Table of contents for Issue 73 November 2007 in RUE MORGUE

CINEMA OF FEAR SCREEN GRABS $16 Preserve the pause button on your DVD player and relive the genre’s favourite jump-scares with Mezco’s plastic mini-diorama instead. Enjoy frozen final moments from Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3. Nab a nightmare in plastic at mezcotoyz.com. PAN’S LABYRINTH MUSIC BOX $125 This beautiful, limited-edition wooden box plays an excerpt of the signature lullaby “Long, Long Time Ago” from Pan’s Labyrinth and sports a photo of Ofelia and the Pale Man on the lid. It also has a velvet-lined storage space for any pretty things you want to keep hidden away from the real world. Treat your trinkets royally at panslabyrinth.com. UGLYDOLLS $6-$50 This line of pulchritudinally challenged critters include new characters Big Toe (slow to…

Those who say Stephen King movie adaptations suck must have a selective memory. King’s earlier works have provided the foundation for many a genre classic, and often lured in A-list horror talent. Proof: three well-known King adaptations, Cujo, The Shining and Misery, all of which just received the special edition DVD treatment, courtesy of Lionsgate, Warner Home Video and MGM, respectively. Though each release boasts a crisp transfer, the bonus supplements are of varying quality. Though some question The Shining’s faithfulness as an adaptation, the bottom line is that Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 supernatural take on isolation, madness and murder at a secluded hotel scared the hell out of most of us. Fans have waited years for an improvement over Warner’s previous snapcase release, but sadly this new double-disc special edition…

BORIS KARLOFF’S MONSTER GAME (GAME GEMS, 1965) Travel through different haunted locations trying to avoid monsters and the mad Mr. Karloff too. LAND OF THE GIANTS (IDEAL, 1968) Based on the TV series, players avoid lumbering giants while collecting items needed to get off the planet. GHOST TRAIN (DENYS FISHER TOYS, 1974) This dynamic, three-dimensional game has players move through a haunted amusement ride while being menaced by ghosts, ghoulies and a giant spider. SCREAM INN (DENYS FISHER TOYS, 1974) The Scream Inn has a spook in every sink and a spectre under every bed. Check out without waking one up! CREATURE FEATURES (RESEARCH GAMES INC., 1975) Styled after Monopoly, players buy up horror movie “properties” and place actors on them, charging anyone unlucky enough to land on them. BERMUDA…

COLD COMFORT THE LAST WINTER Starring Ron Perlman, James LeGros and Connie Britton Directed by Larry Fessenden Written by Larry Fessenden and Robert Leaver Glass Eye Pix “What if the very thing we were here to pull out of the ground were to rise willingly and confront us?” This is the question pondered by environmental analyst James Hoffman (James LeGros) in The Last Winter, the latest offering from director Larry Fessenden. At an isolated Alaskan outpost, not unlike the one in John Carpenter’s The Thing, a team of oil workers led by a curmudgeonly Ed Pollack (played by man-mountain Ron Perlman) is engaged in a massive petroleum exploration project to exploit untouched oil resources. When Hoffman’s research reveals the permafrost is melting, he and the bombastic Pollack butt heads over…

At first glance, it would seem easy to dismiss Supernatural as The Hardy Boys meets Millennium. Broadcast on The CW (formerly The WB), the popular show follows brothers Sam and Dean Winchester (handsome twentysomethings Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles) around America as they battle all manner of supernatural nasties. Each episode plays up the humorous tension between the evil-hunting brothers and ends with some unnatural beastie being dispatched to Hell by means of one Latin incantation or another. Throw in some cheeky dialogue, rockin’ tunes that comment on the narrative (AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising,” Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog,” etc.), some nifty special effects, and you’ve got yourself a good reason to park the family in front of the tube week after week, right? Right. Except…

