For those of you still buried beneath the soil, DARK SHADOWS is coming soon (it’s out May 11th, 2012). Its footage and trailers have been met with much skepticism and backlash, but the anxiety and excitement is still palpable on this website.

The Tim Burton film stars Johnny Depp, Jonny Lee Miller, Michelle Pfieffer, Eva Green, Helena Bonham Carter, Jackie Early Haley and future Oscar winner Chloe Grace Moretz. The following featurette compares Barnabas Collins to all the other famous vampires of our times, and features snippets of interviews from Depp, Haley and Burton and discusses everyone from Bela Lugosi to Christopher Lee. Look for some original cast members from the TV show as well.

We sure can glean a lot from the finale of the saga with these two images. For starters, it looks like the film will again star Stewart, Pattinson and Lautner, a huge surprise to us Twihards. And, they won’t be changing their fashion sense (though it is reported that Taylor, to fans regret, will be wearing a shirt in at least one scene). In all seriousness, we do get see Bella’s red eyes and her new undead form, which tickles me in all the wrong places.

Starring Kristen Stewart as the newly vamped Bella Swan, Robert Pattinson as steadfast husband Edward Cullen and Taylor Lautner as Jacob the werewolf and the sexiest third wheel on the planet, BREAKING DAWN PART TWO is set to come out November 16th of this year, just in time for Thanksgiving, though it’s release will feel more like a Black Friday for its avid fans.

Famous Monsters. So tell me about I, VAMPIRE. Do think this is the first time DC has ever so prominently featured horror characters in its major titles?

Joshua Hale Fialkov. Well, there’s a rich history of horror at DC, back to the House of Mystery and House of Secrets stuff, which are some of my favorite comics ever published. They’re so wonderful and so much fun. Although wonderful might be a weird word for it.

FM. Hey, wonderful works!

JHF. And then, obviously, all the great Vertigo stuff. So there’s a history of it. And the original I, VAMPIRE—when JM DeMatteis did it—takes place sort of in the DC universe. Andrew Bennett met Batman at one point. I think what’s most exciting about the New 52 is that the comics don’t have to be one genre. Even superheroes can branch out. So having this hard horror book that rubs up against the rest of the DC universe is exciting, and a lot of fun because that’s the stuff that always excited me in pre-“Crisis” DC. It’s great to see it come back around.

FM. I agree about the New 52. A lot of the titles are even ressurecting obscure older characters.

JHF. And even just tonally, the tones of all the books are so wide. You really buy all the stuff exsiting simultanously. Everything is so widespread that it makes it makes more sense and feels more cohesive.

FM. Is this the first DC thing you’ve worked on? After doing ECHOES [Image], TUMOR [Archaia]…

JHF. I did a three issue run of SUPERMAN/BATMAN right at the end, before the relaunch… which I think technically I wrote after I had written I, VAMPIRE. But this is my first big DC thing. I’ve done shotgun shorts for Vertigo, and I’ve worked over at Marvel a bunch.

FM. And Batman made an appearance in I, VAMPIRE recently?

JHF. Yes, we had Batman in Issues 5 and 6. And he sticks around just in time for the Justice League Dark to show up. So we’ll have our first proper crossover between JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK and I, VAMPIRE. At the last of each month will be both parts.

FM. Can you tease us for it?

JHF. I can! At the end of Issue 6, Andrew did not come out so well. He didn’t come out of the book quite so… alive. So in the course of the crossover we get to see what it means to not have the one “good” vampire in the world still around. Which mostly involves a giant, evil, ancient vampire coming back to fight everybody. It actually takes the entire team—both the Justice League Dark and the rest of Andrew Bennett’s team, including his nemesis, Mary—to actually fight this giant monster and not get massacred. It’s pretty brutal.

FM. That sounds awesome. I’m very excited about the whole vampires being actual vampires in the DC universe.

JHF. Yeah, I mean, it’s for a couple reasons. One is that you’ve got [Scott] Snyder doing AMERICAN VAMPIRE, which is a very singular way to deal with one class of vampires. You’ve got 30 DAYS OF NIGHT that Steve Niles is doing over at IDW, which is also a very specific kind of vampire. You have the BUFFY vampires. Out of all the books that are doing vampires, nobody’s actually doing the classic Bram Stoker vampire. I didn’t change too much from what happened in the original series, so we’re pretty close in terms of their power sets and everything. And in DRACULA, Stoker really built a perfect set of powers. They’re really powerful, but they have their limits. It was the best way to make them competitive in the DC universe—for them to be able to fight off the various humans and villains that they go up against.

