News
Teacher Facing Five Years in Prison for Showing Gory Horror Film to Students
Released in 2012, the anthology film ABCs of Death is comprised of 26 vastly-different short films, each one centering on a death scene that’s tied to the letter of the alphabet each director was given. Gory and at times downright disturbing, it’s not the sort of film that’s for the faint of heart, to say the least.
It’s unclear why she did it, but The Columbus Dispatch reports that a substitute Spanish teacher for the Columbus City Schools for whatever reason showed ABCs of Death to her students in April of 2013, their ages ranging from 14 to 18. The 58-year-old woman, Sheila Kearns, does not speak Spanish, and so she would often show the kids movies to keep them occupied.
After one of the students let the school’s assistant principal know that Kearns was showing them R-rated films, the substitute teacher was promptly fired, and she went on trial yesterday in Common Pleas Court. She faces five felony counts of disseminating matter harmful to juveniles, which could land her in prison for five years.
According to Kearns, she had her back to the screen at the time the horror film was shown, and she claims she had no idea that the subject matter was so violent. She also insists that she thought the film was in Spanish, indicating that she showed it to the students as some sort of teaching aide.
Ten men and two women will decide Kearns’ fate, the jury tasked with determining whether the impromptu screening fits the definition of obscenity under Ohio law. In addition to the time she could spend in jail, each of the five charges carries a fine of $2,500.
Personally, I’m not sure the punishment fits the crime here, as five years in prison for showing ANYONE a movie of ANY SORT is quite frankly ridiculous. If anything, Kearns is a neglectful dolt who should’ve known better – but it’s hard to call her a criminal, simply for showing kids a horror movie.
Yes, ABCs of Death is indeed loaded with blood, guts, semen and even feces, as the Assistant Prosecutor points out, but at the end of the day it’s only a movie. Most kids aged 14-18 have already been exposed to plenty of fictional violence, so again it’s hard to really say any damage was done to their minds here.
Give her a slap on the wrist and send her packing. Anything more is a bit excessive.
And why the hell would a school appoint a non-Spanish speaking teacher as the substitute for a Spanish class? Serves them right…
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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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Movies
‘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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