Oh, a doubly good reason to be happy emerges today, folks, as we’ve got a lovely combination of joy coming our way. The combination in question is “Spanish horror” and “the IFC“, by way of Kidnapped. They may call it Sequestrados over in Spain, but for us, it’s Kidnapped, and it’s all kinds of awesome.

Kidnapped follows a family who’s recently moved into a new house. A stressful time, sure, but when the three of them get reasonably settled in, they have a nice family dinner to celebrate. Of course, it doesn’t last long when a group of armed men bursts into the family’s new house and breaks up the celebration by taking the entire family hostage. They’ve come for money, but they’ll get a lot more than that when the family starts fighting back.

You know when you kick your movie’s first five minutes off with a semi-conscious guy with his hands tied behind his back and his head in a tied-shut plastic bag, you know you’re in for something really big and impressive. It’s too unaccountably bizarre not to be impressive.

But it only gets substantially more so from there, and when I say more so, I mean, “more so”. It’s only going to get more violent, more nerve-wracking, and more downright unnerving from its already mind-blowing beginning. It’s easily one of the most aggressively disturbing thrillers I’ve run into in a long time. You could call this horror, sure as you’re born, but that’s almost a misnomer. This is a pure, wild hunk of thriller, and if you want stuff that will keep you up at night, this one should qualify.

I’ve always said that the scariest movies are the ones that feature events that might actually happen to you at some point. While being chased through the woods by an undead juggernaut with a machete and a kill count the size of Texas isn’t too likely, and thus not scary, getting your house broken into by thugs who mean to take your money and threaten your family to ensure your compliance is the stuff of front page news, and thus, is incredibly scary.

The Spanish have already shown their incredible talent for thrillers and horror film, and Kidnapped will not let you down if you’re fond of the scary. The IFC bringing this one into wider release is a development that’s just insanely welcome, and if you want something that will make you cringe in your seat, this is exactly the stuff you’ve been waiting for.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Kidnapped a full ten out of ten for being an intense and thoroughly plausible thriller that will leave you checking your door locks for days afterward. The IFC’s really got a winner with this one.

Red Riding Hood, from the director of Twilight, will be released on June 14th on Demand, for Download, and Blu-ray combo pack.

We are hosting a giveaway in conjunction with the release of the movie. I have two (2) prize packs to send your winners.

Prize Pack Content:

• Cable Cash (which is $5 off the winner’s cable or satellite bill)
• Canvas Roll-up Bag
• Tribal Wolf t-shirt

Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight) directs a fantasy thriller that puts a haunting twist on the classic fairy tale. For years the villagers of Daggerhorn have maintained an uneasy truce with a werewolf – but the beast changes the stakes by killing the older sister of beautiful young Valerie (Amanda Seyfried). Promised in marriage to one man but in love with another, Valerie has her life dramatically affected yet again by the creature’s bloody actions. When a werewolf hunter warns that the beast takes human form by day and walks among them, panic sets in as the death toll rises. And Valerie learns she has a unique connection to the wolf that inexorably draws them together, making her both suspect…and bait. Gary Oldman, Billie Burke, Shiloh Fernandez, Max Irons, Virginia Madsen, Lukas Haas and Julie Christie also star.

To enter the giveaway, post your name and I will pick the winner June 24, 2011.

Remember: Watch it your way, On Demand, For Download and on Blu-ray combo pack.

“Come on Tom. Let’s finish it they way we started it, together.”

I am so looking forward to the midnight run. I hope to get seats in the IMAX 3D Theater. When the movie gets to the third act, I don’t know if I will be sad, knowing the franchise is ending, or so into the movie I don’t even think about it. Woe is me!

Screenhead held a giveaway for two Roger Corman DVD/Blu-ray combo packs to four lucky movie lovers!

I am happy to announce the winners!

We will start with Mark Schultz, who didn’t have much to say about the movies. Next winner, Richard Hansen said, “I thought I was old. These are old movies.” That is very true Richard. Debra Wellenstein is the next winner, and she said, “What fun movies! Thanks!” You are welcome Debra. Finally, Tracy also won and she  said, “love old time moves.”

Thanks everyone for joining the giveaway. We always have more, just keep visiting and entering by posting your name.

Here is what Mark, Richard, Debra and Tracey won:

The first one is Roger Corman’s 1963 thriller The Terror – restored and in HD for the first time ever – will be available in a special DVD/Blu-ray combo pack April 26, 2011.

