Rewind of the Living Dead

In 2015, horror icon Barbara Crampton was handed a script written by Mark Steensland that tackled issues often ignored in filmmaking. He had written a movie that focused on “a woman in the second stage of life, battling against a relationship that feels restrictive.”  The result was a movie that took home the top prize at Shriekfest, a horror film festival in Los Angeles. After Crampton received t...

In this special edition of Rewind of the Living Dead, we discuss the 2021 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, breaking down all of the winners and giving some of our picks for the best in horror for the past year and what's coming next in 2021.  Music courtesy of Andrew Scott Bell and Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio   For more Rewind of the Living Dead, visit our website or follow on social media: https:/...

A nightmare after watching ‘The Ring’ inspired writer Christopher Robert Cargill to pen his own screenplay following visions in his head that he once found a film in his attic that contained disturbing footage of an entirely family being hanged.  Eventually he teamed up with writer and director Scott Derrickson to flesh out the idea of a demonic creature, who lured children into his wicked web and...

Writer and director Bryan Bertino gained a huge following in horror after he served as the writer and director to the 2008 home invasion film “The Strangers,” which terrified audiences and left everybody in the theater feeling like this could happen to them.  Bertino followed that up with the found footage film “Mockingbird” and then the 2016 movie “The Monster,” which kept him once again focused...

The slasher movie is a staple of the horror genre with classic films such as “Halloween and “Friday the 13th” influencing audiences and filmmakers for decades to come.  In 1980, director William Lustic alongside writer and star Joe Spinell unleashed a different kind of slasher film that was more brutal and intimate than almost anything that came before it. A lonely man named Frank Zito leaves his...

In 1974, director Tobe Hooper shocked and stunned audiences with his magnum opus — “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”  It was a film Roger Ebert called as “violent and gruesome and blood-soaked as the title promises.” Hailed by some as a classic but others as a disturbing film not worthy of an audience, the original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” eventually reached cult status and today it’s hailed as on...

Horror franchises have notoriously undergone a number of changes, reboots and recreations over the years but the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films stand in a class all on their own.  In 2013, director John Luessenhop decided to take his own stab with “Texas Chainsaw 3D” — a film that sought to carry on the legacy of the original movie while trying to take advantage of the new 3D technology that was sw...

Inspired by fairy tales about predators that call back to classics like Grimm brothers fables, Shawn Linden decided to create his own take on the genre in a modern setting.  The story was plotted out during a trip home from a European film festival back in 2007 but Linden didn’t get to actually create the film until 13 years later. Set against the backdrop of a remote cabin in Canada, a family liv...

More than 25 years after Tobe Hooper created one of the most iconic horror films of all time with “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” action movie producer Michael Bay saw an opportunity to capitalize on the property after starting his own studio called Platinum Dunes that was created specifically with low budget films in mind.  Eventually, Bay’s company purchased the rights to the “Texas Chainsaw Mas...

Thanks to TV series such as “The Walking Dead,” the zombie genre has really been rejuvenated in recent years with a number of truly creative takes in horror films made across the globe.  In South Korea, “Train to Busan” was a pulse-pumping thrill ride that was equal parts terrifying and claustrophobic thanks to the inventive way zombies were used in that movie. In 2019, writer and director Jeff Ba...

The explosion of the slasher genre in the 1980’s had just about every studio in Hollywood thirsty for the next great horror franchise. New Line Cinema, which was the studio responsible for the rise of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, decided to reinvent the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise with a third film in the series with plans to focus more around Leatherface than his cannabilistic family...

Horror films are best known for scaring audiences with gruesome scares or terrifying monsters but the horror genre has also been able to simultaneously tackle a lot of societal issues.  Whether that’s facing the real life horror of prejudice and racism in films such as “Get Out” and “Candyman” or the class war displayed in movies like “Society” or “The People Under the Stairs,” horror films are of...

