Attention NYC Fans, IFC Center continues the Glass Eye Pix 30th Anniversary tribute with two midnight screenings (tonight 10/23 and tomorrow 10/24) of THE ROOST, the debut film from Ti West.

For more info and tickets, head over to IFC Center.

A few new posts from around the web celebrating The Fessenden Collection,
now available online and at your favorite brick and mortar shop.

“It’s impossible to speak on independent horror/genre films
without mentioning the name Larry Fessenden.
FESSENDEN’S SET EASILY WINS BEST BOXSET OF 2015.”
Icons Of Fright

PICK OF THE WEEK!
The set’s worth it for The Last Winter alone (along with its numerous new extra features)
as the film is an utterly fantastic piece of eco-terror,
but it should be a blind buy for Fessenden fans anyway.
Filmschoolrejects.com

“Whale. Castle. Carpenter. Craven. Fulci. The great names of horror.
But maybe there’s another, less known talent that should be added to this list.
Larry Fessenden may never have had their commercial success,
but the New York filmmaker’s impact on modern American horror,
both artistic and personal, is indelible.”
The Austin Chronicle

“Larry Fessenden’s films may be an acquired taste, but there’s no doubt
a small but loyal faithful has acquired that taste, and it
will be more than sated by Shout! / Glass Eye / IFC’s new Blu-ray box set,
which offers imperfect but strong presentations
of four of his films in HD and throws in a laundry list of bonus features to boot.
Recommended”
DVDTalk

“THE LARRY FESSENDEN COLLECTION is a gateway into
one of the most under-appreciated and compelling minds in horror storytelling.
It’s hard not to become engrossed into Fessenden’s eerie and original worlds,
and his perspective on nature, human nature and interpersonal drama
in times of duress is unlike any other.
THE LARRY FESSENDEN COLLECTION comes highly recommended,
and once you check it out, there will be little doubt
that he’s deserving of the “Master of Horror” mantle.”

Fangoria

Noel Murray of A.V. Club took a detailed look at THE LARRY FESSENDEN COLLECTION, out now on Blu-Ray from Shout! Factory.

From the A.V. Club Piece:

Digital media has its advantages—portability and durability chief among them—but there’s still no substitute for a good, extras-packed DVD or Blu-ray box set when it comes to putting important work into a larger context. The Scream! Factory/IFC Midnight/Glass Eye Pix co-production The Larry Fessenden Collection contains nice-looking transfers of four feature films by the New York art-horror impresario: 1991’s anti-vivisectionist Frankenstein riff No Telling; 1995’s vampire/addiction drama Habit; 2001’s man-vs.-nature monster movie Wendigo; and 2006’s global-warming eco-thriller The Last Winter. But just as important are the collection’s commentary tracks, interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, and samples of Fessenden short films and documentaries dating back to the late 1970s. There’s no easy way for a download or streaming video—or even a repertory retrospective—to replicate the archival quality of The Larry Fessenden Collection. It’s the ephemera gathered in this set that makes such a strong case for a filmmaker who’s often overlooked.

For that subset of cinephiles who aren’t horror aficionados, Fessenden is probably best-known for Habit and Wendigo, two films that walk a narrow line between fantasy and naturalistic drama—and that won acclaim from mainstream critics.Habit is the more original work, even though it came out in the mid-’90s amid a glut of similarly allusive and edgy vampire pictures. Fessenden himself stars as Sam, an alcoholic New York artist and restaurant manager who’s dealing with a recent break-up and the death of his successful father when he meets Anna (Meredith Snaider), a mysterious, sexually aggressive woman who unnerves his friends. As their sex gets kinkier and his health declines, Sam begins to share his suspicions within his social circle that he’s dating some kind of supernatural soul-sucker. But because he’s such a dodgy fellow, no one heeds his cries for help. Based on a video project Fessenden made at NYU’s film school—the short version of which is included in the box set—Habit calls back to the improvisational rawness of New York filmmakers like John Cassavetes and Martin Scorsese for a film that’s more an atmospheric, finely observed character sketch than a shocker.

Wendigo is more overtly a monster movie, playing up the ominous portents when a well-off Manhattan family travels upstate to clear their heads in a country house—where they deal with disgruntled hicks and rumors of ancient spirits in the woods. Fessenden had a little more money to work with in Wendigo, as well as a more professional cast, with Jake Weber playing cynical commercial photographer George, Patricia Clarkson playing his wife Kim, and Malcolm In The Middle’s Erik Per Sullivan as their young son Miles. But while the last third of his film becomes ostensibly one long chase through the snowy wilderness, involving a towering, antlered man-beast, Fessenden again seems more interested in what his characters are going through when they’re not living in fear of gun-toting hunters or were-deer. Specifically, Wendigo is about George’s worries that he’s a sellout, and his anxiety over whether he’s providing Miles with a strong enough male role model. In some horror films, those kind of personality details feel tacked-on. In Habit andWendigo, sometimes it’s the horror that seems superfluous.

