Horror in the Hammer at Open Streets Hamilton

On Sunday, September 23rd, Horror in the Hammer braved the cold wind and the maze of pylons erected around the Robocop shoot on James Street North to attend OPEN STREETS HAMILTON and bring an early taste of Halloween to Hamilton.

Whoooooo! Spooky stuff here.

Camped out on the sidewalk at James Street North & Colbourne, with the Robocop remake set behind us, we braced against the wind to sell cheesy horror dvds and spread the word about the upcoming 2012 Hamilton Zombie Walk. We didn't sell many Halloween treats -- I hope Hamilton's not getting too health-concious on us -- but the brisk weather probably had a hand in encouraging people to seek soup and coffee than candy and chocolate.

All in all, Open Streets Hamilton was a fun event and we got to meet some memorable characters, past zombie walkers, and introduce the event to a new crop of fresh meat.

Visit Horror in the Hammer at Open Streets Hamilton

Horror in the Hammer will be representing the horror community on James Street North for OPEN STREETS HAMILTON - Sunday, September 23rd 

Skitter, stomp, slither, or crawl on down to Open Streets Hamilton and visit with Horror in the Hammer at our table located north of James and Colbourne across the street from the Wild Orchid Restaurant. Come learn more about the 2012 Hamilton Zombie Walk and Charity Food Drive as well as our monthly Fright Night Theatre movie screenings. 


View Open Streets Hamilton: James Street North (September 2012) in a larger map
At our table, Horror in the Hammer will be selling snacks, merch, copies of our indie zines Scream Scene, and cheesy $2.00 Horror DVDs. All proceeds go toward funding the Hamilton Zombie Walk and Food Drive and Fright Night Theatre. 

DETAILS

WHEN: Sunday, September 23rd. 10am - 3:00pm.

WHERE: James Street North, Hamilton, ON. Booth is north of James St. North and Colbourne Street (43.263626,-79.866134)

WHY: Open Streets Hamilton is a community-based partnership dedicated to promoting active, healthy, and inclusive lifestyles by temporarily transforming streets into a shared space for everyone to experience. Open Streets Hamilton is a public showcase of free health, recreation and outreach focused activities -- such as Horror in the Hammer's Zombie Walk and Charity Food Drive as well as our annual blood drives -- provided by local community groups and organizations.

In the evening, come join us for our Fright Night Theatre screening of Leif Jonker's indie vampire classic DARKNESS and the World Premiere of Blackbags: The Movie created here in Hamilton.

BLACKBAGS: THE MOVIE (Official Trailer)

On September 23rd, Horror in the Hammer invites you to Fright Night Theatre's WORLD PREMIERE screening of BLACKBAGS


Directed by Luke Meneok, Blackbags is a gritty crime short about Ski Mask Guy and his gang of masked villains. Too many habits have begun to spiral out of control. If it's not a corrupt police detective breathing down his neck for a fix, he has to try and put a limit on his crony's new hobby: cruising the city streets at night and abducting young girls. But when these two problems collide, Ski Mask Guy must find a way to wrap up these loose ends without going down, himself...

Blackbags will have its world premiere as part of our horror shorts lineup at the September 23rd screening of Leif Jonker's DARKNESS

ADMISSION: $10 Dollars at the Box Office (RSVP on Facebook).

DATE/TIME: September 23rd (4pm-8pm. Shorts begin at 4:15pm and feature film begins at 4:52pm)

LOCATION: The Mountain Theatre (526 Concession Street, Hamilton, ON)

FEATURE PRESENTATION: Leif Jonker's acclaimed indie vampire gore fest DARKNESS (90 min) + three horror shorts.

== SCREENING SCHEDULE ==

4:15 pm - [ SHORT SHOCKS: Short Movie Showcase]

- BLACKBAGS (2012) || WORLD PREMIERE ||

Things are getting hot for Ski Mask Guy and his gang of masked villains. Too many habits have begun to spiral out of control. If it's not a corrupt police detective breathing down his neck for a fix, he has to try and put a limit on the new hobby of his crony, the Meathead: cruising the city streets at night and abducting young girls. But when these two problems collide, Ski Mask Guy must find a way to wrap up these loose ends without going down himself.... Dir. Luke Meneok.

- TRASH (2011)
 

 What starts out as a seemingly harmless prank on a suburban teenage boy spirals into crimson chaos in this throwback to 80's and 90's shot-on-video horror films! Dir. Torin Langen.

