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‘Home Alone’ as a Horror Film: Unearthing ‘Deadly Games’

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The killer Santa in "Deadly Games"

I try to watch “Home Alone” around this time every year, and one of the thoughts that often pops into my head is that this plot would make a great horror movie. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered Rene’ Manzor’s “Deadly Games” on Shudder, and even more surprised when I discovered it came out a year before “Home Alone!”

Manzor’s 1989 film has been known by many names, including “Dial Code Santa Claus,” “Game Over,” “Hide and Freak,” and “Deadly Games.” It stars Thomas (Alain Musy), a 10-year-old genius who programs computers, builds gadgets, dresses like Rambo, sports an awesome mullet and believes in Santa Claus. Thomas’ mother owns a chain of toy stores, so he has all the toys a kid could ever want, and he lives in a mansion full of high-tech gadgets.

"Deadly Games" is like "Home Alone," but horror

Deal / Garance / L.M. Productions

Using Minitel, an internet precursor, Thomas thinks he’s telling Santa what he wants for Christmas. However, a psycho (Patrick Floersheim) uses a public terminal to pose as Santa and find out more about Thomas. He steals a Santa costume, paints his beard white, and stows away in a delivery truck bound for Tommy’s home. The intruder leaves bodies in his wake before breaking into Thomas’ house — coming in through the chimney, of course.

His mother is working on Christmas Eve, and Thomas is home taking care of his elderly grandfather. He’s determined to prove that Santa is real, so he’s rigged his mansion with surveillance cameras and staked out a spot. When the deranged Santa shows up, a thrilling cat and mouse chase ensues. However, Thomas is hardly helpless. He uses his security cameras and an array of booby traps to keep the madman at bay.

Tommy in "Deadly Games," dressed like Rambo

Deal / Garance / L.M. Productions

Whereas the “Home Alone” films lean heavier on the humor and feature cartoonish violence, “Deadly Games” is grisly in a grindhouse vein. It also has a lot of heart, and I really enjoyed seeing Tommy protect his diabetic, partially blind grandfather.

There are some truly beautiful shots here. My favorite is of Floersheim in his Santa suit standing in the snow with an eerie light behind him. It’s magical, even with the bloody knife in his hand.

“Deadly Games” is destined to be a Christmas classic. I’m just so glad this previously forgotten gem is now available to a wider audience. It was only available by bootleg VHS until 2018, when the American Genre Film Archive restored it. The film made it’s North American premier at last year’s Fantastic Fest in Austin. It’s now available on Blu-Ray and it’s currently streaming on Shudder.

If you’re looking for a new movie to add to your Christmas season watch list, I can’t recommend this one enough. Check out the restored trailer below:

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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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.

Evil Dead Rise

“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:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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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.

Happy Sad Confused

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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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

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.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

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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