Tippi Hedren, star of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Marnie, visits Universal Orlando’s annual Halloween Horror Nights for a rather frightful evening. This year, Universal Orlando is devoting the entire event to bringing horror films to life – like SAW, The Wolfman and Chucky. The event runs select nights now through October 31, 2009.

The Chiller Eyegore Awards, part of the Halloween Horror Nights festival (we just finished a couple weeks ago covering all the various short films that will be involved in the proceedings) just announced a couple of its special guest appearances.

If you ever wanted the chance to see the embodiment of a franchise and a complete disaster in filmmaking in the flesh, you’ll get your chance at the Chiller Eyegore Awards as both Tobin Bell and Rob Zombie will be making appearances.

The contrast is impressive, of course–with the representative of a major flagship title that’s only starting to look a bit long in the tooth (let’s face it, after six installments ANYTHING starts to look a BIT frayed around the edges.  Don’t get me wrong–I enjoyed Saw V plenty, but the point remains) standing alongside a guy whose career never really produced much but fake blood and bombast.

Still, it should be an interesting show, no matter how it ends up.

Okay, so we’ve now finished reviewing all the entries for the Halloween Horror Nights short film contest, and now we’re left with one critical question: who’s going to take it?

Now that I’ve seen them all, I feel at least somewhat qualified to answer, and though there were a great many good pieces in there–in fact, there were really only a couple that we’re that hot–I think you know where my nod has to go:  Fewdio’s Mockingbird.

Granted, The Nightmare actually was a wild moulange of creepy images, but the lack of a story killed it.  And Samaritan was actually pretty scary if a bit predictable.  And Lamaze of the Dead was a beautiful study in zombie movie fun but not a one of these could top the shock that Mockingbird presented.

That’s my pick for the top film of Halloween Horror Nights’ 2009 short film contest–it remains to be seen who’ll take the top prize home, but I know where my vote went.

Where’s your vote going?  Hit the comments section below and fill us in!

Well, folks, this is it–the last of the movies we can review for the Halloween Horror Fest 2009 short film contest.  We’ll be doing a full recap with our projected winner tomorrow, so stay tuned, but until then, on to the horrorshow!

We get a good look at just what stranger danger actually is in this one, and for one such stranger, he’s going to discover that the danger is a lot more unexpected than he figured it’d be.

I admit that I do like the makeup work in this one, and that the ending IS at least something of a surprise, but I really couldn’t get terribly scared by this.  This was probably one of those ideas that turn out to be a lot better suited to a feature-length movie than a short film, because it moved entirely too quickly for its own good.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this decent, if lacking in the scares department, short a solid six out of ten.  Just because it didn’t get a rise out of me doesn’t mean it won’t out of you, especially if you’re a newcomer to the horror game.

All right, folks–with just one movie left to cover that’s not courtesy of the boys at Fewdio, we’re down to the wire in terms of what we’ve got left, and tonight, we’re tackling Samaritan, part of the Halloween Horror Nights short film contest lineup.

This time, a man on his way home gets a whole lot more than he bargained for while changing a flat tire.  He thinks he may have found someone in trouble…but HE’S the one in trouble.

I have to admit, this is a downright creepy little package.  There was a great adrenaline rush there through most of this, and they don’t waste much time at all getting to the downright freaky.  I’m truly impressed by how good this turned out.  It’s a spectacular chunk of awesome, all right, and about the only thing bad you can say for it is that they don’t do a whole lot of explaining the things you’ll see.

What was that on the road?  What was that at his house?  Why is all this unpleasant stuff happening to HIM?  Plenty of things I would’ve liked to know, but thanks to the nature of short film, forget it.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this surprising blast of unexplained scary a respectable seven out of ten.  This could’ve made a really sweet feature-length title with some expositition.

And so our coverage of the 2009 Halloween Horror Nights short film contest continues on with The Nightmare, one  that got me scared from the word go as it couldn’t muster up any score higher than three out of five on YouTube.