FM. Sometimes it’s best to go back to the archetype.

JHF. Yeah. They have to be strong enough to be a legitimate threat. And I think they are. Not even John Constantine can handle it.

FM. Love Constantine. He’s so much fun.

JHF. Writing Constantine is going to be great! I was sort of anxious about it, because I started writing the Constantine issues the same time I started writing DOCTOR WHO for IDW.

FM. All right!

JHF. And so I was like, I am writing a lot of British people. This is a lot of Britishness. But the two sort of fed into each other, so it worked out, I think. [laughs] Nobody says “blimey” at all, although there are a bunch of “oy”s. I did what I could to keep it as real as possible. As real as a magic user called the Hellblazer can possibly be.

FM. Obviously. So no sparkling vampires, here.

JHF. Well, they’re pretty.

FM. Vampires have always been pretty.

JHF. That’s the thing people forget. The TWILIGHT backlash made people forget that DRACULA is a love story. DRACULA is about a guy who makes himself handsome because he’s in love with some other dude’s wife! That’s what DRACULA is actually about. A gothic horror story is really about love. That’s what I wanted to focus on in the book—how the relationship between Mary and Andrew is sort of the lynchpin, not just with vampires but with mankind’s relationship to them. I tried to do something that’s a little bit bigger, that has wider implications than just, they’re alone in highschool and they’re in love but they can’t sleep together. Which is cool, I mean. That’s Issue 14! Oh man. “Josh, you’re fired.”

FM. I forgot you were writing DOCTOR WHO! The story arc is a retro one, right?

JHF. Yes. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory decide to go on a vacation. A nice seaside trip. All the classic Doctor Who stories start with them trying to take a vacation.

FM. I’ve noticed. [laughs]

JHF. They decide to go to the tip of Africa, because what nicer place is there in the springtime? Except they end up in the wrong year. It’s 1941, the Nazis are marching in, and there’s a giant epic romance that just happens to be taking place in the background as the Doctor faces off against the Silurians. What’s fun about the Doctor Who comics is that they’re structured like the old show, which I’m a huge fan of, but they feature the new Doctor, who I’m also a huge fan of. Getting to write Doctor Who is like getting to write the best of both worlds. It feels like getting to write one of the classic serial stories, while at the same time I get the awesome, modern, crazy Doctor. Matt Smith is so much fun to write. He’s such a great character.

FM. I love Matt Smith. And I’ve talked to people about how Doctor Who is such a great platform, because you can pretty much do anything.

JHF. Yeah. It’s really wide open. Mine is a four-issue story, and the third part came out this week. Then I wrap up the book next month, and then they relaunch the series. So, much like Superman/Batman, I got to put the nail in the coffin.

FM. [laughs] Is that a good feeling or a bad feeling?

JHF. With Doctor Who it’s a good feeling, because I know I’ll get to do more stuff with them down the road. Andy Diggle is taking over the book, which they announced a couple days ago, and it’s going to be great. I’ve heard about what they’ll be doing, and it’s super, super cool. And they’re doing a STAR TREK crossover! Why don’t I get to write that?

FM. Yes! I heard about that. The Next Generation meets the Doctor! Which cracks me up because at the Doctor Who panel at Comic-Con last year, didn’t Karen [Gillan] say she wanted a Star Trek crossover?

JHF. Yep.

FM. They made it happen! Anything else you have coming that you’d like to talk about?

JHF. Can I talk about LAST OF THE GREATS?

FM. Sure!

JHF. The trade paperback is coming out next week. It’s a superhero story about the last of a family of superbeings who come to Earth, give us everything we want, and then we massacre them all. Just in time for an alien invasion… that they actually came here to protect us from. So we have to go back and beg this hateful, resentful, scornful, ten-foot-tall god to please bail our asses out. And it does not go well for anyone involved.

FM. That’s a little bit true to life, except with aliens.

JHF. Yeah, it works. That’s the first series coming out, with Image. Hopefully we’ll get to do more.

