t wait to do it. I loved this script. It’s so radically crazy and it’s right up my alley. I didn’t even ask any details about it and as I was leaving the office, she called me back and said, “Oh, I think it’s directed by Rob Zombie.” And once she said Rob Zombie I was like, “Are you kidding me? That’s so great.”  So I go to work with Rob and he’s genius. It was pretty incredible. I like having the versatility of doing a crazy horror film, and doing animation, and doing music.

What do you see for yourself in 2014?

I would say that I’m doing a lot of animation stuff right now. I’m rehearsing for some live LA shows right now, which should be fun to do. Some real intimate shows. I do a lot of charity and concerts for benefits [Daily is an active supporter of Last Chance for Animals]; I’ll be doing more of that. I’ve been doing some more on-camera work. I have a film I already did called Yellow directed by Nick Cassavetes that hasn’t come out yet. I have a cartoon called Julius Jr. that I’m in on Nick Jr. And the Powerpuff Girls special and who knows what will happen with that.

More recording, more singing, more movies, more animation. More speaking. More sharing my feelings. More talking about real stuff. More trying to be a positive influence.

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Entertainment aimed at kids is a tricky bit of business. Most adults (who’ve apparently forgotten all about what it’s like to be a kid) seem to be working under the misguided impression that children are delicate creatures who need to be protected from the horrors of the world, and therefore should only be allowed to see movies that are gentle, safe, happy, bright, sanitized, and above all else, bland. Cute and fuzzy animals help, too. This is why in the ‘80s parents groups insisted that Warner Brothers cartoons be edited all to hell before being broadcast directly into all those impressionable minds on Saturday morning. As a result Daffy, Sylvester, and Wile E. Coyote no longer drank, gobbled pills, got shot in the head, got smacked with anvils, or fell off cliffs. These same parents then wondered why the hell their kids didn’t seem to appreciate these classic cartoons anymore.

Kids, on the other hand (at least those who haven’t been brainwashed by dumb child psychologists) are in general a bloodthirsty lot. For centuries young boys and girls alike have been in constant pursuit of the dark, the violent, and the grotesque. What kid with a Matchbox car ever pretended that car was driving around town nicely, obeying all the traffic laws? No, you give a kid a Matchbox, that car is going to be involved in thousands of horrible and bloody accidents. When I was a kid, my parents let me read anything I wanted with the exception of the one book I really wanted to read, namely Helter Skelter. So I snuck up to the drugstore and read it chapter by chapter over the course of a summer. I know I wasn’t the only twisted nine year-old-out there, either, given the number of kids who lined up around theaters all over the country to see Jaws.

Some artists in the childrens entertainment industry understand this and have profited well as a result (the Harry Potter and Limoney Snicket series, etc.), and sure, with your Internets and what not we’re living in a different age. Kids can log on and watch real beheadings if they like. But there was a time when a handful of filmmakers, whether by accident or because they were sly, sadistic bastards, managed to do an end run around both parents and kids, crafting films which, on the surface, seemed gentle and bright and innocent, films without the slightest whiff of anything overtly terrifying or gross, but which still contained images or characters or situations guaranteed to give kids nightmares. Lots and lots of nightmares for years to come without their overprotective parents ever understanding why. So here are our picks for the top twelve (intentionally or not) creepiest kids movies of all time. And as we go down the list, we have to ask ourselves: what in the fuck was going on in the ‘60s?

Dr. Syn, alias The Scarecrow (1963)

Disney’s remake of a 1937 Roy William Neill film seemed innocent enough, if a little mature and politically complex for typical Disney kids fare. The Robin Hood variation stars Patrick McGoohan as a mysterious 18th century figure who organizes a smuggling ring to circumvent the king’s taxes and defend a small coastal village. To protect himself and anyone who could identify him, he goes about his business in disguise, speaking in a deep, sinister voice. Problem is, the disguise is a creepy scarecrow mask. I’m not sure why he opted for the creepy scarecrow. It’s a little less than comforting. On the surface it’s a plain old period adventure yarn for the whole family about robbing the rich to help the poor, but I tell you that image of a figure in a cloak and a wide-brimmed hat and that horrifying mask riding across the countryside at night still haunts me. I don’t care if he was trying to help the poor; that fucker showed up at my door with a bag of money, I’d scream, then shoot him.

Winter of the Witch (1968)

For reasons I still cannot fathom, this made-for-TV short was inflicted upon me by teachers at least once a year (sometimes more) every year between second and sixth grade. It never coincided with anything, we were never told why we had to watch it, and it was a film with no educational value whatsoever. I think they were just trying to screw with our heads. Narrated by Burgess Meredith, it concerns a young single mother and her son who pick up and move to a new town. Although the mother incessantly complains in vague terms about their “problems” and “troubles” they manage to buy a big house sight unseen for $400. Then more of those troubles crop up when they learn the house is not only filthy, but an old witch is squatting there, too. (The witch is played by Hermione Gingold from Gigi and The Music Man.)

