Really Awful Movies: Ep 69b – Practical Effects and The Butcher Shop

We were lucky enough to visit Hamilton’s The Butcher Shop, which specializes in and is dedicated to designing and creating unique and high-level makeup effects, creatures, prosthetics, human replicas, specialty props and gore effects.

With almost 20 years experience designing special makeup effects and gore gags, Carlos Henriques and Ryan Louagie’s incredible effects work has been featured in ground-breaking independent films, TV series, music videos and haunted attractions.

Carlos Henriques (pictured) was kind enough to not only give us a tour of his shop, but to chat with us about why he does what he does. We love practical effects, and while we acknowledge that occasionally CG is required, it should be used sparingly. Nothing beats a nice bloody practical effect. The boys from the Butcher Shop have practical effects down to a science.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 68b – Fatal Pictures’ Zach Green and Richard Powell

At Really Awful Movies, we love to shine a spotlight on emerging talent in the horror genre. So when one of us caught the short film Heir currently making the festival rounds, we thought “We’ve got to talk to these guys!”

Heir is the brainchild of Fatal Pictures and stars Robert Nolan and the hardest working man in indie-genre cinema, Bill Oberst Jr. It’s a singularly disturbing and powerful piece of art that accomplishes in 15 minutes what many feature films fail to do in 120.
Fatal Pictures, comprised of producer Zach Green and writer/director Richard Powell, have thus far made four shorts. Starting with Consumption in 2008, Fatal has also made the “boxcutter” trilogy – three films, Heir as well as its progenitors Worm and Familiar.  Each film stars Robert Nolan and is an unbelievably effective piece of psychological horror. Familiar is currently available for download on iTunes.
In this interview, we discuss the genesis of Fatal Pictures, the advantages of starting with shorts rather than jumping straight into features, funding and production, and of course, the films themselves. Fatal Pictures is one to watch – we can’t wait to see what they do next.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 65 – Horror-Rama 2015

We were honored to be asked to cover Horror-Rama 2015, the second edition of Toronto’s only all-horror convention. The brainchild of Luis Ceriz and Chris Alexander, Horror-Rama is a fun-filled weekend of guests, vendors, panels, screenings and parties. Bigger and better than last year, this year’s edition featured some incredible guests. A fantastic time was had by all!

In this podcast, you’ll hear interviews with:

George Mihalka – Director, My Bloody Valentine

Sybil Danning – Hercules, Battle Beyond the Stars, Howling II…Your Sister is a Werewolf

Linnea Quigley – Return of the Living Dead, Night of the Demons, Silent Night, Deadly Night

Ian McCulloch – Zombie, Zombie Holocaust, Contamination

Tristan Risk – American Mary, The Editor

Michael Berryman – The Hills Have Eyes, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Devil’s Rejects,

Debbie Rochon – Tromeo and Juliet, Slime City Massacre,Killer Rack, Model Hunger

Cherie Currie – Lead Singer of The Runaways, Parasite, Twilight Zone: The Movie

Corpusse – Musician

Chris Alexander – Horror-Rama Co-founder, Editor ShockTillYouDrop.com, Queen of Blood, Blackglovekiller

Enjoy!