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Horror Fuel

Spoon Fed Horror

Expect more from your entertainment. Don’t be spoon fed. Whether film, literature, music, even video gaming…refuse to be dumbed down. As I move over the half way point in post production for “Death House” I’ve had time to reflect on the film and wonder how it will be received. The latest news on yet another “Friday the 13th” installment is it will be an origins story. I guess my question is…was there ever that much there in the first place to warrant an origin backstory? Doesn’t it defeat the point of making a simple slasher film to entertain, scare and titillate? Do we really need an origins story whether on Pamela Vorhees or Jason or how Camp Crystal Lake was founded? The Millennial Generation and after are said to be too literal. They need everything spelled out for them. They have all the information they need on their phones. Why think? Why extrapolate? Hell, why even dream? School is taught

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Jun 8, 2016
Horror Fuel

The Road to Death House Part 1

Let’s build on Eli Roth’s prescient observation. I have written quite a bit on cynicism in filmmaking. If you are just coming to my series, stop here. Go back and read my other pieces. Then you can read this in context. However, he is talking about a SMALL percentage of fans. This is not a general description at all. We prefer to focus on the majority of horror fans that do the opposite of Roth’s comments. I have provided an open door, a very wide door, into the production of a movie since “Death House” started filming. “Death House” is my fifth feature film: the fifth I have written and the third I have directed. It’s been a long road, and frankly, I am doing what no one else is doing in Hollywood, making consistent, high quality product on very low budgets. I’ve made one film a year since doing this profession full time. “Death House” was brought to me

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
May 4, 2016
Horror Fuel

Friday the 13th Gets Lucky

A Few Words From Our Ms. Palmer “What a piece of shit! No one’s gonna see this crap!” — Actress Betsy Palmer aka Pamela Vorhees The late, esteemed critic, Roger Ebert, coined the phrase “Dead Teenager Movie” and I have stated several times that Jaws 2 arguably gets technical credit as the first one. While teenagers in peril was a long standing theme and used over and over again, it’s the sequel to Spielberg’s game changing shark movie that lined them up one after another for the monster to pick off. Jaws 2 gave the designer sheen to killing off teens. It wasn’t a grainy “B Movie” that played part of a double bill at the drive in. This was wide screen Panavision and a 50 million budget. While there was no nudity, the underlying “have sex and die” motif was there with a killer in the form a pissed off female Great White Shark. The original 1978 Halloween fine

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Jan 11, 2016
Horror Fuel

Amityville Horrible

Reality vs. Bullshit The only fact about any of the Amityville Horror films is that the DeFeo family was murdered in their sleep inside the house on 112 Ocean Avenue. The real horror is what the surviving relatives of the murdered Defeo’s must endure every time one of these lousy films is made. Hollywood cynicism goes beyond making bad films and trying to pass them off as good or worse yet, classics. The real cynicism is from the studios that torture the DeFeo family and make a buck off a terrible situation. As a result, I wonder, has any studio that made these films ever donated a few posthumous bucks to the DeFeo family for their trouble? I’m not one for reparations, but many of these films invoke the DeFeo name. Maybe a scholarship or two set up in memory of the victims? A lot of people made a lot of money off this family’s tragedy. As a result, they

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Dec 21, 2015
Horror Fuel

‘Salem’s Lot Sucks Like A Good Vampire Movie Should

Vampires Are Back “Barlow! He’s a vampire! He must be destroyed!” — David Soul, Salem’s Lot That’s a line of dialogue from the cheesy and absolutely fun 1979 mini series, ‘Salem’s Lot. While it comes nowhere near the elegance and terror of the Stephen King novel, it totally avoids the cynicism and emptiness of the 2004 remake with Rob Lowe and Donald Sutherland. When you have vampires, especially scary vampires, why is there a need for sexual predator fathers and teachers? This was not a subject of the book, so why did the 2004 remake need to add this dimension? It’s like the Amityville Horror films (which none, and I mean ZERO are good horror films) you have all these ghosts, why does the house have to explode or someone chases someone with an axe or commit incest? Aren’t the ghosts scary enough? At least the original 1979 B movie gave us a puking a nun and a wonderful hamfisted

