Table of contents for Issue 135 July 2013 in RUE MORGUE

“Faith is fragile” – I find that tagline for The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh particularly intriguing this issue… Y’see, this one presented us with a conundrum in terms of how we cover this first feature from Rue Morgue president Rodrigo Gudiño. You, the reader, puts faith in us to deliver a cover story that’s the best choice for the RM audience first and foremost, not something dictated by advertisers, or simply self-promotion. The last thing we want to do is abuse that trust. That said, Rue Morgue Cinema’s first feature is huge for our little company – a thoughtful, original indie film that represents the spirit of the magazine, has an unusual cast and crew, and presents us with an opportunity to explore the genre in a…

The man behind many of the greatest movie monster makeups has been honoured with a new gallery that bears his name. The Jack Pierce Memorial Gallery for Makeup and Character Arts – named after the makeup wizard who designed the look of such celebrated Universal monsters as Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein’s monster and Imhotep the Mummy, Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolf Man and Elsa Lanchester’s Bride – was dedicated in a ceremony that took place on May 30 in Los Angeles. Housed inside the LA-based Cinema Makeup School (CMS), the gallery showcases both a permanent and rotating exhibition of pieces from various special effects houses, veteran makeup experts and talented, rising artists. Visitors to the exhibit will find busts of Pierce, Karloff as the Mummy, and various life-size props of assorted creatures,…

1. TRICK ‘R TREAT PERSISTENT PUMPKIN PATCH KID 2. DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW BUBBA’S BACK IN BURLAP 3. THE STRANGERS HOMICIDAL HOME INVADER 4. FRIDAY THE 13TH, PART 2 HOCKEY SEASON HASN’T STARTED 5. THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN PHANTOM KILLER COSTUME 6. MALEVOLENCE BAG TO BASICS TORTURED TAGLINES ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS (1979) “WHEN THE EARTH SPITS OUT THE DEAD… THEY WILL RETURN TO TEAR THE FLESH OF THE LIVING…” See more of Jay’s work at jayfosgitt.com…

I LOVE A GREAT GHOST STORY, which is probably why I spent a big chunk of my formative years chasing down the cinematic equivalent – haunted house movies – on home video. The Amityville Horror, The Changeling, Poltergeist and The Shining were rotating features in the midnight movie marathon that my friends and I would indulge in on most weekends during those impressionable years. By the time I kicked off Rue Morgue, well into my twenties, I’d had the opportunity to revisit a lot of those old haunts and discover new ones – long-haired Japanese ghosts, housebound Spanish spookshows and the “evidence” of paranormal activity in suburban America. So when it came time to write my first feature film, you could say I was intimately aware of the subgenre.…

“NO LIVE ORGANISM CAN CONTINUE FOR LONG TO EXIST SANELY UNDER CONDITIONS OF ABSOLUTE REALITY.” So begins Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House, a modern classic of supernatural fiction that has had an indelible effect on the world of horror. This powerful source material was adapted into one of the finest ghost stories ever committed to film: 1963’s The Haunting – a work that Martin Scorsese ranked as number one on a 2009 list of his Scariest Horror Films of All Time. Its director, Robert Wise (1914-2005), was a product of the studio system. He began his career working for RKO Pictures, ascending through the ranks from humble beginnings fetching coffee, to film porter; eventually he became a sound, narrative and film editor before directing his first…

HOW DO YOU TELL A STORY THAT CANNOT BE TOLD? ALTERNATELY, HOW DO YOU KEEP A SECRET FOR 200 YEARS? This is the quandary of Eleanor, a teenage vampire, in Byzantium, the latest gothic horror tale from director Neil Jordan. The Irish filmmaker knows the undead territory well, having helmed 1994’s adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. This time, it’s not a fancy Brad Pitt/Tom Cruise Hollywood production but a modest $12 million picture that offers a more moody take on bloodsuckers, with new twists on old myths. Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan: Hanna, pictured) will be sixteen forever. She is on the run from a secret Brotherhood with her “morbidly sexy” vampire mother Clara (Gemma Arterton, a Bond Girl from Quantum of Solace and the star of The Disappearance…

