Table of contents for Issue 71 September 2007 in RUE MORGUE

+ In the 1700s, consumption (now known as tuberculosis) was treated with one of two concoctions: the first involved snakes being boiled in milk, and the second consisted of woodlice boiled in ale. + Jean Brooks, star of Val Lewton’s The Seventh Victim, succumbed to alcoholism and faded into obscurity in the years following the film’s release. When she died in 1963, at the age of 46, not a single obituary ran for her in any Hollywood paper. + When Petre Toma, resident of a small Romanian village, died in 2003, his fellow villagers became so convinced that he was a vampire and that his corpse rose from the grave to feed on them, that they exhumed his body and cut out his heart. + Following university, Clive Barker toured…

HYPERACTIVE INGREDIENTS Trevor Piecham/USA Trevor Piecham’s animated poisoned pets-themed short is perhaps the grossest and cutest thing you’ll see this year. TOILET LADY: A RAPE STORY Alberto Viavattene/Italy This Italian gore-fest puts a refreshing spin on the rape/revenge genre. Bring some bathroom tissue to clean your seat. NUMBER 7 Ryan Sage/USA A coked-out hooker and her freaky pimp try to fleece an indecisive John in a neck brace – with shocking, then amusing results. DEADLY TANTRUM Mike Mort/UK Essentially the finale of an unmade ’80s slasher flick, this bloodsoaked short stars a bumbling masked killer who’ll have you in hysterics. HAPPY BIRTHDAY 2 YOU David Alcalde/Spain An effectively chilling tale centred around the child welfare profession – with a gruesome torture twist. VIOLETA Marc Riba and Anna Solanas/Spain A Spanish…

SUBURBAN APOCALYPSE RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR Starring Rory Cochrane, Mary McCormack and Tony Perez Written and directed by Chris Gorak Lionsgate Disaster movies are the kissing cousin of the horror film: spectacles of death and destruction without real gore or the supernatural. In the ’70s they concerned fluke catastrophes localized to skyscrapers, cruise ships or airplanes. In the past decade they became more spectacular special effects vehicles, showcasing CGI meteors, massive volcanic eruptions, a flash ice age and even the Earth’s damaged core. With megaeffects, large casts and huge budgets, they’re sensational, mass-marketed action-thrillers. It’s when disaster movies strive for realism, though, such as the nuclear Armageddon films The Day After or Threads – which scared the crap out of TV viewers in the ’80s – that they become truly…

When it comes to horror, there is arguably nothing better than having something to worry about. And Matt Coyle’s Worry Doll certainly offers readers plenty of cause for concern – the best kind, the fully immersive kind. It is nothing short of a graphic masterpiece that takes sequential-art storytelling in a new direction. Roughly based on the Guatemalan legend of an under-the-pillow avatar that siphons one’s troubles, Worry Doll succeeds on many levels but deserves plaudits most for its uniqueness of presentation, bolstered by the fact that it could only be properly orchestrated in the comic-book medium. The story of Worry Doll is complicated. That said, it’s still easily summarized without spoiling its contents: three (possibly conscious) dolls discover the family with which they are living brutally butchered and embark…

There’s a castle nestled in a quiet North Philadelphia neighborhood. Despite the 30-foot walls surrounding its eleven acres, you wouldn’t even suspect Eastern State Penitentiary is there unless you turned onto the street it dominates to confront its imposing facade. Although hidden now, when it was built, Eastern State stood atop a hill, easily seen from Philadelphia’s center. It was designed to look like a castle in an attempt to scare the populace into not committing crimes that would land them inside. It’s hunkered down about five blocks from City Hall and the art museum (its famous steps seen in Rocky). The once-abandoned, partly ruined, 170-year-old prison is a museum by day, but by night – from September 21 to November 3 this year – it also hosts one of…

