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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…

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 #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…

Rue Morgue · 002 Rue Morgue #211 Calvaire Aunique and harrowing gem of the early oughts, Fabrice du Welz’s first feature Calvaire was, in many ways, ahead of its time. Premiering at Cannes in 2004, the story of a lounge singer being abducted by an all-male village and assigned the identity of a villager’s promiscuous wife pushed all the wrong buttons for critics, but all the right ones for festival audiences. Equal parts brutal, absurdist, dizzying, and emotional, Calvaire tends to be overlooked in favour of its equally inventive and traumatizing peers of the New French Extremity, but its dark humour and gender-bending charms have aged remarkably well – making its new HD remaster on Blu-ray via Yellow Veil Pictures both keenly welcome and long overdue. Marc Stevens (Laurent Lucas)…

VENDETTA Marie Corelli Zittaw Press Time hasn’t been particularly attentive to Marie Corelli. The British author’s name seldom appears amongst the ranks of better-known gothic scribes such as Poe, Bronte and Stoker. Yet, at her height in the late 1800s, Corelli’s popularity was massive. Her novels commanded a fan frenzy on par with that of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series today – sales were in the 100,000s and influential figures such as the Queen of England were part of her dedicated throngs. Yet the critics blasted Corelli, deriding her work as pulp for the masses, and over time the masses moved past her decadence, blubbering sentimentality and affected melodrama. Now, much like her sophomoric novel’s protagonist who comes back from the dead, so to speak, 1886’s Vendetta (a.k.a. Vendetta!; or, The…

Hammer Film Productions will always be best known for its long-running series of colour monster movies that debuted in the 1950s, but these gothic treats weren’t the studio’s only genre output at the time. Between lush adaptations of Dracula and Frankenstein, Hammer also regularly cranked out low-budget black and white thrillers that offered punchy twists on familiar plots. A few of these programmers popped up previously, including Scream of Fear and The Nanny, but now Sony has devoted a six-DVD set to Hammer’s stark but entertaining thrillers. Icons of Suspense Collection: Hammer Films reveals some of the British House of Horror’s best kept secrets. CASH ON DEMAND (1961) Starring Peter Cushing, André Morell and Richard Vernon Directed by Quentin Lawrence Written by David T. Chantler, Jacques Gillies and Lewis Greifer…

THE NIGHT ROB CAME HOME HALLOWEEN Starring Scout Taylor-Compton, Malcolm McDowell and Daeg Faerch Written and directed by Rob Zombie Dimension When it was first announced that Rob Zombie was remaking Halloween, it seemed like a good idea. Really. Forget the protests of the purists – what other filmmaker cares more about this increasingly ridiculous franchise? No one. However, much like asbestos, Crystal Pepsi and invading Iraq, it was a good idea at the time. So, now that the torches have fizzled and the pitchforks have been put away, let’s examine just what went wrong. There are the usual Rob Zombie film problems: characters who are screeching caricatures, obvious dialogue that actors struggle to make ring true, scenes designed more to accommodate genre icon cameos than to advance the plot,…

Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema Jay McRoy Rodopi Cultural angst begets trends in dark art, and as Jay McRoy’s scholarly Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema makes clear, there are plenty of compelling, sometimes traumatic, reasons that the country boasts such a vibrant, original and often shocking canon of genre films. The author begins his 200-page academic exploration with an introduction that sets up the following six chapters, including a lay of the historical and political landscape that fostered traditions such as supernatural kwaidan tales and the post-war giant monster movies. The book’s major topics, however, include torture/gore films (e.g. the Guinea Pig series, Flowers of Flesh and Blood); other forms of body horror (including a comparison of Hisayasu Sato’s Muscle with Pier Pasolini’s Salò); J-horror ghosties; the often…

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),…

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…

“I HAVE LONG BEEN FASCINATED BY THE WAY A PLACE CAN AFFECT ONE,” says Reggie Oliver, one of the sixteen contributors to Crooked Houses. “Those mysterious sensations of unease you have in a certain house, or a room in a house, can be inexplicable but are not easily dismissed. Almost everyone who has gone in search of a new home will have had the experience of coming to a place which seems on the surface ideal but just does not ‘feel right.'” An anthology of all-new stories from Egaeus Press, Crooked Houses is perhaps best defined by its subtitle: “tales of cursed and haunted dwellings.” The motif of a “bad place” has been a staple of horror fiction ever since the gothic castles: as times evolved, so have the dwellings,…

Like an exclusive film festival put on for audiences who are mostly too busy to actually watch films, the industry-only American Film Market once again dominated Santa Monica, California, from November 5 to November 12 of last year. Now in its 29th year, AFM has become the premiere global marketplace for production and distribution deals. As such, filmmakers, distributors, studio scouts, sales agents and festival programmers (7903 of them, according to the AFM) descended for advance looks at new works that most of the world is not yet aware of. This year’s AFM showcased 513 films, including 102 world premieres. Here’s a look at some of the roughly 70 horror highlights that screened at the event. BOOK OF BLOOD John Harrison/UK Coming on the heels of Ryûhei Kitamura’s Midnight Meat…

“I see no God up here…” so supposedly said cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin when he became the first human being to leave our planet in April of 1961, a mere few years after his country rocked the world by launching Sputnik into space. Egor Abramenko’s feature directorial debut – which borrows its name from that satellite – takes place more than two decades after these events, while continuing to lurk in their long shadows. Sputnik begins in 1983, as a two-man space shuttle falls to Earth. After one crewman dies brutally, the other, Commander Konstantin Veshnyakov (Pyotr Fyodorov), finds himself held in a military research facility in Soviet Kazakhstan. When Tatyana Klimova (Oksana Akinshina), a well-known psychologist on the verge of losing her license due to her unorthodox methods, is brought…

