Table of contents for Issue 118 December 2011 in RUE MORGUE

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…

Celebrity disease as a collectible commodity, bought – and suffered – by the highest bidder. If you were forced into a guessing game with nothing to go on but that concept alone, it probably wouldn’t take you long to throw out the name Cronenberg. And you’d be right, in a manner of speaking, as it’s the idea at the heart of Brandon Cronenberg’s debut feature Antiviral, which is scheduled to wrap principal photography early this month in Ontario. Antiviral is the story of Syd March (played by Caleb Landry Jones: The Last Exorcism, X-Men: First Class), who works at a clinic that offers to inject its clients with live viruses harvested from infected celebrities. When he’s off the clock, Syd also traffics the diseases on the black market, smuggling them…

1.THE YEAR OF THE DEAD 2012 SWIMSUIT CALENDAR $19.99 Even if necrosis has never done it for you before, check out this artful creation featuring undead bikini-clad beauties for every month of the year, and you’ll be craving zombie flesh before you know it. Get ghouls, ghouls, ghouls at theyearofthedead.com. 2.CTHULHU WATERGLOBE $39.99 Awake the Great Cthulhu with a shake of this light-up waterglobe, inscribed with H.P. Lovecraft’s famous portent from the Necronomicon. Don’t worry: the ancient deity is guaranteed to remain safely behind the glass – just don’t drop it. Call upon the Old Ones at fearwerx.com. 3.ZOMBIE FRIDGE MAGNETS $3.99 There isn’t much in this gruesome world that can’t be zombified, given enough time, opportunity and imagination. This line of fridge magnets includes undead parodies of Shepard Fairey’s…

WHEN REALITY TV SHOW THE OSBOURNES DEBUTED ON MTV IN 2002, VIEWERS REVELLED IN THE TRAIN WRECK THAT OZZY OSBOURNE HAD BECOME. AS THE ALCOHOL-RIDDLED, DRUGGED-OUT ROCK ICON SHUFFLED ABOUT IN HIS LEISURE CLOTHES AND MUMBLED LAZILY IN A NEARLY UNINTELLIGIBLE BRITISH ACCENT, THE DAILY TRIALS OF HIS FAMILY – INCLUDING WIFE SHARON, DAUGHTER KELLY AND SON JACK – WOULD BECOME ONE OF THE MOST-WATCHED PROGRAMS IN THE MUSIC CHANNEL’S HISTORY. But along with the Osbourne brood’s overnight infamy came a lasting public portrait of Ozzy that grew increasingly disconcerting to Jack, particularly since the legendary singer has been clean since the TV show ended in 2005. Deciding he needed to set the record straight, the youngest Osbourne enlisted Mike Fleiss (producer of Hostel and 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,…

HUMP IN THE NIGHT PARANORMAL ENTITY The Asylum This obvious attempt to cash in on the success of the Paranormal Activity franchise is supposed to be comprised of “found footage” from a family that videotaped the supernatural incidents they were experiencing. But as the movie progresses, it soon becomes apparent that, despite their collective suspicions, it isn’t their late father who’s haunting them. The malevolent spirit is far too interested in having sex with the busty teenaged daughter – who mostly prances around in her underwear – to be kin. Aside from the shitty acting, atrocious sets and nausea-inducing POV camerawork, there’s actually some tension and a couple of neat scares that help make this one of the better Asylum movies. That’s not saying much, however. BODY COUNT: 2…

HOMEGROWN CINEMATIC HORROR HAS ALWAYS FLOWN A LITTLE UNDER THE RADAR IN CANADA, WHERE THE FILM INDUSTRY TENDS TO CHAMPION SERIOUS WORKS OF DRAMA OVER GENRE STORIES, NO MATTER HOW WELL TOLD. So, you’re forgiven if you haven’t heard of The Mask, a 3-D spookshow that is not only celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, but also holds the distinct honour of being the country’s first horror film. Before making the movie, Julian Roffman (1915–2000) had directed the beatnik-themed, youth-oriented crime drama The Bloody Brood (1959), and was known in the industry for introducing videotape to Canadian broadcasters, but though he’d had great success in that business, it was not his passion. “Around 1958 or so, my dad wanted to make feature films,” says Peter Roffman, the director’s son, who…

