Table of contents for RM#190 Halloween Special Issue in RUE MORGUE

Halloween again? It seems like only yesterday I threw out my mouldy jack o’ lantern… oh wait, that was actually yesterday. But the “seasonal” housewares that adorn the Rue Morgue Manor all year long are starting to appear in stores even as I write this in sunny July, so it’s once more time for us to spread our pages double-wide in our annual Halloween issue, and discuss what another year of Rue Morgue has brought. Celebrating her first anniversary this fall is our YouTube channel, Rue Morgue TV. Translating a print periodical to video format is trickier than it sounds, but over the course of the 40+ episodes we’ve launched, we hope to have offered you a peek behind the curtain at some of the names who have appeared in…

1 HALLOWEEN SUIT AND TIE SET $59.99 USD Puttin’ on the ritz doesn’t have to be the pits! This stylish slim-fit ensemble from Suitmeister includes jacket, pants and matching tie to add maximum spooky spiff to your seasonal wardrobe. kohls.com 2 STEPHEN KING BOOKMARKS $6 – $7 USD Who better to mark your place in the latest Stephen King best-seller than the author himself, or one of his most iconic characters? Hand-drawn, double-sided and measuring 2 x 7 inches, these unique bookmarks will ensure you always keep your page… or else! astrangerdream.com 3 CANDY CORN FLATS $55 USD Satisfy your sweet tooth with a pair of candy corn flats that’ll add some Halloween to your wardrobe all year long. 100% vegan and sugar-free, these beauties will cause compliments instead of…

SATAN AND HORROR MOVIES, HORROR MOVIES AND SATAN. IT’S A RELATIONSHIP MADE IN HELL THAT HAS SERVED BOTH SIDES EXTREMELY WELL. One needn’t look much further than what is arguably the greatest horror movie of all time (that would be The Exorcist) to see the power that is generated when the genre consorts with the Devil. He’s been called the ultimate boogeyman and, irrespective of your religious (or non-religious) beliefs, Satan has had a special place in the horror genre from day one. With a name that translates to “adversary,” the Devil is less a character of mythology than an archetype, a catch-all for the powers of darkness – from evil and human hatred, to the social taboos of sex and rebellion, but Satan’s movies tend to return to several…

“Number One: You can never have sex. Number Two: You can never drink or do drugs. And Number Three: never, ever, ever under any circumstances say, ‘I’ll be right back.’ Because you won’t.”– Randy (Jamie Kennedy) in Scream (1996) Call it the slasher film’s answer to “I before E except after C,” an adage with so many real-life exceptions that it barely qualifies as a generality, never mind a rule. Granted, there’s plenty of cinematic precedent to back up Randy’s little dictum, which seemingly overnight entered every cult film fan’s lexicon, but it’s not mere small-minded pedantry to point out a number of glaring deviations – in some of the slasher subgenre’s most iconic titles – that call these “rules” into question. Well, at least the ones about sex, booze…

Unlike the vast reaches of space, in your living room, everyone can hear you scream. When it comes to sci-fi horror, it’s hard to top Ridley Scott’s Alien. With wailing sirens, strobing lights, and the encroaching terror of a malevolent extraterrestrial looking to make mincemeat out of a crew already at odds with each other, it’s a hostile setting perfectly suited for tales of dread among the stars. Now, just in time for Alien’s 40th anniversary, award-winning Swedish developer Free League Publishing (Tales from the Loop, Mutant: Year Zero) has taken on the challenge of bringing the franchise to the tabletop setting for the first time since Leading Edge’s 1991 Aliens Adventure Game. Set to fully launch later this year, ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game thrusts players into the year 2183,…

MOST OF THE BIGGEST NAMES IN CINEMATIC VISUAL EFFECTS ARE AßOCIATED WITH SPECIALTIES: Lon Chaney Sr. and Jack Pierce with early makeup effects, Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen with stop-motion animation and creature design, George Lucas and his posse with miniatures and green screen trickery. But when one makes one’s bones (and flesh, and blood, and entrails) in the late ’70s with Dawn of the Dead and the early ’80s with Friday the 13th and several of its slasher offspring, well, one tends to get typed as the go-to gore guy, despite having long since compiled a much more diverse resume as both designer and teacher. In his new book (out Nov. 3 from Dark Ink Books), effects icon Tom Savini doesn’t bemoan his lot; he’s justifiably proud of his…