In 18th century France, Lt. Andre Duvalier (Jack Nicholson), an officer in Napoleon’s army, has been separated from his regiment. Wandering near the coast, he spies a young woman (Sandra Knight) and calls out. When she fails to acknowledge him, he follows her into the dark surf and loses consciousness.

He awakens in a house, tended by an old woman, Katrina (Dorothy Neumann), who claims not to know the mysterious lady. On his way again, Andre comes upon the castle of Baron Victor Frederick Von Leppe (Boris Karlof).

There he learns that the girl is in fact the spirit of the Baron’s late wife being used as a pawn by the witchy Katrina, who is bent on driving the elderly Baron to suicide.

Famous for being shot on leftover film sets from other productions, The Terror, produced and directed by Roger Corman, has been released under several titles (Lady of the Shadows, The Castle of Terror and The Haunting) and more recently aired as episodes of the syndicated TV series Cinema Insomnia With Mr. Lobo and Elvira’s Movie Macabre (Oct. 3, 2010).

The second one is produced by the celebrated B movie icon Roger Corman and directed by the legendary Francis Ford Coppola, 1963’s terror-ific Dementia 13 will be available in a special DVD/Blu-ray combo pack, April 26, 2011.

Considered Coppola’s first mainstream, “legitimate” directorial effort, this gothic psychological thriller – based on a story idea Corman penned in one night – was shot for a budget of $42,000. The majority of the American actors were college pals of Coppola, many of whom paid their own way to Ireland for the opportunity to appear in a film. Although Coppola promised “lots of sex and violence,” Corman later battled with Coppola and hired director Jack Hill to shoot additional scenes of carnage. For years, it was rumored that the film’s print had mysteriously disappeared. Now, Film Chest makes Dementia 13 available to fans, restored and in HD for the first time ever!

After inadvertently causing her husband’s fatal heart attack, Louise, a scheming young woman (Luana Anders), attempts to have herself written into her wealthy mother-in-law’s will.

Forging a letter from her deceased spouse to convince his family he’s away on business, Louise – determined to get into their good graces – pays a surprise visit to the ancestral home in Ireland. With other family members gathered at the foreboding castle, she joins in a morbid ritual to honor Kathleen, her sister-in-law who died mysteriously seven years earlier.

When an axe-wielding lunatic begins murderously stalking the gatherers, her plans are permanently interrupted. But which one is the killer?  Is Louise – or one of the other peculiar mourners, each with a dark motive – willing to do anything to gain fortune?

Witness an exorcism performed by legendary Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins) in The Rite.

Believe it or not, this movie is inspired by true events and is on the streets wherever DVDs are rented and sold. Screenhead worked with Warner Bros to help promote the thriller. We ran a giveaway for three lucky winners of a movie night package. It includes a free iTunes download of The Rite and a coupon for a large pizza from Papa John’s. We had a lot of interested readers in this giveaway but only three winners. Alas!

Here are our winners. Lynda E. says, “This kind of stuff scares the bejeebers out of me, but I’ll probably watch it anyway.”

Em Savidge says, “Love Papa John’s – and would love to win this movie – great prize combo (all it lacks is beer!)”

Dara Nix says, “We LOVE Papa John’s AND Anthony Hopkins in this house.”

So, thank you for offering your comments. It’s been a great giveaway.

This is what Lynda, Em and Dara won:

Papa John’s Pizza Card
iTunes gift card for the purchase of the movie.

Watch it your way: On Demand, For Download or on Blu-ray combo pack.

Inspired by true events, this supernatural thriller follows a seminary student (Colin O’Donoghue) sent to study exorcism at the Vatican in spite of his own doubts about the controversial practice and even his own faith.

Only when sent to apprentice with legendary Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins), who has performed thousand of exorcisms, does his armor of skepticism begin to fall. Drawn into a troubling case that seems to transcend even Father Lucas’s skill, the young seminarian glimpses a phenomenon science can’t explain or control – and an evil so violent and terrifying that it forces him to question everything he believes.  What do you believe!?

Dustin Hoffman and Susan George starred in the original Straw Dogs, which was directed by Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch). That was in 1971 when movies like Straw Dogs was unheard of, but today, I will use the old cliche, they are a dime a dozen. Honestly, I don’t feel anything special about this remake.  If you read the logline, it’s practically word for word except for the locations of where each movie takes place. The original took place in rural England while the remake takes place in the deep South.

The remake stars James Marsden, Kate Bosworth and Alexander Skarsgard, which is directed by Rod Lurie. The trailer looks great, and I am sure the movie is just as good as the first one. It’s just that I am not a fan of remakes. Let’s have originality!

