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Rue Morgue · 002 Rue Morgue #227 - Frankenstein   ONE NEEDN’T BE A HARDENED HORROR FAN TO APPRECIATE THE UBIQUITY OF MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN. BEFORE HE became the stuff of kids’ Halloween costumes, Victor Frankenstein’s clumsy creation was rendered to celluloid in 1931 in a film starring Boris Karloff, whose portrayal of the monster, assisted by famed Universal monster-maker Jack Pierce, cemented the image of a heavy-lidded, bolt-necked, broad-browed giant into the public consciousness, laying the foundation for one of horror’s most iconic figures. That portrayal also blew the mind of one Mexican filmmaker-to-be, a man who would go on to dominate the film industry as one of the genre’s most dazzling dreamers: Guillermo del Toro. Garnering international acclaim for his Spanish language independent features before grappling with…

DAUGHTER OF THE LIVING DEAD QUEENS OF THE DEAD Starring Katy O’Brian, Jack Haven and Jaquel Spivey Directed by Tina Romero Written by Tina Romero and Erin Judge Independent Film Company/Shudder It might seem an impossible task to launch a career by taking on the bloodsoaked filmmaking mantle of your legendary father, but Tina Romero, daughter of George A. Romero (you know, the guy who essentially invented zombie cinema as we know it), has done just that with her zom-com Queens of the Dead. In this audacious and assured feature debut, the director follows in her father’s formidable footsteps while also blazing her own trail and leaving her own bite marks on the undead genre. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32986431/ During drag night at a gay nightclub in Bushwick, mundane issues like last-minute cancellations…

THANK YOU for yet another amazing Halloween issue. I particularly enjoyed the material on lost horror films. This made me recall a long-standing hope for the release of a film that I never noticed grace the pages of Rue Morgue. It Came From Trafalgar boasts an all-star cast of horror legends, but was either never actually completed, or never commercially released. Is this film real and, if so, why is it never spoken of? TONY WILLIAMS, VIA EMAIL Hi Tony, It Came From Trafalgar is indeed a real film – one that has only ever screened in 2009 at genre conventions across the U.S. As you note, it has never been released but we would love to see it! Any producers out there listening? -Ed JUST WANTED TO SEND along…

A SERBIAN FILM IS ONE OF THOSE MOVIES WHICH, FOR BETTER OR WORSE, ONCE SEEN CANNOT BE UNSEEN. When it came out, some loved it, many hated it, but few were calmly twirling their thumbs somewhere in between. Many diehard horror fans detest its very synopsis and refuse to see it to this day, preferring a sort of second-hand hate. And yet, whether considered an exercise in depravity, shock for shock’s sake, or some kind of valid metaphorical statement – muddled for some, crystal clear to others – the beast just refuses to die. No list of the most shocking, controversial, and transgressive films made since the turn of the millennium is complete without A Serbian Film, and its title often occupies the number one spot. The 2010 film continues…

IT WAS A YEAR INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM, AND THE HORROR GENRE WAS LOOKING FOR NEW BLOOD. IT WAS FINDING IT IN THE FAR East, with an ever-evolving J-horror craze reflected in the release of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo (a.k.a. Pulse), Sion Sono’s Suicide Club, and Takashi Miike’s unforgettable Ichi the Killer. Closer to home was Alejandro Amenábar’s European/American co-pro The Others and Brad Anderson’s independent chiller Session 9. Shuffled in among these titles was a completely unique French-language horror film called Brotherhood of the Wolf by a new name on the scene: Christophe Gans. A lushly produced and conceptually audacious film, Brotherhood of the Wolf is a genre-blending historical drama set in 18th-century France, where the hunt for a mysterious beast takes place amid political strife, civil upheaval, romance, folklore,…

https://open.spotify.com/album/7M2kbHZtoBbQvbpAYsScqC SPANNED CANYONS INSTRUMENTAL The Only Perfect Way for This to End (INDEPENDENT) Spanned Canyons (a.k.a. Rue Morgue alumnus Gary Gahan and company) invites you to slip on a pair of headphones and descend into an open-veined bath of lulling soundscapes. The opening track, appropriately titled “The Descent,” plays with various layers of static and a mournful saxophone to full effect. That’s pretty much the mood for the whole album, in which the sax continues to wail throughout, like a foghorn piercing the mist that envelops each densely mixed track. Voices occasionally sound out, although it’s hard to hang onto any specific thematic strands, but maybe we’re not meant to. As with previous offerings, Spanned Canyons’ collages of white noises evoke the liminal spaces of dreaming – no small feat. In…

FREDDY’S FINGER KNIVES SCRAPING METAL RAILINGS; MICHAEL MYERS’ slow, deliberate breathing behind his mask; shower curtain rings sliding across metal rods; the rhythmic tick of a grandfather clock in an empty house; floorboards creaking under unseen feet… iconic sonic highlights of horror cinema, or unintentional ASMR? Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is the euphoric tingling sensation that starts at the scalp and travels down the spine in response to specific triggers. The term was coined in 2010 by a cybersecurity worker named Jennifer Allen, and now there are thousands of videos dedicated to inducing the sensation, with ASMRtists whispering into microphones, crinkling paper, brushing hair, role-playing spa appointments, and so on. But not everyone gets it. Some people feel nothing at all. Others find the same sounds deeply irritating, even…

