Table of contents for Issue 114 August 2011 in RUE MORGUE

My second-hand VHS copy of Fright Night was a fetish object in my early teen years. I’d first discovered it at my local Jumbo Video, in the “dungeon,” which was the store’s horror section – a cordoned-off space painted and decorated to look like Dracula’s castle. At that age, without internet or anyone to recommend horror movies to me, I’d become accustomed to judging a movie by its cover. Fright Night is one of those rare films that actually surpasses its unforgettable artwork, and I fell under its spell immediately, entranced by that image of a vampiric cloud looming over a suburban home. As RM’s art director, Gary, says of the film, “It’s like a Halloween bag for kids: it’s got everything in there.” Indeed it does: multiple monsters, insane…

It’s getting increasingly tough to secure financing for an indie movie project. When it comes to fundraising, filmmakers must be more creative today than they’ve ever been. Scott Glosserman, director and co-writer of the 2006 meta-horror hit Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon and the recently released made-for-MTV thriller The Truth Below, isn’t just waiting for the next financing model to come along – he’s creating it. Glosserman is turning to social networking to finance Before the Mask, what he calls a “spremake – a sequel/prequel/remake” to Behind the Mask. On the project’s Facebook page (facebook.com/before-themask), you aren’t simply prompted to “like” the film – you’re asked to help finance it by pre-ordering the DVD. Clicking the “Pre-Order Now” button doesn’t take you to another site, it collects…

1 VAMPLETS $19.95 These lil’ suckers may look cute, but they want your blood as well as your heart. Adopt a Vamplet and then browse the website to register its undead certificate, create a customizable online tombstone and coffin, and learn more about your baby bloodsucker’s darkest proclivities. Save one from the grave at vamplets.com. 2 ZOMBIE BLOOD $4.99 Take your vengeance on the flesh-munching ex-living by gulping down a few cc’s of Zombie Blood – in a specially constructed blood bag – and see how they like it. The lime-green gore is packed with all the (synthetic) nutrients that you’d find in regular blood, plus a hefty jolt of caffeine to reanimate you. Guzzle grue at thinkgeek.com. 3 CTHULHU ROASTER $35 In the giant barbecues of the extra dimensions,…

HUNG OUT TO DRY FINAL DESTINATION (2000) After surviving a horrific plane crash that claims the lives of 287 people, Tod (Chad Donella) slips on a wet bathroom floor and gets strung up by a clothesline in his bathtub. With his bare feet slithering on the tub’s soapy surface and a pair of scissors agonizingly just out of reach, Tod’s eyes bulge and his face reddens as he’s slowly strangled to death. This scene set the tone for all of the creative kills to come as Tod took his place as Death’s very first reclaimed victim. THIRD TIME’S THE HARM FINAL DESTINATION Another crash survivor (Kristen Cloke) is home alone, drowning her sorrows with a mug full of booze, when Death shows up to crash her private party. The…

SALUTE TO A SHOWMAN SPINE TINGLER! THE WILLIAM CASTLE STORY (2007) DVD Featuring Terry Castle, Joe Dante and John Waters Directed by Jeffrey Schwarz Automat Pictures Back in the late 1950s and early ’60s, while film makers such as Terence Fisher and Roger Corman were successfully crafting sumptuous Gothic chillers for Hammer and AIP, producer/director William Castle was busy carving out his own niche with a series of playful, (mainly) black-and-white shockers that, despite hokey effects and modest production values, managed to attract huge audiences. Helping to make these low-budget flicks a success was Castle’s inimitable brand of self-promotion and carnival barker showmanship – which often involved releasing the films with off-the-wall gimmicks such as “Illusion-O,” which saw placard glasses handed out to theatregoers that allowed them to “see” apparitions…

DC Comics recently announced that in September it will relaunch its comic line with a slew of new and rebooted titles in an attempt to revitalize the company. Naturally, the announcement caused some concern among fans, especially followers of John Rozum’s excellent Xombi, which is conspicuously absent from the fall schedule. The comic, launched in March 2011, has garnered a tremendous amount of critical praise and accrued a rabid fan base during its short shelf life. Xombi’s story began back in 1994 when it debuted as part of DC’s Milestone imprint, a line of comics showcasing ethnic super-heroes. The series’ lead character, David Kim, is a Korean-American scientist who becomes technologically enhanced after being injected with a nanotech virus. The nanites inside his bloodstream give him the power to restructure…