HELL-BELLY HORROR DEVIL’S DUE Starring Allison Miller, Zach Gilford and Sam Anderson Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett Written by Lindsay Devlin Fox Found-footage horror is at its scariest when its claustrophobic point of view forces you to see what’s in front of the camera without cutaways. The quiet observation of possessed sleepwalking in Paranormal Activity or Michael’s zombie-like presence in the final scene of The Blair Witch Project are so frightening because you can’t look away. Devil’s Due, apart from its cliche plot, fails as an effective found-footage horror by not sticking to the subgenre’s aesthetic. Zach (Zach Gildford) and Samantha (Alison Miller) are getting married, and Zach has decided to start documenting their relationship on video. They get hitched without a hitch in the Dominican Republic, but…

CONSUMER CULTURE WE ARE WHAT WE ARE Starring Bill Sage, Ambyr Childers and Julia Garner Directed by Jim Mickle Written by Nick Damici and Jim Mickle E1 Now this is how you remake a film – take a basic concept and recast it in a different place, for a different culture, in order to find new meaning in the theme. We Are What We Are director Jim Mickle and his co-writer Nick Damici transport Jorge Michel Grau’s 2010 cannibal film from the urban slums of Mexico to backwater America. They also change the family dynamic: instead of a patriarch dying and leaving two sons and a daughter to feed, a matriarch dies, leaving two daughters and a son. The machinations of the plots are markedly different, but ultimately both fractured…

It was the moment fans had been waiting for. After eleven seasons adrift in space, spent heckling some of the most unbearable genre films ever made, Mystery Science Theater 3000 star Mike Nelson – along with his acid-tongued robot puppet pals, Tom Servo (Bill Corbett) and Crow T. Robot (Kevin Murphy) – managed to escape home to Earth to lead normal lives in the series’ final episode. Although no longer forced to endure films such as Hobgoblins, The Screaming Skull and Monster AGo-Go, the show ended as the three main characters nevertheless found themselves in front of the TV in a tiny apartment, making yet more verbal jabs at trashy movies, echoing the sardonic pleasure we all feel when watching a particularly inept horror flick. Playful irony aside, the long-running…

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…

Franchise Follies • Archetypal Tendencies • Spiritless Spectres Hollywood Horror from the Director’s Chair Simon A. Wilkinson McFarland Like many of the sequels he focuses on in his book, Simon A. Wilkinson doesn’t really offer fans anything new. However, Hollywood Horror from the Director’s Chair does present a provocative, third-party examination of some of modern horror’s most beloved franchises. Wilkinson explores how series such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and even The Blair Witch Project have basically been adopted as bastard sons by big studios that are more interested in profit than creativity, and what these franchises have done to the careers of their directors, with many of them finding themselves pigeonholed in the genre as a result. Though he focuses primarily on a few…

Since the last issue, this column turned fifteen years old, I turned 49, and my wife put a bullet in the head of our zombified marriage. It was at the tail end of 1999 that I approached founding editor Rodrigo Gudiño about submitting a film review I hoped he’d print in his magazine. He offered me this column instead. I could never have imagined at the time that, 140 issues later, I’d be writing about my impending divorce. I’ve had a lot of time for self-reflection while packing up Casa del Gore-met. I’ve shared this home with my wife – and later our children – since we moved in the month after that first column was published. We got married a yearand-a-half later and, two years after that, the first…

I AM 21-YEARS-OLD and I am writing you from my 5x9 cell in the Texas Department of Correctional Justice. I am currently serving an eight-year sentence for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, which is south-Texas prosecutor slang for “my apartment was broken into and, in grabbing the only weapon I could think of, I attacked the trespasser with my replica Freddy Krueger glove.” After being arrested, my state-provided legal counsel consisted of “If you don’t sign for eight years now, they’re going to give you twenty.” I naively and unfortunately signed the next eight years of my life over to the State of Texas. Since I’ve been incarcerated, I have had an unexplainable amount of time to read and I recently began to write to people whose work I…

Could a real zombie apocalypse happen? And if it did, would we fare as poorly as the people in horror films and books do? In his latest non-fiction offering, Zombie CSU: The Forensics of the Living Dead, author Jonathan Maberry explores these questions through a series of candid, eye-opening interviews with law enforcement professionals, doctors and scientists on the cutting-edge, making some startling discoveries along the way. “I’ve always disagreed with the plot device that as zombies rose society would instantly crumble,” says Maberry. “I know too many seasoned cops and military guys to accept that. And the medical community would definitely embrace the opportunity to research a new disease. That’s how grants and Nobel prizes get won.” In order to test his theory, the two-time Bram Stoker Award winner…

JUST A QUICK WORD to tell you how excited I was to read your piece on ADULT. (RM#103) in the last Blood Spattered Guide. Every month or so, you seem to point out a music group that I reaaaally enjoy that doesn’t get a lot of coverage from the horror community, while it should. At first, I thought I wouldn’t write you this message, but then I read this comment in the Post Mortem column from that guy who was bitching about your articles and thought, “That’s sad, we always write back to complain, but not too much when we’re happy or satisfied.” So that’s it, I only wanted to say that, unlike that guy, you’re a reason why I still buy Rue Morgue! Have a nice day! MARC BOISCLAIR…

When a homicidal ex-stuntman is riding you down late at night in his car you might just want to remember what ol’ Jack Burton has to say. Or, better yet, interview ol’ Jack Burton himself about his thoughts on the matter. “Well, I just call’em car chase films, because they’re all about the American vehicle,” begins Kurt Russell, a.k.a. Jack Burton (Big Trouble in Little China), a.k.a. Snake Plissken (Escape from New York), a.k.a. R.J. MacReady (The Thing) and now the bloodthirsty Stuntman Mike in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof. “I think this movie has something to say about American men, who are kind of wandering at the moment, and young American women who are waiting for a void to be filled and are trying to fill it themselves, and in…

