Table of contents for Issue 158 August 2015 in RUE MORGUE

“That is Sir Lee, not ‘Sir Christopher!’” boomed the voice on the phone. The one time I’d ever speak with the legendary actor and I’d embarrass myself by bungling his knighthood. We shared only a few words, most of which were me apologizing before handing the phone to our writer James Burrell for his interview with the icon, but I did get to experience the effect of that commanding voice. Even in his 90s, Sir Lee still possessed a remarkable gravitas. It was that weightiness that marked his career, whether releasing metal albums, narrating radio plays or playing cinematic heavies such as Rasputin, Bond villain Scaramanga, the nefarious Count Dooku, evil wizard Saruman, Pagan leader Lord Summerisle and, of course, Count Dracula. The deep voice, imposing height, piercing eyes and…

CineCoup, the Vancouver-based “disruptive film accelerator” that pits Canadian filmmakers against one another in a twelve-week competition to win up to a million dollars in funding, as well as a theatrical release for their film via Cineplex, shook things up recently when it announced not one but two winners of their latest competition. (The first CineCoup winner, announced in 2013, was last year’s cult hit Wolf-Cop (RM#145)). Hellmington and High School Brawl were named winners of the grand prize, “The Big Deal”, at the Banff World Media Festival this past June. High School Brawl is an action-thriller set in a state-of-the-art prison, while Hellmington is a true crime horror film with elements of found footage. Both will head into development soon. The scary one, Hellmington, will follow two Canadian documentary…

1 SKULL ROLLING PIN $34.90 Add a pinch of the macabre to your cookies with this Skull-printed rolling pin by RollingPinsDesign, handmade from high-quality beechwood and specially crafted for making the creepiest pastries! 2 ZIPPER TOOTH PHONE CASE $45 Deter anyone from stealing your phone, ever, with this truly disgusting 3-D cellphone case by Ms. Cadaver, hand-sculpted from polymer clay and dental acrylic, and coated with an acrylic resin for durability. No two are exactly alike! Available for iPhone 4s, 5s and 6, and Samsung Galaxy s4, s5 and s6. 3 BATS IN THE BELFRY BEACH TOWEL $17 Creatures of the night deserve a day in the sun too, so grab one of these velvety soft towels by Sourpuss and bring the bats to the beach! Made from 100% cotton…

THERE’S NOTHING SCARIER WHEN YOU’RE A KID THAN THE THOUGHT OF LOSING YOUR PARENT. For example, Cub’s young protagonist is an orphan looking for a father figure and the actions of the title character in The Boy are all aimed at being reunited with his mother. Similar fears haunt the twins at the centre of Austrian horror Goodnight Mommy (a.k.a. Ich seh, Ich seh). They live in a cold, modernist house at the edge of the woods with their mother (Susanne Wuest), who is recovering from facial surgery. The bandages on her head form a frightening white mask (similar to the resurrected Julia in Hellbound: Hellraiser 2) and the boys, Elias and Lukas (Elias and Lukas Schwarz), start suspecting that the person in their home is not really their mother. She’s…

AS TECHNOLOGY MAKES PRODUCTION CHEAPER THAN EVER BEFORE, BUDDING HORROR FILMMAKERS ARE FACED WITH A CHOICE: MAKE A CALLING CARD SHORT OR POUR ALL THEIR ENERGY INTO A FEATURE? Cinema itself began with shorts, but detractors of the format claim they’re a waste of time when a feature can be created so cheaply these days. Horror movie history tells a different story, however. Some of the more memorable genre features of our time started as shorts, including The Evil Dead, The Babadook, Saw, District 9, Rare Exports and Oculus, among many others. For their creators, the initial short was the launch pad to a feature film career. Although it may not be obvious to the average filmgoer, we’re in a short film renaissance right now. As founder and curator of the…

