After watching newcomer Ashlynn Yennie eat shit and die in madcap director Tom Six’s demented cult 2009 hit The Human Centipede, I was certain the Wyoming-born starlet would quit Hollywood and head back home to work the mines.

But, when she resurfaced in its sequel last year, it became apparent that Yennie is here to stay. I am now convinced that the pretty 26-year-old has got scream queen midi-chlorians pumping in her blood.

This, of course, bodes well for writer/director Adam Gierasch’s (Night of the Demons – 2010) new Seven Arts frightener Schism, which stars Yennie as a woman in a committed relationship with a Baton Rouge cook with a dark past.

Schism costars Callum Blue (“Smallville”) as Yennie’s boyfriend and Vinnie Jones (Midnight Meat Train) in what will surely be some kind of pissed off character role. The film—said to be in the vein of Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder—will shoot in New Orleans.

“Chuck” recurring Mekenna Melvin (pictured center) stars in writer/director Joe Robert Cole’s feature film debut Amber Lake, a murder mystery co-written by Melvin and costars Polly Cole (Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights) and Natalie Smyka (Across the Hall).

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The synopsis reads:

Three half-sisters, after being invited to their father’s lake house to meet him and each other for the first time, are each questioned by a local sheriff to explain the events that took place leading up to the discovery of their father floating dead in the lake.

Using a Rashomon effect, each sister gives a slightly different account of the events, with each version pointing a finger at a different sister, while the sheriff must sort through the details to find out what really happened. What he discovers in the end is not what he expected.

If, like me, you thought Rashomon was a Jewish holiday, it’s not. The Rashomon effect refers to how different people remember shared occurrences with a varying degree of details. The term’s origin goes back to renowned Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 crime film Rashomon.

Melvin is best known for her work on the NBC’s comedic spy series “Chuck,” now on its fifth and last season. She plays Alexandra McHugh, daughter to super-spy Alex Coburn/John Casey (Adam Baldwin) and love interest to Chuck’s (Zachary Levi) BFF Morgan Grimes (Joshua Gomez).

Rose McGowan will get hearts beating as Patrick John Flueger’s (Footloose) love interest in director John La Tier’s adaptation of the 1843 Edgar Allan Poe short story “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Production on the film begins on Oct. 20 in New Orleans.

Says La Tier:

It was always our intention to stay true to Poe. We want this film to be something he would be proud of, and I believe this captivating script, combined with this cast and art direction, is going to be just that.

“The Tell-Tale Heart ” is the story of a murderer haunted by the beating heart of the old man he’s killed, dismembered, and buried underneath the floorboards of his house. There is no romance and/or love interest in the original story, though there has always been speculation that the murderer could be a woman, which would make McGowan’s role all the more interesting.

Joining McGowan and Flueger on the Popart Film Factory & Leverage Entertainment-produced project are Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show), Jacob Vargas (Devil), Damon Whitaker (The Hillside Strangler) and Kirk Fox (The Postman).

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“Master of the Macabre” William Castle, pronounced dead and buried in 1977, is back! And he wants your children … to read. The legendary producer of Rosemary’s Baby and the director of such demented frighteners as The House on Haunted Hill (1959) and 13 Ghosts (1960) has written a young adult novel entitled “From the Grave: The Prayer.”

The 75,000-word book follows four angst-riddled teens from distinctive backgrounds as their lives intersect in Southern France while stumbling upon a haunted house that holds clues to finding an age-old manuscript that could bring forth an evil known as the Ancient Ones. The group band together to find the mysterious document and to keep it away from a secret society hellbent on acquiring its powers.

“From the Grave: The Prayer” is slated for a Halloween release and will be made available in print and eBook versions ($15.99 and $9.99 respectively) via Amazon, Kindle, NOOK, and iBooks. It is the first in planned series of “From the Grave” books.

Says daughter and William Castle Productions head Terry Castle:

My dad was notorious for both his spine-tingling movies as well as the legendary gimmicks he devised to drive people to the theater again and again. And now, for his latest and perhaps greatest marketing gimmick yet, Dad has written “From the Grave.”  He’s really outdone himself this time!

Along with creating numerous genre gems, Castle was known for his outrageous and fun P.T. Barnum-like approach to movie marketing campaigns (i.e. providing audience members with vouchers worth a $1000 in life insurance from Lloydes of London should they die from fear during showings of his 1958 breakthrough Macabre).

Castle first returned from the beyond last May during the 33rd anniversary of his death. Not one to rest-in-peace on his laurels, he immediately launched a blog and created Twitter and Facebook accounts to stay in touch with fans and keep them informed on all his upcoming projects.

Relativity has released promo stills from its upcoming Edgar Allan Poe based thriller The Raven. Among them is a first look at British stunner Alice Eve in her Victorian costume. The 29-year-old plays Poe’s wife Virginia Clemm-Poe.

Set in 1849 Baltimore, The Raven follows author Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack) as he attempts to rescue his wife (Eve) from a serial killer who is tailoring his murders to match the deaths found in the novelist’s most popular books. The film, directed by James McTeigue (V for Vendetta), arrives in theaters on March 9, 2012.

