Table of contents for Issue 155 May 2015 in RUE MORGUE

How did we get from cop to cannibal? I’ve been wondering this about the Hannibal Lecter movies. Let’s go back to 1986, when two important serial killer movies were released, John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Michael Mann’s Manhunter. The former offers a shockingly nihilistic, violent and ugly portrait of a serial killer. Michael Rooker chillingly essays a confident, handsome, yet uneducated and murderous, drifter based on real-life killer Henry Lee Lucas, in a film that’s sickeningly effective in its dirty portrayal of dirty deeds. Manhunter by contrast is a much sexier, higher-budgeted beast, full of action and thrills that focus on the race to stop a cunning serial killer who carefully stalks his prey. Based on the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon, it has towering, lanky…

May 2015 marks the first anniversary of H.R. Giger’s death and the forward momentum of interest in the visionary artist’s work shows no signs of inertia. Indeed, this month not only sees the release of Dark Star: HR Giger’s World, Belinda Sallin’s feature-length documentary about the Swiss surrealist, but several events are planned to commemorate his passing. Foremost amongst these is the Second H.R. Giger Documentary Film Festival, which commences on the night of Friday, May 12 (the date of Giger’s death) and closes the following evening. Accommodating this unique celebration of nearly 50 years of Giger-related filmmaking is The Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan, New York. Leslie Barany, Giger’s agent, confidante and close friend for 33 years, is delighted to have secured the prestigious venue. “We feel…

1 GHOULISH GARY STICKER PACK $1 5 (pack of 4) Fly your horror colours with these vinyl die-cut form stickers designed by our very own Ghoulish Gary Pullin. Perfect for guitar cases, suitcases, your favourite casket or anywhere you see the love of horror is lacking! 2 CTHULHU TUB DRAIN STOPPER $39.99 Treat yourself to a bubble bath of madness with this hand-painted drain stopper featuring Lovecraft’s Great Old One. Cast in a rigid urethane and standing 5.57” tall, this stopper will keep your tub filled and your sanity drained. 3 HORROR-THEMED PENNANTS $15 each Show your genre pride with these pennants from the high school where the Saw is Family, the Tall Man is principal and the home team is from Haddonfield! Available separately or as a pack, these…

BRINGING POPULAR HORROR MOVIES TO THE SMALL SCREEN IS NO EASY THING. Tremors (2003), Freddy’s Nightmares, Blade: The Series, The Shining miniseries, the 1987 Bates Motel series (which never got past the pilot stage), Rosemary’s Baby… all are destined for obscurity. And yet sometimes an ordinary handful of eggs can become a heavenly soufflé with the right touch, especially if that show is Hannibal and the main ingredient is Mads Mikkelsen. Mikkelsen, a gymnast and dancer who segued into acting in his home country of Denmark, rose to fame alongside writer/director Nicholas Winding-Refn, with a starring role in Pusher and its first sequel. A career in cinema shot out from there, landing him roles in a host of critically acclaimed movies, including After the Wedding, A Royal Affair, The Hunt…

CLIVE BARKER'S MONSTERS, MUTANTS AND MAGICAL BEINGS HAVE LONG FOUND A HOME IN THE PAGES OF COMIC BOOKS Early adaptations of Books of Blood (Eclipse’s Tapping The Vein, 1989 – 1992), Marvel/Epic’s expansions of the Hellraiser and Nightbreed universes in the early ’90s, plus more recent adaptati ons of The Thief of Always and The Great and Secret Show by IDW Publishing (2005 and 2006, respectively) are now joined by a series of new Barker titles from Boom! Studios. It started in 2011 with the launch of the three volume maxiseries comprised of Hellraiser, Hellraiser: The Road Below and Hellraiser: The Dark Watch, which picks up directly after the events of the 1988 movie Hellbound: Hellraiser II, with Kirsty Cotton once again drawn into conflict with Pinhead and the Cenobites.…

HELLHOUND ON YOUR TRAIL IT FOLLOWS Starring Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist and Olivia Luccardi Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell Mongrel Media Films like Phantasm, Prince of Darkness, the original Japanese Pulse and much of David Lynch’s filmography achieve that literal nightmare feeling of logic being clawed away by something reaching up from the subconscious. It Follows doesn’t claw as much as it steadfastly pursues – hence the title – but it’s effectively nightmarish in its own way. Based on a recurring bad dream suffered by writer-director David Robert Mitchell, the suburbs-set film uses a very basic – Nightmare on Elm Street-influenced – premise to terrify: what if a shape-shifting something that no one else could see pursued you relentlessly? Maika Monroe (The Guest) stars as Jay, a suburban…

