Table of contents for Issue 139 November 2013 in RUE MORGUE

By the time you read this, your jack-o’-lantern is probably already getting that zombie pucker, but as I write this, we’re just ramping up to the best day of the year. Excitement is building over the dozens of upcoming horror movie screenings and other Halloweenish events, I’m stressing over who (or what) I’m gonna dress up as for our annual party, and stores are full of all that spooky plastic crap that’s so hard to resist. Sadly, it also means annual news stories about schools burying their Halloween celebrations. This week the Welland Tribune, a small-town Ontario news outlet, ran a piece titled “Halloween cancelled at school,” which describes how one of the local schools cancelled the planned Halloween dance and told parents that their children were not to dress…

Grand Guignol, dead since the 1960s, has returned to stain Parisian theatres with blood once again. Le Théâtre du Grand Guignol – now reincarnated as the International Visual Theatre – has officially reopened its doors with Une sacrée boucherie (Bloody Butchers), a humorous contemporary gore tale involving triplets, a butcher with memory lapses and a mother who’s convinced that she’s cursed. Produced by Philippe Carbonneaux, it is the first of more bloody stage productions to come. The rebirth of Grand Guignol theatre is really being led by producer/director Frédéric Jessua, who will be heading to Switzerland next year to produce Sous la lumière rouge (Under the Red Light, a.k.a. In the Darkroom) by Maurice Level and Etienne Rey, about a man with a camera who makes a terrible discovery about…

1 GARDEN NIGHTMARES $60 These 12” to 14” zombie garden gnomes by Revenant FX finally might keep those damn kids off your lawn. There’s also a line of masked gnomes – including “The Springwood Terror,” “The Crystal Lake Slasher” and “The Texas Chainsaw Butcher” – that’ll really put the “deadly” in your nightshade patch. Plant one at revenantfx.com. 2 CUSTOM WHITE BRONZE SKULL RING $65 The devil’s in the details of this carefully crafted skull ring, cast in white bronze. Behold the curve of the nasal bones, the detailing on the individual teeth, the structure of the jawbone. Perfect for the corporate goth and classic metalhead alike. It’s skullfully done at shanalogic.com. 3 TENTACLE DOORSTOP $19.95 Sucker for cephalopods? Adore a ctenphora? Lovers of all things tentacled no longer have…

How do you quickly and effectively differentiate your new zombie comic in a market crowded by the living dead? Simple: you make your protagonists a group of animals struggling to survive the human apocalypse. That’s the concept behind Rex, Zombie Killer, a title that saw life last year as a one-shot and has now returned as a four-issue limited series. Created by writer Rob Anderson and drawn by artist Dafu Yu, Rex has enough zombie action to satiate the most ardent horror fan, except this time the undead have to contend with a golden retriever, a pit bull, a corgi, a cat and a gorilla with a baseball bat. “I’m definitely an animal guy,” admits Anderson. “I’ve always been surrounded by pets and spent years volunteering at shelters, so I’ve…

THE VENUS COMPLEX Barbie Wilde Comet Press Shocking and explicit, Barbie Wilde’s The Venus Complex is an intimate tour of Michael Friday’s mind as he morphs from a misogynistic, hyper-intelligent university professor into a sexually-charged, calculating serial killer. Written in journal form, Friday reveals his most gory necrophilic fantasies, and then makes them a reality. Not for sensitive readers; after finishing this book you might never feel clean again. JESSA SOBCZUK BEWITCHED AGAIN: SUPERNATURALLY POWERFUL WOMEN ON TELEVISION 1996 – 2011 Judie D. O’Reilly McFarland Drawing from depictions of superpowered women appearing on television as early as the 1950s, academic Judie D. O’Reilly traces the history of the supernaturally powerful woman into the Buffy and Charmed era. Along the way, she makes a compelling argument that female characters endowed…

