Table of contents for Issue 117 November 2011 in RUE MORGUE

John Dunning, the co-founder of Canadian independent motion picture company Cinépix and a pivotal figure in the development of horror filmmaking in Canada, died on September 19, 2011, at 84 years of age. Though Dunning never fully recovered from a near-fatal bike accident in 2006, he continued to be active in filmmaking during the past few years. Through Cinépix, Dunning and his partner André Link were instrumental in changing the landscape of the Canadian film industry. Although their company was probably best known for successes such as the comedy Meatballs and the acclaimed indie drama Buffalo ’66, the Montreal-based producers may have made their biggest mark on the horror genre. In the 1970s, they helped to kick-start the careers of many genre-focused filmmakers and producers, including David Cronenberg, Ivan Reitman,…

1 FRIDAY THE 13TH DVD COLLECTION $39.99 It’s hockey season, so don’t forget your Jason mask, which just happens to come in this DVD box set of the Friday the 13th franchise. Also included: the previously released “Ultimate” editions, a book on the films and 3-D glasses for part three. Limited to 50,000 – machete not included. Stalk the series online and at retail stores everywhere. 2 SKELETAL APRONS $23.95 “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” bony beauty Kate Moss once controversially proclaimed – but now you can get the best of both worlds the next time you’re roasting ribs, with an apron that brings out your inner supermodel. Let the meat fall off your bones at neatoshop.com. 3 BATMOSPHERE NECKLACE £90 GBP Offbeat British designers Tatty Devine have…

VINCENT PRICE WOULD PORTRAY NUMEROUS SINISTER VILLAINS DURING HIS FIVE DECADES IN FILM, but none of them resonated with horror fans quite like diabolical genius Anton Phibes from 1971’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes and its sequel, 1972’s Dr. Phibes Rises Again! A renowned concert organist horribly disfigured in an automobile crash, Phibes – with the help of his beautiful, seemingly mute assistant Vulnavia – slays the medical team he deems responsible for the death of his cherished wife, Victoria. As the holder of a doctorate in theology, Phibes also puts his knowledge of the Old Testament to good use by murdering his victims in manners inspired by the ten plagues of Egypt. The follow-up film sees the character do away with an archaeological group whose leader has interfered with Phibes’…

THIS ISSUE: LANCE GETS A LITTLE GAMEY DOUBLE DOG TRUTH OR DARE: A CRITICAL MADNESS Sub Rosa Studios Everyone’s played Truth or Dare at least once, but most of us have never thought about making it into a movie. Enter this dud about a dude who walks in on his cheating wife and proceeds to go crazy, reverting back to a time when he mutilated himself with a razor while playing Truth or Dare in the schoolyard. After spending time in a psych ward, he’s released and immediately goes on a hilarious killing spree that sees him driving over a baby in a stroller and then chasing down a little-leaguer with a chainsaw. Too bad the body count can’t make up for the shitty acting and a storyline that…

THE NAME MARK SHOSTROM RESONATES WITH FANS OF LURIDLY INVENTIVE SPECIAL MAKEUP EFFECTS. RISING TO PROMINENCE DURING THE 1980S, the Los Angeles native’s credits include the Roger Corman-produced The Slumber Party Massacre; Don Coscarelli’s The Beastmaster, Phantasm II and Phantasm III; David Cronenberg’s Videodrome; Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond; John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness; and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 and 3. His signature movie, however, is Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II (out November 15 from Lionsgate), which features a riotous extravaganza of outlandish creatures, flying limbs, decomposed flesh and explosive multicoloured vomit that embraced numerous techniques in makeup, animatronics, stop-motion animation and claymation. Shostrom met the challenge head-on, especially with the bloated, sore-ridden, fly-blown, demon-possessed Henrietta (pictured below, being worked on by the effects artist), who relentlessly torments the…

Scott Tuft is a new name in the comics industry but his first work, Image’s upstart monthly horror series Severed, already brings with it a fair amount of pedigree. Tuft’s co-writer and long-time friend Scott Snyder is the creator of Vertigo’s award-winning American Vampire; together the duo has conceived a nightmarish tale of broken childhoods, desperate longing and cannibalism. “When Scott and I first started thinking about Severed, we wanted to make a horror where the scares were not fantastical but real, and the gore was a symptom of the horror more than the substance of it,” says Tuft. “We also wanted the horror to resonate deep down. We wanted to evoke that fear that you have as a kid – where you’re afraid to go to sleep or turn…

