Table of contents for Issue 130 Jan/Feb 2013 in RUE MORGUE

Where does Ed Gein come from? Yes, we know there was a mentally damaged Wisconsin farmer named Ed Gein who committed murder and horrible indignities to corpses both fresh and graveyard-green, but what about the mythological Ed Gein also known as “The Mad Butcher” and the “Plainfield Ghoul?” The Ed Gein that has become a pop culture icon? Where does that larger-than-life Ed Gein come from? He’s cut from the same cloth (or maybe same skin…) as zeitgeist murderers Charles Manson, David Berkowitz and Richard Ramirez. Former commune-living hippie Manson is a symbol for the death of the ’60s and the Peace and Love Generation; Berkowitz embodies a dirty, depraved 1970s New York City; and Ramirez is often placed within the context of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s due…

As of January 1, 2013, George Noory celebrates ten years of investigating alien abductions, ghost stories, mystery cryptids and government conspiracies, thanks to his hosting gig on popular radio show Coast to Coast AM. Created by Art Bell in 1988, the four-hour program, which airs from 1 to 5 a.m. E.S.T., can be heard on more than 560 stations in the United States, Canada and Guam. Over the years, the Sherman Oaks, California-based show has become an outpost for callers and guests to discuss conspiracy theories, the paranormal and the unexplained. “All my life, I’ve had a fascination with the paranormal and the unusual,” explains Noory. “I like to look for answers first and foremost. What I don’t want to do is spend my nights hurting the dreams of my…

1 IN SEARCH OF… BOX SET $129.99 Fans of the real-life weird and wonderful will want to investigate this box set containing all 145 episodes of the documentary series that, from 1977 to 1982, focused on the paranormal and the unexplained. From Bigfoot to Nessie, series narrator Leonard Nimoy has it covered. Search for it at amazon.com. 2 CEPHALOPOD DRINKING ACCESSORIES $25 No matter how many arms you have, you can always use a little help when you’re playing bartender, right? These cephalopod-inspired pieces will give your festivities a Lovecraftian flavour when you’re raising a glass to the Outer Gods. Grab the suckers at shanalogic.com. 3 COUNT KETCHUP SPREAD HEAD $4.49 No one likes a dry and bloodless burger. Fortunately, Count Ketchup is here to help. Plonk him on the…

Horror last year was, in a word: epic. The Cabin in the Woods delivered an insanely fun and intelligent monsterocalypse, Father’s Day threw every transgression at the wall and we loved how it stuck (Hail the Fuchmanicus!), and John Dies at the End proved that a low budget is no obstacle to everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink storytelling. Books, comics and video games followed suit, with the familiar reworked into something big in The Croning, Saga, Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer, Godzilla: Half Century War and Telltale’s The Walking Dead. And if you needed something more interactive, zombie runs got us running scared. And don’t forget Clive Barker’s reconstituted Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut – a triumph of imagination that makes up for the onslaught of low-budget cash-grab possession movies. So… how ya gonna top that, 2013?…

THIS ISSUE: LANCE TASTES THE TEARS OF A CLOWN Red Noses for Blue Ladies DEAD CLOWNS Cryptkeeper Films Coulrophobia is defined as the fear of clowns, and it’s a very real and quite prevalent phobia throughout the world. So there are probably a lot of you out there who’ll agree that the best kind of clown is a dead clown. Fitting, as Dead Clowns happens to be the title of this flick about a seaside town that’s being terrorized by a bunch of zombie clowns during a hurricane. Low on laughs, this is a dark film with some good gore, which features scream queens Brinke Stevens (Demon Sex) and Debbie Rochon (Bikini Bloodbath) doing their best not to be ripped apart by these bestial bozos. It’s kind of like The…

Brutal” is such a versatile word. It describes the type of gore movies I like to watch, the genre of death metal I like to listen to and, judging by the search results on the Internet Movie Database, it’s also a popular film title! The Brutal of interest here is the 2012 film written and directed by Michael Patrick Stevens, who also co-stars with A. Michael Baldwin of Phantasm fame. This is a movie that merits a purposefully vague synopsis. It opens with a home-video montage that establishes Carl Gibson (Baldwin) as a devoted husband and father of two young children who finds himself chained half-naked to a wooden chair in a spartan basement with no knowledge of why he’s there. The only other person in the house is a…