And what we get here isn’t so much a movie as it is a music video only without the sound.  It’s really nothing more than a series of deranged images shot in jump cut fashion going from one weird thing to the next without anything resembling a coherent plotline or overarching narrative.

If Marilyn Manson ever shoots another video, then these are the guys he wants to call about it. Sadly, short film is really not on their list of qualifications.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this a three out of ten because it’s the right thing, just at the wrong place at the wrong time.  It’d be great if it were on MTV with Rob Zombie in the background, but for a short film contest?   No.

It’s not every day that I fault a movie for its sheer ambition, and in fact, it’s the thing I least like to fault a movie FOR.  Much better too ambitious than not sufficiently so, and so to ding a movie for being overly ambitious feels downright hypocritical.

And in the case of Halloween Horror Nights short film entrant Lamaze of the Dead, that’s what I have to do.

All hell breaks loose when, in the middle of a lamaze class, Zombie Apocalypse suddenly breaks out.  And for one young couple, it’s going to mean a whole lot more than they bargain for.

Like I said, this movie has a lot more ambition than it should; they’re almost trying to wedge what could have been a ninety minute movie in a space meant for a short film one thirtieth that size.  You can only fold a piece of paper so many times before it can’t be folded further, and this movie illustrates that point nicely.

It’s a great movie, lots of zombie-blasting fun for all, but everything seems to happen so fast that there’s no room for coherent narrative.  But even I acknowledge that the ending is just AWESOME.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, in turn, hands over an eight out of ten to this movie that would make an awesome feature had it just slowed down, caught its breath, and told its story correctly.

The terrifying world of  SAW will be transformed into a haunted house featuring iconic scenes from the films such as Jigsaw’s lair and the tomb-like bathroom.  Guests will come face to face with Jigsaw and also watch as his victims struggle to try and win at his game. 

Halloween Horror Nights runs September 25-26, October 1-4, 8-11, 15-18, 21-25 and 28-31. For more information visit Halloween Horror Nights. You won’t catch me there!

And so we go back to the parts of the Halloween Horror Nights short film contest that we actually haven’t covered yet to bring us Do No Harm.

And once again, I’m baffled by the plotline of a Halloween Horror Nights short.  As far as I can tell, a nurse, or possibly a patient, is having some serious post-op hallucination problems.

Look, I know there’s only so much you can do with three, four minutes of video, but surely “make a coherent plotline” isn’t irretrievably far down the list.  I mean, I had no idea what was going on here.  Why did I have no idea what was going on here?  That’s just not right.  I should KNOW what’s going on in a short film.  If a short fails on even that basic level of storytelling, then what’s the point?

The Screenhead Ten Scale, therefore, hands Do No Harm a big old basket of harm in the form of a two out of ten for being a creepy but confused mess.

What?  Why would I make such a ridiculous pronouncement?  Why, we’ve only handled two out of ten–how can I announce blithely that thirty percent of the show can’t be reviewed!

Simple–we’ve already reviewed them.

Three out of ten shorts in the show’s lineup will prove familiar to Screenhead readers, especially Bedfellows, Mockingbird and Shadow Puppets.

They’re FEWDIO SHORTS.

Yes, your jaw has likely dropped in stunned awe–mine sure did–to discover that fully thirty percent of the 2009 Halloween Horror Nights short film contest is occupied by Fewdio, and I’d just like to express my condolences to everybody else up front.  Because despite the fact that I’ve seen some decent shorts so far–Chinese Chiller comes readily to mind–chances are, you can’t beat Fewdio.

Odds are really long that you’ll beat Mockingbird.

I’m sorry, there it is.  Mockingbird was easily one of the scariest things I’ve seen in a long time and I’ve been watching scary movies since I was twelve.  The rest of the show is going to have to bring some serious scary to bear to compete with the boys out at Fewdio, and if they can even play in the same league, then we should be in for a great show.