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Quick Links The Bizarre Sci-Fi Experience That Is Lawnmower Man Stephen King and Critics Hated Lawnmower Man Lawnmower Man Has Not Aged Well

Considered one of, if not the greatest authors to ever approach the horror genre, Stephen King has always been very vocal about what he does and does not like when it comes to the medium. Sometimes, he gets it right; sometimes, he doesn't. Even a master of the macabre can be wrong. However, there is one sci-fi horror film that Stephen King despised more than any of his other works adapted to the screen, 1992's The Lawnmower Man.

Stephen King's history with the movie is not just one of distaste, but also a legal battle with the production company behind it. We will head back to the era of awful CGI to dissect one of the most despised movies to come out of the decade and explore...

Showrunner Eric Kripke joins podcast hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante to discuss a few of his favorite films.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Howling (1981) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairings

Piranha (1978) – Jon Davison’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairings, Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review

Gremlins (1984) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review, Tfh’s Mogwai Madness

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

My Octopus Teacher (2020)

The Evil Dead (1983) – Fede Alvarez’s trailer commentary

Evil Dead II (1987) – Mike Mendez’s trailer commentary, Alex Kirschenbaum’s review

Meet The Feebles (1989) – Mike Mendez’s trailer commentary

Dead Alive a.k.a. Braindead (1992) – Mike Mendez’s trailer commentary

Bad Taste (1987) – Ti West’s trailer commentary

Infested (2002)

Super (2010)

Forrest Gump (1994)

The Hidden (1987) – Mike Mendez’s trailer commentary, Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review

Uhf (1989)

Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid (1986)

The Dead Pit (1989)

Batgirl (2022) – Unreleased film

The Fantastic Four (1994) – Unreleased film...

Hello, everyone! We’re back with a brand new batch of home media releases, and this week’s assortment is an eclectic group. Code Red is showing some love to The Dead Pit and Arrow Video is keeping busy with their latest Giallo Essentials set and the 2-disc limited edition release of Mill of the Stone Women. Other titles headed home on December 14th include Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Amityville Vampire, Alone in the Woods, The Spanish Chainsaw Massacre, and Chicken’s Blood.

The Dead Pit

Dr. Ramzi (Danny Gochnauer), a deviant who enjoys torturing his patients, is killed by a fellow doctor and buried in the basement of a mental health facility. Twenty years later, the hospital is up and running again and a “Jane Doe” (Cheryl Lawson) arrives at the institute with amnesia. Upon her arrival, a major earthquake rocks the building and unearths the now undead Dr.

Production, finance and sales outfit Film Constellation has inked new key deals on psychological thriller “John and the Hole,” directed by one of Variety’s top 10 directors to watch, Pascual Sisto. The film is written by Nicolás Giacobone, an Academy Award winner with “Birdman,” adapted from his short story “El Pozo.”

The Cannes 2020 title, which also screened in Sundance and recently played in competition at the Deauville American Film Festival, where it won the Louis Roederer prize of the Révélation jury, sold in France to Ace Entertainment, in Germany, Austria and Switzerland to Koch Films, in Scandinavia to Njuta Films, in Latin America to Synapse Distribution, and in Africa to Gravel Road Distribution Group.

Previous deals included the U.K. with Vertigo Releasing, Australia/New Zealand with Rialto Distribution, and South Korea with The Coup. IFC Midnight released the film in the U.S. earlier this past month.

Described by...

August’s home media offerings are wrapping up in a big way this week, and I hope you’ve got your wallets ready because there are a ton of releases that genre fans are going to want to add to their collections. Fulci fans should be excited for the arrival of both The House by the Cemetery and The New York Ripper in 4K, courtesy of Blue Underground, and Severin is having their own Fulci fiesta this week, too, with their releases of Aenigma, Demonia as well as the recent documentary Fulci for Fake.

Scream Factory also has a killer lineup of titles headed home on Tuesday, including the Collector’s Edition of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie and the Universal Horror Collection: Volume 6.

Other Blu-ray and DVD releases for August 25th include Dead Pit, The Beast Must Die, The Last Victim, Live Feed, Gemini, Hallucinations, and Alien Scum.

