Table of contents for Issue 119 Jan/Feb 2012 in RUE MORGUE

We at Rue Morgue call it a “Billy Connolly moment” – when you suddenly realize that a character you’ve been watching in a movie is being played by an actor that you know from somewhere else but didn’t recognize. For example, when I revisited Shocker, after not seeing it since I was a kid, it hit me like a ton of bricks when I made the connection that the big bad guy, Horace Pinker, is played by Skinner from The X-Files, a.k.a. Mitch Pileggi. Mind blown = Billy Connolly moment. “What does comedian Billy Connolly have to do with it?” you ask. Well, it all started when a screener for the movie Fido came into the office a few years ago. The staff watched it and when Connolly’s name came…

If the popularity of zombie walks is any indication, there are thousands who aren’t content to simply watch undead action in the movies. Run for Your Lives – a race that pits runners against five kilometres of obstacles and, of course, shamblers – is now catering to the more active zombie lover. The first Run for Your Lives event took place on October 22, 2011, in Baltimore, Maryland. According to Derrick Smith, one of the race’s co-creators, nearly 10,000 runners showed up to test their mettle against twelve natural and man-made obstacles while being chased by 400 volunteer zombies. Rules were somewhat akin to flag football: throughout the course, zombies would try to snatch three “health” flags from runners’ belts; the goal was to reach the finish line with at…

1 CREATE YOUR OWN ZOMBIE ACTION FIGURES $49.99 Got the creative drive of Victor Frankenstein, but still have those pesky nagging doubts about playing God? Why not have fun with a customizable create-yourown-zombie kit instead? Includes an assortment of heads, limbs and other body parts in varying states of decay, plus instructions for adding your own gore. Compose a cadaver at fearwerx.com. 2 LOVECRAFTIAN LETTERS FRIDGE POETRY £19.99 When the dark muse wraps her tentacles around you and you seek to express the chill of extra-dimensional loneliness, why not turn to your fridge for inspiration? Cover it with this magnetic set of 500 Lovecraftian words, and you’ll also be that much closer to a cold one if you get stuck. Piece together a poem to Cthulhu at innsmouthhouse.com. 3 NIGHT…

THE NUDE VAMPIRE (1970) Starring Caroline Cartier, Ursule Pauly and Marie-Pierre Castel Written by Jean Rollin and S.H. Mosti The second feature from Jean Rollin, and the first in colour, The Nude Vampire (La vampire nue) is also one of his strangest. A weird horror science-fiction hybrid centred on bloodlust and immortality, it sees the director grow as a truly distinctive artist fuelled by a love of painting, literature and classic film serials. While extremely surreal, The Nude Vampire sees Rollin stepping away from the hardcore experimentalism of his first feature, The Rape of the Vampire, into a more traditional narrative structure. While it perhaps loses some of the urgency of his chaotic debut, it’s a more polished piece, and stylistically would lead the way to the masterful works that…

APIANO PLAYS BY ITSELF IN AN EMPTY LOUNGE; DOORS SLAM OPEN AND SHUT WITHOUT WARNING; BLOODIED FIGURES STALK THE HOTEL HALLS. IT’S JUST ANOTHER NIGHT AT THE YANKEE PEDLAR INN, THE HAUNTED HOME-AWAY-FROM-HOME IN TI WEST’S LATEST FILM, THE INNKEEPERS. The movie focuses on two slacker hotel clerks in their twenties, Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), who are working at the 19th-century New England lodging, during its last weekend in business. With only a few guests to take care of, they stave off boredom by turning their attention to the legends of the ghostly inhabitants of the building, specifically abandoned bride Madeline O’Malley, who committed suicide in the 1800s when she was deserted by her lover. Claire’s more skeptical than Luke, though she is intrigued by Madeline’s story.…

