Table of contents for Issue 164 March 2016 in RUE MORGUE

A horror comic acquired in a trade at school and hidden under the bed, a VHS tape watched in a friend’s basement, or perhaps the liner art for a heavy metal album in an older sibling’s bedroom – our fascination with the genre is so often borne out of a curiosity for the forbidden. But sometimes it falls in our lap by accident. My own obsession blossomed when my parents unwittingly introduced me to a cannibal named Swift Runner. During one of our summer road trips out of Edmonton they attempted to keep me occupied with a book titled Outlaws & Lawmen of Western Canada. The cover features a Mountie on horseback, rifle drawn, presumably bringing order to the plains, or some such derring-do. It’s painfully clich-eh, and seemingly wholesome…

The end of 2015 and the early weeks of 2016 were filled with numerous deaths of notable figures from the worlds of music, television and film, several of whom left significant marks on the horror community. On Christmas Day, 2015, author George Clayton Johnson died in Los Angeles, California, at age 86. The noted science fiction writer and creator of the original Ocean’s 11 film was best known for co-writing, with William F. Nolan, the classic dystopian novel Logan’s Run, (in which the population is controlled by killing citizens once they reach the age of 21), as well as the very first Star Trek episode to air (“The Man Trap”). Horror fans remember him most for writing various episodes of the original Twilight Zone, including first season highlight “The Four…

ONCE UPON A TIME, CHILDREN IN HORROR MOVIES WERE UNBLEMISHED PARAGONS OF VIRTUE. Their purity and naiveté was at variance with the likes of the clay creature in Der Golem and Karloff’s bewildered Monster in Frankenstein; their flower-like fragility cruelly exposed by the more tenebrous menaces of M and The Leopard Man. Naturally, it wasn’t difficult for early audiences to work out where their sympathies should lie, but such assurances were challenged in ensuing decades with the arrival of the tiny terrors lurking in The Bad Seed, Village of the Damned, The Other, The Exorcist and The Omen. Kids were now destructive and demonic creatures capable of a great many evils; the once unsullied state of childhood a fertile ground for fear. In 1990, Philip Ridley’s The Reflecting Skin offered…

TROLL (1986) Starring Michael Moriarty, Shelley Hack and Noah Hathaway Directed by John Carl Buechler Written by Ed Naha TROLL II (1990) Starring Michael Stephenson, Robert Ormsby and Connie Young Directed by Claudio Fragasso Written by Rossella Drudi and Claudio Fragasso Shout! Factory Just who are the Troll films for? Too juvenile for horror fans and too upsetting for kids, the original Empire Pictures production and its legendarily awful sequel were pumped out alongside a dozen other Gremlins-inspired movies about mini-monsters on the loose. While the original film offered a weird twist on standard fare, as an evil troll wizard schemes to turn an apartment building into a lush fairy-tale forest, the sequel-in-name-only is an even more bizarre anti-vegetarian screed about a family besieged by goblins. Though the films have…

MOST OF US ASSOCIATE TURKISH HORROR CINEMA WITH ITS OFT-MOCKED HOLLYWOOD RIP-OFFS OF MOVIES SUCH AS DRACULA, THE EXORCIST AND JAWS. But the country does make its own original scary movies; it’s just that none of them have broken out internationally to be recognized in the same way as Japanese and French horror cinema. There is no Turkish version of J-Horror or the French New Wave of Horror. That could change with the release of Baskin, out March 25 in theatres and on demand via IFC Midnight, and via Raven Banner Entertainment in Canada. Already a film festival hit that won Best Director awards at Morbido and Fantastic Fest, Baskin tells the story of five Istanbul cops, including a rookie named Arda (Gorken Kasal) on the graveyard shift who are…

Late last year, it was my pain and pleasure to put together the latest Rue Morgue Library edition: Blood in Four Colours – A Graphic History of Horror Comics. While poring over hundreds of titles published in the last seven decades, this sometimes jaded comics fan learned something. I’m not talking about the odd new factoid or two, though there were certainly a few of those (for example, I had no idea Marvel’s Groot made his first appearance in a 1960 issue of Tales to Astonish). Rather, I had an epiphany of sorts that made me re-evaluate my entire relationship with horror comics: simply put, they’re the single best form of entertainment for horror fans. I’ve been reading comics for nearly 40 years, and like many people in long-term relationships,…

When Mike Hrubovcak’s book Visual Darkness thudded onto my desk, I was equally repulsed, astounded and impressed by the sheer amount of bloody artwork he’s produced for the metal scene over the years. Imagine if Ed Gein studied the work of Wes Benscotter and Vincent Locke, and was a rabid fan of death metal, and you’re almost there. I’ve long been fascinated by the typography and design behind death metal band logos, which are typically hilariously illegible yet possess a certain kind of fun in breaking your brain trying to decipher them. I gnawed the gristle with Hrubovcak about the book (only available at visualdarkness.com) to find out if nothing is too violent when you find beauty in the bloodshed. Your artwork reminds me of something Fred Vogel of Toe…