CRAZY 4 CULT: CULT MOVIE ART Gallery 1988 Titan For five years, Los Angeles’ Gallery 1988 has hosted an annual “Crazy 4 Cult” art show where renowned artists, such as Shepard Fairey and Jason D’Aquino, peddle their pop culture-inspired works. Now, Titan Books has assembled some of the exhibit’s best art into a hardcover volume, featuring more than 150 artists. While the broad focus is on cult cinema, They Live, Dawn of the Dead, The Evil Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Shining, Friday the 13th and The Exorcist are all celebrated within, making this an ideal coffee-table conversation piece. JENNIFER M. WOOD BLACK SABBATH FAQ Martin Popoff Backbeat Books As obsessive as Black Sabbath is heavy, this unorthodox grab bag of Sabbath insider interviews, timelines, analyses and rare…

Perched on a hill, a few miles from Montego Bay, Jamaica, the Rose Hall Great House is a short distance from the seashore. Surrounded by gardens, ponds and a well-kept golf course, the Georgian-style mansion is a tranquil place, with an extraordinary view of the water. A few cats laze around the grounds, watching visitors come and go. Today it might seem peaceful, but at one point the structure was in ruins – crumbling and decaying for approximately 130 years, left to rot, and harbouring a particularly sinister past. The drive up the slope to the majestic house is a short one. Nobles, servants, slaves and celebrities such as Johnny Cash have all walked in and out of Rose Hall since the structure was built in the 1700s. Cash spent…

“We’re Not Gonna Take It”– TWISTED SISTER If you read my column on my problems with death metal in RM#110, you may recall that I am constantly questioning what exactly makes music horrific. Because unlike films and books, there really is no distinct “horror music” genre. Yes, there are a few acts – Alice Cooper, Misfits, Skinny Puppy – that have blatantly adopted enough horror themes throughout their work to be considered icons of the genre. For me, though, equally of interest are artists who create unsettling, scary sounds, whether or not they ever mention a monster. Atari Teenage Riot has been producing audio terrors since 1992. The Berlin-based group describes itself as “digital hardcore” – combining the pulse of techno with the politics of punk in an intense mix…

Sign up at RUE-MORGUE.COM. Email HAUNTS@RUE-MORGUE.COM UNITED STATES AMOK TIME 2949 Hempstead TPK Levittown, NY 516-520-0975 amoktime.com BERSAL’S CHOP OF HORRORS 1815 Trawood Space D El Paso, TX bersalschopofhorrors.com COLLECTORS CORNER 7911 Harford Rd. Baltimore, MD 410-668-3353 collectorscornermd.com CORNERSTONE COMICS 980 E. Orangethorpe Ave., Ste A Anaheim, CA 800-521-9975 DARK DELICACIES 4213 W. Burbank Blvd. Burbank, CA 818-556-6660 darkdel.com DIMENSION COLLECTIBLES 10 N. Main St. Ambler, PA dimensioncollectibles.net DREAMHAVEN BOOKS 2301 E. 38th St. Minneapolis, MN 612-823-6161 dreamhavenbooks.com DREAMLAND 1415 W. Schaumburg Rd. Schaumburg, IL 847-524-6060 dreamlandcomics.com HORRORBLES 6731 W. Roosevelt Rd. Berwyn, IL 708-484-7370 horrorbles.com THE HOUSE OF ODDITIES 421 Spring St. Jeffersonville, IN 812-285-1185 thehouseofoddities.com KEITH’S COMICS 5400 E Mockingbird Ln., Ste 120 Dallas, TX 214-827-3060 keithscomics.com OUT OF THE ORDINARY MUSIC AND GIFTS 733 Monongahela Dr. Glassport,…

LONG LIVE JOHN BOWEN for “Bowen Calls Bullshit” in RM#113! FYI: If you direct, write or simply enjoy horror, have some pride in that. Please don’t invent some pretentious new genre name because you feel “above” horror. John and I will loudly call bullshit on such actions. Then we’ll both get stabby. RICHARD GAVIN, VIA FACEBOOK TROLLHUNTER was a lot of fun. Can’t wait till they ruin it with a US remake. DOUG RINALDI, VIA FACEBOOK THANKS FOR YOUR REVIEW of my translation of The Necrophiliac [in RM#112]. It has been such a long road getting this thing published that you can’t imagine… well, you work in publishing, so perhaps you can imagine. In any case, your review was great not only because it gave much needed press to the…

