Table of contents for Issue 162 December 2015 in RUE MORGUE

When you were a child, did you know any kids who actually received coal in their Christmas stockings? Not likely; children figure out quickly that the whole lump of coal thing is a bluff. Now, had there been the threat of a visit from a horned demon that would beat and/or abduct you for being bad, you can bet your sugarplums there would’ve been less naughty, more nice. And you can bet I would’ve loved the Krampus for being a monster just as much as I would’ve feared him. Also known as “The Christmas Devil” or the “Anti-Claus,” the centuries-old tradition in Alpine countries is becoming a holiday staple in North America, with a sharp rise in Krampus-themed events (Google “Krampus party,” for examples), books, greeting cards, T-shirts, posters and…

Thirty years since its debut on the Nintendo Entertainment System, Friday the 13th is finally returning to the gaming world, but with a twist. In Friday the 13th: The Game, from Gun Media and developer IllFonic, fans will finally be able to experience the thrill of being Jason Voorhees himself. The title will offer online multiplayer play rather than a single-player campaign. One player during each match will take on the role of the iconic killer, while the rest do their best to take him down (they’re camp counsellors, of course). An all-star team has been lined up to work on the title, including Friday the 13th creator Sean Cunningham, Tom Savini, who did special effects makeup on the original Friday the 13th (1980) and Kane Hodder, who played Jason…

This pair of games featured detailed monster playing pieces and markers moulded in the shape of running children. Revenge included a four-inch-tall vampire figure, while Escape included six body parts players could assemble into a Frankenstein’s Monster. The games were marketed in the UK with different figurines (and superior box artwork) by Peter Pan Playthings. Prices vary, but Revenge can be found on eBay for around $20, while the rarer Escape sells for nearly double that. MORE CRYPTIC COLLECTIBLES AT RUE-MORGUE.COM…

SEEING RED CRIMSON PEAK Starring Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain and Tom Hiddleston Directed by Guillermo del Toro Written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins Universal Guillermo del Toro’s Spanish language films – Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth – are considered his most personal, but when it comes to style, Crimson Peak is like spending two hours inside the man’s head. That may come at the expense of storytelling, but it’s clearly his intention. As del Toro has explained (in RM#160), Crimson Peak isn’t a ghost story but a gothic romance, and it plays by the those rules. That means the ghosts are secondary to the sordid plot consisting of a love triangle, layers of deception, murder and a house alive with so many secrets it literally whispers…

My first instinct is to describe Messiah of Evil as a wonky, eccentric little amusebouche of Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, Lemora and Carnival of Souls, marinated rather overlong in Dario Argento, seasoned with a fistful of Night of the Living Dead and an insouciant hint of Lovecraft, served cold on a familiar bed of Twilight Zone pasta, and, and, and… but I won’t, lest some wrathful editor whup me with the whuppin’ stick. As one of the film’s supporting characters says, “It’s not that I care. It’s just that I’m scared.” We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Then again, fuck ’em – I’ve got tenure. Following an opening sequence in which a dying man stumbles through the streets of a coastal California town, our heroine Arletty (Marianna Hill), now…

SCREAM: CHILLING ADVENTURES IN THE SCIENCE OF FEAR Margee Kerr PublicAffairs Sociology is often misunderstood by the mainstream – it’s a social science that concerns itself not only with what people do, but how they ascribe meaning to their behaviour. It asks the questions that need the kind of data you can’t get from interviews or a controlled lab setting, and so sociologist Margee Kerr spent two years immersing herself in various forms of fear before presenting her findings in Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear. A self-confessed horror fan and thrill-seeker since childhood, the author’s research had her investigating fear in many forms, from visiting haunted houses to jumping out of a plane, and her experiences presented in this book are both entertaining and fascinating. Participant observation…

THE ADDAMS FAMILY SOUNDTRACK Vic Mizzy SPACELAB9 To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Hollywood’s famously morbid family sitcom, Spacelab9 reissues the original 1965 Addams Family album on vinyl, remastered and ooky as ever. The record is known for not exactly being a soundtrack, but rather a collection of original songs written out of themes used in the show, all by master composer Vic Mizzy, whose iconic harpsichord and finger-snapping “Main Theme” landed him a life in Bel Air. Each character gets a track, from the lewd and eccentric “Gomez” to the light and lovingly ethereal “Morticia’s Theme” and the surprisingly fast and rocking “Lurch’s Theme.” Listening to The Addams Family record today, it immediately conjures up ’60s-specific images – days sipping Mai Tais in giant bathing suits by the pool…

WHAT A WONDERFUL Note From Underground in RM#160. A touching look at [Wes Craven], who sparked my love for the genre @MOLLITORM, VIA TWITTER RUE MORGUE, kudos to those who compiled the 50 Essential Horror Albums in the latest issue. Quality choices all around. @CHAGS3, VIA TWITTER I HAVE BEEN READING Rue Morgue ever since David Cronenberg’s Rabid issue. I quickly picked up a couple of magazines because I was in for a long flight. Ever since then, I have never been without the newest issue. Rue Morgue is by far the most entertaining magazine for all things horror. I even open to the middle of the newest issue and smell for the fresh ink before reading. Rue Morgue has shown me some of the most amazing films, art, music,…