It’s no exaggeration to say that there is a ton of zombie comics on the market, and when you read a number of them on a monthly basis, it can get difficult to distinguish one from the other. It’s therefore a breath of muchneeded fresh air when a new take on the old corpses appears. Daybreak (out now from Drawn & Quarterly) is a graphic novel written and drawn by Brian Ralph that yet again deals with a zombie apocalypse and its effects on a small group of survivors that band together in a desperate struggle to stay alive. However, it also has the innovative approach of casting the reader as one of the main characters. The story starts with a one-armed man addressing the reader, warning that it will…

ENTER, NIGHT Michael Rowe ChiZine Publications Widow Christina Parr, her daughter and queer brother-in-law return to the Northern Ontario mining town of Parr’s Landing in 1972, where an old, toothy evil awaits them. Deliciously old-school, Michael Rowe’s debut pays tribute to Marv Wolfman’s The Tomb of Dracula comics. Tightly paced and full of loveable, terribly imperilled characters and gloomy, Gothic atmosphere, the story builds to a crescendo, before letting loose a kick-to-the-heart finale. JAMES K. MORAN GHOST TRACKERS Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson with Tim Waggoner Pocket This haunted house yarn courtesy of the guys from Ghost Hunters is actually a lot like a spooky fairground attraction: a little cheesy and wobbly in places, but ultimately a lot of fun. Take three friends who are former teenage paranormal investigators, throw…

Paris has a reputation of being a city of beauty, magic and poetry. Every day the streets of the capital, which snake their way to the Eiffel Tower and the Champs Elysées, entice those hungry for romanticism and wonder. But Paris is also full of mysteries, legends and dark stories. There are morbid and dangerous places in this city, and Le Manoir de Paris is the scariest. Built at the end of the 19th century, Le Manoir de Paris (located at 18 Paradise Street) was originally the mansion of a rich, eccentric count, renowned for his sumptuous parties and gigantic collection of rare and precious objects. Upon being stricken with the plague, the count’s body began to change horribly, confining him to the manor to the point where his relatives…

“I remember Halloween”-MISFITS Well, Misfits fans, I think I get it now. I’ve always been pretty much the only person in the Rue Morgue family who didn’t geek out over Glenn Danzig and the original horror punks. Oh, I respected them as pioneers of the genre. I just didn’t grow up listening to those records. And I suppose I blamed them for the legions of copycats – you have no idea how many shit-rate songs about monsters with “whoa-oh!” choruses get sent in around here. Still, when you love music, there are some things you just gotta see for yourself before you die. And this past Halloween weekend, the Danzig Legacy show in NYC – one of only four across the US in 2011, in which Sir Danzig performed material…

JUST CAME BACK from seeing the new Thing prequel. While it was better than I thought it might be and some of the answers to what really happened before the Carpenter version started are clever, I still have questions. What about the videotape the Norwegians made showing them using thermite to get to the spaceship? None of that seems to happen in the prequel. Was there only one alien in that whole big spaceship? And if MacReady in the first film never noticed the other snowcat(s) on the other side of the alien crash site and never ran into the Kate character from the prequel, does that mean the filmmakers are hinting at a “sequel/prequel?” I will say this, the CGI looks like CGI. Rob Bottin’s creatures had so much…

ANY DRINKING GAME INSPIRED BY THE NEW HORROR/COMEDY ANTHOLOGY FILM CHILLERAMA WOULD END BADLY. Down a beer every time a bodily fluid shoots across the screen and you’ll be courting alcohol poisoning before the halfway point; knock back a shot whenever a classic genre film is referenced and you’ll need a liver transplant. The movie consists of a string of three unrelated shorts – Adam Rifkin’s Wadzilla, Tim Sullivan’s I Was a Teenage Werebear and Adam Green’s The Diary of Anne Frankenstein – tied together by a wraparound story (Joe Lynch’s Zom-B-Movie) that provides the loose narrative framework for the entire film by focusing on the closing night of a drive-in theatre. Projectionist Cecil Kaufman (prolific character actor Richard Riehle) plans to show four legendary movies that have never been…

