Table of contents for Issue 179 Nov/Dec 2017 in RUE MORGUE

ON RUE MORGUE’S FACEBOOK PAGE Who would you like to see cast as an adult member of the Loser’s Club in the next IT movie? All seven roles should be played by Nicolas Cage. MATTHEW STEPHEN SUNRICH The people who played the kids in the 1990 version (obviously with the exception of Jonathan Brandis) should play the new cast. MARY BETH REID Use the same actors. Just wait 27 years to make the sequel. ADAM LEE COLONEL Would only make sense to cast Seth Green as Richie. ANNETTE COPPOLE-A They should stick with what works. Go with all unknowns. HENRY SILVAS James Franco as Ritchie. Seth Rogan as Ben. Channing Tatum as Bill. SHERRI FERGUSON FINAL WORDS AS CAPTIONED BY YOU ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE “THE ORIGINAL ENDING TO WILLY…

1 GINGERDEAD CHRISTMAS SOCKS $10 Who needs to be cool when you can be warm in these holiday socks, featuring that perfect combination of colours to convey a general distaste for the season. So treat your feet and don’t let your friends and family get away with having a good time. sockdrawer.com 2 SOURPUSS APOTHECARY GLASS ORNAMENTS $8 Nothing says holiday spirit quite like Poison Eyeball Treats and Cyanide Lozenges hanging from the tree. Have both on display with these unique ¼-inch glass disc globes, featuring artwork by Bethany Lowe. sourpussclothing.com 3 KRAMPUS THE CHRISTMAS DEVIL SWEATER $79.99 Bring home the holiday gloom with this truly unique 100% acrylic pullover cardigan, featuring Krampus replete with chains, a whip and naughty child in his basket! Guaranteed to take the ugly Christmas…

Lakeshore and Mondo Records have solved the puzzle box and unleashed two new editions of Christopher Young’s score for Hellraiser. Now fans can choose between the original poster art or a dazzling new sleeve from Canadian artist Matt Ryan Tobin. It’s easy to see why these labels are going all out for the film’s 30th anniversary: remastered from the original 24-track tapes, Young’s score has remained a timeless composition. For a movie largely set in the confines of a house, employing a full orchestra to suggest the scope of Clive Barker’s hellish realm through the music alone was a smart move – especially considering that similar genre fare at the time was being underscored by an arsenal of synthesizers. While the score uses atonality and jarring percussive effects when needed,…

THERE’S A NEW CLOWN IN TOWN IT Starring Bill Skarsgård, Jaeden Lieberher and Finn Wolfhard Directed by Andy Muschietti Written by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman Warner Bros. Starring Bill Skarsgård, Jaeden Lieberher and Finn Wolfhard Directed by Andy Muschietti Written by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman Warner Bros. Andy Muschietti’s ambitious adaptation of Stephen King’s award-winning 1986 novel It is significant for a number of reasons. The first installment of the two-part series broke numerous box office records upon its release in spite of several factors that would seem to work against it. First of all, King’s cinematic adaptations are notoriously hitor-miss; then there’s the fact that Tommy Lee Wallace’s 1990 TV miniseries version remains revered by fans in spite of its flaws, due in…

BETTER MUTILATE THAN NEVER THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES (2007) Blu-ray Starring Stacy Chbosky, Ben Messmer and Samantha Robson Directed by John Erick Dowdle Written by Drew Dowdle and John Erick Dowdle Scream Factory Ten years after being buried by its distributor, the Dowdle Brothers’ serial killer faux-documentary The Poughkeepsie Tapes is finally seeing a physical release thanks to Scream Factory. Originally set to be unleashed before the found-footage boom brought about by Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity, a combination of cold feet and financial woes caused MGM to pull it from theatres at the eleventh hour. Since then, the movie garnered a modest cult following through word of mouth and convention bootlegs… until now. Through interviews with police and FBI profilers, The Poughkeepsie Tapes tells the story of an elusive serial killer…

Two friends go camping and find themselves at the mercy of natural – and possibly unnatural – forces. That sentence could describe any number of horror stories and movies, but is in fact the premise for Algernon Blackwood’s criminally overlooked 1907 novella The Willows. While the original story may be mostly forgotten, its influences are far-reaching, from H.P. Lovecraft to The Blair Witch Project. Writer Nathan Carson and artist Sam Ford are shining a much-deserved spotlight on Blackwood’s tale with their two-issue comic adaptation. In the original story, two young men embark on a canoe trip down the Danube River. Upon landing on a small, sandy island – populated by a number of willow trees – and setting up camp for the night, they fall prey to a number of…

