Table of contents for Issue 113 July 2011 in RUE MORGUE

For genre film festival lovers, the question isn’t whether to attend FanTasia – it’s which of the festival’s dozens of screenings and events to catch. With more than 105,000 tickets sold last year – a cool 15,000 more than 2009’s tally – FanTasia has proven to be one of the most important showcases in the world for movies that run considerably left of centre. This year’s festival, which runs July 14 through August 7 and marks FanTasia’s fifteen-year anniversary, will be no exception. The roster of world premieres includes The Wicker Tree, writer/director Robin Hardy’s re-imagining of his own 1973 classic The Wicker Man; highly-anticipated horror anthology The Theatre Bizarre; Yudai Yamaguchi’s Nazi baseball gorefest Deadball; and the grisly Italian throwback Morituris. Among this year’s confirmed guests are Hardy,…

1 ICONS OF HORROR T-SHIRT $25 Chop Shop’s WeScare, WeBite and UndeadWe T-shirts feature (respectively) 58 monsters, 34 vampires and 51 icons of the undead in silhouette – taken from movies, video games and cartoons. They’ll torment your brain for hours as you try to figure out who’s who. WeBuy at supermarkethq.com/product/the-horror-fantasy-tshirt-collection. 2 BRAIN FREEZE ICE CUBE TRAYS $8.99 Throw some flesh on the barbecue, listen to it sizzle, and relax with a nice tall drink – cooled to perfection by a large brain-shaped ice cube. A must for hot and sweaty running zombies, or even the slower, colder, shuffling ones. Chill your cortex at thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/ d29b. 3 LEFT 4 DEAD 2 PLUSHES $29.95–$34.95 After countless hours of shooting them, blowing ’em to bits and roasting them with flamethrowers, you…

WHAT GETS THE AVERAGE PERSON INTERESTED IN RESEARCHING THE EXISTENCE OF A LARGE UNDISCOVERED MAMMAL IN THE MODERN WORLD? What makes them willing to risk ridicule and scorn from family and friends? I feel, after having been a researcher in the public eye for over ten years, that it is the horror industry that has spawned many a weary trip into the midnight realm of the elusive unknown. Most researchers will agree that it was a film that initially stoked their interest. For example, The Legend of Boggy Creek is my favourite hairy scary movie of all time because the story takes place less than a three-hour drive from my house. My imagination ran wild after I saw it. But why do we actually go out in the field…

HOODLUMS VS. ALIENS ATTACK THE BLOCK Starring Jodie Whittaker, John Boyega and Luke Treadaway Written and directed by Joe Cornish Sony In an era when overhyped (and insanely budgeted) blockbusters flood the multiplexes, Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block shows what can be accomplished with a small budget and great ambition. In this sci-fi/horror/comedy hybrid, a young South London street gang, led by the sullen Moses (John Boyega), finds itself in the middle of an alien invasion. All hell breaks loose as the gang members attempt to escape, and then fight, the monsters running loose in their high-rise. The cast (including Shaun of the Dead’s Nick Frost) is uniformly brilliant, and the young “hood rats”– actors plucked straight out of UK drama schools – handle themselves with incredible confidence and believability…

MARK HARTLEY MADE A SPLASH WITH HIS 2008 DEBUT NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD, A FULL-FRONTAL LOOK AT THE OZPLOITATION MOVIES OF THE ’70S AND ’80S. His latest feature, Machete Maidens Unleashed! (now available on DVD in North America through Dark Sky Films), employs the same frenetic aesthetic to plunder the Filipino exploitation films produced during the reign of infamous dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Armed with money shot footage of karate-kickin’ midgets, papier-mâché monsters and busty babes with blades, Hartley rampages through such Filipino drive-in fodder as Eddie Romero’s Blood Island trilogy from the ’60s, to the Roger Corman-produced women-in-prison films of the ’70s (such as The Big Doll House, Women in Cages and The Big Bird Cage), to the rise of the 33-inch-tall Weng Weng in the ’80s, the star of the…

