Table of contents for Issue 161 November 2015 in RUE MORGUE

There are page-turners and there are slow burners, and the work of H.P. Lovecraft most certainly falls into the latter category. So then, in the Information Age (a.k.a. Digital Age or Computer Age) when we value – obsess, really – over the speed, clarity and efficiency of said information, why are the stories of the Dark Prince of Providence more popular than ever, almost 80 years after his death? There’s no easier topic than Lovecraft for a theme issue, as the flow of fiction inspired by his work is constant. You’ll see his name peppered throughout these pages, in nearly every section. We didn’t have enough room to cover all the Lovecraftian books coming out, and our cover story is practically overloaded with experts, each of whom have a different…

The late Don Post is widely regarded as The Godfather of Halloween. His studio was responsible for creating the iconic full-head latex Halloween masks every monster kid wanted after seeing them advertised in the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland, and which appeared in films such as Halloween, Hellraiser and Mad Max. Though the 2012 sale of Don Post Studios to Paper Magic Group signified the end of an era, Post’s legacy is being honoured this month with a convention dedicated to his work and a new special edition of the 2014 book The Illustrated History of Don Post Studios, by Lee Lambert. After learning of the company’s sale, Lambert was concerned that its legacy could be lost, so he decided to mount the book project to tell the story…

WHEN H.P. LOVECRAFT DIED IN 1937, ALONE AND DESTITUTE, HE HAD EVERY REASON TO BELIEVE HIMSELF A FAILURE: HIS WORK HAD BEEN CONSTANTLY REJECTED BY RESPECTED MAINSTREAM PUBLICATIONS AND RELEGATED TO LURID MAGAZINES (MOSTLY WEIRD TALES). He never saw a book of his stories published in his lifetime and probably believed the memory of his writings would fade with the crumbling pulps. Flash-forward to the beginning of the 21st century and any publication with “Lovecraft” or “Cthulhu” in its title is an easy sell. This is especially true in the past few years with the arrival of dozens of new anthologies featuring stories by modern scribes inspired by his concepts – an honour no other writer of horror, not even Poe or King, has received in such capacity. The most…

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED HOW AN INDEPENDENT HORROR FILM GETS UNLEASHED ONTO THE WORLD? How it is that some films break through and find mainstream success, while others disappear with little fanfare or distribution? With the prevalence of behind-the-scenes documentaries and bonus features the past couple of decades, horror fans have had plenty of opportunities to get glimpses of “how the sausage is made,” but have you ever wondered how it ultimately gets sold? Every independent film fan has heard of the elusive “festival pick-up,” where some deep-pocketed Distribution God swoops in and drops a fat sack of cash in front of someone, and in turn births a new filmmaking legend. It’s the golden ticket many naïve filmmakers spend their entire career striving for, after all, we all know about…

BASKIN (TURKEY) Can Evrenol Bumbling cops enter an abandoned building inconveniently located over the Gates of Hell in this nasty directorial debut from Can Evrenol. Though the movie takes its sweet time to enter the belly of the beast (likely due to budgetary constraints), once all hell breaks loose it gets deeply disturbing and unapologetically disgusting. Reminiscent of Fulci in its vibrant colours, dripping gore, surreal dream logic and casual eye-gouging, Baskin is a strong calling card for its director. While the film is far from perfect, it showcases the twisted imagination of a talented sicko who will hopefully grow into a genre force to be reckoned with. PB DEMON (POLAND/ISRAEL) Poland/Israel) Marcin Wrona Marcin Wrona’s final film (he was found dead in his hotel room in Poland…

THIS ISSUE: LANCE LOVES HIS CRAFT NOT-SO-GREAT OLD ONES THE FESTIVAL Dark Vision Films H.P. Lovecraft may be nothing more than a lantern-jawed freak to some people, but to others he’s one of the most important horror writers of the early 20th century. Adapted from a short story that first appeared in a 1925 issue of Weird Tales, The Festival follows a guy who visits his wife’s seaside hometown to help out with their annual festival, only to discover that he’s there as a sacrifice meant to appease the Elder Gods. It’s a cool premise that suffers from wooden acting, brutal editing and extremely sparse dialogue that at times appears to have been inserted only as an afterthought. This was one of the first Lovecraft tales to mention the…