PHANTASM/CHIMERA Scott Dwyer, ed. Plutonian Press Don’t let this small press “anthology of strange and troubling dreams” fall under your radar just because the editor is only known for his website The Plutonian. This may be his first publication, with a black-and-white cover to boot (good artwork by Serhiy Krykun), but the names involved and their contributions are anything but small. The always-reliable Brian Evenson is here with “The Hole,” a tale of aliens possessing astronauts on a gloomy planet, which is enriched by its insidious point of view and strong, ominous narration. “Fiending Apophenia,” by Clint Smith, deals on the surface with dealers and stealers of a new drug that reveals a gruesome truth underneath reality – but in essence, it’s a melancholy story about the passage of time…

THE EVIL WITHIN 2 Xbox One, PS4, PC Bethesda Softworks Horror happens in the head. It’s an idea The Evil Within series takes quite literally, by immersing players deep inside a computer-generated alternate dimension “mind world” to confront some of the sickest set pieces in modern survival horror. While the original game saw protagonist Sebastian scavenging supplies and fighting/evading monsters in order to survive his surreal and terrifying environment – the mind of a twisted psychopath – the sequel (out now from Bethesda for PS4, Xbox One and PC) ups the ante with tweaks in all the right places. Rue Morgue caught up with TEW2’s director John Johanas at QuakeCon 2017 in Dallas, Texas, where we also had a chance to test drive the game, which returns us to familiar…

MASSIVE CONGRATULATIONS on twenty years of fucking awesome writing. I’ve been reading RM since it was on paper and hard to find in the States! My favourites are Bowen’s Basement and Last Chance Lance (both always on the money!). My one question is: how the fuck did From Hell It Came – one of the dumbest fucking movies ever made – warrant a Blu-ray release when there’s about 1000 better movies still waiting? Boggled! Here’s to another twenty years of RM! ROB MORGANBESSER – STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK I LOVED Monica S. Kuebler’s piece on “Supermarket Shockers.” Being a man of a certain age now, I was just a lad in the ’70s and these books were everywhere. What Monica doesn’t mention (but does sort of touch on in her…

AUTOPSY CASE NO. 1269351 As a kid, I often swam in the cool, muddy waters of Texas’ backwoods lakes and rivers during the summer. I always enjoyed the experience, yet I recall a certain trepidation when entering any murky shallows where venomous cottonmouths (or worse) might lurk. Other than a chance catfish nip, my fears appeared to be baseless… or were they? I recently received an intriguing video clip by a farmer in Louisiana, a man who is also a licensed pilot and periodically flies a small plane to survey his crops using digital video. On one occasion, he flew over the Tensas River, a significant waterway in the eastern portion of the state. While reviewing the footage, he was surprised to see a huge object or animal in the…

IN THE LAND OF GAMING, NOT ALL MONSTERS ARE CREATED EQUAL – OR SHOULD I SAY, AS FREQUENTLY AS OTHERS. Zombies remain the undisputed rotting kings of the digital domain, with several popular franchises all their own (Resident Evil, Dead Rising, Left 4 Dead, The Last of Us), while other things that go bump in the night have gotten decidedly less… ahem… play. Take vampires, for instance. While there have been a few celebrated outliers over the years that have made waves amongst gamers (2004’s Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, the action RPG to which all vamp games are still compared today; BloodRayne; Castlevania; and, more recently, The Witcher 3 DLC Blood and Wine), the bloodthirsty undead have never become a bona fide gaming phenomenon, meaning vampire fans have been…

THIS ISSUE: LANCE CAVORTS WITH DEMONS SUB PAR HERESY NAVY SEALS VS DEMONS MVD Visual Here’s a little Demonology 101 for y’all: just as angels are the worker-bees of God, demons are the Devil’s henchmen. And if I’ve learned anything from the Bible, it’s that if you’re ever threatened by those pesky infernal beings, there’s no one better to call than a retired US Navy Seal. That’s the essence of this scripturally accurate plot that sees the Seals team up with a gang of bikers to defeat a demonic infestation in southern Texas. Though it suffers from some truly abysmal acting, Navy Seals Vs Demons features some good gore and the bikers look like they attended the Danny Trejo School of Bad Mutherfuckers. Incidentally, if you’re looking for that…