Bob Clark has always been a bit of an enigma to me. When I first heard of Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, I wrote the film off as an unnecessary bit of crude exploitation cinema – an opinion based solely on the title. By the time I got around to seeing it, though, I was pleasantly surprised by the creative charm, clever humour and genuine scares. In the tale, a sadistic theatre director (hilariously played by Alan Ormsby, who also co-wrote the screenplay and did makeup) drags along his hippie theatre troupe to an island, where they delve into the occult and the reanimation of the dead (including a stiff called Orville) – with terrifying results. Released in 1972, just a few years after Night of the Living Dead…

The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead Scott Kenemore Skyhorse I’d love to be a fly on the wall several hundred years from now when archeologists and cultural anthropologists sift through the remains of our era. Will they shake their heads at our desire to find deep philosophical meaning in our pop culture exports? Because when you think about it, nearly every successful sci-fi property (Star Trek) and even the odd horror one (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) has had some sort of “philosophy,” “zen” or “everything I need to know I learned from” book companion. If seeking to glean wisdom from fiction seems ridiculous to you, consider Zen of Zombie, which essentially takes the piss out of this whole movement, and the self-help craze to boot. In this…

When one thinks of New York City, certain tourist attractions naturally come to mind: the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, Coney Island, Central Park and so on. But, that’s not to say there isn’t plenty for a horror fan to take in during a trip to the Big Apple – and it’s not all ghost tours either. Take The Jekyll & Hyde Club, for instance: part haunted attraction and part dinner theatre. The multi-storey, family-friendly theme restaurant provides a sensory overload of macabre sights and sounds, from animatronic ghouls that spring to life throughout the dining area to actors who wander the building to entertain (and sometimes heckle!) you while you eat. Named for the classic 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson tale, The Jekyll & Hyde Club is located in Manhattan,…

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YOUR MAGAZINE’S coverage of John Carpenter’s The Thing included assertions of pet subtexts that are absurd. If any President’s “era” influenced The Thing it would have been President Carter’s. His presidency was ending around the time The Thing’s pre production was starting. The Carter era included fuel shortages, a hostage crisis, high inflation, and high unemployment. The Thing’s so called downbeat ending was much more reflective of President Carter’s “days of malaise” that inspired doubt and hopelessness. I suppose one could make a case that a newly optimistic and resurgent America in the summer of 1982, led by President Reagan, rejected the bleakness of The Thing because it did not want to be reminded of the democratic winter they had weathered. However, I will not. I believe there are just…

Ten years before Edward Douglas got busy making music for haunted attractions and films with the gothic band Midnight Syndicate, he wrote and directed a DIY horror film of his own called The Dead Matter. Now, the composer has returned to the director’s chair, launching Midnight Syndicate Films with a bigger-budget remake of his first film. “I did the original Dead Matter for about $2000, shot on super VHS in the Cleveland area,” says Douglas. “My goal back then was to eventually put myself in the position to remake the film with an actual budget. It’s taken ten years but I’m happy to say we have a nice cleaned-up script, a great crew and great cast.” He also has a great backer. To resurrect the supernatural feature about “vampires, zombies…

You don’t have to see Creepshow to know that Stephen King is a comic book fan. Aside from penning and co-starring in the 1982 movie anthology inspired by the EC comics of the 1950s, the author has written introductions to the 400th issue of Batman and Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman: World’s End collection. Yet, given the number of movie adaptations of King’s material, it’s shocking that The Gunslinger Born – based on his sprawling seven-novel fantasy/western/horror epic The Dark Tower – is the first comic book spin-off of his work. The seven-issue series, which debuted this past February from Marvel Comics and is collected as a hardcover release this month, is a prequel to the first Dark Tower novel The Gunslinger (it also overlaps somewhat with the third Dark Tower…

