Table of contents for Issue 148 September 2014 in RUE MORGUE

Herzogian horror. That phrase needs to enter the lexicon, for the cinema of Werner Herzog is spiked with unrivalled moments of psychological atrocity. I reviewed the new box set of films by the German auteur for this issue, which reminded me once again why I obsess over his work: to experience extremes – the same reason I watch horror movies. Herzog’s delivers his extremes in the form of overwhelming landscapes and personalities and the interactions between them, which usually lead to madness. Horror is a very visceral, visual genre most oftened centred around monstrous external threats, internal body horror that manifests itself in hideous ways, the gory destruction of the physical form or a combination of the three. But Herzog’s most compelling work concerns itself with the terror of –…

Godzilla fever may be sweeping the world in the wake of the American reboot and the 60th anniversary of the orignal, but for some, the irradiated lizard has been a lifelong passion. Case in point: self-taught filmmaker Billy Dubose, the writer, director, producer, editor and star of one of the most ambitious fan films ever made: Godzilla: Battle Royale. The 31-year-old native of Elmhurst, Illinois even managed to cast the star of the original 1954 Gojira, Akira Takarada, and Robert Scott Field, the cyborg M-11 from 1991’s Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. The Destroy All Monsters-inspired plot follows an attempted alien invasion of Earth, as the villainous Queen Xaxious (Vicka Xaika) transports the world’s kaiju (Godzilla, Mothra, Anguirus, Varan, Orga, Maguma, Manda and others) from their peaceful Monster Island home and…

1 CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST TRIBESMEN BEAT JACK’S MEAT TO BITE-SIZED BITS 2 CANNIBAL FEROX JOHN MORGAN DIS-MEMBERED AND DISMEMBERED 3 THE GREEN INFERNO ACTIVIST MEETS HACKTIVIST/SNACKTIVISTS 4 CANNIBAL FEROX BLOODY BREAST SUSPENSION 5 ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST EYEBALL POPPERS 6 JUNGLE HOLOCAUST (FORE)ARM CANDY TORTURED TAGLINES SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (1984) “YOU’VE MADE IT THROUGH HALLOWEEN. NOW TRY AND SURVIVE CHRISTMAS.” See more of Jay’s work at jayfosgitt.com…

Eli Roth is back! Actually, that’s not true. The director of the gooey Cabin Fever and the first two Hostel films never left moviemaking. Instead, when Hostel: Part II fell short at the summer box office in 2007 and was killed by critics sensitive to so-called torture porn, he changed gears and turned his energies towards producing and, more surprisingly, acting. Most prominently he played Nazi killer Sgt. Donny Donowitz – a.k.a. the Bear Jew – alongside Brad Pitt in Quentin Tarantino’s WWII epic Inglourious Basterds (2009). The phrase “Eli Roth presents” also started cropping up on movie posters, most notably for the 2010 hit The Last Exorcism. He also produced The Man with the Iron Fists (2012), the directorial debut from Wu-Tang Clan founder The RZA, and helped shepherd…

CRAPTILLIAN LIZARDMAN: THE TERROR OF THE SWAMP Camp Motion Pictures When Bill Hansen was a kid, he was attacked by a horrible Lizardman. Pissed off that nobody believed him, he worked hard, made billions of dollars and then hired a team of mercenaries to track down and capture the creature, so he could put it on display. Presented as a mix of King Kong and Creature from the Black Lagoon, this is a corny affair that takes itself far too seriously and suffers from atrocious camerawork (focus, people, focus…), deplorable CGI and a truly laughable lizard costume. Incredibly, it’s based on actual sightings of a strange reptilian humanoid in Lee County, South Carolina, which allegedly have been occurring since 1988. And if you don’t believe me, just check out…

