Table of contents for Issue 90 June 2009 in RUE MORGUE

In 1984, at just nine years old and a lover of all things spooky, I got bit by the Ghostbusters bug… hard. I had a Ghostbusters lunchbox. In it was a Ghostbusters thermos, which I drank from on Saturdays while wearing my Ghostbusters T-shirt as I watched Ghostbusters on video. I even shoplifted a copy of the Ghostbusters novelization. If I were older, I might have even gotten a Ghostbusters tattoo. Like every other kid that grew up in the ’80s, I loved Ghostbusters. I don’t know how many times I watched the movie but I never grew tired of it. I loved the librarian, I loved the eggs that fried themselves, I loved Slimer the disgusting blob (who actually didn’t get his name ’til the animated cartoon, which I…

For a festival whose name invokes the concept of “light,” Lumina to is becoming quite dark this year. Toronto’s third “festival of arts and creativity” (June 5 to 14) will offer more programming slanted towards gothic, fantasy and horror tastes than ever before, including an evening with Neil Gaiman and a variety of theatre, music, literature and film events celebrating the 200th birthday of Edgar Allan Poe. A highlight of the Poe-themed programming is the new play Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe, produced by Edmonton’s Catalyst Theatre. The production is being described as a “musical gothic fairy tale for adults” spun from Poe’s concept of a dream within a dream. “We wanted to tell the story of his life, but according to the logic…

• Researchers in Italy recently uncovered the 16th-century burial site of a woman who was believed to be a vampire by the people who interred her. Her skeleton was found with a brick wedged in its jaw; superstition demanded that “vampires” be buried with something inedible in their mouths so they would not be able to get sustenance and rise. • Before Tod Browning was hired to direct Freaks, the project was intended to be a vehicle for Lon Chaney, but he died before it could be made. • A 50-year-old British man, David Phyall, recently committed suicide by cutting his own head off with a chainsaw that he secured to a piece of furniture – because his Hampshire flat was scheduled for demolition. • Tim Burton counts Mario Bava’s…

SOME OF THE BIGGEST THRILLS IN THE HISTORY OF CINEMA HAVE COME FROM THE SPECTACLES OF GIANT CREATURES WREAKING HAVOC, SO IT’S IRONIC THAT MOST OF THESE “BEHEMOTHS” WERE ACTUALLY ARMATURED PUPPETS LESS THAN A FOOT TALL. These mini-Goliaths are a testament to the genre’s most meticulous and time-consuming special effect: the frame-by-frame art of stop-motion animation. Stop-motion animation developed in the earliest days of moving picture trickery. In 1896, French filmmaker and former magician Georges Méliès (A Trip to the Moon) discovered the substitution method of making objects appear to disappear on film. He would stop the camera, remove or replace the subject, then start the camera rolling again; the effect would create the illusion of a magician’s apprentice disappearing in a puff of smoke. Building on Méliès’ discovery,…

NORWAY IS BETTER KNOWN AS A LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN THAN A LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT MOVIE, BUT ITS younger filmmakers are working to change that. The last decade has seen genre films such as Villmark (2003) and Rovdyr (2008) play international film festivals, while the 2006 slasher Fritt vilt spawned a sequel last year and was recently released to DVD in North America under the name Cold Prey. Add to that growing list of horrific Norwegian exports Død Snø, or Dead Snow as it will be called when IFC puts it in limited North American release June 19. Set in the rugged forests and snow-covered mountains of Norway’s far north, the film takes seven medical students, cuts them off from civilization (and cell phone coverage) and pits them…

SCHOOL SPIRIT DORM Tartan Asia Extreme Though the Thai film industry has been around since the 1920s, only in the last decade has it really embraced horror, with supernatural titles such as Shutter, Art of the Devil and Three. (Spirits, black magic and possession are popular storylines in the predominantly Buddhist country). Dorm features a boy who gets sent away to boarding school, where he finds himself haunted by the ghost of a kid who died there years earlier. This is a dark and creepy coming-of-age movie with a young cast that handles its solemn tone extremely well, helping to elevate it above what might have been just another run-of-the-mill ghost story. The fact that the spook is a short-haired boy rather than a long-haired girl is a welcome change…

