The Rotting Zombie's Round-up of Horror News for October 2021

October is always the busiest month for my blog. In the lead up to Halloween I find myself getting sent more screeners than I usually would. This year it has been like a dam has burst, I'm finding myself getting multiple films sent to be a day. A quick glance at my whiteboard and I can see there are currently fourteen films alongside books, music and video games. Making things more stressful is my day job that is requiring me to constantly work overtime on Saturdays, which is when I would normally get a good start on writing the blog posts for the following week. First world problems and all that, but it has left me to feeling pretty wiped out. Enough whining, onto the news! I've promised a couple of people I would mention their news, so lets hope I remember who they all were.

Starting off with two trailers for films that I will be reviewing in the coming weeks and which are shortly due for release on Blu-ray and Digital. As A Prelude to Fear is about a young woman called Eve. She gets abducted and finds herself chained up in a basement at the mercy of a serial killer the police have dubbed the Pied Piper.

The other film is C.A.M. This 2013 found footage horror sounds interesting. The synopsis states that a rare parasite has contaminated a local meat packing plant, it has infected the workers there making them deadly aggressive. The film follows a tactical response police team who are sent in to contain the situation.

Circle of Bones is a Filipino indie horror film that was written and directed by the award winning filmmaker Vincent Soberano. It came out theatrically and on Digital on October 22nd. The film is based on a book written by Soberano that deals with local superstitions and urban legends in the Visayas region. Filipino police discover the lone survivor from an encounter with a twisted cult suspected of mass murder. It looks like her account will make up the film. This stars Sarah Chang alongside Jana Victoria, Marela Torre, Ian Ignacio and Epy Quizon. Soberano states the inspiration for Circle of Bones came to him when he stumbled across a cult temple in Bohol while location hunting for a different film, he says "I started asking around and based on stories from the locals, I came up with the new plot for Circle of Bones".

Metaphysical drama Memoria comes to UK cinemas on January 14th 2022. This was the winner of the Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and nominated for the Palme d'Or. It stars Tilda Swinton as a woman who is awoken by a loud bang. This results in her heading out into the city, searching for the source of this mysterious sound, along the way she becomes 'immersed in the aural richness around her...Soon she begins to confront the unsettling sights and sounds that call her identity into question'. Maybe not horror but this sounds like something different to the norm.

An official teaser for Room 9 - Part 2 "They Turned Us Into Killers" has been released. This sequel once again features Scout Taylor-Compton, as well as horror icons Kane Hodder and Michael Berryman and is written and directed by Thomas Walton.

On November 16th comes two disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray sets of Maniac Cop 2 and 3. In Maniac Cop 2, Officer Matt Cordell is back from the dead. He teams up with a serial killer in order to get vengeance on those that wronged him. In Maniac Cop 3 Cordell is on the rampage once again, this time to get revenge on a media crew who smeared the name of a police officer who is in hospital in a coma due to an incident at a hostage situation. Both films are full of extras and audio commentaries. These can both be found here.

The directors cut of Teacher's Day is back on DVD after being banned. It's about a teacher, who angry at being fired from his job sets out to find the girls who made that happen.
Finally, Jared Master's latest film, Roller Junkies! has a new trailer, it certainly looks crazy.

The Visitor is a short horror film that has received some rave reviews. It was created by Mark Palgy, a composer and glitch artist known as De4thrace. With the pandemic happening he had a lot of free time, so decided to fulfil a lifetime ambition to make a horror film. It was filmed over just four days, it is described as showing '...the Kentucky countryside through the lens of old slasher and horror film grain. It's a story of...finding yourself'. The film is now out and can be seen on YouTube here.

Finally, Italian horror video game Game Over Carrara has put out a new cinematic trailer. This is a free to play point and click adventure mobile game with action elements. The press release states it was built using recreations of real world locations within the Italian city of Carrara. The game was created by Elvis Morelli who wanted the world to know how beautiful his home city was. To do this he created a zombie video game. In a cool move a lot of the characters in the game are real residents of Carrara, while the shopkeepers and agencies in the area feature in the game so as to avoid invasive advertising. The first two episodes are available on Android on Google Play, with iOS to follow soon. There is also a demo of an extra DLC episode. The third episode is in development and will be out in early 2022.