I'm not the type of person whose like or dislike of a film normally hinges on one sequence or image, but in the case of 1978’s Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell, the semi-infamous lawnmower scene was pretty much all I remembered before revisiting it upon a recent midnight dreary. But let’s save that for later. Arriving the same year as Halloween and Dawn of the Dead, Devil Dog was seriously hobbled from the get-go. It was several years late to the great satanic cinema feast of the ’70s, which had actually kicked off in ’68 with Rosemary’s Baby as an appetizer, climaxed a few years later with The Exorcist as the to-die-for main course and concluded with the gooey, bloating dessert that was The Omen; by 1978, Old Scratch…

CTHULHU FHTAGN! Ross E. Lockhart, ed. Word Horde Veteran editor Ross E. Lockhart goes back to his Lovecraftian roots (see The Book of Cthulhu II in RM#129) with an all-new, invitation-only selection of the latest Lovecraftiana. This particular field has been mined for decades, and while there’s still some juice to be squeezed from it, how fresh it seems will mostly depend on readers’ previous exposure. If you already know that the book’s title means “Cthulhu sleeps,” you’ll probably be able to sleep just fine after reading it. There is relatively little cosmic horror here; however, if you’re happy with the down-to-earth psychology of troubled relationships, or at least action scenes and explicit body horror, there’s plenty to satisfy! Vikings battle the Deep Ones off the shore of what will…

PROFONDO ROSSO SOUNDTRACK Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin RUSTBLADE RECORDS To mark Profondo Rosso’s 40th anniversary, Claudio Simonetti and his newly formed band recorded faithful versions of Goblin’s main themes, engineered with the same precision as prior re-recordings. Each of the four main tracks is fairly long, features robust sound, and almost matches the analog warmth of the original 1975 album. The 2015 recordings feature liquid bassist Federico Amorosi, aggressive drummer Titta Tani and guitarist Bruno Previtali, while Simonetti deftly handles keyboards, synths and Moog emulations, making for a solid twenty-minute suite. “Deep Shadows” offers the band’s most vibrant performance and solos, which perhaps reveal what the album should’ve been: more freeform, improvised versions akin to masterwork Roller. Augmenting the album’s second half are two prior studio and three live theme versions,…

MAD MAX Windows, Xbox One, PS4 Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Like this summer’s cinematic blockbuster it’s based on, Mad Max lives up to the hype. It’s a standalone game that doesn’t directly connect with Mad Max: Fury Road (take note, Imperator Furiosa fans, she doesn’t appear in this title), but the frenetic car-crash energy is on point with the film and the immersive post-apocalyptic environment is so well-executed you can almost smell the guzzolene. Pushed to the brink of insanity after the loss of his family, our titular character makes the mistake of driving through some territory belonging to sadistic warlord Scabrous Scrotus. Max and Scrotus both survive the ensuing confrontation, but Scrotus’ war boys make off with Max’s most prized possession: his Interceptor. Stranded, he befriends hunchbacked mechanical genius…

IT WAS WEIRD being at Fan Expo and not seeing you guys there this year. I missed the Rue Morgue booth and all of your ghoulish faces! EVAN DILWORTH, VIA FACEBOOK [Hi Evan, we missed you too! That’s why we have launched the Rue Morgue Dark Carnival, coming to Hamilton, Ontario, July 8-10, 2016! Drop in at darkcarnivalexpo.com for news and updates! – Ed.] DAVE, I ALWAYS ENJOY your editorials. This morning I received my HorrorBlock with the latest edition [RM#160]. I had opened the magazine on the kitchen table and I was heading out but I was curious to find out what the subject was this time. So I told myself I would read just the two first sentences. Little did I know, I couldn’t put the thing down!…

1 CREATURE CUP $14.99 – $19.99 Beware the hidden monster in your mug when you drink from one of those unique ceramic mugs (available in 11 oz and 15 oz sizes). They are microwave and dishwasher safe, so fill it to the brim with poison again and again. 2 SKELETON BABY ONESIE $19 A must-have for your Broodling, this comfortable and durable 100 percent cotton short-sleeve one-piece from My Baby Rocks features a unique, white skeleton design and lap shoulders for easier dressing. Available in sizes from newborn to 18 months. 3 LUST FOR SKULLS SOCKS $12 Who doesn’t have a lust for skulls and 19-inch knee-high socks? The fiends at Sourpuss have combined the two into an irresistible pair of wearables featuring an all-over skull pattern on a charcoal…