Well, after some initial friction they work out an agreement. As the mother continues complaining about her “problems,” the witch starts reading the papers and gets depressed over the state of the world. Then she decides to start cooking again, and whips up a batch of magic blueberry pancakes for the boy and his mom. What makes them magic, see, is that they make everyone who takes a bite real happy. You can tell this because when anyone shoves some pancakes into his or her mouth, the screen fills with flashing red and blue dots and a quick horn trill sounds. Smiles and uncontrollable giggling follow. They decide to open a restaurant and soon people are lined up down the street to get some, um, “Happiness Pancakes.” I guess it would’ve been a little too obvious if the witch had made Happiness Brownies. But that’s the thing. There was nothing overtly creepy about the film, but every last kid in my second and third grade class recognized it immediately as a drug movie. I mean c’mon, people eat pancakes, then see flashing colored lights, then get real happy? What the hell else do you need? What was troubling was that none of our teachers seemed willing to admit this. In fact they acted like they had no idea what we were talking about. And THAT’S just plain creepy.

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953)

The beloved live-action musical fantasy by Dr. Seuss is at heart (no matter what people say) a film about childhood fears of all kinds, together with some less than subtle Freudian conflicts. Young Bart Collins hates his piano teacher, Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conreid in a brilliant, over the top villainous performance) more than anyone or anything in the world. Not only is Terwilliker a sadistic tyrant, he also seems to be making moves on Bart’s mother. Bart, meanwhile, secretly hopes his mom will get involved with the plumber instead. The “lighthearted” fantasy sequences that dominate the film find the kid imprisoned in the Terwilliker Institute, an inescapable fortress of a piano academy surrounded by a barbed wire fence and filled with prison cells, where five hundred young children are forced to practice 24 hours a day, seven days a week at a single, massive, twisting and endless piano keyboard. Dr. Seuss always had a dark side (don’t get me started on Cat in the Hat), but never was it more evident than it is here. With its wildly surreal sets and sharp b/w photography, Bart’s nightmare comes off like a cross between early David Lynch and the funhouse sequence at the end of Lady From Shanghai, but with more musical numbers. Sure, blissfully ignorant parents will look at it and think, oh, it’s about a boy who doesn’t like piano lessons ha ha ha isn’t that cute, but it’s so much more sinister than that, a film about torture and simmering Oedipal violence.

It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown (1966)

Having watched this again recently for the first time in thirty years or more, I’m hard pressed to pinpoint exactly what it was about Snoopy’s World War I Flying Ace fantasy sequence that so profoundly disturbed me when I was young. I was fine with Lucy’s witch mask and that sincere but grim pumpkin patch and Charlie Brown’s growing collection of rocks (something I could sympathize with), but whenever Snoopy took off after the Red Baron I had to leave the room. Maybe it was the early psychedelics of the shifting perspectives, camera angles and color palette so common in drug films of the era, or maybe it was the change in Vince Guiraldi’s music from bouncy piano jazz to moaning horror film atmospherics, or maybe it was Snoopy in silhouette, that stylized night sky behind him as he creeps behind enemy lines after being shot down. More than anything I think it was that this sequence, dropped into the middle of a simple, straightforward, crudely-animated cartoon, was such a radical departure in style, both visually and on the soundtrack, that it represented a sharp smack to a four-year-old brain unable yet to sort things like that out. Back then it was like dropping a long clip from Eraserheadinto the middle of Gilligan’sIsland. It made my head hurt, and it scared me.

Charlotte’s Web (1973)

The astronomically popular animated adaptation of E.B. White’s astronomically popular children’s book featured an all-star voice cast including Debbie Reynolds, Henry Gibson, and Paul Lynde in the story of Wilbur, a runty and hapless pig who lives on a farm and is, in all likelihood, doomed to the slaughterhouse. But when the barn spider charlotte takes pity on him and starts weaving pro-Wilbur slogans into her web, (“Some Pig”), people begin to take notice, and Wilbur becomes a local celebrity. With charlotte working as his one-spider p.r. team, his fame grows. Then charlotte dies. DIES, ya hear me? End of the movie she poots out a big egg sac, curls up, and DIES. And Wilbur, presumably, goes on to become an Easter dinner for some fat Midwestern family. That’s the way I always interpreted it anyway, and I don’t think I’m alone given how many kids left the film in hysterics.

