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John Hurt Left an Indelible Mark on Cinema, Including Horror
After a career that spanned six decades replete with memorable performances, including a pair of Oscar nominations, John Hurt succumbed to cancer yesterday aged 77,
From a heartbreaking turn as John Merrick in The Elephant Man that earned him a Best Actor nomination to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to An Englishman in New York, Hurt demonstrated time and again that he was one of the most gifted and versatile actors audiences have had the pleasure of witnessing.
Whether a film delved into drama, humor or even horror, Hurt was always up to the task.
In 1979, a year after Hurt was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Midnight Express, he appeared in one of science fiction and horror’s most revered pictures, Ridley Scott’s Alien. As a crew member aboard the ill-fated Nostromo, Hurt’s Kane was the first in a litany of actors to fall prey to a facehugger, and left audiences frozen with fear in a scene that has not lost an ounce of its intended effect nearly forty years after it was seared into our collective memory.
For horror fans, none will ever forget where they were or how they felt the first time they laid eyes on the chestburster scene. The look of disbelief and terror on the faces of Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto and the helpless scream of Veronica Cartwright mirrored our own emotions. The word indelible comes to mind, and special effects aside, we have John Hurt to thank for that.
It didn’t end there, however. Hurt was magnificent as High Chancellor Adam Sutler in the Wachowski sisters’ V for Vendetta, a dystopian tale of corruption and oppression that was horrifyingly fascinating on one hand, but possesses a chill that runs much deeper in our present world.
Hurt demonstrated range that offered equal humanity to a character considered a side show attraction and authenticity to a paranoid tyrant. To say nothing of his father-like turn as Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm in Guillermo de Toro’s Hellboy, a film that found the English actor portray a scientist who raises an infant demon conjured by Nazis with gentleness, affection and understanding.
For all the love and adoration that has poured out from colleagues and fans since news of Hurt’s passing, perhaps none said it better than Hellboy’s writer and director, del Toro.
"I wish Father was here- he would know what to tell us…" pic.twitter.com/ABfg5wI62L
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) January 28, 2017
Hurt himself once said “We are all racing towards death. No matter how many great, intellectual conclusions we draw during our lives, we know they’re all only man-made, like God. I begin to wonder where it all leads. What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how.”
Hurt’s best was something to behold, and all genre of film, including horror, are forever in his debt.
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Movies
‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments
It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.
We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.
“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”
That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”
Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:
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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening
Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.
Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.
Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.
Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.
Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.
The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.
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News
Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date
Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.
Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.
These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:
According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”
Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.
Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.
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