During last year’s Texas Frightmare Weekend in Dallas, a few members of the Rue Crew caught a set by a band that had reportedly been splattering stages with bodily fluids – real and synthetic, human and animal – since forming in late 2006. That night, The Razorblade Dolls commanded our attention with a slate of seething scorch-outs, revving in the red on a seemingly bottomless tank of industrial filth and fury not fully realized on its 2008 self-titled debut (pictured). Now, after swapping in a new drummer (Logan Coughran) and releasing a second independent album, A Name for Evil, vocalist Smitty (pictured, above left), whose throat-rattling scream is a force of nature, and guitarist Skar (above right) reveal the thrust behind the serrated songcraft and envelope-pushing live show that has…

2:48 AM: Put on Cabin in the Woods after a fantastic viewing of Silent Night, Deadly Night [Rue Morgue’s November 30 CineMacabre screening] and copious amounts of booze! Thank you @ruemorgue @HIGH_KICKS, VIA TWITTER AS A LONG-TIME fan of John Carpenter’s woefully underrated and overlooked Prince of Darkness, I was elated to discover the unmistakable visage of Donald Pleasence gracing the cover of RM#128. I snapped the issue up and quickly devoured the Prince of Darkness articles. The interview with Carpenter was especially terrific. I suppose my only complaint is that I was left wanting more. Here’s hoping that Shout! Factory gives Prince of Darkness the same treatment that Carpenter’s other masterpiece of that period, They Live, recently received. CHRIS SASSER – BLEEKSBORO, PENNSYLVANIA LOVED THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS cover…

Actress-turned-filmmaker Axelle Carolyn is currently in production on her first feature film. Carolyn’s husband, director Neil Marshall (The Descent, Dog Soldiers), is serving as executive producer on Soulmate, which was announced a couple of years ago under the working title Ghosts of Slaughterford but after some false starts didn’t begin shooting until late 2012. “It’s been a long time coming,” says Carolyn, who previously appeared in Marshall’s Centurion and Doomsday, during a break in filming. “The script has come on by leaps and bounds. It’s a different incarnation now: an evolution of the idea that I started writing over three years ago. It actually feels like a blessing that it crashed last year, although it didn’t quite feel that way at the time! It’s now much more contained, and I’ve…

WHEN THE MAN WHO DIRECTED ALL FOUR PHANTASM FILMS, BUBBA HO-TEP AND THE BEASTMASTER DESCRIBES HIS NEW FEATURE AS “BATSHIT CRAZY,” ONE IS WELL ADVISED TO TAKE HIM AT HIS WORD. In this case, however, he’s not alone, because that’s precisely the term that enthusiastic audiences all over North America and Europe used most often while Don Coscarelli toured John Dies at the End around the festival circuit last year. How else would you describe an adaptation of a novel about two underachievers who dabble in a black, liquid street drug called “Soy Sauce” that promises wild hallucinations but actually transports users into different dimensions and eventually returns them home, permanently altered and increasingly aware that only they can stop a war that’s brewing between factions on other planes of…

NO OTHER REAL-LIFE KILLER HAS HELPED SHAPE THE MODERN HORROR FILM AS MUCH AS ED GEIN, WHICH IS QUITE THE COUP CONSIDERING HE ONLY HAD TWO CONFIRMED MURDERS TO HIS NAME. Rather, it was what he did to, and with, the bodies once they were dead that has captured our morbid imaginations. Modern horror movie staples such as homicidal mommy issues, confused sexual identity, grave-robbing for souvenirs, butchering people like animals, wearing human skin and even themes of cannibalism and necrophilia (inextricably yet erroneously linked to Gein) all began with the Plainfield, Wisconsin farmer. Born Edward Theodore Gein, on August 27, 1906, he was the second son of Augusta and George Gein. Despite the fact that Augusta apparently hated her husband, the couple stayed together for religious reasons and she…

a man stumbles home after a night of hard drinking, only to find his walls and floor slick with blood. His wife and young daughter have been butchered; in an act of heinous psychological torture, the killer will later have the little girl’s face delivered to her grieving father who, by then, is out for blood himself. Welcome to the brutal world of John Connolly. The Dubliner is best known for his Charlie Parker novels, about a Maine-based private detective who is haunted, figuratively and literally, by the restless ghosts of his murdered wife and child. The best-selling series, which began with the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Every Dead Thing in 1999, isn’t Connolly’s only foray into the realm of horror, though; his collection of ghost stories, Nocturnes, included “The New…