MARCHÉ DU FILM/CANNES IS LOADED WALL TO WALL WITH POSTER ART FOR UP-AND-COMING FILMS, SOME OF WHICH MAY NEVER GET MADE. The goal of these one-sheets is to grab your attention and communicate a central idea about the movie. I chose five of them that seemed to be horror projects and compared my very first impressions on the poster with what the film is actually about. Just how well did they work on me? DON’T KILL IT FIRST IMPRESSION: It stars sweaty Dolph Lundgren. I’ll see it. AFTER RESEARCH: Turns out Mike Mendez (Big Ass Spider, The Convent) is back with a horror movie starring Lundgren! Apparently Dolph plays a demon hunter trying to save an Alaskan town from an ancient evil. Okay, now I won’t just see it, I’m…

One of the fest’s best genre outings was also one of the shortest: the brilliant horror-comedy Portal to Hell!!!. Made by Vivieno Caldinelli and Matt Watts, the eleven-minute short combines Lovecraftian horror and subtle character comedy in the tale of a burned-out superintendent (Roddy Piper, who died shortly after making the film) forced to deal with a pesky Cthulhu outbreak. Hilarious, gory and reverent to ’80s horror, Portal to Hell!!! will delight even the most hardened horror snob. Caldinelli talks to us about his tentacled tale. Why mix mundane character comedy with Lovecraftian insanity? The Lovecraft element was always there in Matt’s concept, but I think the comedy came out when we started collaborating. We have similar sensibilities, so we were just making each other laugh. None of Lovecraft’s work…

MORE THAN MEETS THE FRY SHOCKER (1989) Blu-ray Starring Peter Berg, Mitch Pileggi and Camille Cooper Written and directed by Wes Craven Scream Factory “This whole film was an exorcism of my own demons with my father,” proclaims Wes Craven in the commentary track for Shocker. On one hand, the 1989 film is a goofy, fun, rubber-reality slasher that sits in the shadow of A Nightmare on Elm Street and doesn’t age as well due to its dated special effects, bombastic heavy metal soundtrack and descent into slapstick. On the other hand, it’s a pivotal work in the filmmaker’s canon – the first project in which he had complete artistic freedom and took advantage of that to fully explore several of his thematic interests, including the disconnection between generations and…

Lovecraftian sci-fi, body-swapping, goblin violence and antique fortune tellers – The Gates of Misery is an exciting new horror anthology created by artist Matthew Therrien that brings together some of the industry’s top talent, many of whom have never written for comics before. An ardent and lifelong fan of the genre, Therrien’s ultimate goal for the project was simple: to keep the anthology format alive for a new generation of horror and comics fans while simultaneously pushing the writers to explore the dark depths of their creativity. “The overall idea was to allow filmmakers and writers the opportunity to create a six-page or less horror story; no restrictions,” says Therrien. “Whatever they could conjure from the depths of their nightmarish imaginations, I would draw. And I was absolutely delighted by…

THE DEAD HOUSE Dawn Kurtagich Little Brown and Company Sisters Carly (a child of light) and Kaitlyn (a child of darkness) are like two souls trapped in one body. When Carly goes missing, Kaitlyn is willing to do anything in her power to find her, even if that means stepping into the world of the paranormal. The Dead House tells its powerful tale through diary entries, police reports and investigative interviews, and it will keep you in suspense right through to the final pages. AMY BRIDGES EIGHT LITTLE ZOMBIES John LaFleur and David Metzger Crooked Tombstone Productions Unless you’ve been residing under a tombstone, you’re probably familiar with the nursery rhyme “Eight Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.” Eight Little Zombies scoops the concept and rhyming scheme to…