To coincide with last month’s release of Metallica Through the Never – a 3-D Imax movie that’s half concert film and half genre flick about a roadie who must go head-to-head with one of death’s horsemen – the band commissioned one of their favourite artists, pop culture junkie Dirty Donny (RM#109), to create artwork for three newly minted pinball machines. This isn’t the first time Donny has been called upon by the band to design a pinball machine. A few years back, he created two Metallica-inspired games for James Hetfield through pinball artist Wade Krause and designer Tanio Klyce. Both were Frankensteined together using existing machines, including “Elvira and the Party Monsters” and “Earthshaker,” with the panels replaced with those featuring Donny’s signature style artwork. This latest trio of machines,…

There really was no other band like the original ’Fits, but by the time the second incarnation of the group released Famous Monsters in 1999, singer Michale Graves had established himself as the new defining sound of horror-punk, with his balance of aggressive p-rock snarl and ’50s-influenced crooning. Like Glenn Danzig, Graves became the band’s centrepiece, its sound built around his powerful and melodic singing style, so there’s always been interest in what the skeleton-makeup-wearing fiend would do after leaving the band in 2000. Though the results have been uneven at best, from the punk-meets-alterna-rock of the band Graves, to numerous lacklustre solo projects, he now makes a triumphant return to his horror punk roots on The Lost Skeleton Returns (Hydraulic Entertainment). “I had been searching for a way back…

ROCK ON @GhoulishGary and @RueMorgue for featuring Pumpkinrot in the October issue of Rue Morgue. Glad to see him get his due! @CHADSAVAGE, VIA TWITTER THE LONG WAIT for @RueMorgue October issue to arrive at the local bookshop is agonizing. @THATKATHMASSIER, VIA TWITTER EVEN WHEN YOU DO an article on a movie I don't like, in this case Invasion of the Body Snatchers (I hate remakes for the most part), the article is still great. Question: Stiff as Art Hindle is, how’d they know he was a pod person? In Sick Top Six, I’d like to have seen Corman’s Not Like Us. Now that’s some weird body snatching! Another great issue! ROB MORGANBESSER – STATEN ISLAND, NY ONCE AGAIN, I purchased a CD (#TheHaxanCloak) because @RueMorgue steered me to it.…

Remember playing arcade games and waiting for your friends to die so you could have a go? If you ever wished for a monster, zombie or swordsman to kill them so you could play, two designers in Australia have created a game full of’80s nostalgia that lets you do exactly what you’ve always wanted: kill your friend in the game in order to take his or her place. Crawl is a multiplayer title, currently being developed by independent company Powerhoof, which sees one player as the hero battling through a dungeon while others control monsters in an effort to halt the protagonist’s progress. The player who is successful in taking out the hero instantly steps into his shoes and must race to get further, before the game culminates in an…

LAPHAM’S QUARTERLY – DEATH Lewis H. Lapham, ed. American Agora Foundation Do you like to pontificate on passing? Meditate on all things morbid? Worry about becoming worm food? Well, you’re not the only one. Give your morbid interests a workout with this Fall edition of Lapham’s Quarterly, which offers 226 jam-packed pages on all things death-related. Opening with an infographic illustrating various cultures’ postmortem practices throughout history, and presenting a timeline for corpse decomposition, it leads into an editorial by founder and publisher Louis Lapham. With intimate detail, the 78-year-old reflects upon the death of his grandfather and father, as well as his own impending end. Then, the bulk of this handsomely designed edition focusses on three main sub-themes: Preparation, Expiration and Post-Mortem. Reaching back to the beginning of recorded…

FRIENDS’TIL THE END CURSE OF CHUCKY Starring Fiona Dourif, Brad Dourif and Danielle Bisutti Written and directed by Don Mancini Universal It’s goddamn difficult to keep a horror franchise frightening when you’re six movies in. It’s even tougher when it’s a product of the 1980s that’s full of goofy one-liners. And it would seem to be damn near impossible when that franchise is centred around a killer doll. But Chucky’s a survivor, and with the help of Don Mancini – who created the series and has had a hand writing and/or directing and/or producing each installment over the last 25 years – the little red-haired bastard is in top murderous form in Curse of Chucky. This time the doll arrives via courier to a cavernous, Psycho-like mansion owned by a…