ITS TARGET AUDIENCE WAS TOO YOUNG TO KNOW WHO HOST VINCENT PRICE WAS, MUCH LESS STAR BILLY VAN. There were better-made puppets and more production value on Sesame Street. And as far as role models go, no one in Castle Frightenstein ever seemed to succeed. Yet, from the early ’70s onward, kids across Canada and parts of the US tuned in regularly to The Hilarious House of Frightenstein to spend an hour (edited to a half-hour in some markets) with the outrageous cast of characters created for CHCH Channel 11 in Hamilton, Ontario. As the Hilarious House of Frightenstein Tribute Site (frightenstein.com) proclaims, “Whatever the reason, Frightenstein got into people’s minds and it stuck there.” There’s certainly more than one reason the 130-episode show is more popular than ever, but…

High school can be hell. Bullying, exams, proms, gym class – personally, I’d rather face an army of zombies any day. Perhaps this is why schools feature prominently in so many horror stories; just the sight of a hallway lined with lockers is enough to make your flesh crawl. The latest twisted tale to venture back to class is Bad Kids Go to Hell, a three-issue comic mini-series filled with angst-ridden teens, a haunted school and killer cockroaches. Like many supernatural tales, its origin is grounded firmly in reality. One night, co-writers Matt Spradlin and Barry Wernick were walking around Beverly Hills when they spotted a group of obnoxious teens. It wasn’t long before they started trading horror stories about their own high school days. “Our schools were fucking ruthless,”…

Travis Clyde Tuckton (Elliot V. Kotek), fresh out of the joint after a stretch for auto theft, hitchhikes back to his rundown rural homestead so he can ask his gap-toothed, legless grandpap (Dick Mullaney) the one question that haunted his incarceration: “What’s a header?” Meanwhile, Stewart Cummings (Jake Suffian), a tightly-wound, recently transplanted big-city ATF agent forced to run drugs to pay mounting medical bills for his ailing girlfriend, has one question for his good ol’ boy supervisor after the bodies of women with splooge-splattered brainpans start turning up under local highway underpasses: “What’s a header?” A header – as revealed in Archibald Flancranstin’s HEADer – is a rather profane deed regarded by hillbillies as the ultimate act of vengeance you git on them’s yer feuding with. It’s based on…

SAM RAIMI’S RETURN to low-budget filmmaking IS a cause for celebration for all horror movie mavens. Although I’m a little wary of directors, now wildly successful, returning to their roots with dusted-off scripts written and set eons ago, Drag Me to Hell sounds promising. The demon-possessed billygoat will surely be a laugh-riot highlight. The other highlight for me in the May issue was your ongoing coverage of Forrest J Ackerman’s passing. With your standout Basil Gogos cover issue several months before his death, it’s taken a Canadian publication to lead the way. Just as I shed tears over the death of Jim Henson – and undoubtedly will when Ray Harryhausen departs – so too I did for Ackerman. These are men I never knew yet miss as friends. While I…

video.yahoo.com/watch/4743571/12669301 Meet Neil Swint, a rather ambitious fellow who spent (according to the info provided on the site along with this video) “three thousand, six hundred and fifty days” re-scoring 1922’s Nosferatu with Black Sabbath music from 1970 through 1989. Was this labour of love worth it? Tune in and judge for yourself. eerie-coterie.blogspot.com An online blog that devotes as much space to horror literature as horror movies? A rarity indeed, but that’s exactly what The Eerie Coterie is. Run by a pair of bookstore owners who go by the online handles Mimik and The Nobody, this site delivers a wealth of valuable news and reviews, as well as enough horror-related links to keep you surfing for days. thedesignblog.org/entry/shelves-for-life-and-death If you’re looking to reduce your environmental footprint, designer William Warren…

1 ZOMBIE PUMPS $39.99 When the undead apocalypse finally happens, stumble in style with a pair of zombie pumps by Iron Fist. If you’re planning on surviving, the five-inch spike heels can double as handy weapons; if not, the black satin bow at the back will add a little panache to your putrefaction. Shoooooes make the pain go away at ironfist.tv. 2 CRYPTOZOOLOGICAL FIGURE SET $14.99 Cryptozoology is a fascinating field of research, but sitting outside for weeks on end waiting to catch a glimpse of an elusive beastie is decidedly uncomfortable. Why not study them in your living room instead with these hard vinyl figures of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Jersey Devil, Chupacabra, and the Mothman? Stay dry, warm, and uneaten at entertainmentearth.com. 3 BLOODSTAINED BATHMAT AND…

