The folks behind Syfy’s upcoming “Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome” appear to be hard at work dreaming up cool concepts and creatures for the “Battlestar Galactica” prequel series. The network has released four concept images teasing slick looking cylons, aliens, and Lucy Lawless topless with naked slave girls … oh wait, that last one is “Spartacus: Blood and Sand.”

The synopsis for “Blood and Chrome” reads:

Ensign William Adama, barely in his 20’s and a recent Academy graduate, finds himself assigned to the newest battlestar in the Colonial fleet … the Galactica. The talented but hot-headed risk-taker soon finds himself leading a dangerous top secret mission that, if successful, will turn the tide of the decade long war in favor of the desperate fleet.

For those of you who were busy getting laid, William Adama was played by Jaime Escalante Edward James Olmos in Syfy’s original “Battlestar” series. Here’s hoping the prequel series gives us some much needed background on Adama’s horrible pockmarks.

A two-hour movie will kick off the series in late 2011 or early 2012.

Images courtesy of Blastr:

[Show as slideshow]

Magnet Films has released a red-band trailer for director Christopher Smith’s (Severance) gruesome bubonic plague frightener Black Death. The film, which premiered over the summer in the U.K., will have a limited release in the States on March 11, 2011 (or you can see it on Feb. 4 via On Demand).

Peep it (via Hulu):

“To split a man from his asshole to his apple” – Those have got to be the most horrifying words ever spoken.

The film’s official synopsis reads:

The year is 1348. Europe has fallen under the shadow of the Black Death. As the plague decimates all in its path, fear and superstition are rife.

In this apocalyptic environment, the church is losing its grip on the people. There are rumors of a village, hidden in marshland that the plague cannot reach. There is even talk of a necromancer who leads the village and is able to bring the dead back to life.

Ulric, a fearsome knight, is charged by the church to investigate these rumors. He enlists the guidance of a novice monk, Osmund to lead him and his band of mercenary soldiers to the marshland, but Osmund has other motives for leaving his monastery.

Their journey to the village and events that unfold take them into the heart of darkness and to horrors that will put Osmund’s faith in himself and his love for God to the ultimate test.

Black Death stars Sean Bean (Death Race: Frankenstein Lives) as the knight Ulric and Eddie Redmayne (Powder Blue) as the monk Osmund. Costars include  Carice van Houten (Repo Men), David Warner (Planet of the Apes), and Kimberly Nixon (Easy Virtue).

[Show as slideshow]

Spiderman starlet Kirsten Dunst tells Vanity Fair that she will go nude in Danish director/degenerate Lars von Trier’s (Antichrist) end-of-the-world sci-fi thriller Melancholia. Dunst, who also goes topless in this month’s relationship drama All Good Things, appears to be embracing her God-given talents of T&A.

She tells VF:

After this [All Good Things], I also have a nude scene in Melancholia. So they’ll get used to seeing me naked. Trust me, they’ll be over it by the next film.

Yes, it will be like watching our sister get naked. Our sexy, very busty sister.

Budgeted at a modest $7 million, Melancholia follows a group of people as they freak the fuck out upon discovering that the earth is on a collision course with another planet. Dunst landed the lead role of Justine after Oscar-winning actress Penelope Cruz backed out to star in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

Melancholia costars Keifer Sutherland (Mirrors), Charlotte Gainsbourg (Antichrist), Udo Kier (Halloween), Charlotte Rampling (Never Let Me Go), Alexander Skarsgaard (“True Blood”), and Stellan Skarsgaard (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).

Producer Eli Roth’s supernatural frightener The Last Exorcism is set to arrive on DVD and Blu-ray in the States on Jan. 4 (Dec. 27 in the U.K.). To promote the home editions during the holiday season, Lionsgate has released a sexy clip featuring one of Santa’s naughty little helpers performing a little striptease for your viewing pleasure.

If you’ve been good, take a look:

Directed by Daniel Stamm (A Necessary Death), The Last Exorcism employs shaky-cam techniques to capture an evangelical minister’s last exorcism in documentary fashion. The film stars Ashley Bell, Patrick Fabian (Pig), Iris Bahr (The Poughkeepsie Tapes), Jamie Alyson Caudle (Jonah Hex), Louis Herthum (Mutants), and Tony Bentley (The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans).

Thanks to the friendly degenerates at HorrorAsylum for the clip.

Relativity Media wants you to imagine how your life would change if you could just take a pill that allows you to become the perfect you. In my case, that would mean being able to eat one of those giant 10-pound burgers I see on the Food Network.

For Bradley Cooper’s character in director Neil Burger’s Limitless (previously entitled Dark Fields), the drug allows him to go from slacker/writer to motivated rich guy. Of course, he also finds the kind of trouble that one avoids by keeping their aspirations low.

Peep the trailer:

See? I’m telling you: stick to the 10-pound burger. You won’t get to bang Abbie Cornish, but you won’t feel like jumping off a tall building.

Based on the book by Alan Glynn, Dark Fields is the story of a struggling copy-writer (Cooper) who finds financial success after stealing an experimental pharmaceutical drug called MDT-48 that makes people smarter, but slows down their perception of time.

Limitless arrives in theaters on March 18, 2011.

Little Fockers star and 2005 Playboy cover model Teri Polo is set to star in director Josef Rusnak’s (The Thirteenth Floor) abduction thriller Beyond. She joins a cast that includes Jon Voight (Transformers), Julian Morris (Sorority Row), and Dermot Mulroney (Zodiac).