MANY OF US LIKE HORROR WITH OUR HOLIDAYS, BUT MICHAEL DOUGHERTY LOVES IT. A devotee of Halloween, the writer/director delivered a sacred cinematic text for that holiday with 2007’s bloody anthology film Trick ’r Treat. Unfortunately, though, it proved troubling for the studio that made it. Warner Brothers didn’t take kindly to all the killing of kids (and killer kids) and forced numerous re-edits on the filmmaker before shuffling the movie out in a direct-to-DVD release years after completion. Fortunately, that anthology of Halloween horror tales, featuring the now-beloved monster trick-or-treater Sam, became a fan favourite and spawned plenty of related merchandise. So, it’s not particularly surprising that Dougherty chose another holiday-themed horror outing for his sophomore directorial effort, Krampus (out December 4 from Universal). Rooted in German folklore, Krampus…

GETS A BAD RAP HOUSE OF THE DAMNED Full Circle Filmworks Your house is supposed to be a sanctuary from all the bad things outside. But there’s always one house on your street, or the next street over, that just gives you the creeps… Back in 1996, director Sean Weathers decided to make a horror movie with an all-black cast, set in the confines of a house where a demonic force threatens to kill a group of kids celebrating their friend’s 21st birthday. Finally available on DVD, this black-and-white film features voodoo queens, zombies and some of the worst rapping ever recorded. Though it suffers from uneven lighting, which makes the action barely decipherable at times, it’s still a fun watch and a welcome throwback to the days of…

In 2012, comic writer/artist Mike Mignola teamed up with novelist Christopher Golden for Joe Golem and the Drowning City. The illustrated novel saw occult detective Simon Church and his sidekick, Joe Golem, solve supernatural crimes in a Manhattan submerged in 30 feet of water, the results of rising sea levels and devastating earthquakes. Mignola and Golden are joining forces once more, along with artist Patric Reynolds, to bring the adventures of the mysterious Golem to comics this month. Joe Golem: Occult Detective is a five-issue Dark Horse series that delves further into the world built in the original story, with new adversaries and deadlier threats. “From the moment Mike first suggested we take this concept and turn it into a novel, we both knew we’d eventually do a comics version,”…

With the amazing visuals and truly terrifying legend behind Europe’s supernatural anti-Santa, it’s no surprise Krampus continues to provide a wealth of inspiration for filmmakers and visual artists. Make sure to keep one eye open for three art books stuffing sacks this season. First, author Mike Drake compiles Contemporary Krampus: A Modern Look at an Ancient Legend (Phrenology Press). It features imaginative interpretations from 68 modern artists such as Angus Oblong of TV’s The Oblongs, Dan Barrett, Belle Dee, Peter Skullkid, Middle of Beyond and more. In addition, art director Monte Beauchamp is unleashing Greetings From Krampus (Last Gasp), a beautifully designed set of 24 postcards, as well as Creepy Krampus No. 2, a collectible book of reusable stickers. Both collections feature creepy and humorous vintage Krampus illustrations. I spoke…

Rob Zombie is a divisive name in horror – the face of the genre for today’s younger generations of fans but often reviled by hardcore aficionados for his copy/paste approach to filmmaking and cartoonish aesthetic. In his band White Zombie, and later as a solo musician, Zombie was less controversial – a true lover of horror and exploitation, drawing on films such as Make Them Die Slowly and Spiderbaby for song content. But how exactly did underground horror become the image of a relatively mainstream band? What was the man’s thought process behind the constantly debated 2007 Halloween remake? UK author Joel McIver, who has written books on Slipknot, Slayer and Cannibal Corpse, delves into these questions and more in Sinister Urge, out now from Backbeat Books. Here’s what he…

LONDON, ENGLAND - 1839 Few of us have visited London’s Highgate Cemetery, but most of us have seen it. The Victorian burial ground – located on a quiet road in one of the city’s most sought-after residential areas – has taken on a life of its own in pop culture. The 37-acre cemetery is divided into two parts (known as the East and West Cemeteries) and hosts approximately 170,000 bodies in over 53,000 graves. Though it might seem morbid today, it became a tourist attraction almost from the moment it opened in 1839. Many Londoners took Sunday strolls along Egyptian Avenue – named after the street of family vaults fashioned like Egyptian tombs – that opens onto the Circle of Lebanon, an area housing more crypts and crowned by a…