ZOMBI MEXICANO Keith J. Rainville From Parts Unknown Publications How nice it is to be provided a window into a secret world of cinema. In this case, the world of the Mexican zombie films of the ’70s. But why has this movement been obscured, especially with the stacks of zombie-related books out there? How did it escape the gaze of the obsessive completists? This is exactly what author/lowbrow culture junkie Keith J. Rainville seeks to answer. Rainville starts by taking the reader through the semantic discrepancies that he thinks are at the root of all the confusion – the idea that what Mexican cinemagoers call mummies, the rest of us might call zombies. This mislabelling seems in part due to the real-life mummies of Guanajuato, a hundred-or-so well-preserved corpses found…

ANTIVIRAL SOUNDTRACK E.C. Woodley LAKESHORE RECORDS It takes a little while to settle into the slow-burning groove of E.C. Woodley’s score for Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral, but it ultimately makes for an engaging immersion into the young Canadian’s own brand of surreal horror. Essentially built around four alternating notes, initially heard on soft keyboard, Woodley quickly strips down his quartet of resonating tonalities into saturated bass chords, and gradually layers in fuzzy pulses and synth drones, with an intermittent cello that’s been enhanced to sound neither organic nor synthetic. The score’s most affecting quality is the way the tones and soft textures seem to breathe, and no matter how much the electronic elements may distort, they’re all kept in a range beauthat’s weirdly soothing. Not unlike the work of Cliff Martinez…

THANK YOU, thank you, thank you for the wonderful article and interview for American Mary. I've been watching the magazine like a hawk since last fall hoping for coverage on it, mostly because Rue Morgue always does such a good job, and I find your reviews well thought out and assessments honest. The coverage of the new version of Maniac in the same issue – well, I don't know if could have been any happier unless the magazine had come with a bag of cookies shaped like Pinhead’s face. KATHERINE K. DOYLE – HOUSTON, TEXAS BRITISH ISSUE [RM#133]… REALLY. Sounds to me like you’re dogging on Hammer. No stories on Amicus… pitiful. I was really looking forward to this issue, since Hammer horror was the beginning of my horror education.…

The parish of Barrow Gurney in Somerset, England, isn’t the kind of place you’d expect to go for your horror art fix. But the town’s abandoned psychiatric facility – saved from demolition when it was found to be a favourite roosting place for a dozen bat species – has become the venue for the horror movie tributes of street artist Jamie Paul Scanlon, better known as JPS. Mostly done with spray paint and stencils, his life-sized paintings of such horror icons as Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees haunt the decaying hospital, turning the grounds into a gallery of underground art. The Barrow Hospital (sometimes referred to as simply Barrow Gurney) was built in 1934 to resolve issues of overcrowding in the nearby City of Bristol Mental Hospital. Initially planned as…

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WHEN AARON POOLE SIGNED on to play the lead in The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh, he faced a unique challenge: his character Leon is the lone human onscreen for the bulk of the film, with only a host of inanimate objects and a CGI monster to keep him company. An antiques dealer, Leon is charged with sorting through his estranged mother’s possessions after her death. Of course, this is no ordinary senior’s home laden with the fuzzy tchotchkes of the aged – Rosalind Leigh’s house is a shrine, filled with religious iconography and cultish imagery. The marble angels, wooden idols and other creepy artifacts in the maternal home occupy as much, if not more screen time than Poole himself, with director Rodrigo Gudiño’s camera lingering over the…

James Wan has never made the same film twice. The 36-year-old Australian has built a reputation on being predictably unpredictable; he announced his formidable presence in the horror world with his 2004 debut Saw, unleashing a wave – perhaps “tsunami” is a better word – of imitators before promptly abandoning the world of gory, hard-R horror. His next film was 2007’s famously studio-diddled ventriloquist ghost yarn Dead Silence, followed by the same year’s Death Sentence, a relentlessly grim meditation on the futility of revenge. Neither effort came close to duplicating Saw’s remarkable box-office success; that would come four years later with Insidious, a bloodless but terrifying throwback to old-fashioned supernatural horror, which earned massive returns on its miniscule budget. So it was surprising, then, when Wan attached himself to…

