Table of contents for Issue 172 November 2016 in RUE MORGUE

erschell Gordon Lewis’ official website describes him as “The Godfather of Direct Marketing and Gore.” The order of that wording is important. Though he clearly embraced both titles (and his fans at conventions), he was better known for the latter, yet right up until his death he refuted notions that he was an artist. In an interview we conducted with him a couple weeks ago – which you’ll read next issue – he said, “I will point out to you, if there’s one thing my movies are not, they’re not achievements. Except commercially.” Lewis was the first to acknowledge that his films are far from artistic cinematic triumphs, but they were never meant to be. They were marketing achievements – calculated, profitable experiments in gimmickry that would make P.T. Barnum…

DANI FILTH JOINS OCCULT FILM BAPHOMET American filmmaker Matthan Harris has been teasing his occult horror film Baphomet since online news sites started reporting on it back in 2014. Little had been heard about the project in recent months until this past September when it was announced that metal icon Dani Filth had been cast in a key role. Filming took place that month in London, with full production set to begin next year. The Cradle of Filth frontman, whose only previous acting experience has been in the Amicus-inspired anthology Cradle of Fear (2001), will play Dr. Lon Carlson, a British occult expert called upon by a young American woman to help when her family is attacked by a satanic cult determined to take their land for use in a…

ENAMEL PINS BY SEVENTH INK $10 Pins are all the rage these days, and Seventh Ink has two of the coolest. Their 1” Pumpkin and 1.25” Black and Gold Coffin enamel pins come with shiny finishes and rubber clutches, so you won’t lose ’em when you crawl back into your coffin. ALLIGATOR WINE T-SHIRT $23.50 Zombina, from graveyard rock band Zombina and the Skeletones, has launched her own company, Alligator Wine, so you can stay adorned in skulls and other dark imagery. This 100 percent cotton unisex Gildan shirt comes in sizes S to XL and in the only colour you need: black. NAUGHTY DEVIL CORKSCREW BY THE BLACK BROOM $43.95 No romantic evening is complete without a bottle of red uncorked by Lucifer’s member. Black Broom’s Naughty Devil Corkscrew…

THE CRAMPS, MISFITS AND THE DAMNED ARE THE UNHOLY TRINITY OF PUNK ROCK HORROR BANDS. And while The Cramps and Misfits are highly regarded, The Damned, which formed in 1976, lives up to its name and remains relatively unknown. It’s strange considering they directly influenced the Misfits, and were the first British punk band to get signed (to Stiff Records), release a punk single (“New Rose” – months before the Sex Pistols), put out a punk album in the UK (Damned Damned Damned) and tour America. Celebrating their 40th anniversary, the members of the group have proven themselves not just true punk rock journeymen, but also horrorpunk pioneers. Singer Dave Vanian (as in “Transyl”) is the original goth/vampire punk – a gravedigger who owned a hearse in his younger days.…

THAT OLD BLACK HILLS MAGIC BLAIR WITCH Starring James Allen McCune, Callie Hernandez and Corbin Reid Directed by Adam Wingard Written by Simon Barrett Lionsgate If you expect to get anything out of Blair Witch, you gotta let go of The Blair Witch Project. The 1999 movie, which pioneered the modern found-footage aesthetic, was lightning in a camcorder. It was the right concept at the right time marketed the right way, using the early days of the Internet to blur the line between fact and fiction in a way that probably hadn’t been done so effectively since Orson Welles’ panic-inducing War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938. Trying replicate the BWP experience would be idiotic and director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett (the guys behind solid genre flicks A…

On a dreary winter’s day, in rural Wisconsin, the dead came back to life. But not your typical, horror genre undead; these weren’t flesh-eating zombies. Instead, they looked and behaved (mostly) as they had prior to death. However, the “revivers,” as they were soon labelled, would send social, moral and political shockwaves through the community and eventually the rest of the world. Thus began Revival, one of the most consistently gripping horror comics to emerge in recent years. Since its debut in 2012, it’s provided readers with a stark and often brutal story that is both visceral and deeply introspective. This fall, Revival began its climactic story arc (with issue #42) – a bittersweet moment for writer and creator Tim Seeley. “I’m most proud of the dedication of the creative…

