LEGEND Kicks Off the New Year with Thrilling Round of Premieres

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January 6, 2025

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Joseph Perry is the Film Festival Editor for Horror Fuel; all film festival related queries and announcements should be sent to him at josephperry@gmail.com. He is a contributing writer for the "Phantom of the Movies VideoScope" and “Drive-In Asylum” print magazines and the websites Gruesome Magazine, Diabolique Magazine, The Scariest Things, B&S About Movies, and When It Was Cool. He is a co-host of the "Uphill Both Ways" pop culture nostalgia podcast and also writes for its website. Joseph occasionally proudly co-writes articles with his son Cohen Perry, who is a film critic in his own right. A former northern Californian and Oregonian, Joseph has been teaching, writing, and living in South Korea since 2008.

U.K. readers, LEGEND has another fine slate of horror, science fiction, thriller, and related genre films for you to start 2025 in fine fashion. Following is the official press announcement. From cult classics like Roy Ward Baker’s LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES to legendary director Walter Hill’s BULLET TO THE HEAD and Sacha Bennett’s WE STILL STEAL THE OLD WAY, LEGEND has scheduled eleven Channel premieres in January to kick off the New Year in thrilling fashion. Other premieres include the classic mercenary thriller THE WILD GEESE, starring screen legends Richard Burton, Roger Moore and Richard Harris, sci-fi actioner LOOPER, starring Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt, sniper thriller DEADLY TARGET, crime drama EMPIRE STATE, starring Liam Hemsworth and Dwayne, biographical disaster movie DEEPWATER HORIZON, high-octane action thriller WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE, British black comedy crime thriller THE HITMAN’S APPRENTICE, starring Tim Roth and Jack O’Connell, and prison thriller ESCAPE PLAN, starring Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Plus, fans of cult TV can tune into T.J. HOOKER, THE A-TEAM and THE TWILIGHT ZONE, all of which continue their popular runs throughout the month. Details in transmission order: Friday 3 January @ 23:05 – LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES (1974) *Channel Premiere While lecturing in China, Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) agrees to help seven kung fu trained siblings reclaim their ancestral mountain village, now the domain of seven powerful vampires and their army of undead slaves. Co-directed by Hammer stalwart Roy Ward Baker and Hong Kong director Chang Cheh. Saturday 4 January @ 21:00 – BULLET TO THE HEAD (2012) *Channel Premiere Jimmy Bobo (Sylvester Stallone), a New Orleans hit man and Detective Taylor Kwon (Sung Kang), a New York City cop, form an alliance to brings down the killers of their respective partners. Co-stars Christian Slater. Thursday 9 January @ 21:00 – THE WILD GEESE (1978) *Channel Premiere Richard Burton, Roger Moore and Richard Harris star as a team of aging mercenaries hired by a wealthy industrialist for one final mission: Recruit and train a squad of desperate commandos, parachute into an unstable African nation and snatch its deposed President from a maximum-security army prison. Saturday 11 January @ 21:00 – LOOPER (2012) *Channel Premiere

When the mob wants to get rid of someone, they will send their target 30 years into the past, where a looper – a hired gun, like Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) – is waiting to mop up. Joe is getting rich, and life is good…until the day the mob decides to “close the loop, ” sending back Joe’s future self (Bruce Willis) for assassination. Thursday 16 January @ 21.00 – DEADLY TARGET (2015) *Channel Premiere When Special Operative James Webster (Michael Jai White) returns home from duty to find his brother brutally murdered, his lethal training immediately kicks in. Fuelled by rage and a burning need to avenge his brother, he sets out to hunt down the perpetrators and nothing is going to stand in his way… Saturday 18 January @ 21:00 – EMPIRE STATE (2013) *Channel Premiere Based on a true story, Dwayne Johnson stars as an NYPD detective trying to solve the biggest cash heist in U.S. history. Co-stars Liam Hemsworth and Michael Angarano. Sunday 19 January @ 21:00 – DEEPWATER HORIZON (2016) *Channel Premiere Mark Wahlberg stars in this powerful film inspired by a story of real-life heroes. For the one hundred and twenty-six people aboard the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig, April 20, 2010, began like any normal day. Before day’s end, the world would bear witness to one of the greatest man-made disasters in US history. Thursday 23 January @ 21:00 – WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE (1987) *Channel Premiere Bounty hunter Nick Randall (Rutger Hauer) is offered two hundred fifty thousand dollars by the C.I.A. to get the terrorist behind the bombing of a Los Angeles cinema. Nick quit the C.I.A. because he couldn’t trust them. Can they be trusted now, and can he stop the terrorists? Friday 24 January @ 22:55 – THE HITMAN’S APPRENTICE (2012) *Channel Premiere When 19-year-old Adam (Jack O’Connell) agrees to do a day’s driving for his mum’s gangster boyfriend Peter, it takes him on a 24-hour journey into a nightmarish world of murder, sex trafficking and revenge, in the company of aging hit man Roy (Tim Roth). Saturday 25 January @ 21:00 – ESCAPE PLAN (2013) *Channel Premiere Stallone stars as Ray Breslin, the world’s foremost expert on high-security prisons. But when he’s framed for a crime and thrown into a cutting- edge, ultra-secret facility he designed, he must recruit a fellow inmate (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to help him bust out of the escape-proof facility. Thursday 30 January @ 22:55 – WE STILL STEAL THE OLD WAY (2016) *Channel Premiere Regarded as the best in the business, The Archer Gang are back in this explosive follow-up to We Still Kill The Old Way. When the infamous 70s underworld legends are tasked with robbing Britain’s richest Banker, they are caught mid-heist and sentenced to do time in Britain’s toughest prison. Once inside, they encounter their old nemesis Slick Vic Farrow (Billy Murray) who is intent on murdering the gang. Also stars Ian Ogilvy, Lysette Anthony, Steven Berkoff and Julian Glover.