While much of the furor over extreme movies last year rained down on the necro-sexual excesses of Srdjan Spasojevic’s A Serbian Film, 2011 has already seen controversies erupt in three countries over three different movies. And for the first time in recent memory, attacks came from both sides of the political divide. In April, Dead Hooker in a Trunk, the debut feature from Vancouver-based twin filmmakers Jen and Sylvia Soska, had its premiere at the Dark Bridges Film Festival in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, cancelled and its posters destroyed in response to an anonymous call to the Roxy Theatre. The problem? The title was deemed offensive in light of a rash of Aboriginal prostitutes who’d gone missing in Western Canada. Jason Eisener’s Hobo with a Shotgun received similar treatment from the Roxy…

Fright Night WRITER TOM HOLLAND HELPS US ILLUSTRATE HOW HIS UNLIKELY HIT REINVENTED THE VAMPIRE FOR MODERN VIEWERS. SURVIVING THE KILL-OR-BE-KILLED WORLD OF HORROR CAN BE AS TRICKY FOR MONSTERS AS IT IS FOR THEIR HUMAN VICTIMS. VAMPIRES ARE A PERFECT EXAMPLE. YOU’D NEVER KNOW IT FROM THEIR CURRENT PERCH AT THE TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN, BUT BLOODSUCKERS WERE PRACTICALLY ON THE ENDANGERED SPECIES LIST 30 YEARS AGO. THEY THRIVED DURING HAMMER’S HEYDAY IN THE 1960S, BUT BY THE LATE ’70S DRACUL A AND HIS PROGENY HAD SLUNK OFF INTO THE BOX-OFFICE GHETTOS OF ART-HOUSE HORROR AND GIMMICKY PORN. It wasn’t necessarily a crisis of their own making. If vampires were teetering on the edge of extinction, there were a few dozen guys with masks and meathooks who were…

WHEN WILLIAM RAGSDALE LANDED THE ROLE OF CHARLEY BREWSTER IN THE ORIGINAL FRIGHT NIGHT, HE WAS BUSY SPENDING HIS DAYS SHUCKING OYSTERS IN A SAN FRANCISCO RESTAURANT. He’d finished acting school and had a few small roles in films and some leads in plays, but Tom Holland’s Fright Night was his biggest gig yet. Of course, it helped that Ragsdale already worshipped at the altar of horror long before the vampire comedy came along. “I was a huge fan of the genre as a kid,” confesses the actor, who counts Frankenstein, Dracula, The Abominable Dr Phibes, Count Yorga, The Legend of Boggy Creek, Dark Shadows and Night Gallery among his early favourites. “One of my favourite [Night Gallery] episodes involved a rich, spoiled Southern white brat who inherited his aunt’s…

SMALL-SCREEN SCARES ARE ALL THE RAGE THESE DAYS ON BOTH PREMIUM CABLE and network television, with monsters, murderers and mysterious happenings all vying for prime-time domination. Join us as we take stock of new and returning genre series, and preview what fresh frights they have in store for their fans this year. AMERICAN HORROR STORY Created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk (NEW SERIES) The creators of Glee and Nip/Tuck have shot a reportedly promising pilot for this one-hour drama about a husband and wife (Dylan McDermott and Connie Britton, respectively) who transplant their family from Boston to San Francisco for a fresh start after suffering through a miscarriage and an affair. But their troubles don’t end there: turns out their new digs are haunted! Tentatively set to air this…

THE ROUTH OF BADNESS DYLAN DOG: DEAD OF NIGHT Starring Brandon Routh, Sam Huntington and Taye Diggs Directed by Kevin Munroe Written by Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer and Tiziano Sclavi Fox Dylan Dog: Dead of Night – the subtitle implies the first of an ongoing series. Fat chance, seeing as it earned approximately $4.5 million at the box office, on a $20 million budget. Eep. Given the popularity of comic book adaptations right now, that’s quite a feat of fuckuppery. But don’t blame the source material. The film is based on Italy’s most popular ongoing comic series, about a supernatural private detective – think Darren McGavin’s Night Stalker character in the crime-noir world of a Dashiell Hammett story – which we’ve already had a taste of thanks to 1995’s…

