Table of contents for Issue 122 May 2012 in RUE MORGUE

Few things make me happier than sitting in a fishing boat with a line in the water. Aside from the natural lure of the Great Outdoors, I’ve been wondering why I really love this sometimes frustrating, often expensive pastime, and I’ve come to realize that my relationship to it is surprisingly similar to that of the genre. I’ve been reading Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, his non-fiction contemplation of horror, and he brings up famed sci-fi writer William F. Nolan’s comment on imagination, that “nothing is so frightening as what’s behind the closed door.” King then points out, “What’s behind the door…is never as frightening as the door…itself.” There’s an apprehension, unease and ultimately a thrill of being out in a boat with a line in the water, and it comes…

Chances are, if you’ve ever attended a summer camp, you’ve picked up handy skills such as how to properly pitch a tent or build a fire. Now, thanks to a unique collaboration between Dark Horse Comics and Trackers Earth – a Portland, Oregon-based company that offers outdoor programming for kids – campers can add “preventing a doomsday cult from opening a rift to the netherworld” to their “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” lists. The Official B.P.R.D. (Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense) Training Camp is a combination of real-world survival skills with interactive role-play that teaches “trainees” all of the necessary techniques (e.g., telepathy training, self-defense specific to preternatural entities, comparative analogy and physiology of monsters) to become a field agent for the B.P.R.D., a fictional organization established…

1 DARK SHADOWS BOX SET $599.98 This coffin-shaped box is jampacked full of dark delights for Dark Shadows fans: 131 DVDs, containing all 1225 episodes of the show, together with – among other things – cast and crew interviews, bloopers, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and a postcard autographed by Jonathan Frid himself. It’s almost big enough to sleep in! Have your footmen haul one home from amazon.com. 2 DARK SHADOWS: THE BEST OF THE ORIGINAL SERIES $49.99 Need more Barnabas for your buck? Good news: twelve of the original tie-in Dark Shadows comics have been digitally restored and compiled into this showcase volume, which forms a perfect intro to both the show and to the standalone comic book stories. Four-colour Collinwood adventures await at hermespress.com. 3 DARK SHADOWS MODEL KITS $24.99 Rising…

WHEN BLAIR WITCH PROJECT CO-CREATOR EDUARDO SÁNCHEZ DESCRIBES THE THEME OF HIS LATEST FILM, HE’S REALLY DESCRIBING THE THEME OF ALL OF HIS FILMS. “It’s about coming up with some sort of mythology about what evil is,” he says of Lovely Molly, his low-budget feature centred upon one fragile woman’s confrontation with her own demons of drug abuse, the childhood mental and physical abuse she suffered at the hands of her father, and a literal supernatural entity that seems to be stalking her. “The demon represents itself as an animal, and at this time, it has chosen the horse. In other societies, in other manifestations of it, it could’ve picked a serpent or something else. For now, it uses the horse as its mask.” The film’s avatar is a symbol…

EVERYTHING OLD IS BLU AGAIN THE DEADLY SPAWN (1983) Blu-ray Starring Charles George Hildebrandt, Tom DeFranco and Richard Lee Porter Directed by Douglas McKeown Written by Ted A. Bohus, John Dods, Tim Sullivan, et al. Elite The thing about charming old exploitation is that it has always done well without the use of modern cosmetics. Grainy reels of celluloid or crunchy video never stopped certain classics from burrowing their way into our hearts, and in some cases one could even argue that a thorough cleaning can actually harm the product. As it does with Elite’s new Bluray “Millennium Edition” of The Deadly Spawn. We’ll get to that in a moment… The movie begins somewhere in rural New Jersey, when a meteor crashes into the woods and hatches life forms seemingly…

Album artwork has mostly been reduced to a postage stamp-sized image that serves as a placeholder on our personal computers, tablets and smartphones. We pay no attention to liner notes or the way something is presented. If you’re lucky, a music download may offer a PDF file of the artwork, which you just simply print, cut, fold, glue and buy a case for, I guess? But for those tangible types who still like to hold onto something tactile, vinyl has survived and the market continues to thrive thanks to collectors, purists, and horror fans such as Spencer Hickman, founder of UK-based soundtrack label Death Waltz Recording Company. Hickman worked in the music industry for 25 years as manager of the Rough Trade Record Shop in London, England, before he decided…

Here I thought I’d been listening to industrial music for the past 25 years. Then the fourth album by one-man band Author and Punisher, Ursus Americanus (Seventh Rule Recordings), clunked into my inbox a few weeks ago and I abruptly realized the style truly hadn’t been invented until recently. Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Nitzer Ebb, Combichrist, KMFDM? Half measures compared to A&P’s lone member, Tristan Shone. Doubtful? You should know that Shone is a mechanical engineer who, since issuing his debut album The Painted Army in 2005, has been fabricating devices out of heavy machinery that enable him to compose and perform industrial doom-scapes, which, as his bio explains, focus on “the eroticism of the interaction with machine.” Now that’s what I call walking the talk. Personally, I’ve always…