THE PAINTER, THE CREATURE, AND THE FATHER OF LIES Clive Barker Earthling Publications In 1982, Clive Barker was a struggling Liver-pudlian playwright living on the dole in London; five years later, with an acclaimed series of short story collections (The Books of Blood), a debut feature film (Hellraiser) and a second novel (Weaveworld) to his name, he had become a veritable cottage industry. Now, The Painter, the Creature, and the Father of Lies presents more than a quarter-century of Barker’s non-fiction writing, some previously unpublished. The book’s editors, Phil and Sarah Stokes, have amassed an exhaustive and enthusiastic collection of works, replete with close to 40 new – at turns graceful and enchanting, at other times jarring – illustrations by Barker. As a prime purveyor of literature that sometimes horrifies,…

It seems like a new horror press is born ever y month, even if many fail to sur vive past their first year. But that hasn’t stopped British author CJ Lines (2007’s Filth Kiss) from co-founding a new publishing house with Claire Peters and Sarah Dobbs called Adramelech Books to release his own works and those of others. I dropped Lines a, er, line to find out what inspires an author to launch his own imprint. What made you start a small horror press? I like reading stuff that’s dark, weird, edgy and surprising, and there’s not a better genre out there than horror for providing all of those elements! Horror’s gone do wn some strange paths in the last decade, not all of which I’ve particularly liked, so I…

THE BLOB SOUNDTRACK Michael Hoenig LA-LA LAND Former Tangerine Dream member Michael Hoenig (The Wraith, and the superb Dark Skies) crafts a clever little score using deep, resonating synths and actual brass instruments for his slow-oozing narrative about interstellar pink goo gradually wreaking hell on a small town. From the ambient tones, metallic sounds and sampled vocals arise like a miasma that hovers above some classic shock stabs. By the score’s finale, it’s a snarling mélange of weird brass figures and layers of electronic textures that splatter and screech. Also amid Hoenig’s original cues are remnants of the film’s temp track (“Sleeping Pill” blatantly stems from Jerry Goldsmith’s Capricorn One love theme), but it’s a minor quibble with an otherwise fun B-movie score written with an obvious affection for vintage…

THE WITCHER 2: ASSASSINS OF KINGS PC, Xbox 360 Atari Even more than its previous installment, The Witcher 2 is first and foremost a game for adults. It has all the grisly kills and epic battles inherent in the best third-person RPGs, but it also comes loaded with harsh and suggestive language, and more than a little full-frontal nudity. You’re back in the boots of Geralt for this new title, which is set after the events of the first game. As a Witcher (a.k.a. much-loathed monster slayer), it’s your job to keep the towns and countryside clear of the sorts of unnatural creatures that crawl out of the water (among them, the zombie-like Drowners), creep around on land (think giant mutant insects and phantasmagorical wraiths) and stalk you in unlit…

In 1976, the film adaptation of Carrie, Stephen King’s first published novel, burst into theatres and changed the horror genre forever. Some fans may be surprised to learn that the book – and the movie it spawned – almost never were, because in 1974 King tossed the manuscript, which at the time was a short story intended for Cavalier magazine, into the garbage. It was his wife, Tabitha, who rescued the crumpled papers and encouraged him to proceed with the tale. Little did the author know that his first novel, which he considered “the world’s all-time loser,” would sell more than one million copies in 1975. The story’s subsequent big screen adaptation, by director Brian De Palma and screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen, grossed $33.8 million at the US box office,…

AMAZING lineup for Festival Of Fear! *breaks out goth clothes* Haha! Ready to explore the #Fandom dark side!:) @ARWENFANDOM, VIA TWITTER READ THE NEW ISSUE! Loved the Sushi Typhoon stuff! The magazine keeps getting better and better! Keep up the great work! MARVIN CHARLES, VIA FACEBOOK THANK YOU for the amazing article and interview with John Waters in RM#111. John has to be one of the most fun and creative forces working today and I was thrilled to see him on your cover. I literally laughed out loud reading the interview. He is never afraid to push cultural boundaries, and neither is Rue Morgue. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to see my favourite outsider artists in your magazine, and be introduced to new and…