Currently being shot in Alaska on a reported $10 million budget, Beyond follows a veteran detective and a television psychic as they attempt to find a missing child. Polo, still a looker at 41, will play the child’s mother, Voight’s daughter.

Polo also stars in director Joe Dante’s upcoming supernatural thriller The Hole 3-D. Her horror creds include the 2009 ghost tale The Beacon and the awesome—but short lived—Fox television series “Brimstone,” in which she played Ashur Badaktu, the damned priestess who orchestrates the escape of 113 souls from hell.

Director Patrick Lussier and writer Todd Farmer, the mad geniuses behind 3-D thrill rides Drive Angry and My Bloody Valentine, have been tapped by Dimension Films to reboot Clive Barker’s beloved 1987 frightener Hellraiser.

Lussier tells Moviefone:

We want to pull from the world that Clive created. Specifically that’s what we wanted to do. In that original film he opened so many interesting doorways and opportunities that that’s what we want to explore– always keeping in mind what he had done and how he did it and just working within that world.

The idea was that if we’re going to do it, let’s be epic. There’s a part of this world that we’re never allowed to see because there’s never been the resources to show it, so let’s show it.

Lussier goes on to dispel rumors that the Hellraiser reboot would be teen oriented. He does not, however, confirm or deny if his Drive Angry star Amber Heard will star in the film. Here’s hoping Doug Bradley is brought back to portray Cenobite leader Pinhead.

Dimension Films has also got a straight-to-DVD Hellraiser flick coming down the pike entitled Hellraiser: Revelations. It stars former “La Femme Nikita” TV starlet Peta Wilson.

The original Hellraiser film is the only one in the franchise directed by creator Clive Barker (it was based on his novella “The Hellbound Heart”). The 57-year-old British author regrettably sold the rights to the Hellraiser universe before the first film hit theaters in 1987.

Anchor Bay Entertainment is releasing director Charlie Picerni’s long-delayed vampire actioner The Bleeding on DVD and Blu-ray on March 1, 2011.  The film marks the big screen debuts of tattoo-artist-turned-reality-show-personality (“Miami Ink,” “LA Ink”) Kat Von D and Playboy model and UFC Octagon Girl Rachelle Leah.

Peep the trailer:

The film’s synopsis reads:

Shawn Black (Michael Matthias) knows pain. His parents and brother were killed in front of him. Beaten, bloodied and left for dead by a gang of ruthless vampires led by the charismatic Cain (Vinnie Jones) and his lethal lieutenant Vanya (Kat Von D).

But like his would-be murderers, Shawn has come back from the brink of death to take his revenge. He soon comes upon Reverend Roy (Michael Madsen), who reveals to Shawn his calling as a “slayer,” the only human capable of truly destroying vampires.

I don’t know what role Rachelle Leah plays in the flick, but I’m just grateful to have an opportunity to see her in something that doesn’t involve roided-out sweaty guys attempting to butt drag each other.

The Bleeding costars 2006 Penthouse Pet Krista Ayne (Bad Biology), rapper/criminal DMX, and boy-their-careers-took-a-major-wrong-turn actors William McNamara (Copycat), and Armand Assante (Judge Dredd).

Peep the gallery:

[Show as slideshow]

Studio Canal’s remake of the 1970 British abduction-thriller And Soon the Darkness opens in limited theatrical release this Friday, but you can catch a glimpse of sexy 25-year-old starlet Odette Yustman acting her ass off while wearing a bikini in the following clip (courtesy of UGO):

Wow. Now, that’s some seriously good bikini acting. Still, I can’t help but wonder how much more emotionally powerful the performance would have been if Yustman had made a more bold choice and gone with a thong.

Directed by newcomer Marcos Efron, And Soon the Darkness stars Yustman and self declared vagetarian Amber Heard as American girls on an Argentinian bike-riding excursion that goes terribly wrong when one of them is abducted.

You can pick up a DVD and/or Blu-ray edition of the film on Dec. 28.

Odette Yustman made Clatto’s list of The 20 Hottest Women Working in Horror/Sci-fi Today.

Thora Birch and her big American beauties have been fired from an Off Broadway revival of the 1927 Hamilton Deane-John L. Balderston play “Dracula.” Birch, who was set to make her New York stage debut this week as Count Dracula’s love interest Lucy Seward, was kicked to the curb after her degenerate ex-por-star-turned-manager father, Jack,  threatened an actor for touching his property daughter’s back.

Director Paul Alexander tells the NY Times:

I can’t have one of my actors in a situation where he is physically threatened by the father of anyone. It was odd to have Jack Birch around so much.

Thora was surprised by the decision and continues to employ and trust her creepy dad despite the fact that her once promising career has given over to roles in straight-to-DVD fare such as Train and Deadline.

She says:

For three weeks I was just doing my thing, and everything I hear was positive, that the work I was doing was wonderful. Maybe it’s some kind of misunderstanding. I mean, there had been no tensions, everything was going wonderfully.

Then Friday they just asked me to leave the building. I’m totally in a state of shock over this, I still can’t believe it.

My dad is my support, and he is the best support that I could ever have.

Hmm, Thora’s relationship with her dad is starting to look even creepier than “Caprica’s” Alessandra Torresani’s.

Jack Birch and his wife (aka: Carol Conners) starred in the Linda Lovelace adult classic Deep Throat. Jack is known to be a creep on Hollywood sets, often cheerleading Thora’s performances during her nude simulated sex scenes.

Up next for Thora is director Susanna Lo’s upcoming bio-pic Manson Girls. The 28-year-old starlet will play Nancy Pitman, a Charles Manson cult follower who later served time for her involvement in a deadly Aryan Brotherhood murder.