JUST LIKE MUMMY USED TO MAKE CURSE OF THE FACELESS MAN (1958) DVD Starring Richard Anderson, Elaine Edwards and Adele Mara Directed by Edward L. Cahn Written by Jerome Bixby MGM Hammer Films gets most of the credit for reanimating Universal’s classic screen monsters in the 1950s, but the truth is they weren’t the only ones ransacking 1930s horror franchises for inspiration. Even before Hammer began its lush Gothic adaptations of Dracula and Frankenstein, poverty row studios such as Gramercy, AIP and Clover were busy cranking out cheap black and white pictures that modernized these monsters for the atomic age. Curse of the Faceless Man, like similar features The Werewolf (1956), The Return of Dracula (1958) and the Black Lagoonspawned The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959), isn’t always successful at…

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…

The column you are about to read is an account of the tragedy that befell Tobe Hooper, his villain Leatherface and the various creatives behind 1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It is all the more tragic because they were original. Hooper could not have expected, nor would he likely have wished to see, so many of his mad and macabre musings from TCM blatantly copied by other directors for their own films. Regardless, paying homage to a classic doesn’t automatically make a film cringe-worthy; let’s take a quick survey of some of the more accomplished recent DVD releases that owe everything from a debt of gratitude to a cut of their retail sales to Hooper and co-writer Kim Henkel. Headcheese-ing up the list is Krist Rufty’s Psycho Holocaust (2009), available…

SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK. LEGENDARY DEATH METAL BANDS SUCH AS AUTOPSY, AT THE GATES AND CARCASS DID, AND THEY’VE ALL TOURED CLASSIC MATERIAL TO GREAT ACCLAIM. NOW GOREGRIND GODS EXHUMED HAVE LURCHED BACK TO LIFE TOO, BUT THEY’RE NOT RESTING ON THEIR LAURELS. Inspired after seeing aforementioned seminal British grind innovators Carcass – the first band to set medical dictionaries to music – lead vocalist/guitarist Matt Harvey formed Exhumed in 1991 at the tender age of fifteen. The band played shows but recorded only a small number of demos and splits (so its members could finish their educations) before releasing their aptly titled debut full-length Gore Metal in 1998. Slaughtercult followed in 2000, and Anatomy is Destiny in 2003. But by 2005, Harvey was ground down by the business of…

During a 2004 procedure to correct a testicular malformation, Romanian doctor Naum Ciomu lost his temper after making a surgical error and proceeded to sever his patient’s penis and then cut it into three pieces. Ciomu was barred from practicing medicine for three years and ordered to pay damages to the victim. According to Ken Hanke’s unauthorized biography of Tim Burton, during the time the filmmaker worked at Disney he often “took to sitting in a closet or hiding under his desk to avoid dealing with anyone.” During the summer months, one child dies in a portable outdoor pool every five days. Author Henry James (The Turn of the Screw) once wrote that “an enthusiasm for [Edgar Allan] Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.” Landing…

“WHO WOULDN’T WANT TO PLAY SOMEONE WHO’S ALL-POWERFUL, LIVES FOREVER, AND IS IRRESISTIBLE?” REMARKS CHRIS SARANDON OF HIS MEMORABLE TURN AS JERRY DANDRIGE IN TOM HOLLAND’S FRIGHT NIGHT. It’s an observation that may seem like a no-brainer in hindsight, but at the time he was offered the role of the vampire-next-door, Sarandon – who had previously received an Oscar nomination for his performance opposite Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon, appeared alongside screen luminaries such as Ava Gardner, Burgess Meredith and John Carradine in The Sentinel, and split celluloid with Rutger Hauer, John Hurt, Dennis Hopper and Burt Lancaster in Sam Peckinpah’s The Osterman Weekend – was understandably apprehensive about starring in a campy horror-comedy with a first-time director calling the shots. “Before reading [the script], I was wary of…

STEPHEN GEOFFREYS IS TOUGH TO PIN DOWN. AFTER BEING NOMINATED FOR A TONY AWARD IN 1984, AT AGE 20, HE LAUNCHED A HOLLYWOOD CAREER THAT, OF COURSE, INCLUDED HIS DEFINING ROLE AS EVIL ED IN FRIGHT NIGHT. HE DID A FEW MORE GENRE FILMS, INCLUDING THE ROBERT ENGLUND-DIRECTED 976-EVIL, BEFORE DISAPPEARING FOR A FEW YEARS AND THEN SPENDING A DECADE AND A HALF WORKING IN GAY ADULT MOVIES. However, approximately five years ago he started appearing in (indie) horror films again and at the odd genre convention. After an enthusiastic email introduction, he lives up to his elusive reputation, as a couple of weeks pass with several unanswered emails and phone calls. Finally, I get him on the phone to talk Fright Night. “From the first time I read the…

