Heading into its seventh year, the fest already has begun unveiling its first wave of programming for this year’s event, scheduled for Sept. 22-29. The 20 announced titles span the globe from Japan, Belgium, Mexico, Russia, Hong Kong, Korea and the U.S.

“Fantastic Fest is the high-point of my year. Every year, old friends return and strangers become friends. Fantastic Fest is my extended dysfunctional family; each of us completely obsessed by the wildest and weirdest films on earth,” says festival creative director and co-founder Tim League.

So what do they have planned for this year? Here are the 20 titles that will kick off programming, and we’ll bring you more information as we get it:

Comin’ At Ya! 3D “30th Anniversary” (2011)- Real D Presents
World Premiere
Star Tony Anthony and Producer Tom Stern live in person
Director: Ferdinando Baldi, USA, 118 minutes
The film that kicked off the ’80s 3D Boom returns in a state of the art digital re-imaged restoration. Equal parts western and rollercoaster, COMIN’ AT YA pulls out every stop to entertain you. If the modern wave of 3D were as fun as COMIN’ AT YA! 3D, the motion picture industry would have nothing to worry about. The only Spaghetti Western shot in 3D is now completely restored with the latest in 3D technology and stars Tony Anthony as H.H. Hart, an avenging hero out to retrieve his kidnapped bride, played by Victoria Abril. Gene Quintana plays the slave trader who is holding her hostage in this extremely memorable cult favorite.

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2011)
Regional Premiere
Director: Panos Cosmatos, USA, 110 minutes
A trance inducing, psychedelic head trip from visionary director Panos Cosmatos, BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW is a sci-fi dystopia sent with love from the Reagan years. Imagine STALKER meets LOGAN’S RUN.

Body Temperature (2011)
North American Premiere
Director: Takaomi Ogata, Japan, 72 minutes
Takaomi Ogata’s BODY TEMPERATURE chronicle’s a young man’s love affair with a life-sized sex doll. Think LARS AND THE REAL GIRL but with all the creepiness that story was strangely missing.

Borderline (2011)
North American Premiere
Director: Alexnadre Coffre, France, 89 minutes
When David finds a bag in the park, he sees its nefarious contents as the perfect escape from his dead-end life; hopefully without losing it entirely at the hands of the bag’s former owner.

Boys on the Run (2010)
Texas Premiere
Director: Daisuke Miura, Japan, 114 minutes
Based on a manga (surprise), BOYS ON THE RUN’s central courtship starts with a bestiality DVD and ends with a Taxi Driver-style showdown. Guaranteed to warm the heart of the serial masturbator inside all of us.

Bullhead (2011)
US Premiere
Director Michael R. Roskam live in person
Director: Michael R Roskam, Belguim, 129 minutes
Testicular trauma, the underground beef hormone black market, steroid addiction and a vast swath of suppressed emotions swirl together to form one of the most powerful narratives we have seen in recent memory.

El Infierno (2010)- Cine Las Americas presents
Texas Premiere
Director: Luis Estrada, Mexico, 145 minutes
Luis Estrada’s El Infierno (Hell) finds pitch-black dark humor in a peasants rise to power amid the drug-war-torn streets of the Mexican border.

House by the Cemetery (1981)- Blue Underground Presents
Theatrical Premiere of the 2K digitally restored version
Director: Lucio Fulci, Italy, 87 minutes
Lucio Fulci’s classic Italian gore rollercoaster, now presented in a digital restoration from Blue Underground.

Invasion of Alien Bikini (2011)
Texas Premiere
Director: Oh Young-Doo, Korea, 75 minutes
The no-budget bikini-clad alien invasion martial arts romp INVASION OF ALIEN BIKINI was so fun, it took the $25,000 jury prize at this year’s Yubari Fantastic Fest, a sum more than five times the budget of the film.

Kill Me Please (2010)
US Premiere
Director Olias Barco live in person
Director: Olias Barco, Belgium, 96 minutes
From the producers of MAN BITIES DOG, KILL ME PLEASE details the day-to-day exploits of one of the world’s foremost assisted suicide clinics. Dark comedy and pathos are as well mixed as Dr. Krueger’s lethal cocktails.

A Lonely Place to Die (2011)
Regional Premiere
Director: Julian Gilbey, UK, 98 minutes
This back-to-basics, no-BS modern take on the survival genre features a violent Russian girl in a cage, gun-toting maniacs, and a cat-and-mouse chase across lawless, rural Scotland.