PHANTASM EXHUMED: THE UNAUTHORIZED COMPANION Dustin McNeill Harker Press “All it took was a little digging,” reads the cover of Phantasm Exhumed – The Unauthorized Companion, which is an understatement on par with something like, “The Tall Man isn’t from around here.” Longtime Phan Dustin McNeill sure as hell dug deep, interviewing damn near everyone who was involved in the Phantasm series, save for the always elusive James LeGros, who replaced Michael Baldwin as Mike in part two (something that doesn’t sit easy with many Phans), and director Don Coscarelli, who may have his own plans for an official Phantasm tome some day and declined involvement. But his absence actually frees McNeill from having to circle around to Coscarelli all the time, giving us a broad perspective. And at 260…

SOUNDTRACK RASHOMON The Cameraman’s Revenge CINEPLOIT Rashomon is the solo project of one Matt Thompson, a cinematically-influenced musician who also provides keyboards for Cineploit labelmates Zoltan. On his fourth album, Thompson composes new soundtrack music for two films by stop-motion pioneer Ladislaw Starewicz: The Cameraman’s Revenge, a brilliant 1912 surrealist work in which dead insects are animated in a tale of love and revenge, and The Mascot, a disturbing 1933 children’s film far ahead of its time. Both scores employ old school synths and organ to create warm and fuzzy tones that are layered with more period-specific instruments, such as the autoharp, which adds exotic accents. The score for The Cameraman’s Revenge ultimately offers the more satisfyingly gothic creep of the two, though the one for The Mascot makes effective…

WHAT AN AMAZING life Dick Smith led. How many people in the business called him “genius,” I wonder? He was the first makeup artist I ever knew about. I remember asking the reference desk at my library if they had any information on him. Dick Smith will always be SFX royalty. ANGELA BARR, VIA FACEBOOK BRANDON LEE has been gone 20 years but will never be forgotten. TALLMETALHEAD, VIA INSTAGRAM TWO ISSUES in, due to Horror Block; I love RM#147’s cover… read from front to back! SHAUN LINDINGER, VIA FACEBOOK WOW! I got my second Horror Block in the mail the other day and once again I was blown away! Thank you very much! And I love your magazine, by the way! DAN HAWBAKER, VIA FACEBOOK RM#147 IS ONE OF…

The horror world, and the special effects industry at large, lost one of its true legends with the passing of Dick Smith on July 30, 2014. Born June 26, 1922, Richard Emerson Smith was a pioneer of special effects makeup, gaining numerous accolades during his career (including an Oscar for his work on Milos Forman’s Amadeus), as well as mentoring and inspiring generations of other artists and creators. Smith’s list of credits include special effects makeup on The Exorcist, Altered States, Scanners, The Hunger, Taxi Driver and TV’s Dark Shadows. His interest in the field began when he attended Yale University as a pre-med student with a major in zoology, but chose a different career path in his sophomore year after reading a book on makeup tricks used by Hollywood…

1 ZOMBIE HAND WINE BOTTLE HOLDER $29.99 Next time you’re wondering whether to pair brains with a nice Bordeaux or if a chardonnay complements a cerebellum, get some help with this zombie hand wine bottle holder. It fits most standard-size bottles, so for apocalypse-scale gatherings, you may want to pick up a few… Send more grapes at thinkgeek.com. 2 FLOWER SKULLS SHEET AND COMFORTER SET $34.99 - $49.50 As thoughts of hibernation cross your monstrous mind, consider some fresh linen for your lair – this comforter and sheet set (sold separately) features a rather elegant pattern of white-on-black skulls and should keep you toasty as you dream of… well, let’s not go into that. Sleep like the dead at wayfair.com. 3 HUMAN FETUS SOAP BAR $15 Unnerve anyone who happens…

EVER WONDER WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE IF HALLOWEEN LASTED AN ENTIRE MONTH? YU LAN, OR THE HUNGRY GHOST MONTH, IS A PERIOD CELEBRATED IN SOUTHERN ASIA THAT SPANS THE ENTIRE SEVENTH MONTH OF THE CHINESE LUNISOLAR CALENDAR. That's right, weeks of nightly supernatural suspense, rife with colourful customs and rich superstition. For an entire month, residents avoid going out after dark, swimming or leaving their chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice, for fear of an encounter with misshapen spirits known as hungry ghosts. It all begins with family. Although there are various denominations one can belong to in Asia, filial piety (devotion to one’s parents and worshipping one’s ancestors) is practiced by nearly all. Devotion to loved ones is demonstrated by visiting their graves, cleaning them or displaying…