THIS MONTH: THE DOOM THAT CAME TO FRIGHT GALLERY Help! Skinner has taken over my column! Of course, he’s a good fit for this issue, as H.P. Lovecraft’s hellish universe of gods and unnameable beings has permeated so much of his art (RM#153), from famous wall murals in Oakland, California, to his album and video art for the rock band Mastadon. The self-taught artist perfectly sums it up when asked, where do you begin to imagine the world of Lovecraft? “This is a great question because I think that people like things spelled out for them. Literally explained in every detail. To be relieved from having to imagine anything, lest they be challenged to stare into the potential for creating their own horror.” His recent painting Azathoth Invoked debuted at…

The murder ballad is one of the earliest forms of horror music, a genre of songs detailing murders – often crimes of passion and their aftermath – that dates back to the 17th century. When we think of murder ballads today, we think of grisly outlaw tales sung by the likes of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings or Neko Case. When I first came across Murder Murder, a “bloodgrass” band from my hometown of Sudbury, Ontario, I knew I was onto something. Equal parts bluegrass and outlaw country, Murder Murder aims to mythologize Northern Ontario’s brutally cold, working-class landscape the same way traditional murder ballads have done for the American South, the Appalachians and Alaska during the Klondike years. “People who are familiar with the murder ballad usually relate it to…

After staking a claim in both cinema and comic books, Jen and Sylvia Soska are coming to television. Hellevator, a new “survival horror” game show, features the Twisted Twins as hosts/taskmasters. A collaboration between the Game Show Network (GSN), the Soskas and Blumhouse Productions (the company behind horror franchises Paranormal Activity, Insidious and Sinister), Hellevator has three friends travel, via a “haunted” elevator, down into an abandoned warehouse. Each of them must exit on a different floor and complete a “frightening” challenge to earn money for the team; if they don’t complete the task in time, the elevator doors close and the taskmasters win. “It’s us versus them,” explains Sylvia (pictured, right with Jen). “‘Them’ being three friends, ‘us’ being Jen and myself, our Hellevator and an army of unspeakable…

Ichi the Killer and Audition director Takashi Miike cites Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as his favourite horror movie. A Kentucky man was recently caught digging up the 30-year-old grave of his father while shouting Bible verses. He allegedly told the police constable who confronted him that he was exhuming his dad so he could go to heaven. In Clive Barker’s A to Z of Horror, Tom Savini cites Lon Chaney, Sr. as his earliest influence, after seeing 1957’s Man of a Thousand Faces when he was thirteen years old. A nineteen-year-old Houston man died this summer after the gun he was taking selfies with accidentally went off, shooting him in the throat. In the commentary track for Shocker, Wes Craven reveals that the two biggest influences on the…

H.P. LOVECRAFT’S PROSE IS NOTORIOUSLY DIFFICULT TO ADAPT FOR THE SCREEN, BEING LOW ON ACTION, HIGH ON ATMOSPHERE AND ALL ABOUT “THE UNNAMABLE.” And yet, there is a film festival devoted to short and feature films that attempt to convey just that through moving pictures. This year the annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival celebrated its 20th year, running from October 2 to 4. Started by Andrew Migliore in Portland, Oregon, in 1996, it grew over the years into one of the more important horror-related events: three days of Lovecraftian films, panel discussions, author readings, live events and Cthulhu-oriented RPGs and board and card gaming. The festival typically shows over 30 short films, and eight to ten features. In 2010, Migliore stepped down as organizer; current festival director Brian Callahan explains…

FEAR NOT, OLD SCHOOL ZOMBIE FANS. While it’s true that the last undead epic served up by Paramount Pictures, 2013’s World War Z, was largely despised by gorehounds for both its CGI gut-munchers and star Brad Pitt, the studio’s new one, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (out October 30), wants to win back your patronage with an excess of nudity, bloodshed, laughs and, well, no Pitt. “It’s as graphic as a zombie movie can get, I think,” promises actor Logan Miller, one of the titular Scouts hoping to save their town from the zombie apocalypse. They don’t rip off dicks in normal zombie movies, but they might in this one.” Standing beside him, also taking a break from night shooting on the film’s Los Angeles-area set, is Miller’s co-star,…

