This February 2nd Punxsutawney Phil has declared that we’re in for six more weeks of winter. What better way to celebrate this unwanted news than by recalling suicide attempts (fictional suicide attempts silly, by the wonderful Bill Murray in the equally wonderful Groundhog Day). As unthinkable as it is to contemplate the loss of one of comedy’s all time greats, It is pretty good fun watching Murray’s obnoxious weatherman Phil Conner’s attempting, and failing, to kill himself four times in this 1993 comedy classic. So without further adieu let’s countdown the the ways that Phil tries to escape the never-ending curse that is a perpetual February 2nd in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

1. The class teenage girl favourite; toaster in the bathtub (I believe It is a different toaster to man-eating toaster in Ghostbusters 2, It could be related though. I’m not sure).
2. Stepping in front of a truck.
3. Taking a swan dive from some sort of tall clock-tower thing.
4. Driving himself (and Punxsutawney Phil, the infamous fat Groundhog rat thing) off a cliff-face, into a quarry, and a sweet fire-ball of death.

But that’s just the visual stuff, Phil also confides in ‘wet weekend’ Andie MacDowell that he’s been ”stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted, and burned.” Technically then, Phil has died some eleven times. Poor bastard. But fun memories.

So on this February 2nd let’s all raise a glass to you Mr Bill Murray (and Harold Ramis) for putting this bizarre American tradition on the pop culture map. And while Dan Aykroyd is pulled out of a metaphorical tree stump stump every year to predict the coming Spring of Ghostbusters 3, It would seem that the rest of us will have to linger in the perpetual 1984 as Bill Murray continues to deliver an unending winter for everyone’s favourite ghost franchise (collective sad face).

Happy Groundhog Day. Yeah.

This is a great movie legend that goes a little something like this: In the 70s and 80s German TV networks were showing an ‘uncut‘ version of Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal masterpiece Psycho. Now this revelation, whilst true, isn’t quite as exciting as it sounds. There’s no new scenes, alternative endings, or sci-fi revelations featuring Fu Manchu, but there is some 20-30 seconds of extended footage during some key scenes. So here’s the history; In the 60s and 70s Psycho slowly made Its way around the world TV markets. As it reached different countries each made various cuts to fit their own domestic censorship and corporate laws. Countries including the US, UK, New Zealand, and Norway all made cuts to the final product. The slightly cut US version is the one we widely accept as the definitive Psycho and it’s this cut that has been used for VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray releases ever since. But it would appear that it was the Germans who made no cuts whatsoever to the movie and those lucky so-and-so’s have been enjoying a TV cut that the rest of us haven’t been privy to ever since. Check out the images below for a breakdown of the extended uncut scenes as seen on German TV. Hey Universal Pictures, get this cut out on DVD, make some money and make us happy.

Norman spies on Marian undressing:

The sequence with Norman spying on Marian is notably longer, featuring prolonged shots of Janet Leigh undressing. And yes that’s even a little side boob right there. Of course It’s no surprise that scenes featuring partial nudity (especially prior to scenes of violence) were cut at that time. This adds a good 10 seconds to this sequence.

Normans’ bloody hands:

After the shower sequence Norman drags Marian’s body out of the bathroom and examines the blood on his hands. In the German cut the sequence is again longer and prolonged, this time dwelling on the blood on Norman’s hands. Hitchcock tracks Norman’s bloody palms all the way through the doorway to the sink where he washes the blood off. An obvious case of too much gore for many censors.

The death of Arbogast:

This scene was always pretty terrifying with or without cuts. Norman, in full insane mode, runs out of Mother’s room in full old-lady get-up, slashes Arbogast diagonally across the face, opening him up like a letter, watches him fall down the stairs (where Hitchock employed that truly bind blowing and boggling effect to make it appear that Arbogast stayed on his feet the entire way down, so that the viewer could experience the true horror in his expression), and finally stabs him to death at the foot of the staircase. The German cut again elongates the violence, with far more thrusts of Norman’s knife into Arbogast. In the original we see Norman raise and pluge the knife once, In this cut we see the knife plunge repeatedly toward Arbogast.