IF COUNTRIES HAD NATIONAL_MONSTERS, NORWAY’S WOULD CERTAINLY BE THE_TROLL. THE THINGS HAVE BEEN CRASHING THROUGH THE DARK WOODS OF THE NATION’S COLLECTIVE PSYCHE FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY NOW, BUT POP CULTURE HAS NOT BEEN KIND TO THE ONCE FEARSOME CREATURES. OVER THE COURSE OF THE PAST FEW DECADES, THESE MONSTROUS EATERS OF CHILDREN HAVE GRADUALLY BEEN REDUCED TO POT-BELLIED PENCIL-TOPPERS AND GIFT SHOP SOUVENIRS-– A SAD FATE INDEED FOR BEINGS WHOSE VERY MENTION ONCE KEPT GENERATIONS OF KIDDIES ON THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW. Trolls can trace their ancestry to Norse mythology, but it was a pair of folklorists named Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe (a zoologist and a theologian, appropriately) who are most directly responsible for making the creatures an indelible part of Norway’s cultural heritage. The…

THE COLLAPSED Starring John Fantasia, Steve Vieira and Lise Moule Directed by Justin McConnell Written by Justin McConnell and Kevin Hutchinson Unstable Ground Productions The end of the world has been a favourite plot device for a long time now, but lately the subgenre seems ready to crumple under its own weight. The subtle post-apocalyptic thriller The Collapsed puts a fresh spin on the idea, though, and opts for the slow burn over the bloody bang. Guiding us through the end times is the Weaver family: parents Scott and Emily and grown children Aaron and Rebecca. Some unknown event has sent the world spiralling into chaos, and they’re are trying to make their way to the small town of Dover’s Bend to find their estranged son. When they encounter a…

Here Comes Slasher Claus THE DORM THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1982) Blu-ray/DVD Starring Laurie Lapinski, Stephen Sachs and David Snow Directed by Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow Written by Stephen Carpenter, Jeffrey Obrow and Stacey Giachino Synapse History has been kind to the slasher films of the ’80s; today, horror fans celebrate them for their kitschy and formulaic nature. At the time, that’s exactly why they blew! It didn’t help that two levels of censorship – the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and, in this reviewer’s neck of the woods, the OFRB (Ontario Film Review Board) – enhanced the likelihood that the version you’d get to see would be completely denuded. Hey, you’d be apathetic too if you’d been burned by as many government-raped tapes as I have. Had I…

STRANGE KIDS CLUB ANTHOLOGY #1 Rondal Scott strangekidsclub.com Since 2009, Rondal Scott’s website has been a fun place for fans of ’80s nostalgia, specifically retro horror flicks, pro wrestling and Garbage Pail Kids, to converge online. Now, with its first printed anthology, the Club’s mascot, Strange Kid, is up to all kinds of dastardly deeds in comic form, vibrantly illustrated by many of today’s top talents. Artist interviews and gooey handfuls of dark humour help round out this release and make it a true treat for the peepers. GARY PULLIN DEAD RECKONING Charlaine Harris Ace Spoiler warning: The eleventh book in the series that serves as the basis for TV’s True Blood sees Sookie and Eric’s relationship complicated by both old-time bloodsucker politics and the scheming, power-hungry vampire regent…

For a vegetarian heathen from the city such as myself, there is something slightly unnerving about travelling through the backroads of the American South, land of the God-fearin’ and meat-eatin’, where mac ’n’ cheese is considered a vegetable and “Book Store” more often than not means “Bible Store.” But that’s not the kind of scare I’m after when I pull into Gatlinburg, Tennessee. They call this small mountain town (population: just under 4000) on the eastern edge of the state the “Gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains,” nestled as it is in the shadow of the forested hills that keep the air fresh and the tourists rolling in by the tens of thousands. They come not only to camp in the massive Great Smoky Mountains National Park but also…

“Tonight is the night of the vampire”– ROKY ERICKSON We get a lot of press releases emailed to us around the Morgue, many of which make us laugh with unintentional typos, outrageous claims and the like. My fave of late was for a band from LA called Vampires Everywhere! which, apparently, is taking “the vampire scene’s clean-cut, Disney image and [shedding] some blood on it.” If they’re talking about the Twilight franchise and its sanitized romanti-vamp spawn, I think many of us can relate to their pain. But few of us would argue this group, whose new album Kiss the Sun Goodbye was given a beating in last month’s Audio Drome, is particularly horrific either. I’ve been trying to embrace Vampires Everywhere! and its youthful metalcore/gothic pop about matters of…