In September of 1954, hundreds of children aged four to fourteen descended upon the Southern Necropolis cemetery located in the South of Glasgow, in an area known as the Gorbals. Armed with knives, stones, handcrafted spears and stakes, they were on the hunt for a seven-foot tall vampire with iron teeth, who they claimed was responsible for the disappearance of two local children. The “hunt” lasted for three nights until the parents, with the help of the local constabulary, were able to convince the kids to call off the search permanently. “The details of that story are what drew me in,” says David Lucarelli, writer of The Children’s Vampire Hunting Brigade, a new series based on the Gorbals Vampire legend. One night while online, Lucarelli discovered the tale of the…

GHOST GAL: THE WILD HUNT Bobby Nash Raven’s Head Press Ghost Gal is the first book in a new series that follows the adventures of real life ghost hunter Alexandra Holzer, daughter of renowned paranormal investigator Hans Holzer. The series kicks off with a battle against an ancient spirit who has a score to settle with Alexandra’s father. It’s a charming, fun ride that keeps the spirit of the elder Holzer’s work alive. CHARLOTTE STEAR PROFESSOR CHALLENGER: THE KEW GROWTHS AND OTHER STORIES William Meikle Dark Renaissance Offering up new adventures of Professor Challenger (of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World), these tales – narrated by Challenger’s journalist companion Edward Malone – see carnivorous fungi nearly take over London, Neanderthal ghosts haunting the Scottish highlands and ice-age beasts dwelling on a…

No question, the design desk at Criterion has kept its brand identity solid with top notch art direction and slick packaging. The company helped re-invigorate film art, which has of late become widely popular again with film fans. I was recently reminded of this when I clawed open their Scanners reissue and was greeted with mind-blowing illustrations, each one cooler than the next. As such, I felt it was high time to showcase some of the original horror film art from Criterion’s horror catalogue. I could have easily picked a dozen titles, such as The Blob, Mike Mignola’s Cronos cover, the crazy cat poster for Hausu (House) or that newly minted cover for The Innocents (see p.42), but we’ll call those honourable mentions and focus on my top five. In…

With Eli Roth’s gutmuncher The Green Inferno hitting theatres this month, there’s no better time to feature Cannibal Corpse in the column. September is a huge month for death metal’s most singularly gruesome band, with not only the release of its 13th studio album, A Skeletal Domain (Metal Blade), but also an official biography, Bible of Butchery, written by British author Joel McIver. Even a casual fan of extreme music should be familiar with Cannibal Corpse’s hilarious, sometimes morally reprehensible song titles and lyrics – “A Skull Full Of Maggots” and “Entrails Ripped From A Virgin’s Cunt,” to name a few. Yet despite landing in hot water early in their career, being banned in several countries at various times, the band has reached mainstream popularity, even appearing this summer on…

DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965) Freddie Francis The first of Amicus’ anthologies, the film features Peter Cushing as the Tarot cardreading Dr. Schreck, who foretells the futures of the five men traveling in the train compartment with him. In the first story, an architect is called upon to renovate his former home, and discovers that a werewolf lays in wait for him. The second has a family return from vacation to find that a murderous vine has grown in front of their house. The third features a jazz musician appropriating a piece of voodoo ceremonial music for his gig – with ill-fated results. The fourth sees a pompous art critic menaced by the revenge-seeking hand of a painter he drove to suicide. And in the last tale, a young…

12 HOURS TO KILL THE PURGE: ANARCHY Starring Frank Grillo, Carmen Ejogo and Zoë Soul Written and directed by James DeMonaco Universal The success of the last summer’s lowbudget/high-concept thriller The Purge meant that a sequel was inevitable. And while it is certainly bigger, The Purge: Anarchy is also mostly better, although whatever tangential relationship the series had to horror has been largely jettisoned in favour of action-oriented mayhem and half-baked social commentary. But that doesn’t stop it from being entertaining and, dare I say it, a bit touching too. The set-up for the sequel, which takes place one year after the events of the first film, remains the same: in a near-future America, all crime, including murder, is permissible for a twelve-hour period once a year. In theory, the…