DREAM CRUISE Starring Daniel Gilles, Ryo Ishibashi and Miho Ninagawa Directed by Norio Tsuruta Written by Naoya Takayama and Norio Tsuruta Anchor Bay If anyone should be cursed in the J-horror community, maybe it’s Kôji Suzuki. The novelist who authored Dark Water, The Ring and other Ring-related tales, unleashed a subgenre more persistent than the watery long-haired ghost girls featured in its films. Norio Tsuruta, who adapted Suzuki’s Ring: Birthday short story for the big screen in 2000, brings Dream Cruise to the small screen, oblivious to the fact that the Ring, er, well, dried up years ago. The episode sees Jack (Daniel Gilles) a young American man haunted by the childhood drowning death of his brother and now afraid of water, invited to a meeting on a boat with…

SPOTLIGHT: PHIL MUCCI Twenty seconds into his debut short, The Listening Dead, New York-based photographer Phil Mucci declares his directorial intentions with stunning authority. His masterfully executed ode to German Expressionist silent cinema commences with a grandiose establishing shot that finds his camera diving through a mist-drenched, wooded valley towards a grim, Gothic mansion. Inside the foreboding abode, a pianist plucks away at his instrument, seemingly possessed by the ghostly muse who dances by his side. Annoyed with his morbid tinkerings, his sexually frustrated wife enacts a supernatural, voodoo doll-style revenge upon her neglectful husband. With its accurate deployment of silent film techniques and sophisticated sense of composition strongly reminiscent of his idol, Mario Bava, Mucci’s debut succeeds as both an aesthetic experiment and a technical triumph. In order to…

DEVILS OF DARKNESS/WITCHCRAFT One of the best things about Fox distributing MGM’s films is that they’re now able to release their own library under the Midnite Movies banner, as they have for this occult-themed twofer. The bright and colourful Devils of Darkness (1965) revolves around centuries-old satanic cult leader (and probable vampire) Count Sinestre (Herbert Noel), who kidnaps women to use in his unholy rites. Choppily plotted, this creaky UK production is simply too talky and old fashioned to make much of an impression. Trying to get to the bottom of Sinestre’s devil-worshipping machinations, the white bread hero (William Sylvester) spends almost all his time hunting for rare books in libraries and visiting scientists that look like they’ve stepped out of a ’50s monster movie. The co-feature, Witchcraft (1964), is…

American comic creator Matt Wagner is all about identity and, to a significant extent, evil, particularly when it comes to his anti-hero Grendel, who celebrates his 25th anniversary this year. The character began as a charmingly inventive billionaire-by-day, criminal-mastermind-by-night noir crime figure that was – let’s face it – basically Batman gone bad, from sheer boredom. (Grendel has also appeared in crossover titles with the Dark Knight.) There have been over a dozen major stories penned almost exclusively by Wagner over the years, running six centuries into the future (using different incarnations of the character), that touch on everything from brutal revenge fantasy to genocide, and there’s no doubt that the red stuff is a barbaric staple of the series. More compelling, though, is the comics’ meditation on the nature…

SOMEWHERE A BAND IS PLAYING Ray Bradbury Gauntlet Written in the 1950s, this “new” novella by Ray Bradbury – in which a man stumbles upon a not-on-any-map town where the citizens never age – includes more than 60 pages of ephemera, detailing fragments of various drafts and a partial screenplay that revolve around the main story. Unfortunately, while the novella itself is classic Bradbury, the aforementioned inclusions detract from the story’s magic. Brett Alexander Savory THE GHOSTS OF AUSTIN: WHO THEY ARE AND WHERE TO FIND THEM Fiona Broome Schiffer More travel guide than fireside read, Fiona Broome’s ghost-hunting manual is an odd mix of local history and “how-to” info for the aspiring paranormal investigator. The writing is a bit rough, and Broome glosses over some of the juiciest…