VAMPIRE RAIN Xbox 360 AQ Interactive Mankind is in a bind: the vampire population is growing fast, threatening to put us on the endangered species list. Luckily, an elite team of soldiers called Anti-Nightwalkers has been assembled to help us bite back. It’s been discovered that the bloodsuckers’ senses are dulled by rainfall – so your team is sent into the labyrinthine streets of Manhattan during a heavy downpour. Reminiscent of stealth games Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid, players utilize a simple map and compass control system to navigate twenty mission levels, trying to locate a kidnapped scientist and find the hidden lair of the head vampire. Because of their superhuman strength and aggressive nature, most of your time will be spent trying to avoid battle. If you are…

FROM THE MOMENT Rob Zombie leaked that poorly written Halloween screenplay to the web, most intelligent horror fans suspected this would be a misguided debacle from a guy who clearly has no understanding of the original film, and who comes across as Beavis and Butthead with his criticisms of it. I grew tired of hearing his arrogant nitpicking about Carpenter’s Halloween months ago, and now I have to endure it in the pages of my beloved Rue Morgue, too. I am very disappointed that you put something like this on your cover, especially after that thoughtful editorial in the past detailing the care and consideration taken when deciding upon a cover. Rob Thomas – New Castle, Delaware THANKS for the insightful interview with Rob Zombie regarding his Halloween remake. It…

seanherman.com Sean Herman’s collection of luxurious colour tattoos will put some terror in your blood – literally. The artist fits right in with the rest of the talented horror-loving ghouls at Brandon Bond’s notorious All or Nothing Tattoo in Atlanta, Georgia, but stands out in terms of his washy, blood-drenched style. occasionalhell.com Occasional Hell is an extensive illustrated listing of the implements of torture. With a page devoted to each device, visitors can not only learn how they were used and when, but can purchase the Torture Device Coloring Book as a souvenir. Also check out the site’s rather cool morbid home design projects, such as the mortuary coffee table. hoursofdarkness.com/Modern_Ruins_Photography.html While Hours of Darkness primarily focuses on low light, evening and nighttime photography, it also has a superb Modern…

Had Adam Green’s film Hatchet premiered in the late 1990s, it may well have died a most ignominious delete-bin death, dismissed as yet another tired entry in the post-Scream slasher revival despite its general superiority to most offerings in that played-out oeuvre. Landing in our midst barely a decade later, however, this affectionate and gore-soaked homage – laced with liberal doses of humour and nudity – has generated tremendous buzz on the festival circuit. “I really just made the movie that I wanted to see and I didn’t pay any mind to what sells now or what everyone else is doing,” the Massachusetts-born Green tells Rue Morgue. “By catering to myself, I sort of tapped into the vein of a legion of horror fans just like me.” Set primarily in…

In the years following World War II, Andrew Ryan became increasingly disillusioned with the emerging government super powers. He dreamed of a place where science could advance without the fear of government interference, so he built Rapture, a lavish underwater city to facilitate such study. It was a utopia – at least until it all went horribly wrong. And that’s where you, the player, come in, a plane crash castaway in one of the most-anticipated games of the year for the PC and Xbox 360: BioShock. “Rapture is a paradise lost,” says lead designer Paul Hellquist of Irrational Games’ first-person shooter (distributed by 2K Games). “[It] isn’t your standard concrete-and-pipe complex that you see so often in games these days. There are theatres, underwater forests, amazing art decoin spired skyscrapers…

HELL ALSO HATH NO CONTINUITY EDITOR HELL HATH NO FURY Brain Damage Films Though the DVDs released by Brain Damage Films usually have awesome covers, too often the movies themselves are a major disappointment. Hell Hath No Fury is one of them. It’s a confusing anthology that desperately tries to intertwine stories dealing with vampires, transvestites, coffee shop cowboys and hot chicks taking revenge on rapists. The more it jumps around from scene to scene trying to be clever, the more annoying it gets. If it had been shot as a straightforward anthology it probably would have been salvageable and even enjoyable – maybe. I knew I had a real sick puppy on my hands when the girl I was watching it with told me she would rather stick a…

