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Some people don’t seem to like my new movie. Some critics are even spreading lies about me, saying that I’m some kind of special effect. Let me assure my many fans that I am a reality and to my critics I say this… Watch where you swim!

For instance, DVD VERDICT said…

“Kudos to the minds behind Sharktopus; they know they’re making a ridiculous movie and they let everyone in on the joke.”.

The ‘minds’ behind Sharktopus have already been devoured, after assuring me they were making an even handed documentary about my life, my loves and my wry, sideways look at life. Instead they’ve painted me as a one-dimensional killer. Ok, everyone knows I love to tear a Bikini clad babe in half with my barbed tentacles but where’s the balance? Did anyone ask me about my poetry? Or my love of the arts? No, they went for the lowest common denominator as usual. I can’t understand why anyone would want to see me, endlessly tearing people limb fron limb in a bloody orgy of violent destruction when they could hear me recite my latest cycle of verse about kelp.

“The beast looks like it came from a video game, no detail etc and they put great big close ups of the damned thing in the movie.” say BATTLE ROYALE WITH CHEESE. That’s not a lack of detail, just good skin care. I use a coral scrub every day to keep myself looking fresh. You guys are now on my menu.

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BEST FOR FILM posed a question: “Incidentally, you can’t possibly think its bulk could be supported by its tentacles on dry land, could you?”. Not that it’s any of your business but I work out. One of my many varied interests, along with coral collecting, philosophy and fine dining, not that you’d get any of that from the film, which seems to spend most of it’s running time focusing on smokin’ hot babes in microscopic swimwear and my feasting on the innocent. Best For Film, watch the seas!

Basically, in this post, I’m here to answer my critics. Yes, I will probably eat you but I am so much more than that. While I’ve been in the UK, I’ve experienced all the amazing culture and enjoyed diners in some of London’s finest resturants. I’ve had the opportunity to meet, greet and eat many fascinating people, each of whose knowledge I have now gained. So enjoy the movie, with all that gratuitous splatter, outrageous acting and foxy semi-nudity, but please remember, Sharktopi have feelings too.

FOLLOW MY ADVENTURES ON SHARKBOOK

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Damned By Dawn (cert. 15) will be released on DVD (£15.99) by Momentum Pictures on 7th March 2011.

MORE DAMNED BY DAWN ON THE CULT LABS BLOG

The list of hideous creatures that dwell in folklore is only limited by mankinds imagination and when it comes to summoning creatures to dismember, terrify and drag us off to parallel dimensions of eternal suffering, we’ve always had a real talent.

Horror cinema has it’s own myths and legends that borrowed heavily from European folklore and literature, before being honed by Universal and Hammer into their familiar shapes. Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstien are endlessly repackaged and so many Zombie movies are now being made that it’s beginning to resemble the late 70s Slasher boom.

So, what of other ancient figments of our collective imaginations? Sometimes it seems as if fantastic cinema, a umbrella term that should inspire filmmakers to new giddy heights of invention, is as homogenised as a modern high street. The genre keeps endlessly refining slasher movies, turns it’s focus onto the body via the limitless supply of grinding Torture-Porn or retells the undead apocalypse and man’s struggle to survive the aftermath, when I think it’s time to dig into the ancient myths that makes us who we are.

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In times gone by, when death was a closer presence in everyone’s life and science had yet to provide as many answers, we coped with mortality by spinning yarns about boatmen on the River Styx or the scream of the Banshee, carried for miles on the rushing wind.

The Banshee is an excellent place to start, after all, it gets increasingly difficult to wrong foot an audience with a careful eye for genre conventions so why not focus on something from our distant past that hasn’t been raked over a million times already? Asian horror scared Western audiences because it referenced folk tales from a culture very different to our own, but, once you get away from Vampires and Werewolves, there’s a rich seam of ghouls and monsters ready to take a bite out of the screen. Where, for instance, is the scary gothic tale of Spring Heeled Jack?

Damned by Dawn mixes Evil Dead style Demon-splatter with a vein of Irish mythology, about a woeful creature who screams in mourning for the deceased in prominent local families. The natural howl of storm winds whipping across the rolling green landscape was thus transformed into a howl of pain for those left behind. But beware those who interfer in the Banshee’s task, for they’ll meet a end that’s truly terrible…

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Time then, to learn a little more about this undersubscribed movie fiend…

Although the Banshee hasn’t got the biggest list of film credits, at least one notable film has featured her screams of torment. Vincent Price starred in the 1970 horror cheapie CRY OF THE BANSHEE

WIKIPEDIA has an informative entry on the myth, including a nice bit of trivia for us Welsh folk, there’s a local version for valley dwellers, THE HAG OF THE MIST.

IRELAND EYE has more on the legend, including the ‘fact’ that a Banshee can have three forms, a young woman, a stately matron or a raddled old hag, while YOUR IRISH covers similar ground.

MARVEL COMICS have never been fussy when it comes to co-opting historic myths to help bolster their ever expanding and extremely profitable universe. Their take on the Banshee keeps the superhuman scream intact, only now it’s a mutation that leads it’s owner to join the X-men.

BONUS CLIPS:

Check out backstage footage from the making of DAMNED BY DAWN…


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