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…

I WAS JUST TRYING TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT,” says Eli Craig of why he wrote and directed Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. “I come from a long line of hillbillies; my father was a hillbilly, my father’s father was a hillbilly. And I just wanted to let people know that they’re not all evil. A few of them might be evil – y’know, slashing people in the backwoods – but not all of them.” Of course, he’s joking. Craig is actually the son of Hollywood actress Sally Field, but he did spend part of his childhood in a small town in Oregon with his father, which sparked the idea for this clever inversion of the typical hillbilly horror film. In it, two best buddies, the harmless overalls-clad Tucker (Alan…

ALIEN AMONG US THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955) DVD Starring Brian Donlevy, Jack Warner and Margia Dean Directed by Val Guest Written by Richard H. Landau, Val Guest and Nigel Kneale MGM Hammer’s very first horror film, The Quatermass Xperiment remains one of the best genre efforts of the 1950s, hands – and flailing tentacles – down. Although the film’s clunky space travel gadgetry may be hopelessly outdated, a mature plot and stripped-down, no-nonsense tone make the film just as effective and entertaining now, as it was 56 years ago. The character of British rocket scientist Professor Bernard Quatermass made his debut in the BBC television serial The Quatermass Experiment in the early 1950s. Released two years later under a slightly different name (“Xperiment” accentuated the film’s “adults only” X-certificate rating),…

HORROR HAS ITS HOUSEHOLD NAMES, WRITERS WHOSE LEGACIES ARE ASSURED. But there are also wordsmiths who have become unjustly forgotten. Such is the case with Maurice Level (1875–1926), France’s long-neglected master of malice. A prolific playwright, novelist and short story author, Level’s gruesome, quasi-misanthropic imagination made his work popular in its day, both in France and abroad, via English translations. His cruel tales appeared in toptier Parisian papers such as Le Journal, but Level’s marriage to horror was consummated around 1906, when he began a fruitful collaboration with Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, the legendary playhouse whose unflinchingly violent dramas were the bloody precursors to the modern slasher film. But as the 20th century rumbled on, Level and his work sank into obscurity. Now, thanks to the efforts of Centipede Press…

If one truth has become self-evident in nearly twelve years of producing this column, it’s that no one can know it all. Expect an educated and considered perspective when you thumb through to this page, but don’t do it looking for the final word. Self-appointed gurus, be damned to hell! There is no monopoly on opinion, and there’s plenty of room on the newsstand for other horror magazines. Take tenebrarum, a unique publication out of Germany that is only available from the website, tenebrarum.info. Each issue is dedicated to a single film, has both German and English text, and is bursting with large colour stills, posters and lobby cards. And, it has an editorial staff of one: Martin Beine. “I started working on a book on cannibal movies way back…

HEN IT COMES TO MUSICAL MOVEMENTS THAT PROCLAIM AN OVERT LOVE OF HORROR, IT WOULD APPEAR THAT NO FORM HAS BEEN LEFT UNTOUCHED. Punk, metal, country, rap and pop all have their unique and individual tributes to the genre, by champions of spooky cinema who enjoy sharing their love of fright films with listeners. Even within rave culture, beneath the smiley face ’n’ glow stick veneer, there exists a dark side. The British-born subgenre of electronic music known as “drum and bass” has been pumping dance floors with eerie samples, aggressive breakbeats and snarling bass lines since its inception more than twenty years ago. In 1990, a few short years after the birth of the rave scene, UK producers 4 Hero released their hit track “Mr. Kirk’s Nightmare” on sm:)e…