FURTHER WE GO INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 3 Starring Stefanie Scott, Lin Shaye and Dermot Mulroney Written and directed by Leigh Whannell Entertainment One Leigh Whannell has a habit of killing his most popular characters. With the Saw franchise, the writer knocked off Jigsaw in the first film, but the popularity of Tobin Bell’s baddie resulted in the character living on in flashbacks for six sequels. Similarly, spiritualist Elise Rainier died at the end of Insidious, came back as a spirit in the sequel, and now gets even more screen time in Insidious: Chapter 3, a prequel that leads up to the events of the first film, and also happens to be Whannell’s debut as director. He does a decent job here of integrating the prequel into the series, thanks largely to…

THERE ARE A NUMBER OF REASONS WHY JESS FRANCO’S 1971 TRIPPY EROTIC SHOCKER IS PROBABLY HIS BEST FILM. It’s an inventive riff on Bram Stoker’s Dracula set in Turkey, it boasts a solid cast and it had a producer who gave the filmmaker freedom to indulge and develop his own inimitable narrative style and fetishes – but above all else it has brown-eyed beauty Soledad Miranda. Although she had appeared in smaller supporting roles in previous Franco films, Vampyros Lesbos initiated a proposal from producer Artur Brauner for a multi-picture deal with a plan to turn the former actress of Spanish comedies, musicals and dramas into an international star. The dream ended when Miranda was killed in a car accident months after completing her last two Franco films, She Killed…

I’ve stayed away from manga to date, mostly due to my ignorance with the format, so I missed the big North American manga boom of the last two decades, scratching my head in wonderment from afar. But now, after some soul and Wikipedia searching, I’ve finally entered the bizarre, twisted and stunning world of Japanese comics. Luckily, my manga renaissance has coincided with the North American print debut of Tokyo Ghoul (volume one on sale now), the harrowing story of a young man who finds himself thrown into the mad world of flesh-eaters. “Horror manga, when done well, is a unique experience,” explains Joel Enos, editor at VIZ Media. “Tokyo Ghoul combines common seinen (or manga for young adults) and shonen (manga for boys) themes of powers, levelling up, teen…

THE FIFTH HOUSE OF THE HEART Ben Tripp Gallery Books The Fifth House of the Heart’s international vampire hunt, spanning decades and hemispheres, takes about 200 pages to get interesting. The book’s narrative concerns Sax, an antiques dealer and vampire hunter, who needs to settle one last score. While the novel suffers from an unnecessary reimagining of classic vampire mythology, it still packs enough old-world romance and blood to satisfy. DEIRDRE CRIMMINS COFFIN RIDERS James W. Bodden Necro Publications Bloom and Lorraine decide to die. Bloom shoots himself in the head with a revolver, but then Lorraine reneges on the deal, leaving him to spiral down into Hell and then try to find his way out – all while searching for the woman who should have followed him…

To this day, my favourite film intro is from Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, in which an unseen figure sits at his workbench fabricating a glove of knives with the craftsmanship of a demented blacksmith. Since then, many different versions of the glove have hit the market, ranging in quality from cheapo plastic Halloween props to the top-of-the-line metal ones made by Nightmare Gloves (nightmaregloves.com). The company, which crafts officially licensed Freddy gloves for high-end collectors, is headed by FX master Anders Eriksen, art and design director Eriq Chang and filmmaker Christopher Johnson – who did special effects for the Final Destination series and got noticed for his 2009 fan trailer for the A Nightmare on Elm Street remake. Nightmare Gloves, which makes a variety of inventive spins…

THE INCREDIBLE ADVENTURES OF VAN HELSING III PC, Mac Neocore Games If there’s any doubt to the influence the Diablo franchise had on action-RPGs it should be firmly wiped away with the knowledge that, all these years later, companies are still pumping out Diablo clones. The recently released Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing III is one of them. The action here is split between two realms, Borgovia and the Ink, which is bleeding into and corrupting the former, threatening to cast it back into darker, more monstrous times. You, of course, play Van Helsing, and must stop the Ink incursions and kill off the one behind them, the Faceless Tsar. Gameplay is pretty much what you’d expect, lots of hacking and slashing and wielding of spells. Because Van Helsing’s world…

