Table of contents for RM#196 Halloween Special Issue in RUE MORGUE

Here we are, weirdos – it’s Halloween. The summer of perpetual bummer has waxed and waned, and I should be writing this editorial through the bleary eyes of a Fantasia fest-induced hangover. But no; today’s distant gaze comes courtesy of a memory – to back when I was a kid growing up in Ottawa, and my mom made me wear a thick coat over my Halloween costume to go trick-or-treating. To me, this was the very height of indignation. What was the point of putting together this whole ensemble if I had to cover it up for the main event? Cool costume, what are you supposed to be? A bummed-out Canadian fifth-grader? Nailed it. Among the many disappointments Rue Morgue has faced over the past year – indefinite retailer closures,…

1 BLAMO BAT ONESIE $239 Trick-or-treating might be off the table for this year, but that’s no reason not to dress up as your favourite creature of the night. Blamo offers several animal-themed onesies in comfy, soft 100% cotton knit, but we’re partial to our own familiars. Also available in toddler sizes for your baby bat! Blamo.store 2 US ENAMEL PIN $10 Differentiate yourself from your tethered doppelgänger with an elegant pin referencing Jordan Peele’s sophomore hit Us. Featuring a gloved hand clutching a large pair of scissors and measuring 1.5 inches in sculpted two-tone enamel, it’s got two posts on the back to keep it right side up in this upside-down reality. Midnightdogs.co 3 ALIENS FACEHUGGER MASK $30 – $42 Ripley was right – if we break quarantine, we…

KORROR TENDS TO CLAIM ITS CINEMATIC AUTEURS, MARKING FILMMAKERS WITH AN INDELIBLE STAMP that sees their opportunities largely limited to the genre, pigeonholing their creative careers. For Lucio Fulci, whose career in film spanned a staggering five decades and nearly 60 films as director, much of his notoriety and success focused on his genre output that came quite late. It’s easy to see why: between his iconic Gates of Hell trilogy (City of the Living Dead, The Beyond and The House By the Cemetery), the shocking brutality of The New York Ripper, and the infamous tropical gorefest that is Zombi 2, Fulci bludgeoned his name into the annals of horror with all the delicacy of a sledgehammer. Still, beyond a rabid and committed fan base, the director remains something of…

WHILE MANY OVERLOOKED HORROR FILMS OF THE 21ST CENTURY HAVE ONLY GAINED A FOLLOWING AFTER THEY HIT HOME VIDEO, some of the most interesting releases of the last twenty years spent far longer in total obscurity. As film preservation efforts have grown in recent years, we’ve increasingly been able to experience some of the legendary “lost” and unreleased projects from horror’s shadowy past, including sought-after works by well-known directors, abandoned projects, and even mysterious gems hidden away in unmarked film cans. Saved from the brink of extinction by enterprising archivists, these truly overlooked films have finally been released to modern audiences. GRIZZLY II: REVENGE (1983) A rough, unfinished workprint of the sequel to William Girdler’s Grizzly (1976) has made the bootleg rounds for years, but it wasn’t until earlier this…

YOU’LL FIND OUT (1940) If I tell you that one of my favourite séance movies is a horror-musical-comedy about young people who get stranded during a storm in an isolated mansion inhabited by eccentrics, you’ll probably ask me where the spirit-calling scene is in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. You’ll Find Out precedes Rocky Horror by 35 years, however, and stars Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre to boot. Lugosi plays the medium out to rook the elderly spiritualist out of her fortune, Karloff is her shady lawyer, and Lorre is a scene-stealing skeptic. The séance scenes are genuinely eerie, and even involve weird mad scientist-style electric equipment. This is a cult movie (still) waiting to happen. SPELLBOUND (1941) Not to be confused with Hitchcock’s film of the same…

