Table of contents for RM#183 in RUE MORGUE

I’m not averse to remakes, I swear. In fact, with mobile technology such as it is and its resultant impact on communications and mass culture, I think there are many stories that would stand to benefit from a modern take. That said, I felt some reticence when I heard that Halloween was getting another spin. Let’s be honest – as far as horror franchises go, Halloween has had a pretty epic run. Ten films, including Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake and sequel – that’s a helluva shelf life for stories about a silent boogeyman in a William Shatner mask. Michael Myers is iconic, no doubt, but let’s not pretend that he’s a terribly complex or multifaceted character. What novel havoc could he possibly wreak in 2018 that he hasn’t yet accomplished…

1 GEEKY TIKI MUGS $17.99 USD It’s a proven fact – cocktails taste better out of tiki mugs, and this Universal Monsters-inspired set will put some freaky into your next tiki! The 20oz ceramic mugs boast the likenesses of Dracula, the Mummy, Wolfman, Gill Man, Frankenstein’s monster and his Bride, and are dishwasher and microwave safe. The well-being of your liver, however, is another matter entirely. entertainmentearth.com 2 GOTH BLOCK $15 USD Calling all vampires! Protect your ghastly complexion and ghoulish tattoos with this SPF 50 sun blocker. Water-resistant up to 80 minutes, this sunscreen bars harmful UVA and UVB rays and is 100% vegan as well as cruelty free… unlike your moonlight motives. letitblock.com 3 JACK THE RIPPER LAVATORY MIST $11.99 USD Bad odours can be murder, so cover…

“WHY IS A COMEDY GUY DIRECTING THE NEW HALLOWEEN?” That was the cry that went up when it was announced that David Gordon Green was guiding Michael Myers’ latest resurrection. Apparently, these lamenters forgot that when Green took the helm of Pineapple Express, the response from some corners was, “What’s this acclaimed indie-drama guy doing making a stoner comedy?” As a filmmaker, Green responds to many different kinds of material, and has a particular affinity for 1970s horror cinema. He was, after all, once attached to the Suspiria remake whose directorial reins wound up being taken over by its producer, Call Me By Your Name’s Luca Guadagnino. “The ’70s is the decade I truly geek out about,” says Green during a break on the Halloween set. “Suspiria and Halloween were…

“HAVE YOU SEEN THE BEAST WITHIN? Well, the cicadas come back every seventeen years, and it’s been about seventeen years since my MonsterVision show, so I’m comparing this to The Beast Within. It’s a cicada-like rebirth.” That can only be the voice (imagine it with a Texas twang) of Joe Bob Briggs, B-movie critic extraordinaire, who is indeed unleashing a beast of a movie marathon this summer. Joe Bob’s Last Drive-In, airing on the Shudder streaming service (exact date undetermined at press time), will showcase 24 hours of fear films from the ozoner era, interspersed with his unique brand of commentary. “Basically it’s MonsterVision; it’s the exact same format,” Joe Bob (it seems wrong to call him “Briggs”) tells Rue Morgue, referring to his cult TNT series. “We interrupt the…

A STUNNING DEBUT HEREDITARY Starring Toni Colette, Gabriel Byrne and Milly Shapiro Written and directed by Ari Aster A24 It’s a good thing I didn’t sit down to write this when I got home from seeing writer/director Ari Aster’s stunning debut Hereditary. I was scrambling to make sense of one of the most severe cinematic thrashings I have ever endured; one so intense that I needed to kiss my sleeping wife and kids when I got home. As the days went on, I couldn’t shake the experience. I grappled with the film’s images, and its sounds continued to echo in my head. I thought these days were behind me; the days when I first saw The Evil Dead (1983) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and came out the other…

THE DOCTOR IS IN DOCTOR WHO: TOM BAKER SEASON 1 (1974) Blu-ray Starring Tom Baker, Elizabeth Sladen and Ian Marter Written and directed by various BBC/2entertain When script editor Robert Holmes and newbie producer Philip Hinchcliffe took over BBC’s Doctor Who, the show had survived the changeover of lead actor Jon Pertwee and had just introduced the fourth Time Lord, played by relative unknown Tom Baker. By the end of their first season together, the creative team would score huge ratings by tapping into horror tropes and a more adult style of storytelling. Key to Baker’s first series, which has been re-released in a deluxe new Blu-ray set, is the guiding hand of Holmes, a writer known for penning the scariest serials in the show’s history. The scribe inherited several…