I JUST READ the Al Jourgensen interview in RM#121 and had to get this off my chest: Dear Al Jourgensen, discussing your past drug history and the serious health issues that you are having now are certainly eye-opening to people who use drugs. However, when you are talking about having survived near-death experiences due to drugs and their devastating effects on your body, cracking jokes about how you have been boozing it up all night and are blitzed during the interview does not make you sound cool. You traded one form of poison for another, brother. If you keep abusing dangerous substances, your luck will run out someday. I know people who have done less abuse to their bodies than you and don’t have the ability to talk about it…

A strange thing happened to Uwe Boll on his way to becoming the 21st century’s Ed Wood – he discovered his filmmaking improved whenever he tackled the horror and violence inherent in real-world stories. This theory will be put to its greatest test yet later this year when he’ll release The Bailout, a feature about a man who takes his bloody revenge on the investment bankers who ruined him, and a short segment in the forthcoming horror anthology The Profane Exhibit, based on the incest-imprisonment case of Austrian Josef Fritzl. In the last four years, the German director, best known for making poorly regarded filmic adaptations of video games such as House of the Dead and BloodRayne, has increasingly turned to real-world nastiness for inspiration. Last year, he released Auschwitz…

Not exactly faithful to the show, yet undeniably cool, this Dark Shadows board game had up to four players assemble their own glow-in-the-dark skeletons on cardboard scaffolds by pulling plastic bones from a mini Barnabas coffin. The first one to complete a spooky skeleton wins. Also featuring a spinner, tiny wooden stakes and a bonus (easily lost) set of Barnabas vampire fangs, the game’s gorgeously illustrated box art and easy accessibility (it’s frequently found on eBay for $40 to $60) make this a popular DS collectible. MORE CRYPTIC COLLECTIBLES AT RUE-MORGUE.COM…

DE MORNAY KNOWS BEST MOTHER’S DAY Starring Rebecca De Mornay, Jaime King and Patrick John Flueger Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman Written by Scott Milam Anchor Bay/Starz Normally, a horror remake not being released would be cause for celebration, sparing audiences yet another legacy-spoiling rehash. Yet, with Darren Lynn Bousman’s Mother’s Day reboot – which has been entangled in the studio system’s red tape until now – it’s actually kind of a shame. This is what a redo should be, taking only the most basic premise from the original and creating something new. Only loosely based on Charles Kaufman and Warren Leight’s screenplay for Troma’s original cult classic, this Mother’s Day opens at a housewarming party that is rudely interrupted when a collection of criminals comes crashing in, wounded from…

Although I was an inveterate tapehound in the ’80s – my wallet stuffed with membership cards for nearly a dozen video stores and no bargain bin ever went unpicked – I didn’t get into collecting underground tapes until 1990. It was then that I finally had my own pad and two four-head stereo VCRs I could piggyback to make dupes for trade. German gore films were among the hot commodities in those days. Nekromantik was my introduction to the country’s underground splatter films. I first saw it, along with Buttgereit’s other movies, Der Todesking (1990) and Nekromantik 2 (1991), during a week-long series of screenings billed as the Cult Film and Video Festival at Toronto’s venerable Bloor Cinema in October of 1992. Even though they were projected VHS tapes, there…

IT’S IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO NOTICE JILL JANUS. To say the blonde, blue-eyed singer of Los Angeles-based “true heavy metal” band Huntress stands out amongst the throng of scruffy tattooed dudes who typically front such macabre musical acts might be the understatement of the millennium. Even though the group’s debut album, Spell Eater (Napalm Records), isn’t out until May 8, Huntress has already generated a buzz due to numerous publicity photos of Janus liberally showing off her, um, considerable feminine assets. (One shot has her splattered in blood and wearing only a fur coat and black bikini bottom.) But the singer, who is endowed with a formidable four-octave range and a classically trained set of pipes, says she isn’t concerned about her image overshadowing her musical abilities. “I don’t have any…

British horror director Robert Fuest died on March 21 at his home in England, at age 84. “Stylish” is the word most frequently applied to Fuest’s films, particularly his eccentric horror-comedy masterpieces The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972). The films follow the titular mad organist/theologian (Vincent Price) on a murderous crusade to avenge his wife’s death, and then resurrect her. Dr. Phibes’ bizarre theme-killings rank among horror cinema’s most imaginative deaths, and inspired films ranging from Price’s Theater of Blood (1973) to Se7en (1995). Fuest’s background as a painter, art teacher and, later, production designer/director on visually striking TV shows such as The Avengers, paved the way for the Dr. Phibes films’ gorgeous art direction. Fuest flouted Gothic clichés, redefining the genre’s look by setting…