HORROR FICTION IS THE LITERARY EQUIVALENT OF PUNK ROCK. And no one makes a better case for this than John Shirley, a punk rocker-cum-groundbreaking genre writer who has spent the last few decades trying to, as he describes, encapsulate “the power of a loud, intelligent, but crazedly energetic rock concert” in book form. An apt pursuit, as much of Shirley’s work is inspired by the weird and wicked things he witnessed during his outsider years spent playing in bands such as Sado-Nation, Obsession and The Panther Moderns. He speaks of writing a letter to the late sci-fi/fantasy author Avram Davidson once, during that era, describing how he’d been swept up in a Manhattan police raid and locked in a cell with a bunch of junkie transsexual prostitutes. “I described to…

IF COUNTRIES HAD NATIONAL_MONSTERS, NORWAY’S WOULD CERTAINLY BE THE_TROLL. THE THINGS HAVE BEEN CRASHING THROUGH THE DARK WOODS OF THE NATION’S COLLECTIVE PSYCHE FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY NOW, BUT POP CULTURE HAS NOT BEEN KIND TO THE ONCE FEARSOME CREATURES. OVER THE COURSE OF THE PAST FEW DECADES, THESE MONSTROUS EATERS OF CHILDREN HAVE GRADUALLY BEEN REDUCED TO POT-BELLIED PENCIL-TOPPERS AND GIFT SHOP SOUVENIRS-– A SAD FATE INDEED FOR BEINGS WHOSE VERY MENTION ONCE KEPT GENERATIONS OF KIDDIES ON THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW. Trolls can trace their ancestry to Norse mythology, but it was a pair of folklorists named Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe (a zoologist and a theologian, appropriately) who are most directly responsible for making the creatures an indelible part of Norway’s cultural heritage. The…

FLIM + DVD + REISSUES FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES COLD SKIN Starring Ray Stevenson, David Oakes and Aura Garrido Directed by Xavier Gens Written by Jesús Olmo and Eron Sheean Samuel Goldwyn Films Although it has inevitably drawn comparisons to The Shape of Water, Xavier Gens’ Cold Skin is based on an Albert Sánchez Piñol novel originally published in 2002. And like Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar winner, it is not so much an outright horror movie as an exploration of what interactions with semi-human beings (fish-hominids in both cases) bring out in people. From the opening scenes, this is one handsome production, ravishingly shot by cinematographer Daniel Aranyó on forbidding locations in the Canary Islands and Iceland, with vivid production design by double Oscar-winner Gil Parrondo (this was his last…

VON TRAUMA ANTICHRIST Starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg Written and directed by Lars Von Trier IFC We at Rue Morgue take a lot of bullets for the team; subjecting ourselves to the worst of cinema so you don’t have to, and Antichrist left me feeling like William Holden at the end of The Wild Bunch. If you are at all tuned into the business of film, you’ll know its debut at the 2009 Cannes festival was infamous; It was roundly booed with only a spattering of applause. With its infamous reputation, one’s expectations of what lies within Lars Von Trier’s loopy world cannot help but be piqued. In essence, Antichrist is a meditation on grief, in this case a married couple – identified only as “He” and “She” –…

IN 1974, PARANORMAL INVESTIGATORS BARRY TAFF AND KERRY GAYNOR WERE APPROACHED IN A CALIFORNIA BOOKSTORE BY A WOMAN NAMED DORIS BITHER. The housewife and mother calmly informed them that her Culver City residence was being haunted by a spectral presence. Intrigued, the two men accompanied Bither to her home, where they conducted a thorough two-hour interview – at the climax of which Bither confessed to having been “attacked and raped by a ghost.” At first doubting her story, Taff and Gaynor nevertheless sanctioned a ten-week investigation. Over the course of that time they – and many other witnesses – observed a series of events that would become one of the most disturbing and controversial cases in the annals of American parapsychology, inspiring a best-selling book and a terrifying movie…

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…

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…

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…

WE’RE A HAPPY FAMILY GIRLY (1970) Starring Vanessa Howard, Howard Trevor and Ursula Howells Directed by Freddie Francis Written by Brian Comport and Maisie Mosco Scorpion Releasing “Nasty nanny is no good! Chop her up for firewood! When she’s dead, boil her head, make it into gingerbread!” Man, talk about a film falling through the cracks. It’s not entirely surprising that such an oddball, broadly satirical thriller as Girly – a.k.a. Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly – failed to find a mainstream audience in 1970, especially given its lack of name actors. However, this was still Britain’s golden era of horror cinema (albeit in its twilight years), which was also an incredibly fertile period for offbeat British comedies such as Bedazzled and The Magic Christian. Add the marquee value of…

SOUNDTRACK THE CRAZIES (2010) Mark Isham VARESE SARABANDE It’s been a few years since Mark Isham’s been involved with horror, but unlike his score for The Mist, his latest return to the genre marks a welcome revisiting of the ethereal/industrial electronica that helped make The Hitcher such a terrifying cult film. Isham knows how to exploit fears within insular communities and his clean sonic designs support stories where a hard-to-pin-down force is slowly wreaking havoc. Whether it’s hard percussive hits or digitized rhythms, one feels immediate unease. His grasp of melody ensures small pockets of humanity within the sound of The Crazies, but their shredded form infers a steadily in-screasing body count. Varese’s hourlong CD features lengthy cues that ebb, flow, smash and soothe. Isham’s hypnotic electronica’s been sorely missed…