WHY NOT pick up [RM#156] for an insightful, intelligent, amazing interview with Jörg Buttgereit – and if you are so inclined, check out my interview as well! As well as my good pal Joanna from @morbidanatomy. @MIDNIGHTARCHIVE, VIA INSTAGRAM I DON’T KNOW, call me sick, but I enjoyed The Human Centipede [RM#156]. This movie really made my skin crawl and not too many horror movies can do that. Dr. Josef Heiter is one of the scariest characters in horror movies today. An ordinary murder is boring, but when you sever the knee ligaments of your victim and make them completely helpless its very frightening to say the least. It reminds me of the helpless victim in the movie Misery after his feet were hammered. I still shiver from that movie…

IT’S OKAY TO KILL KIDS IN MOVIES. IF THEY’RE RABID ZOMBIE-TYPES. AND THEY GET OFFED IN HILARIOUS WAYS. That’s what Leigh Whannell learned while making Cooties (out September 18 from e1), a film in which a cannibalistic plague that only affects preteens races through a grade school. Whannell – best known for co-creating the Saw and Insidious franchises with James Wan – co-stars in the film, and also cowrote it with Ian Brennan, co-creator of Glee, which presumably makes him an expert on murder-worthy youth. “Both Ian and I grew up in a time that was less complicated,” says Whannell. “You know, you just had to go outside and play. You didn’t have access to so much white noise – the Internet and all these different media platforms. I didn’t…

FEAR NOT, STRAIN FANS – WHILE SEASON TWO OF THE GUILLERMO DEL TORO-PRODUCED TV SHOW WILL VEER EVEN FURTHER AWAY NARRATIVELY FROM THE TRILOGY OF VAMPIRE APOCALYPSE NOVELS THAT INSPIRES IT, some things will never change. For instance, rat-catcher-turned-vampire-killer Vasiliy Fet, played by Canadian actor Kevin Durand (Resident Evil: Retribution), will continue to dispose of suckheads the best way he knows how. “He still loves rebar,” Durand promises. “He loves rebar. He’s got all these other fancy things, but it’s still kind of his weapon of choice. He likes to take a Glock or a nail gun, but if he could just bash the hell out of them… It’s kind of like therapy, I think.” It is late February, and Durand is holding court with an international group of journalists…

A ROLE YOU CAN SINK YOUR TEETH INTO THE SINS OF DRACULA MVD Visual For horror fans of any age, there’s nothing like sitting back and watching the classic films that started it all: the black and white Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy. Unfortunately, these classics have been reissued, recycled and re-imagined ad nauseam so studios can make a quick buck on a fan favourite. Case in point: The Sins of Dracula. Though this movie features an actor in the role of Dracula who does his best to channel the late John Carradine, the fact that the movie is about a Devil-worshipping theatre troupe trying to make a musical version of the 1978 Jonestown Massacre and resurrect Drac, leaves a lot to be desired. It might just make you…

The Monster That Challenged the World is an old movie you can laugh at, and that’s perfectly okay. While it’s a stretch to call this formulaic 1957 creature feature a truly “bad” film, there are risible moments in it that make it worth grabbing Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray release – even though LA Weekly writer Amy Nicholson probably wouldn’t agree. This past spring, Nicholson’s article “Stop Laughing at Old Movies, You $@%&ING Hipsters” expressed shock that anyone would dare find humour during a screening of Mario Bava’s Hercules in the Haunted World. Nicholson’s main gripe was that the audience’s laugher was a way of demonstrating to everyone within earshot they were more sophisticated than the film they were watching. Though annoying movie theatre behaviour should never be tolerated, a seasoned…

