Table of contents for Issue 116 October 2011 Halloween Special Issue in RUE MORGUE

In 25 years we’ve learned nothing from Seth Brundle. But that’s why David Cronenberg’s The Fly is more affecting than ever before. Despite Jeff Goldblum’s mullet, Geena Davis’ shoulder pads and a collection of sweaters that only a Goodwill donation bin could love, the movie’s themes were frighteningly prescient. I’m referring to the volatile relationship we’re in with our own bodies. The Fly is a meditation on the war inside of us, played out in a way that’s more visceral and heartwrenching than in any of the filmmaker’s other works. This unflinching metaphor for mortality sees Seth Brundle emerge naked from a telepod, reborn and supercharged with youthful strength and energy. Like a teenager, his appetite for food and sex is voracious, his mood swings intense, and he even suffers…

Anyone can build a horror movie around the capers of Lucifer’s hordes, but it takes a twisted mind to look to the angels for inspiration. As Rodrigo Gudiño’s forthcoming feature film debut The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh proves, the award-winning director of The Facts in the Case of Mister Hollow (not to mention founder and publisher of the magazine you’re holding) doesn’t seem to do anything conventionally. Looking for a new feature idea for Rue Morgue Cinema after encountering delays with his remake of Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent’s 1972 western Cut Throats Nine, he initially settled on a ghost story because of the low expense associated with the subgenre. Yet the psychological aspect of such tales soon intrigued him more. In Last Will and Testament, antiques dealer…

1 THE FLY BOBBLE-HEAD $11.99 The 1958 classic The Fly is a terrifying tale of one man’s pursuit of scientific knowledge for the betterment of mankind, which leads to his tragic downfall. And, like many such tales, it’s a lot funnier in bobble-head form. Give your head a shake at entertainmentearth.com. 2 DISMEMBER-ME PLUSH ZOMBIE $12.95 This sweet lil’ living dead fella just wants to be your friend… which will probably make it all the more traumatic when you pull off his limbs, tear off his head and rip out his brain (good thing he comes with a spare). His torso even comes apart to reveal fuzzy intestines within. Tear a zombie a new one at neatoshop.com. 3 BRAIN SOAP IN A JAR $19.99 Two brains are better than one,…

SLASHER FILMS MAY HAVE THEIR BLOODY ROOTS IN THE 1970S, BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN THAT THEY’RE STUCK IN THE PAST. The subgenre, which generally follows the strict formula of a masked madman hacking up young people, remains popular – but why? To find out, we polled two filmmakers with prominent entries in the slasher canon – released exactly 30 years apart. George Mihalka, whose 1981 film My Bloody Valentine, introduced us to the pickaxe-wielding mad miner Harry Warden, and Robert Hall, whose ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest 2 (out this month from Image Entertainment) boasts hulking psycho Chromeskull and his hunting knife, trade viewpoints on slasher cinema. Why did you want to make a slasher film? RH: This subgenre is the ultimate form of escapism. We in Western Civilization have a…

IT’S A FAMILIAR CAUTIONARY TALE: FOREIGN DIRECTOR WITH UNIQUE TALENTS MAKES A SPLASH ON THE FESTIVAL SCENE WITH FIRST HORROR FEATURE, HOLLYWOOD HIRES FOREIGN DIRECTOR TO MAKE AMERICAN HORROR FEATURE, FOREIGN DIRECTOR FINDS OUT QUICKLY THAT HOLLYWOOD ISN’T ACTUALLY INTERESTED IN UNIQUE TALENTS, FOREIGN DIRECTOR IS STUCK WITH SEVERELY COMPROMISED VERSION OF FEATURE. This was the case with Guillermo del Toro’s Hollywood premiere. After the Mexican filmmaker’s first feature, the stylish and unusual vampire movie Cronos (1993), he was hired by Miramax to make a full-on monster movie, Mimic (1997), based on a short story by Donald A. Wollheim. Set in New York, it stars Mira Sorvino as Dr. Susan Tyler, an entomologist celebrated for wiping out a cockroach-borne disease – which was killing Manhattan’s children – by genetically…

