For the last week we’ve been plagued by illness and internet issues. Those of you that know me, might say ‘But Sarah! That’s surely a hyperbolic statement if ever I heard one’ and darn it, you’d be right. The truth of the matter is that the ‘illness’ boils down to the fact that I’ve been burning the candle at both ends recently and this has resulted in a lack of updates on my part. We’ve got plenty of new content on the way and as soon as things are back to normal, we’ll be as prolific as ever. The ‘internet issues’ bit is also a slight exaggeration, which relates to the Gorepress Gorecast. Yesterday should have seen Episode 3 going live but due to the fact that it was Bank Holiday weekend and we hadn’t factored in the shower of work-shy bums that would be off all weekend, raping the internet, we were unable to record. Take two is tomorrow and I don’t foresee any problems so if all goes to plan it’ll be available for your listening pleasure tomorrow evening.

In other news, our very own web designer and graphics expert Matt has taken to trying his hand at some pop-art and some rather more realistic paintings, a few of which are currently for sale in his Etsy store. You can take a look at what he has to offer by clicking this link or going to www.etsy.com/shop/matteblack. He welcomes a challenge and is available for all kinds of commissions so if you feel that your wall is lacking some original, horror inspired artwork then pop an email over to mail@gorepress and I’ll make sure he gets it.

Although it might not look like much, we’ve been busy as ever trying to secure bigger and better things for you guys to peruse on the site. There are a couple more interviews in the works at the moment, as well as previews of some exciting looking movies before their release dates, over the next few months. As yet I’m keeping tight lipped on the details but I’m sure Jamie will have more to say about it all in his next blog.

Another thing we’ve been a little lax with lately is reciprocal links and that’s entirely my fault! If you’re a website that’s linked to us then please feel free to give me a metaphorical kick up the caboose and I’ll arrange for your link to go on Gorepress. If we haven’t previously discussed reciprocal links but you’d like to talk about it then please send an email to sarah@gorepress.com and I’ll see what I can do.

That’s it for now, my Herschell Gordon Lewis box-set has literally just dropped through my letterbox (that’s not a euphemism) so I’ll be spending the remainder of my day with the Godfather of Gore. As always, feedback is welcomed and please don’t forget to include your comments in the relevant boxes, on any of our reviews and features, whether you disagree, wholeheartedly agree or want to take a cheese grater to our faces for bad-mouthing your favourite movie. We want to hear it all.

Take it easy!

-Sarah.

I’ve spent the last fortnight watching a bunch of films, some horror, some not. Two that definitely deserve a mention are Teenage Dirtbag and Deadgirl. Teenage Dirtbag was written and directed by a newcomer called Regina Crosby and while the direction is fairly basic stuff, the film itself is really moving but startlingly simple. I guess it would fall under the Romantic Drama category which, let me tell you, is not something I regularly find myself going for but the well-hidden ‘girly girl’ inside me just can’t resist a good ol’ fashioned unrequited love story in which one or both of the protagonists end up dead. I’m not entirely sure what that says about me but I’m sure there are psychiatrists the World over that would love to find out.

If you’ve read my review of Deadgirl on here then you’ll already know how much I absolutely loved it, enough to award it a re-watch only about 6 months after first seeing it. It was a thoroughly uncomfortable but expertly crafted take on the zombie genre and the acting was superb. It stars Noah Segan who I’ve become a bit obsessed with recently. On top of having that frighteningly intense look about him that I seem to find so attractive, this kid can really act! He made Cabin Fever 2 much better than it rightfully should have been and managed to steal the show from the, ever wonderful Joseph Gordon Levitt in the stylish teen-noir Brick. He has a few projects coming out soon including horror comedy All About Evil (with a premise that sounds a little like 2009’s Smash Cut) and grind-house throwback Someone’s Knocking At The Door, which he also produced. Check out the trailer for that here. If this guy doesn’t become a household name sometime soon then there’s absolutely no justice in the world.

I know I’m over a week late on this one but even though it’s old news already, I felt I should probably say a bit about the death of Corey Haim. It was untimely, but not necessarily unexpected by some. He was a bit of a legend back in the day and should be remembered for what he did best. Not that anyone should need an excuse to watch it again but I suggest you all stick The Lost Boys in your DVD players and raise a glass to him. He’ll be missed by many.

On that note, I’ll leave you to get back to your full and satisfying lives again. Keep on giving us your feedback (unless you’re my Dad, in which case stop being creepy and bugger off, I’ll swear as much as I like) and we’ll keep on keepin’ on being opinionated for your reading pleasure.

-Sarah.

