Table of contents for Issue 149 October 2014 Halloween Special Issue in RUE MORGUE

It reads like the name of one of those ridiculous little cars made for someone half my size, but a geon is actually a literal building block of sight. More specifically, they are very basic shapes – squares, circles, cones, pyramids, ovals, etc. (in 2-D or 3-D) – that the brain already knows and can use to quickly understand more complex shapes comprised of multiple geons. That’s why we recognize a circle with two small ovals and a curved line as a happy face. Add a triangle to the top and it’s a someone wearing a party hat. Add two small upside-down triangles to the curved line and you’ve got a vampire celebrating a birthday – yaaay! And so on… Past experiences in the world create familiar geon patterns that…

(HG Toys, 1979) Many Alien fans are familiar with the fantastic 18-inch Kenner figure from 1979, but HG Toys also released some awesome Alien toys, including the Alien Blaster Giant Target Set. Containing a three-foot-tall illustrated cardboard alien, the toy came with a “blaster” gun and three ping-pong balls to shoot at four hinged, flip-down targets – which, when hit, gave off an “eerie” bell sound. Incredibly difficult to find, a complete boxed specimen sold on eBay this past summer for $1100. MORE CRYPTIC COLLECTIBLES AT RUE-MORGUE.COM…

One of the most iconic toy companies of the 1970s, Mego Corporation is fondly remembered for its 8-inch posable action figures of DC and Marvel superheroes, and characters from such TV and film properties as Star Trek and Planet of the Apes. The toys featured detailed (for the day) head sculpts and sported colourful cloth outfits, making them hugely successful with kids. A series of missteps (including passing up on the license for a little film called Star Wars) led to financial troubles for the company and Mego filed for bankruptcy in 1983. Since then, a few outfits have released Mego-like products, including Figures Toy Company, EMCE Toys and Bif Bang Pow! One of the latest companies to pick up the Mego torch has, ironically enough, been the National Entertainment…

NATIOAL HORROR EXPO 2014…

UN-LEASE THE BEAST 4 DEAD GIRLS: THE SOUL TAKER Breaking Glass Pictures When something sounds too good to be true – it usually is. That’s the lesson four girls learn when they decide to move into a completely furnished house with impossibly low rent. The catch is that their creepy landlord is actually a demon who traps them in the house so he can kill them and feed off of their souls. Too bad the action plods along slower than a zombie snail and, most annoyingly, the stereotypical girls – the prude, the slut, the trashy “dyke” and the lesbian with a heart of gold – don’t even seem to like each other, which made me wonder why they’d cohabit in the first place. And, honestly, they probably could…

WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION OF SAM RAIMI’S EVIL DEAD MOVIES, no horror franchise has been unleashed in so many variations on multiple home video formats as the Halloween films. With news of an eleventh Halloween movie in the pipeline, it seems only fitting that Anchor Bay, in collaboration with Scream Factory, would push out Halloween: The Complete Collection just in time for our favorite night of the year. The timing is appropriate, but is this fifteen-disc “deluxe” Bluray release (or the ten-disc version, which is also available) worthy of a pricey revisit to Haddonfield? As one would expect, The Complete Collection includes all the Halloween films to date, from John Carpenter’s original through to Rob Zombie’s remake and sequel. In terms of the quality, while much work and passion went into…

CREEPY #18 Fred Van Lente, Corinna Bechko, Dan Braun and Peter Bagge Dark Horse THE GOON #46 Eric Powell Dark Horse DAY MEN #4 Matt Gagnon, Michael Alan Nelson and Brian Stelfreeze Boom BALTIMORE: THE WITCH OF HARJU #1 Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden and Peter Bergting Dark Horse AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE #6 Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Francisco Francavilla Archie Comics GRIMM FAIRY TALES #101 Pat Shand and Andrea Meloni Zenescope When Creepy magazine crawled onto newsstands back in 1964, it filled the gaping hole left by the Comics Code Authority’s castration of the comics industry. For nearly a decade, horror fans had seen their beloved grisly comics either disappear or get watered down to an unrecognizable level. Because Creepy was classified as a magazine, it didn’t have to submit to the…