DEATH CASKET: ART OF UNKLE PIGORS Eric Pigors Self Published Thumbing through one of Eric Pigor’s books is much like emptying out a treat bag on Halloween. It’s stuffed with 140 pages of sickly sweet, colourful illustrations of the art he’s created since 2007. His toxic monster toons infect T-shirt designs, album covers and art prints – you never quite know what might spill out. Limited to 100 copies, Death Casket is signed and even comes with a nifty death certificate. Grimly appropriate! GARY PULLIN THE GHOST HANDBOOK: AN ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO GHOSTS, SPIRITS, AND SPECTRES Dr. Robert Curran Barron’s This charming full-colour mini-volume begins with a short overview of the uneasy relationship between the living and the dead through history before getting into the real meat of the book:…

Bundled up against the early morning November chill, I had taken a cab to Cementerio General (Cemetery General) in La Paz, Bolivia, to witness one of the world’s most extraordinary celebrations of the dead, the Fiesta de las Ñatitas. It has been hailed by its adherents as “a celebration of life” and derided by its detractors as “a pagan spectacle,” but regardless of how one describes it, the Fiesta is completely unique. The annual festival is held every November 8, and attracts some 10,000 people, most of whom come to the cemetery carrying garishly decorated human skulls, or ñatitas (which means “pugnosed ones,” in reference to the skull’s shape). Normally kept in small shrines in the homes of their adherents, the skulls are considered receptacles for the souls of the…

HALLOWEEN ISSUE of Rue Morgue looks AMAZING! Simply packed with [over] 100 pages of fandom, gore and goodness! *High fives* DOORWAY2FANDOM, VIA TWITTER I AM CURIOUS as to why you didn’t mention the Halloween II (1981) Blu-ray controversy yet? I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Universal removed Moustapha Akkad’s name from the opening credits. The traditional “Moustapha Akkad Presents” credit is gone; instead we are treated to “Universal, An MCA Company Presents.” The font doesn’t even match, and Moustapha’s name still appears on the packaging. What is your opinion on all this? I think it’s wrong what Universal did. I was looking forward to this release, but this is a deal breaker for me. CHRIS – NORMAN, OKLAHOMA [We talk about it in the Halloween II review on p.44…

Thanks to its smart take on familiar slasher tropes, Adam Wingard’s home invasion shocker You’re Next has been getting gangbuster reviews on the festival circuit. For many horror fans, though, the big story isn’t the film’s potential for breakout box-office success, it’s the welcome return of actress Barbara Crampton to the blood-spattered silver screen. Crampton, best known for her roles in Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator, From Beyond and Castle Freak, was all but retired from acting when she read the script for You’re Next. “They didn’t even want to meet with me first,” she recalls. “They just offered me the part, which I thought was kind of nice. I really liked Simon Barrett’s script. I thought it was very cool, but I had no idea it was going to get the…

youtube.com/watch?v=rFNOFOWCSk0 Step back into history with this black and white clip of Gus Edwards performing “Lon Chaney’s Gonna Get You if You Don’t Watch Out” from the musical-comedy Hollywood Review of 1929. While not terribly creepy in and of itself, it does shed some light on Chaney as an early horror icon. raygartononline.com Award-winning author Ray Garton (Scissors, Live Girls) has just launched his very first official website. Along with the usual bio and bibliography, there are links to his blog and various podcasts and articles featuring interviews about his extensive body of work. Better still, fans can interact with the scribe himself on the site’s message board. Welcome, Ray! zombieinfo.com Zombies, those undead skinbags with more staying power than roaches, are the focus of yet another website. While the…

THE AWAKENING UK Nick Murphy Rookie director Nick Murphy teams with veteran British horror writer Stephen Volk (Gothic, The Guardian) for this classic English ghost story that unnerves through atmosphere, dread and human tragedy. Set in the early 20th century, a ghostbusting skeptic is invited to a boarding school to investigate what she assumes to be a hoax but soon realizes is a very personal haunting. A suggestive ghost story in the spirit of The Others, The Awakening’s delicate balance of creeping suspense and genuine jump scares – though subtle and gore-free – contains at least one scene that’s sure to unnerve hardened horror fans. A haunting yarn from a promising director. PB THE DAY USA Doug Aarniokoski Apocalypse fatigue sets in with yet another movie about desperate…