The musical cues heard in Dark Shadows were achieved by playing vinyl records of the score (composed by Robert Cobert) during the actual taping of the show. Although recorded, Dark Shadows was essentially a “live” program, meaning the cast wasn’t allowed retakes. As a result, a number of gaffes made it into the show, including wobbling props and sets, and boom microphones and crew members visible in shots. Between 1966 and 1971, 32 original Dark Shadows novels and a tie-in adaptation of House of Dark Shadows were written by Canadian author Dan Ross under his wife’s name, Marilyn Ross. When Barnabas Collins’ often-seen portrait in the foyer of Collinwood was being created, the last part to be painted was the face – which had to wait until Jonathan Frid was…

THIS ISSUE: LANCE ACHIEVES AN ALL-TIME HIGH ROLLING STONERS BONG OF THE DEAD BLACK HORIZON You may recall The Gore-met puffin’ about this flick back in RM#111 but it’s only just recently hit DVD. When a couple of post-apocalyptic stoners discover that pouring a few ounces of liquefied zombie brains into their hydroponics lab makes for some killer weed, they head out in search of skinbags and more undead grey matter. Along the way, they hook up with a hot chick who arms them with everything from revved-up weed whackers to an armoured truck with lawnmowers welded to its front bumper. It’s a silly zom-com that suffers from some seriously lame dialogue but it’s also absolutely teeming with gory kills and entrails flying everywhere (our heroes make very good…

Bowen 50, World 0 “you gotta be fucking kidding.” No, I didn’t just watch a severed head sprout spider legs and scurry away, nor did some doofus suggest that I give last year’s Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark remake a second chance. Long-suffering readers, I’m just trying to get what’s left of my frontal lobe around the idea that this is my 50th Bowen’s Basement column. On one hand, November of 2007 to May of 2012 barely qualifies as the blink of a jaundiced eye, but on the other, the fact that I’ve accomplished anything 50 times in less than a decade is the stuff of utter bafflement. Maybe it’s because 50 is also the age I’ll be hitting (and not gracefully) in September, or maybe it’s because I…

THE BIGFOOT FILMOGRAPHY: FICTIONAL AND DOCUMENTARY APPEARANCES IN FILM AND TELEVISION David Colomen McFarland There’s no question that Bigfoot has long held a vital place in horror culture, playing the part of the bestial brute in numerous film and television outings. But like the alleged creature itself, the squatchploitation genre often exists in a shadowy realm of low-grade cinematography and undocumented evidence. Even hardcore fans of the subgenre may find it difficult to track down vintage gems or reliable guidance when it comes to separating the good from the bad. Thankfully, we now have The Bigfoot Filmography, a monstrous tome that effectively navigates the treacherous terrain of sasquatch cinema. When I received this hefty book, it prompted the question: just how many Bigfoot appearances can there be? Well, it catalogues…

LIKE MANY GENRE FANS, SCHOLAR KENDALL R. PHILLIPS’ LOVE OF HORROR – AND HIS DEDICATION TO EXPLORING IT – RUNS DIZZYINGLY DEEP. In his 2008 book, Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture, he investigated the history of genre cinema stateside. That project got him thinking about just how many important and influential horror films were made between 1968 and 1982, a period the writer considers to be “the second golden age of horror.” This in turn led him to the topic of his latest academic tome, Dark Directions: Romero, Craven, Carpenter, and the Modern Horror Film (out now from Southern Illinois University Press), about how the filmmakers redefined horror during that insanely fertile period in genre history. “There is a pretty overwhelming tendency for film scholars and critics to…

SOUNDTRACK WOLFEN James Horner INTRADA James Horner got his career break in 1981, scoring this underrated shapeshifting drama with a huge orchestra. His approach is filled with plenty of snarling brass figures, glassy string effects and an eerie main theme that effortlessly morphs into moments of tenderness, lovemaking and wolves dying to feast on nosey detectives. The freedom to write a feral score resulted in a work that revealed Horner’s mastery of elegantly gnarled tones, and certainly during the ’80s no other composer exploited the dynamic range of orchestral sounds for Dolby Surround like this. Action cues such as “Whittington’s Death” bleed with ferociously performed hunting motifs and steel anvil hits, yet there’s a mournful theme variation that captures the sadness of the wolf pack – virtual aliens in a…

THE WALKING DEAD PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Mac Telltale Games If the wait between issues of The Walking Dead is too long, it seems like an eternity until season three of the TV show starts, and you’ve played both versions of the board game already, then you’ll be happier than a walker with a mouthful of brains that Telltale Games’ version of the series is finally here. Announced last year, the downloadable, episodic “adventure” game just came out for Xbox Live, PSN, PC and Mac (via telltalegames.com), at five dollars per installment. The title is set in the world of the comic book series as a side story – which occasionally incorporates familiar Walking Dead characters – centred around a man named Lee Everett, who may or may not have…