PERVERSE TITILLATION: THE EXPLOITATION CINEMA OF ITALY, SPAIN AND FRANCE, 1960–1980 Danny Shipka McFarland “Eurocult” is an amorphous, catch-all term that describes genre movies produced in Europe. It also describes an era of filmmaking that began tentatively in the early ’60s, was immensely popular in the ’70s and died out in the ’80s (although there has been a somewhat unlikely revival via the “new wave” of extreme French horror during the last decade). This is a massive and massively popular field of study about which much has been written, particularly in regard to exploitation films. Eurocult filmmakers excelled at cranking out cheap and unabashedly lurid pictures, and they’ve been welldocumented, so what can a book with such a broad mandate add to an already huge body of knowledge and critique?…

WHEN JOHN LANDIS WAS FIRST APPROACHED BY RENOWNED REFERENCE BOOK PUBLISHER DK TO WRITE A BOOK ON HORROR FILMS LAST YEAR, HE DIDN’T HAVE TO THINK LONG ABOUT HIS ANSWER. “I said no,” he admits. “I really dislike all of those ten best, five best. … It’s a horseshit thing. I don’t think you can compare movies that way. People like movies for different reasons. Take Walt Disney’s Pinocchio – I think that’s a genius movie. Or Let the Right One In, the Swedish picture, is a great film. And 2001: A Space Odyssey. What the fuck do those movies have in common? Nothing! Bride of Frankenstein is so wonderful and so is Mighty Joe Young but I don’t necessarily say one is better than the other.”…

DEXTER: SEASON 5 SOUNDTRACK Daniel Licht MILAN RECORDS Daniel Licht’s fifth outing into the mad world of Dexter remains surprisingly fresh, considering this release showcases the same core themes that dominate virtually every episode. Rolfe Kent’s series theme is quoted either in whole or through some clever variations, but it’s Licht’s own renditions, as well as his performances on the tracks, that make the 39-minute suite as currrent and memorable as the prior collections. It’s a perfect balance of electronic and organic, with lovely, empathetic violin solos (“The Kids Leave”) and little instrumental gestures (chains, bone-sawing) that hint at Dexter’s internal dilemmas, particularly his balancing act of being judge and executioner, a dad, and support for his not-so-bright sister. The rhythms are partially drawn from the Cuban-American sounds of the…

“Tell me, can you smell the rot?” – CARCASS You ever tried talking to a cannibal? It’s not advised, especially around Halloweentime, when you’re all fattened up from Canadian Thanksgiving and smelling of candy. But I can assure you that it’s safe to email with one. At least, I did it and survived to tell this tale. The California band Ghoul describes its music as “splatterthrash,” a pretty cool subgenre concoction for its speedy old-school riffs and growling vocals about maggots and robotic killing machines. The overthe-top gore gags and mythologizing biography notes (the band claims to hail from Creepsylvania and uses the stage names Cremator, Fermentor, Digestor and Dissector) smell a little like GWAR, although I wouldn’t exactly mention that to vocalist/guitarist Digestor for fear that even a smidge…

NOT BEING A PLAYER or even a follower of video games, horror or otherwise, the cover story for RM#115 landed on me with a dull thud. Movies, television, books, comics, theatre and magazines all resonate across time and space with me, but not this. On the other hand, it was good to see an old favourite of mine, Alice Cooper, returning to the subversive rock ’n’ roll from my youth. It’s good to have what feels like an old friend back in the saddle. Welcome 2 My Nightmare may be my first Alice Cooper purchase in 30 years. GARY KIMBER – PICKERING, ONTARIO FANTASTIC ISSUE of @RueMorgue [#115]. Brilliant write-up about mysendoff.com, special thanks goes out to @AprilSnellings and the team at RM. @VIVE_MEMOR_LETI, VIA TWITTER SAD TO SEE the…

“I BUILD BODIES. I TAKE THEM APART, AND PUT THEM BACK TOGETHER AGAIN.” THIS IS HOW SETH BRUNDLE, PROTAGONIST OF THE FLY, EXPLAINS HIMSELF AS THE CREATOR OF AN ATOM-SCRAMBLING TELEPORTER. BUT THOSE WORDS APPLY EQUALLY TO THE MAN WHO WROTE THEM, DIRECTOR DAVID CRONENBERG. BY THE TIME HIS REMAKE OF THE 1958 CREATURE FEATURE WAS RELEASED, IN THE SUMMER OF 1986, THE CANADIAN FILMMAKER HAD ALREADY BECOME SYNONYMOUS WITH THE TERMS “VENEREAL HORROR” AND “THE NEW FLESH.” HIS BRAND OF BODY HORROR HAD BECOME SO RECOGNIZABLE – THROUGH FILMS SUCH AS SHIVERS, RABID, THE BROOD, SCANNERS AND VIDEODROME – THAT THE TERM “CRONENBERGIAN” HAD ENTERED THE CINEMATIC LEXICON TO DESCRIBE A UNIQUELY MONSTROUS YET INTELLECTUAL FUSION OF MUTATION, TRANSFORMATION, DISEASE, SEXUALITY, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. The Fly would soon be…