IT’S A TROPE SO WELL-ESTABLISHED IN HORROR THAT MARTY, THE ARCHETYPAL STONER from Drew Goddard’s meta horror comedy, understands that reading Latin is dangerous without knowing exactly how or why. And he’s right, at least in the world of 2011’s Cabin in the Woods. His friend, the non-virgin proto-final girl Dana, ignores him and reads the Latin aloud anyway, reanimating the long-dead corpses who attack and kill much of the group. So, what is it about Latin that makes it so dangerous? The language itself has an inauspicious past: its heyday was two millennia ago during the Roman Empire, when it became a dominant language of the Ancient Mediterranean primarily through conquest, colonization, and enslavement. Through force, the small city state of Rome conquered and subjugated peoples from modern Great…

ANGUISH (USA) SONNY MALLHI Anguish confronts the issue of teenage mental illness using possession as a metaphor for schizophrenia. The first half of the film, a straight teen drama, boasts an unbelievably naturalistic performance from Ryan Simpkins (Surveillance) as Tess. Quiet, lonely scenes of her skateboarding in the fog or hovering on the periphery of her new high school’s clique perfectly capture feelings of adolescent isolation and self-consciousness that act as a precursor to her break with reality. Unfortunately the film jettisons all originality and ambiguity in favour of paint-by-numbers boo scares and a silly secular exorcism finale. AM ANTISOCIAL 2 (CANADA) CODY CALAHAN Antisocial (2013) took an interesting if not unique idea – what if social networking turned us into real zombies instead of metaphorical ones? – and…

THE ANNALS OF SUMMER-CAMP HORROR CONTAIN THEIR SHARE OF WHAT-THE-FUCK MOMENTS, but the final shot of 1983’s Sleepaway Camp is by far the what-the fuckest of them all. And that’s just one of the reasons that nearly 31 years after its premiere, writer/director Robert Hiltzik’s lurid curiosity is getting the special edition reissue treatment. For fans of’80s horror, Sleepaway Camp joins Friday the 13th and The Burning to form the unholy trinity of summer-camp slasher flicks. By the time it hit screens in November 1983, Jason Voorhees had hacked his way through three installments, and The Burning had enjoyed a number of re-releases since its initial May 1981 opening. Curiously, Hiltzik, then a film student at NYU, says he wasn’t influenced by any of those films. “I cannot say that…

BLOODSOAKED IN BARROW 30 DAYS OF NIGHT Starring Josh Hartnett, Melissa George and Danny Huston Directed by David Slade Written by Steve Niles, Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson Columbia Rue Morgue declared this film its most anticipated of 2007, and I too floated into the darkened theatre high on expectations for the adaptation of Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith’s groundbreaking vampire comic. If this wasn’t a perfect horror film, there would be no mercy, I would rip it a new jugular. Now, I can’t do it. 30 Days of Night may not be perfect, but it has such perfect parts. For a mainstream blockbuster, it is bold and bloody in its use of violence and gore, and remains true to the original comic in style and substance. Its main flaw…

WHAT THE KATZMAN DRAGGED IN THE WEREWOLF (1956) Starring Steven Ritch, Don Megowan and Joyce Holden Directed by Fred F. Sears Written by Robert E. Kent Sony Along with Roger Corman and Samuel Z. Arkoff, Sam Katzman was one of the few Hollywood players that could truly lay claim to a title like “King of the Bs.” But while most trash film fans are only too familiar with Corman and AIP’s extensive catalogue of schlock, Katzman has remained a comparatively obscure figure, despite his long reputation as one of the cagiest B-unit moguls of the studio era. Over his 40-year career, Katzman worked himself up from a lowly studio gopher to a prolific producer of low-budget fare, having a hand in no less than 240 films. Willing to hop on…

What makes a man a monster? That’s the question driving Durham County, a new six-episode TV series about a serial killer in suburbia and the cop trying to catch him. Though combining the dark surrealism of Twin Peaks, the dramatic realism and everyday setting of The Sopranos, and the stylistic touches of Six Feet Under, the show is distinctly Canadian. Set in the real-life suburbs of Durham County, Ontario – just outside of Toronto – it stars Hugh Dillon (former front man for Canuck rock band The Headstones) as Mike Sweeney, a hair-trigger cop investigating a series of murders where women are found beaten to death, a lock of their hair clipped as a souvenir. The show – which debuted on Global TV this past May and is out this…

DORFF TOSSING BOTCHED Starring Stephen Dorff, Jaime Murray and Sean Pertwee Directed by Kit Ryan Written by Derek Boyle, Eamon Friel and Raymond Friel Warner From the plain-Jane DVD cover and dull synopsis, you’d be forgiven for dismissing Botched as nothing more than a typical heist flick starring perennial scruffy-faced, asshole bad guy Stephen Dorff (Blade). Miss this surprisingly quirky balance of comedy and horror that has all the makings of a cult classic, though, and you might never forgive yourself, especially if you’re a fan of splatstick. Dorff plays Ritchie Donovan, a painfully unlucky professional thief who’s run out of second chances with his sordid financiers. Forced to take the heat for the latest in a string of mishaps, Ritchie gets dispatched to Moscow by an underworld kingpin to…

https://youtu.be/OXw8sSWDwvQ WOLVES WITHIN SHEPHERD Starring Tom Hughes, Kate Dickie and Greta Scacchi Written and directed by Russell Owen Saban Films They say no man is an island, but it’s easy to feel like one sometimes – like when your adulterous pregnant wife dies, leaving you with more than a little emotional baggage. This is the story of Shepherd, where Eric (Tom Hughes) is reeling from the loss of Rachel (Gaia Weiss), who not only stomped on his heart but drove a wedge between him and his family, leaving him a widow and a complete fucking mess. After a failed attempt to reconcile with his mom (Greta Scacchi) and a botched attempted suicide, an ad in the newspaper for a long-term, live-in shepherd position catches Eric’s eye. Figuring that some solitude…