So there we have it. You certainly won’t learn much more narratively from these extra 30 seconds or so of footage. But there is something to take from all this. Hitchcock’s original version of the move, as it was in the can, lingered and dwelled longer on scenes of semi-nudity, blood, and violence then we realised. Presumably, the cut that’s done the rounds in Germany for the past four or five decades in the version he intended the world to see in the first place.

I adore man vs nature movies, I have done ever since I saw Leslie Nielsen bare-chest wrestling a bear in Day of the Animals (1977). The thought of seeing Liam Neeson (who’s really carved out a surprising career as a tough guy in the past decade) fighting wolves in the Alaskan wilderness was an easy sell. But whilst The Grey certainly delivers on man vs nature genre conventions It’s also trying to be something a lot more. Director and writer Joe Carnahan wants to take us on a brutal journey that is as much about survival, masculinity (aka some serious bromance), and loss as it is about running from rampant wolves. And It’s not just the narrative that’s a surprise, Carnahan really slaps you in the face from the get-go with a tone and visual style which is not at all symptomatic of genre movies. The Grey feels more like a hard hitting gritty drama which, has way more in common with Carnahan’s Narc (2002) than it does his A-Team (2010). There’s certainly some wonderful snow filled cinematography, but on the whole Carnahan keeps things handheld and frantic.

Gore hounds and action fans shouldn’t fear though, you still get plenty of both. The numerous wolf attacks and the spectacular plane crash sequence are all worthy of note. Again Carnahan has opted to keep the action close in frame and handheld. Gone is the slick, high octane action of The A-Team, instead this is bone crunching, wince inducing stuff from start to finish. Another victory comes in the lead performance from Neeson who finally turns in an action performance with room for acting. Forget about Neeson’s recent turns in The A-Team, Clash of the Titans, or Unknown, here Carnahan has managed to drag the same kind of gruff leading man performance from him that he did from Ray Liotta in Narc.

The true outstanding factor of the movie however is the insistence on location shooting. With the beautiful wilderness of British Columbia standing in for Alaska, you can feel the cold experienced by the actors, see it in their red-raw hands, frozen lips, and steam breath. Yes there’s obviously work done on sound stages, but for the most the cast and their stunt doubles are wading through knee high snow, running through frozen woodland, and jumping into icy streams for real. And that gives the movie a real visually visceral edge. In keeping with this commitment, Canahan keeps the CGI wolves in the background and in the shadows for the most part, deploying them sparingly and during attack scenes, whilst also thankfully delivering real wolves and animatronics.

Not everything is perfect however, and some of the gushing reviews are a little generous in my opinion, as this is not a film without flaws. There’s a flashback too many for sure, some of the film’s metaphors are shoved down your throat where a little more subtlety is needed, and the dialogue is in places to perfect and profound for a group of men that are as grittty and in as nasty a situation as the film wants us to believe. Neeson in particular has some dialogue which is just too overly profound in certain situations. In short the dialogue at times jars with the style. However these are small gripes in the larger picture. Hats off to Carnahan and Neeson who both show us what skills they still have to offer.

Liked The Grey? make sure you check out Deadly Movies Top 5 (non werewolf) Movie Wolves here

The death of the video rental store is a well trodden topic on blogs and in columns, so I’ll try to keep this short. Now I’m not some old kook complaining about the death of an unwanted, useless technology. I am old enough to remember visiting video stores to hire movies on VHS  as a kid. I’ve always enjoyed the library type quality of the video store, and the even greater browsing quality, even when you know what your looking for. Then of course came DVD, Blu-ray, and then on-demmand. Blockbuster pushed out the local video store and Netflix eventually pushed out Blockbuster. You know the story. Of course whilst each newcomer cornered the market, each respectively put up their prices when consumers had nowhere else to consume: When your local video store got trodden on by Blockbuster up went the BB night rentals, when Blockbuster all but went bankrupt up went those Netflix subscriptions.

