Table of contents for Issue 101 June 2010 in RUE MORGUE

As we leaned over the turntable, my heart was pounding out the fear that I was about to ruin my life by messing with the dark side. It was the late ’80s, my friend lived with his devoutly Catholic grandparents, and he had gotten his hands on one of their religious pamphlets that told of a secret satanic message hidden in the song “Stairway to Heaven.” His uncle, who lived in the basement of the house, played Dungeons & Dragons, smoked copious amounts of hash and had a vinyl copy of the album in question: Led Zeppelin IV. We placed it on the platter, set the player to “neutral” and my buddy slowly spun the record backward. Thick and droning, the whole thing sounded arcane and forbidden, but eventually we…

Promethea AMERICA’S BEST COMICS/WILDSTORM 1999 In a futuristic New York, college student Sophie Bangs’ research of mythical female warrior Promethea manifests into reality as she finds herself transformed into the fabled heroine and must do battle with her ancient enemies throughout history. “Promethea was this cool comic that Alan Moore started, the main hero was a goddess and a lot of goddess mythology was involved in that. Then, all of a sudden, he started adding in lots of historical stuff and, through the ages, you saw the different Prometheas and you’d see [Aleister] Crowley in there once in a while. Then he references the Illuminati – it was just really cool. … It’s [illustrated by] J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray. We actually got J.H. to do a story for…

TRUE BLOOD: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON Starring Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer and Ryan Kwanten Directed by Michael Lehmann, Scott Winant, John Dahl, et al. Written by Alexander Woo, Raelle Tucker, Brian Buckner, et al. Warner The folks behind True Blood are clever; it’s a cleverness that’s aided the show’s success and extends out into its marketing campaign (“VILF” anyone?) and its DVD/Blu-ray releases. The idea for this second set is simple: people love the world of True Blood, so expand it and invite them in. The box has everything it should. All the episodes are here – you’ll see Sookie, Bill and Eric go to Dallas for some vampire kidnapping, deception and facing-of-the-sun; Jason getting inducted into the Fellowship of the Sun, a fanatical anti-vampire religious sect, and still managing…

Hamlet, banished from Denmark for the murder of Polonius, sets out for England, and along the way stumbles across cutthroat pirates, a handful of ghosts and a familiar trio of witches. Once he reaches his destination, the reigning king, Richard III, offers to resurrect Hamlet’s dead father for a price: kill the wizard Shakespeare. The first issue of Kill Shakespeare plays fast and furious with some of the Bard’s most famous characters and settings, yet in a very intriguing fashion. The concept of the series is deceptively simple, and given the number of macabre characters and situations created by the playwright, the storyline has myriad roads it can travel down. If the remainder of the series is as confident and clever as this issue, this may very well be one…

It’s also the theme for the eleven tales that comprise Philip Nutman’s new short fiction collection Cities of Night. While Nutman may not yet be a household name in genre fiction, he’s certainly been prolific in horror. After kicking off his career as a journalist at the age of fifteen, he went on to garner a Bram Stoker Award nomination for Superior Achievement in a First Novel for his 1993 book Wet Work, and has since also pursued comics and screenwriting, where he is best known for penning the screenplay for the punishing 2007 adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door (RM#74). “It’s all storytelling,” says Nutman about writing for so many different mediums. “Some stories are more visually oriented and lend themselves to movies, and some buggers just…

LIFE SUCKS AND THEN YOU DIE HORROR FILMS ARE MORE VIOLENT THAN EVER, BUT TOO OFTEN THIS NI-HILISM DOESN’T SERVE A PURPOSE. Without the context of a compelling story, they run the risk of becoming merely cinematic endurance tests. This month: two relentlessly downbeat indie films struggle to rise above their shocking intent. Spécialité du chef is a stylized 26-minute splatter short by baby-faced French filmmaker Grégory Sacré. It opens with a man (Ludovic Bergaut) regaining consciousness, only to discover that he’s hanging from the ceiling of a meat locker by a chain attached to a metal plate screwed into his face. His hands are tied behind his back and he’s naked save for a pair of briefs. A similarly bound man and a woman hang beside him. He slips…

