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This episode of Investigation Discovery’s American Monster features footage of killer Christine Billis on TV alongside the husband she left dead in a staged car crash. Billis intentionally drove the couple’s car into a tree but while she was belted up and suffered only minor injuries, her husband Charles, 57, was unbelted and died at the scene. American Monster episode, titled The Last Broadcast, looks at how the tapes from a public-access TV show the couple were involved in show a “sinister tale” behind what happened. It was initially thought the crash in 2009 in Charleston, Vermont, was an accident […]

The post Christine Billis killed her husband in staged car crash then confessed to man she met on Ok Cupid appeared first on Monsters and Critics.

Back in 1999, a tiny, amateurish, independent horror film called The Blair Witch Project managed to turn a massive $248 million profit on a meager $600,000 investment, while scaring audiences despite a lack of onscreen violence and gore. So what happened here? Good luck? Good timing? Genuine cinematic skill on the part of directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick? With a new Blair Witch film headed for theaters in a couple of weeks, YouTuber Ryan Hollinger examines the original phenomenon in an installment of his web series Ryan’s Theory entitled “The Blair Witch Project: Why Is It Important?”

Even though Blair Witch was a trendsetter and game changer for cinematic horror, it was far from original. Its pseudo-documentary structure had already been used in films like 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust and 1998’s The Last Broadcast. So what made The Blair Witch Project special? As Hollinger sees it ...

Tony Black on the return of the Blair Witch franchise…

Of course the first question worth asking is this: is Blair Witch a horror movie? That now depends on which Blair Witch you’re talking about. Amongst all its glittering comic book movie reveals, Comic Con 2016’s biggest surprise turned out to be that Adam Wingard’s upcoming found footage horror picture, The Woods, set to release in September, has long in secret been a sequel to The Blair Witch Project. You’ve probably seen that one, the 1999 micro budget film which practically invented the found footage genre (or at least rocketed it once more into the public consciousness) and sent people at Cannes into paroxysms of fear in a manner few had seen since The Exorcist twenty five years earlier.

It’s been described by many as a seminal piece of horror to reflect Generation X, the pre-millennial terror

Toby Whithouse has been questioned about the possibility of reviving Being Human, but doesn’t have any good news on the matter…

When Being Human was cancelled after five series, fans of the show were naturally dejected.

It’s to be expected, then, that the show’s creator Toby Whithouse will face regular questions over the possibility of bringing the show back.

The discussion reopened recently, with Whithouse asked for an update over two years after the show was stopped.

He told BBC Writersroom: "We all know shows that have outstayed their welcome, or been cynically resurrected. And no one would thank me – least of all the Being Human fans – if I went back with anything other than a stunning and revolutionary idea."

"Anything less would demean the show. And I haven’t had that idea," he added.

So, don’t expect the show to return any time soon. If Mr Whithouse's stance ever changes,

1999 seems so far away now. At the fag end of the millennium, it was the year that gave us Stanley Kubrick's posthumous final opus, Britney Spears's first album and Hugh Grant playing the iconic Time Lord in a Doctor Who Comic Relief special. That wretched song 'Blue' by Eiffel 65 was violating our ears. It also saw a micro-budget (reportedly $35k) film creep into UK cinemas on October 22 and change the horror genre forever. The debate rages on whether that was for better or worse.

The Blair Witch Project's financial rewards were huge, with the film grossing $10,931 for every $1 spent according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Yet its cultural impact was arguably more staggering. In an age when the Internet was in its mass-market infancy and mobile phones were a luxury bearing the game Snake, it was felt that the horror genre had nothing new

We’re back with another edition of the Indie Spotlight, highlighting recent independent horror news sent our way. Today’s feature includes new details on Found Footage 3D and Mania, photos from Refuge and a poster from Fetish Factory, release dates announced for Skypemare, Soulmate, and The Inside, a trailer for When Black Birds Fly and Zombie Hood, and more:

New Details on Found Footage 3D: “…the producers of upcoming horror film Found Footage 3D announced the launch of their Indiegogo campaign to obtain additional funding for post-production and marketing expenses.

Produced by Kim Henkel, co-creator of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Found Footage 3D tells the story of a group of filmmakers who set out to make “the first 3D found-footage horror film,” but find themselves in a found-footage horror film when the evil entity from their movie escapes into their behind-the-scenes footage.