There were several complications, mainly my nerves, some faulty headphones and the fact that I neglected to turn my speakers off instead of just down which is where the resulting echo came from. Ah well, you live and learn, right? We ain’t professionals, that much is obvious!

For those of you that choose not to listen to or to download the ‘Gorecast’ then we’ll be aiming to include written reviews of the movies in addition to the audio ones. Although, that does mean you’ll miss out on Jamie’s unique views, dulcet tones and pretty vast knowledge of the genre and me blagging my way through the whole thing in my strange, irritating Northern/Southern hybrid accent.

In the first episode we basically use the time to review 2007’s Freakshow and 1993’s cult classic Freaked and also to babble a bit about new DVD and cinema releases and what we’ve been watching lately. Next time there’ll be much of the same except we’ll be moving on from freaks and onto devils, reviewing Needful Things and Faust : Love Of The Damned so keep your eyes and ears peeled for that.

In the past week or two we also managed to launch our TV reviews section with The X Files, seasons 1 & 2. We’ll be adding to those very shortly, with seasons 3-9 already completed, as well as Being Human, seasons 1 & 2, Dexter and Fear Itself on the way.

If you have any suggestions, if there’s anything you’d particularly like to see on the site or if you’ve got any feedback, good or bad then please chuck us an email at mail@gorepress.com. If it’s positive feedback then I’ll send Jamie round to your house with cake and beer and if it’s negative then we’ll prize your eyelids open with matchsticks and make you watch Manos : The Hands Of Fate on repeat until you relent and change your mind. Seriously though, all feedback is gratefully received and graciously welcomed so let us know your thoughts!

I arrived in Glasgow shortly after 4pm, met up with my old Dad for some fish and chips and then headed up to the GFT to hook up with the other fest goers. I was there for less than five minutes when some of the regulars showed up. It was dead good to catch up with some of the folks that I haven’t seen since last August.
I had to deal with some GoreZone related ribbing, but it was all good. I tried to avoid saying anything that might get me in trouble. I think I just about managed it. Throughout the weekend people were asking me if I was me (which I am) and congratulating me on being a man, sticking it to the man, and not bowing down to the man. I tried in general to not talk about it too much, but thanked everyone who gave me messages of support because I really do appreciate it.

So I saw a bunch of movies, some of which I will review, some I won’t. I’ve got to be honest; there will be no Amer review. I fell asleep, and I fell hard. I kept waking up and seeing how amazingly beautiful it was, but just couldn’t keep my eyes open. From what I saw, it was a giallo through the eyes of Gaspar Noe as a film student. The directors and producer, Helene Cattet, Bruno Forzani, and Francois Cognard, gave an interesting Q&A, and I will have to make sure I track down the movie to watch it again when I wasn’t up until 7am drinking beers and debating racism with my family.

I was a bit gutted that the uncut, fully restored showing of A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin was neither fully restored nor uncut, but either way, it’s always good to see Fulci on the big screen. Always. I can’t wait until the promised version hits DVD, which should be very soon.

Frozen director, Adam Green, didn’t manage to make it over. If you follow him on Twitter, you will know how gutted he was to be stuck on a static plane in the snow. So in his absence, 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams director, Tim Sullivan, read out an email from Green to introduce the film, complete with a rant about Avatar. Frozen played really well, and was easily my favourite of the festival. Also, Sullivan is one charismatic dude, and funny to boot. Especially in the 2001 Maniacs Q&A session, I didn’t get to interview him but I did get to ask a question during the Q&A. Obviously, I asked him about how Miles Dougal (Brian from Psychocop Returns!) got involved. He seemed pretty impressed that I even knew who Miles Dougal was, I felt good about myself all day.

There was a pretty fun short called Deadspiel, obviously Canadian, about a curling match between zombies and humans. Nicely put together, if a little slow, which is a pretty great punchline. Also they showed some excellent trailers, especially Stoner, which has made it onto my ‘Oh Shit, I Gotta Watch That’ list. George Lazenby and Kung Fu together, the idea just makes me so happy.
[REC] 2 blew me away, I really like where they went with the story. I may have preferred it to the original. Splice didn’t fulfil its promise but was still an admirable science gone wild movie, and yes, I would (when you see the movie, you will understand). It got pretty icky in parts too. Harpoon: Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre was a stand out, played straight with a few notes of comedy, it really worked for me. A couple of members of the young, pretty cast were about to introduce it, but didn’t come back for a Q&A.