In the past year three of my local video stores have shut down, one Blockbuster and two independents. In the past 8 months I’ve done what the market dictates I do In response to this; I’ve got my home entertainment online via the usual sources of downloaded and streamed content, as well as on-demmand services direct to my TV. But here’s the thing, I just can’t settle on enjoying movies on my laptop, even if they are of good quality, which often they’re not. And as for on-demmand movies from Netflix or your cable/satellite provider, the quality and selection is there (ok, selection still needs to be worked on for obscure movie fans) but there’s no beating the sheer experience of visiting the local movie store. So It was with great pleasure that today, after 8 long months of downloading and streaming, I’ve finally found a video store to become a member of. One with a huge selction of titles and a great horror back catalogue.

Let’s wrap with the original title of this ramble: The death of the video store? This much touted phrase is a little apocalyptically dramatic for my liking. I liken it to vinyl stores. There’s probably more vinyl record stores out there now than there was in the mid 90s when record stores were all but extinct at the hands of the mighty CD and then the advent of downloads. Why? Because people love to collect and browse music just like they do.., movies! Video stores are going to continue take a big hit over the coming decade, and who knows, my newly discovered local store may not even exist in twelve months time. But there will always be a place for the video store, and for the surviving ones, I have this message; hold on tight, you’re becoming so niche that you’ll be super hipster soon and teenagers in black-rimmed glasses will be flocking to your store (which means the prices will go back up again.., you just can’t fucking win).

Coming up with great movie wolves that aren’t werewolves is harder than you may think, especially these days when animals tend to be realised by shitty CGI (looking at you The Day After Tomorrow wolves). Most horror movie wolves tend to be of the Were (aka lycanthrope) variety, which sucks because I’m of the firm belief that werewolves should be man-wolves and not the on-all-fours types you find on the Discovery Channel. So without further adieu here’s Deadly Movies favourite non-werewolf wolves:

5: Disney’s Big Bad Wolf (1933 – Present) and Tex Avery’s Wally Wolf (1942 – Present). These two guys are, for many, the first exposure to the classic Big Bad Wolf. Disney’s wolf was a kind of insane hobo who started his cinematic career as the arch nemesis to those winging pork-chops The Three Pigs. With his love for cross-dressing, demented eyes, and a grin worthy of any British dentist, Disney’s wolf is a character symptomatic of a time when animation didn’t dumb it down for the kids. Tex Avery’s wolf was even more of a freak, a sex freak in fact, who had the permanent horn. Yes this is the proverbial dog-with-two-dicks. Where Disney had their demented hobo, Avery channeled Hollywood leading men such a Clark Gable for his wolf that wanted nothing more than to bone a plethora of starlets who would shake their junk up and down fancy martini soaked stages.

4: Black Wolves in ‘Wolfen’ (1981). The embodiment of gods or spirits? Super intelligent beings? Metaphor for the Native American plight? I’m not exactly sure what the definitive answer is, but the black wolves in 1981′s Wolfen are pretty bad-ass. Roaming the deserted streets of South Bronx ripping out the throats of executives and bums alike, these fuckers aren’t choosey. Interestingly they also have Predator vision (including Predator audio) a full six years before McTiernan’s sci-fi classic.

3: Gray Wolves in ‘Frozen’ (2010). These wolves aren’t particularly evil as such, they just know a free meal when they see one. But when Dan (Kevin Zegers) takes a tumble off the stricken chair-lift, breaking his leg in the process, the ensuing wolf attack is nail-bightingly savage and stomach churning. I mean seriously, can you imagine just sitting there as wolves chewed at you face-parts whilst the misses looked on from 50 feet above? Brutal.

2: Badass Alasken (presumably Gray Wolves) in ‘Grey’ (2012): These wolves select themselves for this list for one simple reason; If you’ve ever bare knuckle fought with Liam Neeson wearing broken glass gloves then you deserve to make any kind of Top 5 list, such as: Top 5 fights with Liam Neeson, Top 5 broken glass wolf fights, or Top 5 people from both Star Wars and Batman franchises that you’ve had a fight with if you’re a wolf. Oh and like the Frozen wolves they also bite faces off, which is neat.