THE SECRET OF VENTRILOQUISM Jon Padgett Dunhams Manor Press Jon Padgett, CEO of the Thomas Ligotti Online website, proves himself a worthy successor to the master with his stunning debut collection. There’s no gristle, no bone, no dilly-dallying here: only pure meat whose terrors seamlessly grow into the metaphysical. Creepy introductory piece “The Mindfulness of Horror Practice” leads to a seemingly conventional opening story, “Murmurs of a Voice Foreknown,” whose premise, about two feuding kid-brothers at a family farm, may deceptively remind you of Stephen King’s work, but the development and conclusion are far crueller and bleaker. Some of the tales are more reminiscent of very dark dreams magically captured on paper than they are of conventional plot-driven horror stories. Thus, “The Indoor Swamp” is a parable of organic dread…

ALAN ROBERT’S GOREGEOUS COLORING BOOK When Life of Agony’s Alan Robert isn’t recording and touring, he’s publishing his comic Killogy with IDW and living on a steady diet of horror films. When his wife suggested he should take a stab at his own “adult” colouring book, he drew up a single page of the sickest thing that came to mind: the bathroom at New York’s legendary CBGB. He posted the drawing online and the overwhelming response to it inspired another one. Two days later, IDW gave him a book deal, commissioning 80 more pages. The result, The Beauty in Horror: A GOREgeous Coloring Book is a fiendishly fun art book. Roberts changed up his usual, shadowy comic style for intricate line work, using ink and thousands of rock-steady lines to…

unknown circa 600 ad t’s the bane of a music snob’s existence: a piece of classical music erroneously referred to as the “theme from” a hit film. The brief opening section of Richard Strauss’ tone poem “Also Sprach Zarathustra” seems permanently mislabelled “Theme From 2001: A Space Odyssey”; Rossini’s “William Tell Overture” suffered the same fate decades earlier via the Lone Ranger radio and television series; Mozart’s “Piano Concerto Number 21” preceded the ardent romantic tragedy Elvira Madigan by nearly 200 years, yet the two are now so inextricably linked that most recordings of the Concerto bear the film’s name as a subtitle. “Dies Irae” (pronounced “dee-ays eeray”) is another example, and yet its legacy is longer and odder. It’s been saddled with the epitaph “Theme From The Shining” and…

RUE MORGUE IS a highlight of every month, so I’m saddened that you’re cutting back to six issues a year. But, while eleven is better than six, six is definitely better than none, and as long as you’re publishing, I’ll be buying. Vive Rue Morgue! RYAN PRITCHARD, VIA FACEBOOK I CAN UNDERSTAND the hate the new Blair Witch is receiving. I’d hoped horror had moved away from found footage by now; the annoying camera shaking makes my head hurt and seems a cheap trick best suited for student YouTube videos. The genre cannot evolve past screams off screen and ensuring low-budget effects aren’t laughed at by obstructing them with wild camera jerks and bad lighting – hardly value for your money. Is it too much to ask to see a…

Animal sacrifices, which traditionally take place during the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, combined with unusually heavy rainfall made the streets in Dhaka, Bangladesh, run red this past September. Knott’s Berry Farm cancelled FearVR – a virtual reality attraction that placed visitors in “a mental hospital where a psychiatric patient with demonic powers is on the loose” – after the National Alliance on Mental Illness complained, arguing it was insensitive to those with mental health challenges. A lightning strike in Norway this August killed some 300 wild reindeer. The animals huddle together during inclement weather, contributing to their deaths. A Discovery Channel crew filming shark footage for the upcoming documentary Bride of Jaws discovered that blasting death metal underwater was an effective way to coax Great Whites into the area.…

