Up a Creek

It was the spec script that brought writer David Kajganich out to Los Angeles in 2003 and earned him a slot on Variety's "Ten Screenwriters to Watch" list in 2006. Joel Schumacher got attached to direct, less than five years after helming one of the most lusted-after properties - Phantom of the Opera - that had circulated through Hollywood for the last decade and a half (even Spielberg was said to be interested). Lionsgate was the studio, a place that once knew what to do with Horror that wasn't a part of the Saw franchise...

...and then it all kinda went down the crapper. Kajganich saw the release of his first produced script - 2007's The Invasion, or, of the four versions of Jack Finney's classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the only Not Good one. Schumacher struck out with a return to lower-budgeted terror, The Number 23. And Lionsgate...well, it's best not to dwell on what happened to Clive Barker's Midnight Meat Train. Or maybe we should: in a repeat of what happened with that film's embarrassing treatment, the movie made from Kajganich's white-hot spec script Town Creek - now called Blood Creek - was unceremoniously and contractually dumped into a handful of budget cinemas this past fall, and is slated for a DVD release on January 19, 2010. And, as if to put a grace note on this whole through-the-looking-glass experience, now -- Now we get a trailer. Commence with general shaking of heads, gentle readers.

The word is that Schumacher and Kajganich tussled over the script, the director won, and the results were not an improvement. While I'll be watching the finished product with as much interest as anyone, and I always go into any movie predisposed to enjoy myself, I have only this to offer to Joel Schumacher...

Batman and Robin. Karma is a bitch.