THIS ISSUE: LANCE APPROPRIATES THE APOCALYPSE THE FINAL BEAT DOWN THE MIDNIGHT AFTER Well Go USA Entertainment Believe it, the apocalypse is coming! It might be war, earthquake, famine, plague or zombies, but one thing is for sure, we’re all fucked. Hopefully not as bad as the seventeen people in this Chinese film, who find themselves alone in an abandoned city after taking a mini-bus through a tunnel from Hong Kong to Tai Po. Unable to contact the outside world, they start dying off in increasingly horrendous ways, including being burnt alive and raped to death in the bushes. Even with that level of violence to its credit, The Midnight After can’t quite decide if it’s a straight-up horror or a comedy, especially when it breaks into a karaoke…

Factoid: I fucking hate The Conjuring, not to mention its vomitous litter of sequels, prequels, spinoffs and fuckoffs. It’s overwrought, clichéd drivel and I’m genuinely baffled that so many otherwise rational folk actually seem to dig it. What did you people do, ingest some critical-assessment-suppressing miracle drug? So why suddenly spew all this venom over a film released six years ago? Well, because I’ve just discovered The Conjuring’s all-but-forgotten ancestor. And it’s worse. Much, much worse; so much so it’s actually worth watching. The Haunted, a 1991 made-for-TV movie, recently showed up on Shudder without so much as a footnote of explanation or warning. Given my longstanding fondness for the oft-maligned Movie of the Week canon and the presence of some well-respected actors including Sally Kirkland and Jeffrey DeMunn, The…

I’ve mentioned before that I find Alien comics challenging, in that most of them tend to be familiar riffs on either the first or second film in the franchise. This usually results in competent but somewhat stale retreads and unfortunately, Aliens: Dust to Dust clings to what’s come before with face-hugger intensity. Once again, we have an outerworld colony overrun by xenomorphs; once again, a small group of survivors try desperately to get off the planet; once again, we see dark, hostile environments filled with inclement weather; and once again, there’s a “surprise” android reveal. There’s one interesting twist, however: early in the story, twelve-year-old Maxon’s mother becomes the victim of a chestburster, which then leads to a full-grown xenomorph that exhibits odd and protective behaviour towards the boy. Is…

THE LONG AND STORIED HISTORY OF CHILLING TALES INCLUDES MANY TALENTED WOMEN, but you wouldn’t necessarily know that since the work of these writers often failed to be preserved in the same manner as that of their male counterparts. Whether a side effect of our patriarchal society or the nature of the publications in which these women’s stories appeared, early contributors to horror and speculative fiction such as Margaret Cavendish, Regina Maria Roche, Charlotte Darce, Charlotte Riddell, and Margaret Oliphant are far from familiar to most readers. Yet, if you go looking for them, as Melanie R. Anderson and Lisa Kröger have in their new book Monster, She Wrote (out Sep. 17 from Quirk), they’re there, along with countless others, just waiting to be rediscovered. “A lot of these women’s…

Horror fans are familiar with the thrill of finding a director’s cut of a beloved film, but when was the last time you listened to a composer’s cut of one of your favourite movie scores? As a soundtrack collector, this idea obviously excites me, particularly when we’re talking about the score for Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond (1981), one of the greatest suites of music ever composed in a long line of incredible Italian prog rock scores. That the music from The Beyond is such a singular achievement in splatter cinema scores should come as no surprise, considering the musicians behind it: composer Fabio Frizzi backed up by Fabio Pignatelli, Agostino Marangolo, and Maurizio Guarini – all members of Goblin at the time. When I found out Cadabra Records would be…

I WANT TO THANK you for RM#189 being devoted to queer fear. It is yet another rallying cry for us weirdos to stick together, and Andrea’s Note From Underground emphasizes that; I want her to get as political as she wants to with the magazine since as she says, horror is political by nature. Speaking personally, I had always considered myself to be a heterosexual man, but I have recently discovered that I am asexual. That is perhaps the least known sexual orientation and [refers] to someone who has no sexual feelings or desires, or who is not sexually attracted to anyone. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I have been asexual for a long time. I could go on, but I will wrap this…

Halloween's heritage They say every lie has a grain of truth to it, and horror fiction is no exception. Short of movies that dramatize historical events (The Hills Have Eyes, Open Water, The Girl Next Door, etc.), much of our genre has its roots in reality, often in more nuanced ways. Shadowland is an exploration of these narrative origin stories, with an eye to uncover the cultural implications that appear in the transition from real life to urban legend to film. Halloween is a perfect time to kick off this new column, being a holiday with its roots in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The first of November was a day designated by Pope Gregory III to honour all saints, which encouraged superstitious cultures to spend the night before (known as…