FM. I will definitely check it out.

by David Searls

Review by John Scappini

Some things are just too good to be real. When your good fortune can’t be trusted, it’s probably a sign for you to get the heck out of Dodge. That’s a problem some characters have in David Searls’ rampaging thriller, BLOODTHIRST IN BABYLON. The town of Babylon is one off the beaten path in the rust belt and on the road to Detroit. A small, idyllic little town, Babylon is extremely insular. However, a small migrant community begins to grow, and some of them start to ask questions about the fishy circumstances regarding their employment. You see, the townspeople are almost too accommodating in getting the passer-bys jobs and cheap places to stay…

BLOODTHIRST has a few false starts before it really gets off to the races, perhaps lingering a bit too long once the stage is set, but it is definitely worth it once it gets going. The town of Babylon is run by two factions of vampires, the old guard, and a group who want to harvest humans. Keep that one in mind next time you get offered a cushy job, it could secretly be staffed by vampires.

BLOODTHIRST works best when it’s moving at high speeds and covering a lot of territory, plot-wise. There’s a lot of good little tense scenes that’ll have you on the edge of your chair reading. A favorite of mine was the first battle between humans and vampires, and after finally killing these things off—or so they thought—and wiping the sweat and dirt off, you see the vampires themselves get back on their feet, a really chilling moment.

The characters of this story are well fleshed out, which makes the action matter that much more once the fangs start flying. The backstories do a good job of establishing the blue collar mentalities of the passer-bys who do battle with the vamps.

To go along with its vampire intrigue, BLOODTHIRST is a pretty gruesome book. Throats are clawed out, bodies chopped up via chainsaw, you know… all the good stuff. Searls has a magnificent knack for describing hacked up bits of body parts and other gory details.

There are some fantastically groan-worthy lines, such as “I can’t believe I did that. Looking for monsters in the backseat. This is going to be one memorable evening.” and the Bruce Campbell-esque zinger “What you must never do, Van Helsing would have warned, is invite the vampire in. Unless, of course, you needed home court advantage.” While campy and fun, these comedic one liners do nothing to hurt the all-around steady work that is BLOODTHIRST IN BABYLON.

BEING HUMAN
“ALL OUT OF BLOOD”

Season 2, Episode 3

Review by Andy Greene

A show about ghosts, werewolves, and vampires (groan) based on a BBC show that still runs airing on Syfy. That has disaster written all over it. Instead, Being Human is one of the best shows on television. Just three episodes into season two, and it’s clear the show isn’t going anywhere. This week’s “All Out of Blood” is written by Chris Dingess (Reaper), directed by BH veteran Paolo Barzman and as we’ve come to expect, packs an emotional wallop with a shocking twist.

Note: If you haven’t seen this season’s premiere, skip down to the bottom to avoid spoilers.

The show’s central core is about how these monsters attempt and routinely fail at being human (hey, that’s the name of our show), and Aidan is always at odds with his hunger for blood and his desire to be a better man. In this week’s episode, Aidan (Sam Witwer) continues to see newcomer Julia (Natalie Brown), a woman about to start work at their hospital. He struggles not to devour her every time they meet, yet his feelings for her and his vegetarian diet stay his fangs, barely. To make it more difficult, the hospital he works at has finally amped up security due to the massive amounts of blood routinely being stolen from the premises. Video cameras presumably wouldn’t capture his reflection, but now only a supervisor has the key cards to get in to the blood, so Aidan’s stash is running out. There’s probably a simple solution here, but the guy’s starving and delirious, making Julia in danger of becoming his next meal.

While Aidan battles with himself in his burgeoning relationship and seeks out alternative methods to feed, Josh (the great Sam Huntington) and Nora (Kristen Hager) prepare for their second “turn” together (but their first when they know that Nora is, in fact, a werewolf). Sam has purchased two neighboring storage sheds and enlisted Sally to keep an eye on them. Nora, as the full moon approaches, has more and more disdain for this “safe” plan, wanting to be free and to explore the wolf side of her, with or without Josh. Josh is torn on whether or not to tell her that she’s a killer (she ate vampire heavy Hegeman in her first furry go round) to convince her to follow the plan.

Sally (Meaghan Rath) continues to figure out what the hell to do with all her free time. While werewolves and vampires have been done to death (nailed it!), the ghost mythology is relatively untapped in television or otherwise. I don’t count Medium or Ghost Whisperer and neither should you. As such, I always find myself the most interested in what the writers have planned for Sally and the ghost mythology they are slowly constructing. This week, Sally meets Zoe, a nurse who can see her due to her second sight. Zoe is a cranky medium, but helps ghosts be reincarnated in the newborn babies in the maternity ward. Creepy and controversial stuff. Sally immediately becomes drawn to the idea, and tries to convince Zoe of her worthiness for reincarnation. This leads to one of the weirder ‘job’ interviews ever with the whole gang, more insights into the supernatural, and another mild epiphany for Sally on life after death.

