Rewind of the Living Dead

Conceived and curated entirely on the popular, audio-based social media platform Clubhouse, the newly released "Sinphony: A Clubhouse Horror Anthology" features shorts from some of the best and brightest up and coming filmmakers across horror.  In this special episode of Rewind of the Living Dead, we speak to three of those filmmakers about their work on "Sinphony" including Haley Bishop, who many...

When David Gordon Green got the greenlight to begin developing a new take on the “Halloween” franchise, he started by fleshing out a story that would resurrect Michael Myers and pit him against Laurie Strode once again. Initially, Green wanted to pitch two films that he would shoot back-to-back, which would ultimately serve as one complete story.  Those plans were scratched but Green still found m...

Talks about a ‘Hellraiser’ reboot or remake had been in the works for years with original creator Clive Barker occasionally offering updates about the film.  Various writers and directors were pitched for the project for a franchise that had already seen a multitude of lackluster sequels. By 2013, Barker said he was set to direct and write the newest iteration of the series with Doug Bradley retur...

Raised in a small town near Akron, Ohio, Parker Finn grew up as a huge fan of film but particularly when it came to horror movies. Often intrigued by the covers of VHS tapes at the video store, Finn admittedly watched films that he probably had no business seeing at a young age.  Being traumatized by movies like Poltergeist and The Shining set Finn on a path where he was determined to eventually s...

The “Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise had never been bigger following the release of the fourth installment in the series “The Dream Master,” which was then followed by a TV series titled “Freddy’s Nightmares.” New Line Cinema, which was nicknamed “The House That Freddy Built,” wasted no time ordering a fifth film with an idea that was originally pitched during pre-production on Part 3 about Fre...

During the production of his hit slasher film “X,” director Ti West began developing a backstory for the character of Pearl as played by actor Mia Goth.  Working together, the director and star began crafting what would ultimately become a script for an entire prequel movie that would center around the murderous woman that haunted the farm where “X” took place.  Unlike that film, which took inspir...

The relationship between horror and comedy has really exploded over the last few years, especially with filmmakers like David Gordon-Green and Danny McBride developing a new “Halloween” trilogy and former sketch comedy guru Jordan Peele winning an Oscar and becoming one of the most popular directors in modern horror history.  The latest convert is Zach Cregger, who first came to fame through his o...

As part of our ongoing series taking a deep dive into the entire Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, this week we look back at the 1988 sequel Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master.  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:  h...

Due to the critical failure surrounding “Nightmare on Elm Street 2,” New Line Cinema was hesitant to green light a third film in the franchise but when original creator Wes Craven decided to come back on board to help write the script, the studio decided to move forward with the project.  Craven’s idea centered around a third and final film that would conclude the series, especially considering he...

The 1980s served as the home to many great horror films but it was also a decade defined by sequels, especially when any movie found success with theater goers.  The immense popularity of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” in 1984 led New Line Cinema to immediately shift gears to a sequel that would ultimately be released less than a year later.  Unfortunately, original director Wes Craven declined to re...

Following a career that began directing x-rated films, Wes Craven decided to make the move into bigger features while combing the deepest, darkest parts of his psyche. He wrote and directed “The Last House on the Left” and “The Hills Have Eyes” — a pair of gruesome horror films that terrified audiences but also managed to essentially ostracize Craven because of the extreme content in his movies. ...

After signing a five-year development deal with Universal Pictures, Jordan Peele got to work on his next project following the massive success of both “Get Out” and “Us.”  Peele’s next film was announced in November 2020 with the writer and director saying he wanted to create something audiences would have “to come see” after penning the script at a time with incredible uncertainty surrounding the...

Frank Darabont had been an avid reader of Stephen King novels for quite some time when he came across the 1980 novella called “The Mist” as part of the “Dark Forces” anthology.  Darabont immediately fell in love with the story and decided to adapt King’s book into a film that would become his directorial debut. What ultimately happened was Darabont made another King novella into a film with “The S...

Back in 2004, Joe Hill was a struggling novelist who just couldn’t seem to get one his books purchased by a publisher.  Despite being horror icon Stephen King’s son, Hill was determined to strike out on his own, which is why he changed to a different last name from his father. Rather than write another novel, Hill decided to develop a group of short stories into a single collection with one of the...

A supersized group of episodes of “Stranger Things” combined with delays in production due to the pandemic led to season 4 being split into two separate parts with the first seven episodes dropping in May and then the final two debuting in July.  Despite only two episodes remaining in the season, “Stranger Things” packed a lot into these episodes with a nearly four-hour run time that helped reach...

When writers S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock were working as editors for the United States Navy while helping to produce educational videos, they had a thought while standing on top of a boulder in the middle of the desert — what if there was something underground that prevented them from actually getting off this rock?  That spawned an idea for a monster movie about creatures that swim around under...

When John Carpenter was first contacted about potentially directing a remake of the 1951 classic “The Thing from Another World,” he was reluctant to sign onto the project.  The studio had already hired and fired “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” director Tobe Hooper and Carpenter didn’t really see a path to a creative remake from a film he admired so much.  But it was his first chance to move from indepen...

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean something isn’t really happening. That’s the premise behind the new film “Watcher,” which just opened in theaters as director Chloe Okuno teams up with “It Follows” star Maika Monroe for a thriller that feels like something that should have Alfred Hitchcock’s name attached to it.  In addition to “Watcher” opening in theaters, David Cronenberg’s latest film...

Horror has always found a home on television but it’s hard to imagine anything capturing the attention of the pop culture zeitgeist like “Stranger Things” has done over the past few years.  Developed by the Duffer brothers, the series based in the 1980’s was equal parts nostalgia and great storytelling while making titles like Eleven and the Demogorgon household names across the globe.  When “Stra...

The wild success of the first Friday the 13th movie had Paramount Pictures frothing at the mouth for a sequel but the initial idea was to essentially treat the franchise as an anthology where each movie would involve an entirely new scary story.  Some of the producers on the original film had a much different idea that the sequel should involve Jason Voorhees even though his appearance in the orig...

Writing partners Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski had already managed to get several scripts made into films but there was plenty more left on the cutting room floor from projects that never got picked up or pieces of stories that were deemed too ambitious that the pair called their “murdered darlings.”  Armed with those ideas along with an intense desire to write something that would scare each ot...

When writer and director Miriama Diallo attended Yale University, she referred to the person in charge of her residential college as ‘master’ — an incredibly outdated term that the school tried to explain away as nothing more than a way to pay homage to a British system on which it was based while stating it had nothing to do with the ugly history of slavery in America.  Diallo just went along wit...

Combining a modern tale of terror with a 1980s video game, first-time director Toby Meakins and writer Simon Allen decided to tackle a horror film that feels like it’s one part ‘Jumanji’ and another part ‘Black Mirror.’  The premise centers around a down-on-her-luck computer programming enthusiast named Kayla, who cleans buildings at night to help support her family, as they continue to grieve the...

As she prepared to direct her first solo feature, future Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow wanted to film a Western movie but she found it difficult to secure financing and a studio to back up her vision.  So alongside co-writer Eric Red, who also penned the horror film “The Hitcher,” Bigelow shifted gears to combine her idea for a modern Western with the vampire genre that had become increasingly popu...

With ownership over the entire “Spider-Man” catalog and the characters surrounding the friendly neighborhood webslinger, Sony announced plans to develop several new films that would branch out and expand the whole universe.  Following the surprising success around “Venom,” the studio moved swiftly to begin developing even more projects including one centered around Morbius The Living Vampire — a c...