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The Hollywood Horror Museum presents two very accomplished visionaries in horror as board members, directors John Carpenter and Greg Nicotero. Also in today’s Horror Highlights: details on the all-female directed anthology, Xx, a Toxic Avenger marathon on El Rey Network, and Nitehawk Cinema’s screening of both Wicker Man movies in New York.

Hollywood Horror Museum Members: Press Release: “The Hollywood Horror Museum is proud to announce today, that legendary directors John Carpenter and Greg Nicotero are its two newest board members. The museum which has been showing up at various conventions will be touring later in the year before it finds it’s permanent home in 2017. The interview will be made (if available) upon request.

John Carpenter is the writer, producer, and director of many genre classics including Halloween, Escape From New York, Big Trouble in Little China, The Thing and They Live. Greg Nicotero is director and producer of The Walking Dead,...

If you love horror marathons, Halloween has got to be your favorite season. Don't forget Epix network has a great one entitled All Hallows' Evil Halloween Movie Marathon that features the premiere of Nightmare Factory and now offers fans the chance to win a prize!

All Hallows' Evil Movie Marathon brings us nine fright films including Nightmare Factory, which is an Epix original documentary about F/X masters Knb Efx. The marathon kicks off at 8 p.m. on October 30th and runs through Halloween.

To support the premiere, Epix is hosting the Nightmare Factory Halloween Contest from October 24th-31st. Fans can enter for a chance to win a custom ghoul or vampire bust created by Knb. To participate, fans must submit a photo of their best Halloween look (make-up and/or costume) to Epix via the official Epix Facebook page or via Epix on Twitter (@epixhd). Entries should include...

Premium network Epix gets special with the effects when it presents “All Hallows’ Evil” Halloween marathon, October 30-31. The evening features 9 demonic-plagued films, including the World Premiere of the Epix Original Documentary Nightmare Factory at 8pm on October 30th.

Nightmare Factory, is a 90-minute documentary about the acclaimed Osca-winning Hollywood special effects house Knb, responsible for creating The Walking Dead zombies and the makeup effects for close to 1000 feature films.

Directed by Donna Davies (Zombiemania), the doc is the story of how one Pittsburgh boy’s fascination with monsters drove him to the very top of the Hollywood food chain. In 1989, Greg Nicotero, much to his parents’ chagrin, quit medical school and headed for Hollywood to pursue a dream of making monsters.

Read more...

For the past seven years, Rob Sacchetto has made a living by hand painting people as the living dead. To date, he has zombified over 2700 people from around the world, including George Romero, Tom Savini, Max Brooks and Greg Nicotero. We previously featured Rob on our Indie Spotlight and wanted to run a separate Q&A feature to find out more about his life as a zombie artist:

For our readers who are unfamiliar with Zombie Daily, can you tell us a little bit about the work you do?

Rob Sacchetto: I was drawing Zombies as early as grade 4 or 5 among other things, and have consistently drawn them since then. They were never a fad to me. I didn’t just start drawing Zombies recently because they’ve become more in vogue. I’ve always drawn monsters, dinosaurs, robots, and sci-fi/horror stuff all of my life.

What was...

With the 12th annual and venerated Screamfest L.A. Film Festival running this Friday, October 12th, thru the 20th, we chatted recently with Nightmare Factory writer, director and co-producer (with Dan Stewart) Donna Davies regarding her documentary on FX legend Greg Nicotero.

The flick is set for its La debut Saturday, October 20th, at 1:00pm. Read on for the trailer and an exclusive still!

Nightmare Factory (which features appearances by Howard Berger, George A, Romero, Quentin Tarantino, John Carpenter, Frank Darabont, Robert Rodriguez, John Landis and Elijah Wood, among others) focuses (according to the official synopsis) on ‘Greg Nicotero, who in 1989 quit medical school and headed for Hollywood to pursue a dream of making monsters. Together with gore masters Howard Berger and Robert Kurtzman, Nicotero went on to create Knb Efx Group, one of the most prolific make-up effects studios in the world. Nightmare Factory (review here) delves inside...

No self-respecting horror fan should ever admit they don’t know who Jovanka Vuckovic is. Former editor-in-chief of Rue Morgue (the best horror magazine out there, in my opinion), she is an expert on the horror genre, a filmmaker and now a horror author. Her brand new book, Zombies! An Illustrated History of the Undead, has just hit stores and belongs on every horror fan’s bookshelf.

Dread Central recently had the opportunity to interview the multi-tasking Vuckovic about her new book and her upcoming short film as well as her opinion on everything from slow zombies vs. fast zombies to the state of horror as a whole.

Dread Central: Hello, Jovanka, and thank you for taking the time to talk about your new book, Zombies! An Illustrated History of the Undead. I suppose the first and most obvious question would be: Why zombies?

Jovanka Vuckovic: I actually didn’t choose the subject.

For most of you, Max Brooks needs no introduction. He wrote the novel "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War," which is currently on the road to getting a big screen adaptation with Marc Forster directing a script from Matthew Michael Carnahan.

Brooks was kind enough to take some time to chat with me a few weeks ago while he was promoting the Starz Inside documentary, "Zombiemania," which you can catch replays of this week (check your local listings for times). During the interview, I had to ask for a kickass zombie movies list to run with this week's special Halloween coverage. Brooks was more than happy to oblige, and he delivered quite a list. The last one in particular blew my mind, and I welcome anyone who's seen it to write in their reviews in the comments section below or @MTVMoviesBlog on Twitter.

"Night of the Living Dead...