“What Scream did for slasher films,

Last Broadcast director Lance Weiler among those set to deliver masterclasses at the St Petersburg International Media Forum, which opens tonight with Mommy [pictured].

Lance Weiler, Adam Sigel and Andy Green are among the international guests set to give masterclasses at the inaugural St Petersburg International Media Forum (Spimf) which kicks off tonight (Oct 1) with the Russian premiere of Xavier Dolan’s Mommy.

Film director Weiler (The Last Broadcast, Pandemic), who is also the co-founder of Columbia University’s Digital Storytelling Lab, will speak about interactive storytelling as part of Spimf’s business programme (Oct 6-8), while writer-producer and content strategist Adam Sigel of La-based Cutbait Productions will explore storytelling across platforms, and Andy Green, a co-founder of the viral distribution platform Distrify, will discuss the influence of scientific and technological innovation on cultural strategy.

In other master classes, the creative technologist Clint Beharry of New York-based Harmony Institute will look at ways of optimising stories for social

There may be no other genre of film that juggles trends as often and openly as horror. One decade it’s the slasher; one decade it’s the ghost story; the next it’s found footage. The door does and will continue to revolve. That’s not going to change.

Fortunately for fans of this diabolical branch of celluloid, every now and then those shifts come on the heels of a landscape-altering production or the birth of a franchise destined to change the way we view film. We’ve seen movies evolve so much in the last 80-plus years it’s insane.

It’s almost hard to grasp, but it happens. And it often takes career-defining projects and game-changing films to make the shift a reality. Here are 15 horror franchises that enhanced or completely altered the face of horror as we know it.

Alien:

Ridley Scott’s greatest achievement,

It’s the summer solstice today.

I’m just gonna go crawl in a dark, deep hole somewhere until this whole sunshine thing is done. I mean, seriously, how can you people actually be Excited about the fact that a giant, emotionless, burning ball of fire is beating down on your dumb, stupid faces all day. If that’s not the very definition of masochism, I don’t know what is.

The Last Broadcast #2

Writer: Andre Sirangelo

Artist: Gabriel Iumazark

Publisher: Archaia/Boom! Studios

Price: $4 (digital)

Archaia Entertainment is, as an entity, a bit puzzling. They’re an imprint of Boom!, having been bought by them back in 2008, though it would appear they didn’t do much besides maintain its status as a niche publisher. I first encountered them thanks to their publishing of Sm Vidaurri’s “Iron: Or, The War After” graphic novel, which was lovingly hardbound and was just a pleasure to own,

The Last Broadcast #2

Written by Andre Sirangelo

Illustrated by Gabriel Iumazark

Lettered by Debron Bennett

Published by Boom! Studios

The Last Broadcast continues its story of urban exploration, a long-dead magician, and some sort of occult conspiracy. Ivan is being sucked deeper and deeper into a mystery that involves the Society of Psychic Investigation, a group of UrbEx aficionados, the long-dead magician Blackhall, and his missing friend Dmitri. While the series is still developing its promise and potential, the art style is really something worth picking up

The episode begins by recapping Blackhall’s death on a crowded stage in London. We then flash forward to Ivan in the hospital bed, where Ella is asking him questions about his background as a magician and the things he had in his backpack. Ivan starts looking for Dmitri by visiting a rare book store, where he shows the owner the photograph left in Dmitri’s apartment.

I have no idea what is happening to me. Am I getting soft? I didn’t execute a Single. Comic. This week. That’s right, I was so wowed by all of these debut issues, they are All getting a pardon until their next volume. Usually, I read at least One #1 issue that I can’t stand. Maybe it’s because I picked up two pulp comics, which I’ll admit to being a sucker for. But I was actually pretty convinced I’d dislike the overpriced The Last Broadcast before I even picked it up, and in fact, my first read-through, I wanted to execute it. But upon further dissemination, I started to appreciate the art more and…

If this gets any worse, I’m going to have to change the name of the column to I Read Comics For You or perhaps Comics Are Things.

The Last Broadcast

The Last Broadcast #1

Written by Andre Sirangelo

Illustrated by Gabriel Iumazark

Letters by Deron Bennett

Publisher: Boom! Studios, Archia

2014

For a series about magic, The Last Broadcast doesn’t have any cheap tricks up its sleeve. It’s more about artfulness, from the handsome detailed panels to the intriguing and vibrant plot. The Last Broadcast tells a great story with skill, precision and mystery, and should be essential reading for any comic book fan.