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Dec 16, 2015
Horror Fuel

Crowdfunding Cynema

Do I Or Don’t I? There are crowdfunding sites for films, projects, medical issues, video games, bankruptcy, personal hardships and well…one for making potato salad. What does Cynema have to do with crowdfunding? After all, it’s about people pursuing their dreams, correct? Maybe. Some of that is legit. I am focusing on the film projects. Thousands of folks out there have turned to The Internet to get their movie funded. Kickstarter, Indie Go Go and Go Fund Me have bloomed as filmmakers go to these sites, set financial goals and lobby for donors. I’ve followed several of these ventures on Twitter. They spend their day lobbying followers to help them make their daily financial goals to make “their dream” come true. They offer “packages” that give the title of “producer” to their films. This is ball busting work and to be sure has pissed off a legion of followers with the constant time line shake downs. Some of these filmmakers

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Nov 17, 2015
Horror Fuel

A Whole New Thing: When a Remake Isn’t a Remake

It’s Not A Remake The Thing, 2011, is NOT a remake. It is a prequel. I just did more than the entire Universal Studios marketing department with that clarification. John Carpenter got royally screwed on his 1982 masterpiece. Some call The Thing his greatest film. Others, like me, call it one of the greatest films ever made for any genre. Carpenter’s film was buried in 1982 by a candy pilfering alien and Spielberg. Between a lackluster marketing campaign by Universal Studios and America’s pop sugar desire for heart glowing aliens, The Thing, 1982, never really had a chance. Carpenter himself saw the handwriting on the wall after exiting a plane to giant advertisements for ET: The Extraterrestrial. “We’re done,” he lamented. However home video and cable gave his film a new life, and eventually the tortoise caught up and passed the alien. Today, Carpenter’s film is regarded as timeless and as mentioned, by many, his best. The film is deserving

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Nov 12, 2015
Horror Fuel

‘Trick ‘r Treat’ Director Gives An Update About The Sequel

2007’s horror film ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ became an instant Halloween classic, recently spawning a graphic novel and soon, a sequel. Now that writer/director Michael Dougherty’s Christmas film, ‘Krampus’ , is done he can turn his attention back to the ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ sequel. Dougherty spoke with Cinema Blend earlier this week about what we can expect from the sequel to the anthology filmy and what we will not see. “I’m just really against filling in too much information about your horror icons. I always find that they get less scary the more you know about them. [We won’t be] diving too deep into Sam’s origins. They will always remain shrouded in mystery.” Dougherty continued “I feel like the first film really just scratched the surface in terms of exploring what really goes on in the shadows of Halloween. For me the first film is really just introducing audiences to the notion that, yes strange creepy magical things do happen on

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Nov 9, 2015
Horror Fuel

Congratulations To Our 2015 Halloween Contest Winners

Congratulations to all our winners ! To all those who entered, thank you ! We hope you had a great Halloween! The Pumpkin Carving Contest 1st Place : Kyle Hall Prize: Nosferatu Funko POP Figure ZADF Decal Pack Winner’s Certificate 2nd Place : Kim Miller Prize: ZADF Decal Double Pack The Costume Contest 1st Place : Rylee Hall Horror DVD : ZADF Decal Pack Winner certificate Audible Copies of The Infected: Jim’s First Day and The Infected: Karen’s First Day By Joseph “Zombie” Zuko The Short Story Contest 1st Place : Bryon Scott Prizes : ZADF decal pack Story published on our website Downloadable novels: American Revenant: Hometown Exodus and American Revenant: Settlers and Sorrow Winner certificate

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Nov 3, 2015
Horror Fuel

Video Game Review: Outlast

Happy Halloween everyone! One of my favorite holidays personally. Free candy, awesome costumes and marathons of horror movies and games. This entire month I’ve been playing horror games non-stop and I’m going to review the 4 games I played. I was gonna review “Alien: Isolation” this week but since the sequel was just announced so I’m gonna review 2013’s surprise hit “Outlast”. “Outlast” was released to PC in 2013 and came out to great success both financially and critically, even getting better reviews then its competition “Amnesia”. Do to “Outlast”s success Canadian developer Red Barrels ported it to new-gen consoles bringing “Outlast” to a whole new audience and making it a mainstay series. So what is “Outlast” about? In “Outlast” you play as Miles Upshur, a freelance photojournalist who was tipped off by a whistle blower about radical experiments being performed on the mental patients at “Mount Massive Asylum” in Colorado and the world must know what is happening. Miles