IT MAY HAVE GONE AGAINST HIS BETTER JUDGEMENT BUT CREATURE EFFECTS DESIGNER CHRIS WALAS JUST COULDN’T TURN DOWN THE OFFER TO WORK ON DAVID CRONENBERG’S 1986 VERSION OF THE FLY. DESPITE A PROPOSED THREE-MONTH SCHEDULE TO CREATE THE FILM’S AMBITIOUSLY GOOEY MAN-TO-INSECT SEQUENCES – HALF THE TIME HE ESTIMATED HIS TEAM WOULD NEED – AND A STRONG AVERSION TO REMAKES, ANY RESERVATIONS HE HAD WERE SQUASHED ONCE HE READ THE SCRIPT. “Halfway through it, I knew I wanted to do the film,” recalls Walas, whose resumé also includes Gremlins and Humanoids From the Deep. “David had written such a sympathetic character in Seth Brundle and created so genuinely poignant and powerful a tragic love story that I was completely sucked into it. The effects design aspect of it…

HELLO, JERRY… FRIGHT NIGHT Starring Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell and David Tennant Directed by Craig Gillespie Written by Marti Noxon and Tom Holland DreamWorks Horror fans are protective of the original Fright Night in the way that Van Helsing might protect his virgin daughter from Dracula. Rightfully so. Tom Holland’s vampire classic hits all kinds of ’80s nostalgia buttons with its ambitious practical gore effects, inclusion of genre faves Roddy Mc-Dowall and Chris Sarandon, a narrative that pays tribute to classic horror of yore and the fact that it was so omnipresent in video stores. That the remake even exists, has an A-list Hollywood actor, re-envisions the McDowall character and uses CGI, has made it a target. Unfairly so. While Craig Gillespie’s film suffers from an overuse of CGI, particularly…

BARELY STITCHED TOGETHER CREEP CREEPERSIN’S FRANKENSTEIN MVD Visual Since 2006, Creep Creepersin has produced, directed and starred in more ultra-low-budget horror films than even Lance Henriksen, with another nine scheduled for release in 2011 alone! As a huge Frankenstein fan, I decided to dive in with Creep Creepersin’s Frankenstein. Big mistake, because this one has nothing to do with Mary Shelley’s tale other than ripping off its title. Rather, it’s a boring, sloppy affair that follows a socially awkward guy who spends his time reading porno mags, eating scrambled eggs, brushing his teeth and talking to his pet rat about his plans to make a woman that will actually like him. Though it clocks in at just under an hour, it still feels like it’s roughly 59 minutes too long.…

DINOCROC VS. SUPERGATOR Starring David Carradine, Amy Rasimas and John Callahan Directed by Jim Wynorski Written by Mike MacLean and Jim Wynorski Anchor Bay Back in 2004, Roger Corman shat out an atrocious B-movie called Dinocroc. A few years later, in 2007, his producer’s bowels loosened again to plop out a forgettable stinker called Supergator. Now, because both movies were so uncommonly bad, he’s decided to pair them up in Dinocroc vs. Supergator, an apparent effort to ensure that nobody allows him to produce a movie ever again (unless it’s for the Syfy channel). Writing any kind of synopsis of this film seems kind of pointless as it’s been done a billion times before – scientists create giant beast, beast gets loose, beast chomps on busty bimbos, ruthless developer/investor/military commander…