DETROIT TATTOOER BOB TYRRELL IS ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS PORTRAIT ARTISTS, SPECIALIZING IN ASTOUNDINGLY DETAILED (AND SPOOKY) BLACK AND WHITE PORTRAITS. In fact, I’ve got an entire sleeve of classic monsters by the man (full disclosure: he’s also a good friend) behind Night Gallery Tattoos. And it all started with a familiar ghoul. “It was the little girl from the Night of the Living Dead DVD cover,” he recalls. “Actually, the VHS cover back then! It was the very first portrait I tattooed. I was only tattooing for three months at the time, back in 1997.” And so a monster was born, inflicting pain on willing victims with needle and ink. And there’s never a shortage of them; after all, his portraits have won him countless awards at…

XBOS 360 PS3 WII PC MAC DS TABLE-TOP CARD ROLE-PLAYING IPAD IPHONE REVIEWED ALIEN: ISOLATION PS3, PS4, PC, Xbox One, Xbox 360 Developed by Creative Assembly Sega For those of you new to this planet, Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror/sci-fi survival movie Alien told the tale of a group of deepspace miners forced to land on a planet where they came faceto-face with an aggressive otherworldly species about as far removed from the soft, benevolent aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind as you could get. After a slew of sequels and a handful of lacklustre videogames, it’s about time that somebody took the franchise back to its roots and developed a game that’s as terrifying as the towering, toothy xenomorph that had us soiling our pants in the first…

COMMENTS QUESTIONS CRITICISM I’VE BEEN ATTENDING the Festival of Fear at FanExpo since 2005 and wanted to thank you – you really outdid yourselves this year with Bruce Campbell, the twins from The Shining and a Twin Peaks reunion. Wow! Thank you for making Toronto into a darker place. Your fan for life, ANTHONY WILCOX – MISSISSAUGA, ONTARIO THANK YOU @RUEMORGUE. I got to meet Sheryl Lee at the Festival of Fear! What a trooper signing with broken fingers! @ORACLEFLWPG, VIA TWITTER WILL YOUR CAPTAIN HOWDY shirt be available online at all? I’m in the UK and need it. GARY GOULDBURN – WINSFORD, CHESHIRE [Get ‘em at fright-rags.com while supplies last! – Ed.] I JUST READ and then reread your Note from Underground column in RM#147. I loved it. You…

While on the set of Planet Terror, director Robert Rodriguez would play the soundtracks for Escape from New York (1981) and The Thing (1982) to set the mood for the movie. Two of Harlan Ellison’s most well-regarded stories “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” and “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” were each written the night before their deadlines. Tom Baker, better known as the fourth incarnation of Doctor Who, was considered for the cameo role of Dr. Armstrong in Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce (1985), but the role went to Patrick Stewart. Although the MPAA initially gave Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer an X rating, it was – along with The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989) and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989) –…

IT IS SAID THAT HANS RUEDI GIGER’S JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS BEGAN AT AN EARLY AGE WITH THE GIFT OF A HUMAN SKULL FROM HIS FATHER. Born on February 5, 1940, in Chur, the oldest town in Switzerland, Giger enjoyed a happy childhood despite growing up in a house with few windows. The gloomy interiors fed his imagination as a boy – as did the recurring nightmares that tormented him. Giger tamed these terrors by exorcising them through the “self-psychiatry” of his early artistic experiments, beginning with inks before graduating to oil paints. Expressing no desire to follow his father’s career as a pharmacist, he initially harboured ambitions to be an architect. After serving in the military, and a stint training as a draughtsman at the Meissen architectural company, he attended…

IT’S BEEN 28 YEARS SINCE THE CREW OF THE USS SULACO TOUCHED DOWN ON PLANET LV-426 TO INVESTIGATE THE SEEMING DISAPPEARANCE OF THE SETTLERS FROM THE HADLEY’S HOPE TERRAFORMING AND RESEARCH COLONY. AFTER DISCOVERING AN ALIEN INFESTATION, IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A SIMPLE BUG-HUNT, BUT IT SOON BECAME A FIGHT TO THE DEATH AGAINST AN ARMY OF VICIOUS CREATURES WITH ARMOURED SKIN AND ACID FOR BLOOD. It’s not too often that a film sequel surpasses its original in both scope and box-office success, but James Cameron’s 1986 blockbuster Aliens managed to do both. Though Ridley Scott’s Alien set the bar for all of the sci-fi/horror films that followed, Cameron somehow sent that bar into orbit. This past April, the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo reunited the cast of Aliens…