1: The Gmork in ‘The Neverending Story’ (1984). One of the most terrifying sights from my childhood. The Gmork is freak-show, taunting and stalking poor Atreyu throughout Wolfgang Peterson’s classic children’s adventure. Yes he spends most of his time gurning through a whole in a wall with his animatronic snout lurching absurdly from side-to-side (you really feel for Alan Oppenheimer trying to match up the voice to the random mouth movements) but his piercing yellow eyes, protruding (double rowed) fangs, and fierce overbite have kept dry cleaners in business for three decades (yes that’s a pants soiling joke).

In 2010 I was invited to the UK press screening of Platinum Dunes remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. On a wet London evening I had to surrendor my cell phone and (embarrisingly old) backpack in exchange for a shinny press kit containing pages and pages of information praising the cast and crew who had ‘re-invented‘ a horror legend. Well, we all know how that turned out (see Deadly Movies review here). One such page heaped praise upon up-and-coming leading lady Rooney Mara, a real find and star  of the future it suggested, performing in her first real feature film of any notability. Deadly Movies was less than complimetary toward Mara’s performance back in 2010, in fact I barely mentioned her in the review at all (which is saying something as she was playing Nancy, one of slasher’s leading ladies). What little I did have to say about her can be found in these uninspiring words:

“ In trying so hard to make Nancy a ‘plain Jane’ (as opposed to Katie Cassidy’s hot but disposable blonde) the filmmakers have forgotten to give her any personality. In fact she’s incredibly boring.“

Ouch. So It’s time to eat some pie. And I don’t mean the kind of apple pie that only your mum makes. I talking hot, steaming, and surprisingly tasty, humble pie. Rooney Mara’s performance in David Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is one of the standout reason to see the movie (along with Fincher’s usual visual flair). The transformation in 12 short months from Nancy to Lisbeth is staggering. And hats off to Fincher for making this bold, brave, and very surprising casting. Mara’s physical transformation in both the literal and performance sense results in a wonderful display in a very demanding role. Not only was Fincher asking Mara to up her game tenfold for a role that involves traversing very heavy subject matter balanced with the always tricky obstacles of a foreign accent and well placed comic timing, but she also had that Elephant in the room to deal with; Noomi Rapace’s deservedly lauded turn as Lisbeth in the original Swedish Larsson-trilogy. In short It’s a mind blowing leap in performance that has rightly earned her an Oscar nod for best actress and, for me at least, the main reason I’m keen to see Fincher head back to Sweden for two more outings with Lisbeth and Mikael.

There’s always those moments in movies you forget about, especially in awesome and notorious films. You tend to remember those famous moments – sure you remember the Ghostbusters defeating the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man but do you remember than Ray gets a blowjob from a ghost (and yes that actually happens in the movie, take a look here)? When it comes to this Universal classic monster movie  you tend to recall those iconic moments like The Creature swimming upside-down stalking Julie Adams or carrying the poor swimsuit clad damsel through the corridors of his dark, dank cave (as immortalised in the infamous poster). So it always comes as a pleasant surprise upon re-watching that The Creature (aka stuntman Ben Chapman) gets set on fire and takes a swan-dive off the side of a boat, safely putting himself out in the recesses of his trusted Black Lagoon. Setting characters on fire is always a pretty cool spectacle for audiences. Setting a Universal classic monster on fire is all the more satisfying. And just to satisfy your burning (get it? Burning!?) curiosity, here’s a close up of The Creature having his face and tits well and truly barbecued.

Lets have a quick and very paraphrased history lesson. Back in 1996 Kevin Smith landed the dream gig of pitching his vision of a rebooted Superman to Warner Bros and producer Jon Peters. Smith’s never-made ‘Superman Lives‘ makes for long and fascinating reading. The project never made it to fruition because of major creative differences between Smith and Peters. Peters had some very misguided and very shortsighted ideas of how to approach a new Superman movie. Typical of the 90s approach to superhero films, Peters wanted to change the source material as much as possible, rather than embrace and celebrate it which, is thankfully the trend we largely see today. Amongst Peters’ demands were that Smith’s Superman was to wear a black costume (apparently red and blue was too “faggy”), wasn’t to fly (a Superman that doesn’t fly? Go figure), and had to fight a giant mechanical spider during the movie’s finale. Incidentally Peters would get a giant mechanical spider in 1999 in his totally not dogshit production ‘Wild Wild West‘. Smith actually managed to turn a script in that met all of these whims of a lunatic and was still removed from the project.