UNCLE SAM CONQUERS THE MARTIANS BATTLE: LOS ANGELES Starring Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez and Bridget Moynahan Directed by Jonathan Liebesman Written by Christopher Bertolini Sony The bigger the budget, the more populist the film – it’s the rule of Hollywood economics. Independence Day was made for $75 million, stars A-lister Will Smith and has the president of the United States blasting aliens in a fighter jet. District 9, made for $30 million, stars an unknown whose character is slowly turning into a repulsive alien, and it takes sharp jabs at big business, government and xenophobia. Battle: Los Angeles was made for $70 million – guess which film it resembles more? Though its battle scenes, documentary-style camerawork and alien technology designs are heavily influenced by D9, thematically and politically Battle: Los…

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…

If Rue Morgue were a person, she’d be old enough to buy alcohol (in Canada, anyway) and drive a car; two seemingly arbitrary life landmarks that signify the transition into adulthood. A lot has changed in the past twenty years, not the least of which is the emergence of the Internet. The revolutionary impact of this technology can’t be understated – it’s been enough to send many a print publication into dire straights if not directly into bankruptcy. Rue Morgue still stands tall and the reason for this has a lot to do with adapting to change. In this same pulsing vein, you’ll notice that this issue of Rue Morgue looks rather different from the last, and I’m pleased to present several important changes to the magazine on the occasion…

BIRTH RITE ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968) Blu-ray/DVD Starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes and Ruth Gordon Directed by Roman Polanski Written by Ira Levin and Roman Polanski Criterion Hail Criterion! The highly respected boutique label has finally answered fans’ prayers for a special edition of Rosemary’s Baby, a landmark horror film that helped change the direction of scary movies forever. Along with Night of the Living Dead (released that same year), Roman Polanski’s Hollywood debut reinvigorated the themes of horror cinema’s past with a modern edge, creating a mix of occult paranoia and dark comedy that is still influencing films today. Mia Farrow is captivating as Rosemary, the fresh-faced wife of struggling actor Guy (John Cassavetes), who moves into a spacious New York City apartment to start a family. While Guy becomes…

ACON ARTIST WITH THE ABILITY TO ALTER HIS FACE AT WILL; A GAME OF POOL WITH ETERNITY AT STAKE; A WOUNDED COP WHO MIGHT BE DEATH ITSELF; A COTERIE OF ELDERLY PEOPLE MAGICALLY RELIVING THEIR LOST YOUTH THROUGH CHILDREN’S GAMES. These are the extraordinary imaginings of George Clayton Johnson who – along with his contemporaries Rod Serling, Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont – formed the creative cornerstone of The Twilight Zone. Four of Johnson’s stories have been selected for Image’s new Blu-ray Twilight Zone: Fan Favorites (out June 5), which assembles nineteen of the show’s greatest episodes. Taking a break from Jessica’s Run, a belated sequel to Logan’s Run, the classic novel he co-authored with William F. Nolan, the 82-year-old writer discusses his episodes in the new collection. Tell me…

APIANO PLAYS BY ITSELF IN AN EMPTY LOUNGE; DOORS SLAM OPEN AND SHUT WITHOUT WARNING; BLOODIED FIGURES STALK THE HOTEL HALLS. IT’S JUST ANOTHER NIGHT AT THE YANKEE PEDLAR INN, THE HAUNTED HOME-AWAY-FROM-HOME IN TI WEST’S LATEST FILM, THE INNKEEPERS. The movie focuses on two slacker hotel clerks in their twenties, Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), who are working at the 19th-century New England lodging, during its last weekend in business. With only a few guests to take care of, they stave off boredom by turning their attention to the legends of the ghostly inhabitants of the building, specifically abandoned bride Madeline O’Malley, who committed suicide in the 1800s when she was deserted by her lover. Claire’s more skeptical than Luke, though she is intrigued by Madeline’s story.…

I will blame illegal downloading and the film industry’s failure to respond to it as the cause of death of physical media, which seems inevitable. Rights issues aside, distributors at every level have missed an opportunity to combat this problem by not embracing the technology used to steal product. Offering consumers competing legal downloads – for example, a discounted movie-only bit torrent of the full resolution DVD – would surely have done more to counter piracy than lawsuits. The future of the internet as the primary avenue for home video distribution has come more into focus with the rise of Netflix and the demise of Blockbuster and large scale, brick-and-mortar retailers. This presents a bleak scenario for horror fans, who already complain about the limited selection on Netflix. It’s a…

ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER THE THING Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton and Ulrich Thomsen Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr. Written by Eric Heisserer and John W. Campbell, Jr. Universal You may find it surprising to learn that the new Thing prequel isn’t a bad thing. Actually, it’s a good thing. Maybe not a great thing, but a better thing than anyone anticipated. It kicks off days before the events from John Carpenter’s 1982 classic and, for the most part, great care is taken to ensure that the storylines dovetail coherently. Following a well-executed and harrowing opening sequence in which three researchers discover a long-buried UFO after plunging down a hole in the ice in their snow vehicle, American scientist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is summoned to…

WHEN PSYCHO, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street were first released to movie screens, it’s doubtful anyone could have predicted companies would one day be churning out toys and collectibles of every kind bearing the visages of Norman Bates, Leatherface, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees (and his mother, Pamela) and Freddy Krueger. It was actually with Freddy’s rise in popularity from mere movie villain to pop culture phenomenon in the late 1980s that manufacturers began to issue collectibles based on slasher film characters. Items such as the Talking Freddy Krueger Doll from Matchbox and Freddy’s Glove from Marty Toys were met with anger and concern from parents and psychiatrists when released in 1989, but such controversy would largely subside by the time McFarlane…