ONCE IT WAS HUMAN… THE FLY (1958) Starring Vincent Price, Patricia Owens and David Hedison Directed by Kurt Neumann Written by George Langelaan and James Clavell Fox While genre films of the 1950s were often dominated by giant monsters that offered simplistic messages about atomic power gone freakishly out of control, Kurt Neumann’s exceptional The Fly is a creature feature that’s also one of the most heartbreakingly human horror/sci-fi outings of the decade. Just re-released as a part of The Fly Classic Collection, it evokes timeless themes of love and sacrifice, as a well-meaning physicist is inadvertently turned into an abomination of science. The Fly begins as the body of Montreal scientist Andre Delambre (David Hedison) is found crushed under a hydraulic press. His wife Helene (Patricia Owens) acknowledges that…

When the local paper mill closed then burned to the ground, Bedford, Maine became a ghost town. But something was left behind, something that still lives in the woods. Something ravenous. Something in search of a host. Set in the fictional town of Corpus Christi, Maine, the tale concerns parasitic creatures that infect their hosts like a disease before mutating them. Steeped with believable characters, fully realized locales and genuine chills, The Missing (out this month from HarperCollins), Sarah Langan’s follow-upto2006’sStoker-nominated The Keeper, is one of the most powerful novels the genre has to offer this year. It also includes some major social and political commentary. Of the recurring themes in Langan’s work, the concept of economic and social decay is always at the forefront. “I think I just have…

EBOLA SYNDROME Starring Anthony Wong, Law Mong and Chan Miu-Ying Directed by Herman Yau Written by Ting Chau Discotek Of all the infectious disease and public health scares of the last 30 years, none is more horrifying than Ebola. It has a high mortality rate and no known cure. The first symptoms are uncontrollable vomiting and bloody diarrhea. Weeping sores then appear all over the body. When death is imminent, Ebola victims begin bleeding from every orifice as their internal organs liquefy. That’s the popular depiction of the ravages of the disease; in truth, the symptoms aren’t quite so dramatic. The threat of a large-scale Ebola epidemic is actually rather remote, but that hasn’t stopped resourceful filmmakers from exploiting our fear of such a disgusting demise. Hong Kong director Herman…

With her impossibly high beehive hairdo, slinky black widow dress, gravity-defying cleavage and deliciously dark sense of humour, there is only one Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. Or at least there will be until completion of the upcoming Fox Reality TV series The Search for the Next Elvira. Cassandra Peterson, who turns 58 this month, created the character and has been playing her since the early 1980s. “The show isn’t a search to replace me as Elvira, it’s the search to find another Elvira – the first of many we hope – because I’d like to create an entire army of cloned Elviras to take over the world,” she jokes. “If not the world, then at least just be out and about at various malls and venues around Halloween.” Peterson,…

“Tell a friend! Tell two friends! Trailers are your best form of entertainment!” Joe Dante proclaims with a feverish ballyhoo that seems appropriate for the filmmaker’s latest project, Trailers from Hell. Recently launched, Trailers from Hell presents vintage horror and exploitation trailers for viewing on the internet and via Sprint cellphones – but with a twist. Short, concise commentaries have been added to the site’s vintage movie ads by respected genre filmmakers, including John Landis, Edgar Wright, Mick Garris, Mary Lambert and Dante himself, offering a wealth of personal reminiscences and behind-the-scenes info – or at least as much as can be crammed into two-and-a-half-minutes. “I’ve been collecting films on 16mm and 35mm for years, including 100 or so trailers,” says Dante, who began his own filmmaking career as a…

