Wednesday, February 18, 2009

The trailer park next to the cyber highway.....

After months of development crawling and hear-say throughout the horror fansite community, one of the cooler-sounding film ideas in ages tragically became just "another one fo' the fire." Yet another cinematic "Ben." The unmade corpse was known as Trailer Trash, a feature length movie comprised of all fake trailers, in the vein of Grindhouse's intermission, that came from the mind of Grindhouse participant and overall walking horror encyclopedia Eli Roth (Mr. Hostel himself). It was a brilliant concept, a smorgasbord of campy, retro exploitation saluting written and shot by a slew of genre favorites, including Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino.

An example entry that Roth was flirting with (which he revealed during a celeb-interviews-celeb sitdown he did with Josh Brolin for Myspace): Farmageddon, which would've taken place on a farm, naturally, starred talking animals, and would've been a big-budget Michael Bay-like production. Just imagine how many more tongue-in-cheek winners could've been.

Who knows, maybe some day Roth will actually put this dream project together. Until that happens, though, at least I'll have a new website to visit, where I can tap into my love for throwback movie previews for films I either never knew existed or love but wasn't breathing at the time of its release, leaving the preview unseen. "Trailers From Hell" is the site, overseen by filmmaking vet Joe Dante (Gremlins, amongst other films), and all the site is is a place for various filmmakers and Hollywood heads to handpick their favorite trailers for mostly obscure flicks and provide an on-camera commentary. A co-worker friend of mine who shares my affinity for horror and schlock put me on to it earlier today, and I feel the more complete for it.

Endless fun to be had here. For now, I'm going to post a few examples that spotlight films that I personally love. It's pretty cool to hear respected filmmaker types spitting praise on to films that I've long admired, sometimes feeling as if I'm the only person I'll ever know who enjoys them. No longer the case.

1) 3) Mary Lambert (Pet Sematary director) discusses 1962's creepy-as-hell Carnival of Souls, one of the few horror movies that genuinely scares every time I watch it....the final setpiece in the carnival is the stuff of surrealistic nightmares (the clip of this one at Trailers From Hell is defective, though, always stopping at the one-minute mark. Still want to put you on to Carnival of Souls, so here's its trailer, sans Mary Lambert):


2) Here's Eli Roth showering love upon 1982's Creepshow, one of the G.O.A.T. horror anthologies of all time


3)
Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) gets even more English in this clip as he gushes over 1972's wonderful Asylum, an England-made anthology project that deserves much more acclaim than its ever received


Site's link:
Trailers From Hell

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