Fans of the Friday 13th movie series are to be treated to a documentary retrospective on DVD: His Name Was Jason, hosted by Tom Savini, will be available to buy next year.

The retrospective will cover the “career” of Jason Voorhees throughout the movies and will include “reminiscences and ruminations spanning Jason’s entire film history, as well as a virtual who’s who of contemporary film horror”. It will be released in the US on DVD by Anchor Bay.

As well as the main documentary the DVD “splatter edition” is expected to contain some four hours of bonus material including behind the scenes footage.

The documentary receives its world premier this week at the the 31st Starz Denver Festival with the US DVD release scheduled for Feburary 2009.

One of the true classics of modern cinema is Chan-wook Park’s dark movie Oldboy, unpleasant even by the standards of Korean horror. Love it or hate it, there’s no denying that it’s something special and a one-off.

So it’s an obvious candidate for a big-budget Hollywood remake. And who better to make it than the king of schmaltz Steven Spielberg? Yep, unbelievable as it sounds Variety reports that Spielberg is in talks to remake Oldboy, possibly with Will Smith in the lead role.

Spielberg is certainly a skilled director and capable of producing suspense – Duel is a superb example. However in recent years he’s tended towards the saccharin with an annoying number of cute kids in his films (remember the appalling 2005 version of War of the Worlds?).

As for Smith, I think he’s great at tongue-in-cheek comedy (Independence Day, Men in Black) but far less impressive in straight dramatic roles.

It all sounds like a recipe for a disaster.

Shock Till You Drop is reporting that a sequel to the movie 30 Days of Night is in the offing. Apparently this will feature character Stella Oleson from the first film hunting down and seeking revenge on the vampires.

Personally I’m a lot less enthusiastic about this than some people. As I said in my review of the first movie, it was “rather a waste of what could have been a very tense and claustrophobic situation”. By taking the character to the vampires even that situation will presumably be lost, leaving nothing much left other than a run of the mill vampire movie with snow.

Still, I’m open to being proved wrong!

George A Romero has been discussing his latest zombie movie with USA Today. This time round the social message is going to be “tribalism”. Romero is quoted as saying:

“There are two factions. It’s the idea that even when faced with a crisis, tribal concerns about power control people’s motives.”

The title of the new film – which is currently shooting in Toronto – is still unconfirmed, my money’s on Isle of the Dead. To keep us in suspense the production company making the film is actually named “Blank of the Dead”!

Trouble might be brewing in the usually peaceful world of the undead: today’s press includes two different reports claiming a new world record for the most zombies assembled together.

In the UK, the Telegraph claims the record for Nottingham’s GameCity Zombiefest. 1,227 people dressed as zombies gathered in the Old Market Square and danced or shuffled to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’.

But over the other side of the pond WoodTV reports that some 2000 people attended a charity Zombie Walk in Rosa Parks Circle in Grand Rapids.

Although the Rosa Park Circle figure is higher, the Nottingham event was formally counted by officials from Guinness World Records so is likely to become the official record.

One thing everyone agrees on is that the previous record was set last year when over 1000 zombies gathered in Monroeville Mall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. If they’re traditional Romero zombies then many of them are probably still there…

Photo Credit: nickstone333 (Creative Commons)