The folks out at Image Entertainment have given us a lot of great movies to work with, but they’ve also occasionally brought out some stuff that defies description. Burning Palms will definitely match that description nicely.

Burning Palms is a series of five vignettes that join a group of people out in Los Angeles whose lives–and by extension, their stories–are plain old bizarre. There’s a father and his daughter, whose relationship is a little too close for dad’s new fiancee’s comfort. A gay couple finds themselves playing host to an African child. A man’s bizarre bedroom fetish is a little more than his girlfriend can handle. A boy takes his brothers on an adventure that may cost them more than they think. And a woman who finds herself attacked has an unusual request for the man attacking her.

Weird, weird, weird, folks–there’s simply no other way to describe Burning Palms. It’s an endless string of weird. And this is both credit and flaw. While there is pretty much nothing like what you’ll be seeing with Burning Palms–the closest analogue is Crash, and frankly, that still doesn’t do the job all the way. This is like some spectacularly weird hybrid of Crash and, maybe, Creepshow. It’s actually a little on the scary side, to be honest. People are going to wind up dead here, and they’re not going to die pleasantly. Or normally, for that matter.

Burning Palms is an endlessly unsettling affair that’s full of strange things. And yet, at the same time, it’s actually pretty funny, a lot of the time. Perhaps this is the hilarity of the so very disturbing that there’s no other way to process it, but it really doesn’t matter because at many points it’s a riot on par with anything a college can turn out after a football game.

Sometimes it’s creepy, sometimes it’s hilarious, and sometimes it’s both. But one thing it will never be is predictable.

Burning Palms is a hilarious and disturbing little chunk of strangeness that’s going to be utterly unlike anything you’ve seen before. It’s not for everybody, and you’ve got to be prepared for that. But if you actually do decide to take on this strange, twisted and occasionally uproarious nightmare, you’ll be left with an experience that’s wholly unique.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands Burning Palms a seven out of ten. It’s going to be entirely too weird for most people to handle, so bear that in mind should you decide to catch this one. But if you do, know that you’re in for something the likes of which you’ve never seen before.

First off, a happy Good Friday to all our readers who celebrate it out there, and though it made the pickings today somewhat sparse, I managed to take advantage of the day to get an eyeful of Hanna, which will turn out to be pretty impressive, for the most part.

Hanna takes us out to Finland, where sixteen year old title character Hanna has been living with her father. Her father, meanwhile, has an unusual purpose in mind for his little girl. He’s been training her to be an assassin most of her life. Eventually, Hanna finds herself “ready”, and tells her father the same, kicking off a series of events in which Hanna is picked up by CIA agent Marissa Wiegler, who takes her to a safe house in Morocco. Marissa has a mission: to kill Hanna’s father, as he knows a secret that can’t be made public. But Hanna’s got her own mission: to kill Marissa. Who will kill who? Who will survive? And what does Hanna’s father know that makes him of such interest to the CIA?

One thing that’s clear, even just from the trailers, is that this thing has a lot of action going on in it. That’s plenty clear. And you’ll get a whole lot of wild freaky gymnastics out of the film’s lead, who frankly I don’t even recognize.  Indie fans and action fans alike are going to go absolutely bughouse over this one because there’s so much action in it, and from relative unknowns. It took me a stop on the IMDB to finally recognize both Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett

Though sometimes, the action is a little hard to swallow; Saoirse Ronan, the girl playing Hanna, is a little on the preposterous side as she flings herself headlong into action films yet doesn’t quite seem to have mastered how to actually show emotion while she’s doing it. I understand that part of this is related to the plot, but normally, when you’re to the point where you’re kicking a guy in the head, you expect at least a little bit of an angry look. Though it can be said that this is a really masterful move on her part–and frankly, I won’t argue with those who do–I just found it stretching things a bit.

And the worst part is, by the time you get to the end, anyone who cracks a “teenage mutant ninja” joke will actually not be too far off. I hate it when off-color jokes become stark reality.

Still though, Hanna is going to provide a great, and only slightly trippy, action thriller romp that will keep most anyone satisfied. I do, however, find they dropped the ball a bit with the ending by making it not so much end as stop. Normally this is a symptom of survival horror fare in which the world continues on but our look at it is complete, but in an action thriller I do expect a bit more of a defined ending.

These are minor problems to say the least, and easily ninety percent of Hanna is a terrific movie that will bust you in the metaphorical chops, even if it leaves you metaphorically bleeding by the side of the metaphorical road with the ending.

The Screenhead Ten Scale in turn gives Hanna a nine out of ten for being mostly an absolute jewel of action fare, but with a couple of small nicks that keeps it shy of a really great movie.