THE OBSERVATORY Laszlo Tamasfi Caliber Comics CENTIPEDE: GAME OVER Max Bemis and Eoin Marron Dynamite DARK FANG: EARTH CALLING Miles Gunter and Kelsey Shannon Image CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER Dan Abnett and Tom Mandrake Hammer/Titan Comics UNDER: SCOURGE OF THE SEWER Christophe Bec and Stefano Raffaele Titan Comics THE GRAVEDIGGERS UNION VOLUME 1 Wes Craig and Toby Cypress Image How many pages does it take to tell an effective comic horror story? Forty-eight? Twenty-two? Eight? Would you believe… one? If you’re skeptical, Laszlo Tamasfi’s The Observatory might make a believer out of you. Originally a series of web comics, the one-page tales have now been collected by Caliber Comics as part of its Caliber Presents line. “A few years back, I wanted to make a web comic that could be…

UNBURY CAROL Josh Malerman Del Rey I’ve said it before, but it remains true: Josh Malerman is one of the most interesting and inventive voices to emerge in horror fiction in the last few years. Like his previous novels, 2014’s Bird Box (soon to be a movie starring Sandra Bullock) and last year’s Black Mad Wheel, the author’s latest, Unbury Carol, takes recognizable genre tropes and then unfolds them in unconventional and surprising ways. The result here: an incredibly deft and compelling mix of horror and a period/western aesthetic. The titular, much-beloved Carol suffers from a rare condition in which she falls into a death-like state for several days at a time, breathing barely once per minute. She’s kept her illness a secret from all but those who are closest…

YUME NIKKI-DREAM DIARY- PC Kadokawa Games Few games are as uniquely mysterious as the RPG Maker classic Yume Nikki. Initially released on 2chan in 2004 by enigmatic developer Kikiyama, the exploration game was a 2-D psychological portrait of mystery and loneliness that has since attracted a considerable cult following. To coincide with its recent official release on Steam, AGM Playism and Kadokawa Games have teamed up with Kikiyama to “reimagine” Yume Nikki using modern indie tech, and though it’s evident a great deal of care went into porting Madotsuki and her dream pals into the third dimension, -Dream Diary- isn’t quite as wholly absorbing an experience as the original. Players once again guide Madotsuki in and out of the nocturnal world of her subconscious, each time starting on the balcony…

IT’S A BEEN awhile since I’ve communicated with you guys but, believe me, it’s been an interesting and difficult period for me. First off, I broke my arm six months ago and I almost lost the full use of it, but thanks to surgery and rehabilitation I am almost fully recovered. Healthy doses of your magazine kept my spirits up and helped me through that period. Secondly, I want to give a belated welcome aboard to Andrea Subissati as Executive Editor and let her know she’s doing a bang-up job so far. Last but not least, John W. Bowen’s review (or warning) of American Satan in RM#180 had me absolutely howling with laughter. Keep up the good work! BEN KASTEN, VIA FACEBOOK I’M A LONG-TIME and very thorough RM reader,…

JAMIE LEE CURTIS KNOWS HOW TO MAKE A GROUP OF VISITING MOVIE JOURNALISTS FEEL WELCOME. During a bit of downtime on the Charleston, South Carolina location of the new Halloween film (out October 19 from Blumhouse Productions), the star approaches a few of the scribes, this one included, bearing a totem from John Carpenter’s 1978 original: the original director’s slate, with Carpenter and cinematographer Dean Cundey’s names still scrawled on it. For a lifelong horror fan who was set upon that road by a viewing of the first Halloween at age twelve during its 1979 re-release, it’s a bit like God approaching to personally hand you the Holy Grail. After Halloween ’78 launched her to stardom, Curtis reprised her resourceful heroine Laurie Strode in Halloween II (1981), revisited the role…

AUDACITY (NOUN) courage; daring; the willingness to take bold risks shameless or brazen boldness; insolence; impudence Whether you’re a Sharknado fan or detractor (the series has plenty of both), there’s no denying the gleeful, unmitigated audacity that has fuelled these films from the moment cameras rolled on their first installment in January 2013, gradually elevating the franchise from made-for-cable monster fodder to pop culture touchstone status. It’s also provided a motivational mantra for industry veteran Anthony C. Ferrante (Boo, Headless Horseman, Hansel and Gretel) who has directed six (!) back-to-back Sharknado films in as many years, while managing to squeeze in a few other projects along the way as director, writer and/or producer. “If I’m going to destroy my career with a movie,” the mercurial filmmaker declares, “I’m at least…

CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (2000) It may seem counterintuitive to put an Ang Lee movie on a drive-in list, but he actually revived dreamlike martial-arts choreography not seen since the glory days of 1970s Brucesploitation. FINAL DESTINATION (2000) Six high-school students marked for death – where have we seen that before? James Wong’s reimagining of the dead-teenager genre, with Tony Todd as the creepy psychic mortician, was so compelling that it inspired lame sequel after lame sequel, in classic Friday the 13th style. THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (2001) Almost no one remembers that the Vin Diesel franchise actually took its title from a 1955 Roger Corman film that was the very first release of Samuel Z. Arkoff’s American International Pictures. That’s what’s called the DNA of…

Of Blue Balls and Pink Butts by 2017 Rondo Award Loser John W. Bowen Fuckin’ baboons, man. Any of you got baboon issues? Oh sure, they’re God’s creatures, but hardly among the Almighty’s most inspired moments. I mean, they don’t quite skeeve me out on a visceral level like spiders do, but they’ve always resided near the top of my list of critters to keep at a distance, right alongside honey badgers, grizzly bears and sociology undergrads. They’re fast, agile, incredibly strong for their size, and unpredictable as hell, like really ill-tempered rottweilers with opposable thumbs. Why are they so hostile? Well, maybe if you had an oversized, oddly-shaped, bright pink ass that totally clashed with the rest of your body, you’d be ready to rumble too. So how’s about…

Dynamite’s first ATARI-based comic, Swordquest, had some horror elements, but didn’t fully embrace the genre. Not so with Centipede, a delirious adventure that grabs hold of the game’s monster elements and unabashedly runs with them. On the Earth-like planet Sty-Rek, a geeky, middle-aged man named Dale stands alone among the ruins of his world. The cause of the apocalypse: a giant, fire-belching flying centipede that enjoys munching on the nearly depleted human populace. Intent on avenging his planet, Dale sets out to exterminate the monstrous arthropod once and for all. Borrowing several elements from the classic game, including gnomes, hopping spiders and popping mushrooms, writer Max Bemis takes the reader on a dizzying romp filled with plenty of over-the-top kaiju action and grisly discoveries. A highlight of the story is…

IN THE DIGITAL AGE, WE SPEAK OF HOW NOTHING EVER LEAVES THE INTERNET, but the online world is still young and much of what came before it has already been lost or is in danger of becoming lost, especially when it comes to horror fiction. And as we forget, we lose parts of our genre’s past. Lucky for us, there are publishers committed to the story resurrection business, among them Richmond, Virginia-based Valancourt Books. “We started Valancourt back in late 2004, when we were really interested in the Gothic horror of the late 18th and early 19th centuries,” says publisher James D. Jenkins. “In that era hundreds, if not thousands, of these books were churned out, with wonderful titles like The Animated Skeleton, The Demon of Sicily, and Horrid Mysteries.…

It’s 2018, and live scores are officially a thing: from Nosferatu to Aliens and Jurassic Park, watching a movie along with full orchestral musical accompaniment is a whole new way to see your favourite fright flicks. I can attest to the glory of this trend after attending Jaws with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra this spring; I’ve seen the movie countless times, even on the big screen, but never felt quite so involved until I saw it with John Williams’ iconic score played right in front of me. I don’t think I was alone in the experience either, given the gasps and screams and audience members jumping out of their seats during the movie’s scarier moments. Surprisingly enough, a live score doesn’t mean the music production is any better or louder…

WEIRD STATS & MORBID FACTS ISSUE #183 Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath is the only film in which horror icon Boris Karloff plays a vampire. This past April, the Vatican Council held a week-long international conference to address the increase in demand for the services of exorcists. They estimate around 500,000 cases of demonic possession each year in Italy alone. The character of Claudia in Interview with the Vampire is based on author Anne Rice’s real-life daughter, Michelle, who died of leukemia in 1972 at the age of five. This past February, fashion designer Alessandro Michele sent models down a runway outfitted like an operating room carrying replicas of their own heads at Gucci’s Milan Fashion Week. Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery and notorious murderer Lizzie Borden are sixth cousins; in…