Sign up at RUE-MORGUE.COM. Email HAUNTS@RUE-MORGUE.COM. UNITED STATES AMOK TIME 2949 Hempstead TPK Levittown, NY 516-520-0975 amoktime.com BERSAL’S CHOP OF HORRORS 1815 Trawood Space D El Paso, TX bersalschopofhorrors.com COLLECTORS CORNER 7911 Harford Rd. Baltimore, MD 410-668-3353 collectorscornermd.com CORNERSTONE COMICS 980 E. Orangethorpe Ave., Ste A Anaheim, CA 800-521-9975 DARK DELICACIES 4213 W. Burbank Blvd. Burbank, CA 818-556-6660 darkdel.com DIMENSION COLLECTIBLES 10 N. Main St. Ambler, PA dimensioncollectibles.net DREAMHAVEN BOOKS 2301 E. 38th St. Minneapolis, MN 612-823-6161 dreamhavenbooks.com DREAMLAND 1415 W. Schaumburg Rd. Schaumburg, IL 847-524-6060 dreamlandcomics.com HORRORBLES 6731 W. Roosevelt Rd. Berwyn, IL 708-484-7370 horrorbles.com THE HOUSE OF ODDITIES 421 Spring St. Jeffersonville, IN 812-285-1185 thehouseofoddities.com KEITH’S COMICS 5400 E Mockingbird Ln., Ste 120 Dallas, TX 214-827-3060 keithscomics.com OUT OF THE ORDINARY MUSIC AND GIFTS 733 Monongahela Dr. Glassport,…

noob.us/humor/you-will-never-guess-what-this-ad-is-about Like most people, I’m no big fan of commercials, but sometimes they surprise you. That’s certainly the case with this too-cool-for-school ad that borrows heavily from The Exorcist. To give away the product it’s shilling would ruin the experience, but just see if you can guess before it’s revealed. indiehorror.org Step away from mainstream horror lit with this website that purports to be a “free online horror authors convention.” While it doesn’t quite live up to that promise, it does boast book trailers and reviews, a forum for networking, and a blog that comments on everything from the business of publishing to the current state of monsters. emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp In what has to be one of the cleverest ways ever of getting the general populace to think about “emergency preparedness…

New York City-based jazz musician Stanley Wright was recently found dead in his home, where his corpse had been placed inside a steamer trunk in the basement. As of press time, police had yet to determine the cause of death. Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee’s son, who was accidentally killed while filming an action sequence for The Crow, had a premonition that he would die on the film’s set. From the 1930s through the 1970s, insulin shock therapy was used as a form of psychiatric treatment. Patients were injected with a large dose of insulin on a daily basis to induce a series of curative comas. Actor David Dukes died on the set of the Stephen King TV miniseries Rose Red after he had a heart attack while filming. His real…

WHETHER HE MADE A SUIT FOR PATTERSON’S FAMOUS BIGFOOT OR NOT, THERE’S NO DISPUTE THAT PHILIP MORRIS KNOWS A THING OR TWO ABOUT CREATING BOTH COSTUMES AND SCARES. Since starting in his basement back in the 1950s, his family-run business, Morris Costumes, has become one of the world’s largest Halloween outfitters, supplying costumes and props to everyone from major retail chains to the average street zombie. Originally from Kalamazoo, Michigan, Morris got his start in showbiz at age eight, when a performance by renowned magician Blackstone inspired him to put on his own magic shows for friends and neighbours. By thirteen, he was performing as a ventriloquist, but it was the ghost shows that rolled through town that truly enthralled him. Popular from the 1930s through the 1970s, they utilized…