PETER STEELE 1962-2010 “Loving you was like loving the dead.”TYPE O NEGATIVE Everybody dies. Even the young, the beautiful, the talented. But man, 2010 has been particularly brutal for the sudden deaths of musicians. First, the suicide of troubled songwriter Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse (47). Then, the fatal heart attack of cult pop star Alex Chilton (59). Mysterious (um, probably drug-related) undoings of Avenged Sevenfold drummer The Rev, a.k.a. James Owen Sullivan (28), and indie brat Jay Reatard (29). Not to mention the loss of punk pioneer Malcolm McLaren to a rare asbestos-related cancer (64). And then, in the middle of the night on April 14, tweets that Peter Steele of Type O Negative had passed away. Steele, singer and bassist for the legendary Brooklyn-based goth-metal band, had “faked” his…

GRAPHICS PLAYABILITY SHIVERS HIGHEST RATING IS THREE MONSTER HUNTER TRI Wii Capcom The monsters are out there and they’re coming for you! So grab your shield and sword, as well as your axe, bow-gun and lance, and don’t forget to pack your Speedo, because you’re taking the battle underwater. This is the third offering in the extremely popular Monster Hunter franchise, and the first one available for the Wii. For those unfamiliar with the series, it’s basically a hunt-or-be-hunted affair where players take on an impressive variety of sharp-clawed, teeth-gnashing monstrosities. In the latest installment, you are a novice hunter trying to save a quaint seaside village from the fearsome sea serpent Lagiacrus. But before you can take on the beastie, you must build your social standing…

WEIRD STATS & MORBID FACTS CASE NO. 101 Every Easter in the Philippine province of Pampanga, Roman Catholic penitents volunteer to be nailed to crosses as an expression of their faith. According to Tom Weaver’s A Sci-fi Swarm and Horror Horde, during lunch breaks from shooting The Return of the Vampire, Bela Lugosi would sleep in the set’s coffin. There are several conflicting reports as to whose house chronically ill ex-Beatle George Harrison died in. It is believed that this misinformation came at the behest of Harrison himself, who did not want the place of his death to become a tourist destination. Louisa Baldwin, mother of former British prime minister Stanley Baldwin, was the author of many popular turn-of-the-century Victorian ghost stories. Nineteenth-century graverobbers did not just work locally; in…

Charlaine Harris Ace Though True Blood makes respectful use of its literary source material, the TV show and book series remain two different properties. Example: characters who’ve shuffled off this mortal coil on the television show may yet be alive in the books, and vice versa. The same goes for certain plot points. It’s important to know that going into this review; fans of the show will soon see why… Dead in the Family picks up in the aftermath of the climactic and bloody Fae War of book nine (Dead and Gone). Several long-standing characters have died in battle and Sookie’s still reeling after being tortured by a pair of vicious fairies. For the first time, she considers killing as more than a mere act of self-defense. And one can…

DRIVE-INS DELETE BINS AND OTHER SINS MY NAME IS MUD! Who says horror movies aren’t hazardous to your health? You may never have seen The World Beyond (1978) – don’t feel bad, because most people haven’t – but it’s the one film that literally threatened my physical well-being. Specifically, it caused one of my oldest and dearest friends to throw a knife at me. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Even more so than today, TV in the 1970s was rife with pilots for proposed series that never took off, and in many cases it’s just as well they didn’t. But the mind boggles at the horror bounty that the now all-but-forgotten World Beyond might have offered us, had it spawned at least one season. The show’s premise exists…

CLASH OF THE TITANS (2010) Ramin Djawadi SONY Unlike Laurence Rosenthal’s ebullient and adventuresome score for the original 1981 Clash of the Titans, Ramin Djawadi’s take for the 2010 remake is firmly rooted in contemporary music with slight evocations of ancient Greece. There are some effective tender moments in the score, which is generally bassy bombast and the orchestral/electronic fusion style pioneered by Hans Zimmer and his old Media Ventures troupe, but cuts such as “Bring Everything (But the Owl)” are too thematically cyclical. A tenminute-long grungy guitar/pulse track, “Be My Weapon” by co-composer Neil Davidge, sounds great, but it’s stylistically out of place among Djawadi’s cues, which are clearly built around bass tones, ethnic instrument samples and percussion clusters. While there’s neither horrific imagery nor edgy writing in this…

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS HORROR HAPPENINGS JOHN CARPENTER AND STEVE NILES TEAM UP FOR F.E.A.R. 3 VIDEO GAME If you’ve been yearning for a horror-themed video game guaranteed to quicken the pulse rather than simply lighten the wallet, director John Carpenter and comic scribe Steve Niles intend to deliver this fall with F.E.A.R. 3. According to Niles, the genre heavyweights have helped crank up the scares significantly in the latest installment of this first-person shooter series for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC. “I had worked with John once before, on a film project that never happened,” he explains. “We became friends in the process and jumped at the chance to work together again. He’s even more of a gamer than I am, and that’s saying a lot.” Best…

