News

‘Power Drill Massacre’ is an Homage to VHS, Sleazy Slashers and PS1

Published

9 years ago

August 16, 2015

Call me old fashioned, but I miss the good ol’ days of survival horror when it was you and your wits, no weapons (or at least very limited), a somewhat simple plot, the cheesy dialogue and of course, the really cool killers these games seemed to have. I remember playing Alone in the Dark on 3DO and being floored by it. I still bust that game out from time to time to play.

Then along came Resident Evil and changed that game. I’m not saying that as a negative. Regardless of how that series started to go downhill after Resident Evil 4 (or wherever depending on your opinion), but after it hit the scene, just damn near every survival horror game had to involve a secret bio-chemical company with an evil plot – I’m looking at you, Clock Tower: The Struggle Within. There’s another good example; Clock Tower. I love the first game to pieces. I thought the setup and plot was great, Scissorman is a cool villain and I liked how the character you play as depends on a situation in the prologue. It, along with many other survival horror games, had branching paths which would allow you multiple endings and enhancing the replay value.

Then of course, you have your Silent Hill games, which added a whole new level of psychological horror elements rather than being more jump scares. Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of all of that. All the series I mentioned, Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil and Silent Hill all became heavily more combat focused and only began to offer boo scares. Of course, with Summer Camp and Until Dawn coming out soon, that could all change, but recently I stumbled upon a game that is a throwback to all that, graphics, sounds, music and all.

Power Drill Massacre from developer Puppet Combo on PC and Mac looks like it belongs in the Playstation 1 era, sporting really polygonal graphics, a synthy score and even janky controls (luckily you can plug in a controller and it plays much better). The plot is rather simple: A teenage couple gets into a car wreck leaving the girlfriend (you) unharmed and looking for help. You stumble upon a creepy looking building, which is usually a good sign, and upon entering it, the door locks behind you. You must search for an exit while accidentally uncover what happened in this building and what it means for you. Oh, and there is a masked psycho wielding a power drill chasing you.

The game is purely for fans of not only the old style PS1 survival horror games and sleazy slasher films of the early 80’s, but of VHS fans as well, since the game has a video option that enables the graphics to look like it’s playing on an old VHS tape. I had a lot of fun with this game and it was great to have that old feeling back. The game is also dripping with mood and suspense since the killer will literally jump out at any moment. There are two endings available, which is a lot for a game that is an early demo/proof of concept. Puppet Combo is making a sequel with slightly better graphics and a deeper story to add more gameplay, but keeping the same spirit. You can follow their Facebook for updates. It’s free to download from their site, so play it and remember the good times.

[youtube id=”BX93EdS_64U”]

And for a quick look at the Power Drill Massacre 2…

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Movies

‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

Published

10 hours ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

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:

^{High Desert Hell}

^{The Gemini Project}

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Movies

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

Published

12 hours ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

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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News

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

Published

14 hours ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

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.