Maybe it’s not the most inventive title in the history of the genre, but the 1963 Euro-chiller Horror (more commonly remembered as The Blancheville Monster) does its best to evoke that very feeling as stylishly as possible. Shot in a crumbling, creepy Spanish citadel, director Alberto De Martino relied almost entirely on gauzy dreamlike scenes and candelabra-lit stone corridors to draw in viewers – so much so that he seems almost embarrassed when he’s forced to accommodate the screenplay’s checklist of Edgar Allan Poe obsessions, including family curses, Gothic castles, doomed love, family crypts and burial alive. Dubbed into English by AIP and released to American TV, Horror would have reached North American audiences just as Corman’s Poe cycle with Vincent Price was in full swing. But while Poe’s spectre…

IF YOU WANT TO REALLY GET UNDER THE SKIN OF YOUR FAVOURITE HORROR FILMS BUT CAN’T STAND THE THOUGHT OF TRYING TO PENETRATE THICK ACADEMIC PROSE, THE SWEET SPOT MIGHT JUST BE DEVIL’S ADVOCATES, a new series of smart yet accessible book-length, single-film studies, released by Auteur Press. Current titles include considerations of such films as Let the Right One In, Saw and The Silence of the Lambs – with coverage of Nosferatu, Antichrist, Carrie and The Thing currently brewing. The series is the diabolical conception of editor John Atkinson, who hatched the idea in 2009. “In my experience, horror fans are extremely cine-literate and also quite critical thinkers,” he says. “They are actively interested in the history of the genre and appreciate considered, intelligent analysis of it, rather than…

When I started this column in 2000, VHS still ruled. Because of the relatively low cost of video cameras, it was also the medium of choice for independent filmmakers. Indistinct images, inaudible sound and erratic edits were part and parcel of the VHS experience. Oh, how times have changed! Let’s dig into the first low-budget, high-definition indie Blu-ray to slither into Casa del Gore-met… Flood Reed’s Slew Hampshire (2013) is a sumptuous visual feast with a decidedly offbeat and engaging plot. In 1994, four high school buddies who’ve gone off to different colleges get together for a weekend road trip to a secret strip joint over the New Hampshire border in Quebec. On the way back, they run off the road and into the clutches of a clan of creepy…

Back in 2007, Rue Morgue awarded Phil Mucci’s The Listening Dead Best Short of the Year. Since then, Mucci has taken the genre to the forefront of heavy metal’s elite, becoming one of the most innovative music video makers on the scene. He writes, directs, animates, illustrates, shoots and edits music videos for the likes of Opeth, Pig Destroyer and High On Fire. And he does so with a distinctly horror aesthetic. “Horror has been a favourite since I was young,” explains Mucci. “Watching Superfriends, I’d root for the Legion of Doom and their diabolical plans for world domination. I loved Scooby-Doo, but always thought it was a letdown when the monster turned out to be a dude in disguise.” Mucci’s style has earned him widespread attention, particularly for his…

Jerry G. Bishop, creator of the popular Chicagoarea horror host known as Svengoolie, died of a heart attack on September 15 in San Diego. He was 77 years old. Prior to his three-year stint as Svengoolie, Bishop gained notoriety as a Cleveland DJ. He returned to his native Chicago in 1967 to host a morning radio show; three years later, he found himself working on a Saturday night horror movie program called Screaming Yellow Theatre. Though he started out doing voice-over work for the show, he soon began appearing on camera as the coffin-dwelling hippie known as Svengoolie. While the show occasionally featured classics such as Fiend Without a Face and Bucket of Blood, it generally favoured less illustrious titles such as 1967’s College Girl Murders. Surprisingly, though, Bishop didn’t…