Movie posters have always been part and parcel of the horror movie experience and, in the case of some films, are even superior to what made it on screen. Naturally, many companies have caught wind of the demand for high-quality horror poster artwork, and are offering it as screen prints. Using a process where mesh layers are used to transfer inks onto heavy stock paper for extremely vivid and detailed designs, these prints are usually produced in limited runs, making them highly collectible. One such company using this method is Grey Matter Art. Founded in New York in 2013 by Mike Gregory and Jared Dobbs, Grey Matter has been on the vanguard of the art form’s resurgence, on which it built its company from the ground up. “Being new to…

ANTON LAVEY FOUNDED THE CHURCH OF SATAN IN SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, ON APRIL 30, 1966. The former carnie and devoted showman used the platform for playful jabs at the morality and hypocrisies of the status quo, but the Church – and indeed, Satanism itself – went quiet in the decades that followed as he retreated from public life. It wasn’t until The Satanic Temple emerged in the last decade, with its political and social activism combined with media savvy, that Satanism began to be noticed by the mainstream – but in ways the original Church wasn’t too happy about. Rue Morgue spoke to Church of Satan magister Dave Harris and Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves about their competing takes on some of modern Satanism’s most contentious issues. ON LAVEYAN SATANISM…

1713 VIOLIN SONATA IN G MINOR As legend has it, one night in 1713, Giuseppe Tartini had a dream in which he sold his soul to the Devil. In return, Old Scratch taught the Italian composer what would become his best-known composition, a sonata written for violin with bass accompaniment in four movements which he famously named the “Devil’s Trill.” His story gave birth to countless legends of deals with the Devil in return for musical fame and fortune. 1903 POPE PIUS X BANS THE SAXOPHONE Back in 1903, Pope Pius X took it upon himself to outline what instruments could be played in the Church. He banned the saxophone, claiming that it sounded like the work of the Devil. That ban has never been officially lifted. 1938 ROBERT JOHNSON’S…

Almost every 1980s slasher horror film has a scene just like it – where the young protagonists uncover a buried secret that helps explain why an evil unstoppable killer has been stalking them. Slashers have always featured stories that emphasize the way our present is shaped by our past, and the evolution of the subgenre itself is similarly indebted to the earlier horror entries. By the VHS era, directors such as Wes Craven and Sean S. Cunningham seemingly perfected a distinctive formula of elaborate death scenes and shadowy killers, but they owe their success to the scrappier slashers of the 1970s that gave life to many of the subgenre’s most defining tropes – as well as a few that aren’t as widely discussed. Of course, the tendrils of the 1980s…

When genre giants Stephen King and George A. Romero joined forces for horror-comedy anthology movie Creepshow, expectations were appropriately high. Unleashed in the post-Halloween glow of November 1982, the film was a financial success, but it left critics scratching their heads. Neither writer nor director were especially known for their comedy chops, for one thing, and Creepshow’s warty green tongue all but poked through its rotting cheek, with humour that ran the gamut from slapstick to satire with some of the most memorable one-liners ever committed to celluloid. The film’s 1950s pulp comic book aesthetic was also something of a novelty, with Romero mainstay Tom Savini pushing his makeup FX skills to new heights of garish gore, and unforgettable performances by familiar faces the likes of Adrienne Barbeau, Leslie Nielsen,…

ANY FILMMAKER WILL TELL YOU THAT MAKING MOVIES IS A PUNISHING GIG; from budgets to studio interference, a director’s true artistic vision rarely makes it to the screen in the way they intended. For Tom Savini, whose horror resume spans decades and includes gigs as an actor, stuntman and special effects artist, his debut as director of the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead remains one of the most frustrating projects of his career. Out this October from Happy Cloud Media, Night of the Living Dead ’90: The Version You’ve Never Seen, is both a candid account of the film’s storied production history and a glimpse at the film Savini really wanted to make. Available now via pre-order from happycloudpictures.net, the 150-page book contains not only behind-the-scenes photos…

Satanic Panic “PERHAPS THE SATANIC PANIC’S MOST NOTABLE EFFECT ON HORROR FILMS WAS TO PROVIDE A NEW SOURCE OF INSPIRATION.” While Satan is no stranger to the movie screen, having made onscreen appearances as far back as the silent era, it wasn’t until much later that Old Scratch was accused of working behind the scenes as well. In the 1980s, unfounded fears about a clandestine network of devil worshippers saw concerned Christian groups blame popular culture for implanting demonic and occult ideas in the minds of impressionable youths. This movement, which has since been dubbed the Satanic Panic, focused on heavy metal music and role-playing games as particularly wicked influences, but the horror film industry didn’t entirely escape notice. At the same time as video rental stores began to spring…