Rue Morgue · 002 Rue Morgue #224 - Final Destination   Back at the turn of the millennium, a teen horror film turned a lot of people into nervous flyers when Alex Browning (played by then-unknown Devon Sawa) deboarded a plane after having a vision of it going down in flames, only for it to explode upon takeoff. The first Final Destination (2000) introduced audiences to the idea that while a group of teens may temporarily cheat death, it will come back for them twofold – a concept that gave rise to a franchise with the most outlandish, violent, and gory kills ever committed to screen [see sidebar]. And while it’s been over a decade since Final Destination 5 (2011), a new installment is shooting fresh blood into the…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx6lEn2S1rI DEAD RESET PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, iOS, Android Wales Interactive Full-motion video (FMV) has always filled a strange niche in the gaming landscape. Typically, it’s not game-y enough for the purists, not book-y enough for the visual novel crowd, and is confined within the constraints of a playable-film gimmick. Indie developer/publisher Wales Interactive made a mark in the FMV world with games such as 2016’s The Bunker and 2020’s The Complex, and Dead Reset showcases all of the upsides and downsides of how the company approaches this niche: there’s high-quality, compelling storytelling, but there’s so little gameplay that it’s essentially a sometimes-interactive movie. The story centres on Cole Mason, a surgeon who wakes up in a grimy research station with no memory, but is nonetheless forced at gunpoint to…

THE IDEA THAT MOVING IMAGES ARE SOMEHOW CONNECTED TO EVIL IS AN OLD ONE AND PREDATES CINEMA BY MANY CENTURIES. THE GNOSTICS HAD THEIR “FLICK-BOOKS,” whose rapidly turned pages created the illusion of movement within. Those were distant ancestors to the zoetrope, which eventually led to the Lumière Brothers’ projector. And although their name translates to “light,” some believed that something darker was behind the mechanism – that moving images could themselves be possessed by malignant forces with the power to corrupt their beholder. Enter horror movies: sometimes the genre itself was considered “a portal to something demonic” (to quote a certain Full House star), while for others the subject matter was deemed evil, e.g. William Friedkin’s realistically depicted Devil in The Exorcist (1973). In either case, the idea is…

Grief and loss can be very powerful narrative tools, acting as a springboard to darker and more sinister events. They are very much at the centre of the Halloween Girl series, from its beginnings as a 2015 short film, to the follow-up web series, and now three graphic novels. The catalyst for the saga is the tragic death of teenage Charlotte one Halloween night. Now an angsty ghost, Charlotte and phantom goth pal Poe do battle with a secret society named The Hollow that’s determined to destroy the world. Book Three: Gods & Monsters may be the darkest Halloween Girl yet, as the ghost gals investigate a series of strange murders surrounding a young boy named Kevin. Bullied at school and regularly beaten at home by his dad, his model…

Rue Morgue · 001 Rue Morgue #221 - Intro Those among us who can remember seeing A Nightmare on Elm Street in the cinema during its first theatrical run might feel a little pang of something in the old bones to hear that the film turned 40 this year. For me, an elder millennial who rarely sees horror movies in the theatre, much less during their initial run of engagement, I feel like A Nightmare on Elm Street has always existed. I’m older than the film, so it was there when I came of age to peruse the VHS racks at the video store; it was there at the sleepovers I attended (although I was usually the only one paying attention to it), and as I continued with my horror…

Rue Morgue · 002 Rue Morgue #225 - Alice Cooper   WHEN IT WAS ANNOUNCED THAT A NEW ALICE COOPER ALBUM, THE REVENGE OF ALICE COOPER, WAS DUE OUT THIS July, the question on everyone’s mind was: is that guy still around? It’s a bit of double entendre, given that the man named Alice Cooper (born Vincent Furnier) has reunited with the band members that originally gave him his moniker. For Cooper, life after death is second nature.   Originally formed by Furnier and high school friends Michael Bruce and Glen Buxton (R.I.P. 1997) on guitars, bassist Dennis Dunaway, and drummer Neal Smith, the band began as a directionless curiosity, going by the names The Spiders and The Nazz before landing on Alice Cooper. Under the new name…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9b3YBcTFt8 THE CABIN FACTORY Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, PC International Cat Studios/Future Friends Games It’s your first day at a company that manufactures spooky cabins for commercial purposes. Your job? Suss out the ones that are actually haunted and flag them as dangerous. Properly categorize eight cabins to win. First things first, trainee: creepy as fuck does not mean haunted. Cabins will roll up to your workstation in a wide assortment of strange and unsettling configurations (filled with giant stuffies, for example, or with all the furniture on the ceiling, and featuring the motionless inhabitants doing any number of ominous things), but unless something is actively moving, the cabin’s not haunted. Occasionally the hauntings extend beyond the cabin walls, calling for some extra problem solving if you want to stay…

https://www.amazon.com/Texas-Chainsaw-Massacre-Original-Soundtrack/dp/B0DQK56J6L/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5A6KZEPPMZEV&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.32Zqvwc3pRTkMbI5xG6J0uBnvNdvY0Ygr4ISXX5g4aNUYJuLNxY2DH-WgH2xL4rHUPNvpBpwiuzQIV97gEfdSZoOkNeiWORX3dubeiKd3j8.-VTC-CuBrhMpSqLEyuO8Wcx9q35RoTQUF31mmi9fhcY&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+texas+chainsaw+massacre+soundtrack+cd&qid=1744396437&sprefix=the+texas+chainsaw+massacre+soundtrack%2Caps%2C118&sr=8-1 THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE SOUNDTRACK Tobe Hooper and Wayne Bell WAXWORK RECORDS It hardly needs to be said, but The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was – and remains – a groundbreaking masterpiece. While the lurid title, unforgiving storytelling, and stark, savage imagery twisted necks and dropped jaws, it was the sense of grubby unease that really set stomachs roiling. The soundtrack is key to this uncanny power, eschewing horror tropes in favour of an abstract, experimental score and scraping sound design that prods, goads, and smothers like another cackling member of the Sawyer clan. Composed by Tobe Hooper and Wayne Bell in D.I.Y. freeform fashion, the pair proved the old “necessity is the mother of invention” maxim as they squeezed terror from random instruments, toys, animal calls, and kitchen implements.…

Writer Bruce Brown has spent a large part of his artistic career introducing the works of H.P. Lovecraft to younger generations. His first book, Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom, features Lovecraft as a child and immerses him, fairy tale-like, in a Lovecraftian world. That was followed by two more books in the series and Dr. Herbert West: Astounding Tales in Medical Malpractice. Brown has now unleashed The Cats of Ulthar: A Tale Reimagined, co-written with Emily Webber, though this time his intentions are slightly different. “With Cats I wanted to depart from writing stories for all ages and reimagine a favourite Lovecraft short story,” he explains. “The original tale is told by an unnamed narrator. I wanted to write something raw and unique, and I thought it would be…