REEL TERROR David Konow St. Martin's Press Horror is still viewed by the mainstream as an outlaw genre at best and an embarrassing, unwanted bastard child at worst. California-based writer David Konow makes neither apologies nor concessions for this, and his new book – chronicling cinematic horror exhaustively from the silent era up to and including franchises such as Saw and Paranormal Activity – is all the richer for it. Konow’s impressive resume includes the book Bang Your Head: The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal and credits in LA Weekly, Turner Classic Movies, Guitar World and (shuffles papers around)… oh look, Rue Morgue. Teeming with quotes, notes and anecdotes from contemporary filmmakers, producers, reviewers, actors and studio executives far too numerous to list here, Reel Terror combines historical perspective…

If you’re a regular Rue Morgue reader, you know that books and video games are two of my passions. If you’re a particularly astute reader, you may have picked up on a couple more: television and vampires. So when I stumbled across an announcement last fall for Brad Middleton’s Un-Dead TV (out now from By Light Unseen Media), an exhaustive guide to over 60 years of the vampire on the small screen, I immediately had two thoughts: 1) put this on my Xmas list, stat!, and 2) track down this like-minded TV buff for my column. I cornered Middleton on the cusp of Un-Dead TV’s release to get the scoop on his bloody big (514 oversized pages!) book of bloodsuckers. Why a book on vampire television? In 2009, I was…

SPIDERS 3D SOUNDTRACK Joseph Conlan SCREAMWORKS RECORDS The title may imply another cinematic quickie on track for a fast leap to home video, but Joseph Conlan has provided a mostly dead-serious score that seems more fitting for a summer blockbuster. Much of the music for Tibor Takács’ Spiders 3D consists of pensive tracks with deep, pulsing bass notes and low brass – a nice touch, conveying both the grandeur of the creatures, as well as the dire plight of the characters – and each cue is part of a deliberate design to escalate orchestral and kinetic tension for a climactic battle. Conlan’s build-ups consist of persistent rhythmic motors, leaving no room for humanistic theme statements: this score is purely about the hunt. A few cues are slight homages to John…

ZOMBIU WiiU Ubisoft Now that survivor horror staples such as Silent Hill and Resident Evil have gone the action game route, becoming more about fight than fright, first-person WiiU title ZombiU hopes to bring the genre back to its roots. The 2012 Apocalypse has arrived in London in the form of a viral infection, and you play as a lonely survivor just trying to make it through. On your journey you’ll encounter other survivors, including the “prepper,” an army veteran who knew the end was coming, a scientist who’s working to find a cure for the infection, and members of a secret society known as the Ravens of Dee. The story mixes science and ancient prophesy, but it all feels a bit thin as the main focus in ZombiU is…

Nearly 90 years after its release, Universal’s earliest horror feature, The Phantom of the Opera (1925), is still revealing secrets. As film historians continue to search for lost scenes and a 1930s sound version of the movie, a recent discovery has put it in the running for the distinction of being the first Hollywood feature ever shot in 3-D. Florida filmmaker Carl Hernz uncovered what appeared to be part of a 3-D version of the film in 2010, while gathering footage for use in his own short movie project. Although his archive guide explained that early silent films were often shot with two cameras on the set in order to produce domestic and international versions of the film, and even showed him two frames from different versions of Phantom, Hernz,…

WHEN PAUL GIAMATTI WAS GROWING UP ON THE JERSEY SHORE, HIS OLDER BROTHER SNUCK HIM INTO PHANTASM AND OPENED A DOOR INTO ANOTHER DIMENSION OF CINEMA. “There was a strong sense of real weirdness and terror around that movie; it had to be seen, especially as we all liked to be scared,” recalls the award-winning actor of the movie’s reputation. “It didn’t disappoint; it scared the shit out of me. And I have always remembered being very impressed by the sense of inter-dimensional craziness, the cosmic dimension of the horror – John Dies at the End, obviously, has that in spades. Then of course I saw Bubba Ho-Tep, when I was an adult. Words are inadequate; I think that is a truly brilliant film in every sense of the word.…

