Here’s Mike Mignola on Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus, his pulp-inflected new Hellboy spinoff. Which is AMAZING, by the way.

And here’s ToyFare Magazine’s Top 100 Toys of the Past 10 Years, containing oodles of stuff you didn’t know you needed. (Super-Grover!)

Not torture porn the genre, mind you–“torture porn” the term.

The Horror Blog’s Steven Wintle today called the label an “utterly useless term”. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you already know that you can’t swing a dismembered arm in the horror blogosphere without hitting just that very kind of expression of both dismissal and angry contempt from the cognoscenti. You hear it quite a bit from filmmakers, too.

But why?

First of all, why is it “useless” as a descriptor? You know what it means. I know what it means. We all know what it means and what movies it’s meant to encompass. “Torture porn” (noun): Horror films in which the physical brutalization of a person or persons, frequently to death and always while somehow immobilized or held captive by the brutalizer or brutalizers, is the primary locus of horror in the film. I’d imagine the intent would be clear upon introduction to many people who’d never heard the term before–sure, “porn” might give them the wrong idea, but it’s a hell of a lot more instantly grokkable than, say, “graphic novel.”

My guess is the dislike of the term stems from the facts that it’s frequently seen as pejorative, that it tends to lump together films that we horror buffs like (Hostel, Wolf Creek) with films that we don’t like (Chaos, the Saw franchise, sequels to remakes of classic ’70s genre antecedents like The Texas Chainsaw Massacare and The Hills Have Eyes), and that it lumps together films that, in terms of things like plot structure and financing and intent, don’t really have much in common. But isn’t all of that true of the term “horror” itself?

On this blog, I myself have tended to use other terms when referring to the movies generally placed under this rubric, like “meat movies” or “the current brutal-horror cycle.” But that’s because I made them up and like them, not because I have any beef with “torture porn” per se. I know exactly what it means and so do most people who care about this sort of thing.

Own your torture porn, people. Live your torture porn. Love your torture porn!

Wizard went wall-to-wall Iron Man this weekend, posting interviews with the movie’s director Jon Favreau, stars Robert Downey Jr. and Terrence Howard, and Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, plus a set visit report.

I managed to sneak a peek at the San Diego Comic Con footage from the movie, and they really seem to “get it”–more so than the past year or two of comics starring the character, if I may be so bold–from Downey’s hilariously confident yet not arrogant performance to the use of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” on the soundtrack. This could be pretty cool.

I’ve watched the Mist trailer quite a few times now, because it’s based on my favorite Stephen King short story and that’s how I roll, and one thing I meant to comment on but didn’t was how wonderful Andre Braugher is as the supermarket’s main Flat Earther, Brent Norton. In the story, Norton’s one of those trademark King “man, I can’t WAIT until he gets eaten” infuriating know-it-all types, which is a blast. But Braugher seems to be playing it extremely cool, as well he should: Norton has to be believable as a character to whom other people would rally. If his approach to the mist is tantamount to sticking his fingers in his ears and chanting “la la la la not listening to you not listening to you,” the conflict evaporates. He needs to be persuasive. I know this is just based on the trailer, but so far I’d follow Braugher’s unflappable Norton before Tom Jane’s tough-guy David Drayton.

This free-associated post title is brought to you by Lost writer Brian K. Vaughan, who’s talking about his upcoming tenure on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight comic book at, yeah you guessed it, Wizard.

I think [“Werewolf Women of the SS”] would be a great movie but I don’t know how they’re feeling now because “Grindhouse” didn’t live up to [Dimension’s] expectations. So I don’t know if they really want to make movies based on the trailers. [Laughs] I think “Grindhouse” was a great idea and doing more of them would be great but—and we’ve discussed this to death because we have the trailer and it’s the same company doing “Halloween”—the main thing that went wrong was that the average person was confused about what it was. Because there were two movies—“Planet Terror” and “Death Proof”—but the actual movie was called “Grindhouse.” I’ve talked to people I consider to be fairly intelligent and they were confused. “Like, wait, is this a movie? Do I have to pay twice?” Because movies are all the same—all the trailers, all the marketing. So when something is different, people just get confused. I just don’t think people got what it was and stayed away. I thought it was pretty self-explanatory. But the concept of “Grindhouse” is a very obscure concept. Not to me, not to [director Quentin] Tarantino, but to the average person. Kids today are like, “What’s a double feature? What are you talking about?”

—Rob Zombie, in a really interesting, really long interview with Wizard’s Chris Ward about Halloween and all things horror. It actually makes me want to go see Halloween, in fact.

Wizard’s also got an interview up with Tyler Mane, the new Michael Myers.

Presenting the scariest three minutes of my entire life:

At the 25-second mark I was pretty convinced I was about to die.

The movie doesn’t say, “Here’s the dirty truth about you people,” but rather, “Look into my eyes, then tell me you don’t see yourself” — a distinction that separates hacks from artists.

–Matt Zoller Seitz, “Caveman valentines: The French Connection, Dirty Harry and Straw Dogs“

Okay, so I finally got to see the trailer for The Mist thanks to the good people at YouTube:

And it looks pretty good–I actually had a Mist-related nightmare last night, for whatever that’s worth, although that’s probably at least in part because the TopSpinner and that swinging boat ride at Astroland literally had me convinced I was going to fall out of them and plummet to my death. Like Jason, I was happy to see that Marcia Gay Harden’s Mrs. Carmody isn’t a Jonathan Edwards fire-and-brimstone whackjob, which works great in the story but not so much in a movie. It seems like they’re painting her as your run-of-the-mill pastel-wearing minivan-driving evangelical, who’s read every Left Behind book and sees what’s going on and is like, “Finally!” That’s actually pretty scary. The problem is that it’s nowhere NEAR as interesting as giant tentacle monsters, and the trailer seems to overvalue the scare factor of an angry church-fundraiser organizer and her yokel minions in the context of A MONSTER APOCALYPSE. As for the SFX that have come in for some criticism, well, yeah, I hate boring glory shots of what the computer team hath wrought as much as the next guy, and we’re not talking Weta Digital here. But on the other hand I love the Mist monsters so much that I’m not sure how much I’ll care. We’ll see.

