Dismal covered in Fangoria

After a long wait, Dismal finally received its due with an exclusive in Fangoria, the world's leading horror mag. "We were anxious to get a piece in Fangoria and who wouldn't," remarks Dismal producer / publicist Christopher Cook, "but they wanted to wait until we had a DVD release date. It was a long wait." Dismal scribe and producer, Bo Buckley adds, "The movie (Dismal) had a run On Demand, it aired on Showtime and then The Movie Channel and we still couldn't get a mention. Now it's like the monkey is off our back."

As an added bonus there were mentions of Fearmakers' upcoming Bigfoot thriller Savage and their sub-division, Strange Stuff's zombie / comedy Death of the Dead. "It's cool," says producer Justin Soponis, "Having your film mentioned anywhere is cool, but Fangoria takes it to a whole new level."

The team at Fearmakers is proud of the films exposure and grateful for the entire cast and crew who braved the elements to make it happen. "We've built some wonderful, lasting relationships from that film," reflects Buckley. Some of those relationships followed Fearmakers to their next effort, Savage, including the producing team of Freezer Locker Films, VFX QuadraHelix, composer Ken Lampl, design team Steelcoast Creative, actor / stuntman Jack Harrison, DP Shawn Lewallen and others. They also reteamed with executive producer Jack Abele and director Gary King for Strange Stuff's Death of the Dead. "We worked with so many talented, passionate people," observes Soponis, "it would be foolish of us not to work with them again."

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

Dismal is now available for pre-order through many places including Amazon.com, Blockbuster.com, Walmart.com and more. Make sure you get your copy. Official DVD release is Dec. 21, 2010.

Halloween Nights 5 of 15: The Human Centipede

Fearmaker founder, Bo Buckley, dissects one of the most talked about horror film in recent history, The Human Centipede.

The Human Centipede
by Bo Buckley

I really had no desire to watch this movie for entertainment value. It was out of pure intrigue over the widespread discussion the movie has generated that I just had to see it. What I found was after you get past the shock value that is three people being sewn ass to mouth there really isn’t much left.

The movie starts out like many movies we’ve already seen. Take your pick, two American tourists break down in a remote part of Germany on their way to a club. A creepy foreigner rolls up and spouts obscenities, because, let’s face it, all foreigners are creepy, right? At any rate there is no cell service and instead of driving on the rim until they find civilization they decide to hike to the nearest residence… THROUGH THE WOODS! All right, all is forgiven. I mean, it’s not like we’ve never seen people do dumb things to get the horror film rolling. So let me wrap it up. It starts raining and they find a house owned by a retired surgeon; but no ordinary surgeon, the leading specialist in separating conjoined twins. Well he’s a cuckoo bird now and he wants to make a human centipede so he finds a tissue match and sews them up. The rest of the movie involves having the surgically stitched travelers trying to escape.

As I mentioned, the squeamish part of the film is going through the play by play of how the doctor intends to attach the victims. Once you get through that 10 minutes you’re really left with not much else sans a terrific performance by Dieter Laser who plays the mad doctor. Dieter portrays the creepy kind of madman I saw out of Bill Oberst, Jr. who played Dale in Dismal, the film I wrote and produced. Dieter was very good and unnerving. The rest of the cast consisted of two actresses who, apart from a few scenes of being lost and repeating each others names (I’ll touch on this later), spend much of the movie with their faces shoved into a rectum, and a Japanese actor who literally screams the entire film and two German cops who are in the movie for 5 minutes. Thankfully Laser’s performance keeps you watching but in the end you’re left kind of empty.

There’s really no point to this movie other than shock value, and as I said, that’s just a few minutes of the film. But the story lacks the depth to make it more than just shock. What made the doctor go mad? Why does he want to attach 3 innocent people (other than his line “I hate human beings”)? What scientific discovery will he make? It’s definitely not like the Frankenstein-type films where there’s something to be discovered for science. But I did rent it from Redbox so maybe I got a cut version and there’s another version out there that explains it better. My other grip is the writing. Apart from the lack of story depth, one of my biggest pet peeves is when characters, who obviously know each other repeat the other character’s name every time they speak. Two girls taking a European trip together should know each other well enough not to say their name before every line. Listen to yourself talk to someone close to you today, how often to you say their name outside of talking about them or calling out to them? Probably not a lot. And stuff like that immediately draws me out of the experience.

Overall Laser’s performance and the 10 minutes of shock could be enough to check this movie out, but the dollar Redbox rental was about all it was worth to me. Although, I am curious to hear interviews with the two actresses about what they thought when they were going to spend 75 percent of the movie muffling into a stranger’s ass with no shirt on. That must have been an interesting discussion.

Bo gives The Human Centipede




To see Bo's work as a writer, producer and / or director, you can pick up one of his many titles by going to the Fearmakers facebook fan page and clicking on the "Shop Now" tab.

Lisa Wilcox Interview

Check out Savage darling Lisa Wilcox of Nightmare on Elm Street fame as she talks about her life as a horror icon. She has some wonderful things to say about working on Savage and the folks behind it (that's us). You can hear it all on Gruesome Hertzogg's podcast.

(a faux prego Lisa Wilcox with producer Bo Buckley)

Bo Buckley Interviews With The Independent Corner

Ever wonder what goes into the thought process behind a Fearmakers' film? Okay, so maybe "thought process" is used a little loosely, BUT, there are decisions to be made and pieces that have to be put in place when a movie is made. Check out the interview Bo Buckley did with Jonathan Moody at The Independent Corner and find out where it all started, how the movies came to be and where it's going.

Bo Buckley's Interview With The Independent Corner

SAVAGE in Fango

The industry leading magazine Fangoria did a piece on Savage for their website. It was a really cool piece with exclusive photos and comments from the producers and cast. Unfortunately they misspelled producer Justin Soponis' name wrong, but we'll forgive them. Bigfoot may not, but Fearmakers will.

From the Way Back Machine...

I stumbled across this image today of Bo walking onto the Death4Told set while Tom Savini and Margot Kidder were rehearsing. He looks like he's on a mission of destruction.

This picture is was taken on July 11, 2003. Bo must have made a pact with the devil because he still looks the same. Non-aging bastid!

The director, Mike Close, is pictured in the ball cap.