While barely in this week’s installment, fans of Dollhouse will recognize the newest addition to the cast, Dichen Lachman as Suren, the new head of vampires in Boston and a key figure in Aidan’s tortured past. Add Julia to the mix and you have perhaps a potent love triangle and more trouble for Aidan, and it’s exciting to fathom the possibilities, because you know the writers won’t shy away from anything.

More than the action and the horror, BH is about the friendship between its trio of monsters, and it’s a real treat watching these actors develop together. They get better with each episode, as their chemistry grows and their camaraderie becomes more rewarding to watch, almost to sitcom-like levels. Despite all of the horrifying things that routinely happen, this is a funny show, and this episode was particularly hilarious in terms of banter. Any show that has a Dawson’s Creek reference and a guy drinking blood out of a refrigerator deserves to be praised. The fact that an episode is funny when a massive, potentially heartbreaking twist occurs right before the third act that will warp the relationships between Aidan, Julia, Josh and Nora is a testament to the writers.

I’ll admit I have not watched the original BBC show, so I have no inclination of how much of the plot and pace of the source material they borrow any given week, but I know good television when I see it. Most shows drag out love stories, prolong reveals till finales or sweeps, while moving at a snail’s pace to keep the show’s foundation unaffected and its audience hanging on for way too long. BH does the opposite: so many unexpected things happen in each episode that fundamentally change the characters and the direction of the show, perhaps the perfect tonic to an audience likely fatigued by vampires and werewolves. But with the consistently excellent writing, acting and plot twists that Syfy and its creators infuses into Being Human every week, I’m in no danger of growing tired of this show.

If you’ve been reading this site recently, you know that we’re a bit crazy for MONOCYTE, IDW’s current bizarre feast of sci-fi horror by Menton3 and Kasra Ghanbari. You also know that we love us some 30 DAYS OF NIGHT and CRIMINAL MACABRE, two fabulous ongoing series courtesy of horror maven Steve Niles. So FM is incredibly happy to report that Niles and Menton3 plan to collaborate on a new project that will have monster fans everywhere drooling into their vials of fake blood.

The project? THE NOSFERATU WARS. That’s right, the writer who originally conceived of 30 DAYS OF NIGHT because he “hated vampires” is about to destroy mainstream conceptions of wimpy vampirism once again, and he’s enlisted the aid of the visionary Menton3 to help him do it.

Says Niles, “I’ve been waiting for years for an artist like Menton3 to come along. He’s an original. He gets it. I couldn’t be more excited to be working with him and I hope NOSFERATU WARS is the first of many dark, twisted projects we do together.”

The promotional images, including this new exclusive, look predictably amazing. Put us on the excited-enough-to-pee-ourselves list, please.

Synopsys (courtesy Marvel.com):
Blade’s mother was bitten by a vampire while pregnant, imbuing her unborn son with vampire strength and a thirst for blood, but without the vulnerability to sunlight. A master of weaponry with a desire to avenge the death of his mother, Blade finds himself in Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Cambodia in an effort to take down the evil villain, Deacon Frost. With vampire hunter Makoto at his side, they will stop at nothing to destroy Existence, a vampire organization with roots deeply embedded in Asia.

Synopsis (courtesy Burn Hand Film Productions):
“Fresh from seminary school a new Reverend embarks on his first parish. A small, low maintenance Chapel based in the quiet idyllic setting of a quiet country village. While on the surface the village seems to be a peaceful parish, with perfect residents, soon it becomes apparent that something more sinister lurks beneath the façade of a local businessman. On a wet, cold night a mysterious girl visits The Reverend at the chapel. Cold and upset she is welcomed in warmly, soon it becomes apparent that her visit is not for sanctuary but to deliver a message, a message in the form of a deep, bloody bite… Awoken with an unknown, uncontrollable thirst a confused Reverend can find no evidence of the girl from the night before, with nothing but the thirst and memory of the bite, The Reverend embarks on his mandate, to clean up the village and the neighbouring estate, by preaching or feasting. With striking visuals from one of Britain’s rising directors, a stellar cast of horror legends, packed with action sequences, gore, Vampires and chicks and an original story loosely based on the Biblical book of Job. The Reverend promises to leave you thirsty for more…”

The film has no US release date set yet. Stills and trailer below…

I finally broke down and bought a Kindle this year and no the world didn’t end. In fact I am very happy I did. I will first and foremost always love the feel of a real book; the fragrance, the crisp clean pages being turned and the weight of it gently held in my hands.