Rue Morgue · 003 Rue Morgue #223 - The Ring The long-haired Sadako crawls forth from a television set, bones crunching as she stands upright, her ghostly features trembling in the grim light of day, her ghastly face just out of view. This image, which spread like a virus across screens all over the world, spawning a franchise and kicking off the J-horror film boom, had its unlikely origins in literature. It was Koji Suzuki’s 1991 novel Ring (Ringu), which became a sensation upon release, that caused a widespread cinematic phenomenon later in the decade and gained international cultural ubiquity in the early 2000s. First adapted for Japanese television in 1995, the book, like the ensuing films, focuses on a mysterious videotape filled with cryptic scenes that causes anyone who…

I JUST STARTED digging into my September/October issue beginning with (as I usually do) your letter from the editor. Bit rough on the social sciences, don’t you think? I came across my first issue of Rue Morgue in a now defunct media chain in New Orleans while pursuing a grad degree in psychology, which has served me well for decades, if not opening the doors to untold riches… I’d like to think that studying sociology gave you a unique perspective on the great work that you have done since then. Love Rue Morgue and love what you have done with it over the years. TYLER HUDSON, M.A. – ORANGE PARK, FLORIDA I CAN ALWAYS count on Rue Morgue to shine a light on the dark corners of the genre I…

Rue Morgue · 002 Rue Morgue #222 - Clive Barker While many of us know the name “Clive Barker” in terms of his horror fiction output – both cinematic and literary – he’s actually an artistic multi-hyphenate, a polymath in the truest sense of the term. In the Imaginer book series, an eight-volume hardcover art book series compiled by Clive Barker archivists Phil and Sarah Stokes, Barker dubs himself an “imaginer,” and the painter/poet/playwright/author/actor/director does appear to create from a reality of his own invention. An artist in every possible sense, Barker is a compulsive creator, whose output is as unruly and uncontainable as it is combative and confrontational, pouring forth from him in every manner available, be it the canvas or the page. If you haven’t heard his name…

Rue Morgue · 001 Rue Morgue #225 - Intro   So, I’ve been thinking a bit about death lately. Not in the sense that my own is especially imminent or anything (although tomorrow is promised to no one, don’t forget, and I’ve somehow started smoking again), but this issue contains another obit, another dedication, another one for the fire, to use an indelicate horror idiom. (From Night of the Living Dead, get it? You have to get it or else I’m a major asshole.) Adam Lopez was a key figure to me as I entered Toronto’s horror scene. The Toronto After Dark Film Festival was perfect for a newcomer to the city – solid fright flicks at a cozy rep cinema without all of the Toronto International Film Festival’s…

With the revitalization of Hammer Films under new owner John Gore, the venerable British horror studio has not only begun plunging into new productions, but is giving its classics new life on 4K disc. The first to receive this upgrade is Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, releasing January 27 in a massive Limited Collector’s Edition boxed set containing two UHDs and three Blu-rays, plus an insane amount of bonus features. First released in 1974, Captain Kronos was the directorial debut of Brian Clemens, who had previously scripted and produced Hammer’s Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde and made an indelible mark on the UK TV scene with series such as The Avengers, The Professionals, and many others. Clemens shook up the studio’s bloodsucker formula by combining it with the swashbuckling genre, introducing…

ON NOVEMBER 9, 1984, THE SUPERNATURAL SLASHER MOVIE A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET ARRIVED IN THEATRES, TURNING ITS GRUESOME VILLAIN, FREDDY KRUEGER, INTO A POP CULTURE ICON WITH NINE SEQUELS SINCE. NOW, FOUR DECADES LATER, THE MAN BEHIND THE MANIAC, ROBERT ENGLUND, SHARES THOUGHTS ON THE CHARACTER THAT MADE HIM FAMOUS, THE EVOLUTION OF FREDDY, HIS FAVOURITE UNMADE ELM STREET SEQUEL, AND RETURNING TO THE ROLE ONE FINAL TIME… Forty years ago, in the immortal 1984 classic A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven unleashed child murderer turned terrifying supernatural dream demon Freddy Krueger on an unsuspecting world. Since then, the hat-wearing, razor-gloved, burnt-faced boogeyman in a red-and-green sweater not only became a horror icon, but also a pop culture phenomenon who appeared in a total of nine films (where,…

2000 THE ISLE The Isle became notorious on the festival circuit, due to its horrid scenes of animal cruelty and brutal imagery involving fishhooks – some critics lost their lunches and walked out. The plot involves a man (Yu-seok Kim) hiding out at a lake resort and developing a sado-masochistic relationship with Hee-jin (Jung Suh), the mute girl who runs the day-to-day operations at the lake. Ki-duk Kim is an uncompromising filmmaker and The Isle won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but the way it balances queasy violence with soothing tenderness is haunting to say the least. MC 2001 WENDIGO Largely overshadowed by bigger art house successes like Habit and The Last Winter, 2001’s Wendigo sees director Larry Fessenden employing Indigenous mythology as a springboard to explore the negative effects…

Rue Morgue · 001 Rue Morgue #228 - Intro Full disclosure: I have been super stoked about A Serbian Documentary since Steve Biro told me it was in development a long-ass time ago. Why? Because I fucking love A Serbian Film, and I found myself wishing that I’d been in this position fifteen years ago so I could have put that shit on the cover and celebrated that film for all the reasons that still appear to go unsung. Some horror stories ripen with time, and some material needs room to breathe (or in this case, gag) before we can talk about it with a clear head. Hear me out: I’ve been a horror fan long before I sat in this editor’s chair, and I know it’s impossible to…

