Movies
Greg Cannom Joins ‘Dead of Night’
How many of you have seen Cemetery Man, aka Dellamorte Dellamore? If you haven’t, you should. And if you have, you’ll be happy to know that Dead Of Night, based on the same Dylan Dog comics that were a large inspiration for Dellamorte, has finally begun production in New Orleans. Gilbert Adler (Demon Knight) has come on board to produce. Greg Cannom, who just won an Oscar for Benjamin Button, but is better known to horror fans for his incredible (and also Oscar winning) makeup on 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, has also joined the production, which stars Brandon Routh. Read on for a few more details…
Producer Gilbert Adler is sinking his teeth into the horror film “Dead of Night,” which starts production today in New Orleans. And DRAC Studios, whose creative director, Greg Cannom, won the makeup Oscar for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” has come on to handle makeup effects.
Hyde Park Group and Platinum Studios are producing the vampire/werewolf/zombie flick that stars Brandon Routh.
Adapted from the top-selling 1986 Italian comic book series “Dylan Dog,” created by Tiziano Sclavi, “Dead” stars Routh as a private investigator who stumbles onto the world of the undead. Kevin Munroe (“TMNT”) is directing a screenplay by Joshua Oppenheimer and Thomas Dean Donnelly (“Sahara,” “Conan the Barbarian”), who moved the action from the U.K. to the deep bayou of Louisiana.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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