Declan Patrick MacManus turns 70 today. Thanks for decades of genre-busting, righteous, angry, fierce, silly, melodic and mischievous inspiration. —LF

HORROR CHANNEL NYX UK ANNOUNCES PREMIERES FOR SEPTEMBER 2024

www.nyxtv.co.uk

NYX UK announces channel premieres for September 2024, including Larry Fessenden’s DEPRAVED, and celebrates Dario Argento’s birthday.

NYX UK presents eight terrifying primetime channel premieres in September, headed up by Larry Fessenden’s DEPRAVED (2019), his modern take of the Frankenstein story, which screens on Fri 27th Sept, 9pm. Independent horror doesn’t get better or more stylish than this very post-modern Prometheus.

Read full lineup at My Bloody Reviews

Arrow Films has acquired rights in the UK and Eire to the deliciously dark Crumb Catcher. The film had its World Premiere at Fantastic Fest and went on to screen at the Woodstock Film Festival and Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, where it won the Best Ensemble and the Gold Audience Award.

Director of Acquisitions Selin Kilic at Arrow commented: “A newlywed couple face a home invasion-cum-Dragon’s Den pitch from Hell as a psychotic pair try to raise finance for their invention. The performances across the board are fantastic; with constant power shifts, the suspense continues to serve tense twists until the end in this awkward, funny thriller.”

Writer-director Chris Skotchdopole notes: “Excited to bring Crumb Catcher across the pond to the coolest genre label out there. I have loved Arrow for years and am thrilled to be included in their legendary lineup. To the moon!”

Producer Larry Fessenden of Glass Eye Pix shared: “Very pleased that Crumb Catcher has landed a home at Arrow releasing, guaranteeing that a discerning community of cinefreaks will get wind of our gonzo heartfelt picture.”
…
The film stars Rigo Garay (The Leech), Ella Rae Peck (Blackout), John Speredakos (The Mind’s Eye) and Lorraine Farris (Follow Her) and was produced by Larry Fessenden (The House of the Devil) at Glass Eye Pix and Brian Devine (Private Property) at Gigantic Pictures.

Selin Kilic at Arrow Films and Joe Tufano at Submarine Entertainment negotiated the deal. Arrow will release the film on digital in the UK and Eire and as a deluxe collector’s edition Blu-ray as part of its celebrated Arrow Video brand. In the US, following a 60-city theatrical release, Crumb Catcher arrives on Apple TV and other VOD platforms starting August 20th via Doppelgänger Releasing.

read announcement at Starburst

by Isaac Feldberg

As the founder of Glass Eye Pix, writer-director Larry Fessenden has spent nearly four decades carving out a fiercely independent niche in American cinema—not only for himself, but also for the array of talented artists whose careers he’s supported through his storied New York film studio. 

Since “No Telling,” his first feature on film, Fessenden has plumbed the depths of human psychology and interrogated our relationship to the natural world within chilling, atmospheric horror features. To that end, “No Telling,” sold internationally as “The Frankenstein Complex,” smuggled critiques of big pharma and animal testing into the body of a monster movie. “Habit” came next, its vampirism-as-disease allegory suffusing a despairing tale of alcohol dependency and urban decay in mid-1990s New York. 

In “Wendigo,” a family vacationing upstate encounters a Native American legend, Fessenden depicting family tragedy through a child’s eyes; in “The Last Winter,” an oil drilling crew succumbs to unstoppable forces in the Alaskan wilderness; and in “Depraved,” an Iraq war medic processes trauma by stitching together a man from body parts in a Brooklyn loft. Fessenden’s latest, the werewolf feature “Blackout,” is equally grisly and engaged, weighing civic responsibility and addiction issues alongside lycanthropic carnage. 

Though Fessenden founded Glass Eye to copyright his own films, it’s since expanded into an artists’ collective of sorts. Kelly Reichardt made “River of Grass,” her debut feature, with Fessenden starring, editing, and producing; he also produced “Wendy and Lucy” and executive-produced “Night Moves” and “Certain Women.” Ti West saw “Habit” in high school and kept asking about Fessenden while taking a class taught by Reichardt at the School of Visual Arts in New York. On her reference, West interned at Glass Eye; Feessenden produced his debut, “The Roost,” and others, up through “The House of the Devil.” For directors like Jim Mickle (“Stake Land”), Glenn McQuaid (“I Sell the Dead”), and James Felix McKenney (“Automatons”), Fessenden’s production banner has similarly been a safe haven from which to start. 

“I don’t even know what Glass Eye Pix is,” Fessenden confesses during a recent visit to Chicago in support of “Crumb Catcher,” the studio’s latest (out on VOD today via Doppelgänger Releasing). “It’s a place where filmmakers can come if I feel they have this spark of looking to use the genre to tell something personal, honest, and authentic. But that doesn’t mean there are any rules.”  

The feature debut of Chris Skotchdopole, who shares story credit with Fessenden and lead actor Rigo Garay, “Crumb Catcher” centers two newlyweds, Leah (Ella Rae Peck) and Shane (Garay), who travel to a remote estate in upstate New York for their honeymoon, only for two uninvited guests (John Speredakos and Lorraine Farris) to plunge the getaway into a bizarre, uncomfortable ordeal. A chaotic, high-speed collision of psychodrama and perverse tragicomedy, Skotchdopole’s debut reflects his past decade spent working under Fessenden at Glass Eye Pix in more ways than one.

Last month, Fessenden, Skotchdopole, Garay, and producer Chadd Harbold traveled to Chicago’s Music Box Theatre to introduce a screening of “Crumb Catcher” and participate in a post-film Q&A. Fessenden sat down that evening to discuss his own oeuvre and secret to nurturing the next wave of indie-horror iconoclasts.