NIGHTMARES. WE ALL HAVE THEM, BUT ONLY A SELECT FEW ARE ABLE TO SHAPE THEM INTO POWERFUL WORKS OF FICTION THAT CONTINUE TO LIVE ON IN THE IMAGINATIONS OF OTHERS. Where Nightmares Come From (out now from Crystal Lake Publishing) is not so much about the universal origin of bad dreams as it is about the very particular magic (or, rather, talent and technique) of shaping them into horror stories we all respond to. The non-fiction book takes a look at the art of horror storytelling through articles and interviews (mostly original, with only a few reprints) with the medium’s masters, including Joe R. Lansdale, Richard Chizmar, Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, John Connolly, Lisa Morton, Ray Garton, Elizabeth Massie, and many others. “The book,” editor Eugene Johnson tells us, “looks…

CREEPY CONFECTIONS DON’T HAVE TO BE RESERVED FOR HALLOWEEN! This holiday season, put a morbid, cannibalistic twist on some classic holiday treats that are sure to both disgust and delight your guests – crunchy White Chocolate Caramel Pretzel Fingers, melt-in-your-mouth Cinnamon-Almond Cream Cheese Ears, and chewy Fresh Meat Red Velvet Rice Krispies Treats. All of these recipes are quick and easy to prepare, can be made ahead of time, and use inepensive ingredients. And best of all, they require no baking, so you can have more time to enjoy the holidays with your friends and family. And if you have little ones in your household, just imagine how much fun they’ll have creating a plate of severed human body parts to leave out for Santa Claus! WHITE CHOCOLATE CARAMEL PRETZEL…

Ever heard of ASMR? I hadn’t until just recently, but it turns out there is a whole online world dedicated to Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response – videos designed to generate a tingling sensation that purportedly moves from the top of the head down through to the bottom of the spine. ASMR is essentially the softest of sounds – light whispering or the crinkling of paper – created using binaural recordings in which two microphones are used to generate a 3-D sound sensation. While it sounds like the kind of thing that would tickle horror fans (think of the hair-raising effect created by the haunted video in Ringu, the fuzzy sound effects used in 2005’s White Noise, or that kid’s voice in Stir of Echos), it’s actually designed for the opposite…

YES! JOSH HADLEY “A remake/sequel needs to respect the source material, lest they end up ruining that amazing first film.” Sequels, we just cant get away from them in this day and age. Almost every iconic horror movie of the past 40 years seems to have elicited a continuation to the general satisfaction of cash registers everywhere, while fans suffer the consequences. Who can forget Exorcist II: The Heretic? Or Pumkinhead II: Bloodwings? A sequel is meant to progress the story from the initial film and to move the material into new territory, right? It’s a great thing in theory, but in practice it usually winds up doing the opposite. The main problem is that sequels tend to feel the need to fill in (perceived) holes in the earlier film’s…

SERGEI TITUKH LOCATION: Travelling Europe INSTAGRAM: @t_i_t_u_k_h The artwork of Russian-based tattoo artist Sergei Titukh could be pulled from a forest nymph’s nightmares; his spindly, insectile, black-and-grey creatures merge conventional animal parts with twisting tree branches and gnarled roots and wouldn’t look out of place in Stranger Things’ Upside Down. For reference material, Titukh draws from his clients’ imaginations as well as his own, with a dash of inspiration from Mother Nature and nature-worshipping spirituality. “I love nature and sometimes I imagine that somewhere in the gloomy northern forests, among the dry trees, walk demonic creatures,” he says. “I also like witches, sorcerers and their history.” Titukh is currently travelling throughout Europe with stops in major cities. Check out his Instagram at @ t_i_t_u_k_h for updates on his travels and…

WE CATCH UP WITH DOUG BRADLEY (PINHEAD), NICHOLAS VINCE (CHATTERER) AND SIMON BAMFORD (BUTTERBALL) TO RECALL THEIR DAYS PLAYING CENOBITES and ensure that the long hours of prosthetics and makeup didn’t tear their souls apart… How have your impressions of the film and your character changed since the 1980s? Simon Bamford: By the mid ’90s, I thought that Hellraiser’s day had been and gone and that it would slowly be forgotten. However, I hadn’t counted on the ever-growing popularity of movie conventions. Doug Bradley rang Nick [Vince] and myself in 1997, as he had been approached by a company in Boston who ran Monster Modelfest [who] were interested in having a ten-year reunion of the Cenobites. It was the very first convention we had attended together and has led to…

