By MICHAEL GINGOLD
He’s got a new movie and lots of tie-in merchandise in the works.
Having produced Stuart Gordon’s classics RE-ANIMATOR and FROM BEYOND, and directed cult favorites like SOCIETY, THE DENTIST and the RE-ANIMATOR sequels, now Brian Yuzna is reviving an older B-classic for the screen. He’s teaming with Drive-In-Sanity Films for the comic-book series and feature film BRIAN YUZNA PRESENTS TALES OF BLOOD ISLAND, based on the series of shockers (TERROR IS A MAN, BRIDES OF BLOOD, MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND, BEAST OF BLOOD) produced in the Philippines by Hemisphere Pictures between 1959 and 1970.
According to the PR, “The comic book incorporates key characters from the original films and more jungle thrills, strange science fiction & fantasy, and over-the-top monsters and gore that were the key ingredients of the Blood Island pictures as well as ‘mondo movies’ and exploitation films from that period. YUZNA’S TALES OF BLOOD ISLAND is set during the end of the Vietnam War, somewhere in the South Seas, on a mysterious, primitive island filled with a multitude of monsters and mutants. There, a soldier-of-fortune and an ex-war buddy team up for a top-secret mission to find and exterminate the murderous war criminal, Dr. Akira Lorca, whose mad experiments with evolution and a jungle plant serum, derived from man-eating trees, create a hideous, head-hunting, body-swapping beast that terrorizes the island population by feasting on and appropriating their blood and flesh.”
The planned four-issue full-color series will be illustrated by artist Stephen Sistilli with coloring and lettering by Dexter Weeks. The comics have been adapted into a screenplay by David Sehring and Mark Cerulli that Yuzna will direct, and Tiki mug tie-ins and other promotional merch will be created as well. A Kickstarter campaign has been launched, offering autographed items and more; check it out here.