The Last Broadcast continues Archaia’s return to single issue releases, this time with Andre Sirangelo making his debut with the company. Splitting the narrative between three time periods, Broadcast is set in the worlds of urban exploration and stage magic. It begins with Ivan, an aspiring stage magician with few prospects, who wakes up in hospital after an explosion that kills his friends. We are then treated to a flashback with Ivan and co. exploring

Found footage films get a bad rap - and worse reviews. But the genre combines the vitality of punk rock with the reach of a video viral, and it has earned, if not respectability, then at least a respectful reappraisal. Some found footage (hereafter Ff) films are, admittedly, unwatchable (see The Devil Inside or, better, don't). But others, such as recent West Country-set religious chiller The Borderlands, or Bobcat Goldthwait's creepy Bigfoot hunt Willow Creek (out on May 2), are closer to unmissable.

Beyond an ominous title card, Ff films require little backstory, and the genre has only a brief history of its own. An uncompromising, hand-over-the-camera-lens look at totalitarianism in Vietnam-era America, Peter Watkins' 1971 mock-doc Punishment Park is considered Ff's chief forebear. Ruggiero Deodato's still-troubling Cannibal Holocaust (1979), however, is the most striking early archetype. Following a gonzo film crew into tribal Amazonia, it puts video-nasty atrocities through a film-school filter,

As we’ve seen here in the first few weeks of 2014, the landscape of the horror genre is absolutely flooded with found footage movies, and we primarily have two movies to thank/blame for that; The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.

While 1999’s Blair Witch Project is often credited as the first horror movie made in the Pov found footage style, such a claim is actually quite untrue. Though Blair Witch is no doubt the movie that popularized the style, and Paranormal Activity the one that re-invented it and brought it into a new decade, there were actually a handful of found footage films that came out well before the horrifying tale of the witch in the woods.

Here are seven of those handheld horror movies, which all predate The Blair Witch Project!

Cannibal Holocaust (1980) - Theatrical Trailer

Cannibal Holocaust – 1980

What’s the very first found footage movie ever made?

Odd List Den Of Geek 20 Dec 2013 - 07:00

As nominated by Den of Geek writers, here are our favourite individual TV episodes of 2013…

Contains mild spoilers for some episodes.

A fortnight ago, Den of Geek's writers were asked to channel their inner Rob Gordon and select their top five favourite TV episodes of 2013 so far (anything airing in the second half of December wouldn't be eligible). Now, after much arduous mathematics and tallying up, the results are in.

So broad was the range of nominations, we've bumped up the top ten to a top fifteen this year, and included a bonus extra list at the end of every programme that appeared on the writers' lists of personal favourites.

Here we are then, the Den of Geek writers' favourite fifteen TV episodes of 2013...

15. Arrow – Sacrifice

What our reviewer said:

"But this was as entertaining and satisfying a finale as Arrow could ever have delivered,

As one of the most visionary creators in modern time, David Cronenberg has garnered an eclectic filmography that includes deranged horror masterpieces like Videodrome and more conventional, yet audacious, narratives like A History of Violence. Now, audiences will have the chance to be immersed in the filmmaker’s universe via the Tiff and the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab (Cfc Media Lab) transmedia production Body/Mind/Change. This unique interactive experience stars Cronenberg himself and exposes the plausible science fiction that inhabits his oeuvre as scientific facts.

“Working with Tiff on Body/Mind/Change offered an unparalleled opportunity for Cfc Media Lab to work with the amazing David Cronenberg; Lance Weiler, an incomparable storyteller reinventing entertainment using transmedia; and a passionate group of digital designers and companies,” said Cfc’s Chief Digital Officer Ana Serrano, who is also worked with Tiff on Body/Mind/Change. “It has been an exciting creative journey resulting in North America’s first interactive storytelling experience that generates a physical object for the user that has narrative meaning.”

“The Cronenberg Project is Tiff’s first fully-curated exhibition offers visitors a truly unique experience, both within the Tiff Lightbox and beyond with Body/Mind/Change,” added Noah Cowan, Artistic Director, Tiff Bell Lightbox. “In addition to Lance Weiler’s artistic direction and the Cfc team, David Cronenberg’s involvement in this project has made it one of the coolest multimedia projects in the world.”

