This interview has been a long time coming. Believe me. I spared no opportunity to hem and haw about writing up a series of questions for the animators of the upcoming Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated project. I’ve done much to pull my weight with that show and make people aware of it, reporting here as often as I can as new developments arise, I’ve even spoken about them on NPR but an interview is an intimidating thing because I am not you. Frankly, I don’t know what you would want to know about the project. Because of that disconnect, brainstorming questions can be frightening because if you don’t ask the right ones, you may wind up with shitty, unusable replies. You get what you give in this instance. But Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated curator, Mike Schneider, has been nothing but supportive. Have you been to their website? My logo is all over that bitch! And it’s huge! Mike also never retracted the opportunity to speak remotely with the artists on the project since he’s both a nice guy and doing so would be shooting himself in the foot.
Let me take a moment to assume that you know nothing about Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated. It’s a distinct possibility that these words that you are reading now are the first you have seen about this project. Allow me to fill in the blanks. Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated, fundamentally, is a remake of the classic George A. Romero horror movie for which it is named. But this is no mere regurgitation of a movie that has already been remade, it is much more of an epic collaborative art project than anything else. Quite literally, dozens of artists from around the world had either been invited to take part in it or had found it by way of the many news outlets (such as this one) that saw fit to spread the word. The end result will be a completely re-envisioned version of Night of the Living Dead animated from start to finish in a rapid fire kaleidoscopic presentation of artistic styles. From the trailers that are available you can see traditional line art cell animation, paintings, photo manipulation, puppets, clay, barbie dolls, manga and machinima by way of Garry’s Mod. There is even word that a portion of this is done with tattoos. The only rules were that the animators do it in black and white and use the original audio track. Otherwise, the artists were allowed to run wild and from the looks of available footage, run wild they did.
Ennio Morricone is undoubtedly a genius and the maestro of Italian cinema, but part of his genius is including the right people in his work; Edda Dell’Orso is the voice, Franco De Gemini is the man with the harmonica, and Alessandro Alessandroni is his wizard of sound. Alessandroni may not be a familiar name to most, but his contributions to the Italian cinema have been countless and indispensable. Alessandro reflects on his long career in soundtracks with Cinema Suicide writer Tim Fife.
Chances are, when you think of Italian horror, the first name that comes to mind is Dario Argento. Like all great filmmakers, the director is often complimented with a collaborator who helps bring form to their art. Kurosawa had Mifune, John Woo had Chow Yun Fat, Scorcese had DeNiro and Dario Argento had Claudio Simonetti. Yet, unlike the aforementioned directors, they worked with actors and while Argento certainly has his actors and actresses, one of the strongest characteristics of an Argento film is often the soundtrack, Where most Italian filmmakers got in line to have Ennio Morricone score their films and for good reason, Argento took a decidedly sharp left turn and instead employed the synth heavy sounds of one of Italy’s premier progressive rock bands, Goblin. Cinema Suicide’s Tim Fife speaks with Claudio Simonetti about his realtionship with Dario Argento and his career in soundtracks that spans over four decades.
One of the big draws to Italian Cinema is their use of atmosphere, using lush, clever, well composed soundtracks as a foundation for their images. Italy has produced a long list of brilliant composers throughout the years, and one of the most renowned and respected is Rome’s Fabio Frizzi. Fabio began his career working with famous Italian composers Franco Bixio and Vince Tempera, and went on to infamy scoring the soundtracks to Lucio Fulci’s most loved works. Cinema Suicide writer Tim Fife corresponded with Frizzi to learn about the history and the future of one of Italy’s most loved composers.
I’ve been a pretty big advocate of Ghost Adventures since the documentary premiered on The Sci-Fi channel. A few of us are actually pretty big fans of the paranormal and if you’ve been around long enough you can see me praise Ghost Adventures and TAPS and shit on Paranormal State. I try to put my fondness for haunted house movies into words, but I can never seem to quantify my exciement for that sort of thing. Some of the most effective horror movies I’ve seen are spooky ghost flicks. These days, a quality haunted house movie is hard to come by. Producers and directors are obsessed with showing you too much. They don’t build tension or establish atmosphere, they cut to the chase and show you fucked up ghostly people floating around, raising hell. So the reason that the recent rash of ghost hunter shows appeal to me so much has something to do with their alleged nonfiction. They DON’T show you too much because they can’t and in the case of Ghost Adventures, whether you believe in ghosts or not is irrelevant. They pull off a perfectly spooky presentation with the documentary.
It’s no secret that I’m a huge frothing fan of both Take Out, Seth 
Here’s a reminder for readers local to Providence, Rhode Island. Richard Griffin’s indie horror mashup of Lovecraft and Italian splatter, Beyond The Dunwich Horror premiers tomorrow, Friday, May 23 at 7pm and 9pm. Further details can be found at their 