Santa Claus vs. The Devil (1959)

Twenty years before making exploitation wonderments like Survive! and , Mexican director Rene Cardona gave us one of the most baffling and disturbing holiday films in history. Toss everything you think you know about Santa out the window, because it simply doesn’t apply here. The title pretty much says it all, and for all the cutting back and forth between scenes in Hell and scenes in Santa’s Magic Castle on the Moon (?), I gotta say Hell seems preferable. For one thing, as the opening twenty minutes of the film reveals, Santa seems to be holding groups of children from every nation on earth hostage up there on the moon, and he forces them to perform songs and dances from their native lands for him on a daily basis. Merlin, who’s also up there with him, runs a drug lab, and is under constant pressure to come up with new chemical compounds to get the fat man high. Most disturbing of all, the Magic Castle is actually a massive, high-tech surveillance complex that would put the NSA to shame. Not only can Santa see you at any moment of any day, no matter where you are; he can even watch your dreams as you sleep. Cardona did what he could with what was obviously a microscopic budget to try and create a detail-rich candy-colored toyland with an air of magic infusing each frame, but the results are cheap and sad and shabby. In the end it’s a masterwork of accidental and disturbing Surrealism that’s far more frightening than it is joyous. Maybe that’s why Cardona found it easier to switch to straight horror later in his career.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (1964)

There’s just something about the holidays that brings out the creepy and savage in people. I’m convinced Rankin and Bass were actually a couple of evil child-hating sonsabitches who buried subliminal messages in all of their animated holiday specials. That’s why I always found I felt uneasy and a little nauseous by the time the closing credits ran. The messages weren’t always subliminal either. Sometimes they were just plain, um, liminal. In the case of Rudolph I’m not just talking about that first shocking appearance of the Abominable Snow Monster, either (though that didn’t help). Much more troubling for me were the deformed playthings on the Island of Misfit Toys, all weeping and suicidal when they think Santa isn’t coming. AGAIN. But even when he finally does come to pick them up on Christmas Eve to deliver them to children, I can’t help but wonder what kind of poor, crippled children will end up receiving these loser toys. What the hell kinda Christmas present is that? Goddamn train with square wheels. And what kind of future awaits these sad sack toys? Whatever kid gets them will probably just set them on fire or rip their arms out or something.

Even worse than the mutant toys is Hermie, the gay elf who wants to be a dentist. When we first see him, he’s about to rip the tooth out of a doll. What kind of sick fuck is this? You almost expect him to ask the rag doll, “Is it safe?” Then at the end, Hermie saves the day how? By grabbing a big honking pliers and ripping out all the Bumble’s teeth. It takes place off-screen of course, but when the Bumble opens his mouth revealing that dark toothless maw and everyone laughs, I could never help but think his mouth must’ve been a bloody, mushy mess at that point, and he must’ve been in extraordinary pain. Is it safe, indeed. That creepy sadistic little fucker. I know there are reindeer and the like in this too, but all I ever took away from it were those doomed toys and that monstrous, evil gay dentist.

Dumbo, Bambi, Fantasia...Oh, hell, Just Make That Every Disney Animated Feature Released Between 1937 and 1985

Where do you even begin with Walt Disney? Calling him Satan’s Chosen Son would be an insult to Satan. His boiling anti-Semitism and political extremism aside, I never trusted his whole smiling “Oh, I love the children” charade. Or maybe it’s not that he hated children, exactly, but parents. Specifically mothers, and that’s why his films are overpopulated with evil queens and witches and stepmothers, together with gentle, kindly, loving mothers who get shot to death or nabbed by poachers. Disney films may be the epitome of wholesome, righteous family entertainment filled with songs and magic and cute furry animals,, but my god how many millions of children have left theaters devastated, sobbing, and swimming with new-found separation issues (or a paralyzing fear of foxes)? Bambi’s mom gets blown away, Dumbo’s mom gets snatched, there’s that pederast Gepetto, Christ. And has anyone else noticed that the shot of the Dwarfs marching off to work eerily echoes the final shot in The Seventh Seal?

Then there’s Fantasia. I have no trouble with the Night on Bald Mountain sequence. I thought the demon and the ghosts and all the mayhem were pretty damn cool, and for me anyway made the film worthwhile. No, what got to me was The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. All those marching, faceless mops, all that splashing water. Forget about Mickey (I won’t get into one of my Mickey Mouse tirades here), it was those damn mops that scared the shit out of me, together with seeing Mickey’s shadow as he raises the ax over his head. I knew other kids who were equally unsettled by the experimental piece at the beginning, and still others who were completely traumatized by the hippos in tutus. Yes, people blame a lot of things, but I think in large part we can place responsibility for the explosion in American neuroses over the last fifty years square on Walt Disney’s shoulders.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Of course it’s a classic family favorite, filled with songs and Gene Wilder and candy and a big happy ending for that poor Charlie and his whole poor family. But Roald Dahl knew what he was doing, and all his children’s books have a sharp, dark edge to them. In fact as far as film adaptations of Dahl go, The Witches might be the more obvious contender here. Trouble is, The Witches is a little too obviously and deliberately dark. In this case, that smiling Gene Wilder singing “Pure Imagination,” nice as he is (despite his grumpy entrance and freak out near the end), is as Satanic a character as you could hope to find in the movies. That’s not what unnerved me, though. Nor was I bothered when all those snot nosed kids started getting picked off one by one as a result of their own brattish behavior. Still, there are so many troubling images in Willy Wonka (and god bless it for that): the psycho boat ride later aped by Oliver Stone for Natural Born Killers, Charlie and Grampa Joe floating toward the whirling blades of the massive exhaust fan, Augustus Gloop drowning in a river of what we’ve been told is chocolate, etc. But somehow nothing is quite as spooky as all those stiff, uncomfortable, straight-faced song and dance finger wagglings from those damned Oompa Loompas overlayed with psychedelic graphics. Somehow the idea of being told what to do by a group of moralistic orange midgets just made me very uncomfortable. Especially when one tries to do a cartwheel.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