A GOOD DAY FOR M. NIGHT THE VISIT Starring Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould and Deanna Dunagen Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan Universal Pictures M. Night Shyamalan really needed a trip to grandma and grandpa’s house after the last decade of box office floppery. It’s here he could find unconditional love, despite making the ruefully self-indulgent Lady in the Water; receive the wisdom to understand that The Happening was conceptually a bad idea; and have some warm cookies to soothe the savage reviews for The Last Airbender. Those cookies are (probably) metaphorical, as grandma and grandpa’s house is actually Blumhouse, the studio behind the Paranormal Activity, Insidious and Sinister franchises. It gave Shyamalan a modest $5-million budget and creative freedom to make The Visit as a first-person documentary-style film,…

Though it’s become something of a cliché in recent years, the point-of-view (POV) shot is one of the defining technical elements of horror cinema. From Hitchcock to slashers, and especially modern found-footage films, few genres are as adept at putting their audience right within the action as horror. Hitting theatres a few years before definitive killer POV sequences were used in Black Christmas (1974) and Halloween (1978), the sleazy Hollywood shocker Blood and Lace (1971) put viewers in the shoes of a hammer-wielding manic in a memorable POV massacre that also functions as the key to its whodunit plot. Never officially released on home video in North America, the oft-overlooked film hits Blu-ray this month, courtesy of Shout! Factory. As opposed to the similarly titled Mario Bava classic Blood and…

To celebrate Vampirella’s 45th anniversary, Nancy A. Collins assembled some of the top writers and artists in the industry – including Steve Niles, Stephen Bissette, Gail Simone and Joe R. Lansdale – for Vampirella: Feary Tales. This five-issue miniseries (now collected in one volume) sees the scantily-clad vamp sucked into a magic book where she lives out twisted versions of familiar fairy tales. Several classics are name-checked, including “Little Red Riding Hood”, “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty”, but luckily only the most basic of frameworks are used. Instead, the writers alter the stories’ content to adapt it to Vampirella’s world, not vice-versa. So, for example, “The Three Bears” becomes a tale about Vampirella seeking help from three hick gas station attendants who transform into werebears under a full moon. It makes…

IN GEMMA FILES’ WORLD, ALL FILMS ARE FULL OF GHOSTS. “Once a film ages past a certain point, everyone who was involved in its making is dead,” says the Toronto-based author. “I’m really drawn to the idea that when you film something, or someone, you capture a part of its personality, its soul”. Files is well-acquainted with both the history of cinema and otherworldly beings: she taught the history of film at the Toronto Film School for over a decade, and she also worked for years as a film writer for the now-defunct Toronto newspaper EYE Weekly. These days, she’s best known as an award-winning writer of horror and speculative fiction, including her popular Hexslinger trilogy – which features magic, Wild West gore and an unabashedly queer male gunslinger –…

After redefining the modern horror film in 1974 with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper needed work. In 1976, independent producer Mardi Rustam approached him about filming a script he had co-written. Hooper and Chainsaw scribe Kim Henkel reworked it and Eaten Alive (1976) lurched to life. The story is loosely based on the crimes of Joe Ball, the “Bluebeard” of Texas, a serial killer who reputedly fed women to the alligators in the custom-built pit behind his bar (there was no evidence he disposed of his victims this way). The film’s plot, such as it is, concerns the deranged owner (Neville Brand) of a rundown hotel in a Texas swamp who occasionally feeds guests to the “Nile crocodile” he keeps in a pit beside the building. After he feeds…

DESPITE A NEARLY 40-YEAR CAREER THAT IN-CLUDED COLLABORATIONS WITH LIKES OF GARY NUMAN, TORONTO'S NASH THE SLASH REMAINS MOSTLY A AMN OF MYSTERY Wrapped in surgical bandages, sporting welder’s goggles and decked out in a coat and top hat, Nash (real name Jeff Plewman) made eerie electronic music, progressive rock, twisted pop and original soundtrack work with his trademark electric violin and mandolin. He died last year at the age of 66, leaving behind a legacy of innovative music that remains mostly underground. It’s a body of work waiting to be rediscovered, as much of his back catalogue was out of print and is now being reissued by Toronto’s Storming the Base and Artoffact Records. “Nash always preferred vinyl over any other format,” says Trevor Norris, Nash’s business partner and…