Raise your glasses to 2008, a wonderful year to be a horror fan. It was the year that the French struck back with a touch of viciousness that has yet to be captured by others in the genre. Vampires rose from the coffin to take over humanity once again, and Uwe Boll reared his ugly head once more to brutally ravish our senses with the darkest side of himself yet. Hell, even Coffin Joe emerged with a new film The Embodiment of Evil that hopefully will make its way to the US before I die. Come to think of it, foreign horror had one hell of a good year. The Spanish film [REC] took us by storm, and the Swedish film Let the Right One In is hands down the best feature film of the year. If a horror buffs list doesn’t put it at the top it’s guaranteed to at least be in the top ten.

While Sage Stallone showed us his inability to act in a wretched Russian horror flick called Moscow Zero , he did prove his ability to re-issue a couple of horror gems, Pieces and The Beyond through his Grindhouse Releasing label. Though Dimension Extreme label found their stride earlier in the year finally pushing out some high quality titles they unfortunately took the year out on a sour note with the miserable Pulse 3. Code Red dropped some wonderful re-issues, most notably Dead Pit. Synapse had a great year as they continued to rage a wonderful path of terror featuring an array of re-issues no horror fan can do without.

I could talk at length about the wonders of 2008, but January 1^st is literally upon us and 2009 is shaping up to be equally kick ass. Just in the first couple of months we’re looking at a slew of new horror films to hit the theaters. First on the 9^th is The Unborn. The following week brings us My Bloody Valentine in 3D. Then we have Friday the 13^th, and to top it off we have a fourth film, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans thrown in for good measure. Underworld has been one of those love it or hate it franchises and I certainly liked the first more than the second so we’re reserving judgment until we can sit down to review.

In a week or so we’ll also be handing out our first ever film awards, The Deadly 13. We’ve got a good deal of our votes already in and are in the process of tallying and totaling to present to you all. Sure, no one is actually taking away a literal shiny object, but we’ll announce what films we feel represent the best and worst of 2008 in a style that is uniquely our own.

This month we’re doling out more horror than you can handle to include feature content. And on that note I’d like to formally welcome Natalie Slater on board. Natalie runs her own baking company, Bake & Destroy, (that’s right… baking) and is an avid fan of horror running her own zombie blog, Eat More Cops. She’s also published a cookbook entitled “The Joy’s of Cooking Humans”. How delightful! She’s going to be putting her wicked kitchen skills to use giving us recipes and dishes to serve with your favorite horror flicks. It’s not going to be the standard dinner and a movie fare. No, she has more sinister intentions at heart. So, check out the new column, Slash & Dine and eat your fuckin’ heart out… literally.

In addition to Slash & Dine we’re continuing with the Re-make Showdown. This month it’s a slightly different angle. Staff reviewer Dustin is pitting the French thriller Them against the similar American horror flick The Strangers. Both have received accolades from respective fans, but only one can come out on top. And once again Annie is taking us into places unknown with another installment of her popular column Cinematic Haunts.

So yeah, we’re busy as hell and loving it. Hopefully you are all enjoying it as much as we are. Make sure to drop a line, say hi, comment on the reviews, and remember… If you can’t Hack it, Slash it!

Marc Patterson

Editor – BrutalasHell.com