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,…

Subgenre mash-ups are nothing new in horror. You got your devil-worshipping redneck car-chase caper (Race with the Devil); you got your desert cannibal survivalist socio-political allegory (The Hills Have Eyes); you got your gory, feminist-enraging slasher film-as-character study (Maniac); you got your zombie comedy (too many and too tedious to name); you got your underwater Nazi zombies (Shock Waves and more – seriously!) and you got whatever the fuck your own personal take is on any given Troma film. And buried somewhere far beneath all of these, you got your 1975 übercheeze, el cheapo hillbilly horror love poem to 1950s giant bug movies, hereafter known as The Giant Spider Invasion. “Yer so dumb ya wouldn’t know rabbit turds from Rice Krispies,” goes the film’s most memorable line, courtesy of beady-eyed…

Vampires have been scaring humans for more than 300 years. From the earliest nosferatu of European folklore to the monster movie stars of the 1900s, they’ve remained the ultimate predators, immortal. But you’d never know it from watching most of the vamps onscreen these days. Somehow, in the past decade, these creatures of the night have become more like Count Chocula than Count Dracula. Their box-office scaring power consumed by zombies, vampires’ once monstrous personae has been slickly transformed into PG fetish model (Underworld), action hero (Blade) or prom date (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). No slight intended to the Buffyverse, but something is wrong when vampires are the least fearsome denizens in the realm of the undead. This fall, there is one film taking up the noble challenge to give…

For Japanese youth, life is cheap. In 1997, a fourteen-year-old boy cut off the head of an eleven-year-old, stuffed a note in the mouth and left it at the gate of his school. In 2003, a fourteen-year-old sexually mutilated a four-year-old before pushing the child off the roof of a parking garage; earlier that year in the same town, another boy was killed by bullies. In 2004, an eleven-year-old walked into her school lunchroom, dripping with blood after killing a classmate with a box-cutter because the girl called her names on the internet. In 2006, police discovered a van of mostly teenagers and twentysomethings who had met online and committed group suicide by poison. Last year, a seventeen-year-old walked into his local police station with his mother’s severed head in…

Rue Morgue · 002 Rue Morgue #218 Caitlin Cronenberg Cronenberg. That name is instantly recognizable; indeed, it is synonymous with horror films, and not just any horror films, but a particular kind made by David Cronenberg, who began making feature films in 1969 in his mid-twenties and is still making them as he has moved into his eighties – films involving fusing flesh with technology, horror coming from within rather than from the outside, sometimes from within and from the outside. When any film tries to veer into that territory, it is often referred to as “Cronenbergian.” Son Brandon is a filmmaker in his own right, and his movies – Antiviral, Possessor, Infinity Pool – also lean in the direction of sci-fi horror and, while distinctly his, they do have…

1 BLAMO BAT ONESIE $239 Trick-or-treating might be off the table for this year, but that’s no reason not to dress up as your favourite creature of the night. Blamo offers several animal-themed onesies in comfy, soft 100% cotton knit, but we’re partial to our own familiars. Also available in toddler sizes for your baby bat! Blamo.store 2 US ENAMEL PIN $10 Differentiate yourself from your tethered doppelgänger with an elegant pin referencing Jordan Peele’s sophomore hit Us. Featuring a gloved hand clutching a large pair of scissors and measuring 1.5 inches in sculpted two-tone enamel, it’s got two posts on the back to keep it right side up in this upside-down reality. Midnightdogs.co 3 ALIENS FACEHUGGER MASK $30 – $42 Ripley was right – if we break quarantine, we…

DRIVE-INS, DELETE BINS AND OTHER SINS Stupid me (the Bowen’s Basement opening line you’ve been waiting for all these years). Until now, I thought I’d experienced everything ants had to offer, at least cinematically speaking. Empire of the Ants, Them!, It Happened at Lakewood Manor, a.k.a. (wait for it) Ants!, a few also-rans, and that’s that, right? So here I was, ready to move on to The Deadly Mantis or Big Bad Bastard Boll Weevils of Boise or some such, when a dear friend alerted me to the existence of 1974’s Phase IV. What grabbed my attention right off was that it was directed by Saul Bass, long acclaimed for his title designs for Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Martin Scorsese and a tuchus-load more. Happily, this film has a damn…

All That and a Bag of Candy TALES OF HALLOWEEN Starring Lin Shaye, Barry Bostwick and Adrienne Barbeau Written and directed by Axelle Carolyn, Neil Marshall, Mike Mendez et al. Epic Pictures Just like Halloween itself, a good anthology horror film gives us a variety of tasty morsels to chew on while we celebrate all manner of ghoul, ghost and gore. The classic form usually offers approximately five jolting tales of terror (such as in 1982’s Creepshow), but has been known to present as many stories as there are letters in the alphabet (ABCs of Death series). Tales of Halloween, the newest monster kid on the block, finds the sweet spot somewhere in the middle. In this ten-part anthology led by Axelle Carolyn and featuring directorial efforts by members of…

BEATING ROMERO THE ZOMBIE DIARIES Starring Russell Jones, Anna Blades and Imogen Church Written and directed by Michael Bartlett and Kevin Gates Dimension Extreme Though completed in 2006, British-made The Zombie Diaries comes to North America in the wake of both Diary of the Dead and [REC]. The timing is a shame because as a result, this zombie mockumentary already seems like a rehash, even though it was actually completed first. While the movie is far too inconsistent to match the unrelenting suspense of [REC], it is at least better than the overblown Diary of the Dead, and when first-time filmmakers can beat George A. Romero at his own game, that’s certainly an achievement. Co-writers/directors Michael Bartlett and Kevin Gates focus on a group of documentary filmmakers working on a…