I think we were all a little nervous about Scream 4, the sudden revival of a franchise that seemed to be long dead after ten years of inactivity. We’d seen this kind of thing before, and wasn’t hard to look askance at it. Thankfully, though, we’ll get a good solid dose of horror fun here today, and this may well prove to be the shot in the arm horror needed.

Scream 4, much like the three earlier Scream installments that we covered earlier in the week, takes us back to Woodsboro fully ten years after the events of Scream 3, in which we find that the iconic little town is still much as we left it, Stab is an iconic horror franchise that’s made it all the way up to part 8, Dewey is the sheriff, married to a bored Gale Weathers who’s desperate for a shot of the action, and Sidney has returned home to hawk her book about being a survivor instead of a victim, just in time for the anniversary of the original murders. And you know when Sidney’s coming back, she’s usually bringing Ghostface along with her. Now a whole new spate of killings is starting up, and they’re all more connected to Sidney than anyone expects.

First off, credit where credit is due. The first ten minutes are the greatest, scariest, shock-filled time I’ve had in a while at a horror movie. You have to see it for yourself, and for a franchise that’s already been doing openings right for the last three installments, that’s saying something.

The problem, though, is that this time the rest of the movie is so profoundly familiar that the thrills of the opener are somewhat weakened by comparison. We’ve been here before. Several times before, really. We already have an idea that there will be a twist or two somewhere, so when it shows up, the only real surprise is who’s responsible for it. In fact, I actually had a few possibilities ready to go, and when, ding ding ding, the one I had in mind hit it was just so gravely weakened. I still had to give them respect, though, as they did pull off a nice twist, but when you see it coming so much of the impact is just gone with it. And that’s a shame, really.

Still though, as horror movies go, this will be a good one–not too heavy on the meta-preachy, not too thick with the nature of film and remakes and such (though frankly, I don’t think the remake has been around long enough to really merit a set of “rules”–the “rules” of horror film were made over years and dozens of titles. That’s a personal thing, though.), and with plenty of chases and surprises to keep most any regular horror fan happy.

True horror buffs, though, will likely be put off by the warmed-over nature of this trilogy turned full-on franchise. But still, for a movie that’s been around for four installments this is better than it really had any right to be.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, as such, gives Scream 4 an eight out of ten for doing a better job than anyone should have expected, and for putting on a great show with its first ten minutes that, frankly, was wildly original enough to merit the covering of a whole lot of sins.

We’re carrying on with a look at Scream, ahead of the grand resurgence of Scream 4 this Friday, as we segue into Scream 2, a copy of which the folks at Lions Gate sent out for us to review. And while this one is starting to wear thin, there’s still quite a bit to enjoy here, so settle in for more of the grand meta-fun that is Scream 2.

Scream 2 takes us back to Woodsboro, where Gail Weathers’ book, The Woodsboro Murders, has been published, and now made into a feature film called Stab. Stab’s doing pretty well at the box office, but this example of art-imitating-life-imitating-art-imitating-life isn’t going to go over well with the killer known as Ghostface, even though we did sort of see Ghostface put paid to back at the end of the previous Scream. Sort of.

Once again, Scream 2 will be a marvelously twisted meta-fest, as we get all sorts of commentary on the natures of Hollywood and movie adaptations of books and how things can get confused when life imitates art, and then only gets weirder when art imitates life imitating art. Plus, of course, for the horror buffs there will be plenty of blood and stabbings to go around. Lots and lots of stabbings.

Plus we’ll get extra fun here, including the return of most of the cast, including former brief mention (now current plot point) Cotton Weary. As well as a whole new set of rules–the rules of the sequel: a bigger body count and more elaborate deaths.

You can see what I mean, though, where it’s clearly all starting to wear just a little thin. It’s the original Scream pretty much the second time, except now they’ve traded innovation for sheer scope. It’s bigger, louder, bloodier, a bit more impressive, and frankly, you can see every jot and tittle coming. Every false start, every red herring…by the time you get to the end, the whole thing is starting to feel like you’ve been here already. The reason you’re feeling that is because, for the most part, you have been here already. Some parts of it are lifted whole and breathing from the original with really only minor alterations.

Still though, it’s a pretty exciting romp, and the last fifteen minutes or so will be packed full to bursting with sparks and shots and blood and even a couple minor explosions, which means it will be great for a night home at the movies.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives the respectable if somewhat tarnished Scream 2 a seven out of ten. It’s certainly not what the first one was, nor nearly as significant, but it certainly put on a bang-up show in the meantime.