July 16, 2017
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R.I.P. George Romero

In a 2016 interview with Indiewire, Romero reflected on the legacy of “Night of the Living Dead.”

“When we made the film, I thought that we were talking about miscommunication — people who, even when faced with impossible and improbable situations, still argue among themselves about petty things rather than facing the problem,” he said. “I find that this is still going on today. That’s all I really care about.”

July 14, 2017
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Fessenden wins best performance at the Develop Awards!

Fessenden nabs Best Performance at the Develop Awards 2017.
Now available for PS4, Super Massive’s Until Dawn: Rush of Blood.
Competition was stiff:

Text of the press release:

Guildford, UK – 12 th July, 2017: BAFTA-winning independent British developer Supermassive Games picked up the award for “Best Performance” at the Develop Awards 2017.

Larry Fessenden’s performance in Until Dawn: Rush of Blood was voted top out of nine distinguished competitors including Doug Cockle in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Blood and Wine and John DiMaggio in LEGO Dimensions Adventure Time Level Pack.

Pete Samuels, Managing Director of Supermassive Games said “Working with talented actors to bring believable performances to the characters in our games is hugely important to us, so we were delighted to collect the Best Performance award for Larry’s portrayal of Dan T in Until Dawn: Rush of Blood. We love working with Larry, both as an actor and writer, and look forward to future collaborations.”

“It’s a thrill to be in the company of these other nominees, and I would never have imagined carrying the day,” Larry said. “I would like to thank Supermassive Games for giving me the opportunity to bring Dan T to life, and I’d like to thank the animators there for giving my performance a little extra jolt.”

About Supermassive Games:

Supermassive Games are a BAFTA-winning, independent game developer with a reputation for innovation in both storytelling and VR. The studio has released a number of successful titles and are best known for the critically acclaimed PS4 hit Until Dawn. Supermassive Games recently announced three new titles coming for 2017 – Bravo Team (PSVR), Hidden Agenda (PS4) and The Inpatient (PSVR).

About Larry Fessenden:

Larry Fessenden is an actor and producer and the director of the art-horror films No Telling, Habit, Wendigo and The Last Winter, as well as he TV films Skin and Bones and Beneath. He has operated the production shingle Glass Eye Pix since 1985 with the mission of supporting individual voices in the arts.

July 13, 2017
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The Egg and the Hatchet to screen at MARFA 2017

writer/director Chris Skotchdopole’s GEP-produced short
The Egg and the Hatchet will screen at the Marfa Film Festival.

CROWLEY THEATER
Friday 7/14

July 11, 2017
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Cutting Room #87 – The Lodger

July 8, 2017
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Indiewire: Shudder Labs roundup

The Shudder Labs team included Glass Eye Pals
Peter Phok, Jenn Wexler, Clay MacLeod Chapman,
Colin Geddes, Travis Stevens and of course our host Sam Zimmerman.
From Indiewire:

How Shudder Is Fostering a New Breed of Horror Directors

Seven filmmakers gathered in upstate New York to workshop their new horror projects. Here, they reflect on what they learned.

July 7, 2017
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AV Club: Larry Fessenden’s post-horror movies

As luck would have it, I was settling in for a Larry Fessenden double feature the same night that Twitter—or, at least, the small corner of the platform occupied by film writers and cinephiles—was working itself into a tizzy about an article in The Guardian postulating a new subgenre of “post-horror.” The basic thrust of the Guardian article is that recent films like It Comes At Night and A Ghost Story are changing the horror paradigm by adding talky drama elements to genre narratives, which is exactly what Larry Fessenden was doing in the ‘90s. His 1991 debut feature No Telling combines a Cassavetes-esque relationship drama about a marriage in decline with the bare-bones structure of the Frankenstein myth, as an obsessive medical researcher turns to neighborhood pets after he finds himself unable to procure the animals he’s convinced he needs to complete his research. The result is rather like a naturalistic take on Re-Animator cut together with scenes from A Woman Under The Influence, as strange as that may sound.

That particular film also touches on themes of animal rights and environmentalism, displaying a social consciousness that was developed more fully in Fessenden’s follow-up film, 1995’s Habit. Like this year’s Colossal, Habit uses an alcoholic protagonist as a metaphor to tie in with the film’s fantastic elements; in this case, it’s Lower East Side resident Sam (Fessenden), who’s been a complete drunken mess ever since his girlfriend broke up with him and his father died within a few months of each other. Meeting the enigmatic Anna (Meredith Snaider) at a Halloween party ignites an obsessive affair unlike anything Sam has ever experienced in his life, but as their nightly rendezvous grow more intense, Sam starts feeling, well, ill. Blending classical vampire imagery—Anna is allergic to garlic, and can’t come in to Sam’s apartment without an invitation—with the pervasive fear of AIDS that hung over every sexually active person in the ‘90s, Habit is not only a metaphorically rich horror-drama hybrid, but a time capsule of the last gasp of bohemia in downtown Manhattan.