END OF THE ROAD Brian Keene Cemetery Dance Pack your bags! Collected here for the first time are Brian Keene’s weekly columns, originally written for Cemetery Dance during his 2016 Farewell (Not Really) Book Tour to promote his novels Pressure and The Complex. After Gabino Iglesias uses the book’s intro to explain why Keene isn’t an asshole, we’re treated to the passenger side of a writer’s journey as he hits the road towards the twilight of his life’s work and beyond. Through a maze of hotels, conventions, and fan interactions, we can’t help but understand what fuels Keene’s dark and humble heart. His love of our genre flows through his veins and comes to fruition in the ink scrawled across each page, interspersed with photographs as raw and real as…

Although it has an old soul, Tales of the Night Watchman began in 2011 – a collaboration between writer Dave Kelly and artist/co-creator Lara Antal. The book tells the story of Nora, a blogging barista, and her roommate Charlie, an otherwise normal, genuine “nice guy” who happens to be possessed by the spirit of a 1940s detective, the Night Watchman (exactly how and why that happened is one of the book’s core mysteries). Armed with a magical sceptre, the Watchman protects New York from demonic attacks brought about by the impending return of his arch-nemesis, the mysterious Merrick. “I’ve been a horror fan for as long as I can remember,” admits Kelly. “It started with Friday the 13th and Halloween; I would see all these VHS tapes at my local…

12 HOURS TO KILL THE PURGE: ANARCHY Starring Frank Grillo, Carmen Ejogo and Zoë Soul Written and directed by James DeMonaco Universal The success of the last summer’s lowbudget/high-concept thriller The Purge meant that a sequel was inevitable. And while it is certainly bigger, The Purge: Anarchy is also mostly better, although whatever tangential relationship the series had to horror has been largely jettisoned in favour of action-oriented mayhem and half-baked social commentary. But that doesn’t stop it from being entertaining and, dare I say it, a bit touching too. The set-up for the sequel, which takes place one year after the events of the first film, remains the same: in a near-future America, all crime, including murder, is permissible for a twelve-hour period once a year. In theory, the…

The Beds ide, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dracula Mark Dawidziak Continuum So many books have been written about Dracula – analytical academic tomes, pithy trivia lists, coffee table beauties – that my shelves groan under their weight. So why would anyone need yet another one detailing Bram Stoker’s life, novel, all the stage, film and television adaptations, the legacy of the Count from Aurora models to cereal boxes? In the case of Mark Dawidziak’s latest, it’s so you don’t have to read all the rest. Calling any guide that can be lifted with one hand “essential” is risky, yet Dawidziak’s companion to the Count does cover all the basics, and a bit more. The TV critic starts by recalling his own introduction to the vampire king (Abbott and Costello…

Wild Beyond Belief! Brian Albright McFarland In 1995, just weeks before he was murdered by a building contractor in a dispute over money, legendary exploitation filmmaker Al Adamson (Blood of Ghastly Horror, Dracula’s Castle, Blazing Stewardesses) was interviewed by aspiring genre scribe Brian Albright. I’m unsure whether the interview was Adamson’s last, but it’s now the centrepiece of this entertaining collection of conversations with luminaries of ’60s and ’70s American grindhouse cinema. In fact, the ubiquitous and much-loved Adamson provides a common thread throughout the book – virtually everyone interviewed here seems to have either worked with him or known him socially. Other notables from the heyday of exploitation include crewman-of-all-tradesturned-director John “Bud” Cardos (King dom of the Spiders), Jack Hill (Spider Baby), Monte Hellman (Beast From Haunted Cave), legendary…

“Ruin porn” is a term used to describe the relatively recent photographic subgenre that captures urban decay. Its rising popularity is evident in numerous blogs, social media accounts and art books fetishizing mouldering structures. Some of the most compelling, and frightening, of these images are abandoned institutions such as Massachusetts’ Danvers State Mental Hospital, where Session 9 was shot. We often say that a building in horror film is “a character” in the movie, but here Danvers is the star – a sprawling, bat-shaped 120-year-old brick behemoth full of mystery and trauma (the place where the prefrontal lobotomy was invented). And because it plays itself in the film (aside from a couple constructed sets, such as the morgue), history blends with fiction for an experience that literally cannot be duplicated…

CURB APPEAL OPEN HOUSE Starring Brian Geraghty, Rachel Blanchard and Tricia Helfer Written and directed by Andrew Paquin Lionsgate The uninspiring floating heads and cliché synopsis on the box may be cause to skip Open House, but much like The New Daughter (reviewed in RM#102), Andrew Paquin’s directorial debut is a severely misrepresented diamond in the rough. In the midst of divorce, Alice (Rachel Blanchard) and Josh (True Blood’s Stephen Moyer, whose pale skin and overbite reveal his role as Vampire Bill is really not a stretch) put their rambling LA home on the market. Shortly after the open house, a mysterious couple – fatal siren Lila (Tricia Helfer of TV’s Battlestar Galactica) and her soft-spoken killer accomplice David (Brian Geraghty) – murder Alice’s friend Jennie (True Blood’s Anna Paquin,…

“I remember reading Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and really enjoying it, but with only a few exceptions like Carrie and The Exorcist, it didn’t involve any of the movies I grew up loving. So I covered some of the same bases.” With this opening remark during our recent interview, author Jason Zinoman quickly established that he and I are very much on the same page, as it were, about horror cinema’s last golden age. Okay, but first things first. If you’re interested in film of any kind and haven’t read Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (1998, Simon and Schuster), you really need to. The auteur period in American cinema – roughly spanning the 1960s and early ’70s – has been chronicled and critiqued exhaustively, but never with such insight…

