On this day GEP shares this pitch video for a series entitled FEAR NATION by Glass Eye Pix and Rob Kuhns (BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD). A chilling reminder of our nation’s past at a time when our future is uncertain and a tribute to the horror genre’s ferocious power to explore terrifying truths about ourselves.

Kate Lyn Sheil Is a Perfect Actor Who Deserves Your Attention

By Matt Mahler

Sheil stars in the new film, The Seeding, but has an immaculate career worthy of your attention. She’s the best.

Kate Lyn Sheil is a one-of-a-kind actor, like one of those rare lunar events you better grab the telescope for, lest you wait 60 years for that true blue moon. From her early mumblecore days when she seemed the Anna Karina to Joe Swanberg’s Godard, or the Michelle Williams to Amy Seimetz’s Kelly Reichardt, through intense horror films, myriad shorts, and quirky dramedies, Sheil has made a career out of tipping scales. A good film becomes very good when she crosses over, and great becomes greater.
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Perhaps the greatest instance of this is in Rick Alverson’s masterpiece, The Comedy, perhaps the apotheosis of ironic detachment. Starring the brilliant comedian Tim Heidecker in one of the most stunning dramatic performances given by any comedic talent, the film follows a wealthy man-child lost in the depths of anhedonia. He is constantly searching for a feeling, often going to disturbingly uncomfortable lengths to try and capture one, insulting cab drivers, acting like an idiot in a church, and generally disrupting people’s lives.
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As is evident, [Joe Swanberg’s] Full Moon trilogy is very much about the art of acting and the fiction of filmmaking (with acting as a kind of lycanthropy). It’s an interesting facet of Sheil’s career, a kind of meta tendency toward self-reflexive trickery. Of course, some of this is because of the family affair of mumblecore, where actors and directors blended into each other, often making movies about themselves. Swanberg and Seimetz, Lawrence Michael Levine, Kentucker Audley, Lena Dunham, Sophia Takal, Ti West, Jane Adams, Larry Fessenden — they were all starring in and directing each other’s films (while Gerwig, Bujalski, Duplass, and Duplass were doing the same, mostly elsewhere). It was a truly special time in cinema that feels sadly over.
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Read full tribute at Movieweb

Fessenden appears with Sheil in YOU’RE NEXT and SILVER BULLETS. THE COMEDY is a Glass Eye Pix production featuring Sheil. Sheil performs in the TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE episode “The Stranger.” And as always there have been unrealized collaborations too.

I have just learned (from Ted Geoghegan on X) that David J. Skal was killed by a drunk driver on Jan 1st. Skal wrote some of my favorite books on the horror genre and Halloween. Essential reading for horror fans to understand the context in which the iconic monsters were born and popularized.

Glass Eye Trivia: in the TALE FROM BEYOND THE PALE episode entitled THE VAMPIRE PARTY, which was based on a true story, the movie “critic” that the filmmakers were hoping to meet was in fact David J. Skal whose attendance was assured by our hosts. In real life, he didn’t show.

Fessenden on location in Iceland shooting aerial shots for THE LAST WINTER

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Go behind the scenes of the making of UNTIL DAWN in this extensive article by Jack Yarwood at timeextension.com

“Think Scream versus I Know What You Did Last Summer”

… “To have a project that was just at the point of getting good shuttered and taken away from you was yeah, at the time, a little bit soul-destroying,” adds another source. “But I have massive respect for what Supermassive did with it. I think if there was ever a final product of something you worked on, I couldn’t have asked for a better job to have been done of it.”

Supermassive Games’ version of Until Dawn was first announced at Gamescom 2012 and underwent several revisions of its own before eventually being released in 2015 as a title for the PS4. For instance, the game dropped the PlayStation Move requirement as it was no longer deemed a necessary component, the American horror writers Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick joined the project to write the script, and a decision was also made to move development over to Guerrilla Games’ Decima engine, which had originally been used to develop 2013’s Killzone: Shadow Fall…

Read article at timeextension.com

Larry Fessenden (Lt Col. Clive Hockstatter in Brooklyn 45)

I really enjoyed Ted Geogahn’s World War II chamber piece because its ensemble of characters pulled the tale in all sorts of fascinating directions, but its catalyst is undoubtedly Lt. Col. Clive Hockstatter played by genre stalwart Larry Fessenden.

Fessenden’s manic, heartbroken turn as a grieving army man sets the supernatural events of Brooklyn 45 in motion, and he continues to play a disturbing part of proceedings throughout.

see full list here!