WHILE VAMPIRES HAVE NEVER EXPERIENCED THE SAME LEVEL OF MONSTER SUCCESS IN GAMING AS THEY’VE HAD IN FILM AND LITERATURE, a look back at the history of video games reveals they have sunk their fangs into a wide variety of titles, even if many are now forgotten or less than fondly remembered. Literature’s most famous vampire, Count Dracula, has been surprisingly well-represented in video games and inspired some of the first vampire titles, including two text-based adventures: 1979’s The Count saw put-upon villagers imploring the player to defeat Dracula on their behalf, and 1986’s Dracula was a more literal interactive adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic novel. However, of all the games to utilize the character of Dracula, the Castlevania series, aside from being one of the earliest, remains among the…

YORGOS LANTHIMOS DIDN’T SET OUT TO MAKE A HORROR FILM WITH THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER, BUT HE HAS. The Oscar-nominated idiosyncratic Greek filmmaker, best known for 2015’s oddball black comedy The Lobster, casts that film’s star (Colin Farrell) as Steven, a heart surgeon who develops an awkward friendship with teenager Martin (Barry Keoghan). Soon, Martin insinuates himself into Steven’s life, befriending his wife Anna (Nicole Kidman) and their two children. But Martin has a secret: he is the son of a patient who died on Steven’s operating table. Now, Martin tells Steven, he must sacrifice one member of his family in exchange for killing his father. It is, in his view, the only acceptable form of justice. And even though Steven banishes Martin from his life, he is…

Power To The Puppets It’s important to remember that size is relative, especially when it comes to taking a stand against the big and powerful. This is the message at the core of director Bert I. Gordon’s wild 1958 B-horror film Attack of the Puppet People, which sees ordinary people staging their own miniature revolution in an attempt to recover the most precious of gifts – their own free will. Hitting Blu-ray for the first time from Shout Factory, it’s another rear-screen projection classic of size manipulation – surely Gordon’s favourite theme – that seems prescient in the way it warns viewers that they may have to go to significant lengths to protect their rights from would-be authoritarian figures, an increasingly common global concern these days. In the film, Sally…

WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST READ David Wong St. Martin’s Press With What the Hell Did I Just Read, David Wong – a.k.a. humourist Jason Pargin – returns for a third adventure in the cracked universe he created with John Dies At the End, the online serial that became an acclaimed novel that became a Don Coscarelli film. And while Wong again brings the funny and weird to this new chapter in the lives of David, John and Amy, there is an added poignancy that makes this sequel to 2012’s This Book Is Full of Spiders as heartfelt as it is stomach-churning. After the Lovecraftian events of the first two books, David and John have become the go-to guys for everything strange and fucked up that happens in their…

Occasionally as books editor of Rue Morgue, I read something that makes me drop all my column plans because it demands a conversation, a larger space in the magazine. This month, it’s Tade Thompson’s novella The Murders of Molly Southbourne (out now from Tor), which tells the tale of the titular Molly, who’s born with an unusual condition that sees murderous doppelgängers erupt from her blood every time she injures herself (or menstruates, for that matter). From childhood, she’s trained to sterilize and destroy spills and murder any “mollys” that appear. Just when she has that sort of under control, Molly learns there’s something even worse her body can do. It’s body horror at its finest, led by a female protagonist you’ll root for and cry with. I caught up…

JUNGLE TRAP Taken By Savages DEATH WALTZ RECORDING COMPANY SOUNDTRACK The story behind Jungle Trap’s release is probably more fascinating than this soundtrack or the movie itself for that matter. Unfinished and shelved by director James (Don’t Go in the Woods) Bryan in 1990, Jungle Trap was recently discovered, pieced together, and edited by the Bleeding Skull! Team. A period-appropriate soundtrack of analog synth music was added by Taken By Savages (Annie Choi and Joe Ziemba) in an obvious attempt to make these tracks as appropriately minimalist and lo-fi as possible. Hardly a dynamic, captivating record, Jungle Trap consists mostly of droning synth cues focusing on noise over melody, with the occasional tribal beat. A few stronger themes pop up including “Have You Seen Rita?” and “So Long Martell,” which…

THIS OCTOBER MARKS A SPECIAL OCCASION FOR HORDES OF WALKING DEAD FANS. Not only is the series reaching its 100th episode, composer Bear McCreary’s score will finally see a proper release on October 20 across all formats, courtesy of Lakeshore Records and Sparks and Shadows. Unlike previous Walking Dead soundtrack releases from Republic and Spacelab9, which only contained songs used in the show, the new release puts McCreary’s music front and centre. “I was hired on The Walking Dead at the very beginning, so I’ve gotten to see the life cycle of the show,” McCreary tells Rue Morgue. “Because I was hired so early on, I had a lot of time to prepare and decide what kind of sounds and emotions I wanted to work with. I knew it was…