The Cfc Media Lab has assembled an incredible team that includes some of the most innovative creative minds in North America working on digital media today. One of these amazing artists is Lance Weiler who is serving as the creative director and experience designer Body/Mind/Change. Weller history with Cfc Media Lab goes back to his own work The Last Broadcast, which he presented at their Interactive Arena Series as one of the pioneering minds to combine traditional storytelling with modern technology. 1188 Films, Aesthetec, Northern Army, and composer Brendan Canning from Broken Social Scene among others, form the rest of the extremely talented team. In the production side there is Art Hindle, who is one of Cronenberg’s recurrent collaborations, as well as Joey Klein and alumni from the Cfc Actors Conservatory program, Diana Bentley and Natalie Krill.

“Working with David Cronenberg on Body/Mind/Change was an amazing experience. With his participation we were able to create a layered story world that will immerse participants in his fiction as if it were reality,” says Lance Weiler, creative director and experience designer of Body/Mind/Change."

Body/Mind/Change is inspired by the intellectual property found in Cronenberg’s films, such as Scanners, Videodrome and eXistenZ. In this realm, the director’s partners with Bmc Labs, a fictional biotech firm, to develop biotech enhancement implants. On October 25, registered participants will be guided through an episodic interactive narrative that functions as a simulator for training their PODs. Once each participant completes this three-part experience they are guaranteed a unique Pod generated from their behavior during the simulations. Their Pod will be available for pick-up at the close of the David Cronenberg: Evolution exhibition in January 2014 at the Bmc Labs installation, located in the Cibc Canadian Film Gallery on the 4th floor of the Tiff Bell Lightbox.

Participants can sign up now at www.bodymindchange.ca where they can register to be one of the first to receive the next generation bio-tech recommendation engine, called Personal-On-Demand (Pod). For a sneak peek of the video trailer Click Here.

David Cronenberg and Lance Weiler (The Last Broadcast) have teamed up with Tiff and the Canadian Film Center Media Lab to create a new interactive, multimedia project that allows you to "experience what it is like to live inside a David Cronenberg film." Details of how they're going to pull this off are vague, with phrases in the press release like "presents the plausible science fiction found in [Cronenberg's] work as scientific fact." But hey, you can go to the website now to sign up for the project, and watch a teaser starring Cronenberg himself below! Or try to wade through the whole press release in search of clues between the lines of the emphatic "I'm-thrilled-to-be-doing-this" quotes.The first stage, based on the website description, sounds...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

"Being Human's" series finale started with a song-and-dance sequence, and ended the only way the show could: with its three leads becoming human. It took a rocky road for Hal, Tom and Alex to get there, but at least they did and finally got what seems to be their perfect happy ending.

The final episode of the UK "Being Human" series, "The Last Broadcast," aired in Britain on March 10, but only just premiered on Us shores tonight. The show's three leads literally had to fight the devil himself in order to free themselves from his curse, but defeat him they did -- though not before Captain Hatch tried to trick them all individually into making a deal with him.

Hatch showed them alternate dream worlds that they could live in if, in exchange, they let him rule the true reality. For Alex, that meant staying alive the day that she died.

I never saw the first The Last Exorcism by Daniel Stamm, however; the sequel opens with a recap of the first film's final moments, and the strangest thing is how the original film, a found-footage type horror flick, has a sequel in Director Ed Gass-Donnelly's The Last Exorcism Part II that is, essentially, a straight-up, somewhat by-the-numbers horror film. I'm no found-footage fanatic, though I do enjoy the better ones, with The Last Broadcast, Chronicle, the original Paranormal Activity being some of my favorites. Working in favor of this follow-up, Ashley Bell is a pretty solid actress, starring in the original flick, and now reprising her role as Nell. She starts off quite meek, however about thirty or so minutes into the film, she begins exuding a strength that the character needs to endure the craziness ahead. And there's plenty of it.

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The mockumentary is an underutilized method of delivering a cinematic story, especially in the gimmick-friendly horror genre. And I don.t mean like The Office, either. I mean films that generally blend narrative with different visual techniques to help the story feel more genuine and real. Movies like The Last Broadcast, Lake Mungo and Incident at Loch Ness are standouts not only because they.re arguably great films, but because there hasn.t been a flood of knock-offs like the proper found-footage genre has been hit with. It is with open arms that we welcome Christopher MacBride.s secret society horror The Conspiracy into our lives, now that XLrator Media has stepped in and snagged the U.S. distribution rights. The film was surprise hit at last year.s Fantastic Fest, and then nothing much was heard of it until now, though no release plans were mentioned in the release