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Oct 31, 2015

More from Halloween

Horror Fuel

Spoon Fed Horror

Expect more from your entertainment. Don’t be spoon fed. Whether film, literature, music, even video gaming…refuse to be dumbed down. As I move over the half way point in post production for “Death House” I’ve had time to reflect on the film and wonder how it will be received. The latest news on yet another “Friday the 13th” installment is it will be an origins story. I guess my question is…was there ever that much there in the first place to warrant an origin backstory? Doesn’t it defeat the point of making a simple slasher film to entertain, scare and titillate? Do we really need an origins story whether on Pamela Vorhees or Jason or how Camp Crystal Lake was founded? The Millennial Generation and after are said to be too literal. They need everything spelled out for them. They have all the information they need on their phones. Why think? Why extrapolate? Hell, why even dream? School is taught

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Jun 8, 2016
Horror Fuel

The Road to Death House Part 1

Let’s build on Eli Roth’s prescient observation. I have written quite a bit on cynicism in filmmaking. If you are just coming to my series, stop here. Go back and read my other pieces. Then you can read this in context. However, he is talking about a SMALL percentage of fans. This is not a general description at all. We prefer to focus on the majority of horror fans that do the opposite of Roth’s comments. I have provided an open door, a very wide door, into the production of a movie since “Death House” started filming. “Death House” is my fifth feature film: the fifth I have written and the third I have directed. It’s been a long road, and frankly, I am doing what no one else is doing in Hollywood, making consistent, high quality product on very low budgets. I’ve made one film a year since doing this profession full time. “Death House” was brought to me

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
May 4, 2016
Horror Fuel

Friday the 13th Gets Lucky

A Few Words From Our Ms. Palmer “What a piece of shit! No one’s gonna see this crap!” — Actress Betsy Palmer aka Pamela Vorhees The late, esteemed critic, Roger Ebert, coined the phrase “Dead Teenager Movie” and I have stated several times that Jaws 2 arguably gets technical credit as the first one. While teenagers in peril was a long standing theme and used over and over again, it’s the sequel to Spielberg’s game changing shark movie that lined them up one after another for the monster to pick off. Jaws 2 gave the designer sheen to killing off teens. It wasn’t a grainy “B Movie” that played part of a double bill at the drive in. This was wide screen Panavision and a 50 million budget. While there was no nudity, the underlying “have sex and die” motif was there with a killer in the form a pissed off female Great White Shark. The original 1978 Halloween fine

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Jan 11, 2016
Horror Fuel

Amityville Horrible

Reality vs. Bullshit The only fact about any of the Amityville Horror films is that the DeFeo family was murdered in their sleep inside the house on 112 Ocean Avenue. The real horror is what the surviving relatives of the murdered Defeo’s must endure every time one of these lousy films is made. Hollywood cynicism goes beyond making bad films and trying to pass them off as good or worse yet, classics. The real cynicism is from the studios that torture the DeFeo family and make a buck off a terrible situation. As a result, I wonder, has any studio that made these films ever donated a few posthumous bucks to the DeFeo family for their trouble? I’m not one for reparations, but many of these films invoke the DeFeo name. Maybe a scholarship or two set up in memory of the victims? A lot of people made a lot of money off this family’s tragedy. As a result, they

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Dec 21, 2015
Horror Fuel

‘Salem’s Lot Sucks Like A Good Vampire Movie Should

Vampires Are Back “Barlow! He’s a vampire! He must be destroyed!” — David Soul, Salem’s Lot That’s a line of dialogue from the cheesy and absolutely fun 1979 mini series, ‘Salem’s Lot. While it comes nowhere near the elegance and terror of the Stephen King novel, it totally avoids the cynicism and emptiness of the 2004 remake with Rob Lowe and Donald Sutherland. When you have vampires, especially scary vampires, why is there a need for sexual predator fathers and teachers? This was not a subject of the book, so why did the 2004 remake need to add this dimension? It’s like the Amityville Horror films (which none, and I mean ZERO are good horror films) you have all these ghosts, why does the house have to explode or someone chases someone with an axe or commit incest? Aren’t the ghosts scary enough? At least the original 1979 B movie gave us a puking a nun and a wonderful hamfisted