7 Days of Death Jordan Michael Johnson and Jason Smith Devil’s Due Frankenstein Underground #1 Mike Mignola and Ben Stenbeck Dark Horse Joe Frankenstein #1 Graham Nolan and Chuck Dixon IDW Blood Queen vs. Dracula #1 Troy Brownfield and Kewber Baal Dynamite Monster Motors: The Curse of Minivan Helsing #1 of 2 Brian Lynch and Nick Roche IDW The Little Mermaid #1 of 5 Joe Brusha, Meredith Finch and Miguel Mendonca Zenescope Waiting… Few things in life are so universally agonizing. In horror, the most effective metaphor for unbearable delays has been the concept of Purgatory: the nether-region between life and the afterworld, populated by beings that are neither alive nor dead, eternally waiting to move on to a final, and hopefully pleasant, rest. It’s a device at the heart…

If body horror is your cup of gruel, you’ll want to feast your eyes on Jonathan Payne’s, hyper-realistic abominations, which are unlike anything you have ever seen. Called Fleshlettes, they’re seemingly from another dimension, but the bizarre creations were actually inspired by stories from a Payne family member who had a teratoma tumor removed. (Cystic teratoma are germ cell tumours commonly composed of multiple cell types and are known to contain hair, bone, teeth and, in rare cases, eyeballs!). They’re also meant to celebrate the ugly or strange parts of our bodies. I was immediately impressed with how realistic and alive they look, so I had to pick Payne’s brain about his process: What are your Fleshlettes made of? All of my flesh sculptures – up to this point –…

I’M NOT WHAT YOU WOULD call a gorehound, so when I get to the Gore-met’s column each issue, often I am looking at an article and some pictures dedicated to a film or filmmaker that I’ve never heard of. When my eyes fell upon some familiar stills from the classic Dead Alive in issue #154, I smiled and proceeded to dig in. It turned out to be one of the most well written articles I’ve ever read from the Gore-met. Deeply personal and penned with poise and dignity, the man gave us a rare peek into his life which I’ll bet sounds so very similar to a lot of his readers (with or without the divorce). Like the genre movies we enjoy so much, life is full of tension, scares…

I AM NOT GROOT SCARECROW Cinedigm Writer/director Sheldon Wilson has been on my radar since 2007 when I came across Kaw, his movie about a farming community attacked by ravens. This time, he takes us to a town where some kids on weekend detention are doing grunt work on a farm that’s reportedly haunted. Before you can say “Molly Ringwald,” the backwoods breakfast club is attacked by a CG-rendered creature that looks like a cross between Groot and Ghostface but nothing like an actual scarecrow. Made for the SyFy channel, it has some decent gore sandwiched between scenes featuring the heaving breasts of Lacey Chabert (Black Christmas remake). Too bad Scarecrow is missing one key thing… an actual scarecrow! BODY COUNT: 15 BEST OFF-SCREEN KILL: Cutie crunched by a…

One of the few horror films to explore the never-ending search for meaning beyond blind faith, Roger Corman’s X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes is an unflinching look at religion and science that isn’t afraid to ask the big questions, even though some of its answers may be unsettling. On one level, this 1963 horror classic is an archetypal tale of a mad scientist tampering in “God’s domain,” but the film pushes this premise to rarely-seen lengths as it follows the character’s fall from grace as a leading research technician to a sideshow curiosity. It’s a tragic, nihilist nightmare that also ponders the physical and psychological ramifications of such an unprecedented breakthrough. And now this colourfully psychedelic, metaphysical vision of has received a much-needed Blu-ray upgrade, courtesy of Kino.…

IT’S HARD TO TURN ON A TELEVISION THESE DAYS WITHOUT RUNNING ACROSS A SHOW THAT INVOLVES PARANORMAL INVESTIGATION. There are ghost hunts, monster quests, UFO chases and even scientific studies out to prove that unknown boogeymen truly do exist in our world. It’s a popular premise for pseudo-reality programs that feature everything from cryptozoologists tromping through the woods to ghost busters using high-tech gadgets to facilitate communication with the dead. An increasing number of them have taken up the mantle of Paranormal Investigator. The monsters they hunt are familiar – Bigfoot, Chupacabra, ghosts, extra-terrestrials, demons included – but who are these individuals dedicating their lives to the pursuit? That’s exactly what journalist Tea Krulos reveals in his new book, Monster Hunters: On the Trail with Ghost Hunters, Bigfooters, Ufologists, and…

The Holy Grail of video tape trading back in the late ’80s and ’90s the Japanese Guinea Pig films. Sourcing copies that weren’t a half dozen generations away from the original JHV tapes was next to impossible. Needless to say, it was a red letter day when I was handed a first-generation copy of the ultimate film in the series, Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood (1985), by my partner in piracy whose identity I cannot disclose. The hunt for quality copies ended in 2005 when Stephen Biro, a video store owner in Miami, acquired the North American rights to the films and launched Unearthed Films to release them officially. “My partner actually worked with the company over in Japan so the rights weren’t hard to get,” reveals…