"IT’S ACTUALLY A DOCUDRAMA. We went to a little village and covered what people actually do when they bring people back to life,” jokes David Keating, the Irish director and co-writer of Wake Wood, a “Monkey’s Paw”-type tale about the dangers of trying to cheat death. The film, which has been described by various critics as “folk horror” in the vein of The Wicker Man, attempts to capture the feel of a Hammer production from the 1970s. “My plan was to make a contemporary film with a 1970s sensibility,” acknowledges Keating. “I love those films from the ’70s, like Race with the Devil and Rosemary’s Baby. I think it was a wonderful period of filmmaking in general, and horror filmmaking in particular. To me, it just lent itself to that,…

THIS ISSUE: LANCE GRABS A BITE Teenage Take-Out DISMAL Cinema Epoch I fucking love cannibals, especially those deformed, inbred, backwoods ones. Throw in a bunch of oversexed teenagers and you’ve got yourself a movie – just usually not a very good one. Dismal follows a group of college students who head into the swamp in order to pick up some extra credit for a biology course, and stumble upon a hungry cannibal family, with predictable results. And that’s the problem with this lazy flick: it’s filled with stereotypical characters and clichés. It’s got your standard jump scares, boobies and gore, and while the grue is plentiful and features hotties being sliced in half and getting their faces caught in bear traps, it’s just never enough to stand out in a…

AN OFFER CORMAN COULDN’T REFUSE DEMENTIA 13 (1963) Blu-Ray/DVD Starring Luana Anders, William Campbell and Patrick Magee Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola HD Cinema Classics Nearly a decade before directing a little picture called The Godfather and distinguishing himself as part of a new wave of American directors that would also include Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola made his mainstream filmmaking debut with Dementia 13, a hastily written, low-budget horror film shot in Ireland that nevertheless showcased his burgeoning Hollywood filmmaking talents. In the early ’60s, Coppola was just another one of B-movie legend Roger Corman’s ambitious lackeys, making his bones co-directing nudie cuties such as 1962’s Tonight for Sure and The Bellboy and the Playgirls. But when Coppola realized that Corman had…

IF YOU’RE GIVING POINTS FOR SHEER LUNACY – AND WHY WOULDN’T YOU? – THERE AREN’T MANY NOVELS THAT WOULD OUTSCORE TOBE HOOPER AND ALAN GOLDSHER’S MIDNIGHT MOVIE. The pair go for broke in their tale of a zombie outbreak known as “The Game,” which is somehow caused by the screening of a long-lost fictional Hooper film. People pull off their own legs and beat themselves with them; commit suicide in the slowest, most painful ways they can find; and literally fuck one another to death while their junk spews fountains of sticky, blue discharge. It’s a gruesome, violent and relentlessly meta affair that casts The Texas Chainsaw Massacre director himself as the reluctant hero who must delve into his own past to solve the mystery of The Game. Hooper…

With the demise of specialty labels such as Tartan Asia and Artsmagic, one might think the wave of Asian films that invigorated cinema in the last decade would have seemingly dried up. But Canadian label Mongrel Media is helping to fill the void with a barebones release of South Korean filmmaker Chul-Soo Jang’s soul-crushing directorial debut Bedevilled (2010). Hae-won (Ji Seong-Won) is an aloof bank employee who witnesses the violent assault of a young woman outside a bar on the busy streets of Seoul. Reluctant to cooperate with police, particularly after being threatened by the suspects, her frustrations are further exacerbated by a well-meaning co-worker who approves a loan for an elderly woman that Hae-won had callously rejected. After an angry public confrontation, Hae-won is forced to take a vacation.…

Ogre-n. 1. A monster in fairy tales and popular legend, usually represdnted as a hideous gian who feeds on human flest 2. Nivek Ogre, ne kevin Oglvie, vocalist, songwriter and actor, frontman of idustrial music pioneers Skinny Puppy ohGr-n. 1.Musical project for Nivek Ogre and multi-instrumentalist/engineer Mark Walk, which recently relesased its fourth album, unDeveloped FOR FANS OF SHOCK AND HORROR AND STRANGE NOISES, NIVEK OGRE WILL FOREVER BE KNOWN AS THE VOICE AND FACE OF SKINNY PUPPY. Yet for more than ten years now, he’s also been making electronic music mutations under the ohGr moniker. And with unDeveloped (available now from Metropolis Records), it’s clear that this project is just as capable of implanting unsettling ideas into your ears. Ogre admits the album’s title is partly a response…