The Return of the Living Dead is one of the greatest zombie movies ever made, perfectly blending horror, comedy, and a punk soundtrack with zombies that didn’t follow the Romero rules and forever convinced the masses that zombies need to eat “brains!!!” The original 1985 movie was a box office success as well, making over $14 million during its Us theatrical run on a $4 million dollar budget. Being that the ’80s really kicked off the age of horror sequels, it’s no surprise that a sequel to The Return of the Living Dead was greenlit, and while it failed to capture the magic that made the first movie so special, don’t tell that to my younger self in the late ’80s…

Like many ’80s monster kids, my VHS picks were based on cover art at the mom-and-pop video store. Horror art was always fighting for my attention, with the colorful...

By Chris Wright, MoreHorror.com

“Dead Pit” (1989)

Directed By: Brett Leonard

Written By: Brett Leonard & Gimel Everett

Starring: Danny Gochnauer (Dr. Ramzi), Cheryl Lawson (Jane Doe), Jeremy Slate (Dr. Swan), Stephen Foster (Christian Meyers), Geha Getz (Sister Clair), Joan Bechtel (Nurse Kygar), Mara Everett (Nurse Robbins)

“Dead Pit” turned out to be a pleasant surprise in the zombie genre. Generally not well known, this flick adds a surprisingly good supernatural flare to a traditional zombie movie.

I’ve seen a lot of painful zombie films but was pleased I didn’t have to add this one to that list! It received positive reviews from critics at the time. It has been released on VHS and DVD.

The plot starts us off twenty years in the past to a former Doctor Ramzi (Danny Gochnauer) torturing his patients. He is murdered, buried, and sealed in the basement to be forgotten entirely.

The...

Having never been in a high security mental institution I can only imagine what the interaction between cook and patient really is. I keep thinking of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest… Nurse Ratchet. McMurphy. Chief. It would seem to me it’s a rather humorous place to be if you just take the Ken Kesey angle (until Billy kills himself… then it’s no fun for anyone). Maybe the institution of Asylum Blackout is more like Arkham Asylum from the world of Batman. Dark. Demented. The patients ready to get out and exact revenge, insanely, on a staff that cared too little. Mostly I think of the thorazine shuffle. I think of heavily medicated folks drooling on themselves meandering about their padded cell. With that in mind, when I tell you that Asylum Blackout didn’t quite do it for me, it’s not for the lack of...

One of Hyb's very few friends, special effects artist Ed Martinez (The Dead Pit, Black Devil Doll), dropped us a line to talk about his new zombie flick The Dead and The Damned. Directed by Rene Perez, The Dead and The Damned is currently in post-production and plans to make the festival rounds while searching for distribution. Check out the trailer below and visit the official website for future updates.

Code Red DVD, the company who brought us Devil Times Five , Dead Pit and Beyond the Door discs amongst others, is preparing to release Slithis on June 1. Stephen Traxler's 1978 painted the portrait of a terrified Venice, California as it fell victim to a mutated sea creature. Hell hath no fury...like Slithis! So read the poster. Stay tuned for more details as they come in!

Yes we announced the partial lineup a ittle while back, and now we have the exclusive full lineup to share, and boy, is it a doozy. The festival runs April 28th to May 3rd so get your tickets now!

Opening night film: Splice by Vincenzo Natali.

Cosing night film: Cargo (which we loved, review)

TiMER (UK Premier)

Hunter Prey (International Premier) (teaser)

2033 (UK Premier) (Another film we loved, review)

1 The Stanislaw Lem adaptation (UK Premier) (Yes, we loved this too review)

Transmission (A Ballardian telecom malfunction, UK Premier) (review)

Drones

Eraser Children (International Premier, finally I get to see this tonight!) (trailer)

Radio Free Albemuth (Sneak Preview of this Philip K. Dick adaptation! We should have a trailer soon)

Earthling (International Premier) (review)

Depositarios (International Premier, more Mexican scifi) (teaser)

Plug & Pray (UK Premier, documentary)

8th Wonderland (UK Premier)

and much more! You can head over to the festival website for more details and tickets,...

Madman Marz fans be on the look out because production company Code Red DVD is in the early stages of prepping a new special edition of the early 80's "slasher" cult classic Madman. Anchor Bay Entertainment initially put out the DVD back in 2001 but has been out of print and hard to find, that is about to change...