REVIEWS BY MARIO DEGIGLO BELLEMARE, DEIRDRE CRIMMINS, MICHELLE GALGANA, ANDY MAURO SEAN PLUMMER ANIMOSITY – USA Brendan Steere The problem with “twist” movies is that not only are they hard to review without spoiling, they can also be hard to watch when the plot is nonsensical until the surprise is revealed. If Animosity’s implausible character motivations, poor acting and flat visuals make you to turn it off before the twist, you’ll miss out on a genuinely intriguing concept that combines Pet Sematery with Groundhog Day (of the Dead!), set it in a cursed yuppie starter-home in the woods. There’s a decent movie hiding under this pile of corpse doppelgangers, but it’s still clawing its way to the surface… AM AMONG THE LIVING – FRANCE Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury The…

WHEN BIGFOOT CREATURES FIRST BEGAN TO APPEAR IN EARLY 1970S HORROR FILMS, THEIR PERSONAE WERE THAT OF A MONSTER. Movies such as The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972) and Creature From Black Lake (1976) portrayed the beasts as mysterious and dangerous, while at the same time grounding themselves in reality enough to make the thought of man-like apes living on the fringes of our society a sobering one. But as the golden era of Bigfoot waned in the’80s, the once-menacing monster was reduced to a cuddly pop-culture icon whose face was more likely to appear on a board game box than in moviegoers’ nightmares. Over the past decade, a new wave of Bigfootthemed movies have attempted to reinstate the monster’s menace, though few have managed to make much of an…

In space, nobody can hear you say “boo.” Though horror directors have often dipped their buckets in the sci-fi well over the years, it’s usually in service of making its central creature, alien or otherwise, a little bit more mysterious and intimidating. Whether we’re talking The Thing, Godzilla or It! The Terror From Beyond Space, these films are usually unnerving primarily because of the unfamiliar being ripping apart hapless scientists and soldiers on the way to global domination. But setting can be just as important in creating a few goosebumps, which is why Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires (1965) remains one of the most unique genre cross-breeds of its time, a film that is less concerned about marauding monsters than offering up a space-age update to the creaky Old…

LESTAT IS BACK-AND HE HAS AN IPHONE. YES, THE MOST FAMOUS LITERARY VAMPIRE SINCE DRACULA RETURNS this month in Prince Lestat, the first vampire novel from Anne Rice in over a decade. The book stars not only her “brat prince” but also resurrects Louis, Armand, Pandora and pretty much all the beloved bloodsuckers of her Vampire Chronicles series (plus a few newbies), in a sweeping but accessible tale about everything that’s happened in the vampire world since we last met. Unlike Rice’s many historical memoirs, this one’s set in the present day, where the supernatural meets science and technology. In advance of its publication date of October 28 we can’t say much more, but suffice that fans thirsting for new Rice vampire action will be thrilled to hear it’s just…

The anthology film has long been a staple of the horror genre and has enjoyed a renaissance as of late due to movies such as The Theatre Bizarre (2011), V/H/S (2012), and The ABCs of Death (2012). Out this month on DVD and VHS from Wild Eye Releasing is Hi-8 (Horror Independent 8), an anthology featuring an all-star cast of eight veteran independent horror filmmakers getting back to their roots. “A few years ago, I was working on a belated VHS release of one of my old Hi-8 features from the’90s,” recalls executive producer Brad Sykes. “That reminded me of how much fun it used to be back then, just making a film for the fun of it, without all the creative and financial pressures you get in ‘professional’ filmmaking.…

Samhain is less championed than Glenn Danzig’s two other incarnations – Misfits and Danzig – but they retain an undeniable mysterious appeal. While the Misfits were mostly violence and B-movies, Samhain (1983 – 1987, initially) explored darker and more mystical themes, hence the group’s name. This fall, Danzig reunites with drummers/bassists (they switch off on the instruments) Steve Zing and London May for a series of shows called 30 Bloody Years, beginning with Riot Fest in Chicago, where they will be playing their 1984 debut album Initium in its entirely. I recently caught up with May for a rare and intimate conversation about the ultimate Halloween band. What are your thoughts on Initium 30 years later? Even in the burgeoning underground punk/hardcore world Initium caused quite a stir. Besides the…