- THE GIANT RUBBER MONSTER MOVIE: SASCRATCH VERSUS AFRODESIOUS (2011)

Dr. Zoid, an evil vegetarian from the year 25,000,000 A.D., steals a time machine and travels back to the present day. His mission: Destroy all of the Earth's edible animals using the giant monsters under his control. Fortunately, Miko - a young stowaway on Zoid's ship - escapes to help the Earthlings. With his new serial killing best friend Ken at his side, Miko commandeers one of Zoid's giant monsters to fight for the Earth! Dir. Thomas Berdinski. Starring Jeffrey S. Bromley, Brendan Bromley and Carmela Hayslett

4:52 pm - [ FEATURE FRIGHT]: DARKNESS (1997)

 "Even the dead will scream."

In Leif Jonker's acclaimed 1990's indie gore-fest, a small community is besieged by vampires. After he watches friends ravaged in a convenience store, a lone avenger goes off to do battle with the undead, armed with shotgun, chainsaw, and Holy water. Later he finds other survivors and they try to stay alive long enough to do battle with Liven, king of the vampires.

Zombies Invade Supercrawl 2012

On September 14 and 15th, Horror in the Hammer unleashed a small horde of zombies onto James Street North for Supercrawl 2012. 

"Send more paramedics!"

Milling throughout crowds in search of brains, Horror in the Hammer's zombies took pictures with delighted / frightened Supercrawl attendees and distributed information about our next walk and food drive: October 27th, 2012. Embracing a broader definition of "art" than most of the vendors and installations on James Street North, our Hamilton Zombie Walk street team introduced onlookers and local business to the art of horror makeup effects and undead performance that can be seen each year during the Hamilton Zombie Walk.

Despite some who clearly wanted nothing to do with us (aka. party poopers), most were delighted to have zombies with them for Supercrawl taking in all the great bands, arts, and crafts. After all, who can crawl better than a zombie?

Horror in the Hammer's zombies weren't the only undead on display in Hamilton last weekend. Even our friends from the Toronto Zombie Walk (Oct 20, 2012) came out to promote their event and the upcoming NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD LIVE stage show produced by Hamilton boys Phil Pattison and Chris Harrison of Nictophobia Films.

Stay connected with the Hamilton Zombie Walk. Follow us on Twitter @HamZombieWalk, join the official Facebook group, and make sure to like Horror in the Hammer.

SUPERCRAWL ZOMBIE PHOTO GALLERY

Enjoying some liquid refreshment at one of James Street North's best restaurants: JACK & LOIS

All our best friends are zombies, like zombie street-team member Tina!

Sarah of the Zombie Street Team shows James Street is bloody and ready to go

Zombie Street Team member Laurel is a cheeky little ghoul!

The doctor is in!

A zombie mistakes one of the living mannequins outside Eclectric Audio and Music

Zombies love The Green Smoothie Bar

Making friends with the soldier boys from the armory to avoid a shot in the head

First look at 2012 Hamilton Zombie Walk Details

The 2012 HAMILTON ZOMBIE WALK is coming! October 27, 2012. 

Stay tuned for further updates. Follow @HamZombieWalk on Twitter and join The Hamilton Zombie Walk Facebook page.

Get all the latest walk information @ www.hamiltonzombiewalk.com.

HAMILTON ZOMBIE WALK: OCTOBER 27, 2012

The 2012 HAMILTON ZOMBIE WALK is coming! October 27, 2012. 

Stay tuned for further updates. Follow @HamZombieWalk on Twitter and join The Hamilton Zombie Walk Facebook page.

Brought to you by Horror in the Hammer.

Rob Zombie's THE LORDS OF SALEM (Review)

THE LORDS OF SALEM (2012)
by AARON ALLEN

Directed and Written by
Rob Zombie

Cinematography by
Brandon Trost
-------------------------------------------    

Last night in Toronto, Rob Zombie’s new film The Lords of Salem had its world premiere as part of the Midnight Madness program at the Toronto International Film Festival.

After the film, while addressing a question about his artistic philosophy, Zombie made an off-hand statement that, in retrospect, I think explains exactly why he’s such a divisive figure in the horror and film community. About The Lords of Salem, Zombie said his intention was to fill the frame by “putting interesting things everywhere even if they don’t matter.”

Interesting things everywhere -- even if they don’t matter.

The Lords of Salem at Midnight Madness.
(L-R) Colin Geddes (Midnight Madness Programmer), Rob Zombie (director),
Sheri Moon Zombie (star), Jeff Daniel Phillips (star),
Brandon Trost (cinematographer)

I don’t think I can come up with a more concise review of The Lords of Salem than the director’s own words. The Lords of Salem is a disappointing dud about witches and Satan worship amounting to a shallow sensory experience that proves conclusively that Rob Zombie’s natural state as a director is of style over substance and story. And surprisingly, for a horror aficionado like Zombie, style over scares as well.

(L-R) Colin Geddes (Midnight Madness Programmer), Rob Zombie (writer / director),

Set in modern day Salem, The Lords of Salem introduces us to Heidi Hawthorne, a rail-thin and tattooed late-night radio DJ played by Sheri Moon Zombie. One night, Heidi receives a strange wooden box. Inside is a record from a group called “The Lords”. On the same night she and her on-radio partners Herman and Herman (Jeff Daniel Phillips and Ken Foree) interview an author about the Salem witch trials (Bruce Davison turning in a fantastically flustered performance), Heidi decides to play the strange record on the air. As its eerie, discordant melody spreads out across the airwaves, it begins to have a puzzling effect on some of the women who hear it, including Heidi who soon falls into a nightmare-plagued and hallucinatory downward spiral. After the anonymous “Lords” announce a free concert in Salem, Heidi’s condition takes a turn for the Satanic as she falls victim to an ancient witch’s curse on the female bloodlines of Salem that is fated to bring about a great darkness over all mankind.

The Lords of Salem begins with a lot of potential. Stepping off the Halloween remake franchise and before stepping into his upcoming film about The Philadelphia Flyers, Rob Zombie had a chance to show he can write strong, original material and construct films that are more than music-video montages filled with references to his love for horror movies, black and white film, and Southern-style grindhouse sleaze. At first, The Lords of Salem seems to represent a maturation of Rob Zombie's film-making style. Zombie seems more restrained in his visual proclivities. Instead of bombarding us, he focuses on building a quiet, solemn world of characters going through their mundane lives. In this element, I can see the realism that Zombie could bring to his upcoming hockey period piece The Broadstreet Bullies, his first non-horror feature film.

 The cast is also exceptionally strong. Zombie assembles a great roster of lesser-known actors and actresses, many from the world of cult cinema such as Patricia Quinn, better known as Magenta from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Stealing the show, however, is Meg Foster as the witch Margaret Morgan who chills the spine with a feral performance and otherworldly vocal work reminiscent of the demonic cadences Mercedes McCambridge provided for The Exorcist (with a little bit of Gozer from Ghostbusters thrown in for good measure). Unfortunately, there’s no real story generating the momentum here. Worst of all, Sheri Moon Zombie, who is at her most tolerable, is shafted as a character into becoming little more than a visual prop for a series of meandering dream sequences.

And here’s the core of the problem with The Lords of Salem. Rob Zombie isn’t concerned about characters, story structure, or theme. He strike me as the kind of man who goes with his own instincts – what feels cool – and composes them into a series of self-indulgent visual vignettes. Without restraint, Zombie tries to pack the frame full of everything he loves even if it doesn’t serve the story he’s trying to tell. Unfortunately, when it comes time to cut the film, a lot of that gets left on the cutting room floor and probably does a disservice to what's left over. For example, the highly publicized fact that The Lords of Salem would feature Richard Lynch in his last role and also feature cult icons Udo Kier, Clint Howard, Daniel Roebuck, and Camille Keaton turns out NOT to be true. All their scenes ended up on the cutting room floor because Rob Zombie shot too much to fit in one movie. Could Zombie have done more to improve the core characters and story of his film rather than trying to cast every one of his cult icons that he can get to come on set? Perhaps, however, that’s not Zombie’s real problem. He may just be incapable of seeing the forest from the trees; can Zombie resist the urge to treat every scene like a separate project at the expense of the movie as a whole? His wife, Sheri Moon Zombie, seems to confirm that he can’t. “Before every shot,” she told the audience at Midnight Madness, “[Rob Zombie] was like, let’s get weird!” Doing so is even done at the expense of some scares when Zombie chooses to put a strange figure silently in the corner of the room or out in broad daylight with no other build-up or attempt to increase the tension. I guess he just wanted to be weird!