United Artists made some deliberate encroachments into Disney territory with this sprawling, big-budget live action musical comedy adaptation of Ian Fleming’s children’s fantasy novel. It was a guaranteed winner for the whole family, with plenty of catchy, memorable songs (I could still sing them all after 40 years), slapstick and even Disney regular Dick Van Dyke as an eccentric crackpot inventor who somehow ended up the father of two cockney children with an equally eccentric British imperialist grandfather or father or father in law or something. Oh, it has romance and more songs about candy and laughs and thrills and best of all a flying magical car.

But any kid who’s seen it, whatever age they saw it, will remember it for one thing and one thing only: The child Catcher. He doesn’t appear until after intermission (it’s a long film), and only appears in two brief scenes, but that’s enough. Slinking across the screen like a spider, the cadaverous Robert Helpmann has a greenish face, long stringy hair, and dresses like an undertaker or grave-robber. He sniffs the air and in that leering, whining voice says, “I smell CHILDREN!” Hear that? He SMELLS CHILDREN! Which is good, I guess, given that it’s his job to track down all the children in town and make them DISAPPEAR! He’s one of the creepiest and most memorable (if by “memorable” you mean “psyche-scarring”) characters in children's films, and would go on to inspire the Marilyn Manson album I Smell Children. For me, though, the scene that was even more unsettling than the Child Catcher was near the end, when Potts the inventor (Van Dyke) and his romantic interest truly scrumptious perform a song and dance number disguised as a wind-up clown and music box dancer as part of the plan to rescue the children. It’s supposed to be a funny, exciting scene, but with their immobile features and dead staring eyes they always struck me more like twitching animated corpses than life-sized toys. But maybe that’s just me.

Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959)

Disney’s at it again. What is it with these people? When I walked out of the theater with a friend of mine after a screening in the early ‘70s, my only comment was, “Jeeze, that movie could give a kid a complex.” Oh, it’s a happy St. Patty’s Day musical fantasy about an old man who’s spent a lifetime telling yarns about the time he almost tricked a leprechaun out of his pot of gold. Over the course of the film he eventually pulls it off, but then he learns there’s a downside to winning a leprechaun’s gold, and hooboy you better believe the leprechauns are pissed. Oh, it’s a fine and silly bit of Irish stereotyping with dancing and musical numbers and some bad trick photography and what have you. It’s bright and breezy and light.

But near film’s end when the shit hits the fan, well, that’s when the Banshee appears on Darby’s doorstep. He hears the screaming, opens the door, and the Banshee swoops down from the sky. Let’s just say I hadn’t been expecting that one at all. The special effects are mighty cheap even by ‘59 standards, but when you’re that young you don’t notice things like that, all you know is there’s a fucking Banshee at the front door. Then, even after the Banshee goes away, here comes the ghostly horse-drawn hearse with its faceless driver gesturing to the open door and commanding in that ghost voice, “Darby O’Gill...Get in.” In the years that followed I couldn’t open the front door after sundown without half expecting to find a Banshee standing there, or a waiting hearse in the driveway. Sometimes I still expect this. To my mind those films that claimed to be horror films had nothing on Darby O’Gill and the Little People. And perhaps the most terrifying thing of all about it? I mean beyond even the Banshee and the hearse? It’s so far as I know the one and only film in which Sean Connery sings.

Wizard of Oz (1939)

Would anyone deny that one of the most beloved family films of all time is also the creepiest? I could fill pages with a list of specific images and moments from the film that were particularly disturbing on so many levels, from Dorothy falling into the pig pen to the ornery apple trees to the balloon slipping away at the end to that horse of a different color. Even without the witch or the Munchkins, Wizard of Oz would be the champ. The film is an endless parade of assorted separation anxieties and one unsettling image after another. But instead of trying to write them all down, I think I’ll sum it up in two words: Flying Monkeys.

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True Detective is in the middle of its run at HBO. It pairs Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as weathered, beaten and a little weather-beaten cops. They don’t have so much a love-hate relationship as they do an adversarial friendship. They are at odds. And they’re both pretty odd to begin with. They just get odder. McConaughey is the odd man out at the station and Harrelson is an odd father, though not of the Mad magazine variety. At the very end of the nineties, Harrelson and McConaughey played brothers in EdTV. Matthew McConaugheyheyheyithurtsme played Ed. He was on TV. And TV was on Ed. TV was on Ed like, forgive the cliché but, white on rice. Unless it’s brown or wild rice. TV was on Ed so much that he became EdTV. They were very close.

