Table of contents for Issue 104 September 2010 in RUE MORGUE

ALIEN VS. NINJA – Japan Seiji Chiba This quirky, low-budget gem pits rubber-suited aliens against PVC-clad ninjas in an amputation demonstration extravaganza. Reptile-like flesh-eaters crash on a planet of warring ninja clans (by way of some crafty animation) raring to repopulate – plus, they’re starving! Campy acting, badass choreographed sword fights, and tentacle bondage are just three juicy reasons to see this one. JS BLACK DEATH – UK/Germany Christopher Smith Set in 1348 during the peak of the Black Plague, a young monk guides an envoy of the bishop’s men to a remote village reportedly populated by demons and necromancers. Upon arriving, the serene hamlet appears free of pestilence, but all is not what it seems. A grand and gory medieval horror, Black Death is classic storytelling in the spirit…

Rob Stefaniuk knows what addicts look like. Having spent fifteen years in go-nowhere bands before turning to filmmaking, the writer, director and star of the Canadian rock’n’ roll vampire comedy Suck has seen his share of juiceheads, pill poppers and drug fiends. “People who are messed up on heroin kind of look like vampires,” he says. “They have these fucked-up eyes and this pale pallor to their skin, and they’re like the walking dead. So I just kind of made that a comedy!” In Suck (out this month from E1), Stefaniuk plays Joey, leader of the ironically named Toronto rock band The Winners. Perpetually broke, the band struggles through gig after gig in empty clubs, with no payoff in sight. Even their clueless manager (Dave Foley of The Kids in…

DARIO ARGENTO James Gracey Kamera Books With a career that has spanned more than 40 years, Dario Argento is one of horrordom’s most revered figures. The writer/director of such brutally bloody, yet elaborately stylish films as Deep Red, Suspiria and Phenomena (and producer of George A. Romero’s masterpiece Dawn of the Dead and Lamberto Bava’s Demons) has been the subject of several books to date, among them the highly regarded Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento (see RM#103) and Profondo Argento: The Man, the Myths and the Magic. And while not as exhaustive as those efforts, the newly released (and succinctly titled) Dario Argento does a commendable job of introducing readers to the man and his work. Author James Gracey manages to pack a wealth of information…

A confession: I read my fair share of tie-in novels – those often lazily plotted, quickie cash grabs for hot genre properties. Why? Because I am an unrepentant story junkie hooked on epic plotlines. I love long-running bo ok series, television shows that go on for years – the longer the better. And that’s what I get out of tie-in novels: more story, even if 80 percent of the time it’s fast food, not fine dining. Once in a while, I read something that’s light years above the justifiably marginalized crowd, a story that takes the medium, and exploits it to its own advantage – and perhaps even corrects a wrong in the original (gasp!). Let me explain… At the end of the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer,…

THE BEAST WITHIN (1981) SOUNDTRACK Les Baxter INTRADA After a long career composing for bugeyed monster movies and Poe thrillers, Les Baxter scored one more shocker before retiring from the genre he vivified with his lush compositional style during the ’60s and early ’70s. Within Beast’s meaty 58-minute score lies a beautiful, empathetic main theme, harsh orchestral shock cues and, ever the experimenter, Baxter’s creepy use of primordial electronic sounds (many reminiscent of Denny Zeitlin’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers). What’s surprising is the organic balance that Baxter maintains between melodic, dissonant and conventional sounds in spite of the music’s fast turns and transmutations. There’s also an edginess that demonstrates the magic he could conjure if he was given a major studio-level music budget. “Skeletons Uncovered” summarizes Baxter’s maturity; it’s…

HIGHEST RATING IS THREE N3II: NINETY-NINE NIGHTS Xbox 360 Konami Ever have a craving to slip into a suit of armour, pick up your favourite broadsword and go on a legendary hack-and-slash bloodfest? Me too! But with the price of armour and sword cleaner these days, thank the gods there’s a game that’ll get you just as bloody without those hefty bills. With armies of evil set to usurp your beloved kingdom, it’s up to you to take’em on, armed with nothing more than a couple of magic spells and some hi-tech cutlery, which will have you cleaving craniums, lopping limbs and hewing the heads off of thousands of fearsome foes in no time. Gameplay progresses as players utilize a number of simple attack combos in order to clear an…