HUMANITY LOVES A GOOD WITCH HUNT – IT’S IN OUR BLOOD. It’s an unfortunate phenomenon with roots in 12th-century Catholicism and colonial American Puritanism, but it has since extended (in admittedly less lethal incarnations) beyond exclusively religious strains of fanaticism; the Red Scare in 1950s America and the political correctness craze of the late ’80s and early ’90s prove that conservatives and liberals alike are equally prone to the behaviour. Satanic Panic: Pop Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s, out this summer from Spectacular Optical, examines one of the more peculiar hysterias to permeate pop culture in recent decades, born of an odd but alarming combination of religious mania, parochialism and, to a lesser degree, an emerging anti-feminist backlash, whipped into a frenzy by opportunistic tabloid journalists and would-be moral crusaders.…

I’ve had a fascination with the psychology of serial killers since I began reading Canadian true crime writer Max Haines’ syndicated Crime Flashback column in the late ’70s. Haines wrote concise accounts of the crimes of fiends such as Dr. H.H. Holmes, who built an elaborate three-storey building dubbed the “Murder Castle” in Chicago in 1889 to facilitate the murder and dismemberment of an estimated 200 victims. Serial killing is defined by the FBI as “a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone.” Serial killers have always been among us, but the term as we now define it is a relatively modern phenomenon. Advances in forensic science and communication since the late 1800s have allowed investigators to link…

As a horror fan and an open-minded music geek I’m into metal, horror punk, murder ballads, dark country, horrorcore and psychobilly. But I must confess, I’m a little weak when it comes to electronic music. Dark electronic, industrial, darkwave, EBM, synth pop – I’m not sure I always know the difference. So when I heard about dark electronic music fest Aftermath 2015 I was intrigued. I wasn’t familiar with many of the artists, including headliners Conjure One and Laether Strip, but was told it was a very horror-friendly event. I needed to know more so I hit festival creator Troy Hilton with some questions. What is the story behind Aftermath? I used to work for Montreal’s electronic music fest Kinetik. A couple years ago I was on tour with the…

According to several recent studies, it is now believed that roughly one percent of men in the United States are psychopaths. In Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho, upon which Hitchcock’s famous film is based, Norman Bates owns a copy of the Necronomicon. The corpse of a man landed on a London roof in June after falling out of the wheel well of a plane he had stowed away in. It is unclear if he died from the fall or during the flight. Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris had a nightmare after watching 1978’s Damien: The Omen II and it inspired him to write the song “The Number of the Beast.” A new species of dinosaur has been discovered in Drumheller, Alberta. While its scientific name may be Regaliceratops peterhewsi, it has been…

CHILDREN ARE PROBABLY THE LAST REMAINING TABOO, HORROR’S FINAL FRONTIER. IN SPITE OF THE TIRED TROPE OF “KID IN PERIL” BEING SO COMMON IN THE GENRE, CHILDREN ARE MORE OFTEN THAN NOT A PROTECTED SPECIES. So sweet, pure and angelic, they are perfect as victims, although threats to them are rarely realized fully, and a lot of sensitivity is needed in those rare cases when the story demands that they come to a bad end (as in, say, Pet Sematary). Things get even more complicated if kids are not only on the receiving end of violence but are also its perpetrators. For obvious reasons, ghost kids of The Grudge kind are safe to use (and overuse), but real flesh-and-blood psychos of the preteen variety (à la The Good Son, 1993) are…

THE BOY Starring Jared Breeze, David Morse and Rainn Wilson Directed by Craig William Macneill Written by Craig William Macneill and Clay McLeod Chapman SpectreVision This film’s title is reminiscent of other minimalistically named kiddy-horrors, such as The Child (1977), The Children (1980/2008) and Orphan (2009). But be warned: The Boy is not your typical genre flick, but rather a moody indie drama with very dark overtones, although it can also be watched, if you’re so inclined, as a quiet, slowburn horror that delivers some chilling goods in its second half. Nine-year-old Ted (Jared Breeze: Cooties) is an angelic blond boy who’s obviously up to no good. Abandoned by his mother, left with his destitute dad (David Morse: The Good Son) to help him with a backroad motel, with no…