THIS ISSUE: LANCE DABBLES WITH DEITIES PRAY FOR THE END IDOL OF EVIL Chemical Burn Entertainment I’ve always been fascinated by humanity’s belief in gods and goddesses; whether it’s the old, angry guy in the sky, the blue chick with the arms, the pot-bellied guy with the elephant head, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it seems like there’s a god for just about everyone. I’m also fascinated when film directors influenced by other movies decide to incorporate a mythological premise into their otherwise flatulent idea. Take this English/Irish offering, for example: after seeing a little-known flick called Raiders of the Lost Ark and its sequels, director Kevin McDonagh figured no one would notice if he tried to reshoot it using pocket change. Who knew filmmaking was so easy! The result…

DRIVE-INS, DELETE BINS AND OTHER SINS Stupid me (the Bowen’s Basement opening line you’ve been waiting for all these years). Until now, I thought I’d experienced everything ants had to offer, at least cinematically speaking. Empire of the Ants, Them!, It Happened at Lakewood Manor, a.k.a. (wait for it) Ants!, a few also-rans, and that’s that, right? So here I was, ready to move on to The Deadly Mantis or Big Bad Bastard Boll Weevils of Boise or some such, when a dear friend alerted me to the existence of 1974’s Phase IV. What grabbed my attention right off was that it was directed by Saul Bass, long acclaimed for his title designs for Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Martin Scorsese and a tuchus-load more. Happily, this film has a damn…

“I HAVE LONG BEEN FASCINATED BY THE WAY A PLACE CAN AFFECT ONE,” says Reggie Oliver, one of the sixteen contributors to Crooked Houses. “Those mysterious sensations of unease you have in a certain house, or a room in a house, can be inexplicable but are not easily dismissed. Almost everyone who has gone in search of a new home will have had the experience of coming to a place which seems on the surface ideal but just does not ‘feel right.'” An anthology of all-new stories from Egaeus Press, Crooked Houses is perhaps best defined by its subtitle: “tales of cursed and haunted dwellings.” The motif of a “bad place” has been a staple of horror fiction ever since the gothic castles: as times evolved, so have the dwellings,…

Since 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and the birth of German Expressionism, it’s a great time to look back at the music that fuelled these dramatic and striking films. Silent movies required a live score, of course, so it’s not an easy task to dig up old recordings and turn them into 180-gram deluxe vinyl releases – this is especially true for the appropriately titled Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922). Directed by F.W. Murnau, the original Nosferatu came under fire for copyright infringement by Bram Stoker’s estate as an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula, and all copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed; the music written by German composer Hans Erdmann was lost in the process. Nonetheless, the film survived and screened…

YES! SEAN PLUMMER “I love going to movies, but not enough to risk my safety – not this Halloween, nor the next.” LET’S FACE THE REAL SHADOWY SHAPE IN THE ROOM: traditional moviegoing is probably as dead as Laurie Strode in Halloween: Resurrection. COVID-19 has decimated businesses as ruthlessly as Michael Myers slashed his way through Haddonfield and, like it or not, that includes movie theatres. And sure, like Laurie, movie theatres could suddenly rise from the dead. A vaccine is in the works and governments are understandably itching to reopen their economies. But does that mean they should? I love going to movies, but not enough to risk my safety – not this Halloween, nor the next. I, along with many other sensible folks, will be seeing Halloween Kills…

I FOUND THE ARTICLES on Soviet film in RM#195 quite interesting. Something the filmmaker of Sputnik, Egor Abramenko, said regarding the inspiration for his film was striking. He spoke of changing values in the Soviet Union during the ’80s from “collectivism to individualism.” I found this ironic, because it contrasts starkly with Andrea’s appeal in her opening Note From Underground about how “we need human solidarity more than ever before.” I also wonder what “outdated beliefs” Abramenko was referring to. Was it the human solidarity in the form of a generous safety net provided by the Soviet state? Was it the guaranteed employment and free healthcare and education? Or was he speaking of the absence of institutional racism that is so pervasive in North America? JOSEPH WATERS – RALEIGH, NORTH…