While the new features for this edition are still being worked out, we do know that the original commentary track with writer/director Joe Giannone, writer/producer Gary Sales and stars Tony Fish and Paul "Madman Marz" Ehlers will be carted over from the Anchor Bay release. (Sadly, Giannone and Fish are no longer with us.)

Early word has it the disc will sport new interviews with some of the cast, as well as a featurette visiting the original shooting locations with Madman Marz himself, Paul Ehlers.

Madman pre-dated the original Friday The 13th...

Dead Pit Radio talked to Michael Fleischer of Red Shirt Pictures, who informed them that a director's cut of the '80s classics "Night of the Creeps" is heading to DVD. "In October Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will be releasing Night of the Creeps to DVD in a directors cut special edition, it is coming out officially for the first time ever." says Felsher. "Fred Dekker is already working on it, It's going to be the director's cut with the original ending. We're going to go balls to the wall with the special features on it ... I talked to Sony today its official, we're going ahead and its coming out in October! It's officially In production...and moving forward, its coming!" . .

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is finally getting around to a special edition DVD of Night of the Creeps . Go ahead, read that sentence again. It's true. Red Shirt Pictures' Michael Felsher - who has produced a good deal of terrific genre discs - is spearheading the special features. Here's what he had to tell Dead Pit Radio: "It is coming out officially for the first time ever. Fred Dekker is already working on it, It's going to be the director's cut with the original ending. We're going to go balls to the wall with the special features on it...I talked to Sony today its official, we're going ahead and its coming out in October! It's officially In production...and moving forward, its coming!" Good God. I thought the day would never come. Night of the...

Yes, you read that headline right and it is Not a lame-ass April Fool's joke. Apparently we as fans are about to get a wish fulfilled that we've been waiting for forever.

The news broke on horror talk radio show Dead Pit when the boys caught up with Michael Felsher of the extraordinary Red Shirt Pictures, who will be working on the film's special features.

"In October Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will be releasing Night of the Creeps to DVD in a director's cut special edition. It is coming out officially for the first time ever," says Felsher. "Fred Dekker is already working on it. It's going to be the director's cut with the original ending. We're going to go balls to the wall with the special features on it ... I talked to Sony today, and it's official; we're going ahead and it's coming out in October! It's officially in production.

Update 4.3.08 - News in from Styd and Dead Pit  that Night of the Creeps will indeed hit DVD Oct '09 from Sony! Red Shirt Pictures' Michael Felsher tells Dead Pit  "It is coming out officially for the first time ever. Fred Dekker is already working on it, It's going to be the director's cut with the original ending. We're going to go balls to the wall with the special features on it...I talked to Sony today its official, we're going ahead and its coming out in October! It's officially In production...and moving forward, its coming!"Awesome news, but if you can't wait until Oct, you can watch it Free online, now, only on FEARnet!   Plus, back in 2008, we...

Disclaimer: This article may contain sarcasm; irony and “LOLs” proceed with caution.

The Final Chapter (read Part 2 here)! We have Howard the Duck, Freejack and Shyamalan flicks on the list; these are never good signs. Nonetheless we are bringing it all to you in full-color and in 3-D. (Ed. Note: Due to the economy, 3-D has been dropped and will be replaced by Smell-o-vision — check for your scratch and sniff cards in about 4-6 weeks.) Best Sound went to rage-zombie veterans Ian Tapp and Richard Pryke, leaving Mark Weingarten who worked on Rejuvenatrix in the dust. The Sound Editing section contains one too many references to Ron Silver, and at least two references to a Roger Corman film.

The visual effects category pulled on our heartstrings this year due to the loss of Stan Winston, who was noted en memoriam along with other heroes, Vampira, Leonard Rosenman and Charles H. Schneer...

Craig Singer, director of two Horrorfest titles, Dark Ride (pictured) and Perkins’ 14, got to chatting with Fearnet during the New York Comic Con and discussed two new films he’s working on, one of which is a top-secret remake of a zombie film.

"It's a film that's one of my favorite films growing up as a kid,” Singer told the site. ”It's one of the vintage classic films that's going to turn a lot of heads. I was really kind of shocked that it hadn't been revisited. A lot of times films are remade and redone and it doesn't feel quite right; this is an instance where it kind of does feel right. Certain films are kind of taboo, but this film is something that I think fans are going to really appreciate. I can't wait to start working on it."

I’m curious as to what it could be...