Lionsgate Dumps Another Movie...This Time It's Joel Schumacher's

To go from directing major tentpole films and discovering real new talent to having your movie unceremoniously dumped in dollar theatres isn't a fate I would wish on many filmmakers. Joel Schumacher might be an exception. For some reason I watched about ten minutes of Batman and Robin the other night, which served to remind me of just how truly terrible a superhero film can be. (Or any film, for that matter.) With that stench still in my nostrils, I should cackle at Schumacher's current fate. But I can't do it, at least not before catching his new movie Blood Creek to see if it is just as bad.

The Bloodshot Eye (via Shock Till You Drop) reports that Blood Creek, once simply titled Creek, is being tossed into a handful of budget theaters in Memphis, Dallas, Orlando and other middle markets. It opens today, Friday September 18. There's no mention of the film on Lionsgate's website, and no promotion at all. As with Midnight Meat Train last year, this is basically a contract fulfillment move; this time, likely to honor an agreement made under different Lionsgate leadership.

While the film may be terrible, I find it difficult to believe that it could be worse than some of the other shitty horror we've seen this year. And the cast is interesting: Dominic Purcell, Henry Cavill and Michael Fassbender. The latter is hardly a household name, but you'd think there's some sort of promo campaign to be built that could exploit his Inglourious Basterds surge.

The film has a weird Nazi-occult plot. Here's the synopsis, from Wikipedia:

In 1936, the Wollners – a German family living in rural Town Creek, Maryland – are contacted by the Third Reich to host a visiting scholar, Professor Richard Wirth. In need of money, they accept Wirth into their home. Wirth's grand occult project seals the Wollners off from the rest of the world and makes them players in a horrifying game of survival. After 71 years, in 2007, Evan Marshall's life has stalled at twenty-five years old. Left without answers after his older brother Victor's disappearance from a camping trip near Town Creek, he has tried to move on. But when Victor returns one night, very much alive and having escaped his captors, Evan asks no questions – at his brother's request, he loads their rifles, packs up their boat and follows him back to Town Creek on a mission of revenge that will test them in every possible way.

I haven't yet found a trailer for the film (no surprise, if there's not even budget or itnerest enough for basic promotion) but here is some footage that was 'leaked' a while back.