ALEJANDRO JODODROWSKY PARIS–1974-1975 There are myriad unrealized masterworks scattered about the annals of moviedom – Alfred Hitchcock’s Kaleidoscope, Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon, Ridley Scott’s Blood Meridian among them – yet perhaps none as exalted or cosmically-anticipated as Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune. With his notorious 1973 mindfuck The Holy Mountain, the enigmatic Chilean director (whose work can best be described as the cinematic equivalent of LSD) attempted to replicate the effects of said hallucinogenic drug, without requiring the viewer to actually take it. The film remains one of the most visionary works ever made. Jodorowsky knew that he could only follow such a film with something truly grand, so, despite having never read the book, he acquired the rights to Frank Herbert’sc epic science fiction novel Dune. Jodorowsky wanted to create a spiritual…

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS HORROR HAPPENINGS The Toronto After Dark Film Festival rarely adds documentaries to its lineup of high energy horror, sci-fi, action and cult movies, however, this year it’s teaming up with Rue Morgue to present the world premiere of Why Horror?, Tal Zimerman’s look at the psychology of horror fandom. Hosted by Zimerman, a Rue Morgue contributor, the film is the culmination of a year’s work that followed a successful Kickstarter campaign, which exceeded the project’s financial goal. As a result, Zimerman and crew were able to travel the world and speak to the genre’s leading filmmakers, as well as writers, historians, artists and psychologists to discover what makes horror fans tick. Festival creator Adam Lopez says that he selected Why Horror? (as a co-presentation with Rue Morgue’s monthly…

1 DAWN OF THE RED PERIOD PANTIES $12 This menstrual merch was created via a Kickstarter campaign that raised over $160,000 in just six days. With designs featuring werewolves (“Bleeder of the Pack”), vampires (“Cunt Dracula”) and of course, Carrie (“Curse of Blood”), these 95 percent cotton undies will have you looking forward to the next visit from Aunt Flo. The hills run red at sourpussclothing.com. 2 BLACKCRAFT CULT COFFEE $18/lb Leave it to the fine minds at Blackcraft to put the Beelzebub back in brew with their dark roast, made from organic beans roasted in Orange County. The recommended drink of all-night horror movie marathons. Become a caffiend at blackcraftcult.com. 3 KATTITUDE MEGA BAG $48 Curiosity may have killed the cat, but she's back with a vengeance on this…

BACK IN 1980, JUST AFTER H.R. GIGER WAS AWARDED AN OSCAR FOR HIS PIONEERING WORK ON RIDLEY SCOTT’S ALIEN, THE ARTIST STOPPED BY NEW YORK FOR AN EXHIBITION OF HIS WORK, PRIOR TO SETTING OFF FOR HIS SWITZERLAND HOME. There, he would meet Debbie Harry and her then-boyfriend, guitarist Chris Stein, both of whom had come to dominate pop music charts with their band Blondie, which pioneered American new wave and punk pop. Thrilled to meet Giger, the duo approached him about collaborating with them and, incredibly, he agreed, resulting in original cover artwork for KooKoo, Harry’s first solo album. “We gave Giger free rein,” Harry recalls. “He would tell us his ideas and we would talk about it but it was pretty much his concoction. We just had different…

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN ACTION FIGURES WERE FOR KIDS AND HORROR MOVIES WERE NOT, BUT THINGS SURE HAVE CHANGED. One of the cornerstones of the toy industry, action figures have undergone a dramatic shift through the years from being playthings meant for children, to items targeted at adult collectors. Playing – no pun intended – on childhood nostalgia, a number of companies have tapped into the highly lucrative action figure-as-adult collectible market, with children of the’70s and’80s now purchasing toys reminiscent of the ones they owned – or wish they had owned – as youngsters.…

Coming up on its 10th anniversary, Californiabased Bif Bang Pow! was founded in 2005 by Jason Lenzi and Jason Labowitz and made its name releasing retro-styled toys. One of the company’s early releases was a set of 8-inch tall Mego-styled figures derived from the 1980 Flash Gordon; Bif Bang Pow! would go on to produce 8-inch figures and other toys of characters from cult TV properties Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, The Six Million Dollar Man and The Twilight Zone. The first 8-inch Twilight Zone figures to be marketed (Sideshow had previously released a few 12-inch dolls) utilized a black-and-white scheme which gave the toys a unique look while allowing them to remain faithful to how the characters appeared in the original B&W episodes. Now, with assistance from fellow toy outfit…