THE DEVIL’S IN THE EMAIL DEMONLOVER (2002) Blu-ray Starring Connie Nielsen, Chloë Sevigny and Charles Berling Written and directed by Olivier Assayas Arrow Academy Olivier Assayas’ chilly tech-noir piece makes its Blu-ray debut at a funny time: its occasional computer graphics are admittedly dated while its concerns – corporate psychopathy, desensitization, sexual violence, and the discomfiting influence of technology – have never been more relevant. The film busies itself with the chrome-and-glass world of industrial espionage and megabucks deals, where morals are traded and warring factions try to wrest control of the latest advances in tentacle porn. Enter Diane (Connie Nielsen: The Following), an impervious double-dealer and remorseless go-getter who chain-smokes her way to oblivion while making life miserable for assistant Elise (Chloë Sevigny: American Horror Story). The sleazy action…

ISSUE #181 On the first day of filming Blood of Dracula, Udo Kier was so debilitated from having lost twenty pounds in a week that he was at one point unable to stand. When Pakistani bride Aasia Bibi, 21, was forced to marry against her will, she tried to poison her husband with a yoghurt drink that inadvertently killed seventeen of her extended family members. Italian gore god Lucio Fulci passed away at his home on March 13, 1996 at the age of 68 after failing to take his insulin, causing some to speculate that his death was a suicide. In 2001, Michael Rooker unofficially reprised his role from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer for the music video “All Wrapped Up,” by the heavy metal band American Head Charge.…

Back in July, British newspaper The Guardian incensed horror fans when they published a story titled “How post-horror movies are taking over cinema.” The writer argued that while recent releases such as It Comes at Night and A Ghost Story engage with horror tropes, they deliver something more existential – and by implication, better – than typical scare fare. The term ‘post-horror’ was coined because, apparently, complex horror movies that challenge genre conventions are a whole new thing. By this admittedly specious logic, one might argue that The Transfiguration could be construed as post-horror. Its story of a parentless teen who thinks he is a vampire (but isn’t) is thought-provoking and sad, but not scary. And its largely handheld aesthetic, with footage shot surreptitiously in locations around New York City…

One of Ray Bradbury’s most famous quotes reads, “I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.” There’s a nice double meaning to those words. There’s the more obvious one within the context of genre, in which the author is using fantasy (or in the case of Fahrenheit 451, science fiction – he was specific about the terms) to show us what might wait at the end of the dangerous road we’re travelling, as he did with The Martian Chronicles. Published in 1950, as the Cold War was ramping up, the short story collection concerns humans attempting to colonize Mars after ruining Earth via a nuclear holocaust, and the conflict between them and the Martians whose planet they invade. When he says “I try to prevent it”…

CUPS RUNNETH UNDER PIRANHA 3DD Starring Danielle Panabaker, David Koechner and Christopher Lloyd Directed by John Gulager Written by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton Dimension Does the phrase “a step back for the Piranha series” actually mean anything to anyone? For a franchise that started with a film that, in the best of times, was largely forgiven on account of entertainment value, it makes sense that Piranha 3DD would attempt to rack up even more of what made the original so almost memorable. It also makes sense that, as a sequel to a remake of a ripoff of Jaws, its essence has been pasteurized to almost flavourless levels. When marine biology student Maddy (Danielle Panabaker) returns home for summer vacation to work at her family’s water park, things are more…

Humanoid From the Shallow End Even if your scalp has never been plagued with itchy, dry flakes before, I’d recommend using a dandruff shampoo for at least a few days prior to viewing the recently unearthed 1971 fromage farrago Zaat, as it may result in an unprecedented amount of head-scratching. Usually, even the longest-lost title will eventually ring a bell with at least one Rue Morgue staffer, but nobody – not the editors, publishers, art director, interns, creepy janitor who’s currently the subject of a restraining order issued by said interns, nor even I, your tireless delete bin excavator – had ever heard of Zaat prior to Cultra’s impressive new DVD/Blu-ray combo pack reissue. But experience has taught me that when the boss screens it at home and then attaches…

THIS ISLAND RAY MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961) Blu-ray Starring Michael Craig, Gary Merrill and Joan Greenwood Directed by Cy Endfield Written by John Prebble, Daniel B. Ullman, Crane Wilbur, and Jules Verne Twilight Time As soon as Bernard Herrmann’s main title music crashes and booms over the first frames of Mysterious Island, there’s no doubt you’re in for a classic Ray Harryhausen ride, with monsters, action and drama. And luckily, not a single element has diminished in potency since its release 50 years ago. While the screenwriters goosed Jules Verne’s 1874 story a bit, with the addition of creatures and two snotty British women, they still stayed true to the exciting narrative of a reporter and rival American Civil War soldiers who escape from prison in a giant balloon. After drifting…

What is a horror nerd? That’s the question CNN was trying to answer with an October 19 piece on its Geek Out blog, called “Taboo of the Horror Nerd,” by pop culture columnist Aaron Sagars. The article begins with, “They are outsider fans in an outlaw genre. Even as comic book, science fiction and fantasy nerds are embraced by popular culture for their quirk and charm, the horror fan culture exists on the fringe, left out in the cold and dark – perhaps with a chainsaw-wielding maniac on the loose.” He goes on to point out, “Basically, there is no The Big Bang Theory chronicling the lovable foibles of a dedicated nerd who can list his top five cannibal movies, and is steeped in a fandom of dismembered bodies and…