Dark Harvest is Here!

Today's the day! Dark Harvest has dropped as video on demand and is available to rent or purchase on Amazon!

"In a small Midwestern town, a deadly annual ritual unfolds when the mythical nightmare, Sawtooth Jack, rises from the cornfields and challenges the town’s teenage boys in a bloody battle of survival."

If you missed my previous announcement, Dark Harvest was originally a creepy Halloween book written by Norman Partridge.

"Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol' Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death.

Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. He's willing to risk everything, including his life, to be a winner for once. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror - and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy..."

I am crossing my fingers that the film does the book justice! It's one of my favorite Hallowe'en reads and I've been hoping for a while it would be brought to the screen. And while straight to video can be a concern, the horror classic Trick 'r Treat was released directly onto video, and it was glorious!

I'm having a watch party with friends tomorrow night. Honestly, shrimp tacos, beer, good friends, and the possibility of a good horror movie!

Sawtooth Jack is Coming...

On October 13, one of my favorite books is coming to the screen! (You can see my original review of the book here.)

Dark Harvest, written by Norman Partridge, is a delicious tale of Halloween horror so beautifully told, you can almost smell the burning smile of a jack-o'-lantern.

It goes like this: Two things happen every Hallowe'en.

The October Boy rises. And The Run begins. Has done for years. 

The boys of that little Podunk town know their job is to make sure The October Boy never makes it to the church in the center of town. The October Boy, for his part, knows he has to make it into the church by the last stroke of midnight. The boys of the town are locked up for days before The Run, with only water and orange juice to sustain them.

The October Boy is filled up with candy, and the boys are starving...

The boy who kills ol' Sawtooth Jack is allowed to leave the town for good, and his parents get all the money and things they could possibly want.

But you know what they say. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Apparently, this will be a video on demand release. I expect to get more details soon!

God, I hope they don't mess this up!

Sawtooth Jack

There are things living in this field that will, by rights, be dead by tomorrow morning. One of them hangs on a splintery pole, its roots burrowing deep in rich black soil. Green vines climb through tattered clothes nailed to the pole and its crosspiece. They twist through the legs of the worn jeans like tendons, twine like a cripple's spine through a tattered denim jacket. Rounded leaves take succor from those vines like organs fed by blood vessels, and from the hearts of those leaves green tendrils sprout and the leaves and the vines and the tendrils fill up that coat and the arms that come with it.
A thicker vine creeps through the neck of that jacket, following that last few inches of splintery pole like a backbone, widening into a rough stem that roots in the thing balanced on the pole's flat crown.
That thing is heavy, and orange, and ripe.
That thing is a pumpkin.

 Text from Norman Partridge's book, Dark Harvest.

Image from Spooky Blue. Make your own pumpkin-headed scarecrow here.