THE PRICE IS LIFE DEATH TUBE Cinema Epoch What would you do if you came across a live video-streaming website where you could watch people being killed in bizarre ways? Chances are you’d check it out for a while and then debate with your buddies about whether it was real or not. Death Tube is a Saw-inspired Japanese splatter spectacular about a website where people become unwilling contestants in a vicious game show where the losers pay with their lives. Unfortunately, most of the games are rather ludicrous, such as having to solve a Rubik’s Cube or finish an obstacle course while being harassed by a guy in a cartoon bear costume. A morality play at best, a lame Japanese game show at worst, Death Tube is ultimately a disturbing…

SNAKEMEN TELL NO TALES Here is wisdom: whether he shows up in dramas, comedies, action thrillers or even the odd horror film, Strother Martin is not to be trusted. He may not have spent his entire 30-plus-year career playing villains, but he remains best known as that guy whose kindly countenance thinly disguises anything from moral turpitude to pure evil. His career-defining role was the sadistic Captain in Cool Hand Luke (“What we have here is failure to communicate”), but he also famously scuzzed it up as the sleazy manager of a minor-league hockey team in Slap Shot and as a small-town doctor who secretly leads a coven of devil worshippers in The Brotherhood of Satan. Just prior to his death in 1980, he was to play bad guy Otis…

ALLIED ARTISTS HORROR, SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY FILMS Michael R. Pitts McFarland Once upon a time, genre film books with plot synopses, detailed cast lists and “rare” photographs were a godsend for horror geeks. Fevered fans could spend hours drinking in the details of films they had not seen – and weren’t likely to see unless they stumbled upon some late-night TV airing. But the internet has changed all that; if you want to know all about an obscure 1960s vampire film, just browse countless online reviews and then order it on-demand. So why do some horror historians still insist on writing books as if the internet never happened? This is certainly the case with Allied Artists Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy Films, which covers the more than 80 feature…

BLACK SUNDAY SOUNDTRACK Les Baxter KRITZERLAND Les Baxter’s complete 51-minute score is pretty much the only vehicle through which one can experience the shorter American version of Mario Bava’s elegant 1960 shocker. AIP’s habit of rescoring and re-dubbing Italian imports may have rendered their new product more palatable for the teen drive-in crowd, but Roberto Nicolosi’s moodier and even-tempered scoring style was a better fit for Bava’s carefully rendered Gothic chiller. Baxter’s caffeinated approach did provide a sonic bridge for horror fans weaned on Universal-style heavy brass, dissonant strings and eerie organ chords, but perhaps the only aspect that really served the film (besides hastening the pacing) is the central theme, when played on strings. Baxter could work wonders when being minimal and deconstructing his sharply drawn melodies, but he…

F.E.A.R. 3 PC, PS3, Xbox 360 WB Games It’s been six years since the last installment in the F.E.A.R. franchise, which is centred around a creepy little girl named Alma whose arsenal of scary psychic powers have made a lot of gamers lose sleep at night. But F.E.A.R 3, featuring a storyline penned by horror legends John Carpenter and Steve Niles, takes us right back to the end of the previous outing, with Alma all grown up, very pregnant and incredibly pissed off. Players once again take on the persona of the Point Man – a genetically enhanced super-soldier who makes Halo’s Master Chief look like a simpering schoolgirl – whose mission is to find and kill Alma before she gives birth to her little bastard. Though it works incredibly…

ROY THOMAS AND GERRY CONWAY USA - 1971 For whatever knows fear, burns at the Man-Thing’s touch.” And thus, with a simple yet ominous tagline, was the foundation laid for a simple creature in a decidedly less-than-simple, highly influential comic book. Riding a wave of resurgent interest in macabre comics (horror-themed titles had been all but snuffed out in the 1950s, mostly via self-censorship), Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway’s chronicle about an experimental scientist who drowns in a bog in the Florida Everglades, only to fuse with it and re-emerge as a hideous, hulking, mucken-crusted, plant-based swamp creature, oozed onto newsstand shelves in May 1971 and the non-bog world has not been the same since. At a time when comics were almost never viewed as art and were seldom seen…