In the latest edition of our ongoing series exploring the entire Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, we take a deep dive on the original sequel "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" where the buzz is back!  Following the massive success of the original film, director Tobe Hooper returned to the franchise he made famous with the first sequel in the series, which also introduced horror icon Bill Moseley to...

Possession and exorcism are both common themes when it comes to the horror genre. “The Exorcist” is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time while “Rosemary’s Baby” still haunts audiences to this day. Of course more modern tales such as “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” and “The Last Exorcism” have received solid reviews from both critics and audiences.  A new film on Shudder delves int...

As part of a new series exploring different horror franchises, Rewind of the Living Dead will spend five episodes taking a deep dive into "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" as well as all of the sequels, remakes and reboots. The first episode will explore the original 1974 classic "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre."  The word legendary gets tossed around a lot in the horror genre but Tobe Hooper’s first ma...

In this special edition of Rewind of the Living Dead, our hosts Damon and Patrick give their picks for the top five horror films of 2020. What made the final list this year? Listen and find out!  Music courtesy of Andrew Scott Bell and Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio   For more Rewind of the Living Dead, visit our website or follow on social media: https://www.rewindofthelivingdead.com/ Twitter:...

Dracula. Frankenstein. The Wolfman.. These were all staples of the Universal Monsters line made famous by performances from actors such as Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. Years later, Universal decided to relaunch a new monstrous universe based around those same iconic characters but a disastrous attempt at remaking The Mummy starring Tom Cruise cast doubts that the great monster of old would ever...

In the 1980’s, the combination of horror and comedy was becoming more and more popular. Chris Columbus, who would go onto become a famed director in his own right, wrote a spec script after he was inspired by the sound of mice scurrying across his apartment but the story was really just an effort to get more attention on his work.  That was until Steven Spielberg took notice of his script with int...

There are a lot of incredible female-led horror films throughout history but a new movie released in 2018 not only featured a female director in Caitlin Koller but the screenplay came from an actress and writer named Shawna Kofed.  Described as “a scary version of the Big Chill,” old college friends gather at a remote cabin in Wisconsin to attend the funeral of a former classmate who committed sui...

The Chiodo brothers — Stephen, Edward and Charles — were well known special effects artists in Hollywood focusing in clay models, creature creation and stop motion animatronics. In 1988, they decided to crossover from creating special effects to creating their own movie. The original concept came from Stephen Chiodo who imagined the most terrifying image he could muster and that involved driving d...

One of the best parts about the horror genre is that it transcends people, places and cultures. Americans are just as likely to be terrified by a really scary movie as people living across Europe or Asia. In fact some of the best horror films in history didn’t come from the United States. From the classic “Nosferatu” in Germany from 1922 to Dario Argento’s “Suspiria” from Italy in 1977 to “Auditio...

The Howling. American Werewolf in London. Silver Bullet. Those are just a few of the iconic werewolf movies that are considered the best in film history but writer and director Jim Cummings decided to take his own stab at the genre after receiving rave reviews for his film “Thunder Road” where he played a police officer in personal peril following a divorce and the death of his mother.  This time...

At the height of the #MeToo movement in 2018, CollegeHumor writer and actor Josh Ruben decided that he wanted to pen a film that tackled the all too gross conundrum that so many of his female colleagues encountered when they were forced to “diminish their light in the face of a man’s behavior.”  The result was the movie “Scare Me,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in early 2020. Set a...

The massive success of the first two installments of Friday the 13th had proven to be box office gold.  In 1982, Paramount wanted to keep the kill count high with a 3rd film in the franchise. After part 2 star Amy Steel turned down a returning role, director Steve Miner and company decided to capitalize on the resurgence of 3D technology to redefine the movie. The end result is a campy slasher tha...

The 1980’s were filled with iconic slasher movies but writer Rita Mae Brown decided to take a stab at the genre with her script called “Sleepless Nights” that served as a parody to the killer chases teenagers until a final girl survives trope that filled so many horror films .  Producers had another idea and repurposed her script into something a little more straight forward with Amy Holden Jones...