Watson Guptill It has long been accepted that the technical principles of stop-motion animation were discovered accidentally in 1896 by the great Georges Méliès when his camera momentarily jammed whilst filming a Parisian street scene, inventing the practice of repositioning objects in between exposed frames of film to create the illusion of movement. However, an earlier, more macabre example of stop-motion has since surfaced in Thomas Edison’s 1895 film The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, where the technique was utilized to depict Mary’s decapitation. Shortly before the guillotine blade dropped, the film was stopped and a dummy substituted for the actor. These are just a couple of the many facts that Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton unearth for the first-ever comprehensive history of stop-motion animation. As the title proclaims,…

EVER WONDERED WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO celebrities when the zombie Armageddon finally arrives? Will infected actors, singers and songwriters drop their scripts, microphones and guitars and pick up severed limbs and strings of intestines, or will they continue to write songs and release-music videos in between munching on hapless victims? A new film set in a parallel world where zombies have taken over and developed their own cultural scene answers some of those questions as it examines the rise and fall of the most infamous band to rock the undead world: The Zombeatles. Titled The Zombeatles: All You Need Is Brains, it was written and directed by Canadian-born radio producer Doug Gordon and based on an undead Beatles tribute by a band called The Gomers from Madison, Wisconsin. Gordon discovered…

THE HORRIBLY SLOW MURDERER WITH THE EXTREMELY INEFFICIENT WEAPON 10 mins rgmovie@gmail.com Rumour has it that our review of the short Criticized (RM#72) inspired Paul Clemens (star of 1982’s The Beast Within) to drop a line to director Richard Gale. A year later, the fruits of their nefarious collaboration arrived at the Rue Morgue House of Horror. Taking the form of a fake movie trailer, Gale’s latest stars Clemens as Jack Cucchiaio, a forensic pathologist on the run from his savage tormentor (Brian Rohan),who wields what is perhaps the most terrifying weapon ever utilized in horror: a spoon. That’s right, a spoon! Think about it for a moment – it would take years to kill someone by gently tapping them over and over again with such a benign household object.…

A TALE OF TWO BARBARAS NIGHTMARE CASTLE (1965) Starring Barbara Steele, Paul Muller and Helga Liné Directed by Mario Caiano Written by Mario Caiano and Fabio De Agostini Severin Could a blonde wig be responsible for Barbara Steele’s status as the dark queen of ’60s Italian horror? Twentieth Century Fox bought out the raven-haired English actress’ contract from British studio Rank in the late 1950s after Cary Grant expressed an interest in her. But Fox couldn’t find a suitable project for the actress so it kept her out of commission for nearly two frustrating years before finally casting her opposite Elvis in the western Flaming Star (1960). Steele never completed the project. Varying sources suggest that either Fox let her go because of her heavy accent or she walked off…

BOOGEYMAN SOUNDTRACK Joseph LoDuca LA-LA LAND It’s a bit surprising to discover Joseph LoDuca’s score for the rubbish film Boogeyman is actually a perfectly fine piece of work, albeit with some nutty instrumental combinations. It helps that it’s goosed with the sort of jarring little musical nuances one would expect from the composer of the Evil Dead films. Cuts include “Staplin’ Uncle Mike,” which features an unconventional marriage of tumbling metallic sounds, screeching strings and a strangely elegant French horn, and “How Do You Sleep,” which utilizes Indian percussion and a watery glass slide. A mash-up of dissonance, sampled vocals and intrusive, surround sound weirdness dominates “Losing Loves/Read for the Man,” into which LoDuca further integrates subtle Eastern European harmonies and a lovely sing-song theme in order to create littlemoments…

HIGHEST RATING IS THREE GRAPHICS PLAYABILITY SHIVERS SPIRIT SLAYERS/NIGHT STALKERS RPG Sourcebooks White Wolf Publishing For nearly two decades, White Wolf’s consistently polished and always intriguing World of Darkness series has been the main reason why supernatural-themed RPGs continue to thrive – even in a day and age where most gamers are content to sit in their basements and blast video game zombies. Unlike most of White Wolf’s titles, where players take on the roles of vampires or werewolves, these two new sourcebooks are meant to be incorporated with their Hunter: The Vigil gaming line, in which players belong to one of many different human factions that are trying to keep us all safe from the forces of evil. While Night Stalkers is an exhaustive…