MAINSTREAM HORROR CAN’T SEEM TO GET ENOUGH OF SENSORY LOSS. Bird Box, Don’t Breathe, Hush, and A Quiet Place are hugely popular entries whose fears hinge on this very conceit. Some movies equate sensory deprivation of one form or another with victimhood, but they’ve also been championed as survival tools. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the Deaf community (the preferred term to indicate a unique, standalone culture and language), is quite active in furthering representation in cinema – Deaf director Mark Woods formed ASL Films to fill that space; a Deaf-owned and operated production company that utilizes Deaf actors in roles that are performed in American Sign Language. “There really weren’t a whole lot of Deaf movies out there,” Woods, who is also an ASL instructor,…

THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVEN’T EXPERIENCED PUPPET COMBO’S WORK ALREADY might want to try a sampler to help get hooked on his unflinching signature style. So turn out the lights, crank up your headphones, and get ready to scream for your life! Spiders (2018) What do you get when you take the original DOOM and mix it with Arachnaphobia? Spiders, that’s what! Initially released as an entry in the Scary Tales Vol. 1 compilation, this game opens with hilarious footage of a public access show featuring topless women in a hot tub being interviewed about foot fetishes before a sudden warning interrupts the broadcast. Apparently, a once-dormant breed of eight-legged critters has been accidentally set loose and now they are ravaging the entire globe! In the shoes of a father…

AT THE BEGINNING OF 2020, ANTEBELLUM WAS SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE ON APRIL 24 FROM LIONSGATE, and it was already poised to make a statement about the legacy of slavery in America. Then came the pandemic – which forced a delay to August 21 (as of press time) – followed by the dramatic rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the George Floyd murder and other troubling deaths. Suddenly, Antebellum’s story of an affluent Black woman pitted against the intersectional trappings of white supremacy and patriarchy, stood to present a uniquely timely commentary on the state of a country in the midst of a critical reckoning. “We never imagined that the timing would prove so prescient, in terms of what this movie means in the moment,” says…

With the increasingly wild events of the past year, it seems like we’re all feeling a little trampled lately – some more than others. Between the coronavirus squashing every semblance of normal life to the violent police attacks that rocked North America this past spring, 2020 has been a bad year by any standard, but especially for the continued erosion of human rights and freedoms. Following nationwide protests against police brutality in early June, scenes of cops shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at peaceful protesters filled our social media feeds. A reminder that not much has changed since the 1992 Rodney King riots, these videos echo some of the questions about using military force against free citizens posed in War of the Colossal Beast (1958), a classic giant creature…

NIGHTWALKERS: GOTHIC HORROR MOVIES – REVISED EDITION Bruce Lanier Wright Castle Bridge Media Horror is an expansive genre with a definition that varies depending on who you talk to. Author Bruce Lanier Wright’s interesting take can be found within the prologue of Nightwalkers, his extensive guide to gothic horror films: “Horror is a fear unconnected to the thoughts of your personal welfare. Horror has nothing to do with you, in that respect. Horror is impersonal… Absent the element of horror, after all, what is Dracula but Ted Bundy in formal wear?” Originally released in 1995 but receiving little attention due to lacklustre promotion, Nightwalkers has been revised and is now ready to hit an even wider audience. Though revamped, the content remains focused primarily on the works of Hammer Horror…

Silvia Moreno-Garcia recently tweeted: “The reason why I’m asking people not to call Mexican Gothic magic realism but the accurate term of horror and/or Gothic (it’s also historical, but hey) is because I want other Latinx writers to be able to write genre fiction. If you hide me in the magic realism pile, then I won’t be used as a comp for future horror novels for other POC. They’ll just continue to restrict us to two little groupings (immigrant pain stories and magic realism).” This is both surprising, given that Mexican Gothic, out now from Del Rey, does not have a magic realism bone in its glorious, layered, deeply disturbing body, and yet not surprising, because mainstream media (and many marketing departments) still try to dodge the “horror” word, even…