Rue Morgue · 003 Rue Morgue #227 - Boulet Brothers   IF THEY WERE TO PICK ANY HOLIDAY IN WHICH TO SET THEIR NEW ANTHOLOGY SPECIAL, YOU MAY HAVE EXPECTED DRACMORDA AND Swanthula Boulet – a.k.a. The Boulet Brothers – to pick Halloween. After all, the horror drag superstars are best known for their Shudder reality competition show The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula, where creepy (and catty) drag artists from around the world compete to be named the “World’s Next Drag Supermonster” by executing all manner of spooky and sexy looks and surviving some truly ghastly challenges should they fall short of expectations. Instead, The Boulet Brothers’ Holiday of Horrors, out this December on Shudder, promises to be a big ol’ gift-wrapped box of yuletide scariness stuffed under your tacky…

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109838/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_freaked During the first half of the 1990s, before Scream revitalized horror commercially in ’96, the genre went into a serious downswing when it came to theatrical releases. The combination of slasher-franchise fatigue, the rise of VHS, and the collapse of many major independents in the late ’80s meant that in the following decade, many scary movies went straight to video. And numerous titles that would have enjoyed wide breaks or filled grindhouse and drive-in screens several years before received only single-screen bookings in a handful of major cities, sometimes just one or two. A key example is Tom Stern and Alex Winter’s berserk horror comedy Freaked, though it was more a victim of a corporate regime change than the aforementioned factors. The new top brass at 20th Century Fox…

Rue Morgue · 003 Rue Morgue #228 - Karmadonna THE LINGERING CURSE OF A SERBIAN FILM IS MANIFOLD. FIRST, THE FILM’S NOTORIETY SLOWED DOWN THE CAREER OF ITS co-writer, Aleksandar Radivojević, because no one wanted to finance his next project. Then, after fifteen years of unsuccessful attempts, when he finally debuted as a director, everyone kept comparing his movie to A Serbian Film. People wondered where the man who conceived “newborn porn” would go next. As it turns out, Karmadonna is more explicitly satirical and blackly humorous, while its gore, shocks, and transgressions are a fair bit more palatable. The plot is jump-started by a phone call from an entity identifying itself as God, who blackmails the pregnant Jelena (Jelena Djokic) to go on a killing spree guided by…

Rue Morgue · 004 Rue Morgue #226 - The Backrooms ASK ANY REAL FAN WORTH THEIR SALT – ONE OF THE CREEPIEST MOMENTS IN HALLOWEEN (1978) COMES AFTER THE MAYHEM CAUSED BY MICHAEL MYERS. Just before the credits roll, as John Carpenter’s iconic theme song plays, we see the spaces where The Shape had raged just moments before – a living room, the top of a shadowy staircase… now dark and empty. Today, scholars of online aesthetics might term this unique unease at vacant settings to be caused by ‘liminal spaces’ – abandoned places where the emptiness and calm engenders a sense of surreal dread. And while examples of its use abound in the horror genre, the most prominent modern example of creepy liminal space emerged from the internet…

DEVILISH CHARM WITCHBOARD Starring Madison Iseman, Aaron Dominguez and Jamie Campbell Bower Directed by Chuck Russell Written by Chuck Russell and Kevin Tenney A-Nation Media After Hasbro bought the rights to the Ouija board in 1991 and launched its own film series based on the parlour game in 2014, it seemed like the Witchboard films from the ’80s were as dusty as your mom’s attic. Now, co-writer/director Chuck Russell (the maestro behind such visual cinematic feasts as A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, The Mask with Jim Carrey, and The Blob remake), revives the three-film franchise with pizzazz. https://youtu.be/Qr0d00hy1h8?feature=shared Russell’s new take is more of a reboot, detailing the sinister origin of an ancient pendulum-style board that belonged to a nasty, bishop-fighting witch back in the days of…

CONEY ISLAND CIRCUS SIDESHOW Brooklyn, New York New York City holds much in store for the discerning horror fan, and we’re not just talking about the Ghostbusters firehouse, or the freaky Elmos in Times Square. If you’re feeling brave enough to venture past Broadway, you can take the D, Q, N, or F trains to Coney Island, where the crowds and noise will max out your senses. But keep your eyes peeled for 1208 Surf Avenue, home of the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, the last permanently housed sideshow of its kind in the States. With vintage placards outside advertising “weird women,” “snakeology,” and “creep show at the freak show,” the frontage of the building alone is worth a photo op. Thankfully, this modern iteration of the classic sideshow is less…

The Best Policy “INCUBUS IS A HORROR FILM THAT SHOWS HOW DIFFICULT IT IS TO UPHOLD HIGHER PRINCIPLES WHEN FACED WITH THE NEFARIOUS PULL OF CORRUPTION.” If our future seems more uncertain than ever these days, you have to wonder if there’s a direct connection to the kinds of people we continue to elect as our leaders. Look around and it’s plain to see that, for all the other problems out there, we’re not exactly promoting our most selfless citizens to lead us to a better tomorrow. One of the chief culprits of our modern predicament is this weird misconception that prominent business executives make the most honest political leaders – as if the corporate world doesn’t have its own troubling issues with morality and integrity. The rare ability to…

I WAS JUST SO DELIGHTED to see the final showdown of RM#224 consider Rock ’N’ Roll Nightmare (a.k.a The Edge of Hell) as a true contender. It’s not every satanic panic rock horror film that reverses pretty much every assumption of the genre, up to making the heavy metal hero a literal angel who just wants to wrassle puppet Satan. If I’m trying to sell my friends on a CanCon evening, gore splattered over a bit of a bleak meditation on small town poverty is never going to stand up to the winning words “musical with equal opportunity mammary glands and PUPPET. SATAN.” We’re here for a good time, even if this requires acknowledging Markham, Ontario, existing. ANNE MILLAR, VIA EMAIL I BUY RUE MORGUE at my local USA Barnes…