When employed correctly, subtlety can be an effective technique, especially in horror. Understatement and inference leave much to the imagination, which generally winds up being sicker than anything the artist can devise. Many horror bands utilize this tactic to craft music with creepy ambience… then there’s Denver, Colorado’s Maris the Great and the Faggots of Death. Proof-positive that flagrancy trumps subtlety, Maris’ antics both on and off stage take shock rock to a new level. Where acts such as GWAR and Lordi utilize kitsch and schlock to achieve their goals, Maris uses these as means to a grisly end. Outfitted with full monster makeup, a body-length ghoul costume and a massive orange mohawk, the striking undead chanteur doesn’t just front a punk band, he stalks his musical prey at concerts,…

The horror count was down overall for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, but the genre-focused Midnight Madness program delivered what was likely its strongest lineup to date on its 20th anniversary. Programmed by Colin Geddes, the MM roster included world premieres of Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears and George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead, North American premieres of Takashi Miike’s Sukiya Western Django and Stuart Gordon’s Stuck. Gore fans marvelled at two bloodbaths from young French filmmakers: Frontières (a world premiere) and L’Interieur (playing outside of France for the first time). In addition, a few intriguing Canadian titles screened at TIFF apart from the Midnight Madness program, as did the much-anticipated Spanish ghost story The Orphanage. Reviewed below, eleven features and one short from TIFF ’07. BLOOD WILL…

+ A Venezuelan man recently woke up mid-autopsy after being incorrectly declared dead at the scene of a traffic accident. + King James I of England was so obsessed with witchcraft, demons and death that he penned a book on demonology in 1597, titled Daemonologie. + Animal rights organizations estimate that approximately 60,000 black cats are killed in Italy each year, due to the superstitious belief that the felines bring bad luck. + As a young teen, Stephen King developed a fascination with spree killer Charles Stark-weather and even made a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about the murderer’s crimes. + In 2004, as Bangkok police prepared to raid pet stores illegally selling exotic animals, some of the targeted entrepreneurs panicked, dumping their flesh-eating piranhas into the city’s waterways. + Dana…

The rogues’ gallery of maniacs, monsters and supernatural entities wreaking havoc across the pages of Stephen King’s wriings would fill a stadium… and most of the parking lot outside. But any real King fan will tell you it’s the heroes of his stories – the stoic, small-town Joe and Jane Lunchboxes forced to battle the minions of darkness – that will be remembered when King’s long career finally draws to a close. From The Dead Zone’s blandly named psychic John Smith to Andy Dufresne, the buttoned-down inmate of “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” and through a long list of pushed-to-the-edge heroines such as Jessie Burlingame of Gerald’s Game and Firestarter’s pyrokinetic Charlie McGee, King has built his staggering body of work on the reluctant backs of down-to-earth protagonists. Same…

For legal reasons, the editors of Rue Morgue Magazine have ordered me to preface this article with the following warning: Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead is guaranteed to offend vegetarians, vegans, meat eaters, lesbians, gays, feminists, liberals, conservatives, the handicapped, anorexics, bulimics, the MPAA, the ghost of Jack Valenti, Native Americans, the Vietnamese, the Irish, Mexicans, Americans, Canadians, Muslims, Jews, Christians, hillbillies, alcoholics, the Free Tibet movement, everyone at every level of the fast food industry, fast food consumers, animal rights activists, university students, fat people, the guy in the Subway commercials who used to be fat, Tom Cruise, Janeane Garofalo, Martin Sheen, Mel Gibson, Dick Cheney, Dick Cheney’s daughter, people who don’t want to hear Lloyd Kaufman sing, people who don’t want to see Lloyd Kaufman dance, people…

UWE, MEET ULLI CURSE OF THE ZODIAC Lionsgate Ever since his moderate success with the 1980 horror flick The Boogeyman, German director Ulli Lommel has churned out one subpar B-flick after another. What Uwe Boll has become to the video game horror movie, Lommel is to the serial killer horror movie. In Curse of the Zodiac, he takes the unsolved case of the Zodiac Killer – who threatened the San Francisco Bay area in the 1960s – and passes it directly through his colon onto film. It follows the killer as he taunts a writer and a girl who has visions of the killings, but does so in a series of messy, hard-to-follow flashbacks, blurry images, split screens and annoying voice-overs. Much like Boll, Lommel’s an artist of the quantity-over-quality…