THE INVISIBLE MAN SOUNDTRACK Benjamin Wallfisch DEATH WALTZ RECORDING COMPANY Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man was a wholly modern take on a Universal Monster classic and, similarly, Benjamin Wallfisch’s score takes little inspiration from the grand orchestras of the past, sounding decidedly contemporary (albeit rooted in the works of Bernard Herrmann). Though loosely structured, there is an obvious push to balance huge sounds and nearnoise with long quiet passages. The orchestral pieces are entirely stringbased, with an aim to build the same intensity of Herrmann’s Psycho, while synth and industrial-sized rumblings collide. The movie’s transparent villain has no obvious theme to tip you off that he’s there, and the absence of jump scare stingers make this a listen for mature ears. Props to Death Waltz for some inspired packaging; this…

IF THE OVERLOOK HOTEL (A.K.A. THE STANLEY HOTEL IN ESTES PARK, COLORADO) HAD AN IN-HOUSE BAND, IT WOULD BE MURDER BY DEATH. The Kentucky-based five-piece has filled the famous hotel’s haunted halls with their unique blend of spooky folk rock a whopping 27 times in seven years. Caretakers in their own right, it feels as though the band has always been a part of the hotel – and it’s showing no sign of leaving. For lead singer, songwriter and guitarist Adam Turla, the idea of playing the iconic venue came to him after a show in Denver, upon recalling that Stephen King had written his famous novel The Shining there. Numerous logistical challenges followed, but Murder By Death persisted and eventually became the first band to gig at the notorious…

Celebrating fifteen years in the biz, Ohiobased Kyle Cotterman has a diverse portfolio of realistic, surreal, and abstract tattoo art. Having committed the likenesses of Freddy Krueger, Beetlejuice, Leprechaun, and Frankenstein’s Monster on his clients, horror remains one of his many inspirations for a variety of reasons, both esthetic and technical. “Horror tattoos were a big part of my learning process as an artist,” he explains. “Scenes or portraits from horror movies generally have a lot of textures and details to explore. Also, who doesn’t like a little blood and guts tattooed on them?” HAVE A GREAT HORROR TAT? SHARE IT WITH US AT: INFO@RUE-MORGUE.COM KYLE COTTERMAN LOCATION: Kettering, Ohio INSTAGRAM: @kylecotterman…

CAT O’ NINE TAILS (1971) Directed by Dario Argento James Franciscus and Karl Malden play two reporters, one young and eager, the other retired and blind, who work together on a series of murders. A straight giallo thriller in line with Argento’s early output, Cat o’ Nine Tails afforded Sacchetti his first taste of cinematic success, and a volatile relationship that brought about his eventual involvement with Mario Bava. A BAY OF BLOOD A.K.A CHAIN REACTION (1971) Directed by Mario Bava A succession of graphic murders follows the killing of wheelchair-bound matriarch Countess Federica. The killer is revealed to be her husband, but the bloodshed and mayhem has only just begun. The plot revolves around the acquisition of an idyllic piece of lakefront property, where every character has a motive…

2000 THE ISLE The Isle became notorious on the festival circuit, due to its horrid scenes of animal cruelty and brutal imagery involving fishhooks – some critics lost their lunches and walked out. The plot involves a man (Yu-seok Kim) hiding out at a lake resort and developing a sado-masochistic relationship with Hee-jin (Jung Suh), the mute girl who runs the day-to-day operations at the lake. Ki-duk Kim is an uncompromising filmmaker and The Isle won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but the way it balances queasy violence with soothing tenderness is haunting to say the least. MC 2001 WENDIGO Largely overshadowed by bigger art house successes like Habit and The Last Winter, 2001’s Wendigo sees director Larry Fessenden employing Indigenous mythology as a springboard to explore the negative effects…

IT MIGHT SOUND LIKE AN ILL-ADVISED HORROR PARODY, BUT ROB SAVAGE’S DAWN OF THE DEAF IS A BEAUTIFULLY CRAFTED short film that documents a handful of Deaf individuals in London, England, before and after a “pulse” turns the hearing population into zombies. For Savage, who wrote and directed his first feature film at the tender age of seventeen, the appeal of the project was in a novel tweak he hadn’t yet, uhm, heard. “I’m an unapologetically huge zombie fan, and it’s always been on my film bucket list to contribute something to the genre,” the award-winning filmmaker tells Rue Morgue. “However, it’s such an overstuffed area of horror that I knew it would take a really unique and unusual idea for me to get excited. My producing partner, Jed Shepherd,…

