Here’s the scoop from the good ‘ol boils ‘n ghouls over at SHOCK TILL YOU DROP:

DVD release details have surfaced for Toby Wilkins’ Splinter. DVD Active got their hands on an early look at the official cover art (below), not to be confused with the leaked version a few weeks back. The disc streets on January 27th with behind-the-scenes footage, deleted scenes and a making-of featurette.

Starring Shea Whigham, Paulo Costanzo and Jill Wagner, Splinter finds a young couple retreating to the wilderness for a camping weekend, but their romantic idyll is shattered when they are car-jacked by an escaped convict and his girlfriend on the run from the police. As the foursome travel the backroads together, each plotting their next move, they find themselves in deeper trouble than any of them could have imagined - a blood-crazed, parasitic creature that absorbs the corpses of its victims has laid claim to the woods, and the two couples are now in its sights. Finding shelter at an abandoned gas station, they must use their wits and every weapon at their disposal to stave off the onslaught, not only from the insatiable creature, but also each other…

Lookin’ forward to this one.  Keep it Creepy!

HORROR FANS WILL GIVE THANKS FOR THE “THANKSGIVING DAY OF THE DEAD”, AS MONSTERS HD COOKS UP A CORNUCOPIA OF UNDEAD THRILLS WITH TWO CULT CLASSIC ONLINE PREMIERES: “DAY OF THE DEAD” AND “THE RAGE” - ONLY AT MONSTERSHD.COM!

Just got the following press release. For those of you lucky enough to get MONSTERSHD, here’s what you get to look forward to this Thanksgiving when you’re munchin’ on your turkey and mashed ‘taters.

This Thanksgiving, MONSTERS HD cordially invites viewers to cozy up to a free undead buffet with all the trimmings: “Thanksgiving Day of the Dead.” The George Romero cult classic Day of the Dead and the neo-classic, The Rage, from director and special-effects master, Robert Kurtzman will be available to watch on MONSTERSHD.com on Thanksgiving. So, this holiday, while everyone else is gobbling turkey, sink your teeth into “the other white meat” with these tasty zombie offerings, premiering on November 27.

BETTER THAN FOOTBALL, HAH!

Check out the details below for the upcoming awesomeness of the MY NAME IS BRUCE DVD:

As we mentioned here, Image Entertainment is planning a DVD and Blu-ray release of Bruce Campbell’s My Name is Bruce for February 10th. Today, the distributor has unveiled the special features (cover art is on the right) that will be included in their presentation. Expect…

• Feature Commentary with Bruce Campbell and Mike Richardson
• Heart Of Dorkness
• Awkward Moments With “Kif”
• Bruce On…
• Cavealien 2 Trailer
• Beyond Inside The Cave: The Making Of “Cavealien 2″
• “Kif’s” Korner
• Poster Art Gallery
• Props Art Gallery
• Photo Gallery
• The Hard Truth
• Love Birds
• Easter Eggs
• Trailer

The Blu-ray disc will host similar features but will set you back $35.98 whereas the DVD will retail for $27.98 - but we all know you’ll find it cheaper, right?

I Can’t FUCKING WAIT!!!

“Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality. But, there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit…a dark side.”

Paramount Home Entertainment will finally give Tales from the Darkside a home on DVD. The complete first season is arriving on February 10th!

This 30-minute horror anthology series followed in the vein of Creepshow with George Romero on board to executive produce for Laurel Entertainment. The show ran from ‘84 to ‘88 delving into original stories and adapting works from writers like Stephen King and Clive Barker. A feature anthology film, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, opened in theaters in 1990.

I’m gonna need a better job with all of this cool shit coming out, the next story will be about MY NAME IS BRUCE DVD Specs. SWEET!

ShockTillYouDrop.com has nabbed an early look at the DVD cover art for the upcoming documentary His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th. We’ve been informed that this is still being tweaked, but you get the idea. The doc recently received a warm reception at the Starz Denver Film Festival. It hits DVD on February 3rd.

Hosted by special effects master Tom Savini, and with more than 80 interviews - including every Jason and the “Final Girls” who survived him - and clips from the films, His Name was Jason examines how the legend of Jason Voorhees has evolved from a ghost story that oversexed camp counselors tell around the bonfire into a full-blown Hollywood institution. The film was directed by Daniel Farrands and produced by Anthony Masi and MasiMedia.

Looks Fucking Sweet. You Better Believe I’ll Be Getting This One!!!

Directed by: George Elanjian Jr.