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Dec 16, 2015
Horror Fuel

Crowdfunding Cynema

Do I Or Don’t I? There are crowdfunding sites for films, projects, medical issues, video games, bankruptcy, personal hardships and well…one for making potato salad. What does Cynema have to do with crowdfunding? After all, it’s about people pursuing their dreams, correct? Maybe. Some of that is legit. I am focusing on the film projects. Thousands of folks out there have turned to The Internet to get their movie funded. Kickstarter, Indie Go Go and Go Fund Me have bloomed as filmmakers go to these sites, set financial goals and lobby for donors. I’ve followed several of these ventures on Twitter. They spend their day lobbying followers to help them make their daily financial goals to make “their dream” come true. They offer “packages” that give the title of “producer” to their films. This is ball busting work and to be sure has pissed off a legion of followers with the constant time line shake downs. Some of these filmmakers

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Nov 17, 2015
Horror Fuel

A Whole New Thing: When a Remake Isn’t a Remake

It’s Not A Remake The Thing, 2011, is NOT a remake. It is a prequel. I just did more than the entire Universal Studios marketing department with that clarification. John Carpenter got royally screwed on his 1982 masterpiece. Some call The Thing his greatest film. Others, like me, call it one of the greatest films ever made for any genre. Carpenter’s film was buried in 1982 by a candy pilfering alien and Spielberg. Between a lackluster marketing campaign by Universal Studios and America’s pop sugar desire for heart glowing aliens, The Thing, 1982, never really had a chance. Carpenter himself saw the handwriting on the wall after exiting a plane to giant advertisements for ET: The Extraterrestrial. “We’re done,” he lamented. However home video and cable gave his film a new life, and eventually the tortoise caught up and passed the alien. Today, Carpenter’s film is regarded as timeless and as mentioned, by many, his best. The film is deserving

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Nov 12, 2015
Horror Fuel

‘Trick ‘r Treat’ Director Gives An Update About The Sequel

2007’s horror film ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ became an instant Halloween classic, recently spawning a graphic novel and soon, a sequel. Now that writer/director Michael Dougherty’s Christmas film, ‘Krampus’ , is done he can turn his attention back to the ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ sequel. Dougherty spoke with Cinema Blend earlier this week about what we can expect from the sequel to the anthology filmy and what we will not see. “I’m just really against filling in too much information about your horror icons. I always find that they get less scary the more you know about them. [We won’t be] diving too deep into Sam’s origins. They will always remain shrouded in mystery.” Dougherty continued “I feel like the first film really just scratched the surface in terms of exploring what really goes on in the shadows of Halloween. For me the first film is really just introducing audiences to the notion that, yes strange creepy magical things do happen on

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Nov 9, 2015
Horror Fuel

Congratulations To Our 2015 Halloween Contest Winners

Congratulations to all our winners ! To all those who entered, thank you ! We hope you had a great Halloween! The Pumpkin Carving Contest 1st Place : Kyle Hall Prize: Nosferatu Funko POP Figure ZADF Decal Pack Winner’s Certificate 2nd Place : Kim Miller Prize: ZADF Decal Double Pack The Costume Contest 1st Place : Rylee Hall Horror DVD : ZADF Decal Pack Winner certificate Audible Copies of The Infected: Jim’s First Day and The Infected: Karen’s First Day By Joseph “Zombie” Zuko The Short Story Contest 1st Place : Bryon Scott Prizes : ZADF decal pack Story published on our website Downloadable novels: American Revenant: Hometown Exodus and American Revenant: Settlers and Sorrow Winner certificate

Continue reading →
Kelli Marchman McNeely
Nov 3, 2015
Horror Fuel

Video Game Review: Outlast

Happy Halloween everyone! One of my favorite holidays personally. Free candy, awesome costumes and marathons of horror movies and games. This entire month I’ve been playing horror games non-stop and I’m going to review the 4 games I played. I was gonna review “Alien: Isolation” this week but since the sequel was just announced so I’m gonna review 2013’s surprise hit “Outlast”. “Outlast” was released to PC in 2013 and came out to great success both financially and critically, even getting better reviews then its competition “Amnesia”. Do to “Outlast”s success Canadian developer Red Barrels ported it to new-gen consoles bringing “Outlast” to a whole new audience and making it a mainstay series. So what is “Outlast” about? In “Outlast” you play as Miles Upshur, a freelance photojournalist who was tipped off by a whistle blower about radical experiments being performed on the mental patients at “Mount Massive Asylum” in Colorado and the world must know what is happening. Miles

Continue reading →
Capt McNeely
Oct 31, 2015
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