Why now? Why a column on one of 2024’s worst films, months after its release? Well, call me a closure junkie. ’Salem’s Lot remains one of my favourite Stephen King novels and, for all the liberties Tobe Hooper’s 1979 TV adaptation takes, it’s a classic I continue to hold near and dear. I wrote a Classic Cut on that version in RM#160 and a Bowen’s Basement column on the hopelessly mixed bag that was the largely unseen 2004 miniseries. So, what am I gonna do, ignore the new one, no matter how wretched? In case you missed the shitnado of rumours about this project’s problematic gestation, here’s what I’ve gleaned. First announced in 2019, the third screen version of King’s beloved vampire epic was scheduled for theatrical release in September…

Steven Hall did not set out to write the next great horror novel. In fact, quite the opposite. In his first book, The Raw Shark Texts – the story of a lovesick amnesiac hunted by a giant shark – he deliberately tears at the walls of genre convention, churning the thrills and chills with hallmarks ripped from adventure, sci-fi and mystery. It might even make you cry. “The big idea behind the book was to answer the question, ‘Is it possible to write something which would feel like a different book to every reader?’” says the 32-year-old Brit. “So if you happen to read horror fiction, you would find a horror story, but if you were interested in romance or thrillers, you’d find that kind of story. I wanted to…

THANKS SO MUCH for the interview with Caitlin Cronenberg [in RM#218]. Humane is one of the best first-time directorial efforts ever. Great script, fantastic cast, and confident direction. Her mastery of photographic composition is evident in every frame. Can’t wait to see her next effort. Thanks again for being the undisputed leader in horror media coverage. JOE PORTER, VIA EMAIL YOU KNOW IT’S A GOOD YEAR when the daughters of the masters are making their own horror movies. Thanks Rue Morgue for shining the spotlight. KEVKEV, VIA EMAIL JUST WANT TO SAY I’ve been loving the magazine since I picked up my first issue back in 2003. I enjoy how it covers the full spectrum of horror but in particular books and film. I was thinking it would be great…

QUEER SLASHERS Peter Marra Indiana University Press The tough thing about engaging with cinema from the perspective of any marginalized group is understanding and articulating how the othered are represented, distorted, or appropriated for shock value. From a queer lens, we’re seeing parts of someone’s life (or even aspects of life they might wish they could call their own) filtered through heteronormativity and biases, both conscious and unconscious. Throughout Queer Slashers, author Peter Marra navigates a genre of film he loves while traversing its more problematic areas and examining how both straight and queer filmmakers have told queer stories. Marra mentions that there’s an element of drag to many onscreen killers, which is certainly thought-provoking. Freddy Krueger, no stranger to such analysis given the heavily queer-coded A Nightmare on Elm…

Rue Morgue · 002 Rue Morgue #221 - Heather Langenkamp In 1984, the roots of the archetypal “final girl” had been laid down by such films as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Halloween (1978), and Friday the 13th (1980), but as the figure became more readily understood by its audiences, one final girl stood out among the rest – a teen scream queen who’s tough but vulnerable, good but not inaccessibly “pure,” a loyal friend, a devoted girlfriend, and a true heroine with the courage to face one of horror’s vilest villains three times over. That crown belongs to Nancy Thompson, a role indelibly tied to actress Heather Langenkamp who not only portrayed her twice, but also played herself inhabiting that lifetime role in a groundbreaking meta installment that paved…

HORROR FILMS HAVE TRAINED US TO BE CREEPED OUT BY DOLLS. CHUCKY’S MANIACAL GRIN IN CHILD’S PLAY, Annabelle’s hollow stare, the malevolent clown from Poltergeist – from feral fetish dolls to possessed puppets to murderous mechanical moppets like M3GAN, cinema has long weaponized their fixed gazes, their too-perfect features, their uncanny stillness. Each new horror franchise adds another entry to the catalogue of killer toys, embedding the image deeper into our collective nightmares. But… their sweet little faces! Their charming antique frocks! Their weird, unblinking, soul-penetrating glass eyeballs that follow you around the room! My shelves are lined with exactly these supposed nightmare objects – porcelain beauties frozen in expressions that hover somewhere between naive innocence and sly knowing, their painted mouths perpetually on the verge of murmuring secrets too…

BESIDES THE OBVIOUS JOYS OF BEING AN OLD (EATING DINNER AT 3:30 P.M., GOING TO BED BY 6), ONE OF the things I like most is finding new appreciations for horror movies. Sometimes that’s discovering a movie I shook my fist at fifteen years ago is actually pretty okay. Other times it’s all about seeing aspects of a beloved film in a new light, as is the case with a character from a little flick you may have heard of, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I’d say that it was my recent celebration of Chainsaw’s nifty 50th at a local theatre that has put a reassessment of the hapless Franklin forefront in my brain, but truth be told, that reassessment’s been languishing in the back seat of my mind for a…

For those seeking their tingles on the smuttier side of genre fiction, author Chuck Tingle has emerged as an icon of outsider lit; the viral eroticist, pop philosopher, and joyful punk-provocateur-turned-horror-writer made a pseudonym for himself with his queer horror erotica (dubbed the “Tingleverse”) that quickly amassed him a legion of devoted fans (referred to by the author as “buckaroos” and “ladybucks”). And while his recent foray into mainstream horror fiction may be more accessible to populist sensibilities, there’s no question that Tingle’s output retains its edge: his latest apocalyptic brain-melter, Lucky Day (out August 12 from Tor Nightfire), is all about staring oblivion right in its ugly mug and having the bravery to laugh. “It’s the most fun you’ll ever have wrestling with the profound weight of existential dread,”…

1 GEEKY TIKI MUGS $17.99 USD It’s a proven fact – cocktails taste better out of tiki mugs, and this Universal Monsters-inspired set will put some freaky into your next tiki! The 20oz ceramic mugs boast the likenesses of Dracula, the Mummy, Wolfman, Gill Man, Frankenstein’s monster and his Bride, and are dishwasher and microwave safe. The well-being of your liver, however, is another matter entirely. entertainmentearth.com 2 GOTH BLOCK $15 USD Calling all vampires! Protect your ghastly complexion and ghoulish tattoos with this SPF 50 sun blocker. Water-resistant up to 80 minutes, this sunscreen bars harmful UVA and UVB rays and is 100% vegan as well as cruelty free… unlike your moonlight motives. letitblock.com 3 JACK THE RIPPER LAVATORY MIST $11.99 USD Bad odours can be murder, so cover…