SANS OF BRITISH COMIC BOOK ARTIST and frequent Danzig collaborator Simon Bisley, might be surprised to learn the man responsible for visually conjuring some of the most demonic images in comics has no interest in religion, gods or the occult. “Earthbound gods, yeah, but none of that hippie, dancing around rocks, singing and sacrificing kinda shit,” says Bisley, from his home in London. “I could illustrate the Bible and I’m not religious in the least bit. … Besides, I see the devil as more of a fun thing anyway, as more of a rebel. All the great writers and great artists of our time were rebels. Satan was a rebel. He’s just a guy who got kicked out of heaven because he was an individual. A lot of us can…

BLOOD, MONSTERS, MYSTERY, SEX, ROMANCE AND VIOLENCE – True Blood, HBO’s biggest breakout hit since The Sopranos, seemingly has it all. Add to this: that it’s based on a popular book series by award-winning mystery author Charlaine Harris, was reinvented for television by Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball and features a stellar cast, an iconic theme song, vibrant cinematography and clever scriptwriting, and the secret of its success is obvious. It’s one of those rare television series that fires on all cylinders, and has serious crossover appeal to boot. You don’t need to be a horror fan to get caught up in the strange happenings in Bon Temps, Louisiana. But it certainly helps. “I think that even though it is a project about supernatural creatures, which you are seeing…

AT RUE MORGUE, WE ADMIT TO A CERTAIN SICK SENSE OF CIVIC PRIDE THAT THE LEGENDARY GEORGE A. ROMERO NOW LIVES AND WORKS IN OUR HOMETOWN OF TORONTO. So with the release of his latest undead epic, Survival of the Dead, we figured it was high time to pay a visit to the 70-year-old zombie master at his very own House of the Dead. Well, it’s not exactly a house – he lives with his girlfriend on the top floor of a condo on the east side of town with a spectacular view looking west over the city. Taking in the sights myself, I can’t help but smile at the idea that the godfather of the modern horror film resides here, perched high above the rooftops, watching over us through those…

ZOMBIE DEARESTINDIE AND D.I.Y FILMS REVIEWED ZOMBIE DEAREST ZOMBIE DEAREST David Kemker zombiedearest.com The renaissance in zombie movies over the last few years may have shot a little adrenaline into the heart of the walking dead, but the trend has also led to more lazy genre outings than contemporary classics. Take Zombie Dearest, a horror comedy that only seems to incorporate zombies for the sake of a wider audience. The plot sees a troubled married couple move out to the country in an attempt to save their relationship. The husband (writer/director David Kemker) agrees to fix up the house but soon finds himself awkwardly wishing for help – out loud. A non-threatening zombie suddenly appears and quietly helps him work. It’s never explained how or why. Said zombie arrives at…

VAMPIRES, WEREWOLVES, ZOMBIES: COMPENDIUM MONSTRUM Suzanne Schwalb and Margaret Rubiano Peter Pauper Press This guide cannot teach anything new to a true slayer of the undead (if you don’t already know to kill a vampire with a stake through the heart, you’re in the wrong business) but Bruce Waldman’s beautiful maps and illustrations, plus an extended Transylvanian travel section, make this pocket-sized monster compendium worth packing for easy reference on your next fateful mission. JESSA SOBCZUK BITES: SCARY STORIES TO SINK YOUR TEETH INTO Lois Metzger, ed. Scholastic Vampires, werewolves and shape-shifters, oh my! Middleschoolers in search of some monster scares could certainly do worse than this 115-page, seven-story collection. Edgier and more graphic than many titles for this age group, Bites includes tales about a pair of teenage grave-robbers,…

PROPHECY (1979) Leonard Rosenman FILM SCORE MONTHLY Esteemed modernist composer Leonard Rosenman is responsible for a pair of superb orchestral scores written for two of the best bad movies around – The Car [Don’t let Bowen hear you say that! – ed.] and the pus-oozing, mutant bear idiocy of Prophecy. Rosenman’s brand of serial orchestral writing often suited tough-to-pin-down stories and characters. He just had a knack for building a sense of terror of the unknown with a classical sheen, which is why Prophecy even functions as a small concert work. The mood veers from ferocious waves of flittering brass to tender pauses weighed by semi-tragic strings. Fleeting moments of warm harmonic passages are ephemeral, and are often slashed apart by barbed brass chaos. Unlike the boneheaded movie, Rosenman’s Prophecy…