IN 1974 DIRECTOR TOBE HOOPER TERRORIZED FILMGOERS WITH A NEW BREED OF VILLAIN: THE DERANGED, CANNIBALISTIC ENIGMA WITH A PREDILECTION FOR WEARING THE SKINNED FACES OF WOMEN, KNOWN AS LEATHERFACE. Hooper and writer Kim Henkel loosely based the character on Ed Gein, one of the most infamous murderers in the annals of American crime. They chose to focus on the macabre aspects of Gein’s crimes, as borne out in the film’s set design; the furniture made from human parts, the skulls used as decoration and the masks Leatherface wears have basis in fact. (Interestingly, the cannibalism in their film is only implied, just as it was in the Gein case; Gein never admitted that he consumed human flesh, even though the heart of his last victim, Bernice Worden, was allegedly…

THE RAW AND THE OVERCOOKED DEAD SUSHI Starring Rina Takeda, Shigeru Matsuzaki and Kentarô Shimazu Written by Noburo Iguchi, Mariko Iguchi and Jun Tsugita Directed by Noburo Iguchi Millenium Entertainment Since this is a movie about killer sushi, you should already know whether or not you’re going to like it on premise alone. But if you’re still unsure if you want to check this out, allow me to set the table. It begins more like a hard-luck tale than a hilarious horror movie: Keiko (Rina Takeda) runs away from the borderline abusive tutelage of her sushi chef father and takes a server job at a secluded inn. On her first day, executives from a large drug company show up to stay for the night and pig out on sushi. Dinner…

The last few years have seen comics invaded by a number of creators crossing over from other media. Novelists, directors, actors and musicians have all been lured by the siren call of the comics industry. Billy Martin, guitarist for the band Good Charlotte is the latest member of this growing club; he co-wrote and drew Vitriol the Hunter, a new six-issue series from IDW. Set in the fictional city of Basilika in 2127, Vitriol is a vigilante desperately trying to defend his hometown from a vampire uprising led by Lord Barthus. While he struggles with hordes of bloodsuckers, Vitriol also clashes with local authorities known as the Defense Initiative, as well as his own inner demons, which include pill addiction and some serious father issues. Vitriol, co-written with Brent Allen,…

THE NEW YORK GRIMPENDIUM J.W. Ocker The Countryman Press Wanna see Typhoid Mary’s grave? Make a pilgrimage to one of Lovecraft’s former haunts? See the firehouse from Ghostbusters? Cruise the Morbid Anatomy Library? If so, J.W. Ocker’s got ya covered. Though his New York Grimpendium is padded out with some questionable entries (Ground Zero memorial? Really?) and this “guide” has no maps, there’s fascinating info aplenty in Ocker’s playful prose. Don’t visit NYC without it. DAVE ALEXANDER HAIR SIDE, FLESH SIDE Helen Marshall ChiZine Publications Filled with bizarre, lyrical and occasionally religion-tinged short stories, Helen Marshall’s debut collection reads like a fanciful walk through her dark imagination. One of the most notable tales, “Sandition,” is about a woman who finds a lost Jane Austen manuscript written beneath her skin. Strangely…

BY NOW, READERS OF RUE MORGUE should be familiar with the creative force that is Chet Zar. We’ve featured him numerous times in these pages, including in RM#100 for our Nightmare Gallery collection, where we asked him to submit a piece based on a personal nightmare. As it turns out, he’s been channelling real night terrors ever since childhood, and the cover of his new book features one of his most famous renderings. The painting that book is named for, titled Black Magick, depicts a spectral being sporting a top hat, fleshy gas mask and a rusty gun, who stares ominously back at us, as curious and frightened as we are. “I think Black Magick is my signature painting at this point,” Zar allows. “It came to me in a…

My name is Aaron Von Lupton, and I have a vinyl fetish. No, this isn’t some bondage club confession, I just really, really love records. In fact, they’re some of my most prized possessions, especially the horror soundtracks. It all began – not surprisingly, given the title of my new column – with Alice Cooper. When I was about ten years old, a friend played Constrictor for me. Something about the way Cooper sang about splatter horror and wild sex appealed to me on the level that things typically appeal to prepubescent boys. What really caught my attention, though, was the synthy track “Man Behind the Mask,” which was the theme song to the then-most recent Friday the 13th movie, Jason Lives. I hadn’t quite gotten into horror movies yet…