Table of contents for Issue 154 April 2015 in RUE MORGUE

By the time you read this, I just may have chipped the last icicles off of my beard and crawled out from a particularly cold and snowy Toronto winter. Knotted with cabin fever, I want to escape the city – a desire amplified by the fact that I just watched the twelve-hour Ken Burns documentary series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. A detailed history of the creation and protection of the world’s first national parks that’s full of stunning nature footage, it’s got me thinking about my visits to the parks in Canada and how they shaped me – even as a horror fan. One of the greatest gifts my parents ever gave me was travel. I’ve been to some amazing places around the world, but many of the…

A new film from Joe Dante is always cause for celebration – particularly one that spotlights a brain-eating, embalming fluid-spewing female zombie. Burying the Ex, the director’s sixteenth feature, which premiered at the 2014 Venice Film Festival, was recently acquired by Image Entertainment for theatrical release this summer and, like most of his previous horror movies, it dances heartily between playful chills and self-reflexive humour. Based on a 2008 short film by screenwriter Alan Trezza, Burying the Ex centres on Max (Fright Night’s Anton Yelchin), a movie buff who works in a horror memorabilia store. Max’s relationship with his controlling girlfriend, Evelyn (Ashley Greene of Twilight fame), is steadily imploding but he can’t summon the courage required to dump her. Fate intercedes when she is killed in a freak accident…

1 ALKING BOARD PLACE MATS $20/set of two Now you can have denizens of the Other Side over for dinner with these Talking Board Place Mats, decorated with the artwork of everyone’s favourite occult parlour game. Made of a cotton/polyester mix with plain black back, they just may rouse some restless spirits. 2 THE SHINING THROW BLANKET $119 Grab some bourbon and brace yourself for the weather at the Overlook Hotel with this machine-washable cotton blanket, decorated with the iconic rug pattern from Stanley Kubrick’s classic horror film. Measuring 50” X 60,” it’s just the right size to keep you covered during a run through the hedge maze. 3 CRAWLING ZOMBIE GARDEN GNOME $50 Turn your lawn into a nest of zombies with these handmade crawling corpses sculpted in clay,…

NAME ANY GREAT MOVIE AND CHANCES ARE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO COMPILE AN ILLUSTRIOUS LIST OF ITS SUNDRY ADMIRERS. The Changeling is no exception, and counts among its famous fans Guillermo del Toro, James Wan, Ti West, Eduardo Sánchez, Bernard Rose, Greg Nicotero, Johnny Depp and, last but by no means least, Martin Scorsese. The Goodfellas director even included Peter Medak’s stately ghost story in his 2009 list of the eleven scariest horror films of all time, praising the manner in which it is resolutely “filled with sadness and dread.” Another admirer of The Changeling – who’s uniquely placed to offer his own appreciation of it – is Mick Garris, director of Sleepwalkers and The Stand, and the creator of Masters of Horror. The Santa Monica native first became a…

HORROR FANS BEST KNOW HIM AS FROST, THE CIGAR CHOMPIN’, VAMPIRE KILLIN’ BIKER in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn, but Fred “The Hammer” Williamson – a former NFL football starturned actor who appeared in Robert Altman’s M.A.S.H. – is also one of the first stars in the blax-ploitation cycle of films in the ‘70s. After starring in movies such as Black Caesar (1973), Hell Up in Harlem (1973) and Boss Nigger (1975), Williamson (who’s also a director, writer and producer), appeared in cult classics The Inglorious Bastards (1978) and 1990: The Bronx Warriors. More recently, he directed, co-wrote and appeared in the indie film Vegas Vampires (2007). While in Toronto this past February to accept the Toronto Black Film Festival’s inaugural Pioneer Award, we caught up…

NOW THAT THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR HAS TAKEN ON BLOODSUCKERS IN ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER AND LEWIS AND CLARK ARE SQUARING OFF AGAINST CRYPTIDS IN MANIFEST DESTINY, IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE AMERICA’S FOUNDING FATHERS GOT OFF THEIR ASSES AND KILLED SOME MONSTERS. Enter The Order of the Forge, a three-issue miniseries debuting April 29 from Dark Horse Comics, which sees George Washington, Paul Revere and Benjamin Franklin run afoul of a supernatural plot to overthrow the British Empire. Before you point out the obvious – aren’t the heavies just saving the trio a lot of trouble? – know that Forge is set in 1753, which is 22 years before the colonies got on with the business of revolting. The tale is based on an original concept from…