THE CAT STRIKES BACK KURONEKO (1968) Blu-ray/DVD Starring Kichiemon Nakamura, Nobuko Otowa and Kiwako Taichi Written and directed by Kaneto Shindô Criterion Collection There is no dialogue during the first ten minutes of Kaneto Shindô’s Kuroneko. The black and white film opens on a small farm, as menacing drumbeats and bizarre feline-like noises add tension to the soundtrack. Suddenly, a group of dirty, desperate-looking samurai appear out of the woods. They drink greedily from the stream in front of the modest, grass-roof farmhouse before going inside. There they confront two terrified women, steal their food, rape and kill them and then disappear back into the landscape. The camera once again lingers on the farm and everything seems peaceful, until smoke starts to billow out of the house as it begins…

WHEN ASKED TO DESCRIBE CHÔMU PRESS, EDITOR QUENTIN S. CRISP FIRST RELATES AN OLD TAOIST TALE: “Chuang Tse falls asleep and dreams that he is a butterfly. He wakes up and he’s not sure whether he’s just dreamt he was a butterfly or if he’s a butterfly now dreaming he is Chuang Tse.” Crisp’s London, England-based publishing house aims to capture this sense of disquiet with its growing collection of unsettling fiction. The name Chômu refers to a Japanese version of that old story. “Translated literally it means ‘butterfly dream,’” he explains. Furthermore, the imprint’s slogan, “new vistas of irreality,” is a deliberate misquote of an H.P. Lovecraft line from “The Call of Cthulhu.” “Near the opening of [the story] there is the phrase ‘vistas of reality,’ so it’s just…

Nobody was better suited to make The Godfather of Gore, the documentary on unabashed exploitation filmmaker H.G. Lewis (who I profiled last issue), than Frank Henenlotter, who considers being classified as an exploitation filmmaker a badge of honour because, as he puts it, “it’s a broader category and it’s significantly less respectable.” Readers of this space should be familiar with his films Basket Case (1982), Brain Damage (1988) and Frankenhooker (1990), as they are nothing less than essential viewing for the discerning gorehound. They’re crude, hilarious, over-the-top, and starting to slither out on Blu-ray. Along with The Godfather of Gore, Something Weird Video also recently released Henenlotter’s 42nd Street classic and ’80s video store staple Basket Case, with a new transfer from the 16 mm camera negatives and almost all…

SPEAKING WITH ANTHRAX’S SCOTT IAN, IT’S IMMEDIATELY CLEAR THE GUITARIST DOESN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT ALL THE FUSS IS ABOUT REGARDING THE GROUP’S RECENTLY RELEASED TENTH STUDIO EFFORT, WORSHIP MUSIC (OUT NOW ON MEGAFORCE RECORDS). Even though it marks the quintet’s first album of original material since 2003’s We’ve Come for You All, signals the return of vocalist Joey Belladonna, and has earned the band the second-highest chart debut of its career, he already seems tired of people trying to dissect the current incarnation of Anthrax or the quintet’s latest accomplishment. “To me, it’s all Anthrax,” Ian says, sighing. “People can analyze it’til the end of time in terms of who does what, what sounds like what, how come this record sounds like this, who’s better than who, and who brings what…

A pair of friends were arrested in Denver, Colorado, in September after taking their dead Canadian buddy to a diner, a bar and then a strip club, Weekend at Bernie’s-style. Juliet Marion Hulme – who, along with her best friend, Pauline Parker, murdered Parker’s mother in 1954 (a crime explored in Peter Jackson’s 1994 film Heavenly Creatures) – went on to become a best-selling author after her release from prison. She’s written more than 50 books in the historical, detective and crime fiction genres, selling upwards of 20 million copies cumulatively. Earlier this fall, a Mexican drug gang dumped some 35 corpses into the middle of a roadway in Mexico City during rush hour, while several armed henchmen stood guard. According to Bryan Senn’s A Year of Fear, 1932’s Doctor…