THIS ISSUE: LANCE MAKES APOLOGIES FOR ANTHOLOGIES SHORT ’N’ NOT-SO-SWEET SCAREWAVES Independent Entertainment The best thing about horror anthologies is that each story is short, so if you get bored, fed up or mildly suicidal, just remember it’ll be over soon. In Scarewaves, Amos Satan is a radio host wrapping up his last show, when he decides to spin four sick tales for a final thrill. Two of ’em are humdrum affairs about guys trying to kill their girlfriends, and there’s a half-decent one about a former cop trying to live with the fact that he accidentally shot a child. The best of the bunch is a bizarre tale about an artist who preys upon his curvaceous models at the stroke of midnight, but that’s only because of the…

While horror movies have always attempted to enthrall audiences with a potent mix of sex and death, filmmakers also have to take care not to cross the accepted cultural and artistic standards of the day. While these themes sometimes lurked below the surface in supernatural films, this balancing act could be particularly tricky in movies such as John Brahm’s The Lodger (1944), a fictionalization of the real Jack the Ripper case that explicitly incorporated taboo topics. Released on Blu-ray from Kino this month, Brahm’s tale of (almost) true crime tackles the serial slaughter of prostitutes at a time when sex and blood were largely forbidden under the Hays Code, a self-regulation initiative that Hollywood put in place in the 1930s. Based on a 1913 book, The Lodger had already been…

WE’RE EXTRAORDINARILY FORTUNATE IN THIS DAY AND AGE, GIVEN THE NUMBER OF DIFFERENT WAYS THERE ARE TO ENJOY STORIES: books, audiobooks, podcasts, radio plays, TV shows, films. Hell, there’s even something touted as “a movie in your mind,” which is a fusion of novel and radio play. Brenton J. Cox’s war-themed zombie trilogy Atrum Terra is among the tales that have been adapted to this format by GraphicAudio, a company that specializes in bringing stories to life on CD/digital download by utilizing a narrator, multiple actors, music and sound effects. At first glance, Cox’s series may seem like an unlikely candidate, considering it was self-published back in 2012 by an author who “knew nothing about the publishing process.” But it just so happened that Cox spent a lot of time…

erman underground filmmaker Andrea Schnaas’ Violent Shit (1989) was a staple of bootleg VHS catalogs and trade lists back in the ’90s. It first circulated in murky, multi-generation PAL to NTSC conversions in German, which only added to the forbidden allure of a film with a title that is an apt descriptor of the content. In the opening prologue, a young boy kills his mother with a meat cleaver. Twenty years later, “K. the Butcher Shitter” escapes police custody and proceeds to lurch about a forest, slaughtering hapless passersby. With his giant plywood cleaver he caves in skulls, hacks off appendages and rips out intestines. This is seminal shoton-video animal guts and air compressor arterial spray gore stuff! Also, it’s terrible. The threadbare story is incoherent and dreadfully paced. Even…

When I received an email last spring asking if I could post an announcement about an original Misfits reunion, I couldn’t believe it. There had been so many rumours of a Glenn Danzig/Jerry Only reunion over the years that I laughed whenever another one emerged, especially given the ridiculously hateful and public war of words between the two. But when the impossible became announced as a reality, Rue Morgue’s resident party DJ Eric Von Eric and I purchased our expensive Chicago Riot Fest passes, and hit the road for the windy city in mid-September. There were some amazing bands on the bill, including Rob Zombie performing White Zombie’s Astro-Creep 2000 in its entirety, GWAR and Tiger Army, but it was obvious from the audience’s T-shirt choices that they were just…

IT’S NO SMALL FEAT TO BE ABLE TO BOAST THAT YOUR FILM HAS RECEIVED MORE AWARD NOMINATIONS THAN ANY OTHER IN ITS SUBGENRE IN six years. That’s exactly the kind of bragging rights that Michael McQuown and Vincent Guastini have after their found-footage anthology The Dark Tapes swept this year’s festival circuit. As of press time, it’s taken home more than a dozen awards and is on its way to being the most nominated horror film of 2016 – it already is the most nominated found-footage film since 2010. With an intelligent premise, some truly creepy moments, and what’s indisputably the best practical creature effects of the year, The Dark Tapes is a commendable entry in the anthology and found-footage genres, and provides a welcome look at some new talent…