Welcome to Harrow County, a picturesque farming community nestled in 1930s America. But beneath the idyllic veneer lies a deadly secret. Eighteen years earlier, the townsfolk got together and burned themselves a genuine, devil-worshipping, babyeating witch named Hester. As is usual at these bonfires, Hester managed to spit out one final curse before being toasted. And so opens Harrow County, a new backwoods horror series (starting this month) from writer Cullen Bunn (The Empty Man) and artist Tyler Crook (Bad Blood) that casts its spells into the wild world of witchcraft. Witches have been relatively ignored in today’s horror comic landscape, but with new titles such as Scott Snyder’s Wytches, Archie’s Sabrina and now Harrow County, that glaring oversight may soon be rectified. “I grew up in rural North Carolina,…

The name Lee Brown Coye may not ring any bells, but if you’re a collector of pulp magazines like Weird Tales or horror anthologies by H.P. Lovecraft, then chances are you’ll recognize his nightmarish illustrations. Mostly remembered for his raw, black-and-white style, Coye was a self-taught artist and studied anatomy and even worked as a medical illustrator early in his career, giving him an eye for grim detail. His talent didn’t end there: he was also a sculptor, engraver and continued working on projects right up until his death in 1981. The newly minted Pulp Macabre: The Art of Lee Brown Coye’s Final and Darkest Era (Feral Press), edited by Sacred Bones Records head Caleb Braaten and author Mike Hunchback, collects the entirety of Coye’s output in the ’70s and…

EDDIE THE HEAD DEREK RIGGS/IRON MAIDEN UK - 1980 From his first appearance as a primordial stage prop to his ubiquitous dominance of album and promotional art, “Eddie the Head” became the face of British metal band Iron Maiden, arguably the most enduring (and endearingly horrific) mascot in the history of heavy metal music, and an indispensable icon that solidified the bond between metal and the macabre. Eddie’s beginnings were humble; he debuted as a creepy papier-mâché mask that hung at the back of the stage during the band’s earliest shows, spewing fake blood via a pump rigged up to a fish tank. As the story goes, manager Ron Smallwood became convinced that Maiden needed an eye-catching image on its first album cover, to help move records. Enter illustrator Derek…

7TH DAY MADE IT into Rue Morgue’s 2014 Year in Review [RM#152] as the film with The Goriest Scene! Congratulations to Kaleigh Brown, Aftermath FX Studio, Dire Wit Films and everyone involved in the making of the film. JASON KOCH, VIA FACEBOOK ALWAYS A BIG FAN of your annual Horror Convention Schedule [RM#152] – it’s an amazing and very valuable tool for rabid horror fans like me and my wife. We’re planning our year now and hope to make it to Toronto in the fall! Long live Rue Morgue! JARED AND NANCY WALSH – CLEVELAND, OHIO I LOVED THE ARTICLE by Scott Essman titled “Monsters in Motion” [RM#152]. Ray Harryhausen planted a big seed that inspired legendary filmmakers like James Cameron, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Harryhausen left his footprints…

Given that it basically birthed the found footage genre, it makes sense that The Blair Witch Project would beget its own found footage documentary. Named after Blair Witch’s working title, The Woods Movie is an 83-minute making-of film composed entirely of footage shot by the cast and crew of the 1999 release. Premiering at the Film4 FrightFest in Glasgow, Scotland this past February, the doc is the brainchild of Russ Gomm, 34, a British filmmaker who went from Blair Witch super fan to one of the privileged few to ever see the approximately 25 hours of raw footage shot over the course of eight days in 1997. “As a personal thing, I think I’m a great person to be putting this documentary together because not only am I a filmmaker…

IT MAY HAVE HAD A CATCHY PUN IN ITS TITLE, BUT BLACULA WAS NO LAUGHING MATTER. Not only did William Crain’s 1972 feature combine popular blax-ploitation tropes of the time – funky soundtracks, garish clothes, massive sideburns and plenty of action sequences – into a classic horror framework, it used the genre as a springboard for social issues. George A. Romero had ventured into similar territory four years earlier with Night of the Living Dead (1968), but Blacula was the first successful horror film to star an almost entirely black cast, whilst portraying the white characters as corrupt, inept or simply monstrous. Blacula tells the tale of Mamuwalde (William Marshall), an African Prince who, in 1780, travels to Transylvania to seek help from Count Dracula in a bid to end…