HALLOWEEN: THE CHANGING SHAPE OF AN ICONIC SERIES Ernie Magnotta CreateSpace While reams of material has been written about John Carpenter’s landmark 1978 film (and its many sequels), Ernie Magnotta’s self-published volume accomplishes something rather noteworthy: regardless of the place the franchise holds in your heart, Halloween: The Changing Shape of an Iconic Series will make you want to revisit it. Magnotta has done a superb job at laying out his book in a logical and concise fashion. He goes through each film in the franchise methodically, providing a plot summary; character analysis; notes on any changes to Myers’ iconic mask; an examination of the suspense and scares, cinematography, music direction, and themes; and finally, budget info, box office tallies, and excerpts of reviews from the film’s release, before offering…

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1990) SOUNDTRACK Paul McCollough STRANGE DISC RECORDS The original Night of the Living Dead was a small independent film that relied on stock library music for its soundtrack. Tom Savini’s 1990 remake wasn’t exactly big budget either, but this time they managed to hire a composer, Paul McCollough, who also wrote the screenplay for George A. Romero’s The Crazies. McCollough’s score is all synth and Carpenter-esque, but definitely sounds like a one-man project, lo-fi, and already dated. Still, there is some underlying brilliance to it, most notably opening track “Cemetery,” which plays while a full moon rises over trees, provides one of the film’s most chilling moments. Night of the Living Dead lacks any dominant, recurring themes, consisting mostly of whooshing ambience and lots of…

ISSUE # 190 In November of 1997, famed Italian director Dario Argento made a run for political office in Rome. In April of this year, Canadian grave robber Lucas Dawe, 20, was caught boiling a human skeleton he stole from All Saints Parish in Newfoundland, and drinking the broth. Rebecca Toolan, who plays Fox Mulder’s mother in The X-Files is, in reality, only one year older than David Duchovny. The mouth of the White Worm seen in the tunnel toward the end of Ken Russell’s The Lair of the White Worm was actually a painted-over Volkswagen Beetle hood that bears an uncanny resemblance to the mouth of a snake. In 2017, Blake Leibel, 36, the son of a wealthy Canadian real estate tycoon, was charged with scalping his girlfriend Iana…

Let’s talk about The Devil and Father Amorth. In the film, you were witness to a real-life exorcism and you spoke to experts about it. What are your personal conclusions about demonic possession? I have no idea. I believe that there is a possibility that it could be some kind of a disease for which there is no medical name right now, but that there might be in the future. I had three of the leading psychiatrists in this country talking about the film, and how the Diagnostic Manual of Medicine (which is the psychiatric textbook) now recognizes possession. If somebody comes in or is brought to a psychiatrist and they believe they’re possessed, the psychiatrist doesn’t say, “No, you’re not really possessed, that’s a delusion. We’re going to give…

1980 TERROR TRAIN This was the last of three horror films starring Jamie Lee Curtis to be released in under eight months in 1980, but remains the dark horse of the triptych; perhaps because it involves neither John Carpenter nor a non-ironically disco-dancing Leslie Nielsen. Three years after a fraternity prank lands a young misfit (Derek McKinnon) in a mental hospital, he dons various disguises to exact revenge while his tormentors party on an old-fashioned excursion train. The usual ’80s slasher film “problems” – i.e. improbable plotting and lame dialogue – are alleviated here by director Roger Spottiswoode’s instinct for maximizing a uniquely claustrophobic setting, painted in rich, dark hues by Oscar-winning cinematographer John Alcott (The Shining, A Clockwork Orange). As usual, Curtis makes for a sexy and genuinely likeable…

With the releases of hits like Dawn of the Dead, The Amityville Horror and Phantasm and lower profile but equally important films such as The Brood and Nosferatu the Vampyre, 1979 was a seminal year for the horror genre. Even amongst these classics, one film above all has wormed its way into the hearts and minds of audiences as its xenomorphic creatures penetrated the mouths and chests of unfortunate victims. Future documentary filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe was in his early teens when he first saw Ridley Scott’s Alien, and even though he viewed it on VHS, it made an indelible impression. “It’s one of those films I waited several years to watch,” he remembers. “I had been entranced by the poster, and its incredible tagline, ‘In space, no one can…