THE LATE 1940S ARE OFTEN CONSIDERED TO BE SOMETHING OF A PREGNANT PAUSE IN THE HORROR GENRE. Val Lewton, the decade’s most reliable producer of quality horror films, made his last genre title in 1946, and the ’50s-defining atomic-monster subgenre wouldn’t get underway in earnest until Godzilla emerged from the Pacific in 1954. Ray Bradbury’s 1947 horror collection Dark Carnival was barely a blip on the radar, Lovecraft was ten years dead by then, and the pulp industry was in sharp decline. So perhaps it’s not surprising that the decade’s most shocking piece of fiction appeared not behind a Weird Tales cover, but in the esteemed pages of The New Yorker. The story’s title, “The Lottery,” was unassuming enough, and so was its author: Shirley Jackson, a 31-year-old mother and…

WHEN THEY TAUGHT THE NOAH’S ARK STORY IN SUNDAY SCHOOL, MY ATTENTION ALWAYS DRIFTED TO THE NIGHTMARISH VISION OF all those people – a whole world of people – slowly drowning. Later, when the waters finally receded, would they reveal all the dead? What would that look like? Smell like? I’ve always found the Bible kind of a scary thing. But, according to author and associate professor Brandon R. Grafius, the study of horror in relation to the Bible is a fairly new branch of research. It only began to develop about twenty years ago, following the publication of Timothy K. Beal’s Religion and Its Monsters, a book Grafius considers formative to his own academic work. “I think the first edition came out in 2003, and there was just about…

HUNT, KILL, REPEAT REDUX REDUX Starring Michaela McManus, Stella Marcus and Jeremy Holm Written and directed by Kevin McManus and Matthew McManus Saban Films When you hear that Redux Redux is about a woman repeatedly wreaking revenge on her daughter’s murderer over multiple alternate realities, you might imagine it’ll be another horrific variation on Groundhog Day. Instead, writer/directors Kevin and Matthew McManus confound expectations and deliver a consistently surprising and gripping experience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VR0yqjQg7w Redux Redux, coming to theatres February 20, is more comparable to The Terminator: a ground-level thriller that incorporates sci-fi tech and terror trappings with an unerring real-world grit. It also has a similarly compelling female protagonist: Irene Kelly (Michaela McManus), who has gotten hold of a device that allows her to jump through a multiverse that’s a…

HARDLY A (TOXIC) WASTE THE TOXIC AVENGER Starring Peter Dinklage, Taylour Page and Kevin Bacon Directed by Macon Blair Written by Macon Blair, Lloyd Kaufman and Joe Ritter Legendary All the slime, almost all the gore, significantly fewer boobies (but still several), and all the pitch-dark humour with the same generous dollop of optimism and human decency at its core – that’s the short answer to what most longtime Troma fans are asking about the long-rumoured remake of the famously, fiercely, fuck-you independent movie studio’s flagship franchise. It’s unrealistic to expect any remake of such a beloved and iconic cult sensation to please all of the original’s rabid fans, and a few will doubtless come away disgruntled. But the good news (for most of us, anyway) is that writer/director Macon…

IT WAS HARDLY A FIRST. AFTER ALL, BIG-NAME AUTHORS HAD BEEN WRITING UNDER PSEUDONYMS FOR A HOST OF STYLISTIC, FINANCIAL, AND LEGAL reasons since the dawn of publishing. In some cases, their use of pen names had been such open secrets that they scarcely counted as secrets at all, whereas others didn’t become widely known until well after the writers in question were deceased. But when Richard Bachman, credited at the time with a handful of moderately successful dark action thrillers and dystopian science fiction paperbacks, was exposed as Stephen King’s literary alter ego in the late 1980s, the news didn’t just shock King’s gigantic fan base – it actually made headlines. Stylistic considerations aside, pseudonyms have often been a simple matter of necessity for publishing house bean counters rather…

I’VE STARTED TO FEEL LINK I’M LIVING IN A FUCKED-UP EPISODE OF THE TWILIGHT ZONE - SCROLLING THROUGH INSTAGRAM AND TIKTOK only to encounter the same visage replicated across thousands of different accounts. The faces that the algorithm feeds me are all starting to look alike, perhaps because I am a woman of a certain age, hag-dom imminent, cooter full of cobwebs (or at least that’s what I imagine marketing teams think of me). The same impossibly smooth skin stretched over identical cheekbones, those pillowy lips forever parted in practiced surprise, those eyes unnaturally elongated into feline points. Even on red carpets, actresses I’ve followed for years have slowly surrendered what made them distinctive. Crooked smiles? Straightened. Charming freckles? Erased. Healthy bodies whittled to skeletal walking corpses. It’s like watching…

FOR SOME, JIGSAW PUZZLES ARE A RELIC OF THE KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOM, A PRE-TABLET SLAB OF LO-FI ENTERTAINMENT DESIGNED TO KEEP sticky preschooler fingers busy. But many a hobbyist has kept up with the pastime, advancing to tougher difficulties, often featuring smaller pieces and more intricate artwork. While horror has gotten in on the fun with licensed illustrations and movie posters (see Rue Morgue’s wicked collab with Messed Up Puzzles from 2020), David Axelrod of Spark Plug Publishing took things a step further with his Puzzles of Doom line, where completing the puzzle reveals a classic painting… with a horrifying surprise twist. “For a person who hasn’t done a jigsaw puzzle since kindergarten and is reading this magazine, this puzzle is for you,” says Axelrod. “What I’ll say about the reveals…