Starz Inside: Zombiemania, directed by Donna Davies and produced by Kimberlee Mctaggert (the team behind Pretty Bloody) premieres tomonight, Tuesday, October 13 at 10:00 p.m. on Starz! This documentary is a fun look at the Zombie craze around the world.

Featuring clips from a vast library of Zombie films and Zombie experts, including the “grandfather of Zombie films” George A. Romero and best-selling author Max Brooks, it traces the evolution of the Zombie from its roots in African folklore and Haitian Voodoo to its current role as pop culture icon. Watch the trailer, and then watch tonight...

How do you kill a Zombie? How can you kill something if it’s already dead? We’ve been told to shoot them in the head or take a machete to the brain. Hey, whatever works. It beats being eaten alive, right? Starz Inside: Zombiemania (Tuesday, October 13 at 10:00 p.m.) is a...

Starz has been in the habit of cranking out a few horror documentaries under their Starz Inside label. There was Fantastic Flesh last year and Bloodsucking Cinema the year before that. Now, Starz Inside: Zombiemania is set to premiere tomorrow, Tuesday, October 13 at 10:00 p.m. on Starz. Featuring clips from a vast library of Zombie films and Zombie experts, including the "grandfather of Zombie films" George A. Romero and best-selling author Max Brooks. The documentary traces the evolution of the Zombie from its roots in African folklore and Haitian Voodoo to its current role as pop culture icon. Here's a trailer!

Zombiemania, the documentary about zombie movies that has appeared on Canadian television and was screened at the 2008 ScreamFest, is finally coming to America! the documentary will debut on Starz Inside next week, October 13 at 10 p.m. to be exact, via the power inside satelittes, cable, and your televisions.

Zombiemania includes interviews with George Romero, Max Brooks, Tom Savini and more, and while we found it to be a little too scattered for our tastes in our review, there is plenty of interest for the zombie fan. So check it out!

If you have Starz, that is.

Source: MTV...

Established 1974! Our news column has a fantasy but no island.

The Remake Game

Sony Television is planning another go at Fantasy Island, Variety reports. Sony and super-producer Mark Burnett (of Survivor expertise) are teaming to mount a reality show version of the 1970s TV fantasy. The object for contestants: making the dreams of others come true. No TV network has signed up yet for this Island incarnation (although both the original show and its 1998 revival ran on ABC). For more, see this link.

Just before Dick Cook was removed as Chairman of the Walt Disney Studios in mid-September, he greenlit the 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea prequel/remake to be directed by McG (of Terminator Salvation and Charlie’S Angels fame). Presumably, new Chairman Rich Ross (whose new job was announced yesterday) will Still be happy with the idea of another Disney voyage for Captain Nemo and the Nautilus.

Richard Matheson...

If you haven't read it, "World War Z" is one of the sharpest books to be released in the past decade. Set in a grim possible future, the book is presented as a series of interviews with survivors of a globe-spanning zombie war, an incident which very nearly brought about the downfall of human society. Author Max Brooks, the son of Hollywood filmmaker Mel Brooks, employs the full spectrum of commentary to create a frighteningly believable scenario in which the human race responds to a complete societal breakdown.

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak with Brooks, who is busy promoting his upcoming appearance on the Starz Inside special Zombiemania, premiering October 13 at 10pm. He was more than happy to discuss the adaptation plans for "Z," which was picked up by Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment a few years ago.

First, some back story may be in order.

"Starz Inside: Zombiemania" will be giving fans a full blown history of the evolution of the zombie from its roots in African folklore and Haitian Voodoo to its current role as a pop culture icon. The behind the scenes, fun look at the Zombie craze around the world will premiere on Tuesday, October 13 at 10:00 pm Et on Starz.

Fans can catch interviews from "The Grandfather of Zombie Films" George A. Romero and best-selling author Max Brooks. The evening will be hosted by film critic and author Richard Roeper.

The evening will also feature a variety of clips from a vast library of Zombie films and Zombie "experts." Films such as "Night of the Living Dead," "Dawn of the Dead," "Shaun of the Dead," and dozens of others will be discussed.

Clips from the following films will be included:...

Zombies. They're kind of a big deal these days. The release of "Zombieland" this week is only the latest example. The past few years have seen a surge in popularity for the mindless flesh-eaters, with films ("Shaun of the Dead") comics ("The Walking Dead," soon to be a TV show) and video games ("Left 4 Dead").

Books too: in 2006, Max Brooks published "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War," one of the most unique and original takes on the shambling movie monster popularized in the 1960s by George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead." The author added his voice to a number of others -- Romero included -- for a discussion of zombies in the present-day cultural zeitgeist on the Starz Inside documentary "Zombiemania," which airs on October 13 at 10pm. Brooks, who was kind enough to take some time out yesterday for a chat, believe there's...

The notion of the zombie existed long before George Romero's seminal 1968 horror flick, The Night of the Living Dead, spooked a generation of film-goers. Zombies actually have their grisly origin as a component of the magical religion, Vodun (more commonly called 'Voodoo'). They were corpses that had been reanimated by a witch doctor called a bokor, who uses the bodies to do his bidding. Often these zombies, as the stories go, were mistaken for being living human beings. In the earlier part of the twentieth century, western scientists went on expeditions to Haiti to get to the bottom of the zombie legends, and while no hard conclusions were reached, some of the scientists speculated that zombies were, in fact, real, and that they were victims of a bokor who used the poison found in pufferfish to essentially cause them brain damage, making them susceptible to the bidding of their masters.