“It’s like having your very first sexual experience videotaped, and then trotted out every year at the Christmas party. It’s mortifying, but at the same time you go, ‘Aw, hey, I was pretty good back then!’” – screenwriter Ron Oliver. Is it horror nerd heresy – or does it make me an unpatriotic Canadian – to admit that I’m not fond of the original Prom Night? While the 1980 film has its moments, it’s slow, timid, disjointed and unintentionally funny without ever delivering enough Schadenfreudian yuks to truly make it a worthwhile cheese platter. Hence, I spent years bypassing the vastly superior (and completely unrelated) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II. There’s nothing to connect the films narratively, and very little to connect them thematically, save for the fact that…

ZOMBIES ARE US: ESSAYS ON THE HUMANITY OF THE WALKING DEAD Christopher M. Moreman and Cory James Rushton, eds. McFarland For mindless shambling monsters, zombies are a lot like us, or at least that’s what Christopher M. Moreman and Cory James Rushton hope to convey with Zombies Are Us: Essays on the Humanity of the Walking Dead, which examines the undead as a cultural symbol in literature, film, video games, philosophy and even legal language. Scholars from varying backgrounds have contributed a range of papers that try to shed light on the perpetuation of zombies in modern culture and what exactly that says about our humanity. All of the essays have a strong academic slant; some are highly dependent on the use of jargon or otherwise demand previous knowledge of…

SOUNDTRACK THE THING (2011) Marco Beltrami VARESE SARABANDE As he already proved with his score to The Omen remake, Marco Beltrami knows how to pay homage to a classic without imitation. While hints of Ennio Morricone’s dog hunt/pulse track from the original Thing do crop up a few times here, Beltrami’s examination of what makes a classic horror score click has expanded his own compositional chops, as proven here. Beltrami’s Thing is anchored around a series of warped notes, which perfectly nail the film’s central horrors of organic transmutation, invasion and metamorphosis. Refreshing weird sounds never resolve or settle into anything recognizable, and the score’s engineering dares to play with the stereo image, particularly in “Female Persuasion,” during which stereophonic cacophony smothers a grungy monophonic drone. There are discrete homages…

THERE’S ONE SURE WAY to elevate a horror film… good acting! I was very pleased with the RM#118 article about Barbara Crampton’s return to the genre. Unlike many so-called scream queens, Ms. Crampton always brought life and believability to roles that lesser actresses couldn’t. I look foward to both You’re Next and Rob Zombie’s Lords of Salem for her comeback. I read Rue Morgue cover to cover every month and look foward to something a bit more in-depth on Ms. Crampton in the near future. I hope she’s remembered for more “heady” performances, like in Re-Animator! GLENN ZOCCHI – JAMESTOWN, NEW JERSEY I LOVED THE ARTICLE “The Golden Age of TV Horror,” by Kier-La Janisse, and the companion article “Screaming on the Laugh Track,” by Dan Murphy [RM#117]. I was…

EACH YEAR, AUTHORS THE WORLD OVER GIVE BIRTH TO TENS OF THOUSANDS OF STORIES. Of those tales, some find lasting places on bookstore shelves, but most eventually vanish. Every so often, though, a story leaves the page and becomes part of the pop culture zeitgeist, spawning adaptations across multiple mediums. In horror, of course, there’s been Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera, which have all inspired countless stage, film, TV and comic adaptations. It’s more difficult to pinpoint which contemporary stories are going to survive, but The Woman in Black is on its way to joining that esteemed list. And like the works of Stoker, Shelley and Leroux, it began its life as a novel (see p.21), penned by awardwinning British scribe…

IF THERE’S ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE WHAT COLOURS THIS YEAR’S R.I.P. LIST, IT’S NOSTALGIA. Trollhunter was conceived through the filter of the classic fairy tales that captured the imagination of Norwegian children. Machete Maidens Unleashed! relives the charm and harm of Philippines-shot exploitation films, while Hobo With a Shotgun is the bastard Canuck child of a 42nd Street freakshow and an ultra-violent video nasty. John Landis rekindled our love of creatures great and small with Monsters in the Movies: 100 Years of Cinematic Nightmares, the Army of Darkness: Defense app reminded us why The Evil Dead series is so much fun and fan-made movie posters have helped rescue the art form from the hell of floating heads. And damn, if we aren’t excited about one more kick at the Black…