Following in the infected footsteps of his classic zombie movies, George A. Romero’s The Crazies is the latest of his films to be remade. Overture Films is taking its first step into horror territory with an $18 million reimagining of the movie, which completed principal photography in Georgia and Iowa this spring. Breck Eisner (Sahara, Fear Itself) is directing and Timothy Olyphant (Hitman, Deadwood) stars as a small-town sheriff trying to maintain order in the midst of chaos. Other cast members include Radha Mitchell (Rogue, Silent Hill), Danielle Panabaker (Friday the 13th remake) and Joe Anderson (The Ruins). Romero is credited as Executive Producer on the film, but is not directly involved in its production. As in the original, a mysterious viral outbreak sweeps through the population of a small…

FEW HORROR FANS WOULD DISPUTE THAT OURS IS A GENRE LITTERED WITH SUBGENRES AND SUB-SUBGENRES THAT RANGE FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS. Vampires have spawned lesbian vampires while slasher films have deteriorated into postmodern slasher parodies. The ghost story – horror’s most diverse and revered incarnation – has been hijacked by the Japanese (with a little help from the Koreans) and compulsively stylized into the soggy, disjointed cliché we now know as J-horror. But long before Dan O’Bannon detonated the zombie comedy craze with Return of the Living Dead in 1985, a breakaway faction of the walking dead took a sharp right turn into one of the most brutal chapters in recent human history, and the Nazi zombie film was born. While the notion is still routinely met with…

WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT FEAR(S) OF THE DARK Starring Gil Alma, Aure Atika and Guillaume Depardieu Written and directed by Blutch, Charles Burns, Pierre Di Scullo, et al IFC Films To competently film a phobia is not a simple task, as human fears are limitless and are difficult to visually convey. One of the benefits of animation is its ability to depict a wider range of terrors, no matter how detached from reality. Enter Fear(s) of the Dark, a collaborative effort from France featuring six animated works from different artists, each of whom were commissioned to provide an original segment revealing their own particular fears or nightmares. The tales are as distinct in their visual styles as they are in their themes. Marie Caillou’s segment, for example, is a…

Our founder/publisher/benevolent despot Rodrigo traces his love of horror back to growing up Catholic and studying philosophy; Editor-in-Chief Jovanka says she was pretty much born with a mile-long morbid streak that was further inflamed by childhood trauma, while Managing Editor Dave recalls an early love of dinosaurs that blossomed into a general fascination with all things big, monstrous and threatening. I, however, must admit I’ve never found a truly satisfactory psychological explanation for my horror fetish. I consider myself spiritual but not religious, my early childhood was happy and while I dug dinos as much as the next kid, it wasn’t a lasting thing. And this much, Long-Suffering Reader, is also certain: it sure ain’t in my gene pool. When it comes to fright flicks, my immediate and extended family…

SUPERNATURAL UNDER THE MICROSCOPE CREATURE FEATURES COMPACTED HURTS-SO-GOOD CINEMA SUPERNATURAL UNDER THE MICROSCOPE CREATURE FEATURES COMPACTED HURTS-SO-GOOD CINEMA SUPERNATURAL: THE OFFICIAL COMPANION SEASON 3 Nicholas Knight Titan After reading this third volume in Titan’s ongoing series of episode companions to TV’s Supernatural, I have just one question: why can’t this company release books like this for all my favourite television series? No, seriously, it is that good. What separates this volume and its predecessors from the far-more-typical herd of rapidly churned-out episode guides is, first and foremost, the level of involvement of the show’s creator, as well as its cast, writers, composer and other crew – the book is jammed-packed with honest, insightful interviews. As I said back in RM#79 when I reviewed the official companion to Supernatural’s…

LD MONTREAL IS LIKE A MISSING PIECE OF EUROPE THAT GOT LOST A FEWCENTURIES AGO AND LANDED IN EASTERN CANADA. The historic architecture, the horse-drawn carriages, and the majesty of the Neo-Gothic Notre-Dame Basilica all contribute to the feeling of being in another time and country when walking along the cobblestone streets. This jewel of Quebec’s metropolis has a history thick with ghost stories, all part of the local charm and folklore. Many claim to have seen or heard supernatural entities in the various luxury boutique hotels and buildings around town. It’s not surprising considering Montreal’s history is marked with violence and death. First, there were territory wars among the Indian tribes, in order to take control of the best available land; then the French arrived in New-France, founded the…

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