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JUST A QUICK WORD to tell you how excited I was to read your piece on ADULT. (RM#103) in the last Blood Spattered Guide. Every month or so, you seem to point out a music group that I reaaaally enjoy that doesn’t get a lot of coverage from the horror community, while it should. At first, I thought I wouldn’t write you this message, but then I read this comment in the Post Mortem column from that guy who was bitching about your articles and thought, “That’s sad, we always write back to complain, but not too much when we’re happy or satisfied.” So that’s it, I only wanted to say that, unlike that guy, you’re a reason why I still buy Rue Morgue! Have a nice day! MARC BOISCLAIR…

youtube.com [search: “Walking Dead Motion Comic”] Can’t wait for The Walking Dead to come to life on your TV screen this fall? Why not check out this motion comic in the meantime? It brings movement, animation and sound to the black and white panels of the story. Actually, never mind, this may just make you more impatient… walkingdead.wikia.com If you’ve been living under a rock for the last seven years – or just aren’t a comics fan – and want to prime yourself for television’s undead invasion this fall, here’s your cheat sheet: The Walking Dead wiki. This Wikipedia-like site will catch you up on all the comic book series’ basics (plus much more!) – just beware of spoilers. kinderscares.com Got young boils and ghouls at home but aren’t sure…

CASE NO.104 A Romanian woman recently watched over her dead husband’s corpse for two weeks before reporting his demise to authorities because she suspected that he had faked his own death in order to run off with his mistress. When San Diego Comic Con organizers asked Alexandre Aja to tone down the gory footage from his latest film, Piranha 3D, to a PG-13 rating, in order to show it at his preview panel, he refused and Dimension Films moved the presentation off-site to the nearby UA Horton Plaza theatre. A Palestinian superstition dictates that pregnant women who want a son should drink a “potion” comprised of the powdered umbilical cord of a newborn boy. British actor David Warner (Straw Dogs, The Omen) was originally cast as Freddy Krueger. He backed…

MUCH HAS BEEN SAID OF JAZ COLEMAN AND HIS BAND, KILLING JOKE. THE 50-YEAR-OLD ENGLISHMAN HAS BEEN CALLED A WITCH, A SHAMAN, A MADMAN, A GENIUS AND, MOST OF ALL, AN INFLUENCE. Bands from across the rock spectrum, including Metallica, Faith No More, Soundgarden, Ministry, Nirvana, Lamb of God, Tool, Rammstein, Napalm Death, Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction have all name-checked the post-punk band’s heavy tribal ruckus as inspiration. Now, in the wake of long-time bassist Paul Raven’s death in October of 2007, the original 1979 lineup has reunited for a twelfth studio album, called Absolute Dissent (out September 28 on Spinefarm Records), to keep the fire of Killing Joke burning bright. “Since ’82, it was always there, that [a reunion of the original lineup] would happen at some…

ALL THE YOUNG DUDES THE BROTHERHOOD V: ALUMNI E1 Entertainment David DeCoteau has directed nearly 80 movies over the last 25 years, including Shrieker, Creepozoids and several Puppetmaster outings, but you might not know it, as many were released under aliases such as Julian Breen and Ellen Cabot. In 2009 alone he directed eight movies, most of which are stocked with his trademark tight-bodied young men sporting even tighter underwear. The fifth installment of his Brotherhood series features a gaggle of high school jocks and beauty queens trying to cover up a prom night prank that ended in murder. While there’s hardly any gore (but lots of body-scrubbing shower scenes!), DeCoteau’s fans will likely still be pleased to learn that he filmed The Brotherhood VI: Initiation at the same time.…

In 2001, writer/artist Richard Moore unleashed Boneyard, a quarterly black and white horror comic that quickly won over readers and critics with its strong wit, memorable monsters, fantastic art and outlandish storylines. Nine years, 28 issues and seven trade paperbacks later, Moore has decided to (hopefully) temporarily call it quits on what is frankly, one of the finest horror comics of the last decade. “I’ve always loved horror,” admits Moore. “I’d been drawing some characters, completely unrelated to each other, at the time, and one – Abbey – I’d even written into a few different projects. Then it occurred to me that they had a certain commonality, and it all sort of fell together.” For the uninitiated, Abbey is a 2000-year-old vampire living in a graveyard inherited by a perfectly…