13 BELOVED Ma-Deaw Chukiatsakwirakul – Thailand Based on a Thai comic book, 13 Beloved is a delirious blend of Falling Down, The Game, Saw and Fear Factor that explores the hilarious, disgusting and ultimately bloody lengths the average Joe can be pushed to if desperate enough. The Joe in question is Phuchit, an office worker who, after losing his job, car and dignity, gets a mysterious call that plunges him into a real-time game where he can get rich if he completes a series of tasks. Escalating from making children cry to violent civil disobedience to deadly acts of brutality, the sinister game turns its players into monsters. A delicate balance of humour, action, horror and tragedy, the film deservedly took first in FanTasia’s Best Asian Film category. DA AL…

NOT-SO-NICE PRICE WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968) Starring Vincent Price, Ian Ogilvy and Hilary Dwyer Directed by Michael Reeves Written by Tom Baker, Louis M. Heyward, Michael Reeves, et al. MGM Vincent Price was a notoriously gregarious soul. Even his most vicious onscreen characters were often undermined by his natural warmth, innate charm and (to put it kindly) theatrical ebullience. But in Witchfinder General, the beloved actor delivers the most malevolent performance of his long career. This Tony Tenser-produced masterpiece of British horror deals with one of the nation’s most horrible historical figures: Matthew Hopkins, the selfl abeled Witchfinder General. It was in 17th century England, which had been ripped apart by civil war, that Hopkins found fame and fortune by torturing young girls and forcibly extracting from them confessions of dalliances…

I will forever associate horror with the sweet, wonderful and wide-eyed innocent terror of my late-night TV-saturated childhood, those days when my naïve and easily impressed self would stumble across sublime slices of strange cinema that split open fantastic and macabre realities that potentially could (and in some cases most certainly do) exist. I’m also a card-carrying cultist of Rod Serling’s classic show The Twilight Zone (1959–1964) and particularly gravitate towards tales with wild “what-if” set-ups and moral dilemmas, movies that stick regular dudes in arcane situations and force them to sink or swim. Oh, and did I mention I have a lifelong fear of fucking bats? Taking all this into account, I’m going to lay out some much-needed love on a film that combines my late-night B-movie leanings, vintage…

Match to Flame: The Fictional Paths to Fahrenheit 451Ray Bradbury Gauntlet While it’s always great to see a new anthology of collected works from Ray Bradbury, a brilliant writer and grandmaster in both the speculative fiction and literary worlds, Match to Flame isn’t exactly new, so perhaps “recollected” would be a more fitting term. In his preface to the book, Bradbury states that his “interest in the burning of libraries goes back to when [he] was ten and eleven years old.” So the “path” to his seminal Fahrenheit 451, which this collection seeks to examine, is in fact a long one, with many interesting additional tales of book burning and censorship along the way. Unfortunately, by collecting all these thematically linked stories in one volume, there is the tendency to…

Steven Savile HW Press Declan Shea, the narrator of British novelist Steven Savile’s Laughing Boy’s Shadow, hates cities – and by chapter two, he has good reason. A chance encounter with a tramp and a car crash on his way home plunge Declan into the depths of Newcastle’s Underground – a brutal underworld populated by beggars, ghosts and nightmare visions of L. Frank Baum’s characters from Oz. Given a second chance at life by the mysterious Malachi, Declan is corralled into fighting for the soul of the city, damaged and rotten as it is. But the price of Declan’s continued existence begins to spiral out of control, and the lines between good and evil blur until he finds himself committing increasingly ferocious acts in order to stay alive. Laughing Boy’s…

Soundtrack BLOOD & CHOCOLATE Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek LAKESHORE RECORDS Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek have tackled each horror film they’ve scored with total sincerity, and never written down to some of the flawed movies they’ve had to support – case in point: Blood & Chocolate. Opting for a smooth integration of techno, percussion textures and large symphonics with an occasional rock beat, the pair avoid the common practice of generic bombast, and give the lycanthropic spin a potent theme to cement the score; “Angels in the Snow” establishes a moving emotional anchor, while “Vivian Wounded” becomes epic tragedy. The use of Eastern European harmonics and banks of exotic percussion in “The Second Hunt” also adds punch, but unlike their work for The Cave or Land of the Dead,…