DESPERATELY SEEKING MONSTERS DIGGING UP THE MARROW Starring Adam Green, Ray Wise and Will Barratt Written and directed by Adam Green Image Entertainment Between countless fables situated in dangerous forests, Lovecraft’s transdimentional horrors, or a literal Hell that exists below our feet, the idea that monsters live in the places we can’t see is an old one. It’s their elusiveness that not only draws our curiosity, but gives them life. With this concept, Adam Green’s mock-doc Digging Up the Marrow takes us into the world of the unknown and its inhabitants. Opening with convention floor footage of prominent monster kids, such as Rue Morgue cover artist Jason Edmiston, filmmaker Don Coscarelli and artist (also co-producer of this film) Alex Pardee discussing their reverence for creepy creatures, Green starts out in…

ADAM ROCKOFF INITIALLY CAME TO RUE MORGUE'S ATTENTION IN 2012 WITH HIS ACCLAIMED FIRST BOOK, GOING TO PIECES: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLASHER FILM, 1978-1986 (McFarland), an impressive treatise that subsequently spawned a popular documentary feature of the same name. His new effort, The Horror of it All: One Moviegoer’s Love Affair with Masked Maniacs, Frightened Virgins and the Living Dead (Scribner), has its roots in – and/or owes its existence to – a book about heavy metal by another author and a hand job that never happened. Equal parts historical overview, critical essay and affectionate memoir, The Horror of it All was initially inspired by Fargo Rock City, in which author Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs) combines a cultural history of metal music with reminiscences…

Since the last issue, this column turned fifteen years old, I turned 49, and my wife put a bullet in the head of our zombified marriage. It was at the tail end of 1999 that I approached founding editor Rodrigo Gudiño about submitting a film review I hoped he’d print in his magazine. He offered me this column instead. I could never have imagined at the time that, 140 issues later, I’d be writing about my impending divorce. I’ve had a lot of time for self-reflection while packing up Casa del Gore-met. I’ve shared this home with my wife – and later our children – since we moved in the month after that first column was published. We got married a yearand-a-half later and, two years after that, the first…

Pittsburgh space rock duo Zombi was quite the novelty when they arrived in the early 2000s. Hailing from the land of George A. Romero and Tom Savini, and named after one of the quintessential zombie films, they focussed on a sound heavily-influenced by early Carpenter and Tangerine Dream. There was little else out there that was quite like Zombi. And although they eventually left the world of faux-horror soundtrack music for more progressive soundscapes, the warm buzz and epic atmosphere of ’70s and ’80s horror has remained a staple of their sound. This month, Relapse Records reissues The Zombi Anthology, comprised of the band’s self-released demo and Twilight Sentinel EP, recordings made over ten years ago. It showcases them as the true grue horror soundtrack practitioners they once were. “The…

In 2012, Mao Sugiyama, an “asexual” man from Tokyo, had his penis, testicles and scrotum surgically removed. He then separated the meat into five servings garnished with button mushrooms and Italian parsley, and served each one at a cost of $250. Ithyphallophobia is a morbid fear of seeing, thinking about or having an erect penis. Christopher Lee utters exactly thirteen lines throughout Hammer’s Horror of Dracula (1958). In 1567, Hans Steininger, an Austrian man said to have the longest beard in the world, died after he tripped over his facial hair while trying to escape a fire. He normally kept the 1.4 metre-long beard in a leather pouch. Gremlins was originally meant to be a much darker movie and included a scene where Billy’s mom’s head rolls down the stairs…

SOME OF THE MOST COMPELLING FILMS ARE THE ONES THAT FIT UNEASILY INTO THEIR GENRES. WHEN BILL GUNN’S GANJA & HESS CAME OUT IN 1973, THE SAME YEAR AS BLACULA, IT ESCHEWED THE CONVENTIONS OF BOTH THE BLAXPLOITATION MOVIE AND THE VAMPIRE STORY. It didn’t play with racial stereotypes, take place in an urban setting or have a typically violent plot. It rejected monster movie stereotypes (no fangs or capes), had no obvious creepy atmosphere and didn’t feature lavish scenes of sensual blood drinking. Instead, it centred around archeologist Dr. Hess Green (Night of the Living Dead’s Duane Jones), who lives on a country estate. When Hess’ mentally ill assistant (played by Gunn) stabs him with an ancient African ceremonial dagger before committing suicide, the doctor is afflicted with a…