MURDEROUS MUNSTERS SPIDER BABY (1967) Blu-ray SPIDER BABY (1967) Blu-ray Starring Lon Chaney Jr., Carol Ohmart and Sid Haig Written and directed by Jack Hill Arrow Films There aren’t many movies in our beloved genre that defy categorization as much as Spider Baby. Also known as The Maddest Story Ever Told, it features one of the last screen appearances of Lon Chaney Jr. and was filled with creepy cannibalistic kids, scantily clad sirens and hilarious hijinks. Right from the start, Jack Hill’s black and white feature baffles viewers with opening credits featuring cartoon graphics and a quirky theme song sung by Chaney himself. Keeping with the whimsey, the first actor to appear on the screen is comedic legend Mantan Moreland (King of the Zombies). But soon enough the bodies begin…

History as we know it depends not only upon which anecdotes we choose to believe, but also which combination thereof. Ponder, if you will, The Creeping Terror (1964), a frequent flyer on multiple Worst Movie Ever lists, and the question it most commonly provokes: “How in the ripped up, wiped out, battered, shattered, creamed and reamed FUCK did this happen?” Well, the following theories have been put forward, and while none have been proven, none have been convincingly disproven either. For instance, the film was partially funded by its principal cast members, wannabe actors who paid to star in it. It originally had a much better-looking monster, but the poor creature was stolen before production started, forcing the cast and crew to make do with what appears to be a…

FATHER OF THE BLOB: THE MAKING OF A MONSTER SMASH AND OTHER HOLLYWOOD TALES Jack H. Harris TVGuestpert A fairly lightweight memoir by producer Jack H. Harris, Father of the Blob is a rags-to-riches tale of Hollywood success that serves up a few interesting stories even as it declines to tell the wilder side of the schlock filmmaker’s long life. Beginning with a chapter on Harris’ most well-known contribution to motion picture history, 1958’s The Blob, this new book is otherwise a chronological sketch of his life, from working in vaudeville to managing theatres and eventually arriving in Los Angeles. The problem with autobiographies by producers is that they’re often not fully involved with the creative side of the business – more interested in money than movies. It’s one of…

SOUNDTRACK POLTERGEIST Marc Streitenfeld SONY Marc Streitenfeld (Prometheus) was tasked with the unenviable: provide an original score to an unnecessary remake of a genre classic that was blessed by a perfect Jerry Goldsmith score. Streitenfeld does echo the mood of Goldsmith’s approach but the shocker material involves shades of industrial electronica and feedback and some heavy orchestral matter that’s decisive in characterizing the poltergeists as outright malevolent, but little in between. By limiting the appearance of warm thematic material to short sections and brief cues, Poltergeist is a cold score that arguably reduces the impact of the narrative in which a deeply connected family is torn apart by selfish spirits. The ferocious “Into the Portal” and “Let Her Go” are superb, but they come too late in this exercise in…

WAR HAS DONE A LOT OF SHOCKING THINGS ON STAGE OVER THE PAST 30 YEARS, KILLING EVERYONE FROM THE POPE TO SARAH PALIN AND COVERING AUDIENCES IN HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF GALLONS OF FAKE BLOOD IN THE PROCESS. the most shocking moment came on March 23, 2014, when their Ottawa-born lead vocalist Dave Brockie (stage name: Oderus Urungus) was found dead in his home due to a heroin overdose. Always the monstrous voice and face of the band, it was naturally assumed that if Brockie was dead, so was GWAR. To everyone’s surprise, the group soldiered on with barely a hitch. How can this be? The answer lies in the new book Let There Be GWAR by Bob Gorman and Roger Gastman (out now from Ginko Press). “The book is…