I ACTUALLY THINK A LOT OF THE BEST HORROR MOVIES ARE KIND OF THE COMEDIES IN DISGUISE-J.J.Petty HELL BREAKS LOOSE PRETTY QUICKLY IN J.T. PETTY’S PITCH-BLACK EXORCISM COMEDY HELLBENDERS. IN THE FILM’S OPENING SEQUENCE, A PAIR OF HILARIOUSLY FOUL-MOUTHED PRIESTS ARE CALLED IN TO DEAL WITH A RABBI WHO’S IN THE THROES OF DEMONIC POSSESSION, AND HAS NAILED A DOZEN ANIMALS TO HIS WALL AND EATEN SEVERAL OF HIS OWN FINGERS. FATHERS ANGUS AND LARRY MANAGE TO EXORCISE THE ENTITY, BUT NOT BEFORE THE POSSESSED RABBI GNAWS OFF SEVERAL OF LARRY’S TOES AND ISSUES A GRIM WARNING ABOUT A COMING INVASION. It’s all in a day’s work for the main characters of Hellbenders, which scored a limited 3-D theatrical release from Lionsgate in late October. The horror-comedy follows the…

AFFLICTED (Canada) Clif Prowse and Derek Lee You can’t fault the makers of found-footage vamp flick The Afflicted for a lack of ambition. Derek Lee and Clif Prowse wrote, directed and star in this story of college guys on a European vacation who, after a run-in with a woman who turns one of them into a vampire, record the physiological changes. Lee is fun to watch as his character discovers both new weaknesses (sun, human food, etc.) and physical powers, in excellent FX sequences that recall Chronicle. Too bad it’s so frustrating watching them take forever to figure out the obvious. And like most found-footage movies, the I’m-going-to-keep-filming-this-because-Idon’t-know-what-else-to-do reasoning is just plain dumb. The action picks up towards the bloody end, but by then it’s clear mediocrity is its…

DAMPER ON THE CAMPERS THE LEGEND OF THE PSYCHOTIC FOREST RANGER Paranoid Brunette I’d rather be entertained by a bunch of nobody actors with a goofy script spouting cheesy dialogue and getting sprayed with fake blood than watch them frantically trying to become the next Blair Witch Project. That’s exactly the case with this righteous throwback to the’80s that follows a group of friends who head out to the woods to drink beer, smoke pot and try to get laid. All the bodacious babes and gnarly guys prove to be no match for the titular bad guy who slices them up with everything from an axe to a set of keys. If you remember the’80s then you’ll know what I mean when I say that this movie is tubular, dude.…

DYING IS MY BUSINESS Nicholas Kaufmann St. Martin's Griffin “It’s not as easy as it looks to come back from the dead,” says Trent, the narrator of Nicholas Kaufmann’s Dying Is My Business, by way of introduction – and then, on the first page of this dark fantasy action adventure, he proceeds to do exactly that. Trent, a runner for a New York City underworld boss, is at a serious advantage in his profession, since he doesn’t appear to be capable of dying – the flip side is, he has no memories that extend beyond the past year of his life. On the promise that his boss has new information about his history, Trent takes a routine job to retrieve a mysterious box from a warehouse downtown, and is promptly…

SOUNDTRACK RE-ANIMATOR Richard Band WAXWORK RECORDS For its debut release, Waxwork offers up Richard Band’s score for that fluorescent green ’80s cult classic Re-animator. Like other recent LP reissues, this one features new artwork, done here by Rue Morgue’s own Gary Pullin, and includes an 18x24 poster of the same image. The 180g vinyl is pressed on bright green marbled wax; it’s also available in a glow-in-the-dark variant – and get this: when you order you don’t know which version you’ll receive! Much has been said of Band lifting from Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho score for the opening moments of the film, and though the composer does not address these claims in his miniessay in the album’s liner notes, director Stuart Gordon does, claiming that it was intended as homage. One…

THE ALAN PARSONS PROJECT UK - 1976 When one contemplates the phrase “horror music,” a few select styles immediately come to mind: Goblin and John Carpenter’s throbbing synthscapes; the Crimson Ghost grinning sardonically down upon his devil-locked Misfit progeny; and Cannibal Corpse and Carcass churning out odes to human anatomy and its disassembly. Less likely to spring to mind is The Alan Parsons Project. You might know them from such AM radio staples as “Don’t Answer Me” and “Eye in the Sky”; a few may even recall that most of their early albums revolved around particular concepts, such as the ’70s pyramid-power fad (Pyramid) or the science fiction-themed I Robot. However, the initial partnership of Parsons – already well-known as the engineer on such classics as The Beatles’ Abbey Road…