The two features that flank Habit and Wendigo in The Larry Fessenden Collectionshare some of their strengths—but more of their weaknesses. The Last Winter has an even more polished look than Wendigo, and a higher-profile cast. Ron Perlman, Connie Britton, James Le Gros, Kevin Corrigan, and Zach Gilford play a rugged band of oil-company employees and environmentalists who have differing opinions on drilling in the arctic. But Fessenden’s usual strategy of exploring everyday lives and personal melodramas while minimizing the paranormal (represented here by vengeful, mostly unseen nature-spirits) comes out flatter and more diffused with the larger ensemble. No Telling is stronger because it’s more focused, following a married painter who comes to realize that her relationship is stuck on autopilot—and that her husband may be a secret animal-torturing maniac. Again, Fessenden is more interested in the first half of that revelation than the second, although this time he waits a little too long to shift gears fully from domestic strife to terror. In the meantime, he deftly examines how easy it is for the socially and financially comfortable to become complacent, presuming their lives of privilege haven’t come at anyone’s expense.

Fessenden doesn’t have much of a unifying visual style. His shots are well-composed, and he achieves some expressionistic effects wth camera moves (seen most memorably in No Telling’s rapidly retreating camera) and editing (as inWendigo’s periodic flurry of jump-cuts). But Fessenden uses the little flourishes sparingly. Instead, what carries over in his work is a keen understanding of what preoccupies and often divides people—be it disagreements over public policy or a creeping sense of distrust.

Because Fessenden has only made five features in the past 25 years (the fifth being 2013’s disappointing Beneath), it’s been hard at times to pinpoint exactly what makes him special. The box set helps, because in addition to extensive comments from the man himself, The Larry Fessenden Collection covers a lot of what he’s been doing between the bigger films: making shorts and music videos, serving as a producer for his friends’ horror and art-cinema fare, and working as a character actor. All those other pieces come together here into collage-like picture of Fessenden, showing him as an industrious DIY type, biding his time and staying on the margins so that he can create work of uncompromised personal vision.

In one of the interviews here, Fessenden talks about how the independent film market has changed over the last quarter-century, and how the support of genre fans—a crowd still willing to pay to own movies—kept his company Glass Eye Pix going when the festival and arthouse circuits rejected its output as too esoteric for thrill-seekers and too pulpy for serious adults. The collector’s mentality of those horror connoisseurs is partially responsible for this set. The rest of the credit goes to Fessenden, who’s been quietly assembling an impressive legacy, and now has a handy container to hold it.

FROM EW:

ike some rubber axe-wielding Howard Stern, filmmaker Larry Fessenden is fast becoming the King of All Horror Media. With frequent collaborator Graham Reznick he wrote the 10,000-page script for last August’s video game Until Dawn and he is currently overseeing the third season of his creepy audio drama series Tales From Beyond the Pale, with another longtime associate Glenn McQuaid.

As an actor, Fessenden’s recent credits include FX’s The Strain and the now-available-on-Blu-ray We Are Still Here as well as director Mickey Keating’s forthcoming fright machine Darling and Joe Begos’ telekenesis action-thriller, The Mnd’s Eye. Finally, today, Scream Factory is releasing The Larry Fessenden Collection, a Blu-ray set which rounds up the director’s first four films (No Telling, Habit, Wendigo, and The Last Winter) together with an impressive array of extras, not least the best animated short you’re ever likely to see about a werewolf Santa Claus.

And don’t forget — Today’s the release of THE LARRY FESSENDEN COLLECTION – collecting NO TELLING (1991), HABIT (1995), WENDIGO (2001), and THE LAST WINTER (2006) on Blu-Ray, with tons of special features, a 24-page book of liner notes, and more.

And see what Fessenden says is the scariest movie to watch this Halloween… all at Enteretainment Weekly

NYC’s Posteritati is hosting a Glass Eye Pix 30th Anniversary/Fessenden Box Set Release Party tonight.

As the Facebook Invite explains:

Glass Eye Pix, NYC-based production outfit headed by art-horror auteur Larry Fessenden, celebrates 30 years of fierce independent film with a gathering at Posteritati on the day of the release of the Fessenden Collection, a 4 disc blu-ray box set of Fessenden’s films from Shout Factory.

