© Open Road

Here are some recently announced horror/suspense DVD/Blu-ray release dates of note:

June 19:

• Exit Humanity: This latest entry in the Bloody Disgusting Selects series revolves around a zombie outbreak a decade after the Civil War.

July 3:

• Some Guy Who Kills People: Executive produced by John Landis (An American Werewolf in London), this horror-comedy features a mild-mannered comic book geek who plots bloody revenge on the punk kids who beat him up. Read More...

© Warner Bros.

On the heels of Hannibal and the upcoming small-screen adaptations of Psycho, Dracula and Hellraiser, it seems the latest trend in Hollywood is to remake horror movies into TV shows. The latest to join that list is The Exorcist, the 1973 classic about the exorcism of a young girl possessed by an ancient demon. Unlike those other adaptations, the Exorcist TV series in planned as only a limited-run, 10-episode show -- a welcome display of restraint from which some current TV shows could learn. The show, which is still in the early stages of development and has yet to be picked up by a network, is the brain child of Sean Durkin, the writer-director of the acclaimed Elizabeth Olsen dramatic thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene. Read More...

© Warner Bros.

OK, add this to the list of horror clichés we can do without: ghostly hands coming out of nowhere to grab someone. (The Grudge, I'm looking at you.) I thought that The Possession's recently released poster had taken the overused trope to the extreme, but now here comes The Apparition's poster, featuring SEVEN (Is there an amputee ghost in there somewhere?) hands feeling up star Ashley Greene. Eight Seven is enough! Thankfully, there's only a hint of this "handy" work in the newly released trailer for The Apparition, which looks entertaining in a safe, shallow way. Read More...

Jason Gedrick
Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez
Getty Images

Briefly: a couple of juicy tidbits on two eagerly anticipated TV shows returning this fall:

• Jason Gedrick (who to me will always be the kid from Iron Eagle) has joined Dexter for a multi-episode arc in Season 7. According to TV Line, he'll play "the manager of a Miami-area gentlemen's club that becomes linked to a high-profile murder case."
• Although it's been known for a while that Season 2 of American Horror Story would be set in an insane asylum, co-creator Ryan Murphy just revealed that it will take place during the 1960s. This will allow the show to explore the theme of sanity and how something that would be seen as perfectly normal today -- say, homosexuality -- would've been grounds for institutionalization in another era.

Sources: TV Line, Vulture

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