Sign Up at RUEW MORGUE.COM. eMAIL HAUNTS@RUE-MORGUE.COM UNITED STATES AMOK TIME 2949 Hempstead TPK Levittown, NY 516-520-0975 amoktime.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 + VIDEOS + MORE 4566…

takethislollipop.com If you allow this site to access your Facebook profile, you’re in for a creepy surprise. Sit back and watch as a seriously sleazylooking guy clicks through your photos, and then proceeds to track your location. Better still, plug your friends’ info into the site and watch them squirm in their seats. weirdfictionreview.com Ann VanderMeer may be turning over the editorial reins at Weird Tales magazine, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t still keeping things weird. Meet her latest venture (with Jeff VanderMeer), The Weird Fiction Review, a website dedicated to exploring the literary subgenre from its genesis through to its modern incarnation, with some free fiction and comics to boot. 28dayslateranalysis.com If you’d rather get deep about movies and television, this site features news, interviews and reviews of…

In 2007, a 29-year-old Beijing woman was forced to undergo a series of surgeries after doctors discovered 23 sewing needles in and around her vital organs. The objects are believed to have been inserted by her grandparents, who had hoped for a grandson. The punishment for high treason differed according to gender in 1700s England. Men were hanged, drawn and quartered, while women were burned at the stake. At the time, it was considered indecent to expose and publicly maim the fairer sex. Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s “suicide machine,” which was used in more than 100 assisted suicides, hit the auction block in October, along with his doctor’s bag, paintings and a number of other personal possessions. The vampire bat props used in Hammer Studios’ The Kiss of the Vampire were…

ARGUE LIKE OLD HAGS ABOUT ALL THINGS MUSICAL, BUT THERE’S AT LEAST ONE HALLOWED TRUTH NONE DARE ASSAIL: BLACK SABBATH SUMMARILY INVENTED HEAVY METAL. MOST INFLUENTIAL BAND EVER? NO, BUT THERE ARE FEW MUSIC GENRES AS VAST AS HEAVY METAL, AND SABBATH IS GROUND ZERO. It all comes down to the band’s intention to be scary and almost always heavy; a heaviness achieved by a very deliberate and ominous chord sequence known as the tritone, the dissonance of which led medieval monks to refer to the movement as the diabolus in musica, “the devil in music.” As simply put by the riffcorporal himself, Tony Iommi, the idea of the tritone is going up a half step rather than a full step – it’s more than that of course, but in…

AUSTRALIA I LOVE SARAH JANE The good news is that you can easily view online the accomplished 2008 short film of the same name that spawned this one, starring the now-famous Mia Wasikowska (Rogue, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland) as the title character. The bad news: you’ll have to wait until 2013 for the feature-length version of this post-apocalyptic, brutal-yet-touching coming-of-age yarn that helps put the “z” back in Oz. BURKINA FASO THE DEAD Making the most of its West African setting, the zombies in this film wander across vast desert sand dunes and prowl the nighttime underbrush of the wartorn region, where they come across as both predators lurking in the shadows, and a potent metaphor for the victims of conflict. Out now. CANADA 13 EERIE This…

UP UNDER THE ROOF 20 minutes upundertheroof.com Taking place on a rundown farm during the 1930s, Up Under the Roof follows a lonely ten-year- old boy living out an average existence – that is, until one night when he begins to hear strange sounds coming from the attic above his bedroom. Night after night, the noises get louder and soon the boy is forced to confront the mysterious creature responsible. With solid acting and great narration, this short is a compelling take on the coming-of-age story, and depicts what it truly means to face fears. While it doesn’t deliver too much in the way of actual scares, it certainly succeeds in building tension, and the ending (without giving it away) leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy. MIKE BEARDSALL OYSTERS &…

STUDENT BODY COUNT TORSO (1973) Blu-ray/DVD Starring Suzy Kendall, Tina Aumont and Luc Merenda Directed by Sergio Martino Written by Ernesto Gastaldi and Sergio Martino Blue Underground Part of the fun of watching gialli made during the genre’s heyday is picking out the themes and styles that shifted to form the American slasher film. Predating nowcommon requisite body counts and forced nude scenes were high levels of suspense, texture and eroticism, and Sergio Martino’s 1973 apex-giallo Torso positively drips with all of the above. When bodies start piling up in the Italian college town of Perugia, Jane (Suzy Kendall) and a few of her female classmates retreat to an isolated cottage to do some body-piling of their own. Word of their kinky romps spreads to the town’s perverts (virtually every…