Also on the giant monster invasion beat, MTV’s Movie Blog has posted a Dragon Wars creature gallery, and it’s pretty bitchin’. (Via Cinematical.) This movie is already experiencing some “the effects suck!” backlash, and let’s face it, the effects will probably be noticeably cheesy. But also let’s face it, so what? This isn’t like The Host where we’re all supposed to think the ridiculous-looking giant monster is a new milestone in horror filmmaking–it’s a Godzilla-like B-movie. If primitive stop-motion and guys in suits still delight us while we’re watching the just-for-kicks monster movies of yore, I don’t think digital should be any different.

Finally, they’re making a movie out of the old arcade video game Joust, the one where you fly around on giant ostriches and fight pterodactyls who eat eggs, if I recall correctly. (Via Cinematical again.) The high concept is “Gladiator meets Mad Max,” which on the one hand is cool, and on the other hand sounds like one of those comic books that are so common right now that exist primarily as mercenary glorified movie pitches. Let’s just hope they keep the flying ostriches.

Me and the Missus, taken tonight on the log flume during Astroland’s likely final Labor Day weekend ever. The Wu-Tang Clan shirt was purchased at the local Hot Topic. Some kid at Coney Island came up to me and said “sick shirt!” I agree. Greatest Of All Time.

It’s probably too late, but Save Coney Island.

This week’s interview subject in my I Can Has Comix? column is one of my favorite cartoonists and the guy who really got me started on alternative comics in general, Jordan Crane. And just so you horror fans don’t say I never did anything for you in this column, he talks about why he doesn’t like The Walking Dead and how he keeps writing and drawing ghost stories because he has yet to read a good one.

Paging Bill Shatner and/or Frodo Baggins: A 200-yard spiderweb is attracting entomological attention in Texas’ Lake Tawakoni State Park. Theories differ as to whether this is an effort for multiple spiders to work together or get the hell away from each other. I know which one I’d do if I were there.

The trailer for The Mist, in glorious Firefox-busting streaming Quicktime. Via AICN.

Dig this, post-apocalyptic fiction fans: Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, a collection of eschatological short stories by everyone from Stephen King to Jonathan Lethem to Cory Doctorow to George R.R. Martin. (Via GalleyCat, via Justin Aclin.)

Jason Adams didn’t like Monster Squad all that much, at least in part because kids called each other “faggot” in it. I’ll admit that my main reaction is “that’s how kids talk, so maybe lighten up a bit.” This despite being absolutely ruthless in weeding out uses of the word “gay” as an epithet on the Wizard message boards where I am a moderator, for example. IIRC it was mainly the asshole bullies in the movie who used the word, if that matters.

We all have sort of real-world hot-button issues we’re more sensitive about when they come up in a horror context. Frex, Jason couldn’t bring himself to cheekily salute the curb-stomping from American History X, but was okay with tipping the proverbial bowler hat to Alex crushing a woman’s face with a ceramic penis in A Clockwork Orange. In my case I’m really not crazy about killing animals, with children in second place, and if I get the sense that the filmmaker is getting off on violence against women, I tune out.

Anyway, what do we think of this?

The film student in me still can’t quite get over this, but Kristin Thompson has started a blog spin-off of her new Lord of the Rings book The Frodo Franchise. I’d image the blog will mostly chronicle the continuing saga of the attempts to make a film or films out of The Hobbit.

Mike Mignola on Hellboy 2 and his new prose novel Baltimore.

My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way on his new comic The Umbrella Academy.

Director Tim Sullivan on the comic version of his Southern horror film 2,001 Maniacs.

Voice actor Phil LaMarr on Samurai Jack, Futurama, and the new Transformers cartoon.

A sneak peak at Robert Kirkman, Sean Phillips, and Arthur Suydam’s Marvel Zombies 2.

Hayden Panettiere on Heroes Seasons One and Two.

Pretty much the entire Heroes cast and writing staff on Heroes Season One, episode by episode.

Can YOU spot the error in this horror-themed LOLcat?

Via where else?

Jeff Lester saw Cemetery Man (aka Della’morte Dell’amore) and didn’t like it! (You know you’re in trouble when he says “It’s designed to be a horror film for the Smiths set”; simply put, no.) Here’s a bunch of reasons why he’s wrong.

In other news, I didn’t tell you that I saw Wolf Creek a few weeks back. It was good. Intense, at least in part because of all the baggage I took into it. The “torture porn” label is honestly the best thing to happen to a lot of these movies, because the dread you feel when you start to watching them is 50% due to that label alone. I forget who it was who pointed out that that’s the genius of the title The Texas Chain Saw Massacre–it does half the work for the filmmakers right there. But that of course is also a brilliant movie. This isn’t on that level I don’t think, but it’s rough. Parts of this reminded me of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, though the setting, protagonists, and antagonists are all very different. Haneke, I’ve learned through Jason Adams, is remaking that movie in English. I think he’s a little too late to catch the torture porn wave, which crested and crashed, but oh well.