Before there was reality TV, there was EdTV. Sure, there’d been the Loud family and the Gong Show, but they were just CIA fronts, according to Chuck Barris. The nineties flirted with reality shows, like Real World on MTV, but EdTV, at the time, seemed unlikely. A television crew following someone around all the time and beaming it into people’s houses? It was funny. In the nineties. So let that be a lesson to you. Beware of satire. Especially if Rob Reiner has anything to do with it. Satire has a way of coming true in this laugh a minute world. Reiner’s only acting in this, but he brings the power of Spinal Tap to Ron Howard’s precognitive expose.

Matthew McConaughey plays Edward Pekurny, you know, Ed. He’s about to become the most interesting man on the planet and all he’s got to do is act naturally. Well, a little bigger than natural, because that’s what puts asses on couches. Ed is not only telegenic, he’s got charisma. He’s got dignity, at least for a little while. When they strap cameras to his ass he loses some of that, but haven’t we all?  Woody Harrelson is Ed’s brother Ray. He’s pretty interesting himself. But not quite as much as his brother. Oh, sure, back at the networks there might have been talk that he could be a Fonzie type breakout star, but with Opie Cunningham directing the movie, that would hit too close to home.

Ron Howard knew what he was doing, ushering an era of too much information and the cashing in on that information especially when it becomes too much. He cast Ellen, well, Ellen DeGeneres, a face everyone knew from TV because she seemed to be always on TV. DeGeneres started warping the simple realities of standup audiences and made herself at home in every home, whether you were at home or not. She’d later suffer a public breakup when it happened to her. Ron Howard also cast Jenna Elfman, Dharma Freedom Finkelstein Montgomery of Dharma and Greg, who some people probably also watched because they saw her on TV and weren’t sure why. A TV staple since he ran the Impossible Missions Force and Space 1999, Martin Landau is not a big character in EdTV, but an anchor as the wheelchair-bound uncle with a sexy secret. He doesn’t have to say “British Cocksucker” once to get his point across. Ever funny, ever effective. Totally irresistible. Liz Hurley is sexy and shallow. Dennis Hopper is subdued and Sally Kirkland is not. 

Ed loses himself when he becomes one with public consciousness. He becomes a star of international proportions and really, what’s he done that could have prepared him for that? Ray prepared him for that. That easy grubbing brother of his, with all that competition and the rage that could come bursting through his eyes and nostrils like a bull in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, is Ed’s strength. As actors, Matthew and Woody play off each other like they’re kids in a park. Thumbsuckers or bedwetters, forever doing their chicken dance. They out-fun and out-mean each other and generally just go with each other’s whims so easily they turn scenes with syllables. They would do a mean improv. Ron Howard reins them in too much. Sure, he gets the laughs, he always gets the laughs, even his serious movies get the laughs, which is important.

Matthew McConaughey gives Ed his dignity in the end. It’s proven to be a wasted gesture. Nobody gives a shit about dignity in the way Ed did. His ending seems quaint and soft now. Something Ricky Gervais would do. Walk off a reality TV show? Risk the chance of losing all those eyes and ears on you? Walk out the back door or threaten to expose the admen masquerading as television executives as hack quacks? That’s far too optimistic now. That show would bomb on today’s reality TV. Now, if he grew a beard, showed his ass and could only be understood through closed captioning AND subtitles, we’d have a show.

EdTV works as a comedy and as social commentary. It seems very naïve now because of how far reality TV has gone what with the honeys and the booboos and the Kardashian monstrosity. They’ve rendered the satire of EdTV flat. Really, it’s not EdTV’s fault.

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Son of Batman, the newest DC Universe animated film is coming! While Marvel continues to crank out movie after movie (and soon television series after television series), there's no question who rules the high quality animated feature roost. With the impending release of Justice League: War, Warner Bros. have just released the trailer for Son of Batman, based on the Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert Batman and Son, which introduced Damian Wayne to the world.

Watch the trailer here: 

Son of Batman stars Jason O'Mara as Batman/Bruce Wayne, Stuart Allan as Damian Wayne/Robin, Morena Baccarin as Talia al Ghul, Giancarlo Esposito as Ra's al Ghul, David McCallum as Alfred, Thomas Gibson as Deathstroke (hey! He's not in the comics!), and Xander Berkeley as Kirk Langstrom/Man-Bat. O'Mara reprising his Batman role so soon after Justice League: War makes us wonder if they're slowly going to start integrating these animated features into a loose "shared universe." That's nothing but idle speculation, though.

Son of Batman is scheduled for a late Spring release.

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On the set of his final film, the low-budget (and poorly-lit) hippie-era shocker Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971), J. Carrol Naish came to be known as a very professional and cordial man with absolutely no sense of humor. Well, maybe he had his reasons. Over the course of a career that stretched back to the silent era, he’d worked with esteemed directors like Fritz Lang, John Ford, and Anthony Mann. He’d co-starred with Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, John Wayne and Ingrid Bergman. He was one of the original Corsican Brothers, starred in TV’s The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, and was nationally recognized as the star of radio’s popular Life With Luigi. Around the major studios he was known as The One-Man U.N. thanks to his versatility with accents.