The 1960s was an exciting time for British horror, but one of the finest films that came out of the period wasn’t an audacious remake of a classic Universal property or a lurid EC Comics update – it was a tragic haunted house film by a director far more interested in literary adaptations than delivering the gory goods. Whereas Hammer films really put the sex and gore front and centre in their popular Dracula and Frankenstein retellings, Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961) is far more interesting and disturbing for what it implies. Though based on Henry James’ thoroughly Victorian ghost story The Turn of the Screw, a then-fashionable, deeply Freudian approach by screenwriting collaborator Truman Capote gives the film a perverse edge that’s far more daring than anything else released…

“I DON’T BELIEVE IN MONSTERS; THERE’S NO SUCH THING,” SAYS LAUREN BEUKES. “When we describe someone as ‘monstrous’ we are trying to say they are more than (or less than) human. But humanity has to allow for even the most despicable acts. We are all capable of those things in the darkest corners, in the worst circumstances.” The South African writer’s fourth novel, Broken Monsters (out September 16 from Mulholland Books) explores the depths of human monstrosity via a mix of techno-gothic thriller and gritty urban tale that recalls the edgier hardboiled-horror hybrids of writers like Charlie Huston (Already Dead, Sleepless) and Michael Marshall Smith (Only Forward, The Intruders), but aimed more squarely at genre fans. At the center of the story is Gabriella Versado, a single-mom/detective tracking a serial…

The “video nasty” furor in England in the early 1980s remains one of most ludicrous examples of nanny statism in the modern history of Western democracy. Driven by religious fervor and stoked by sensationalist tabloid headlines such as “Ban the sadist videos!,” British legislators ran roughshod over the civil liberties of an entire nation under the pretense of protecting children from films that they determined – without any substantive evidence – “tend to deprave and corrupt persons.” In retrospect, this imbroglio would be excusable as misguided public policy were it not driven by the cynical goal of extending the political influence of the Conservative government in power in Britain at the time. The bureaucratic bumbling behind it is neatly encapsulated in the reported seizure of the Dolly Parton musical comedy…

A DOWN ’N’ DIRTY FOURSOME DEDICATED TO THE PSYCHOTRONIC, HARROWING SOUNDS OF GLOOM, ELECTRIC WIZARD EMERGED FROM THE TOWN OF DORSET, ENGLAND IN THE EARLY ’90S TO BECOME A DISTILLATION OF THE DOOM METAL SOUND ORIGINATED BY THEIR COUNTRYMEN BLACK SABBATH. But while early Sabbath is the group’s musical touchstone, its lyrics and album covers reveal horror and exploitation films, Jess Franco, H.P. Lovecraft and trash magazines to be just as influential. Rue Morgue checked in with guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Jus Oborn to unearth the malevolent madness which fuels their latest dark opus, Time To Die, before it drops in North America on September 30th (from Spinefarm). YOU USE A LOT OF IMAGERY FROM HORROR AND EXPLOITATION FILMS FROM THE 1960S AND ’70S. HOW DO THESE INTERESTS INFLUENCE YOUR…

CURSE OF NAXXRAMAS: A HEARTHSTONE ADVENTURE PC, MAC, IPAD Blizzard Entertainment Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft has been out for several months now, and the verdict among fans is in: its addicting, streamlined gameplay has made it a hit among CCG players and Warcraft fans alike. Curse of Naxxramas is Hearthstone’s first expansion for the free-to-play digital card game, and with it comes new cards, class challenges and a single player campaign during which you’ll pit your best decks against a series of computer-controlled opponents. Naxxramas is a floating necropolis that serves as a stronghold for an undead army known as the Scourge. Lorded over by the powerful lich Kel’thuzad, it houses monstrous arachnids, undead soldiers and twisted abominations. The expansion, much like the structure itself, is divided into five wings,…