THIS ISSUE: LANCE GETS GRAVE RESULTS A COMEDY OF INNARDS MY FAIR ZOMBIE Camp Motion Pictures When your city is overrun by zombies there’s usually more running and screaming than dancing and singing, but that’s not the case in this wonderful installment of the subgenre. Ottawa actor/writer/director Brett Kelly’s take on the George Bernard Shaw play My Fair Lady hews fairly close to the original storyline about a Professor of phonetics who enters into a wager that he can pass off an ordinary cockney flower girl as an Edwardian era socialite – only this time the, girl is a gut-munching zombie! Though the minimalist sets at times betray Kelly’s miniscule budget, this is still an absolutely delightful film filled with witty dialogue, lavish gore and a memorable musical score.…

THE MEGA BOOK OF REVENGE FILMS VOLUME 1: THE BIG PAYBACK Danny Marianino Total Gavone Publishing Who doesn’t love a good revenge story? Nobody. If you said different, you’re lying. Vengeance is a time-tested human instinct that, like it or not, can happily take up residence in any type of movie. It’s likely crept into several of your favourite films without you even noticing, which is exactly what you will find when reading Danny Marianino’s The Mega Book of Revenge Films Volume 1: The Big Payback. The 300-plus page guide is mostly a collection of capsule reviews categorized by genres, including martial-arts, blaxploitation and horror, with a series of lists, mini-essays and interviews interspersed within them. There are sections devoted to things such as international Rambo rip-offs, most memorable villains,…

SOUNDTRACK BAD MILO! Ted Masur MOVIESCORE MEDIA Perhaps at the insistence of the film’s director, Ted Masur’s Bad Milo! score kicks off with a not-so-subtle homage to Danny Elfman’s Beetlejuice, but from there the cues are clever theme variations that show off Masur’s sharp orchestrations, fusing electronics and classical orchestral elements for this witty, mordant score. Using a wide selection of instrumental emulations, Masur’s cues are quirky without being obvious or cloying, and they’re invigorated with tightly-wound energy, giving the soundtrack a continuous momentum and highlighting the film’s ridiculous premise of a demonic creature borne from a man’s intestines. The score also features strong dynamics between quiet and strategic bursts of bombast, and fast-shifting moods ranging from gnarled orchestral clusters to tender theme variations on keyboard (“Sock Puppets” is a…

THE ELECTRONIC MUSIC SCENE LOST A LEGEND ON JANUARY 20, 2015 WHEN TANGERINE DREAM FOUNDER AND SOLE CONTINUAL MEMBER EDGAR WILLMAR FROESE DIED AT AGE 70. Formed in Germany in 1967, the band experimented with moog synthesizers and sequencers, becoming a huge influence on electronic music – including ambient, dance and new wave – in the ensuing decades. Horror fans will remember Tangerine Dream for its nerve-rattling scores, usually characterized by dark analog synthesizers, dreamy ambience and hypnotic droning. John Carpenter often cites the group’s score for William Friedkin’s 1977 thriller Sorcerer as highly influential on his own musical career, and indeed, that release essentially launched the group’s career in movies during the ’80s. In honour of Froese’s passing, we present a look at Tangerine Dream’s horror soundtracks throughout that…

DYING LIGHT, NIHILUMBRA, RESIDENT EVIL HD REMASTER DYING LIGHT PS4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Linux Techland/Warner Bros. Like all things zombie, rotter video games have been feeling a bit played out. With the Dead Rising and Left 4 Dead franchises successfully milking the monster to (un)death and 2013’s State of Decay cornering the survival aspect of an undead apocalypse, what could a new triple-A title bring to the deaders that we haven’t seen before? Answer: parkour. That said, Dying Light will continuously remind you of other franchises, from the melee weapon-crafting (Dead Rising), to the varieties of special infected (Left 4 Dead), to the music (one cue in particular sounds as if it was directly lifted from Mass Effect). Still, Dying Light manages to mash all of these borrowed pieces…