Chew on this:

• The last time I mentioned Margot Kidder, LiLo was in talks to take a role in her Dante Tomaselli horror film, The Ocean. Now the ex-Lois Lane is going to star in a thriller called The Box Collector. The project is being helmed by John Daly, who last directed The Aryan Couple, but is better-known for his role as executive producer on huge films like Platoon and The Terminator. The movie is about "a brooding young artist who falls for a flirtatious young divorcee, despite his overprotective mother's increasingly crazed efforts to halt any relationship." Pesky mothers, but I have to say, this sounds more like a romcom than a thriller. I imagine Kidder is the crazy mom, and perhaps co-star Noah Segan (Brick) is the kid and Michael Bowen (Kill Bill: Vol. 1) is the dad? The last two on the docket are European, which probably means this is the girl in question -- Belgium newcomer Lyne Renee, with Dutch actor Victor Low playing her ex. The movie will start shooting next week in Manitoba, Canada.
• There's a fun little interview over at TOMB with one of the flamboyant players of John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus -- Justin Bond, who played the mistress of the "salon for the gifted and challenged." Besides the stint on the infamous orgy film, Bond's cabaret duo, Kiki and Herb, got a Tony nod this year. He speaks of the nomination, and of course, his time as the mistress and just what that orgy scene was like: "I could have joined in the scene, like John did, but I didn't really feel like it. And after you're in the room with all those bodies for a couple of hours under the lights, the smell isn't really that appealing." Hours of sweaty, smelly orgies -- some people are so dedicated to their work. Or they just really, really like each other -- Bond says that the Shortbus crew became a close group and play wiffleball in the park on Sundays. Will this be part 2 -- Wifflebus?
• The latest duo to hit the indie scene -- Barbara Hershey and Ron Perlman. Variety has reported that both are starring in Vacuuming the Cat, which is, and I quote, the story of "a young man who, after suffering the death of his wife, goes tot he desert to build a porch for his aunt and meets a retired ex-cop who guides him through his grief toward acceptance." I assume the porch will be attached to a house, and not be of the Scrubs variety. Then again, this is a dramedy, so who knows? Kenny Golde is directing the script by Ted Henning, and Daniel Gillies, Irma P. Hall and Pat Crawford Brown are also on the cast list. Note: this is the second film both Hershey and Perlman share -- the first was Frogs for Snakes, a comedy thriller from the 90's.
  

Director Dante Tomaselli, whose most recent project was Satan's Playground, a low-budget horror film about some people who come across the 'Jersey Devil' in the Pine Barrens, is now prepping The Ocean, a film about a mysterious riptide that causes difficulties for a coastal community. Set to star in the film are The Sopranos' Vincent Pastore, Judith O'Dea, and now horror veteran Dee Wallace. Tomaselli dropped the news exclusively to Bloody-disgusting.com, saying "Dee Wallace is set to star in The Ocean. I'm so pleased, she'll bring so much emotional depth to the part. Dee's an outstanding actress whose worked with the best directors and starred in many classic movies. Some of my favorites are The Howling, Cujo, and The Hills Have Eyes. Dee comes from 'old-school' horror, which I love." Wallace is also set to appear in Rob Zombie's Halloween this fall, as well as The I Scream Man, which Tom Sizemore recently got canned from.

In The Ocean, Wallace will play a "troubled medium, haunted by visions of eternal damnation." Tomaselli also gave other details about the production, revealing that he has locked 1.8 million in financing and will begin shooting in August in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, where there are "lots of atmospheric caves, beaches, an amusement park, a gothic lighthouse on jagged cliffs overlooking the crashing surf ..." He also described the movie as a "zombie splatter movie, an apocalyptic chiller, in some ways it has the feel of Lucio Fulci's The Beyond and maybe John Carpenter's The Fog, although it's very different."

Amidst all the partying, AA meetings, adequite e-mails and romantic comedies, Lindsay Lohan is starting to look into thrillers. She's already set to star in the upcoming I Know Who Killed Me, and now she's in talks to co-star in a new film by horror director Dante Tomaselli called The Ocean. If she takes the roll, Lohan will play "a bikini-clad, pot-smoking surfer girl with heavy family issues." It doesn't sound like much of a jump for the actress, and I can't help but wonder if the roll was written for, or at least inspired by, Lohan's own messy life.

As for the film, it's been a media-friendly work-in-progress, where Tomaselli has been eager to share news of the film and how it's morphed and changed as the movie proceeds. What was once touted as a Bermuda Triangle thriller now seems to be more of a horror film-meets-Outbreak sort of tale. The director recently talked with Moviehole, and shared some new bits about the flick. He considers it to be an apocalyptic horror film about deadly ocean waves washing away "the earth's sins." The twist is that there is also an "Ebola-like" virus that is plaguing the community, although I'm not really sure how that fits into the rest. The cast already includes the likes of Margot Kidder, who plays a psychic, and Judith O'Dea, star of the original Night of the Living Dead, as "The Scuba Diver." If you're anxious for more information, the movie's website has a whole slew of news links that should help to satiate your curiosity.

One of the very few good movies that Bob Clark can claim to have directed is the 1974 holiday chiller Black Christmas, a film that's been accurately cited as one of the original inspirations for what's now known as the American Slasher Renaissance. Long before Jason grabbed an axe, Freddy sharpened his claws and Mikey hacked his big sister to death, there was a sorority house full of kids who were hacked up solid over Christmas break.

And yeah, you heard about it a while ago: MGM & Dimension decided that the flick was worthy of a remake, so they hired the two-man filmmaking unit that is Glen Morgan & James Wong (aka the guys who brought you Final Destination, The One and Willard) and ogled a late December release date. The original Black Christmas starred Margot Kidder, Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, John Saxon and Andrea Martin. The new version features the likes of Michelle Trachtenberg, Katie Cassidy, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert and ... Andrea Martin.

So I'm taking bets now, horror fans: Go watch the new teaser and then answer this question: Will this be one of those good remakes (Chainsaw, Dawn, Hills) or one of the other (Amityville, Fog, Wax) ones?