DOMESTIC ULTRA-VIOLENCE THE PURGE Starring Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey and Rhys Wakefield Written and directed by James DeMonaco Universal Ever since the better-than-expected Paranormal Activity sequels and the efficient Insidious, Blum-house Productions has become a reliable house of horrors, providing slick genre thrills on a budget. The Purge is their latest effort, a slice of home-invasion horror with a socially conscious sci-fi twist. Given the potential of the big central concept, it’s a shame the flick falls back on so many familiar tropes, but at least they’re executed well. The story is set in a near-future US where skyrocketing poverty and crime rates were ostensibly curbed by The Purge, an annual night of lawlessness that allows the American public twelve hours to let their baser instincts – especially bloodlust –…

There have been many interpretations of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man and other iconic monsters over the years, but none have had more staying power in our collective consciousness than those by Universal Pictures. The studio’s classic designs continue to permeate pop culture despite the number of more modern and more “serious” re-imaginings. And yet there’s no denying that some consider those versions relics of a bygone era when horror was less threatening and not quite as “legitimate” as contemporary offerings. This view, however misguided, is the starting point for the new digital graphic novel Baron Von Frankenstein: A Hollywood Fairytale (available now from Viper Comics), a fun and heartwarming love letter to the mad monsters of yore. In the book, the Baron, his monster, and servant Igor not only…

Jason Edmiston is no stranger to these pages. We’ve featured his paintings in several features and he was the man behind the drool-inducing cover art for Cronenberg’s The Fly retrospective (RM#116). His style is equal parts Basil Gogos and Drew Struzan, with a helping of lowbrow pop artist Ron English – and with an upcoming solo show at Austin’s Mondo Gallery in August, his popularity will continue to grow. Titled A Rogues Gallery, the show runs August 23 to September 14 and will feature stunning new paintings and screen prints celebrating horror cinema’s baddest villains and monsters. From the aliens in They Live to the creatures created by Ray Harryhausen, Edmiston’s latest exhibit is the ultimate tribute to the nightmarish monsters, anti-heroes and maniacs he grew up watching. “I’m drawn…

Even if you’re not a soundtrack geek, there are a few names that even casual horror fans should know: in the US, John Carpenter’s synth scores are nearly as popular as the films he directed, while overseas, the horror soundtrack belongs to Italian prog rockers Goblin, the band’s name practically synonymous with European splatter and giallo. But unlike Carpenter, who obviously wrote music with a specific movie, mood and feel in mind, Goblin’s career sort of worked in reverse; their jazzy King Crimson meets Emerson, Lake & Palmer instrumentation wasn’t exactly born with the intention of evoking scares. It was in 1975, when they were still called Cherry Five, that Dario Argento offered the group the chance to score Deep Red. The soundtrack was a huge hit, and shortly thereafter…

What scene in a ghost movie scared the bejeezus out of you more than any other? The Haunting – Eleanor lying in bed holding “Theo’s hand” while seeing the face in the moulding on the wall and listening to the distant ghostly mumbling, screaming and laughter. So much of the movie is incredibly eerie! JAMIE PELLERIN Old lady in window in Insidious. JOHN GIBSON In Burnt Offerings, every time Oliver Reed’s character would see or think of the chauffeur from his childhood. DOUG MILLS The damn clown in Poltergeist. PEACH YOURGODDESS COOPER Ju-On – when that kid opened his mouth and a cat screech came out I nearly shit myself. JEFF MELO The Changeling, when the wet ball bounces down the stairs. KATHERINE K. DOYLE Nothing beats The Innocents.…

“MY FATHER SAID HE USED TO HEAR CRYING. I used to hear the crying also. Not like a child, but the voices of many people crying. That is why my father started to dig, and that is when he found the cave and the hundreds of skulls.” Rowena Berong was describing how her father Baban discovered a centuries-old burial site on their property in the township of Kabayan, in the Benguet Province on the Philippine island of Luzon. I had come here seeking exactly these kinds of stories, in this remote area where the divide between the living and the dead is thinly veiled, and those who have passed on beg to be remembered. Baban Berong had unearthed what is now known as the Opdas Cave, a site of secondary…

THIS ISSUE: LANCE MOCKS SOME MONSTER MUTANTS FROSTBITTEN SNOW SHARK: ANCIENT SNOW BEAST Independent Entertainment Some like their horror-comedies slick like Shaun of the Dead or Dead Alive, while others prefer them to be stupid, like this one. I mean, come on: it’s called Snow Shark, for Christ’s sake! In it, an earthquake has released the ancient prehistoric creature that’s been terrorizing a small town for more than a decade, munching on both the cryptozoologists trying to study it and keep it alive, and the rednecks trying to kill it. Though the cast’s acting chops are seriously lacking, kudos to the special effects crew for pulling off the various gruesome, blood-spurting kills and mangled limbs, as well as that seriously demented-looking shark, which plunges in and out of surrounding snowbanks.…

Back in RM#110, I waxed enthusiastically about Brutal Relax (2010), a hilariously gory fifteen-minute short by Spaniards Adrián Cardona, Rafa Dengrá and David Muñoz, about a high-strung man whose day at the beach is ruined by a horde of aquatic zombies. Check it out on YouTube before you read on, I’ll wait… Funny, eh?! Also on YouTube is a more recent collaboration between Cardona and Muñoz, Fist of Jesus (2012), another fifteen-minute short in the same splatstick vein, which they hope to develop into a feature. Blasphemy has never been so funny! The plot: while delivering a sermon on a mount, Jesus is interrupted by Jacob, whose son Lazarus has died. In an arrogant display of divinity, Jesus resurrects Lazarus, who comes back as a flesh-eating zombie! Jesus promptly tries…

THE AMERICAN WEST HAS LONG CARRIED A MYTHIC QUALITY, EXISTING AS MUCH AS AN IDEA AS A LANDSCAPE, BECKONING PEOPLE EVER ONWARD IN SEARCH OF ADVENTURE, REINVENTION AND RICHES. Some pioneers found their fortunes, but just as many – probably more – met with heartache, failure, even death. Despite the frontier’s darkness, or perhaps because of it, Ryan Sollee, the lyricist, singer and guitarist for The Builders and The Butchers, has long heard the West’s siren song. “I really love the West because it was one of the last places on Earth where there was a feeling of undiscovered hope, but usually this turned into disappointment,” he says. “I think it’s interesting that so many of our recent relatives were willing to cast everything off and go out into the…

XBOX 360 PS3 WII PC MAC DS PSP TABLE-TOP CARD ROLE-PLAYING IPAD IPHONE REVIEWED RESIDENT EVIL: REVELATIONS Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U, PC Capcom Last year was a big one for the Resident Evil franchise. Not only did it see the theatrical release of Resident Evil: Retribution, but gamers were also inundated with three different titles to choose from: RE6, RE: Operation Raccoon City and RE: Revelations. Though it had originally been released solely for the Nintendo 3DS, Revelations fared so much better than its multi-platform counterparts that the folks at Capcom decided to spice it up a bit and port it out to the home console market. Set mainly on the high seas, the action takes place between RE4 and RE5. It’s your mission to explore a creepy old…

HERBERT VAN THAL UK - 1959 TO 1989 Few subjects better suit the short story format than horror, where a sense of the macabre is built quickly, then capped with a grisly denouement, often coming unexpectedly and frequently with a twist. The pulp-ish appeal of cheap paperbacks featuring lurid cover art, which British publisher Pan had been successfully utilizing since its inception in 1944, lent itself perfectly to tales of terror. Knowing this, the company’s sales director at the time, Ralph Vernon-Hunt, approached Pan’s top editor, Clarence Paget, with a pitch for a collection of horror stories, asking whether Paget knew anyone who could bring it together. He did. Enter Herbert Van Thal, an old friend of Paget, who enthusiastically embraced the idea and set about working on the first…