Eve will next be seen in director Barry Sonnenfeld’s Men in Black 3-D, in which she plays MIB head Olivia circa 1960, and in director David Brooks’ serial killer frightener ATM. She had been set to star in 20th Century Fox’s recent superhero flick X-Men: First Class, but lost the part to “Mad Men’s” January Jones.

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Australian director Richard Grey is making a time-bending thriller for your penis. Entitled Mine Games, the film stars Briana Evigan, Julianna Guill, and Rebecca Da Costa as part of a group of vacationing friends who discover while exploring an abandoned mine that someone’s past actions will kill them all.

Evigan, daughter to Greg Evigan (”B.J. and the Bear”), has starred in such frighteners as Sorority Row, the Donnie Darko sequel S. Darko, and the oh-shit-there’s-a-tiger-in-my-living-room thriller Burning Bright. She’ll next be seen in Darren Lynn Bousman’s Mother’s Day remake and screenwriter W. Peter Iliff directorial debut Rites of Passage.

Guill’s creds include Platinum Dunes Friday the 13th reboot (for which she went topless), MTV’s My Super Psycho Sweet 16: Parts 1 & 2, the in-flight frightener Altitude, and Dark Castle Entertainment’s upcoming Ashley Greene/Sebastian Stan vehicle The Apparition. Both Guill and Evigan made Clatto’s list of The 20 Hottest Women Working in Horror/Sci-fi Today.

Mine Games also stars vagina-less actors Joseph Cross (Untraceable), Ethan Peck (The Sorceror’s Aprentice), Rafi Gavron (”Life Unexpected”), and Alex Meraz (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn). The film is currently in production.

Fox has released the first full-length trailer for its upcoming mystery series “Alcatraz.” Produced by J.J. Abrams (“LOST”), the show revolves around a reappearance of inmates who vanished years ago from the infamous prison without explanation.

“Alcatraz” stars Sarah Jones as Det. Rebecca Madsen, Jorge Garcia as Dr. Diego “Doc” Soto, Sam Neill as Emerson Hauser, Parminder Nagra as Lucy Banerjee, Robert Forster as Ray Archer, Santiago Cabrera as Jimmy Dickens, and Jonny Coyne as Warden Edwin James.

Personally, I can’t wait to see this. While I can’t let myself believe that it will rival the amazing story that was “LOST,” I do sense a good mystery coming on. I just wish Hurley had dropped weight for the new show. How shocking would it have been if he had returned to TV all skinny-like? But, I digress.

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British actress Gemma Arterton (Disappearance of Alice Creed) is set to star in director Neil LaBute’s big screen adaptation of Agatha Christie’s murder-mystery novel “The Crooked House.” She joins a cast that includes Gabriel Byrne (End of Days), Matthew Goode (Watchmen), and Julie Andrews (The Sound of Music).

LaBute tells Variety:

The story has a couple of fresh sides to it that I didn’t remember from Christie’s work. There’s a love story, which didn’t feature strongly in many of her books, so that seemed very different to me and fresh. Plus it’s quite morally ambiguous, which also appealed to me.

Budgeted at $20 million, The Crooked House is a who-done-it centering on three generations of the Leonides family and the suspicious murder of their multimillionaire patriarch. The clan live together in a huge—and seemingly crooked—mansion.

LaBute, who wrote and directed the delightfully caustic dramas In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, is this time working of a script from The Tourist scribe Julian Fellowes and Tim Rose Price. The film is slated for production in the U.K. this summer.

Arterton is currently shooting Tommy Wirkola’s Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters in Braunschweig, Germany.

Malaysian stunner Natassia Malthe headlines writer/director Matthew Schilling’s feature film debut Avarice. The sci-fi mystery thriller costars Kevin Sorbo (Sorority Party Massacre), Tinsel Korey (Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn), Brad Dourif (Priest), Ray Park (”Heroes”), Jason London (51) and Patricia Richardson (”Home Improvement”).

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The synopsis reads:

A mysterious box from space lands in the desert; it holds the power to grant anyone’s desires, but at a deadly cost. When a group of strangers are brought together by their most desperate desires, they will unwittingly release the evil darkness lurking inside.

Malthe’s genre creds include BloodRayne 3: The Third Reich, Alone in the Dark 2, the werewolf thriller Skinwalkers, superhero flick Electra (she shared a kiss with Jennifer Garner), Halloween: Resurrection, the David E. Kelly penned creature-feature Lake Placid, and the most stroke-worthy video game-based actioner ever DOA: Dead or Alive.

A trailer for director Tony Krantz’s sci-fi tinged crime thriller The Big Bang has hit the web. The film follows a private detective (Antonio Banderas) on the trail of a missing stripper (Sienna Guillory) who may have stolen some diamonds.

Along the way, our hero fucks a hot waitress (a very nude Autumn Reeser), meets a pornographer (Snoop Dogg), and stumbles upon a billionaire’s (Sam Elliot) clandestine mission to recreate the Big Bang … all while trying to stay ahead of some very crooked cops.

Anchor Bay will release the film in theaters for a limited run on May 13.

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