Milocrorze, A Love Story (2011)
Regional Premiere
Director: Yoshimasa Ishibasha, Japan, 90 minutes
This bizarro musical/variety/samurai/love story from Japan is cinematic LSD from Yoshimasa Ishibashi, the mad genius behind the Fuccon Family, and Takayuki Yamada, who plays all three male leads.

New Kids Turbo (2011)
US Premiere
Dirctors: Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kuil, The Netherlands, 87 minutes
Gutter comedy escalates to ludicrous extremes in the Dutch smash hit that will leave you gasping for air. The mullets are magnificent, as are the moustaches.

Revenge: A Love Story (2011)
US Premiere
Director: Ching Po Wong, Hong Kong, 91 minutes
Ching-Po Wong’s REVENGE A LOVE STORY follows a severely wronged man in his quest to avenge a terrible crime. This is a new ultra-violent Hong Kong action, one deeply influenced by the best of Korean revenge films.

Snowtown (2010)
US Premiere
Director: Justin Kurzel, Australia, 120minutes
Justin Kurzel, part of the Australian Film Collective BLUE TONGUE FILMS whose members include Spencer Susser (HESHER) and NASH Edgerton (THE SQUARE), knocks out a stellar debut feature with SNOWTOWN, a dark hypnotic tale of a lower-class youngster who has the misfortune of finding a father figure in John Bunting, Australia’s most notorious serial killer.

The Stoker (2010)
North American Premiere
Director: Alexei Balabanov, Russia, 87 minutes
Genius storyteller and two-time Fantastic Fest veteran, Alexsei Balabanov (CARGO 200, MORPHIA) delivers his unique blend of bloody crime drama by way of the darkest recesses of the Russian human condition.

Underwater Love (2011)
Texas Premiere
Director: Shinji Imaoka, Japan, 87 minutes
The simple life of a fish factory worker gets turned upside-down when she falls in love with a legendary Japanese creature in this kinky, musical romp of a pink film lensed by the legendary Christopher Doyle and directed by Fantastic Fest veteran Shinji Imaoka (UNCLE’S PARADISE).

Versus (2001)
US Premiere
Star Tak Sakaguchi and writer Yudai Yamaguchi live in person
Director: Ryuhei Kitamura, Japan, 119 minutes
The 10th anniversary screening of the yakuza vs. zombies action classic that cracked open Japan’s indie film business like a can of cheap beer.

Yakuza Weapon (2011)
Regional Premiere
Star/co-director Tak Sakaguchi and co-director Yudai Yamaguchi live in person
Directors: Tak Sakaguchi and Yudai Yamaguchi, Japan, 106 minutes
Ten years after starring in VERSUS, former street fighter-turned actor/director Tak Sakaguchi is back with this mondo trasho flick about a yakuza with a machine gun arm and a rocket launcher leg.

Zombie (1979)- Blue Underground Presents
Theatrical Premiere of the 2K digitally restored version
Director: Lucio Fulci, Italy, 92 minutes
Lucio Fulci’s extreme masterpiece of post-Romero corpse mania is back in a gorgeous 2K digital restoration.

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HollywoodNews.com: Piranha 3D is the latest horror film set to hit theaters on August 20th, but they’re not letting the high tech production sway them for the poster.

The film has just released a new poster for the film that is pretty much an imitation of the classic “Jaws” poster. Nonetheless, it is just as effective as it was back then and definitely serves the purpose. According to IMDB the film is about the following: “After a sudden underwater tremor sets free scores of the prehistoric man-eating fish, an unlikely group of strangers must band together to stop themselves from becoming fish food for the area’s new razor-toothed residents.”

What do you think of the new poster?

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Image courtesy of Empire Online

BY SEAN O’CONNELL

Hollywood is a busy town. Movers bump into shakers on their way to the next power meeting. You have to move quickly if you want to keep up.

HollywoodNews.com is here to help. Our interview feature, “Hollywood In Five,” showcases the creative individuals responsible for the movies we love, and corners them for five quality minutes. Or, at least, as close to 5 minutes as we can manage!

Click here to listen to our interview with “The Crazies” director Breck Eisner.

Breck Eisner, son of Hollywood executive Michael Eisner, cut his teeth directing psychological thrillers (2003’s “Thoughtcrimes”) and big-budget, tentpole vehicles (“Sahara,” with Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz). This weekend, audiences will see a different side of the storyteller as he tackles a stripped-down, chilled-to-the-bone adaptation of George A. Romero’s 1973 horror fave, “The Crazies.”