But is weird for weirdness’ sake enough? Some may make the claim that The Lords of Salem is Rob Zombie’s attempt at an art film since it is very abstract in places. I would counter, however, that The Lords of Salem is no art film; it’s Rob Zombie’s attempt to adapt his musical style to a visual medium. Like his albums, which feature a series of tracks dominated by chilling noise, punching grooves, and a camp/nostalgic reference for horror movies of the 1970s and before, the scenes in The Lords of Salem play out like a series of tracks, each sharing similar themes but being their own distinct work. Assembled together, however, they don’t tell a story. Just like you can pick and choose Rob Zombie tracks to listen to on their own and forget the ones you don’t like, you could cut individual scenes out of The Lords of Salem to appreciate them over and over in isolation. Put back in sequence, however, they don’t communicate any more coherent story or theme than they do on their own.

There is a quieter, more human Rob Zombie film buried deep within The Lords of Salem that I would have liked. However, I was left very cold at the conclusion of the movie, which seems to end with a shrug because it has nothing new or interesting to say. The Lords of Salem stands as an interesting premise and an interesting / powerful cast of characters that are abandoned so Rob Zombie can make a series of music videos about witches, Satan, and cult imagery. When you look past all the flashy images, The Lords of Salem is really nothing more than some interesting things everywhere even if they don’t matter.

September 23rd: Fright Night Theatre screens Leif Jonker's DARKNESS (+ short films)

BIGGER! BADDER! BLOODIER! Come celebrate the return of Hamilton's original monthly horror movie event: FRIGHT NIGHT THEATRE!
 

 
ADMISSION: $10 Dollars at the Box Office (RSVP on Facebook).

DATE/TIME: September 23rd (4pm-8pm. Shorts begin at 4:15pm and feature film begins at 4:52pm)

LOCATION: The Mountain Theatre (526 Concession Street, Hamilton, ON)

FEATURE PRESENTATION: Leif Jonker's acclaimed indie vampire gore fest DARKNESS (90 min) + three horror shorts.

 After taking the summer off, we've moved up from The Staircase to the air conditioned and spacious venue of THE MOUNTAIN THEATRE. With more space, we're ready to unleash more terror and more gore with a spectacular lineup of indie horror!

$10 for a night of horror-tainment. Come meet "The Host" as he and his shiny pants welcome you to Fright Night's new home. Killers to the left. Killers to the right. Stand up, sit down, FRIGHT, FRIGHT , FRIGHT!

READ MORE FOR FULL SCHEDULE

== SCREENING SCHEDULE ==

4:15 pm - [ SHORT SHOCKS: Short Movie Showcase]

- BLACKBAGS (2012) || WORLD PREMIERE ||

Things are getting hot for Ski Mask Guy and his gang of masked villains. Too many habits have begun to spiral out of control. If it's not a corrupt police detective breathing down his neck for a fix, he has to try and put a limit on the new hobby of his crony, the Meathead: cruising the city streets at night and abducting young girls. But when these two problems collide, Ski Mask Guy must find a way to wrap up these loose ends without going down himself.... Dir. Luke Meneok.

- TRASH (2011)
 

 What starts out as a seemingly harmless prank on a suburban teenage boy spirals into crimson chaos in this throwback to 80's and 90's shot-on-video horror films! Dir. Torin Langen.

- THE GIANT RUBBER MONSTER MOVIE: SASCRATCH VERSUS AFRODESIOUS (2011)

Dr. Zoid, an evil vegetarian from the year 25,000,000 A.D., steals a time machine and travels back to the present day. His mission: Destroy all of the Earth's edible animals using the giant monsters under his control. Fortunately, Miko - a young stowaway on Zoid's ship - escapes to help the Earthlings. With his new serial killing best friend Ken at his side, Miko commandeers one of Zoid's giant monsters to fight for the Earth! Dir. Thomas Berdinski. Starring Jeffrey S. Bromley, Brendan Bromley and Carmela Hayslett

4:52 pm - [ FEATURE FRIGHT]: DARKNESS (1997)

 "Even the dead will scream."

In Leif Jonker's acclaimed 1990's indie gore-fest, a small community is besieged by vampires. After he watches friends ravaged in a convenience store, a lone avenger goes off to do battle with the undead, armed with shotgun, chainsaw, and Holy water. Later he finds other survivors and they try to stay alive long enough to do battle with Liven, king of the vampires.