Stag Night was a decent enough The Hills Have Eyes-style backwoods slasher type movie, but more interesting than the movie was the punch up that kicked off in the second row. You know you’re in Glasgow when a fight breaks out in the cinema. I don’t really know what happened; apparently a guy was being drunk and annoying enough to make some guy start wailing on him. He got about ten or fifteen punches in before security came, and kicked the pummelled dude out (which prompted a few quick people to dub the event “FightFest”). It was exciting viewing. Director, Peter Dowing, chatted a little bit about the fight after, and imparted the tidbit that he was an assistant animator on Raggy Dolls. I remember loving that cartoon when I was a kid, but don’t remember why.

Jake West popped up to show us some of the stuff cut from Doghouse, which apparently included more symbolism, some of which I caught and some that passed me by. Neil Marshall and his lovely partner in crime, Axelle Carolyn, also turned up with the first five minutes of Centurion. Anything with Fassbender and tonnes of gore will get me salivating good and proper. Also Chris Smith showed up to give us a taster of The Black Death, which didn’t hit me too hard, but I will definitely check it out when it hits cinemas.

I didn’t fancy queuing up for any of the freebies, so didn’t get any of the copies of Dr. Chopper or Mr. Halloween they were doling out like sweets in October, although my good buddy Frank did give me a copy of Sergio Martino’s The Violent Professionals. I didn’t get any of the t-shirts they were handing out either, mainly because I didn’t want a certain section of the horror community thinking I was under the employ of the FrightFest fellas (which I’m not, although I do throw the odd review their way for their site. I can think of worse things than working for living legend Alan Jones).

So I am now on the train home, after a massive Subway and my body weight in coffee, to sleep through until next week. Reviews of everything I actually watched coming soon, but until then don’t let the bed-bugs bite.

Love
Jamie.

Anyway, in the middle of all this excitement I had an excellent meeting with some of the folks behind Mark Macready and the Archangel Murders for a bit of genre chat and massive coffees. Those folks were top chaps, and the interview should be up very soon…

At the end of this week it is FrightFest Glasgow, and I am totally excited (despite the fact that I am worrying about a gang of GoreZone fans waiting for me with weapons), in order to pimp this very site, my girlfriend and I designed a t-shirt. Check it out! I had to edit my intense moose knuckle out of the picture for fear of the ladies going crazy (if you don’t know what moose knuckle is, then be thankful).

We used special t-shirt latex, the finest Florence & Fred t-shirts (£3 from Tesco), and an iron. It didn’t really take that long, and it was good fun to boot! We fluffed up a few, and so ran out of red latex stuff after we made Sarah’s, meaning mine had to be green. But I think it looks freaking awesome, even swathed around my fat gut! If you see me at FrightFest, chances are I will be wearing this and attempting to bother Adam Green, so come and say hello, tell me you agree with all my opinions, and ply me with alcohol.

If you want one of these, or any other t-shirts commissioning, drop me an email at: jamie@gorepress.com, and I will speak to the missus.

I have almost exclusively been watching Giallo this week, so prepare for an onslaught of Italian content in the coming weeks, as well as my FrightFest coverage!

See you all in court, and I love you all very much.

As a not-so-subtle segue into bare-faced nepotism, it’s plausible that a lot of you horror-ites might also be fans of the much maligned graphic novel. Unfairly passed off by many as comics for grown-ups, they can be and are, so much more than that. This is why I urge you, humble horror fan, to spare a little of your time to have a look at a website called Planet Graphic Novel. It’s run by a few friends of mine and they are currently in talks with regard to giving it a bit of a make-over but in the meantime, stop by and marvel at the extensive selection of reviews and information already available.

A while ago, Jamie posted a rather amusing and somewhat derisive open-letter to the editor of Gorezone magazine on his personal blog. Last night, it elicited a response from said editor of said publication and from my rather wimpy, neutral viewpoint, I’m going to keep my opinion to myself (for a change.) Instead I think you should take a look for yourselves and draw your own conclusions, either way, the resulting arguments are funny stuff.

All in all, it might not look like much but we’ve had a rather exciting week. We’ve been beavering away behind the scenes to make the website bigger and better as usual and despite a few technical hiccups all is going well. Dave got the chance to interview the legend that is Zach Galligan from Gremlins and rumour has it that Zach loved the Gorepress line of questioning. Personally, I think the resulting answers are pretty damn interesting too. He was over in the UK to promote his new movie; a British horror called Cut, shot in one continuous take. It’s the first movie of its type and looks pretty effing exciting so keep an eye out for it when it’s released on the 22nd of this month!

That’s it for now folks, I’ve got movies to watch, reviews to write, a website to look after and a crippling addiction to World of Warcraft to waste the remainder of my time on. In the meantime, keep on horror-ing!