The film follows the denizens of a quiet, Midwestern farm community who must fight for their survival once a toxin in the water turns townfolk into malicious zombies. Eisner spoke to HollywoodNews.com on his way to the airport on the day his movie hits theaters.

- Overture Lets Loose Crazy Comics, Games

- A night to remember for “The Crazies”

BY ROBERT W. WELKOS

The invitation came from the “Pierce County Gazette” and read:

Dear Friend,

“I received your message and am relieved to hear you will be meeting me at 4401 Sunset Boulevard on Wednesday, February 24th, to witness THE CRAZIES.”

For security reasons, people receiving the invitation were told to arrive between 6:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., to bring their photo ID, and “security is tight and only authorized vehicles will be allowed to enter the quarantine zone.”

The invitation also came with a warning: “Please keep this information confidential. Only your names have been submitted for processing. No personal cameras are permitted and will be confiscated.”

It was signed: “Samuel O. Simpson, Staff Writer.”

What people attending the screening found was a scene that won’t soon be forgotten.

Paul Degarabedian, the box office analyst at Hollywood.com, said the first thing he noticed that made him nervous was pulling into the parking lot at KCET television studios in Los Feliz and noticing guys in military uniforms. In the minutes that followed he realized that everything that would happen to him that night would be scripted “from actors playing roles from the film, to the sounds of choppers flying overhead and sirens whaling and red lights flashing” all to promote Overture Films’ new horror film, “The Crazies.”

When it comes to promotion, Degarabedian said, it was one of the most fun “and crazy” screenings and after-parties he has ever attended.

The first sign that something was odd, he recalled, was driving into the parking area at KCET and seeing men in military uniforms.

“The guy shined a flashlight in my eyes and on my (invitation),” Degarabedian said. He was very abrupt. Then he asked me, “Have you had any water to drink today?” I didn’t know this, but I gave the right answer. I said, “No, sir, I didn’t drink any water.?”

In the film, directed by Breck Eisner, a toxin in the water begins to turn the residents of Ogden Marsh, Iowa, into violent psychopaths and it’s the job of Sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) to make sense of the situation while he, his wife (Radha Mitchell) and two other unaffected townspeople band together in a fight for survive. The military quarantines the whole town.

After parking his car, Degarabedian said, he and others invited to the screening were told to get wristbands and then were herded onto buses with blacked-out widows. A soldier was yelling at them: “Move along! Get on the bus!”

“They don’t take us to the theater,” he continued. “Instead, we have to get out and walk through the neighborhood with a military escort.” All the time, the soldiers are barking “Move along! Move along!”

Before entering the theater, the moviegoers had to go through a gauntlet of military personnel. Red lights were flashing and the sounds of sirens and helicopters blared throughout the Los Feliz neighborhood..

“There were people dressed up as patients who were on gurneys,” he said. “They were screaming for help.”

At one point, the moviegoers were met by a doctor who checked their ears trying to take their temperatures.

Inside the Vista Theater, where the screening took place, the audience was given popcorn and soda, but before the movie started, actors in military garb paraded up and down the aisles with flashlights announcing that everyone had been cleared for quarantine.

Then the PA announced: “You have been cleared for quarantine.”

“Then a bunch of military guys ran down the aisle and dragged somebody kicking and screaming out of the theater,” Degarabedian said, noting it was obviously scripted.

“I love it!” he said.

Degarabedian said he has been going to Hollywood premieres and screenings for many years and rarely has he been treated to such an over-the-top promotion.

“The age of showmanship is kind of dead,” he said. “The last great screening I attended was ‘Harry Potter’ in New York last year.”

But “The Crazies” equaled or topped that experience.

The after-party was equally macabre.

Guests entered the party and the first thing they saw was a real woman hanging by her neck from a wooden beam.

Degarabedian said she was an actor in a harness, but still the sight of her was eerie.

Spread around the party were costumes from the film, including blood-soaked shirts.

“The experience was like you’re living inside the movie,” he said. “It was really cool.”

Degarabedian said Breck Eisner’s father, former Disney Chairman Michael Eisner, attended the after-party.

And the movie was an enjoyable as the scripted events, the box office analyst said.

“The movie was good, really solid,” he said.

“The Crazies” opens wide on Friday.

Below the official letter: