Killer Shrews return after five decades Recently, we’ve been living through a new age of creature features, thanks largely to Syfy’s schlock renaissance


featuring Mega Shark and its kin. Now that resurgence includes a sequel to The Killer Shrews, the 1959 Ray Kellogg film famously maligned on Mystery Science Theater 3000 for featuring costumed dogs as the title creatures. Entranced by the movie since finding it at Blockbuster in the late ’80s, Illinois director Steve Latshaw (Vampire


Trailer Park) is now in pre-production on Return of the Killer Shrews. James Best, best known as Rosco P. Coltrane on TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard, starred in the original and will return for the sequel. After interviewing Best in 1989, Latshaw befriended the actor and had an epiphany. “I noticed lobby cards for Killer Shrews and it clicked,” recalls Latshaw. “I thought, ‘My god, I would love to do


a sequel to that movie with Jimmy.’” The idea gestated for years until the pair realized that Syfy was the project’s ideal home. The channel agreed.


youtube.com/watch?v=QNwCojCJ3-Q (search: “meow”) Sure, you’ve seen countless zombie apocalypses onscreen, but have you ever seen a zombie kitten apocalypse? Thought not. This animated short by Sarah Brown and Cyriak Harris is cute, creepy, completely ludicrous and quite possibly seizure- inducing. Watch at your own risk.


museumoftheweird.com Get your daily cryptozoology scoop and the rest of your news of the weird at the official website for Austin, Texas’ Museum of the Weird. The frequently updated Weird Weekly News blog can be enjoyed by morbid fact fiends and UFO conspiracy theorists alike. See something strange today.


comicsmakekidsevil.com This black and white online comic, by Christian Sager and EC Steiner, offers up an alternative his- tory for the formation of the 1954 Comics Code Au- thority, one which sees horror-hooked children mutating into hideous, fleshy monsters –but still begs to ask, who’s the real bad guy here? Art imi- tates life, and pokes fun at it.


serialkillercalendar.com/VHSWASTELAND Whether you’re a true blue videotape connoisseur or simply have a sweet spot for the weird video re- leases of the ’70s and ’80s, the VHS Wasteland blog will keep your eyeballs satiated with its demented high-res VHS covers of equally demented B-movie fare (Circuitry Man, anyone?) So bad it’s bitchin’.


gameshed.com/Scary-Games/Free-Icecream/ In this free online Flash game, you are a kidnapped child who must escape the house of the sadistic masked slasher who’s holding you prisoner. This in- volves a combination of puzzle-solving and hiding when the knife-wielding psycho is nearby... lest you become Little Miss Minced Meat.


Compiled by MONICA S. KUEBLER Got a Roadkill suggestion? Email a link to: roadkill@rue-morgue.com


Joining Best in the sequel are Dukes of Hazzard alumni John Schneider and Rick Hurst, country singer Mel Tillis and Jennifer Lyons (Transylmania). Principal photography is expected to begin in LA this month, with a finished product slated for year’s end. As for the titular beasts, they’ll be mostly CGI creations this time around. “The creatures themselves are based loosely on the original design,” says Latshaw. “They’re still roughly the


size of a dog, but they won’t quite run like a dog – it’ll be more a spidery sort of run. I wanted to get something as creepy looking as the bat-rat-spider in The Angry Red Planet.” Still, the original’s infamous dogs-dressed-as-shrews won’t be completely absent. “There’s actually a scene


where there is a dog dressed as a shrew that is a direct homage to the film,” reveals Latshaw. “It’s going to be ridiculous.”


A.S. BERMAN entrails After 56 years, the US Comics Code Authority lost its


final client in February when Archie Comic Publications abandoned the self-regulation imposed by the CCA. Cre- ated in 1954 in response to the congressional hearings that gutted EC and other horror comic lines, the code intermittently nixed the depiction of violence, blood, nu- dity and supernatural themes. However, it became in- creasingly irrelevant during the 1980s when publishers launched “direct market” titles, which catered exclu- sively to serious comic collectors.


Spain’s Nacho Cerdà (The Abandoned) is set to direct


an English-language adaptation of the 2006-07 French comic series I Am Legion. The $15-million movie, with a script by Richard Stanley (Hardware), sees Nazis seek- ing to transform a ten-year-old female vampire into their secret weapon during WWII. Shooting is expected to commence in late 2011 in Eastern Europe.


WWII continues to rage on in the forthcoming film


Frankenstein’s Army, in which Russian forces assemble reanimated super soldiers based on the notes of Dr. Frankenstein, discovered in a Nazi lab. The feature is to be written and directed by Richard Raaphorst, who first tested the concept in a previous incarnation called Worst Case Scenario, which ceased production in mid-2009 due to financing issues. Frankenstein’s Army is ex- pected to begin shooting this spring in Prague and Am- sterdam.


For those tired of waiting for Japanese horror flicks


to hit North America, Japan Flix online distribution serv- ice (Japanflix.com) promises to expand your viewing


choices with titles such as Teketeke, Shisei: The Tattooer and Claimer: Case 1. You can rent ($3.99/$4.99 for HD) or purchase ($9.99/$12.99 HD) the films through iTunes; other means of digital distribution are also in the works.


In March, rumours were still whizzing around the in-


ternet that Tom Cruise was as good as signed to Guillermo del Toro’s 3-D cinematic adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness when the di- rector set things straight: he’s walked away from the project over Universal’s refusal to cough up $150 million for an R-rated film, even with James Cameron attached as producer. (They wanted a more family-friendly rating for that budget.) Del Toro says he’s now tackling Warner Bros’ Pacific Rim, a project that reportedly will allow the Pan’s Labyrinth creator to go wild designing monsters, with shooting to begin in September.


January and February were rough on the pioneers of


the horror and exploitation industry. Barry Hobart, who hosted horror movies in the ’70s and ’80s as Dr. Creep on Dayton, Ohio’s WKEF-TV’s Shock Theater and Club- house 22 programs, died January 14. He was 68. Charles Sellier Jr. – director of 1984’s Silent Night, Deadly Night and executive producer of the 1982 TV adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher – died Jan- uary 31 at 67. Finally, on February 14, David F. Friedman – producer of the HG Lewis classic Blood Feast (1963) and Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975), and executive pro- ducer of Two Thousand Maniacs (1964) and its sequels, and Color Me Blood Red (1965) – died of heart failure at age 87.


A.S. BERMAN


RM10


D R E A D L I N E S


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