Over the years, in a career in which he’d appeared in almost 225 films and TV shows, the New York-born Irish American convincingly portrayed Asians, Middle Easterners, Hispanics, Frenchmen, Germans, Native Americans (he played Sitting Bull twice), East Indians, Italians, and even the occasional Canadian.  He’d been nominated for two Oscars, and won one Golden Globe.  But at the end there he was working for second-rate exploitation king Al Adamson, hired as part of a package deal with Lon Chaney Jr., who by that time was so far gone with throat cancer he could no longer speak. Yeah, the whole set-up stank of real class.

Still, Dracula vs. Frankenstein, god-awful as it is, was the film that introduced me to Naish when I first saw it in 1973, and he stuck with me ever since. Despite all the gangster pictures, Westerns, jungle, desert and seafaring adventures, boxing films, noirs, melodramas,  comedies and musicals in which he appeared, despite his obvious and chameleon-like talents, thanks to just five or six films out of those 200-plus, I will always consider Naish among the classic horror icons, and an actor with some solid geek cred. Here are just a handful of examples to prove my point.

Dr. Renault’s secret (1942)

Although he regularly received top bill when making horror cheapies at poverty row’s PRC Pictures, George Zucco wasn’t treated quite so well at the majors, where he normally ended up with small bit parts. Even in this 20th Century Fox number in which he plays the titular Dr. Renault, Zucco found himself second billed behind the more respected Naish in what amounts to a PRC story made with a Fox budget and production values. What was a weird little horror film for both men begins like a melodrama, as a young scientist travels to a tiny remote French village to visit his fiancée, who lives there with her creepy scientist uncle (Zucco) and his even creepier assistant Noel (Naish). We’re told Noel comes from Java, which may or may not explain why he acts that way. Who the hell knows how people act in Java?

Although the young scientist is happy to see his gal, he’s understandably disturbed to find that weird-ass assistant unduly fixated on her, always sniffing around her like a dog in heat. What might be nothing more than an off-balance love triangle becomes a bit more troubling than that when the young man starts getting all snoopy about the real nature of Dr. Renault’s secret research. Oh, these scientists who simply aren’t satisfied to let species be species. Nothing but trouble, I’m telling you. The film really is a showcase for Naish though, who delivers an oddball performance worthy of Dwight Frye.

Batman (1943)

Long before the Dark Knight films, the Tim Burton films, or even the deliberately campy ‘60s TV series, The Batman made his first big-screen appearance in 1943, just as the comic itself was getting its legs. The Saturday matinee serial starred Saturday matinee serial regular Lewis Wilson (remember him?) in the Bruce Wayne/Batman role. In his first (appropriately jingoistic given the year) outing, Batman finds himself going head to head with the sinister and inscrutable Japanese arch villain and superspy Prince Daka (Naish). Like any of those half-decent James Bond villains who would be coming down the pike in another 20 years, Prince Daka has his very own atomic death ray, a handy alligator pit, and is in the annoying habit of kidnapping American scientists and turning them into zombies willing to do his evil bidding and sabotage the American war effort.

It remains a bit lo-fi compared with later incarnations. Batman’s suit is a little ill-fitting, the fights are what you might call “somewhat tepid,” and while he has a Bat Cave he has no Batmobile, which means he has to take the bus a lot. Naish, though, is as delightfully over the top as the Japanese archvillain (in a performance that would never be allowed today) as Cesar Romero or Jack Nicholson would be later. The same year he made this, Naish was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for his role opposite Bogart in Sahara. He was not nominated for this.

House of Frankenstein (1944)

For some reason in my mind I’d always thought Naish was as much a Universal horror standby during the classic era as Lionel Atwill. Brains are funny things that way. Turns out his one and only Universal horror appearance was in this, one of the last of the original franchise releases. Even though he has to share the screen with the likes of Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, Atwill and Zucco, he more than holds his own. In fact he steals the show as Daniel, the lovesick hunchbacked assistant to mad doctor and Frankenstein protégé Karloff. All Daniel wants is to have a normal upright body so maybe that gypsy girl over there will love him as much as he loves her, and not just treat him like some friendly misshapen puppy. As long as Dr. Beaumont (Karloff) keeps promising him that new and perfect body, he’s willing to do anything, and that includes (but is not limited to) killing anyone who stands in the doctor’s way.

In a story that brings together Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s monster in a self-consciously deliberate grab for the bottom line (while remaining one of my favorites of the entire franchise), Naish gives a remarkably nuanced and sympathetic performance. It’s a huge step up from that same year’s The Monster Maker, a Sam Newfield picture for PRC in which Naish stars as Dr. Igor Markov, a mad scientist who injects his enemies with a serum (you never hear about serums anymore) that deforms them into hideous creatures. Hoo boy.

Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971)

And so we end up back here again. And we end up back here almost exclusively on account of that single turn in a Universal Frankenstein picture, with no thought at all to his vast body of non-horror work. Naish had spent most of his time from the mid-’50s to the end of the ‘60s playing supporting roles on TV, so maybe the idea of ending his career with top billing in a real theatrical film was tempting. His health was fading fast after all (he would die of emphysema in ‘73). Here he plays Dr. Frankenstein himself, or the last of the line of Frankensteins, trying as ever to recreate his grandfather’s experiments in a lab hidden away in a shabby boardwalk house of horrors. For some reason Dracula (played by a stock broker) shows up and offers to help him in exchange for the secret of eternal life. I thought Dracula already had that, but we’ll let it slide. Oh, there are hippies and bikers and dumb cops and an awful Vegas nightclub act, but none of that matters. A good thing, too, as the film is so poorly edited (Adamson’s made far better) it doesn’t make a whole helluva lotta sense.

What does make the picture worthwhile though is getting one last chance to see Naish and Lon Chaney Jr. onscreen. Naish’s dentures may get in the way on occasion, and he’s forced to play the entire film in a wheelchair he didn’t exactly know how to use (despite reports, he didn’t need it off-screen), but he still gives a fine and solid performance as the last of the Frankensteins, knowing his time’s about up and desperate for that one victory he’s sought his whole life. And even though the cancer had rendered Chaney mute by this point, he can still fully express all his pathos through his eyes alone. Better still we get the great Angelo Rossitto as an evil carny who works with Frankenstein, a small role for Forry Ackermann (who contributed quite a bit to the film) as a doomed scientist, and a final confrontation that would go on to inspire a bit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A miserable picture yes, but one that made a ton of money, in no small part I’d like to think on account of all those rabid J. Carrol Naish fans out there who lined up around the block to see it.

These days Naish has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but it has nothing at all to do with any of the films listed above. Some of us know better, though.

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Is the auteur theory – the idea that the director provides the dominant vision and voice for a film – on the way out? Perhaps not quite yet, but Radio Silence is certainly adding an interesting new wrinkle to the conversation. Radio Silence is the four-man filmmaking collective – they direct, write, produce, edit and do many of the visual effects – behind Devil’s Due, a new horror film that takes the classic idea of a sinister pregnancy and gives it a 2014 “found footage” spin (although the screenplay on this one was by Lindsay Devlin, not the Radio Silence team).

Radio Silence – which consists of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez and Chad Villella – got their start making short films and putting them online, before breaking out with “10/31/98,” the final and perhaps scariest segment in the acclaimed horror anthology V/H/S, which was also done in the team’s preferred “found footage” style. That paved the way for the collective to direct Devil’s Due, which finds the foursome moving from the independent world into the leagues of the major studios (20^th Century Fox in this case).

Den Of Geek had the chance to speak with Radio Silence and although all four men were in the room, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett (the credited directors on the movie) handled the conversation as we talked about bringing a team effort to directing, finding new ways to make “found footage” films interesting, and going up against the Mount Everest of “bad pregnancy” movies.

Den Of Geek: What has the process been like for you to transition from the independent film world to a large studio, and how has that affected the way the four of you make a film?

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: So far it’s been great. In the beginning with Fox, there was a little bit of a learning curve in trying to figure out how to take what we knew and do it on their level. But that lasted a very short period of time and frequently it felt like they were supporting us doing our thing with a great crew and people who knew what they were doing better than we ever could, as opposed to us being pigeonholed into some other thing.  

Tyler Gillett: But it was definitely tough. We really had to defend what we are as a group, because it is unconventional and it doesn’t fit into the way that studios operate and the way that the guilds operate. So we really had to support each other and it’s actually helped us become a better team because we really had to stand up for what’s great about us as a group and really represent that to the studio. And they’ve been fantastic about it.

For decades now, filmmaking has been dominated by the auteur theory, which states that the director is the singular, final author of a film. How does what you’re doing – working as a collective – fit with that theory or even oppose it?

MBO: We have a shared goal. We want to make the project the best that it can be, and that involves lots of conversations and lots of debates and --  

TG: I think what’s different about our process is that automatically from the start with a group of four people approaching an idea, the ego and the politics of the process are really sort of removed, and that’s maybe what is different from the auteur filmmakers – and I’m not saying, of course, that they’re all egotistical people, but I think there certainly is a preciousness when you’re one person heading up a project to make it something uniquely yours. That can create some dangerous relationships in that process and things can become kind of political and kind of territorial. We just always want to be serving the idea.

MBO: The funny thing is, though, we still want to make something that’s uniquely ours.

TG: But instead of approaching it from a “this is my idea and it has to be done this way” standpoint, it’s “all right, guys, as a collective, as a group of guys who all have opinions and who all love to work together and who all love movies, what’s the coolest thing we can do? How can we make great?” And automatically, being part of a team, it sort of drains all those superficial stresses out of the process. I know it’s certainly been more enjoyable for us because of that.

MBO: And also as a group, we’re not just one sort of hive director. We edit, we do the effects, we do acting – not on this project, but on others – we do writing…it’s a filmmaking collective more than anything.

When it comes to the horror genre, do the four of you have different favorite styles or subgenres?

