Horror

Michael Jai White remembers the first time he saw people onscreen who looked like they came from his 'hood. This was in an otherwise forgettable 1976 blaxploitation flick called "The Monkey Hustle" starring Yaphet Kotto and Rudy Ray Moore as street-smart con men trying to stop the Man from demolishing their neighborhood for a freeway project. It may not have been high art, but in its own sneaky way, "The Monkey Hustle" was truly glorious. "It was just brash, unlike anything I'd ever seen," says White, the co-screenwriter and star of "Black Dynamite," a spoof of '70s-era black action pictures that opens Friday.

The eclectic mix of films -- often high-minded and audience-friendly -- on display at the 34th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival can be summed up by the two titles screening on the festival's very first evening. This year's opening night selection -- and a rare non-Canadian pick for the fest's kickoff slot -- is director British director Jon Amiel's "Creation" starring real life husband and wife Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly as naturalist Charles Darwin and his religious wife Emma in a tale of the making of his landmark work, "On The Origin Of Species."

The bloodthirsty fisherman isn't the only one who can claim, "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer." Nearly 9 million children also know the gory details of the R-rated 1998 horror sequel about teens fleeing a stalker. In a study published in the August issue of Pediatrics, Dartmouth Medical School researchers found that violent movies like "Last Summer" attract, on average, 12.

In a nation with a history of blood-soaked fields, icy Siberian prisons and leaders like Josef Stalin, it seems a bit curious when Pavel Ruminov, a young, gifted Russian filmmaker, mentions that his countrymen don't know how to kill monsters. History is one thing, film quite another. Ruminov's new movie, "Dead Daughters," is -- partly by hype and partly by the vestiges of a former Soviet system that eschewed slasher meditations -- arguably Russia's first true horror movie.

The body count is piling up in Hollywood, but unfortunately not all the cadavers are on screen. Call it a market correction. Call it a slump. Call it audience fatigue with a subpar rash of crazed killers, wanton vampires and jiggling coeds, but horror, one of Hollywood's enduring staples, is tanking. Consider the numbers. Last year, the studios released 23 horror movies.

FOR the German monk searching for signs of God in "Star Trek," the obscure storeroom on the fourth floor of UC Riverside's main library was worth the trans-Atlantic pilgrimage. Bernhard Janzen pored over television scripts and a video clip from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," and noticed how an African American space station captain had found a religious stone tablet and, much like Moses, smashed it on the ground as he shepherded an oppressed people toward freedom.

The name of writer Stephen King is pretty much synonymous with horror. While he has also written stories that formed the basis for such films as "The Green Mile," "Stand By Me" and "The Shawshank Redemption," his fame and acclaim rest most firmly on "The Shining," "Carrie," "The Dead Zone" and countless other spooky, macabre tales.

The next several days will likely be very shaky ones for the folks who run FEARnet. And they couldn't be more pleased. FEARnet, a multiplatform media outlet devoted to horror, will celebrate its first anniversary this Halloween week by unveiling its first original movie, "Catacombs," starring rocker Pink, and "Buried Alive," an original online interactive series that will allow users to "rescue" characters who have been trapped in underground coffins.

Though William Castle and Val Lewton produced classic horror films -- Castle also directed his thrillers -- their films and personalities couldn't have been more different. Castle was a master showman cut from the cloth of P.T. Barnum who came up with amazing gimmicks -- such as taking a Lloyd's of London life insurance policy out on his audiences -- to attract moviegoers.

If you've seen the posters all over town advertising After Dark HorrorFest 2007 -- they're hard to miss, like that one showing a putrefied ghoul creeping up the backside of a nude woman -- your reaction was probably either "Ewww!" or "Cool!" If it was the latter, you are part of the reason that second annual HorrorFest is poised to land in theaters this weekend with a national splatter.