I got excited this winter when I found out that Michael Bruce and Dennis Dunaway of the original Alice Cooper band would be playing a show at a local bar near my new home just outside of Toronto. Alice Cooper, of course, was originally the name of a five-member band and not just the larger-than-life horror character. The group gave us classic records Love it to Death, Killer, Schools Out and Billion Dollar Babies. Dunaway has been touring with Bruce, as well as his band Blue Coupe (which features Blue Oyster Cult members Albert and Joe Bouchard), and promoting his book Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs!, in which he gives his personal account of the many legends surrounding the original Alice Cooper band. I caught up with Dunaway (pictured, second from…

Hungry for more video game cannibals? Here are five notable representations of this underfed minority. F.E.A.R. (2005) Players hoping to get answers from Habegger, an employee for the most evil organization this side of the Umbrella Corporation, do eventually find most of him. Habegger’s long dead after his face was consumed by series antagonist and resident cannibal Paxton Fettel. Red Dead Redemption (2010) In the EC Comics-influenced “American Appetites” mission, players must capture and return a terrified man to a wounded hermit. Upon completing the mission, you realize the man you’ve hog-tied is the hermit’s dinner. All that’s missing is commentary from your old pal, the Crypt Keeper. The Walking Dead: Season One, Episode 2 (2012) After discovering the human source of meat on Brenda St. John’s dairy farm, protagonist…

WHOA! Just finished reading the interview with Robert Eggers, director of The Witch, from RM#163. I haven’t been this excited for a genre movie in a long time. Brilliant article and some of the best quotes from a director that I can remember. Can’t wait for it! ADAM FOCHT, VIA FACEBOOK DAVE ALEXANDER, I was really disappointed with your critical review for The Final Girls in RM#163. Granted, there is a lot missing in the film environment that should make the world the characters are exploring more ’80s. Plus the lack of gore is disappointing. However I think you completely missed the point and emotion of the mother-daughter relationship, and instead decided to lazily refer to it as having “lesbian overtones.” Also, just because “Cherry Pie” sucks (the song is…

After suffering from a combination of illnesses, cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond died on January 1, 2016 in Big Sur, California, at the age of 85. The Hungarian-American was best known for his work on Deliverance, The Deer Hunter and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, for which he won the Oscar in 1977. “Vilmos was one of that generation that not only changed the way movies looked, but changed the way we look at movies,” American Society of Cinematographers President Richard Crudo remarked to TheASC.com. While many of the accolades following Zsigmond’s passing cited his groundbreaking Hollywood productions for Steven Spielberg, John Boorman and Brian DePalma, his early work in film consisted of genre projects. “When Vilmos and his friend [cinematographer] Laszlo Kovacs [1933-2007] arrived in Hollywood after the Hungarian Revolution,…

1 HIMALAYAN YETI CREATUREPLICA $34.99 The easiest way to sight an elusive yeti is to put one on your collectibles shelf. This 8 ¼”-tall abominable snowman boasts nineteen points of articulation, stands on a base of ice and is simply one of the (pun intended) coolest-looking monsters we’ve ever glimpsed. All he needs now is a home. 2 KILLIN ME SOFTLY DOLLS $32 Embrace the softer side of your favourite fear-monger with an 8-inch plush doll by Killin Me Softly. Each one is hand made out of high quality felt and backed with a solid piece of cuddly grey fleece. Delicate, devious and not recommended for small children, Jason and Wednesday need your love. 3 REDRUM PERIOD PANTIES $12 Bring out ya red with a pair of Redrum period panties.…

IN AN EARLY SCENE IN THE REFLECTING SKIN, DOLPHIN BLUE, A CREEPY ENGLISH WIDOW WREATHED BY PRESERVED PIRANHA PARTS, shark jawbones and an idle harpoon, discloses the following to Seth Dove, the wide-eyed child sitting in her peculiar home: “Sometimes terrible things happen quite naturally.” Although Jeremy Cooper, who played the troubled tyke in Philip Ridley’s stylish slice of American Gothic, finds this alarming proclamation to be a valid one, he recalls the summer he spent making the film in August 1989 to be one of the best things that has ever happened to him. “The Reflecting Skin was a wonderful experience which began for me when Philip came to Vancouver and hosted open casting sessions to find somebody to play Seth,” the former actor, now 36, informs Rue Morgue.…