THE KITCHEN IS CLOSED. THE BASEMENT IS LOCKED. THE BEERS ARE GETTING WARM. Unrepentant trash fiends The Gore-met and John W. Bowen have taken over the Rue Morgue screening room for a marathon viewing session of Camp Motion Pictures’ five-film Retro ’80s box set. GORE-MET: Robin Williams famously joked that if you remember the ’60s you weren’t there. If you adore the ’80s you probably weren’t there either. Hell is chartreuse and smells like Brut 33. Forget the big hair and bad music – VHS is the only thing to come out of the ’80s worth celebrating. Camp Video does that right with this set. JOHN W. BOWEN: I’ve long maintained that the ’80s were a ten-year faked orgasm, but the home video boom was one of the few bright…

Ghost tours and haunted walks have exploded in popularity since the 1990s, thriving in every major city and a growing number of small towns all over Canada and the US, just as their counterparts have for much longer in Europe. Likewise, during the autumn ramp-up to Halloween, makeshift walk-through haunted attractions ranging from the primitive to the sophisticated are almost as ubiquitous, and even if your town doesn’t have one of its own, chances are you won’t need to drive more than an hour to find one. It’s tempting to say that Kingston is no different, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate, because it may be the only place where a haunted walk effectively gave birth to a Halloween attraction. Located at the northeast end of Lake Ontario, Kingston…

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, PA 412-672-2323 TATE’S COMICS + TOYS…

youtube.com/watch?v=cRiJKVPN7xY If your curiosity’s been piqued regarding Howard Shore’s 2008 operatic version of David Cronenberg’s The Fly, head over to YouTube and tune into this short CBC news segment that profiled the production around the time of its premiere. Highbrow body horror? You betcha! marthastewart.com/photogallery/pumpkins While I can’t say I worship at the altar of domestic goddess Martha Stewart, I’m not beyond admitting that she really knows how to get into the Halloween spirit. If you need some clever ideas for making your own home more haunting, check out her brain trust of pumpkin-carving patterns, do-it-yourself deadly decor and recipes to satiate any hungry horde. ’Tis the season. thedarkeva.com Attention, readers: if you are seeking a horror/dark fantasy blog that covers all the bases – reviews, book trailers, author interviews…

Naegleria fowleri is a waterborne amoeba that thrives in the American South and can infect humans with a rare brain-eating disease that is lethal in 95 percent of cases. David Cronenberg references Franz Kafka’s 1915 story The Metamorphosis – about a man who wakes up to discover that he’s turned into an insect creature – in The Fly with the line, “I’m an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it, but now that dream is over and the insect is awake.” This summer, a nineteen-year-old Galveston, Texas, man was charged with burglary with intent to commit assault after breaking into a woman’s apartment and biting her on the neck. When he was caught, he told the police that he was a vampire who has lived for more…

1) THE BOXER’S OMEN (1983) Easily the most garishly bizarre film in the kung fu cinema canon, this Shaw Brothers entry features such jaw-dropping set pieces as the barfing up of a moray eel, mini-bat demon spirit guides, magic corpse-brain potions and a naked sorceress who uses the rotting carcass of a crocodile as a cocoon! It all leads to a psychedelic, show-stopping, magic battle royale. 2) THE SEVENTH CURSE (1986) Before The Story of Ricky, director Ngai Kai Lam made this action-packed adventure in which Hong Kong pulp fiction hero Wisely, an Indiana Jones-like paranormal investigator, must cure the “Blood Curse” placed on him by a “Worm Tribe” from the darkest South-East Asian jungles. Naturally, this leads to a battle against a baby worm demon and the Old…

LIKE MOST FANS OF 1982’S THE THING, I WAS MORE THAN A LITTLE IRKED WHEN UNIVERSAL PICTURES OFFICIALLY ENDED YEARS OF SPECULATION AND REMAKE RUMOURS LAST YEAR BY LAUNCHING A PREQUEL TO JOHN CARPENTER’S SCI-FI HORROR CLASSIC. ORIGINALLY SLATED FOR RELEASE THIS PAST APRIL BUT LATER RESCHEDULED TO OCTOBER 14, I WONDERED JUST WHAT THE HELL WE WERE IN FOR. Hadn’t Hollywood meddled enough with the sacred cinematic triumphs of our childhoods? The 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake was pretty good and the 2003’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre far surpassed my admittedly rock-bottom expectations, but what if the new Thing chapter were to go the way of other recent revisits, such as 2009’s abysmal Friday the 13th redo or last year’s disappointing Nightmare on Elm Street “re-imagining?” Then it…