It’s no secret that I have a passion for lost films, but as much as I enjoy the thrill of the hunt and the subsequent dissections, I sometimes find the reasons why certain titles have slipped though the cracks even more intriguing, particularly when said reasons are patently freakin’ idiotic… assuming, of course, that those really are the reasons. Such may or may not be the case with a certain fun, kid-centric made-for-TV item I recently stumbled across that has allegedly been suppressed for over a decade, not so much for its content but because of the marketing gaffe that briefly made it infamous. October 2000 – the stench of I Know What You Did Last Summer still hangs in the air like a beer fart, TV’s Buffy the Vampire…

STUDIES IN TERROR: LANDMARKS OF HORROR CINEMA Jonathan Rigby Signum Books Horror movie surveys are dicey propositions. Inevitably, critics will carp about the inclusion of this film and the exclusion of that one. And given the thousands of terror titles made over the last century, no tome can be comprehensive. Fortunately, Jonathan Rigby (2000’s English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema and 2007’s American Gothic: Sixty Years of Horror Cinema) acknowledges these limitations and admits that Studies in Terror: Landmarks of Horror Cinema is not an objective appraisal of horror cinema but rather a highly personal one. “Just as one man’s meat is another man’s poison,” he writes, “so one horror fan’s moment of skin-crawling disquiet is another’s blank-faced moment of total indifference.” This means the success of Studies in…

FRIGHT NIGHT (2011) Ramin Djawadi VARESE SARABANDE SOUNDTRACK Similar to Jeff Grace’s approach to The Roost score, Ramin Djawadi integrates an organ to evoke the era of hokey TV emcees who introduce classic horror shockers to kids. Djawadi’s ridiculously addictive main theme is built around a playful series of fast-moving string figures and percussive raps, which work in classical, rock and combinations thereof. His skill in blending disparate elements guarantees every cue bubbles with energy, and the score’s strong, humorous tone is maintained by great organ flourishes and punchy synth bass lines. There are many fine instrumental details woven into the cues, and when the main theme isn’t propelling the action, Fright Night features creepy cuts (such as “Jerry’s Date”) comprised of abstract sounds, a choral buildup, heavy string vibrato…

THE DARKNESS II PS3, Xbox 360, PC 2K Games When 2K Games released The Darkness in 2007, gorehungry gamers were introduced to an intoxicating mix of ultraviolent action, a captivating storyline and a totally fresh take on the first-person shooter. Based in the universe of The Darkness comics (created by Marc Silvestri, Garth Ennis and David Wohl, and available from Top Cow Productions), the game places you in the shoes of Jackie Estacado, a hard-boiled mafia man who isn’t just a crack sharpshooter but who, at the age of 21, becomes possessed by the powers of the Darkness – a mysterious evil force that causes him to sprout a pair of tentacle appendages. Now, come February 7, horror gamers will get to return to the corpse-splitting, heart-devouring, blood-spattered world of…

Birmingham, England, in 1969 was a bleak place, and a fitting backdrop for the doom ’n’ gloom of Black Sabbath, whose blue collar members included a sheet-metal worker with mutilated fingers and an abattoir man turned petty criminal. Music was an escape for all of them. And for bassist and chief lyricist Geezer Butler, there was also refuge in science fiction and horror, including the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Sabbath wasn’t the first band to reference the author. The imaginatively named psychedelic folksters H.P. Lovecraft had done it a few years earlier, and are perhaps best remembered today for their eerie takes on “The White Ship” and “At the Mountains of Madness,” recorded alongside covers of more traditionally twiddly tracks such as “Wayfaring Stranger” and “Get Together.” Sabbath, however, was…