Written by: Michael Carmody (story)
Brent V. Friedman (writer)

Starring Re-Animator’s DAVID GALE

What did this DVD teach me? That the Japanese love just about fucking anything. Ah, Special Features. I don’t even know where to begin with SYNGENOR. I suppose I could start off with the good, as that won’t take very long. I loved the cheesy, campy 80’s-ness of the flick. I LOVED David Gale’s performance as this psycho head of this large corporation, Carter Brown. The performance reminded me a great deal of his role in Re-Animator; this crazed lunatic gonzo sort of performance. Also, there’s this unexplained green gunk he keeps shooting up into his brain.
The creature was also sort of interesting in a “man in a suit” kind of way, which believe me, I prefer over CG any day of the week. The creatures, the SYNGENOR of the title is a bit hard to describe. The movie makes them out to be a combination of genetic and cybernetic “perfection” for use on the battlefield. They look kind of like overgrown, mutant cicada vampires to me, with a little bit of reptile thrown in for good measure.
The acting of the male lead (I can’t remember his name, he was a reporter) and the female lead were actually rather strong and fairly good for this kind of b-horror/sci-fi sleaze-o-rama. They really seemed to take their roles seriously as opposed to the supporting cast who ended up looking like a bunch of cliches and goofballs.

Now for the bad. In addition to the supporting cast, let’s start at the very basics, the story. What-The-Fuck. All I can fathom is that they locked a desperate, out-of-work screenwriter in a room and fed him nothing but beer and stimulants driving him into a sort of half drunken maniacal frenzy. I can only imagine that this was written in pieces on shreds of notebook paper and toilet paper…used toilet paper. So, ok, there’s this place, ‘Something’ Cyberdyne (cough TERMINATOR cough) that has created the ultimate, invulnerable soldier because, in the future, war was going to take place in the middle east (well, they got that right), and they needed a soldier that stood up to conventional weaponry and didn’t need water. Get this, the creatures subsist on the spinal fluid of their victims…ok. And as far as that, “invulnerable to conventional weaponry” part goes, you see a pack of them taken down by shotguns, including one particularly fun scene where a guy sticks a shotty in the creature’s face and blows out the back of its head. Wild.
So I guess I could count the gore in this as fairly decent as well as there’s all sorts of blood and goop everywhere almost constantly. There’s also this side story about how they reproduce every 24 hours and squirt out pods, but, the filmmakers got a little sidetracked and didn’t really expand upon that except to explain how there were so many of them.
The transfer in this SPECIAL EDITION (why the fuck would this flick warrant a SPECIAL EDITION is beyond me, but meh, on with the review), SUCKED. No offense SYNAPSE, I appreciate the flicks, but this looks like it was taken directly from a decent copy of a VHS copy. It’s dark, grainy, just the kind of thing you’d expect when renting from one of the rare mom ‘n pops that’d still carry it on video. The special features were scarce, but there WERE some, including some behind-the-scenes stuff, a trip to Japan, and a visit to the monster-maker warehouse where the creature was being created. Some guy who worked special effects on ALIENS did the work on this one. Wiki it or google it if you really care.

All in all, I’d say this would be one to check out if you’re into that “direct-to-video-horror/sci-fi” thing, and there are a lot of choices out there. Not TOO bad, but not all that great either. It got something of a “meh” out of me while watching it and I found myself doing other things at times. It’s gonna get 1 skull outta 5 for creature, gore, and 80’s-ness alone. It almost warrants 2 skulls solely upon the performance of David Gale. Yeah, two skulls. David Gale, you carried the movie and pulled it up to a 2 out of 5. This skull’s dedicated to you. OH FUCK, I FORGOT, there’s also a FUCKING LAZER DEATH RAY! HA!
Keep it Creepy!

Much to Essential’s chagrin, we’re sure, their trailer has been loosed onto the web. Mind you, this is a sale trailer Essential is using to attract potential buyers and not final.

Sophie Ward plays paranormal researcher Mary Florescu whose investigations lead her to Simon McNeal, a college student who appears to be channeling messages from the dead. As their erotic relationship develops the line between the worlds of the living and the dead become blurred and finally collapse in a stunning and astonishing climax.

John Harrison directed this adaptation and co-wrote it with Darin Silverman.

Here’s a link with information for Clive Barker’s BOOKS OF BLOOD series. Apparently this film is from the first book.

I’ll have to pick these up.

MGM Home Entertainment intends to bank on Rogue Pictures’ 2009 redo of The Last House on the Left with a new collector’s edition of Wes Craven’s ‘72 film.

Special features will include:

• Audio commentary with actors David Hess, Marc Sheffler and Fred Lincoln
• A Wes Craven featurette
• Celluloid Crime of the Century featurette
• Scoring Last House featurette
• Tales that Will Tear Your Heart Out featurette
• Deleted Scene: Mari Dying at the Lake
• Never-before-seen outtakes
• Wes Craven’s annotated shooting scripts
• Photo Gallery