As a correspondent for Fangoria, the world’s best-known horror magazine, I got to go on the set of quite a few scary flicks being made in and around the thriving metropolis of Vancouver, B.C. They weren’t all good movies… …okay, they were almost all bad. But I still had a gas doing them. Thanks Fango! … Continue reading horror in Vancouver
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON JUNE 10, 1993 By Steve Newton The previous movie “based on a short story by Stephen King”, 1992’s The Lawnmower Man, bears so little resemblance to anything King wrote that the horror master belatedly sued to get his name separated from the film. The latest flick spawned by one of King’s short … Continue reading Children of the Corn II is so despicable it makes the lowly original look good
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON JUNE 20, 2007 By Steve Newton Unforgettable haunted-house flicks are extremely hard to come by; the only two I can think of are 1963’s The Haunting and The Shining. The subgenre of haunted-hotel-room flicks is promising in that the number of hotel patrons passing through maximizes the potential for untimely death and … Continue reading Horror review: 1408
ORIGINALLY POSTED ON STRAIGHT.COM, SEPT. 26, 2007 A couple of months back, a promotional item came into the Georgia Straight office advertising the second sequel to the 2002 video-game spinoff Resident Evil. It was a plastic globe that, when you flipped it over, had sand filter down through letters cut into a surface so the words … Continue reading Horror review: Resident Evil–Extinction
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON NOV. 21, 2007 By Steve Newton Writer-director Frank Darabont had skillfully translated the human drama of Stephen King’s work in The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, but he seems hopelessly lost in The Mist , his adaptation of the horror master’s 1980 novella. Its first half-hour echoes the severe lousiness of Maximum Overdrive, King’s first and last … Continue reading Horror review: The Mist
ORIGINALLY POSTED ON STRAIGHT.COM, FEB. 2, 2006 By Steve Newton Not only is Stephen King among the world’s most popular writers, he also has good taste in music. He’s long been known as a devotee of AC/DC and the Ramones, and when it came time to choose a pseudonym to put on the covers of … Continue reading Stephen King calls Marah America’s best unknown rock band
ORIGINALLY POSTED ON STRAIGHT.COM, OCT. 18, 2013 Carrie was one of the most impressive film adaptations of a Stephen King horror novel ever, right up there with The Shining, The Dead Zone, and Misery. In director Brian De Palma’s capable hands, King’s tale of a timid teenaged outsider with telekinetic powers who uses them to strike back against the … Continue reading Horror review: Carrie
ORIGINALLY POSTED ON STRAIGHT.COM, AUG. 11, 2011 By Steve Newton Those Final Destination flicks are hit-and-miss affairs. The ones that take themselves too seriously, like the 2000 original, are a drag, while others, like Final Destination 2 and the new FD5, earn a severed thumbs-up because they cut to the chase and give today’s thrill-seeking horror fans exactly what they … Continue reading Horror review: Final Destination 5
By Steve Newton Swedish guitar hero Yngwie Malmsteen turns 51 on Monday, two days after his appearance in Vancouver tomorrow (June 28) as part of the Guitar Gods show at the River Rock Show Theatre. He’s caused quite a commotion in the hard-rock world in the last half-century or so. Why, just last week he … Continue reading Malmsteen then and now: interviewing Yngwie in 1985 and 2014
all awesome iPhone photos by the Newt By Steve Newton You’ve got to give Billy Idol credit. For a guy whose career peaked roughly three decades ago, he’s hanging in there incredibly well. There’s little flab on the 59-year-old’s tanned bod, and his vocal cords are in fine shape too. Judging by his recent album, Kings … Continue reading Steve Stevens’ sparkly Les Pauls rule at Billy Idol’s Vancouver show
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON FEB. 23, 2011 By Steve Newton Vancouver native Patrick Lussier has made quite a name for himself in the Hollywood horror scene, having edited all three of Wes Craven’s Scream films before taking on the slasher genre himself with the 2009 remake of My Bloody Valentine. He also helped kick-start the past decade’s vampire … Continue reading Drive Angry director Patrick Lussier inspired by classic horror and Canuck rock
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT, OCT. 1, 1992 By Steve Newton 1992 hasn’t been a banner year for horror movies. There hasn’t been anything near as fine as last year’s The Silence of the Lambs in the glut of Stephen King-related/-ripped off losers like The Lawnmower Man and Pet Sematary Two. But things are … Continue reading Horror review: Innocent Blood
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON DEC. 10, 1992 By Steve Newton The job of interviewing Kiss co-founder Gene Simmons is not an easy one, seeing as there are so many things a ’70s rock fan wants to ask the millionaire God of Thunder. You want to glean his views on the price of riches and fame and delve … Continue reading Gene Simmons says Kiss putting makeup on for money is akin to wearing diapers