The Kindle has allowed me to read the back catalogs of many authors I love that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able afford to do. Plus, a lot of publishers and authors are sending me Kindle books for review, which is a lot better than PDF’s. As I had to print the PDF books out. So all in all, I believe the two mediums can co-exist in my life.

Now, I would like to thank all the publishers and authors that sent and continue to send me review copies. It is greatly appreciated as I seem to have a never ending supply of books to read.

I would also like to thank my readers who continue to follow my reviews, as well as follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

Without all of you this would not be worth it. I do what I can to give back to the genre that has kept me entertained for many a year, kept me sane, got me through some very tough times and continues to be my entertainment medium of choice. BOOKS RULE!!!!

I do have to say that 2011 was a banner year for horror fiction in my opinion. I read some simply amazing books this year. What follows is a list of every book I read during 2011. I read 64 books of varying lengths along with various magazines, newspapers, on-line articles etc. As you can tell reading is a big part of my life and who I am.

I probably started another 20-30 books or so,  but for some reason or another I didn’t like them. There are various reasons for this; I just didn’t like the story, poor spelling, grammar and punctuation, not my type of book etc. I will not read a book I don’t like just for the sake of doing a review on it. I have a huge TBR pile and don’t want to waste time on something I am not enjoying. I am not saying that they were all bad books I just didn’t like them and as we all know we can’t like everything.

I will also be publishing my Top Books of 2011 List in the next week or so, once I finalize my selections.

Garden’s Of Night – Greg F. Gifune
Lord Of The Mountain – William Ollie
Valley Of The Scarecrow – Gord Rollo
A Matrix Of Angels – Christopher Conlon
Regret – Gabrielle Faust
What The Night Knows – Dean Koontz
As I Embrace My Jagged Edges – Lee Thompson
The Bone Tree – Christopher Fulbright
Alice On The Shelf – Bill Gauthier
The Disappeared – David B. Silva
Willy – Robert Dunbar
The Pumpkin Man – John Everson
Fifteen Minutes – William Ollie
Dreams The Ragman – Greg F. Gifune
Vampire Hunters 2 – Scott M. Baker
It Drinks Blood – J.F. Gonzalez
The Gaki & Other Hungry Spirits- Stephen Mark Rainey
Bloodrush – Bryan Smith
Frankenstein- Dead City - Dean Koontz
Arena Of The Wolf – Jim Gavin
Midnights Angels – Tony Richards
Hunting The Moon Tribe – Darvid Arganoff
Heart Of Glass – David Winnick
Ursa Major – John R. Little
A View From The Lake – Greg F. Gifune
The Blackest Heart – Vince Churchill
The Five – Robert McCammon
Predatory Instinct – Michel McBride
Descent – Sandy Deluca
The Red Empire – Joe McKinney
The Kult by Shaun Jeffrey
Halloween Spirits – Edited by Lisa Morton (Anthology)
Little Boy Lost – TM Wright
Voyeurs of Death – Shaun Jeffrey
Kingdom Of Shadows – Greg F. Gifune
Martyrs & Monsters – Robert Dunbar
Valley Of The Dragons – K.H. Koehler
Iron Butterflies Rust – Lee Thompson
Beautiful Hell – Jeffrey Thomas
Planet Of The Dinosaurs – K.H. Koehler
Sea Of Serpents – K.H. Koheler
Into Hell – William Ollie
Midnight Solitaire – Greg F. Gifune
Dead Of Winter – Brian Moreland
Take The Long Way Home – Brian Keene
The Creeping Kelp – William Meikle
Kayla & The Devil – Brian Smith
Blood Harvest – James A. Moore
Fangboy – Jeff Strand
The Night Eternal – Hogan  – Del Toro
Subject Seven – James A. Moore
Verland; The Transformation – B.E. Scully
Catching Hell – Greg F. Gifune
Vampire Hunters 3 – Scott M. Baker
11/22/63 – Stephen King
Borealis – Ronald Malfi
Waiting Out Winter – Kelli Owen
Heretics – Greg F. Gifune
When The Leaves Fall – Paul Melniczek
Apartment 7 – Greg F. Gifune
Darkness Falls – Allan Leverone
In Poes Shadow – Anthology
Blindspot – Michael McBride
Where Darkness Dwells – Glen Krisch