PRODIGAL SON THE BOY Starring Lauren Cohan, Rupert Evans and James Russell Directed by Wiliam Brent Bell Written by Stacey Menear Entertainment One Ever watch a movie that feels like it’s a remake of something you’d really like to see? That’s The Boy, which seems like a Hollywood remake of a really batshit crazy foreign film from the ’70s. If only it had more sex, violence, blood, weird doll shit and a surreal style to match its creepy concept, it could be a balls-to-the-oak-panelledhalls cult classic. Instead, it’s a decent little $10 million flick that offers a few satisfying twists on the scary doll subgenre and the frustrating promise of something cooler. Lauren Cohan (The Walking Dead) stars as Greta Evans, a woman who’s fled America to escape an abusive…

Dreams and nightmares have long been an inspiration for horror cinema, but they found their fullest expression in the messy and unfocused regional horror boom of the 1970s. Some of the most original and groundbreaking visions of locally made cinematic terror emerged from this era, including Tobe Hooper’s nightmarish The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. But for every certified classic, thousands more brought their own dark visions to life, often just around the corner from where they lived. It’s this D.I.Y.-leaning movement that is the focus of Arrow Video’s new American Horror Project Volume 1, a Blu-ray set that features ’70s indie favourites Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood (1973), The Witch Who Came From the Sea (1976) and The Premonition (1976). These films, and…

NORA FALCON’S LIFE IS PRETTY DAMNED SWEET. SHE LIVES IN SUNNY CALIFORNIA, IS A BEST-SELLING AUTHOR, ATTENDS A PRESTIGIOUS academy, has a kick-ass B-movie actress for a roommate and a smokin’ hot best friend to crush on – and she’s still in high school. It’d all be absolutely perfect, except for the demanding fans, even more demanding publisher deadlines, and the honest-to-god real-life vampire who’s suddenly stalking her. “I will probably get in trouble for that,” says author Rusty Fischer, of the book’s occasionally biting commentary about overly critical readers and obsessive fans, “but that’s a direct response to how immediate – and often personal – the feedback of today’s readership can get. One of the challenges in writing genre fiction like the paranormal is keeping the continuity fluid, something…

Some staggering numbers – this is the sixteenth anniversary of this column and the 150th issue it’s appeared in. I have been The Gore-met for a third of my life now. In that time, I have seen much change… My first few columns were about prized ex-rental VHS tapes I’d scored in bargain bins and momand-pop video store closings. The new releases I wrote about were VHS screeners I had to pick up from the Rue Morgue office. I didn’t get a DVD player until late 2003; I wasn’t convinced it was going to take off as a home video format. However, few tapes were being sent in and I was running out of material. Nowadays, I don’t deal much with physical media. A lot of the screeners I see…

WHILE SPOKEN WORD AND AUDIO HORROR STORIES CONTINUE TO MAKE A COMEBACK, TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE REMAINS THE GENRE’S BEST CONTEMPORARY OFFERING in terms of storytelling, sound design and talent. Season 3 of the series, out now and spearheaded by Larry Fessenden and Glenn McQuaid under the Glass Eye Pix banner, boasts an impressive array of writers, such as Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, From Beyond) and Eric Red (The Hitcher, Near Dark), and voice actors, including Nick Damici (Stake Land, Late Phases) and Angus Scrimm (the iconic Tall Man from the Phantasm series) in his final performance before his death on January 9 of this year. (His work in the upcoming Phantasm: Ravager was completed long before that.) “My approach to Tales is not unlike my overall approach at Glass…

A German man was killed by shrapnel on Christmas Day after he and two accomplices attempted to rob a condom machine by blowing it up. Genre favourite James Hong (Big Trouble in Little China) dubbed the English voices for two Japanese characters, Ogata and Dr. Serizawa, in 1956’s Godzilla, King of the Monsters, the Americanized version of 1954’s Gojira. In early industrial-age Britain, flour was so expensive that urban bakers often cut it with chalk, plaster of Paris and other non-edible ingredients in order to turn a profit. The official term for this practice is “adulteration.” Deathgasm, the 2015 heavy metal horror film, was renamed Heavy Metal Apocalypse for its Walmart release. The retailer also requested new cover art in which the pentagram was removed. After being caught shoplifting earlier…

ALIEN 2: ON EARTH (1980) Unofficial sequels are common in Italy; for example, a number of spaghetti westerns released in the wake of Sergio Corbucci’s Django were renamed and marketed as Django sequels. In horror, Lucio Fulci inadvertently continued this trend when Island of the Living Dead was retitled Zombi 2 by producer Ugo Tucci to capitalize on Zombi (a.k.a. Dawn of the Dead). Zombi 2 inspired Ciro Ippolito’s Alien 2: On Earth. Under no illusions that his film was anything but a con, the first thing Ippolito did was blow the film’s budget to buy himself a new Jaguar. So, Alien 2 is strictly earthbound and little happens in the first half of its 84-minute running time outside of long driving scenes and a sequence where its main characters…