OF THE MYRIAD MONSTERS THAT HAVE STALKED, CRAWLED, SLITHERED, CREEPED, LURCHED AND SLIMED ACROSS OUR SCREENS, FEW HAVE BEEN AS NIGHTMARISHLY MEMORABLE OR AS EXOTICALLY UNEMBELLISHED AS THE BLOB. Neither vegetable, mineral nor animal, this indestructible, ever-growing, protoplasmic mass is utterly devoid of conscience, intellect or emotion; its singular purpose being the total consumption and absorption of any living organism that has the misfortune of stumbling into its trajectory. Made in 1958 for just $240,000, The Blob has become a perennial classic of sci-fi horror schlock. Lensed in Pennsylvania by a crew principally versed in making religious and educational shorts, the movie is mostly notable for furnishing Steve (or as he is billed in the opening credits, “Steven”) Mc-Queen with his first starring role. Exactly 30 years later, writer/director Chuck…

FLIM + DVD + REISSUES UNDERGROUND FILMMAKING AS ABOVE, SO BELOW Starring Perdita Weeks, Ben Feldman and François Civil Directed by John Erick Dowdle Written by John Erick and Drew Dowdle Universal The derisive snorts erupting from fellow movie reviewers during our As Above, So Below screening were not unexpected. Found footage films have outworn their welcome, and the way this one plays fast and loose with arcane imagery and knowledge without any sense of understanding makes it difficult to trust that it makes sense. But I will be damned if I wasn’t entertained and even spooked on a gut level beyond the need for fully-functional plot mechanics. Perdita Weeks plays Scarlett, an archeologist determined to finish her dead father’s life work. To that end she employs her ex, George…

This is the first time I’ve ventured into Bowen’s Basement, though I’ve heard stories about the stacks of greasestained pizza boxes, the walls covered in conspiracy theory newspaper clippings and the innumerable jars of urine scattered throughout the place. I’ve never liked basements, either – I’d much rather be up in an attic. It’s kind of like that scene in Night of the Living Dead when everyone argues about whether or not they should barricade themselves in the basement… and we all know how that turned out. For most people, the basement has always been a kind of sacred place for scares – just think about all of the horror movies that you’ve ever watched while sitting in one. For me, there was just a trailer. I was ten-years-old, and…

BEYOND FEAR: REFLECTIONS ON STEPHEN KING, WES CRAVEN, AND GEORGE ROMERO’S LIVING DEAD Joseph Maddrey BearManor Media Focus has always been an issue with larger non-fiction books on the horror genre. Horror is too wide to limit itself to a single book by a single author, as even its seemingly niche sub-genres are rife with interesting contradictions and variations. Author Joseph Maddrey wisely sidesteps this problem altogether by limiting his focus to what he sees as the three driving influences on the horror genre in the last 40-plus years: Stephen King, Wes Craven and George A. Romero. Horror fans will remember Maddrey for his book Nightmares In Red, White & Blue, and the documentary film of the same name. His latest, Beyond Fear, covers some familiar territory with King and…

WITCHBOARD 7-Inch SOUNDTRACK Dennis Michael Tenney LUNARIS RECORDS Releasing a 7-inch vinyl horror soundtrack seems like a kind of crass commercialism designed to appeal to collectors’ wallets more than their ears, but given that Kevin Tenney’s competent 1986 chiller Witchboard only had two original songs, it’s understandable. Composed by the director’s brother, Dennis Michael Tenney’s “Witchboard Theme” is a satisfactorily spooky three-note Carpenter-esque progression tailor-made for haunted attractions and’80s horror. “Bump in the Night,” written by Tenney and performed by heavy metal band Steel Breeze, is a wind-in-the-hair and fist-in-the-air kind of metal anthem in the tradition of horror classics like Dokken’s “Dream Warriors” that capture all the inherent summer night energy of a decade of latex and blood. Flip the 45 over and you won’t find any music, but…

LAST YEAR, HORROR FANS WERE TREATED TO A RARE EVENT WHEN LONDON’S UNION CHAPEL HOSTED FRIZZI 2 FULCI, A TRIBUTE CONCERT THAT, AS THE NAME SUGGESTS, WAS BASED AROUND FABIO FRIZZI’S WORK FOR GORE GOD LUCIO FULCI. This Halloween night, Frizzi 2 Fulci returns even bigger and bloodier, this time at London’s esteemed Barbican Centre. Frizzi stepped away from rehearsals to reflect on his career, working with Fulci, and what lies ahead. What made the 2013 concert so special that it convinced you to return to London this fall? I can tell you that when I was on the stage at Union Chapel, I was at home. I was really so comfortable. [Everyone in the band] was in good shape and the reactions were fantastic, so I felt that maybe…