HEMLOCK GROVETO BE ADAPTED AS NETFLIX EXCLUSIVE Brian McGreevy’s dark, new-gothic novel Hemlock Grove already
reads like a screenplay, so it’s not surprising that his tale of a were- wolf loose in a suburban Pennsylvania steel town is being adapted into a TV series for Netflix. Hostel director Eli Roth has signed on as executive producer and
will direct thirteen hour-long episodes of Hemlock Grove as part of the online streaming service’s foray into original programming. Mc- Greevy and writing partner Lee Shipman are adapting the novel (out now from Farrar, Straus and Giroux) for the screen, and it will debut alongside other shows exclusive to Netflix, including David Fincher and Kevin Spacey’s House of Cards and a new season of Arrested Development. “When Netflix announced that they wanted to offer original pro-
gramming, that was a game-changer to every inventive-thinking person in this industry,” says McGreevy, who’s also currently working on an adaptation of Dracula called Harker for Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions. “What the migration of TV to the internet provides is the opportunity to do an authentic version of the novel, more so than any other outlet.” The story of Hemlock Grove begins with the discovery of the man-
gled remains of a teenage girl deep in the woods. Rumours swirl at the local high school, and suspicion falls on a gypsy kid named Peter, who has been telling freshman girls that he’s a werewolf. As more
entrails Simon Marsden, whose moody black
and white photography of abandoned cas- tles and European ruins evoked another, more supernatural world, died January 22 at age 63. Raised in purportedly haunted Panton Hall and Thorpe Hall in England’s Lincolnshire Wolds, Marsden found inspi- ration in the literary works of M.R. James, Arthur Machen and Edgar Allan Poe, whose “dark tales of decaying mansions and moonlit abbeys seemed somehow to mirror my own obsession with the ghosts that haunted them,” he wrote on his web- site,
simonmarsden.co.uk.
Actress Lina Romay, the long-time
muse and devoted common-law wife of Spanish exploitation director Jess Franco, succumbed to cancer February 15 at age 57. First teaming with Franco for 1972’s The Erotic Rites of Franken- stein, Romay starred in more than 100 films throughout her career. The actress appeared at a piv- otal point in Franco’s life, approximately one year after the death of his beloved leading lady Soledad Mi- randa in
1970. (The director often said he thought Romay was a reincarnation.)
Charges filed against Spain’s Sitges In-
ternational Film Festival director Angel Sala, for screening A Serbian Film in Oc- tober 2010, were dropped earlier this year. Three showings of Srdjan Spasojevic’s grimy pornocaust flick led public prosecu- tors to charge Sala with screening child pornography, based on two notorious, faked scenes. In a press release, the fes- tival’s directors state that they are “com- mitted to continuing the debate that has emerged around the limits of film and freedom of expression in a responsible manner.”
The resurrected Hammer
Film Productions has an- nounced that England’s Cin- ema and Television History Research Centre (CATH), lo- cated in Leicester, will be the home of a massive Hammer archive. The publicly accessi- ble collection is expected to contain the screenplays from most of the company’s film and TV productions from 1947 to 1990, as well as correspondence and other related paperwork. This follows Jan- uary’s announcement of a worldwide
restoration project that will see more than 30 Hammer films restored and remas- tered for Blu-ray release, complete with newly shot extras produced by Marcus Hearn, author of The Hammer Vault.
If you’re in the mood for doomsday, you
may want to pick up Elysian Brewing’s 12 Beers of the Apocalypse, with each beer featuring label artwork reproduced from Charles Burns’ 2005 STD-as-mutation graphic novel Black Hole. On the 21st of each month, you can drink to the end of the Mayan calendar with brews such as January’s Nibiru – named after a myste- rious planet ready to take out Earth – a Belgian-style Tripel, or March’s Fallout, a pale ale made with green car- damom.
Gotham recently published
Growgirl: How My Life After the Blair Witch Project Went to Pot, by The Blair Witch Project star Heather Donahue, a quirky memoir about leaving Holly-
wood to grow weed for fun and profit. After symbolically burning her acting-re- lated mementos in the desert, Donahue moved to a commune in rural California and grew medical marijuana for a living. A.S. BERMAN
The men responsible for the infa- mous “Georgia Bigfoot Hoax” (in which a frozen rubber suit was claimed to be one of the creatures) re- cently found themselves in another heated situation as their Bigfoot- Tracker RV caught fire and burned on an interstate in Florida. The driver told authorities they “were on a 36-state tour looking for Bigfoot.” According to BigfootTracker founder, Rick Dyer, the 2008 hoax was not their fault. He now claims they had a real corpse but it was collected by the FBI!
The internet was recently abuzz with an enticing game-cam photo show- ing the back of a mysterious hairy beast. It was a refreshing change from the usual blurred snapshot; however it was soon identified as being a still photo of the costume used in the 2005 horror film, Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch. The search continues...
LYLE BLACKBURN MORE MONSTRO BIZARRO AT
RUE-MORGUE.COM
mutilated bodies turn up, Peter finds himself allied with a brooding, sexually confused blueblood in a search for the
killer. Other story strands deal with a monstrous girl who glows in the dark, a mysterious biotech facility, angels and adulterers. Incorporating elements of classic hor-
ror mythology, and modernized vampire and werewolf folklore, McGreevy’s novel is heavy on suspense, psychological ter- ror, alienation and good old-fashioned gore – elements that the writer says will not be toned down for the series. “Once I began to consider this as a se-
ries, people asked if – since this involves adolescents and werewolves and vam- pires – I was going to take things in more of a PG direction,” he says. “My response is that this story is about kids, it’s not for kids. ... Besides, compared to some of the stuff that Eli has done, the book is pretty PG.” An air date for Hemlock Grove has not yet been announced.
DAN MURPHY
RM10
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