I SPEND A LOT OF MY TIME WITH THE DEAD. As a PhD candidate at Michigan State University, I study Physical Anthropology – more specifically bio-archaeology: a wordy way of saying I study human skeletons from archaeological sites – which has landed me at field sites in the US, Albania and Belize. In Belize I excavate human remains in caves and rock shelters as part of a field crew interested in ancient Maya social identity. Belize is rich in archaeological sites built by the ancient Maya, an industrious and complex society that thrived in Central America before Spanish contact in the early 1500s. Their burial practices are particularly interesting, as they did not retain formal cemeteries as we would think of them today; rather, they buried their dead under house…

THIS ISSUE: LANCE PICKS ON THE PARANORMAL PRE-CURSER PARANORMAL APPARITION WWMM I never liked the Paranormal Activity movies and grimaced at the thought of the inevitable rip-offs that would follow in their insipid wake. Paranormal Apparition would be a prime example of one of those ghastly rip-offs if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s actually a 2007 movie originally called Cold Blood Canyon that was repackaged and renamed after the Paranormal Activity films started raking in the coin, which makes it all the more abhorrent. When a girl tries to get rid of a ghost that’s haunting the house she just moved into with her parents, things go from bad to worse – especially the acting! Throw in some black magic and body swapping, and you’ve got a…

Have you ever tried to count the number of film titles that begin with “The Last?” One recent snowy day I counted upwards of 40 on my own, lost track, gave up and consulted the Internet Movie Database, which lists almost 200. Of the handful that are horror films, only one is called The Last Horror Film (1982), which is appropriate because it’s a singular film for many reasons, most of them wrong. Another quick online search reveals that the word “skeevy” derives from the Italian word “schifoso” and means disgusting, detestable, rotten, repulsive, foul, hideous, loathsome. It’s also a term personified by most of the low-life characters played by the late great Joe Spinell (Maniac, Rocky, The Godfather), who was pretty much the acme of skeevy. In The Last…

FOLK HORROR REVIVAL: FIELD STUDIES Katherine Beem and Andy Paciorek, eds. Wyrd Harvest Press The rich pagan, pre-Christian legacy of the British Isles and Europe, and various themes attendant to folklore motifs in cinema, television, music, art and culture, are presented in this 500-page compendium of essays, reviews and interviews. It’s a mixed bag; not only of themes and levels of quality, but also of fonts and layouts. Still, if you’re willing to look beyond its amateurish design and a number of average/sub par contributions, there’s enough good stuff to be found between the covers. First, there are quality interviews with authors Kim Newman and Thomas Ligotti (an old, non-exclusive one), artist Paul Rumsey and, especially pertinent, director Robin Hardy, whose classic The Wicker Man (1973) looms strongly over this…

SOUNDTRAC THE FOREST Bear McCreary SPARKS & SHADOWS Known chiefly by horror fans for his work on The Walking Dead, Bear Mc-Creary’s latest is an unusually structured shocker where clouds of misty, string-based thematic material are gradually overtaken by the percussive elements initially needle-dropped into the score’s early cues. The Forest unfurls as a series of lengthy tracks, first as atmospherics that draw from the composer’s Asian-tinged main theme before “Alone in the Cave” marks a temporary shift to the rapping percussion, backbeats and organic sounds typical of his rhythmic style. The progression from soft to harsh, and later to eerie, also allows for rare bursts of Japanese children’s choir and chimes, but the score’s genuine unease stems from the clever way McCreary repeatedly applies his version of thematic brushstrokes,…

THARSIS PS4, PC, Mac Choice Provisions If you were one of those starry-eyed dreamers who imagined yourself jetting away on idyllic rocket ship journeys to far-flung planets as a kid, do not play Tharsis, unless you want those rose-coloured fantasies smashed to pieces. Tharsis makes one thing clear from the get-go: space travel is hell, particularly when you have the misfortune of being on the unluckiest ship in the cosmos. No, I’m not kidding – two of your six crew members die before the controls are even handed over to you. Oh, and you’ll likely have to eat a dead person, perhaps even more than one, as cannibalism is a core component of gameplay. Tharsis is played via a simple interface that displays all the modules of your ship and…

ROMAN POLANSKI USA - 1971 “And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty,” Lady Macbeth declares while steeling herself for the wet work ahead in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and it’s easy to imagine Roman Polanski similarly girding himself before production began on his bleak, black hymn to nihilism. While the Bard never flinched from laying bare humanity’s lowest lows, Polanski was the first director to turn Macbeth into something resembling an actual horror film, rife with graphic gore, existential dread and a hopelessly jaundiced view of the human condition. Admittedly, the man had his reasons. Less than two years before cameras rolled on the film, Polanski’s wife Sharon Tate – eight-and-a-half-months pregnant – and four others were murdered by Charles Manson’s acolytes, and the film stands…