THIRD TIME’S THE BOMB 3 FROM HELL Starring Sheri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley and Richard Brake Written and directed by Rob Zombie Lionsgate/Saban Films It’s difficult to discuss Rob Zombie’s 3 From Hell without venturing into spoiler territory, so if you don’t want one of its major (if early) developments given away, skip down to the next paragraph. On the other hand, some fans might want to be forewarned that the titular trio of terror does not include Sid Haig’s Captain Spaulding. He’s out of the picture early on, replaced by Winslow Foxworth Coltrane (Richard Brake from Zombie’s 31), a heretofore undisclosed relative of the Firefly clan who joins Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) and Otis (Bill Moseley) on a new rampage. Brake gives good menace, but Coltrane is cut from…

RAMROD RETURNS VICE SQUAD (1982) Blu-ray Starring Season Hubley, Gary Swanson and Wings Hauser Directed by Gary Sherman Written by Sandy Howard, Kenneth Peters and Robert Vincent O’Neil Scream Factory If you can get past the grimy layers of misogyny, racism, and general seediness – or embrace it, even – there’s much to admire in Gary Sherman’s Vice Squad, the story of a prostitute, Princess (Season Hubley), hunted down by seemingly unstoppable maniacal pimp Ramrod (an unforgettable Wings Hauser), with tough vice cop Tom Walsh (Gary Swanson) racing to stop the carnage. Hauser’s Ramrod is a force of nature, vile and commanding, whose best moments also crop up on 1984 horror compilation Terror in the Aisles, and whom director Sherman confesses is “the greatest monster since Godzilla” in this disc’s…

Since its founding in 2016, Vault Comics has emerged as one of the most creative and innovative publishers on the market. With great success in the areas of science fiction and fantasy, Vault is now turning its attention to horror with Nightfall, an annual fall event that will launch a select number of terrifying titles. The first release to premiere under the new banner will be The Plot, written by Michael Moreci and Tim Daniel, and drawn by Joshua Hixson. Daniel, also Vault’s E.V.P. of Branding and Design, sees Nightfall as an organic evolution of the company’s commitment to tell stories that challenge both creators and readers to break out of the ordinary. “Nightfall is our little red balloon of horror, and we want it to be elastic,” he says.…

WILL MY CAT EAT MY EYEBALLS? Caitlin Doughty Norton Do you have a morbid streak? Do you love a good factoid? Did you give an enthusiastic yes in response to both those questions? Well, dear reader, in that case, let me introduce you to your new favourite book: author and mortician Caitlin Doughty’s Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And please, while I know you can read that subtitle – Big Questions from Tiny Mortals about Death – don’t be foolish enough to think you already know everything within its pages just because you’re a grown-up; I can assure you that you don’t. How do I know? Well, I was the Weird Facts and Morbid Stats girl at this fine establishment for more than a decade and there’s a wealth…

UNDER THE MONIKER THE UNQUIET VOID, ARTIST JASON WALLACH HAS BEEN USING DARK AND DISTURBING SOUNDS to transform the works of H.P. Lovecraft into electronic ambient soundscapes for the past fifteen years. Beginning with 2004’s Poisoned Dreams, based upon the famous Lovecraft tales “Dagon,” “The Call of Cthulhu,” and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” and up to The Secrets of Vanished Aeons (2018), inspired by legendary short novel At the Mountains of Madness, cosmic dread echoes throughout these releases with uncanny aural spaces tinged with industrial chaos. Now, The Unquiet Void pays tribute to lesser known but equally weird fiction scribe Robert W. Chambers with Where Black Stars Rise, available now in a limited pressing of fifty copies on CD, premiering at NecronomiCon 2019 in Providence, Rhode Island, this August. Specifically,…

NOW PLAYING > MORTAL KOMBAT II, LAYERS OF FEAR 2 MORTAL KOMBAT 11 PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC NetherRealm Studios In the early 1990s, the original Mortal Kombat carved out a nice and bloody niche in the arcade fighting scene thanks to its exceedingly gruesome finishing moves (“fatalities”) and photorealistic sprite work. Quickly rivalling the popularity of Street Fighter and Tekken, the series has remained on gaming’s bleeding edge for much of its 27-year lifespan, thanks to an unflinching willingness to implement radical change to its hyper-violent formula. With smart improvements to the already excellent framework of their past few titles, NetherRealm Studios have crafted what is arguably their finest fighter yet with Mortal Kombat 11. Playing out like the most elaborate comic book story arc imaginable, MK11…