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (ARTHUR LUBIN, UNIVERSAL, 1943) A TECHNICOLOR SPECTACLE – the first of its kind for Universal Horror – this version stars Claude Rains (The Invisible Man) as the Phantom, here named Erique Claudin. It signals a significant departure from the Lon Chaney version, instead cashing in on the popularity of musicals and costume melodramas of the time, with stars Nelson Eddy as Raoul and Susannah Foster as Christine. While the masked ball sequence is notably absent, Universal made sure to include the chandelier’s fatal descent. This film also introduces the notion of the Phantom’s disfigurement by acid, to be used in future versions. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (TERENCE FISHER, HAMMER, 1962) HAMMER RECASTS THE TALE for Victorian England, and wastes no time revealing Herbert Lom’s…

KILLING IN THE NAME OF RED STATE Starring John Goodman, Michael Parks and Kyle Gallner Written and directed by Kevin Smith Phase 4 “A parlour trick” is how Kevin Smith has described his first foray into the horror genre. Apt description, ’cause Red State only begins as a fright flick before morphing into an action siege movie. (Similarly, you may have noted that the original creepy crucifixion poster art was later changed to a babe with an AK-47.) It’s dark as hell all around, though. In fact, the filmmaker, who’s known for his comedies, went the indie route with the $4 million film after potential producers the Weinstein Brothers rejected it for being too bleak. Politics likely played a role too; as you can guess by the title, Red State…

JUMPING THE WHALE Double disclaimer. One, I’ve never read Moby Dick. Many of my friends have, and they can be divided into two camps: the ones who say it’s a tedious uphill slog, and the ones who say it’s one of the great masterpieces of English literature, but also a tedious uphill slog; either way, it’s the whole tedious uphill slog part I find off-putting. Two, I absolutely cannot abide Richard Harris. Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine exemplify everything wonderful about that generation of British actors, while sputtering, trembling-lower-lipped Harris is the embodiment of every aspect I find cloying and annoying. So why would I recommend the excrementally awful Orca (1977) to the Rue Morgue faithful? Well, because it’s one of the most unintentionally hilarious post-Jaws Bad Animal knock-offs, in…

BAD OL’ U.S. OF A. THE ART OF CREATURE CRAFT KIRKMAN KEEPS ON COMING MONSTERS IN AMERICA: OUR HISTORICAL OBSESSION WITH THE HIDEOUS AND THE HAUNTING W. Scott Poole Baylor University Press Nobody could be blamed for mistaking Monsters in America for a book that it is not. Whether this disconnect is the result of the title itself, or the scene of gnarled trees shrouded in an ominous fog that serves as its cover art, this is not some compendium of hauntings in the heartland or a personal eyewitness account of the antics of the Jersey Devil. Author (and history professor) W. Scott Poole has constructed a work that is far more in-depth, scholarly and imaginative than any of the throwaway schlock that fills the bargain bins of bookstores every…

SUPER 8 SOUNDTRACK Michael Giacchino VARESE SARABANDE For Super 8, director J.J. Abrams’ homage to the kid-friendly shockers of the ’80s, Michael Giacchino immerses himself in his own musical nostalgia so effectively that he’s written the best John Williams horror score of the era that Williams never wrote himself. The Academy Award-winning composer pulls it off because of his knack for writing searing, tragic themes with gushing strings and absolutely terrifying shock music using simple yet elegant tricks (such as his patented warping brass effect). Super 8, not unlike Giacchino’s music for TV’s Lost, is designed around two stark, contrasting themes: a saccharine, feel-good piece (“Family Matters”) that eventually gets spun into gushing emotional waves of intricately orchestrated strings, and the eight-note menace theme, which is reconfigured into both small…

DEAD ISLAND XBox 360, PS3, PC Deep Silver, Techland Dead Island may well be a game doomed by its own hype. If you get gamers talking, you better live up to what they’re saying. And Dead Island does – to a point. The tropical setting is undeniably arresting and the half-naked zombies appropriately icky, but the graphics themselves could be both sleeker and gooier. And while there’s definitely a heightened feeling of realism when playing, whether that makes for a better game is debatable. Once you’ve chosen your character (who excels at a form of melee or ranged combat), you are deposited into the outbreak. A tutorial runs you through the basics: hitting, kicking, jumping, looting, swapping weapons and operating your flashlight, then it’s time to help people work towards…

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