PICKING AT SCABS HOSTEL: PART III Starring Thomas Kretschmann, Kip Pardue and John Hensley Directed by Scott Spiegel Sony Written by Michael D. Weiss Sony The Hostel films have proven to be big on concept, short on execution and really big on executions. In other words, the idea of being kidnapped in a foreign country so that a secret society of rich sadists can pay to torture you to death is truly chilling, the sophomoric characters populating the movies persistently obnoxious, but if you’re in it for the gore, the pay-off is huge. Hostel: Part III, which may as well have an “EXPIRED” date stamped across it, is a weak late kick at the torture porn can. Michael D. Weiss’ script is conceptually intriguing, as the action is moved to…

ULTIMATE FEAST ZOMBIE (1979) Blu-ray/DVD Starring Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch and Richard Johnson Directed by Lucio Fulci Written by Elisa Briganti and Dardano Sacchetti Blue Underground Lucio Fulci’s chunk-blower classic Zombie is creeping into Halloween and Evil Dead territory in terms of excessive reissuing, but at least Blue Underground’s new two-disc Ultimate Edition actually lives up to its name, offering a transfer that’ll be tough to beat and a very generous helping of goopy new extras. You won’t believe your splinter-filled eyes when you see how bright and sharp the new “2k High Definition” is, from the ocean blues during the infamous zombie vs. shark fight, to the deep red blood that regularly spills from torn necks. The 6.1 DTS-ES audio mix is just as tasty, offering a clean palette…

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are deservedly best known for their vast superhero output, such as The Fantastic Four, so it’s easy to overlook that the duo contributed to a number of monster comics during the 1950s too. They were responsible for a wacky assortment of creatures with outlandish names such as Monstro, Gor-Kill, Monstrollo, Gorgilla, Gorgolla the Living Gargoyle and underwear-clad dragon Fin Fang Foom. While even Lee and Kirby would be hardpressed to name those tales as their finest creations, there’s no denying the stories continue to hold a certain appeal, especially to monster lovers. Whether it’s the nostalgia for a seemingly more innocent era, or Kirby’s fantastic illustrations, there’s a charm that’s hard to find in today’s more violent and nihilistic horror fare. It’s a tone that…

The road to Hell is paved. Well, if you drive there, it is. Oh, sure, you could spend your life engaged in premarital sex, reading gory comics and worshipping satanic rock’n’ roll and hope your preacher and your daddy are right, that you’ll find your way there after death all by yourself. But why wait when you can simply pack up the car and take a road trip to Hell… Michigan? For our gang of travellers – one hippie chick, a classic rocker and me, the resident goth girl – it seemed a no-brainer detour on a long drive from Toronto to Chicago. I mean, when you notice the word Hell on a map, how can you not make a point of going? Located approximately 66 miles west of…

THE WALKING DEAD VERSUS THE WALKING DEAD Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead is walking all over the place, shuffling from comics to TV, toys and multiple game platforms. Aside from the upcoming Walking Dead downloadable video game, two different board games are now on the market – one based on the original comic book and the other on the AMC TV show. We played them backto-back to see which one has the better bite to it. One look at the boxes, boards and game components make it clear that they’re both very tied to their respective sources. Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead – The Board Game, by Z-Man Games, is fully illustrated by Charlie Adlard, who gave The Walking Dead comic its bleak visuals. The nice thick board feels like…

During a crackdown on illegal exotic animal sales in Bangkok in 2004, many merchants dumped their stock of piranhas into the city’s waterways. Stephen King once said that every author of suspense should write at least one tale about “a ghostly room at an inn.” Taphephobia is the fear of being buried alive. Frank Sinatra was so enraged that his new wife, Mia Farrow, wouldn’t quit Rosemary’s Baby to star in his 1968 film The Detective that he had divorce papers served to her right on set, in front of the cast and crew. She was devastated but insisted on finishing the day’s shoot. A Georgia man claims he was fired earlier this year after refusing to wearing a “666” sticker at work, because he considers the number to be…