These daysWB has much more sense when its comes to its DC prpoerties (‘Green Lantern‘ aside, woops) and this is no more evident than in the wondrous animated features produced under the banner of DC Universe Animated Original Movies. 2007′s ‘Superman Doomsday‘ (a PG-13 with some pretty awesome slug-fest violence) features an animated version of none other than Kevin Smith taking a great side-swipe at Jon Peters. As Toyman scales a building in a (you guessed it) giant mechanical spider and is suitably nailed by clone-Superman, Smith can be heard saying “like we really needed him to bust up the mechanical spider right? Lame!” (and yes that is Smith’s voice). It’s a great moment that shows just how far WB has come in the treatment of its most valuable asset.

The Friday the 13th franchise is probably full of more moments of randomness and hilarity than any other famous horror franchise. The Friday films have never taken themselves quite as seriously as their counterparts, with directors and writers trying to insert in-jokes, parodies, and humour into tight budgets and short shooting schedules. There are far too many wacky scenes to fit into a Top 5, so consider the moments below as less definitive and more a homage to the oddness that distinguishes the wonderful world of Friday the 13th.

5: Jason turns into a little boy in his underwear in ‘Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan’ (1989): With a title that’s more reminiscent of ‘Debbie Does Dallas‘ than a horror movie, Friday the 13th Part 8 is a pretty campy two hours. Things take a turn for the really odd when the daddy of brutal homicide is incomprehensibly  turned into a child by sewage cleanser. Yep sewage cleanser. It turns out that after all that carnage all you had to do was throw toilet bleach at the big man.

4: Worm-thing Jason crawls up-skirt in ‘Jason Goes to Hell’ (1993): Ummm…, Jason is a worm thing when he’s not in his zombie body.., apparently. So when a body is needed Jason-Worm (who I guess is a bit like Brundle Fly) makes like a paparazzi in need of rent and heads for the nearest vagina. Classy.

3: Jason wears a fetching pair of Chinos in ‘Friday the 13th Part 3D’ (1982): Before joining the ranks of the unwashed undead, Jason just wanted to be a beloved member of the yachting fraternity. What better way to achieve this than to adorn a swell pair of Chinos. Not only does this fashion choice look ridiculous on one of horror’s great serial killers, it also makes him look like a science teacher at a high school dance.

2: Jason’s mask explodes in ‘Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood’ (1988): Ahh Tina, along with Tommy Jarvis, one of Friday’s most loved characters. And what better reason to love her than the fact she made Jason’s infamous hockey mask explode off his face revealing a kind of pissed off bulldog beneath. Unlike the FBI in Part 9, this explosive action isn’t caused by gun powder or air-strike but rather by the power of the teenage mind. Obviously.

1: Jason surfs an RV in ‘Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives’ (1986): Jason is surfing an RV with fire trails. That’s all I have to say on the matter.

Obviously there are many other cool moments in the Friday franchise, you can see some others here, like Crispin Glover does his wacky dance or Bernie from ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ makes his Friday debut. Sweet memories. Happy Friday the 13th everyone.

Feel free to share your favourite Friday moments below

Luke Halpin was once a smooth, baby-faced, teenage dreamboat. His satin-like face scrawled across countless teen magazines during the 1960s. Halpin was best known for his role as Sandy Ricks (a name almost as smooth as his goose-fat-like smooth face) in the ‘Flipper‘ movies and TV shows. But when Haplin had had his fill of teenage girls (not sure about the wording there) he moved onto to bigger, scarier, and hairier things. With new found man testosterone coursing through his veins, Halpin turned his hand to more adult movies including the fabulous 1977 Nazi-Zombie schlocker ‘Shock Waves‘. As the manly named Keith, Haplin grew an equally manly and notably noble moustache (equalled only by his flowing Greek-god-locks). Haplin’s moustache commands the screen and the respect of both Nazi-Zombies and 70′s hottie Brooke Adams. It’s moustaches like this that won the war.