Boots on the Ground - exclusive stills

My old mate Louis Melville (The Last Horror Movie, Man Who Sold the World) has sent me some exclusive stills from his new war/horror film Boots on the Ground. Plus some info. The film is now deep in post, just finishing the sound design and starting on the final sound mix. Expect a trailer next month and an exclusive first review here in due course.

Press release:
Boots on the Ground is a ground breaking British horror film, making cinema history by being the first British film to be shot entirely by its actors wearing 4k head cameras, replicating the video technology used by modern combat troops to record real-time action footage. The film mirrors the style of 1st person shooter video games and combat documentary footage seen in TV shows such as the BBC series 'Our War'. Add to this visual mix a good dose of classic chiller horror in the vein of 'Jacob's Ladder' and 'The Haunting', and what emerges is Boots On The Ground.

Synopsis:
Hindu Kush, Afghanistan October 2014. War ends at midnight, all five British soldiers have to do is stay alive till then. After surviving a firefight the five British soldiers try to find a safe haven to sit out the rest of last night of the Afghan war. Trekking through woodland they come across a large imposing British fort dating back to the first British Afghan war of the early 19th century. On nearing the entrance to the fort they see five other British soldiers entering. With great relief they also enter the fort but find it eerily unoccupied. Where have the other British troops gone, did they really see them?

As the night unfolds and their mission is finally explained to them, they find themselves engulfed in a labyrinthine nightmare of seemingly un-combatable forces from another realm. Time itself seems to move in inexplicable ways to the point where they question their own reality. Who will stay alive till midnight, will any?

Jeezus! That;s the single most horrifying thing I've ever seen!

British slasher Clown Kill (formerly Lock In) out in May

Three years ago I reviewed Lock In, the debut feature by Mark J Howard. It was a fun slasher about a woman trapped in an office building with a psycho dressed as a clown. The film was available on VOD via the VHX website, and also played at the 2014 Horror-on-Sea.

Lock In has re-emerged, rebranded with the more obviously exploitative title Clown Kill, and is scheduled for release on both sides of the Atlantic next month. Wild Eye Releasing put out the US disc on 9th May. Left Films release the British DVD the following week.

The British sleeve features the actual clown from this film. Dunno who that is on the US sleeve. British clowns deemed not sufficiently creepy for American audiences presumably.

One reason for the film’s revival is that lead actress Jessica Cunningham is now a reality TV star. She was on The Apprentice last year and in January she was briefly on Celebrity Big Brother. Apparently.

You can find out more about the film at www.clownkill.com or on Facebook.

Can't wait to see... the new Dr Blood's Coffin remake

There haven’t been many remakes among recent British horror films. There’s been the odd one, like Stalker, which was a remake of Exposé aka Trauma aka The House on Straw Hill aka whatever, and Beast in the Basement which is a little-known remake of Beast in the Cellar.

Now here comes another one. Producers Arnold Basket and George Brain of Basketcase Productions have commenced principal photography on a remake of 1960s classic Dr Blood’s Coffin. Slightly retitled as Dr Bludd’s Coffin.

Here’s the synopsis: In a remote Norfolk village, people are disappearing and the dead are walking! Could either of these mysteries be connected with Dr Peter Bludd who has recently returned to his home after being thrown out of medical school for unethical experiments? Hazel Parker, secretary to Peter’s neurosurgeon father Sir Arthur Blood, investigates – and finds more than she was expecting…

So roughly the same plot, albeit transposed from Cornwall to Norfolk. The script is by Charlie Roper and Harry Parsons and the director is Bert Handy, all making their feature debut.

Arnold Basket (Dracula in Dunstable) stars as Peter Bludd with Bill Boosey (Hoodie Hellfire) as his father and Vic Flange (also in the recently announced Strippers vs Werewolves sequel) as Hazel Parker. The cast also includes George Russell, Charlie Hawkins, Harry Sutton and Frank Wilkins.

Dr Bludd’s Coffin is now in post and should hit the festival circuit exactly one year from now on 1st April 2018.