This week’s Monday Pick comes to us from the wonderful world of the king of Independent cinema, Mr. Roger Corman, who produced the low-budget version of Jaws, and that movie was the Joe Dante classic Piranha (1978). Cashing in on the “animals run amok” craze of the late 1970s, Dante and screenwriters John Sayles and Richard Robinson crafted a truly unique horror film that quickly gained a huge cult following.

The film centers around a young woman named Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies) who is hired to find two missing teenagers who were hiking in the vicinity of Lost River Lake. Maggie enlists the help of a backwoods drunk named Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman) to be her guide and to help her find the two missing teens. Paul and Maggie’s search brings them to an abandoned military installation with a giant pool filled with salt water. Maggie and Paul enter the facility and find a series of mutant specimens and preserved experiments. Maggie finds the master control in order to drain the pool and see whether or not the teens possibly drowned. Maggie pulls the lever and is suddenly attacked by the facility’s caretaker who is knocked unconscious, as he was trying to stop the pool from draining.

Maggie and Grogan take the man back to Grogan’s cabin where he has sustained further injuries after he crashed Maggie’s jeep in an attempt to flee. The man is tied down to a bed and is frantic when he awakens and learns that the pool had been drained. Grogan decides to take the injured man down river in a homemade raft. As the three trek down river, the man introduces himself as Dr. Robert Hoak (played by Dante alumni Kevin McCarthy) a military scientist who explains that the pool was filled with genetically engineered piranhas for a project codenamed Operation: Razorteeth, a plan which was to introduce the deadly strain of fish that could survive in the coldwater river systems of North Vietnam.

This week’s pick is the 1979 Roger Corman cult classic Rock ‘N’ Roll High School which features the legendary NYC punk rock band The Ramones in their first ever feature film. Corman alumni Allan Arkush who began his career with Roger Corman’s New World Pictures in the mid 1970s directed the film. Corman’s company helped launch numerous careers for many directors like Joe Dante, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovitch, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard and the Zucker brothers.

P.J. Soles stars as Riff Randall, a rebellious teenager who challenges the authority of Vince Lombardi High School’s newest principle, Evelyn Togar (Mary Woronov) who rules over the school with an overwhelming hatred of rock ‘n’ roll music and will stop at nothing to keep it from disrupting the students. When Riff learns that The Ramones are coming to town to play a concert, she plans to get backstage and deliver to Joey Ramone a song she wrote titled “Rock ‘N’ Roll High School”.

Soon after learning that many of the school’s students will be attending the concert, principal Togar confiscates Riff and her best friend Kate’s tickets thwarting any attempt Riff has at getting her song to The Ramones. At the same time, High school jock Tom Roberts (played by tennis player turned actor Vince Van Patten) hires the school’s business guru Eaglebauer (Clint Howard) to be his dating consultant in an attempt to get a date with Riff Randall.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse when 75% of the films hitting theaters this year are in 3D or RealD, Robert Rodriguez introduces 4D with his new feature, the Aroma-Scope.

Sure, it’s not the newest idea. From the major plot points in Joe Dante’s Matinee from 1993 to John Waters’ “Odorama” in the film Polyester, the idea has been played with in the past, but never to the level of a summer blockbuster. Deadline explains.

[Rodriguez] used the marketing strategy of billing his fourth installment in the Spy Kids franchise as a “4D” flick by adding scratch-and-sniff scent cards for audiences. It’ll be interesting to see if this add-on “Aroma-Scope” value increases moviegoing beyond just the 3D higher ticket prices when the pic opens Friday. “When it came time to do Spy Kids 4, I couldn’t just go back and do 3D like everybody else is now. I had to bring something extra,” Rodriguez told the the AP.

During the month of October, there are a smorgasbord of horror movies to watch on cable and network television.  One of the best parts about this is that we get to revisit perennial favorites, including horror anthologies, which have dwindled in the last decade.

Now comes word that the horror anthology might be making a comeback.  Arrow in the Head is reporting that a powerful slate of international horror directors might participate in a new anthology based in Paris.  The film is tentatively titled Paris, I’ll Kill You.

Joe Dante, Paco Plaza, Vincenzo Natali, Xaviern Gens, Christopher Smith, Ryuhel Kitamara, Julien Maury, Alexandre  Bustillo, and Joern Heitmann will all be contributing stories for the film.  That is exciting news indeed, as these are the talented  men that brought us Gremlins, Rec, Splice, Frontiers, Midnight Meat Train, and more.

It is possible that this film could be the first in a franchise, each movie honing in on a certain “horror city.”  This could certainly be an exciting way to infuse the horror world with fresh blood, so to speak.

Outside of the Three Extremes franchise, we can’t recall many anthologies as of late.

If you love film and TV from the past then this post is for you. Shout Factory! will be bringing its unique line of products to San Diego for Comic-Con and we’ve got all the info about their plans for you today, courtesy of this cool press release.

Some of the highlights include appearances by Roger Corman, Julie Corman, Joe Dante, Sid Haig, Mary Woronov , Stephen Collins and Gregg Berger. Sounds like a great time to us.

Comic-Con runs from July 23-26 in San Diego, CA. Be sure to check out all the info on Shout! Factory’s presence at the show by clicking through to read the full press release.

And be sure to check back right here for more of our coverage of San Diego Comic-Con.

We talk quite a bit about narrative feature films here at The Flickcast. You know, the ones that exist in a fictional world full of characters and situations contrived to tell a story. There are also these other films known as documentaries where actual, real people relate the experiences of their lives and also tell a story.

And yes, some of them are quite good, even if they’re not directed by Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock (although, they do make some good films). Case in point, the SXSW documentary premiere film American Grindhouse.

Narrated by Academy Award-nominated actor Robert Forster, the feature-length documentary “boasts exclusive interviews with filmmakers Herschell Gordon Lewis, Joe Dante, Larry Cohen, Jack Hill, Fred Williamson, John Landis and many more. Not only that, quite a few of these actors, directors and writers are speaking out in their first-ever on-camera interviews.”

In addition, the film features “clips and scenes from more than 200 of the most jaw-dropping movies ever screened, American Grindhouse is poised to be the most comprehensive motion picture ever made on the subject of Exploitation Cinema. Shameless ballyhoo or certifiable fact? Watch the film and see for yourself.”

I’m going to go on record right now and say “certifiable fact.” See for yourself and check out the trailer after the jump.

While most people will be rushing out to see Jim Cameron’s newest masterpiece, Avatar, for the spectacle, others may have a new reason to spend the extra money on seeing the film in 3-D. The Weinstein Company and Dimension Films have just announced that the very first trailer for next Spring’s Piranha 3D will debut exclusively before selected 3-D and 2-D showings of Avatar.

The film is the second trailer to the 1978 film Piranha, directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins 2: The New Batch), while the first two films were pretty cheap and a bit hokey, Dimension promises that the newest incarnation will be made to scare.

From acclaimed director Alexandre Aja (“The Hills Have Eyes”) comes the new action thriller PIRANHA 3D, in the latest eye-popping 3D technology. 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.