TWICE THE TERROR: THE HORROR ZINE (VOL. 2) Jeani Rector, ed. BearManor Media Previously only available as an online e-zine, this superb anthology compiled by Horror Zine founder Jeani Rector is crammed with creepy tales about rotting zombies and vicious pigs. There’s also a series of macabre poems by Joe R. Lansdale and a portrait of Vincent Price that looks as if it was painted in spattered blood. With something for just about every horror fan out there, Twice the Terror is guaranteed to thrill and chill you long into the night. LAST CHANCE LANCE THE NURSING HOME James J. Murphy III L&J Publishing While this debut novel from James J. Murphy III could use some additional editorial polish, its clever characters and unique premise still make The Nursing Home…

When the roar of the crowd dies down and the curtains drop, the theatrical spectres of Broadway’s past come out for a supernatural encore. Even after death, actors hate giving up the spotlight, and that’s why New York City’s Times Square theatre district ranks as one of the most haunted places on Earth. No one knows this paranormal history like Dr. Phil Schoenberg, New York’s premiere maven of the macabre. A history professor at Queens College and author of The Ghosts of Manhattan, Dr. Phil knows every back alley wraith and skyscraping spirit the Big Apple has to offer. For these reasons, there’s no better way to explore Broadway’s supernatural side than with Dr. Phil’s Ghosts of Times Square Walking Tour. The adventure begins at Father Duffy Square (located at…

“Look at everybody, naked and disfigured. Nothing’s shocking.” – JANE’S ADDICTION What is shock rock? This term, applied to the antics of Alice Cooper starting in the 1970s, has its roots deep in the history of entertainment. Was Shakespeare its architect, with his gruesome 16th-century tragedies such as Titus Andronicus? What about German composer Richard Strauss and his opera Salome, which paraded a severed head across high society stages in 1905? Surely, shocking rockers go back as far as the rock genre itself: Little Richard, Elvis, our pal in voodoo theatrics Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. But it’s most suitable for Cooper, who took all the sick pleasures of Grand Guignol theatre and vaudevillian hucksterism and mixed them with androgyny, makeup and glamtastic hits, to as much controversy as commercial success. But…

UPCOMING OPERA TO EXPAND UPON ‘BLOOD COUNTESS’ LEGEND Elizabeth Báthory, the aristocrat allegedly responsible for the murders of more than 600 young women at the turn of the 16th century, has long inspired art: novels, plays, films and even games. Now, if composer Dennis Báthory-Kitzs has his way, a new chamber opera about the so-called “Blood Countess” named Erzsébet will open in Vermont this fall. Báthory-Kitzs has been working on the project for over two decades, and is currently in the process of raising the $12,000 US he needs to stage the production. (He is well underway, with nearly half of that amount in the bank at press time). He recently took the campaign to the web, at bathory.org, and is offering donors a wide range of incentives to contribute,…

1 COFFIN COUCHES $3500 Even if you don’t need a coffin to sleep in quite yet, there’s no reason to eschew the comforts enjoyed by the recently deceased. These pristine couches are made from recycled caskets, bear the international biohazard symbol on each leg, and have various upgrades available, from embroidery to cupholders. Have a nice, long rest at coffincouches.com. 2 SOURPUSS DIAPER BAG $33 Monstrous mothers-on-the-go toting diaper supplies, fresh bottles of God-knows-what and bone rattles will enjoy this vinyl diaper bag from Sourpuss Clothing. With bottle pockets and a matching change pad emblazoned with skulls, bones and stitched wounds, it’s the perfect accessory for any demon scion. It’s all for you at sourpussclothing.com. 3 HUMAN TOOTH NECKLACE $110 Each of these beautiful, Victorian-style necklaces is made with a…

FOR MOST OF US, ANY THOUGHTS OF 1950S HORROR COMIC BOOKS ARE SURE TO CONJURE THE RESTLESS SPIRIT OF THE LEGENDARY EC COMICS. FIFTY-SIX YEARS AFTER THE COMICS CODE AUTHORITY EFFECTIVELY DISMANTLED THE BOOMING INDUSTRY OF HORROR COMICS (VERY NEARLY TAKING THE ENTIRE COMICS BUSINESS WITH IT), WILLIAM GAINES’ ICONIC PUBLISHING HOUSE STILL HOLDS A MONOPOLY ON CREEPY COMICS NOSTALGIA – EVEN THOUGH IT ONLY PRODUCED A SCANT SEVEN PERCENT OF THE JOYFULLY GRUESOME FARE THAT CROWDED THE ERA’S NEWSSTANDS. What about the other 93 percent, then? In the long shadow of EC, most of it has been virtually forgotten. Comics historians Greg Sadowski and John Benson hope to change that with Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s (out September 22 from Fantagraphics). “I collected comics as…

FUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE PREDATORS Starring Adrien Brody, Topher Grace and Laurence Fishburne Directed by Nimród Antal Written by Alex Litvak and Michael Finch 20th Century Fox The fifth entry in the Predator legacy hits the ground running when a grab bag of soldiers and convicts literally drop out of the sky and crash into the jungle with little idea of where they are or how they got there. Husky throated alpha male Adrien Brody takes the lead – along with Alice Braga (I Am Legend) as a sniper/love interest, Danny Trejo for requisite grit, That ’70s Show’s Topher Grace as the unnecessary bumbling scientist comic relief and a couple of other future victims – and summarizes that they’ve been dumped in an otherworldly game preserve as sport prey for……

HOW DO YOU SURVIVE A RESIDENT EVIL FILM? ACTOR BORIS KODJOE HAS THIS ADVICE: “STAY CLOSE TO MILLA!” Kodjoe is, of course, talking about his co-star Milla Jovovich, one of several cast and crew members I speak to during a visit to the Toronto set of Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D. The model-turned-actress plays Alice, the zombie-killing heroine of the Resident Evil films. This fourth installment in the franchise was filmed last fall, mostly in the cavernous Cinespace complex in the city’s west end. A backstage tour introduces us to the Fusion Camera System, the same 3-D system James Cameron developed to make Avatar. We also get to see stand-ins block a scene and watch the resulting images in 3-D. It takes forever, but the result is impressive. Scheduled for release…

PORTRAIT OF A CARVING ARTIST A BUCKET OF BLOOD (1959) DVD Starring Dick Miller, Barboura Morris and Julian Burton Directed by Roger Corman Written by Charles B. Griffith MGM “Creation is – all else is not!” howls pompous beatnik poet Maxwell Brock (Julian Burton) as Roger Corman pulls back the curtain on the opening scene of his sanguinary satire A Bucket of Blood. Though intended to foreshadow the artistic mayhem to come, Maxwell’s haughty clam could refer to the film’s in famous director and producer. A one-man B-movie empire, Corman has compulsively cranked out dozens of low-budget programmers since the beginning of the 1950s. Though it ranks among his lowest-budgeted creations, A Bucket of Blood is infused with Corman’s personality and artistic ambitions in a way that had not really…

IT’S IMPORTANT, ESPECIALLY WITH EXTREME CINEMA, not to confuse the artist with the art. That really hit home for me when I met magGot. He was the hairy freak in August Underground’s Mordum (2003) who slit a woman’s stomach open and fucked her guts, raped the corpse of a pubescent girl in a bathtub and ate maggots off the ruined neck of a decapitated baby. It was at the first Festival of Fear that this clean-cut, low-key dude introduced himself to me as Michael Todd Schneider. He got a blank look until he clarified, “magGot from August Underground’s Mordum.” Schneider is far from the ferocious scuzzball he portrayed in that film. He’s a multi-talented artist who caught the filmmaking bug while attending the Art Institute of Pittsburgh for special effects.…

WITH RAVE CULTURE, ELECTRONIC MUSIC CAME TO BE DEFINED BY HIGH ENERGY BEATS AND A VIBE THAT SCREAMED “DRUG-INDUCED GOOD TIMES,” MEANING THE DARKNESS OF HORROR AND THE LEVITY OF DANCE MUSIC DID NOT A NATURAL PAIRING MAKE. However, the experimental nature of electronic music meant it was only a matter of time before bedroom producers paired their drum machines with chopped and screwed horror movie themes, giving birth to a new subgenre: witch house. “Witch house music comes from the need to have a connection to the spiritual and supernatural transformation of the self,” says James Weigel (a.k.a. owleyes), co-founder of Houston, Texas electronic label Disaro Records. “The space and imagery conjured in the Italian horror films from the ’60s and the silent era transport this generation back to…

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