Blood, Sweat and Urine Smears One night back in June, I hosted a little soiree in the basement. Attendees included Rue Morgue’s Dave Alexander, Tal Zimerman, Andrea Subissati and – wait for it, ladies – the Gore-Met. Highlights were manifold: finding the selection of canapés wanting, Andrea launched into a protracted neo-Seinfeldian rant condemning pretzels as unfit for consumption by people with master’s degrees; several hours later, mirth reined supreme when a shoeless Gore-Met stepped in dog urine. But the main attraction was undeniably the night’s viewing selection, the lurid, intermittently coherent and gratuitously greasy grindhouse goodie that is 1984’s Exterminator 2. Back in 1980, the somewhat better known (though not necessarily better) original Exterminator introduced us to John Eastland (Robert Ginty), a Vietnam vet who goes on a vengeful…

BEWARE THE MOON: THE STORY OF AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON Paul Davis Cult Screenings In his foreword to Beware the Moon: The Story of An American Werewolf in London, Mick Garris declares there are “certain very special films … that live long beyond their intended shelf lives.” John Landis’ rambunctious monster movie is, of course, one of them. Possibly the greatest werewolf picture ever made, its radical confection of guffaws and gore, tragedy and terror (attacked by some critics as a debilitating weakness upon the movie’s release in 1981) remains enormously affecting. Derived from his meritorious 2009 documentary (also called Beware the Moon), Paul Davis’ 200-page volume is an expansive oral history that charts the making and enduring legacy of Werewolf. Featuring interviews with over 35 members of the…

ELECTRONIC REPEATED VIEWING Frozen Existence LUNARIS RECORDS Scottish electronic/noise artist Alan Sinclair (a.k.a. Repeated Viewing) recently scored neo-giallo Three Sisters (RM#158), as well as a slew of faux soundtracks to horror and cult movies that don’t exist, including Frozen Existence, which is made to look and feel like the score to an Italian horror movie directed by Lucio Fulci and distributed in a Wizard Video VHS big box in 1981. The album runs the gamut of synth sounds, from warm organ to ambient drones and wind effects, and funk/prog influences peek through on “Investigation (Part 1).” Sinclair may be trying a little too hard to inject as many Italian horror staples into Frozen Existence as possible, but ultimately he does manage to create an album that could in fact serve…

MONSTERS. PAGAN GODDESSES. A NIGHTMARISH POST-APOCALYPIC WORLD. EGYPTIAN GODS. EVIL WIZARDS. The unforgiving blackness of space. These are all subjects heavily explored in stoner metal, a genre whose pioneers Black Sabbath and Pentagram plumbed the occult evil and folkloric malevolence depths of back in the ’70s. However, it’s rare for a band to explore all of these subjects in a single record – and yet Toronto’s Ol’ Time Moonshine has done just that, on its ambitious new concept album The Apocalypse Trilogies: Spacewolf and Other Dark Tales. Lead singer and lyricist Bill Kole, who has a background in TV and film, exhaustively plotted the album from beginning to end. “We had a few songs early on in the writing process that specifically dealt with those genres in terms of subject…

INSIDE Xbox One, Windows, PS4 Playdead Every so often a game comes along that reminds us that less is more, that video games can be immensely emotionally powerful in terms of immersion, storytelling and outright creep-factor. Playdead’s 2010 sleeper hit Limbo was one such game (as I’ve pontificated to anyone who will listen), and its long-awaited successor, Inside, raises the bar appropriately. The story concerns a nameless boy in a red shirt with the simplest of abilities (walk, jump, push/pull) infiltrating a facility of some sort, navigating obstacles by swinging from ropes, manipulating elevators and pulling blocks around in order to reach higher platforms. The only other characters you encounter fall into one of three categories; mindless automatons (that you must imitate/manipulate to chilling effect), faceless scientists (who may…