I FINISHED READING SARAH MARIA GRIFFIN’S HORTICULTURAL HORROR NOVEL EAT THE ONES YOU LOVE ON A Tuesday evening and whiled away my Wednesday thinking about Baby, the carnivorous orchid who spends the novel plotting to consume the florist who tends him. And I wondered why, despite all my macabre interests and dark inclinations, I’d never considered cultivating something with savage appetites. Griffin’s story drops us into the Woodbine Crown Mall, one of those slowly dying retail spaces where the food court echoes with phantom teenage conversations and half the storefronts gape empty like missing teeth in a still-grinning skull. Baby lives in the heart of this decay, and it’s a perfect set-up: a carnivorous orchid thriving off the decaying ecosystem of a place that’s feeding on its own corpse while…

Rue Morgue · 002 Rue Morgue #228 - Brotherhood of the Wolf IN THE 18TH CENTURY, THE MOORS AND MOUNTAINS OF SOUTH-CENTRAL FRANCE WERE TERRORIZED BY A SERIES OF ATTACKS from a creature no one could identify. Original accounts of the Beast of Gévaudan described a monster quite unlike any fauna native to the area – a hulking animal larger than a cow with dark stripes along its sides and back, enormous claws and teeth, and the ability to leap (or even fly, according to some) at incredible speed. Having attacked literally hundreds of people over a span of several years only to disappear without a trace, the mysterious beast was primed for cinematic adaptation, and that came in the form of Christophe Gans’ Brotherhood of the Wolf, which…

For us horror fans of a certain age, it’s a sobering thought that Tom Savini’s Night of the Living Dead is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. The circumstances surrounding the making of his 1990 remake couldn’t be more different than those of the Romero original; the latter was an expression of unfettered, boundary-pushing, independent cinematic freedom, while Savini saw his vision compromised by producer meddling and studio-mandated edits to achieve an R-rating. The result was a movie that garnered largely negative reviews and weak box-office returns. Fans know that the motivations behind remaking Night were at least partially mercenary. Romero (who scripted the new take) and his Image Ten partners John Russo and Russell Streiner (who produced) were seeking to reclaim ownership of (and yes, maybe make a little…

The idea of a specific location being cursed by something malignant is arguably as old as humanity itself. Whether a haunted cave, mountain, or house, such places have fascinated and terrified humans for millennia and still continue to resonate. Hoping to provide a new perspective on old haunts are writer Michael W. Conrad and artist Dave Chisholm, whose series Plague House aims to give the haunted house trope a new lease on life. “As far back as we can trace in human history, there have been locations that have been seen as holy, cursed, and all [points] in between,” says Conrad. “For some, this has been based on practical data; even the Bible makes mention of such things. The title Plague House is in fact a reference to a biblical…

Rue Morgue · 005 Rue Morgue #226 - Deathstalker THEY SAY IT’S LONELY AT THE TOP, BUT ASK FILMMAKER STEVEN KOSTANSKI, THE DIRECTOR BEHIND SUCH MOVIES AS PSYCHO Goreman and Frankie Freako, and he’ll say the opposite is true. Whether he’s collaborating with the other members of the Astron-6 film collective (including Adam Brooks, Jeremy Gillespie, Matthew Kennedy, and Conor Sweeney) or surrounding himself with little rubber monsters of his own creation, there’s always someone nearby, ready to lend a hand (or tentacle) to his latest effort, and he’s happy to bring others into the fold. “I like putting my friends in my movies,” he tells Rue Morgue from his home office, crowded by monster costumes and puppets from his films. “It’s fun to just kinda loop them into…

Rue Morgue · 001 Rue Morgue #223 - Intro Guys, sound off. Everyone okay? I feel like things are bad; not bad in the usual way that everything feels kinda shitty when you’re deep in the doldrums of Canadian winter – when the air hurts your face and you hope your car starts and frig, I wanted to like that Wolf Man movie better. Things seem extra bad, though – even by my usual winter curmudgeon standards. It’s the kind of bad that makes me look over my shoulder for the other shoe to drop. I find myself being extra careful handling fragile items and speaking to strangers. There’s something tenuous in the zeitgeist right now and I wish I could put my finger on it. Perhaps this feeling has…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuIJ7HTZUZQ KARMA: THE DARK WORLD Pollard Studio LLC, Wired Productions, Gamera Games PC, Playstation 4/5, Xbox X/S/One, Nintendo Switch No one will blame you if you spend much of Karma’s playing time fixated on how amazing this dystopian first-person narrative puzzler would be on VR. From its pan-anywhere camera to its motion-inspired interactions (push and pull the mouse to open doors and drawers, etc.), it’s all gloriously cinematic as it casts players into an alternate 1980s East Germany, full of corporate malevolence and human experimentation – and brain diving. The latter being where the majority the game’s surrealistic environs spawn from; nightmarish “memory” places where eyeballs grow from walls, folks have CRT monitors for heads (like the TV men in those Skibidi Toilet viral YouTube shorts), Twin Peaks’ notorious Red…

I JUST WANT TO TELL YOU how thoroughly gratifying and meaningful your writing about Clive Barker in the most recent issue of Rue Morgue was. As a lover of Barker’s twisted worlds, it was a delight to read your own take on the man’s work and his impact on you. The feature itself was a great update on Barker’s current work – an insightful look into the life of someone not getting the exposure he once did. A loving tribute. I am a writer and film critic, mostly focusing on horror, cult, and noir films, and Rue Morgue has been a consistent quality-driven print and online magazine for me in recent years. The Dark Delicacies piece in this issue was also a highlight. Just wanted to share these words with…

https://mellowdeath1.bandcamp.com/ MELLOWDEATH JAZZ Mellowdeath CRUEL NATURE RECORDS German drum and bass duo Mellowdeath dubs its music “nightmare jazz,” a genre that purports to be a cross between a cinematic soundscape, a haunted circus, and a David Lynch western. We’re not totally sure what that means, but this self-titled debut is best described as spastic, adlibbed jazz, made up prominently of surf tones with guest appearances on guitar, trombone, and theremin that evoke the playfully demented Mr. Bungle performing in a smoky jazz club full of metalheads. Opener “Demon Slither” is the most surf-sounding track before it transforms into an out-of-control hyper-speed jazz number. “Omacore” and “Krankenstation” lean more toward metal (albeit with theremin), and “Verfolgungsjagd” is a bluesy number that feels mostly improvised. Both band members are female, and the…