Posteritati will be presenting a slew of the posters that have marked the Glass Eye brand including Wendigo (2001), The House of the Devil (2009), Wendy and Lucy (2008), Habit (1995) and more! Larry Fessenden will be in attendance and will be signing posters as well copies of his blu-ray box set.

IFC Center pays tribute to Glass Eye Pix (“one of the indie scene’s most productive and longest-running companies” —Filmmaker Magazine) with a series of midnight shows starting Thursday October 8.

See you there!

LA Fans, we’ve got another screening at the ArcLight Hollywood tonight. Slamdance Cinema Club presents a screening of WENDIGO tonight, October 19th, at 8pm. Fessenden and Jake Weber will be in attendance.

For tickets and more info, head over to the ArcLight.

Want to know more about the WENDIGO? Check out THE SHAPE OF THE WENDIGO, featuring Fessenden explaining the origins of his fascination with the myth, directed and edited by Adam Barnick.

Attention LA Fans – ArcLight Hollywood and Slamdance Cinema Club presents a screening I SELL THE DEAD tonight at 8pm. Guests from the film in attendance include Fessenden, Ron Perlman, and Angus Scrimm.

For Tickets and more info, head over to the ArcLight.

Head on over to Blumhouse to see an exclusive mini-documentary interviewing Fessenden about the various forms the Wendigo has taken in his work. From WENDIGO to THE LAST WINTER to SKIN AND BONES and more, Fessenden sheds light on how this mythological creature’s captured his imagination.

Attention fans in the L.A. area! Glass Eye Pix are giving away a limited number of tickets for the WENDIGO and I SELL THE DEAD Arclight screenings mentioned above! Just email GlassEyeTix@gmail.com for a shot at one of 100 free passes for each showing. But act fast — these will sell out quickly!

Exclusive art/comments: “RE-ANIMATOR” reunion and more in Glass Eye Pix’s third “TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE” lineup

Filmmaker and Glass Eye Pix topper Larry Fessenden and I SELL THE DEAD creator Glenn McQuaid (pictured) have more sonic nightmares coming in the third season of TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE audio dramas, and they gave Fango the scoop about some exciting contributors, plus an exclusive first look at the promo art.

“This new collection is, after a few years of taking our show on the road, a return to the comforts of the studio,” McQuaid tells us (the TALES recorded live at this past summer’s Fantasia festival will be part of the fourth season). “I’m very proud of the results. After five years in the business, the audio format is opening up to us in new ways, and these 10 TALES are a wonderful edition to our crazy canon of stories. They make for a diverse, inventive and, I believe, vital horror anthology.”

One of them sources H.P. Lovecraft, and was created by the team behind the classic features RE-ANIMATOR and FROM BEYOND. “Our first show was directed by Stuart Gordon and written by his longtime partner Dennis Paoli,” Fessenden reveals. “It’s a Lovecraft story called ‘The Hound,’ and Barbara Crampton is in it and Richard Band is doing the music.” The eldritch author’s tale concerns graverobbers who steal a magic amulet from an interred body, with grisly consequences, but Fessenden promises there’s a lot more to the TALES version. “The original story is like three pages, and it has been wonderfully embellished. I won’t say much more, except that Barbara’s character shows up with a whip [laughs]. It’s a very rich piece, and Glenn did some spectacular sound design for it. I think you’ll enjoy the creaking of the bed—let’s leave it at that!

“Then we have [THE HITCHER and NEAR DARK screenwriter] Eric Red,” Fessenden continues, “which we’re very excited about. He’s written a crazy one about…well, I don’t want to reveal too much, but it’s very special. Brahm Revel, who did all our comic books, has got one, and some old pals are back like James McKenney [of AUTOMATONS and HYPOTHERMIA] and Jeff Buhler, who’s been doing a lot of work out in Hollywood and has done all three seasons of TALES; Glenn, of course, has one, and I do too. The whole lineup is very exciting.” McQuaid adds that genre journalist April Snellings also has a TALE on tap.

There’s new blood involved on the visual side as well. “We have original paintings [including the poster seen above] by Graham Humphreys, who is famous for his British posters for THE EVIL DEAD, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and others,” Fessenden says. “He has an amazing legacy, and it’s very important to TALES that the images be strong. We just can’t wait to release these to the listeners; we’re figuring out our release plan now. There will be, as always, physical media too, because we want to celebrate the possibilities of artful packaging.” Stay tuned for further details, and visit TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE’s official website.

read story here

Fessenden’s WENDIGO included in awesome list of 10 cool fright flicks from Calum Marsh of DETAILS magazine:

See WENDIGO on the big screen 16 & 17 of October in NYC at IFC or 19 October in Los Angeles at the Arclight