Hi there reader types, it’s me, Jamie. I’ve been pretty quiet on the site these last few weeks, I did a bit of focusing on my personal blog, Lets Get Dangerous_, and a bit of work on a short film that I plan on shooting in the summer. Obviously, you lot will get all of the gossip as and when it happens. And uni too, I’ve been trying to focus on that, but films just keep getting in my way. Think about it, you can read up about a dirty politician suing a paper for saying something snotty about his wang, or you can flip on Kane Hodder belt-sanding someone’s face off. I know what I would rather be doing.

So even though I have been quiet, I have been percolating some ideas in my brain for features and other squee-inducing portions of the site. Sarah mentioned in her blogette that a podcast is on the horizon, and that it is, dear reader. If all goes to plan, Sarah and I will be all up in them ears with some talk of the bestest and worstest horror movies you can think of. Plus you get to hear Sarah’s lovely chipper voice, and my… well, my not-so-enthuastic drawl.

In other news, I have some stuff coming your way for Women In Horror Recognition Month. I have some interviews on the horizon, including one with those Butcher Brothers fellas, who brought you The Hamiltons, the April Fools Day remake, as well as the forthcoming The Violent Kind which stars my favourite former Super-Tromette Tiffany Shepis! Also, I’m heading north of the border to get me some FrightFest action up in Glasgow, so feel warm and fuzzy in the knowledge that I will be bringing back all the good words on Adam Green’s Frozen, Vincenzo Natali’s Splice, along with [REC] 2 and 2001 Maniacs: Field Of Screams. I might even try and have a bit of a chat with some of the good folks over to promote their movies for the site. Fingers crossed.

Also, I’m not sure if you folks are aware of this, but up in Edinburgh in March there is an extreme cinema season showing the likes of Gaspar Noe’s Carne, Robert Endelson’s Fight For Your Life, Deodato’s The House On The Edge Of The Park and Jacopetti’s Farewell Uncle Tom in all their uncut glory. I’ve managed to work out a compromise with the not-so-into-disgusting-gore girlfriend in which we spend a couple of hours watching Buttgereit‘s corpse fucking bonanza, while she gets a weekend in the picturesque city of Edinburgh. Good deal, right?

Anyway folks, I’m off to watch an Austrian pop punk band rip it up in a dingy little venue in the city. I hope this, my first Gorepress blog post, hasn’t bored you too much.

I will catch up with you all very soon, I love you all very much.

It’s been an important first six months in the life of our modest little horror site and I figured that now is as good a time as any to launch our new blog in order to keep you updated with the comings and goings of all things Gorepress.

The idea for Gorepress first came about 18 months ago. In fact, it was an off the cuff remark in response to the tongue-in-cheek question: “How can we persuade people to send us free DVD’s and thus feed an increasingly expensive movie addiction without the likely possibility of bankruptcy?”. While initially laughed off and dismissed as nothing more than a pipe dream, the seed had been planted and subconsciously grew until we couldn’t ignore it. Having expressed notions of wanting to become a movie journalist as a philanthropic and guileless teen, they were later quashed by a friends’ insistence that “paps and journos were cunts”, not to mention my relentless pathological fear of higher education. Now, a jaded and disenchanted twenty-something, my path as a self-made ‘journo cunt’ is cemented and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Roping in Jamie was easy. One mention of creating our very own horror website and he was chomping at the bit to join the ranks of the unpaid, much-maligned reviewer scum. As soon as Dave got wind, he was bashing out reviews left, right and centre and so our humble horror family was born. Matt was unceremoniously volunteered to build the website but could not have been more accommodating when it came to getting my vague ideas to fruition, and Phil & Aaron were only too happy to lend a hand with content. I bet there aren’t too many industries that can boast a wealth of people salivating to contribute their hard work for no pay and little praise; just another of the many things that makes the horror genre great.

And so, a year in the making and only six months up and running, it’s been both an exhausting and exciting journey so far. This month alone, we’ve managed to review some awesome and some truly awful films and I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Jonathan Sothcott and Lisa McAllister, who are both as lovely as they are prudent and talented.

We’ve got some bloody exciting things on the agenda for the upcoming months, including regular podcasts, an upcoming events section and the inclusion of TV reviews, as well as our desire to constantly look to improve the site in more subtle ways, so keep your eyeballs glued to your screens, folks.

In the meantime, here’s a list of upcoming movies that we’re all looking forward to watching this year; Mothers Day (remake), 2001 Maniacs : Field Of Screams, Evil Dead 4, The Violent Kind, Hatchet 2, Frozen, Splice, The Horde, [REC] 2, Pontypool Changes and Heartless. Pencilled for a UK release this month is the remake of Romero’s The Crazies. Have a look at the trailer here :