You may not spot the handsome, six-foot-four Osgood “Oz” Perkins on the red carpet at the Met Gala or chasing paparazzi off his lawn, but horror has its own A-listers and Perkins has fast become one. Between a lifetime in showbiz that started early (namely a bit part in 1983’s Psycho II as a young Norman Bates, alongside his father Anthony Perkins who reprises his career-making role) and supporting roles in such Hollywood hits as Legally Blonde and 2009’s Star Trek reboot, he’s no stranger to the film set. But after earning a degree in English, the actor turned his attention to the other side of the camera – and the darker side of cinema – with writing/directing credits for 2015’s sleeper hit February (previously titled The Blackcoat’s Daughter), 2016’s…

THE BEAUTIFUL THING ABOUT BEING A HORROR FAN IS THAT EVERYONE HAS A DIFFERENT ENTRY POINT TO THE GENRE. Sometimes that entry point is defined by a predilection for hardcore gore; others crave the irresistible thrill of suspense and tension; still others are drawn to style, pacing or aesthetics. And for many of us, all of these traits intersect to form our own personal swampy gumbo of horror fanaticism. It’s a lovely place to be. I spent a lot of my preteen and teen years sacked out on a couch in my parents’ basement in the dark, building the foundation of my horror education through books, TV shows and movies. I was irresistibly drawn to scary shit because of the many reasons listed above, and also because it protected and…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeI-u7-ecGk MENACE FROM THE DEEP Flatcoon/Gamersky Games PC Are you the type of gamer who’s lost entire days to dark roguelike deckbuilders such as Inscryption and Slay the Spire? Have you defeated those titles and are now seeking new fuel for that unholy addiction? Well, rejoice! Your next stop is Lovecraft country; the tainted seaside town of Innsmouth to be precise, where something strange and decidedly nasty is pushing itself up from the deep. For those familiar with Slay the Spire, Menace from the Deep feels like a more complex version. For everyone else, the learning curve is steep but not insurmountable; to help, the game recommends playing a few rounds of Easy mode with all the cards unlocked before embarking on the campaign (i.e. story game). To start, choose…

Kurt Russell has a habit of playing reluctant tough guy heroes, due in no small part to John Carpenter’s enduring faith in the actor’s abilities. When the director cast him as Snake Plissken (the extraordinarily sexy badass anti-hero us female cine-nerds live for) in Escape from New York, a cult icon was born, and Carpenter didn’t hesitate to call upon him once more for the role of RJ MacReady in The Thing, a character that was less a bad boy, but still an accidental hero, who just wanted to go up to his shack and get drunk until things started getting weird around the station. As MacReady puts it early in the movie, “Somebody in this camp ain’t what he appears to be.” He’s then forced to take action when…

https://www.youtube.com/c/GeorgeStreicherMusic/videos GEORGE STREICHER ELECTRONIC Music For Halloween Night ENJOY THE RIDE RECORDS Is your Halloween playlist feeling a little too atonal or Carpenteresque? Need something both melodic and mischievous? We got you covered. George Streicher’s Music for Halloween Night is essentially an album-length valentine to October 31, a kid-friendly, fully orchestral romp via the kinds of beats that Danny Elfman made memorable in The Nightmare Before Christmas. You can feel that essence from the opening monologue and follow-up track, “Eye of Newt,” which mashes up the best of both Elfman and John Williams à la Harry Potter – which makes sense, given that Streicher also scored the Harry Potter video game Magic Awakened. Though it wears these influences on its wizard sleeves, that’s no criticism. Streicher aims to capture the…

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1315320/The_Necromancers_Tale/ THE NECROMANCER’S TALE PC, MacOS PsychicSoftware, Spiderwinkle Games Do you enjoy practicing black magic in graveyards in the dead of night? How about raising skeletal armies and investigating suspicious deaths? If that sounds like a dream job, then The Necromancer’s Tale, a new turn-based RPG that’s absolutely steeped in the dark stuff, has you covered. After choosing the level of difficulty (story mode, balanced, or strategy mode) and playing through the interactive prologue, which introduces the game’s lore and helps determine the character’s skills and traits, players are unleashed on the 18th-century town of Marns. Arriving just days after your father’s untimely passing, you must explore, get a job, uncover the community’s shady secrets, and learn the dark arts, all while keeping your activities secret from the locals because…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g53pXWqL8o WHEN TALKING TO WRITER/DIRECTOR JOHN ROSMAN ABOUT HIS FEATURE DEBUT NEW LIFE, THERE ARE A NUMBER OF THINGS YOU can’t talk about – or at least, that shouldn’t be shared with potential viewers before they see the movie. Coming to select theatres and VOD May 3 from Brainstorm Media, New Life is one of the most powerful independent genre films in recent years, and part of that power comes from a reveal shortly before the halfway point. It pivots an already tense pursuit thriller directly into the horrific, and is a shocking surprise that mustn’t be given away here. What can be said is that the story centres on two women: Jessica (Hayley Erin), desperately trying to make it to the Canadian border, and government agent Elsa (Sonya Walger),…

DAN AYKROYD IS NOT A WEREWOLF! TWILIGHT ZONE THE MOVIE (1983) Starring Dan Aykroyd, Albert Brooks and John Lithgow Directed by Steven Spielberg, John Landis, Joe Dante, et al. Written by Richard Matheson, Josh Rogan and George Clayton Johnson Warner I was sure Dan Aykroyd turned into a werewolf in Twilight Zone the Movie. But no, he’s just a bluish ghoul. Memories of certain films mutate as they incubate in the brain over the years, and like so many movies first watched on video, this one (finally on DVD) has been less polished by the sands of time than ground down by them. Revisiting the world of the Twilight Zone TV show, the anthology begins with a classic morality tale of a modern-day bigot who walks out of a bar…