WITHER WINONA BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (1992) Starring Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins and Winona Ryder Directed by Francis Ford Coppola Written by James V. Hart Columbia/Tristar On the director’s commentary of this reissue, Francis Ford Coppola reveals something horrific about his version of Dracula: it was Winona Ryder’s idea. Seriously. Although Coppola was a fan of Stoker’s tale since childhood, it was L’il Miss Shoplifter who originally brought him the screenplay, thereby sealing her fate as a principal cast member and driving a stake through the hearts of those who love acting as much as vampires. But as a fresh viewing of this collector’s edition celebrating the 15th anniversary of Coppola’s Dracula reveals (title aside, it’s not really Stoker’s is it, with all that Vlad Tepes hogwash thrown in?), not even…

BIRTH OF THE STOP-MOTION BEHEMOTHS THE LOST WORLD (1925) Starring Bessie Love, Lewis Stone and Wallace Beery Directed by Harry O. Hoyt Written by Marion Fairfax Fox It’s the monster movie that launched many a childhood obsession. Giving audiences a glimpse of what life might have been like when dinosaurs roamed the earth, 1925’s The Lost World is a true special effects landmark, the first feature film to use stop-motion animation and give “life” to prehistoric creatures. Presented as a special feature on Fox’s new DVD of Irwin Allen’s inferior 1960 remake of the influential dino-classic, Harry O. Hoyt’s The Lost World is the rarest and most sought after of all classic Hollywood beasts – a silent film that is exciting enough to keep modern viewers on the edge of…

A malevolent hobo addicted to eating sharp, rusty metal, a fairy tale hero turned shameless cannibal, a child-stealing zombie, satanic ghosts, deadly, parasitic worms and murderers of every stripe – Adèle Hartley loves them all. If she didn’t, they wouldn’t have found a home in her latest horror short story anthology, Dead by Dawn Volume 2. Known by genre cinephiles as the creator of Scotland’s Dead by Dawn horror film festival, Hartley launched Bloody Books in 2006 (an imprint of parent company Beautiful Books) with the release of Classic Tales of Horror Volume 1 and Read by Dawn Volume 1. While the former is exactly what the title promises – reissued classics – the latter series has exposed some exceptional short story writers. “I look hard. It’s about finding the…

VACANCY Soundtrack Paul Haslinger COMMOTION The grunge and sleaze radiating from Vacancy’s Venus flytrap hotel rooms is nicely evoked by Paul Haslinger’s acoustically gritty, rock-styled score. And while hardly a benchmark for the genre, his mercurial cues convey a decent balance of drones, thrashing electric fuzz guitar, pulsating synth percussion and steely sound effects that regularly elicit fears of sharp objects poised to penetrate flesh. Haslinger (Underworld) likes to foil our expectations by flipping the tempo or gliding into pools of ambient calm between angry dissonance, while some cues, such as “Searching the House,” bleed with a sleazy blues-rock coolness. And sometimes he smash-cuts to shock payoffs or mimics nails-on-blackboard squeals as in the unsettling “Killed by a Beamer.” Whereas lesser composers tend to fixate on limited electronic palettes, Haslinger…

GRAPHICS: PLAYABILITY: SHIVERS: DEAD HEAD FRED PSP D3Publisher of America Ever have one of those days where you wake up in the morning to discover that you’ve been murdered and resurrected by a mad scientist who has placed your eyes and brain in a jar that now serves as your head? No? Well, regardless, that’s the fate that has befallen Drop Head Fred’s Fred Neuman, a hardboiled detective trying to figure out who killed him, in what is definitely the most innovative and interesting game out for the PSP so far. Sleuthing through the city proves difficult with a glass specimen jar for a head but luckily Fred is able to utilize nine interchangeable noggins – each with its own unique abilities. For instance, the mannequin head…