BEREAVEMENT Starring Alexandra Daddario, Michael Biehn and Peyton List Written and directed by Stevan Mena Anchor Bay A prequel to Stevan Mena’s decent slasher debut Malevolence (2004), Bereavement finds the writer/director pillaging the most interesting elements of his first film for an origin story of sorts that doesn’t necessarily require a viewing of its predecessor. The masked killer of Malevolence, Martin Bristol, is seen here as a sixyear-old boy (Spencer List) who is kidnapped by an Ed Gein-ish serial killer and raised in a slaughterhouse to kidnap and chop up attractive young ladies. It’s a damn unsettling premise that Mena handles well, but unfortunately that part only takes up half of the movie’s runtime. The rest is dedicated to a well-endowed teenage girl (Alexandra Daddario) who moves to the rural…

WHEN IT COMES TO MATTERS OF THE PRETERNATURAL KIND, NUMBERS CAN BE A TRICKY THING. While recent polls conducted by the Associated Press, Ipsos and Gallup have concluded that only about one-third of Americans believe in the existence of ghosts, you can’t seem to change the channel without stumbling upon a haunting-related series, special or ad for a new movie. Nor has this skepticism toward the spectral prevented the Paranormal Activity films from becoming one of Hollywood’s most reliably profitable franchises (the initial entry, estimated to have cost just $15,000 to make, recorded box office receipts of $183 million worldwide). Utilizing The Blair Witch Project method for terrifying an audience – the less you see of the ghoul, the better – the Paranormal Activity franchise has earned its reputation as…

BEFORE HUMAN CENTIPEDE… ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932) Blu-ray/DVD Starring Charles Laughton, Richard Arlen and Bela Lugosi Directed by Erle C. Kenton Written by Philip Wylie, Waldemar Young and H.G. Wells Criterion In 1934, the notorious William H. Hays shackled Hollywood with a censorship code aimed at cleansing the silver screen of moral impurity. Some would argue that the post-code films are even more fascinating, as filmmakers were forced to employ sneakier and more clandestine methods to convey contraband information, yet it’s surprising and sometimes even shocking to observe the frankness and intensity of some of the pre-code films. Island of Lost Souls is one such movie. Directed in 1932 by Erle C. Kenton, the film begins with shipwrecked traveller Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) being rescued by a transport vessel…

People often ask what’s the coolest part of working for Rue Morgue, and while there is no shortage of answers, one that’s pretty high on my list is the fact that almost everyone here is also involved in the genre creatively. Take Blood Spattered Guide columnist Liisa Ladouceur, for instance, who has a non-fiction hardcover out this month from ECW called Encyclopedia Gothica, which was illustrated by our art director Gary Pullin. Of course, I couldn’t resist picking her brain… Why write a goth encyclopedia? I’m a word nerd and a goth, so it was the perfect project. For years I wanted to write a book about goth but didn’t want to retread the same ground as the other good ones out there, which are overviews of the music history,…

Herschell Gordon Lewis is one of the most influential and critically overlooked horror filmmakers of the last 50 years. He’s called the Godfather of Gore for good reason: he created the splatter genre with Blood Feast (1963). Now, at 82, Lewis is coming back to the genre in grand fashion. Image Entertainment has released his first three films – Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) and Color Me Blood Red (1965) – on Blu-ray, along with a thoroughly entertaining and informative documentary by Frank Henenlotter and Jimmy Maslon, aptly titled Herschell Gordon Lewis: The Godfather of Gore (2010). What many fans may not realize is that the filmmaker didn’t just invent the gore film, he also invented gore effects! “We started from ground zero,” recalls Lewis. “Now, of course,…

NOW PLAYING CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS-REZURRECTION, UGLY AMERICANS APOCALYPSEGEDDON, TRAUMA, AND MORE CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS – REZURRECTION Xbox 360 Live, PSN, PC Activision With the latest DLC expansion, Rezurrection, Call of Duty: Black Ops developer Treyarch has taken zombie killing – or rather surviving – to the next level: the moon. Aptly named Moon, the only entirely new map in the pack has a few fresh features to excite gamers, the most predominant being the zero-gravity environment, which means you can glide weightlessly across the terrain. Also, zero-G allows for some unique and entertaining kills; blow off a zombie’s head and its headless carcass will drift off into space. This brings us to the weaponry, notably the Wave Gun, which will undoubtedly appeal to gorehounds. Shoot a…