Both of these films are available in Shout! Factory’s Larry Fessenden Collection boxed set, and No Telling is also currently streaming on Shudder.

Read the full article…

July 7, 2017
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Gizmodo: “The Last Winter an especially effective terror-in-isolation tale.”

Bundle Up With These 18 Horror Movies Set In The Freezing Cold

#3 The Last winter

Things start going very, very wrong for a group of Arctic oil drillers in Larry Fessenden’s cult thriller — but is it due to a natural causes… or supernatural ones? Inevitably, the survivors begin to turn on each other with increasing fervour as the Earth itself seems to start claiming lives, but intriguing characters (played by Ron Perlman, James LeGros, Connie Britton and others) and a unique plot make The Last Winter an especially effective terror-in-isolation tale.

Check out the full list

 

July 2, 2017
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Glass Eye titles make the cut: 13 Unsung Independent Horror Flicks

From CHILLERtv.com:

Glass Eye Pix classix I SELL THE DEAD (Glenn McQuaid) and THE LAST WINTER (Fessenden)
celebrated in Tony Timpone’s list of 13 Unsung Independent Horror Flicks.

Also listed: Jim Mickle’s feature MULBERRY STREET which features Fessenden torn apart by rats,
and ZOMBIE HONEYMOON by Dave Gebroe, executive produced by Fessenden.

6. I Sell the Dead (2008)

This marvelously macabre horror film tags along with a pair of 18th century grave robbers (Lost’s Dominic Monaghan and Larry Fessenden, who also produced). Dublin-born director Glenn McQuaid discusses his film’s origins: “In the late ’70s and early ’80s, BBC2 ran a series of horror double bills every Saturday night. They covered the classics from Universal, RKO and Hammer, but also peppered the programming with some fairly (at the time) obscure and more contemporary films like The Craziesand Race with the Devil. This collection was really my first experience of horror, and it left a very strong impression on me.

“When I wrote I Sell the Dead, I wanted to reach back to those movies and make something that would sit well alongside them,” adds McQuaid, currently pitching a new horror yarn called The Restoration at Grayson Manor. “Folks like Freddie Francis, Terence Fisher and Val Lewton are very much an influence on the world I created. I also love cemeteries, and, in a way, I Sell the Dead is a love letter to them.”

7. The Last Winter (2006)

Speaking of producer Larry Fessenden, the man who serves as the indie world’s best friend also directs movies of his own. Starring Ron Perlman and James Le Gross, this prescient horror picture deals with an environmental nightmare in the Arctic. “I wanted to show two men out in the unforgiving wilderness where one has knowledge of the land and the other has all the bravado but is suddenly vulnerable,” explains Fessenden. “There is a Kurosawa movie called Dersu Uzala that captures that vibe, which had some influence. And more than with my previous film Wendigo, The Last Winter was inspired by the writings of Algernon Blackwood, who so uniquely evokes the uncanny. I was worried about climate change when I made the film; I wanted to show how scary it would be if everyone just kept ignoring the warnings and acting as if nothing was wrong—to me that seemed like a world gone mad…and that was in 2005!”

SEE WHOLE LIST HERE

 

June 28, 2017
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Cutting Room #86 – New York in the 70’s

June 26, 2017
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Fessenden’s THE LAST WINTER unspools at MOMA this summer in series celebrating “the uncanny”

From TIME OUT NY:

MoMA is screening 70 amazing science fiction films this summer

Fans of sci-fi haven’t had a particularly great go of it this year, what with Scarlett Johansson’s Ghost in the Shell leaving bad tastes in our mouths and the fifth Transformers entry, The Last Knight, inducing vertigo. 

But it looks like our luck is about to change this summer: MoMA just announced “Future Imperfect: The Uncanny in Science Fiction,” an enormous showcase of more than 70 films made from 1901–2017. With a prompt of “what does it mean to be human?” the fest will only showcase movies set on Earth in the present or quasi-present, so all of your space-faring favorites are out. I know, I know: I was hoping to watch Dune at MoMA too. 

Opening on July 17 and running through August 31, the series will screen films from more than 22 countries, and features intros from filmmaker fans like Larry Fessenden, Lynn Hershman Leeson and John Sayles. Neil deGrasse Tyson will be on hand on July 14 to introduce The Quiet Earth.

There are too many features to list here, but some notable pics include Invasión (1969)Die letzten Tage von Gomorrha (The Last Days of Gomorrah) (1974), Fata Morgana (1971), Gattaca (1997), Children of Men (2006), Ex Machina (2014) and Marjorie Prime (2017)

You can check out the full lineup here