THIS ISSUE: LANCE ENDURES DUMB-ASS DUDES WHAT HAPPENS IN THE HAMPTONS… BACHELOR PARTY IN THE BUNGALOW OF THE DAMNED Brain Damage Films This goofily named delete bin dud features a bunch of moronic d-bags, led by the button-up-shirt-with-flames-and-backwards-ball-cap-wearing Sammy, trying to throw their buddy a truly memorable bachelor party in the Hamptons. The dimwits succeed when they accidentally hire vampire strippers (who are really more like demons or something) with an insatiable taste for man-blood. The underlit film is way too dark and suffers from murky sound, awful makeup and a tediously homophobic script. Not even a ridiculous Lloyd Kaufman-in-drag cameo or scream queen Monique Dupree’s ginormous breasts can help stifle the yawnfest that you’ll experience if you decide to watch Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned, because…

THIS ISLAND RAY MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961) Blu-ray Starring Michael Craig, Gary Merrill and Joan Greenwood Directed by Cy Endfield Written by John Prebble, Daniel B. Ullman, Crane Wilbur, and Jules Verne Twilight Time As soon as Bernard Herrmann’s main title music crashes and booms over the first frames of Mysterious Island, there’s no doubt you’re in for a classic Ray Harryhausen ride, with monsters, action and drama. And luckily, not a single element has diminished in potency since its release 50 years ago. While the screenwriters goosed Jules Verne’s 1874 story a bit, with the addition of creatures and two snotty British women, they still stayed true to the exciting narrative of a reporter and rival American Civil War soldiers who escape from prison in a giant balloon. After drifting…

ATEENAGER TAKES A WALK ACROSS THE FROZEN TUNDRA. FROM THE SHADOWS, A LEERING, DROOLING GIANT WATCHES HIS EVERY STEP, FIGHTING BACK HUNGER AND THE TEMPTATION TO REVEAL HIMSELF. He is the monstrous hunter of the cold northern night, sizing up his prey: the young man who is just out for a midnight stroll, and has suddenly become potential dinner for an entire family of monsters. Inuit, indigenous to the North American arctic regions, have a strong tradition of storytelling and folklore, and some of their most beloved tales have their basis in the darker aspects of arctic life and the monster myths and legends of the area. Since 2007, Nunavut-based publisher Inhabit Media has collected chilling stories, such as the one above, in a series of young adult hardcover collections.…

I will blame illegal downloading and the film industry’s failure to respond to it as the cause of death of physical media, which seems inevitable. Rights issues aside, distributors at every level have missed an opportunity to combat this problem by not embracing the technology used to steal product. Offering consumers competing legal downloads – for example, a discounted movie-only bit torrent of the full resolution DVD – would surely have done more to counter piracy than lawsuits. The future of the internet as the primary avenue for home video distribution has come more into focus with the rise of Netflix and the demise of Blockbuster and large scale, brick-and-mortar retailers. This presents a bleak scenario for horror fans, who already complain about the limited selection on Netflix. It’s a…

NIGHT FALLS ON THE SANTA CRUZ BEACH BOARDWALK. AS THE SAFETY OF THE DAY IS REPLACED BY DARKNESS, A BLUR OF FLUORESCENT CARNIVAL LIGHTS ILLUMINATE THE SURREAL ATMOSPHERE, WHILE IN THE SHADOWS NEARBY A GROUP OF YOUNG MEN LOOK ON. There’s something eerily familiar about this scene, but it’s not a snippet from a Lost Boys film. It’s the video for “Vampire Kiss,” the first single from Stellar Corpses’ third release, Dead Stars Drive-In (out January 24 from Santa Carla Records). The quartet, self-described as “morbidly fun punk rock” by singer Dusty Grave, has aspired to cover a lot of gruesome ground since forming more than half a decade ago. Melding a love of horror imagery with an amalgam of metal, pop, rockabilly and even outlaw country, Grave admits that…