Metalsploitation films discussed in this month’s music feature make for fun retro viewing but, like all lowbrow exploitation films, they don’t exactly treat their subject matter seriously. Movies such as Trick or Treat deal with heavy metal in the simplest way possible, playing up to the stereotype of dumb headbangers. A couple of recent literary horror anthologies might be changing that, however, by aiming to deliver something more sophisticated. Swords of Steel, out now from DMR Books, is a collection of fantasy/horror stories penned exclusively by members of metal bands, including Manilla Road and Bal-Sagoth. In its introduction, David C. Smith (author of the Red Sonja novels) describes the book’s content as a kind of “weird adventure” that differs from traditional high fantasy by focusing on darker themes, brutal reality…

GRAFTON, WEST VIRGINIA: ON A WINDSWEPT BEACH, FBI AGENTS INVESTIGATE A HORRIFIC, SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE CRIME SCENE. Towering over them is a grisly monolith comprised of bodies in various states of decay – torn apart and lashed together into a human totem pole. Will Graham, the team’s criminal profiler, arrives at the site and begins to visualize the events leading up to the totem’s construction. Blessed (or cursed) with a heightened sense of empathy, he synchronizes himself with the killer’s mindset. He closes his eyes and an ambient pulse signals a transition as time seems to roll backwards. We see Graham’s mind re-enact the events of the totem’s construction, culminating in the vicious murder of the most recent victim, the final piece of a gruesome art project. Standing back to take…

Canadians know a thing or ten about horror – that’s just a given. Just ask Dave Alexander, James Burrell or Paul Corupe. No, wait, fuck those guys. Ask ME. We’re as ravenous for the stuff as any nation you can name, but we’ve also produced an impressive amount of it for a country with a population a fraction the size of the US. We pioneered slasher films (Black Christmas), then turned around and churned out profitable retreads after the archetype became popular (Prom Night, Terror Train, My Bloody Valentine). Our homeboy David Cronenberg practically invented body horror – and endured his share of critical ass rape for it – years before becoming the arthouse darling our cineastes fawn over today. John Fawcett, Karen Walton and a mostly-Canadian cast turned teenage…

TOD BROWNING’S DRACULA Gary D. Rhodes Tomahawk Press Why do we need another book about Universal’s Dracula? According to Gary Rhodes, it’s because “the others are wrong.” It’s difficult for horror fans to think of 1931’s Dracula as anything but a highly respected classic. Widely considered the first horror “talkie” - directed by Tod Browning (Freaks) and starring the inimitable Bela Lugosi as the Count - it remains a blueprint by which other adaptations of Bram Stoker’s vampire novel are judged. And yet, film scholar and author Gary Rhodes (No Traveler Returns: The Lost Years of Bela Lugosi) sees Dracula as woefully underappreciated. He is particularly prickled that Browning has been increasingly maligned, cast as a poor, drunk or even absentee director, based mostly on a 1974 interview with cast…

TURKEY SHOOT SOUNDTRACK Brian May DUAL PLANET Alternately known as Escape 2000 and Blood Camp Thatcher, Turkey Shoot’s grimy bottom-of-the-Ozploitation-barrel appeal can be found in the score by the late Brian May (not to be confused with the guitarist from Queen). A product of its time, May’s work relies heavily on fierce percussion and the kind of 1980s synthesizer strains that recall the work of John Carpenter or other low-budget horror scores of the era. There are moments when the sparse orchestral palette opens up and we’re treated to something larger-scale (and budget) – the aggressive brass stabs and strident chords of “Radio Freedom” and “Open Season” sounding very much like May’s Mad Max 2 score. Turkey Shoot is a fun auditory time capsule, peppered with dialogue excerpts and sound…

THE '80S ARE CELEBRATED FOR A VARIETY OF HORROR SUBGENRES: SLASHERS, BODY HORROR, SPLATTER COMEDIES, ETC. BUT ARGUABLY NONE WAS MORE SPECIFIC TO THAT DECADE THAN METALSPLOITATION FILMS. Not only did this subgenre put horror movies and heavy metal together – effectively doubling the ire it raised from parents – it was also a natural move for studios looking for a wider audience. Put together, these two socially caustic ingredients resulted in some truly special films, such Rocktober Blood (1984), Trick or Treat (1986) and Black Roses (1988). Given the current fascination with ’80s culture, it’s no surprise that a metal band would pay tribute to those black leather and hairspray horror flicks. And that band is Acid Witch, known for its overtly heavy stoner metal dedicated to witchcraft, Satan…

MICHAEL MANN USA - 1986 It’s widely accepted that Manhunter is one of the best police procedural thrillers ever made, and yet few movies occupy such an odd place in cinema history as Hannibal Lecter’s big-screen debut. The first of two adaptations of the 1981 novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, it was directed by Michael Mann (Thief, The Keep, Miami Vice), released with a pedestrian title and years later remade under its original title with Anthony Hopkins reprising his most famous role as everyone’s favourite iconic (and laconic) cannibal. The novel sold well but never scaled the monster bestseller heights of its sequel, The Silence of the Lambs; similarly, Mann’s film garnered some critical and financial success but was barely a blip on the pop culture radar compared to…