Val Kilmer plays Dr. David Kruipen, a world-renowned expert in climate change. Dr. Kruipen and his students discover the thawing carcass of a woolly mammoth, but alas, their joy suddenly turns to fear. The thawing carcass releases a terrible parasite upon the research group, and begins picking off the team one by one.

Eventually, the students realize what they need to do: quarantine themselves, which means killing anyone who gets too close and protecting each other from their fellow research buddies. This is a classic isolationist horror directed by Mark A. Lewis and even though it pulls a bit from The Thing, I like the idea of a bunch of smarty pants kids killing each other off to protect the world.

There is still no release date for The Thaw.

The Steam Experiment is now holed up in Grand Rapids, Michigan filming around town and thanks to Mlive we've got a few looks behind the scenes.

First off, kudos to Armand Assante for giving the only look he knows how to in these pictures (bewildered and pissed at the same time.) And second, was how great is Kilmer's scientist costume? Is there some unwritten rule that all science people have to dress in brown sport coats from the 80s?

The idea behind Steam Experiment is that Kilmer is a now defunct professor who wants to prove to the world that global warming will make everyone go crazy. So he locks up these poor 6 people in a Turkish bath house and slowly cranks up the temperature. He wants to prove that humans will descend into savagery under the hot pressure. Kilmer won't reveal the location of this bath house to the detective on the case (Assante) until his theory is printed as the local paper's front-page headline. The movie also stars Megan Brown and Patrick Muldoon, and Eric Roberts plays a former pro football player who's locked in the steam room. Gross — Eric Roberts shirtless.

How many bath houses are there in one area? I feel like this wouldn't be that hard for the police to figure out.

Director Mark Lewis tells Dread Central that the parasitic monster was inspired by bed bugs and how vulnerable we all really are to Mother Nature. Although this an eco-thriller Lewis warns it won't get preachy at all.

Lewis also shares a little detail about the hairless monsters and how much CGI will be used.

Fortunately the aforementioned parasite doesn't have any hair, and we've partnered with a terrific VFX company. The tests have been amazing. I've never seen anything like it. It's going to be very creepy to say the least.

Shooting is starting this spring, I look forward to the mammoth thawing, but can it possibly be as great as the alien-possessed undead mammoth from the Sci Fi Channel movie? [The Province and Dread Central]

Weirdly, both properties involve Doug Liman, who directed Jumper and executive-produced Knight Rider. We just hope that in some parallel universe there's a kickass version of Knight Rider featuring Jamie Bell as the new driver, with Sam Jackson as the voice of KITT. So where do you stand?

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We've excised the two new clips that show a) Mike bluffing in a game of poker against a Phil Hellmuth type, and b) Mike getting into a fight in a casino and kicking a guy in the balls. We figured you could probably direct those scenes better in your head. What you're left with is a scene of KITT just after he's picked up Mike's love interest, Sarah (he called her on the phone!). KITT tells her that her dad is in danger while narrowly missing some college students strolling through a park.
In the third clip, KITT tries to evade capture while wisecracking with Mike and Sarah. Mike threatens to pour sugar in KITT's gas tank, and he robotically says "Don't even think about it, Mike." Somehow he manages to keep his "I really might get an important phone call at any minute, so I have this thing jammed in my ear" headset in while vamping.
Does Val Kilmer have some massive IRS debt that we didn't know about, or perhaps a secret drug habit that he's been hiding from the world? After watching these clips it's hard to imagine why he took this gig except for the paycheck. Hearing him deadpan these lines it makes us wonder why they didn't just go from Will Arnett to This American Life's Ira Glass, who can really dial it in, monotone-style. We just wish we could have been a fly on the wall when Kilmer's agent called him with this role:

"Val? It's Morty. Yeah, the folks at NBC have called me about a billion times about this thing, so I have to mention it to you. They want you to do the voice of a..."

"I'll do it."

This Knight Rider promo just started airing on NBC, and gives a good look at KITT's "voice modulator. [KnightRiderOnline]

• Separately (if this counts as a spoiler) Val Kilmer is re-recording all of KITT's dialogue, taking over from Will Arnett. [IESB]
• Is Rick Gervais' This Side Of The Truth science fiction? It's about a world where nobody ever lies, and Gervais' chracter invents lying. Anyway, he also has a depressed next-door-neighbor (Jonah Hill) and a loser friend (Louis C.K.). [Hollywood Reporter]
• If you really can't wait until Thursday, here are two incredibly blurry videos of mobile-phone clips from the next Smallville. Chloe's snooping gets her into trouble, and Clark has a tense moment on a boat. Or maybe it just looked seasick because of the camera shaking around. [Superman Homepage]
• Also, Black Canary's cry makes Clark's ears bleed and breaks Green Arrow's arrow. By the end of the episode, Green Arrow can't wait to introduce Black Canary to the Justice League. [SpoilerTV]
• And here are four new pics of Brian Austin Green as an amnesiac visitor from the future, in next week's Sarah Connor Chronicles. [TVAddict]

People tuning into ISS action will also see the Russian Orlan, a suit which has been in continuous use since 1977. Now that the Cold War is over, the two former superpowers can fight about whether it's better to outfit its astronauts in retro-70s gear, or retro-80s. Here are the dirty details about the contestants on the ISS' next top space suit.

•The EMU is of course white, and white looks great with those Reeboks that have suddenly come back into style. Score one for the EMU, which takes an early lead.

•However, the EMU is time-consuming to put on and infamously requires the Maximum Absorbency Garment (MAG), or space diaper, and we all know what prolonged wearing of one of those leads to. Potentially high humiliation factor forces us to deduct half a point from the EMU, which is still ahead by 0.5, because the Orlan has ZERO points. BUT...

• The Orlan-M model, by contrast with the EMU, is entered via a rear hatch: you just step right in and close the back door, pop your head into the helmet and head for the airlock! Unfortunately, it looks as if you're climbing inside something that runs on steam like this one (above). But what the hell, let's give the Orlan a point for ease of entry.

Orlan inches ahead by a slim half-point margin!

•Both suits are hard-soft hybrids, which means that they're easier to move in than the earliest generation of hard-shell suits. They are not, however, a significant advance over the Apollo-Soyuz designs. That will come when we start to see the next generation of skintight unpressurized suits, the snakey Hedi Slimane kind (below) that Val Kilmer and Benjamin Bratt wore in and that Tom Sizemore bulged out of in the surprisingly not-completely-sucky Red Planet. This one is a tie.

Orlan is still in the lead!

•All Russian space tech looks like hell and might get you killed at any time, but it lasts forever. Russian Space Agency design is rugged yet dangerous. Thus, the Orlan adds a point for the thrill factor.

Orlan 2.5, EMU 0.5. C'mon EMU, catch up!

•Each EMU sports $40,000 custom-made gloves. The Orlan, as one might expect, contains no bespoke elements. One point to the EMU for each glove, which means we're now tied.

Tiebreaker: You're a space tourist on the International Space Station. It's time for your $7 million space walk. You can choose between the EMU and the Orlan. Which will it be?

Famous Names: Martha Coolidge (Director) Val Kilmer, William Atherton, Jon Gries (Cast)

Crunchy Goodness: 3

Life Lesson: Always check your optics.

Most Painfully Dated Moment: The end credits, a feel-good slo-motion scene set to Tears for Fears' 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World.'

Memorable Product Tie-In: Real Genius may be the best-ever ad for Jiffy Pop, for reasons that a single watching will make abundantly clear.

A Guide to the Real Genius/Caltech Connection