MBO: We’ve all got a great appreciation for all different kinds of horror. I’m sure we all have our own favorites, but at the end of the day we all like good, fun horror across the board.

TG: And I think we also all share opinions about what movies we love and what’s great about those movies. I think that as different as we are, opinion-wise and taste-wise, there’s a strange alchemy within the group that, when the right idea comes and we’re brainstorming and we’re looking for the solution to “x” problem, when that solution finally presents itself, it’s really sort of clear and unanimous why it’s right. I don’t think that’s something we can necessarily explain, but I think it’s just the luck of the four of us having found each other five years ago and having formed a relationship that thankfully, gratefully has led us to such a cool place creatively.

Obviously for a film with a subject like this, the elephant in the room is Rosemary’s Baby. How do you tackle this subject matter within the context of having that one movie that dominates that particular corner of the horror genre?

MPO: We certainly are all fans of Rosemary’s Baby, first off, and when we all read this concept and it was presented to us, it was really clear that that’s actually what was attractive about it. Not that it was a parody or a remake or an attempt to spin off the idea, but it was a story about two people and the intimacy of their lives and giving the audience a chance to peek in on that in a way that’s really kind of sexy and interesting and fun, but also has the potential to be really voyeuristic and terrifying, and it just felt like a really cool chance to tell an honest story. And then of course the analogy of the pregnancy and the changes that happen to a woman during a pregnancy was just a really fun thing to make scary.

You’re also working within the “found footage” style on this film. We’ve seen so many movies done in this style, both good and bad, so what was the challenge of doing the film this way, keeping it fresh and avoiding the pitfalls?

TG: Trying to surprise ourselves is a big part of that. As makers of POV movies, we’re fans of them as well and we’ve seen many of them. When approaching this story, it was always from a place of how can we do this in a way that’s exciting to us and isn’t something that we’ve seen before, and that feels interesting and doesn’t feel like the booby traps of the style that you hear people kind of criticize all the time. The question of why are you filming and where did the camera come from and how does it fit into the scene. That’s certainly the conversation that we have the most in the process of making one of these movies, and as cheap and as easy as people think these films are to make, that’s really a hard problem to solve if you want to tell a story that has some integrity, and we really wanted to do that – we wanted to make a movie that felt very much like it was something original and that there was a real attention to solving those problems that are inherent to the style.

You’ve just finished this movie, but do you have any other projects that you’re ready to tackle next?

MPO: Avatar 3 is probably our next thing, or Gravity 2 (laughter). We’re just hungry for whatever that next thing is, and honestly are so excited for the release of this.

Devil's Due is out in theaters this Friday (January 17).

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This is why we can’t have nice things. In this era of spoilers and spillage, it should come as no surprise that even Quentin Tarantino would taste sour betrayal from within his inner cirlce. Apparently, his latest script has leaked and his response is quite surprising.

Initially set to go before the lens next winter, Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight has been pulled off the docket and may see life as a novel first thanks to a pair of unidentified loose lips.

Unidentified for now, that is. It seems that Tarantino only released his script to six people, among them producer Reggie Hudlin (Django Unchained), and actors Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, and Tim Roth (but not Samuel L. Jackson or Christoph Waltz). Stay cool, Honey Bunny, it seems like Roth is in the clear, as is Hudlin, though he did show it to his agent as well.

Here’s Tarantino’s statement to Deadline’s Mike Fleming (who broke the story) on what went down:

“The one I know didn’t do this is Tim Roth. One of the others let their agent read it, and that agent has now passed it on to everyone in Hollywood. I don’t know how these fucking agents work, but I’m not making this next. I’m going to publish it, and that’s it for now. I give it out to six people, and if I can’t trust them to that degree, then I have no desire to make it. I’ll publish it. I’m done. I’ll move on to the next thing. I’ve got 10 more where that came from.”

The “10 more where that came from” boast is a thrilling little nugget, but it sounds like it might be a slight exaggeration in that it seemingly comes in a moment of high frustration from a man who recently hinted at retirement.

To be clear, Tarantino does seem to be quite immersed in “the next thing”, so hopefully something else will roll next winter, but doesn’t this all feel a bit rash?

Even though so many people both abhor spoilers and seek them out, many of Tarantino fans would likely avoid or be oblivious to the existence of a leaked script. As we’re apparently about to see, the overall Tarantino magic means more than just words on a page. It’s the performances, the soundtrack, and the rhythm of the dialogue that can’t be equalled by our own imaginations.

It’s great that Tarantino allows for the possibility that he might change his mind and revisit this, but in that he immediately reiterates that this won’t be next and in that it was only a first draft, it’s natural to wonder if this film will stay dead.

Some of us are still waiting for Killer Crow, Kill Bill Vol. 3, and the Vega Brothers film. So it’s not like Tarantino hasn’t shelved things for good before.

I guess time will tell, but right now I’m sitting here wondering if this could have all been avoided had Tarantino asked Samuel L. Jackson to shout terms and conditions at people before he handed over a copy of his script. 

Via Deadline

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