MORE SILENT TREATMENT A QUIET PLACE: PART II Starring Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds and Cillian Murphy Written and directed by John Krasinski Paramount Pictures A pandemic and delayed release only bestowed more relevance upon A Quiet Place: Part II, beginning with its opening sequence. In a “Day 1” prologue, just before the Abbott family and their fellow small-townspeople are first attacked by the sound-hunting monsters, we learn that the deadly threat has already decimated China. The terrifying action that follows demonstrates that encoring writer/director John Krasinski can wreak vivid, impactful mayhem on an expansive canvas, before returning to more intimate terrors for the bulk of his film. The rest of A Quiet Place: Part II is set a while after the original, rejoining Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and her children as…

AMATEUR HAUER SPLIT SECOND (1992) Blu-ray Starring Rutger Hauer, Alastair Duncan and Kim Cattrall Directed by Tony Maylam Written by Gary Scott Thompson MVD Entertainment You can’t turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, but you can apparently put the former into the latter. This is pretty much what MVD Entertainment has done with their impressive Blu-ray reissue of 1992’s less-than-impressive Split Second. Set in a dystopian London of (then future) 2008, this British sci-fi/horror cheapie stars Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner) as troubled super-cop Harley Stone, reluctantly partnered with aptly named rookie detective Dick (Alastair Duncan) to take down a monster serial killer who’s been ripping out its victims’ organs and absorbing part of their DNA. The cops bond as they hunt the demonic creature, while the plot expands…

In 2008, writer/artist Svetlana Chmakova set out to answer a simple question; where do demons get their diplomas? The result became Nightschool: The Weirn Books, an English-language manga about a normal high school that transforms at sunset into an institution for young vampires, werewolves, and “weirn” – witches born with a demon guardian spirit, a shaggy-looking little creature called an astral. Serialized between 2008 and 2010, Nightschool was a hit with critics and teen readers. The writer then closed the school’s doors temporarily and moved on to other projects, including the successful (non-horror) Berrybrook Middle School series for younger readers. But a funny thing happened while she took a break from Nightschool. “The early Nightschool-starter germ that sank its hooks into my storytelling heart was the question of, ‘What happens…

THE AGE OF DECAYED FUTURITY: THE BEST OF MARK SAMUELS Mark Samuels Hippocampus Press Mark Samuels, who has been called “the contemporary British master of visionary weirdness” by Ramsey Campbell, published his first two collections in 2003. Yet, he’s left such a strong mark on the horror field that it took less than fifteen years for an homage by his peers to appear (see 2017’s Marked to Die: A Tribute to Mark Samuels). And now, the time is ripe for a Best of… book, compiled by S.T. Joshi and introduced by Michael Dirda. Alienation, paranoia, misanthropy… Intellectual, existential, and cosmic horror questioning humanity’s place in the universe and the nature of reality… Metafiction with constant allusions to the classics of supernatural literature, from Machen through to M.R. James and Lovecraft…

THE LAST OF US PART II PS4 Naughty Dog Controversy in gaming’s rabid fandom world is nothing new; sadly, neither is blatant misogyny, homophobia and bigotry. When Naughty Dog teased the first bit of the highly anticipated The Last of Us Part II’s story at their E3 2018 event, a portion of the internet denounced images of one of the first game’s protagonists in a lesbian embrace as promoting the agenda of “social justice warriors.” Flash forward to shortly before the game’s summer 2020 release – during a global pandemic, no less – when controversy arose once more. Not only were major plot points leaked, discussion about Naughty Dog subjecting its employees to intense “crunch culture” during the game’s long development also surfaced, with some fans moving to boycott the…