After languishing for decades in the netherworld of grey market media, Canada’s first feature-length horror film is finally getting the attention it deserves. Thanks to a painstaking 2K digital restoration by the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and the US-based 3-D Film Archive, Julian Roffman’s mind-bending 1961 shocker The Mask – also Canada’s first 3-D feature – received a high-quality Blu-ray release last month from Kino Classics. In advance of that release, it toured Canadian theatres, with a premiere at TIFF Bell Lightbox on October 23, co-presented by Rue Morgue and featuring an event poster designed by RM columnist Gary Pullin. Now, filmmaker and 3-D historian Jason Pichonsky hopes to tell the story of The Mask in a feature-length documentary. He’s already completed a 21-minute version called Julian Roffman: The…

THIS WINTER MARKS 90 YEARS SINCE THE FACE OF HISTORY’S MOST NOTORIOUS MUMMY WAS REVEALED TO THE WORLD. Officially, excavations in the tomb of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun began on November 25, 1922. That was when archaeologist Howard Carter and his sponsor Lord Carnarvon first laid eyes on the claustrophobic interior of this tiny tomb, overflowing with sumptuous funerary goods, ebony furniture inlaid with ivory, and statues and jewellery made of gold and encrusted with semi-precious stones – 5398 artifacts in total. It took three more years of digging, removal and restoration before the mummy itself could be examined. In November of 1925, the famous golden mask of the young king was removed for the first time since his burial more than three thousand years ago. Behind the glittering…

“HENRY ROLLINS IS NO FUN” – THAT SOMEONE WOULD WRITE A SONG WITH THAT TITLE SPEAKS VOLUMES about the reputation of the former frontman of Black Flag and Rollins Band. Rollins, also a prolific writer, well, spoken word artist and actor, has built a career on being serious, angry and seriously angry. After small to mid-sized roles in films such as Lost Highway, Feast and Wrong Turn 2, he’s starring in a film, as essentially himself. But a cannibal. He Never Died – written and directed by Jason Krawczyk, and out this month from Vertical Entertainment – features Rollins as Jack, a gruff, misanthropic loner who’s supernaturally tough, has been around for a very long time and must sustain himself with human flesh. Living alone in a basement apartment and…

Though seemingly born to play the dashing but troubled heroes of a series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations throughout the 1960s, Vincent Price took a brief time out to star in the horror anthology Twice Told Tales (1963), featuring a trio of vignettes adapted from the work of another well-known American author, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Though not as well regarded as the classic Poe series, there are some standout moments in the film, including the fascinating “Rappaccini’s Daughter” segment, in which Price plays a botanist whose interest in his daughter’s innocence and deadly exotic plants mix in a most unhealthy way. Also featuring dramatizations of “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” and “House of the Seven Gables,” Twice Told Tales makes the jump to Blu-ray this month, courtesy of Kino. Based on Hawthorne’s 1844…

RECLUSIVE. ECCENTRIC. MYSTERIOUS. BUT NOW THOMAS LIGOTTI HAS ALSO BEEN RECOGNIZED AS A CLASSIC. Songs of a Dead Dreamer (1986) and Grimscribe (1991), his first two collections, long out of print or limited to small press editions, are finally available with their original covers (featuring artwork by Chris Mars) in an affordable, mass-distributed Penguin Classics edition. More than 400 pages of condensed terror reveal a true master at the top of his game. While no stranger to acclaim, with three Bram Stoker Awards, a British Fantasy Award and an International Horror Guild Award under his belt, the 62-year-old Ligotti avoided the spotlight of mass-market publication for decades and remained “the best kept secret in contemporary horror,” as The Washington Post once labelled him. His name became familiar to a wider…

So, there’s a second sequel to the 2010 remake of Meir Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave! How did this become a franchise? The 1978 original may be an exploitation classic, but it’s also a very unpleasant film about rape and vigilantism. Steven R. Monroe’s 2010 remake toned down the rape and turned up the revenge. In that film, Jennifer Hills (Sarah Butler) traps her tormenters in tortuous Rube Goldberg machines, her outlandish vengeance a counterbalance to the weaker half of the original film. Monroe’s 2013 follow-up, I Spit on Your Grave 2, while decidedly brutal, has nothing to do with the first film. Sarah Butler returns to the role of Jennifer Hills in I Spit on Your Grave III: Vengeance is Mine, but with a new director, R.D. Braunstein.…

THERE’S A REASON WE HATE SEEING CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS RIGHT NEXT TO THE HALLOWEEN CANDY. While Halloween is increasingly celebrated as the official holiday for horror fans, Christmas has long been its antithesis: the most pure, family-friendly, wholesome holiday of the year. But recently there’s been an increasing level of interest in Christmas within the horror world. The folkloric Krampus has become popular in North America, newer Christmas-based horror movies including Rare Exports, a Christmas Horror Story and Krampus are emerging, while watching older films such as Black Christmas and Silent Night Deadly Night is becoming a tradition. Perhaps sensing an opportunity, instrumental horror soundtrack outfit Midnight Syndicate pulled a surprise move creating its own Christmas album, Christmas: A Ghostly Gathering, out now on Linfaldia Records. Now in their nineteenth year together,…