Read Interview at RogerEbert.com 

“…an insanely impressive directorial feature debut for Skotchdopole.
It’s funny, bizarre, uncomfortable, and an absolute cringe-fest for all the best reasons.”
—Maggie Lovitt, COLLIDER

After a breakout 2 Month long theatrical run
at Alamo Draft Theaters and AMC Cineplexes and Driv-Ins across the country,
Skotchdopole’s thriller comes to your home through your favorite streaming service.

a DOPPLEGANGER FILMS release | a GIGANTIC PICTURES presentation | a GLASS EYE PIX production

8. Wendy and Lucy (2008)

One of just a handful of movies on this list to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Wendy and Lucy stood as a champion of independent film back in 2008 when it won critical reverence, as well as several awards on the festival circuit. The story centers on Wendy, who, destitute and in desperate need of work, travels to Alaska with her dog, Lucy, in search of a job. When her car breaks down in a small Oregon town, her financial situation worsens, forcing her to steal dog food in order to feed Lucy. After being caught and thrown in jail, Lucy goes missing. Wendy desperately searches for Lucy, facing numerous obstacles and setbacks as she frantically traverses the unknown city. Her search reveals the difficulties people face while living on the edge of poverty, of how difficult it is to get by in the face of impending loneliness, of how desperately people seek companionship from anyone—even dogs. Directed by Kelly Reichardt and produced by Neil Kopp, Anish Savjani and Larry Fessenden, Wendy and Lucy stars Michelle Williams, Will Patton, Will Oldham and John Robinson.

Here’s where you can stream Wendy and Lucy.

Read full list at Forbes

TBT 2006: GEP thesp James Le Gros (BITTER FEAST, FOXHOLE, BLACKOUT)
side by side with Fessenden, during production of THE LAST WINTER.

See Le Gros in India Donaldson’s GOOD ONE, now in theaters.

The Offering’s Directors Series: Beyond the Screen with Visionary Larry Fessenden

Not many people can say that they embody the DIY ethic that Larry Fessenden has. He has endured for decades in the entertainment industry on his own terms. He’s an actor, a director, an editor, a producer, a writer, and culturally his fingerprints are on so many things it would make your head spin.  Glass Eye Pix is the fierce independent NYC-based production outfit headed by art-horror auteur Larry Fessenden. He defies genre. His works include DEPRAVED, BENEATH, ABC’s of DEATH 2, NBC’s Fear Itself episode “SKIN AND BONES,” THE LAST WINTER, WENDIGO, HABIT, NO TELLING and his latest effort BLACKOUT.

Glass Eye Pix is responsible for narrative films, documentaries, books, comics, audio plays, and other unique work designed to inspire and contrast with corporate media.  https://glasseyepix.com

Larry Fessenden has been the maestro who’s been mentoring the next generation of iconic talent whether it’s Ted Geoghegan, Ti West, Travis Stevens, Christian Nilsson, Luca Balser, and most recently Chris Skotchdopole. Some folks have called him the John Cassavetes of horror. I call him the latest guest on The Offering Director’s Series.  

Interview goes live August 14 at 8:30AM

Guillermo del Toro has sagely said “the natural state of a movie is not getting made.” Glass Eye Pix has a litany of movies we worked on that never made it to production (like Fessenden’s THE ORPHANAGE). Then there are the projects we started that did go on to get made by other entities (like Jeremy Gardner’s AFTER MIDNIGHT, formerly SOMETHING ELSE). One happy story comes back to life in this archived account of GEP’s involvement in the making of Ryan Spindell’s THE MORTUARY COLLECTION, which went on to become a popular success with a different production team.
Here is a blast from the past circa 2013:
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Fantasia ’13 Exclusive: Director Ryan Spindell Talks Glass Eye Pix Anthology THE MORTUARY COLLECTION

An archive interview from The Gingold Files.

Of all the projects being hawked at individual tables at the Frontières International Co-Production Market during Montreal’s Fantasia festival, the one with most attention-grabbing setup was Glass Eye Pix’s horror anthology The Mortuary Collection (see photo above). Read on for the visual and verbal details on the film (which was ultimately produced by another company, made its Quebec premiere at Fantasia 2020 and was released later that year—MG).

Director Ryan Spindell and producer Brent Kunkle of Glass Eye placed the props seen above to visually represent The Mortuary Collection, a four-part tale of terror that will mark Spindell’s feature debut after shorts like Kirksdale (which impressed this writer at the Tribeca Film Festival back in 2008) and The Root of the Problem. As opposed to the boundary-busting approach of the likes of the V/H/S movies and The ABCs of Death, this omnibus will adopt a more classical approach
…
He’s certainly hooked up with the right team, as Glass Eye Pix and its president/producer Larry Fessenden have backed genre films set in many different times with many different tones. “I’ve been working within the studio world for a while,” Spindell explains, “and I was taking a lot of meetings and not making a lot of things, so I decided I was going to write a movie for myself as a die-hard horror fan and cinephile. And instead of going the normal Hollywood route with it, I went to Glass Eye, because I knew these guys were making really high-quality products for very low costs, and I love that DIY attitude. They were the first people I went to and they said yes, and we just took it from there.”

read full article at FANGORIA

Moral: Never Give Up.

8/12/24: CRUMB CATCHER gang gathered at Coxsackie NY’s Hi-Way Drive-In
for Q&A and screening along with Scorsese’s AFTER HOURS

(in attendance: Ella Rae Peck, John Speredakos, Chris Skotchdopole, Rigo Garay and Fessenden.)