IT’S EXACTLY THE SIGHT YOU HOPE FOR WHEN YOU VISIT THE SET OF THE NEW HALLOWEEN. On a large video monitor downstairs from the bedroom where the action’s happening, in a Charleston home taken over by the filmmakers, stuntman Jim Courtney can be seen taking his place in a closet. He’s wearing Michael Myers’ trademark coveralls, but his face is bare. Then a crewmember steps in front of the camera, momentarily blocking the view – and when he steps away, there’s Michael wearing his mask. The mask. The one that loomed out of the darkness behind Jamie Lee Curtis and terrified millions of moviegoers in 1978’s Halloween. Yes, the Shape’s got his original disguise back for his 2018 killing spree, and the sight of him in the familiar pale latex…

NO OTHER MOVIE FRANCHISE HAS EVER MARRIED junk science, high action, low comedy, and, uh, sharks with such a frenetic cavalcade of actors, musicians, athletes, politicians (!), and other B-through-Z-listers of every imaginable stripe as the Sharknado franchise. Here’s how all that breaks down, film by film… SHARKNADO (2013) “Instead of letting live sharks rain down on people, we’re going to get into that chopper and throw bombs into the tornados, blasting those bastards to bits.” WTF FACTOR: A hurricane hits southern California (seriously), resulting in a tornado that scoops up thousands of sharks and sends them – airborne – into the streets of Los Angeles (seriously). What’s even weirder than that is how quickly we embrace this as the new normal. OH LOOK, IT’S… Well, no one so far.…

The Mice Will Play Famed RKO producer Val Lewton always liked a good cat ’n’ mouse game with his audience, plunging viewers into that shadowy space between suggestion and reality with a string of unique horror films in the 1940s. For The Curse of the Cat People (1944), a barely related sequel to his 1942 hit Cat People, Lewton looks at the relationship between escapist fantasy and reality in a manner that still gets explored today, most recently in 2018's Ready Player One. Released when audiences themselves were looking to escape from the horrors of World War II, Lewton’s film recently made its Blu-ray debut from Shout! Factory, and is interesting to compare with the more contemporary themes that emerge in Spielberg’s latest blockbuster. More of a potent dark fantasy…

THE CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD Paul Tremblay William Morrow The set-up is simple enough: a girl and her two dads are on vacation at a cabin when a strange man appears. He is soon joined by three others. They say they need help and are on a mission from God. Apparently, an apocalypse is coming and they are heralds and agents of prevention. The dads, however, are determined to keep them out, and thus, the siege is on. Were the voices they all heard the result of some shared mental illness, an alien intrusion, or truly a sign from you-know-who? In The Cabin at the End of the World, author Paul Tremblay explores the terror of being invaded, but with a twist – despite their suggested sinister…

Sometimes it just seems like the universe is trying to get you to pay attention to something. This has certainly been the case with Ken Greenhall’s 1977 novel Hell Hound, which landed on my desk as a reissue from Valancourt Books at roughly the same time as Grady Hendrix’s superb Paperbacks From Hell, which contained coverage of Hell Hound, along with dozens of other 1970s and ’80s mass-market genre paperbacks. At that point, I made a note to write about Valancourt, because preserving horror fiction is something I feel passionately about, and I added Hell Hound to my towering to-be-read pile. Now, many months later, as I’m working on my Valancourt story, I learn that Hell Hound is being reissued once more, in a deluxe hardcover edition, courtesy of Centipede…

MESSIAH OF EVIL SOUNDTRACK Phillan Bishop ONDES POSITIVES RECORDINGS Ondes Positives delves deep into surrealist horror art with a 7-inch EP score of the obscure 1973 classic Messiah of Evil, a cult film directed by the same people who wrote American Graffiti. Phillan Bishop’s Moog-like electronic score is a key part of the movie’s weirdo aesthetic, with the “Opening Titles” consisting of a melodic theme surrounded by warm vibrations, harsh noises, and the kind of atmosphere normally reserved for drug-induced hallucinogenic sequences. Also included is lounge-jazz number “Hold on to Love” and the semi-famous “No one can hear you scream!” dialogue clip. Because no master tapes exist, Ondes sourced the music from a 35mm print and the results are impressive, even if some cloudiness remains. The packaging is completely over-thetop…

ITALIAN HORROR AND UNDERGROUND EXPLOITATION films experienced a resurgence in the early 2000s, thanks to the DVD reissue market, giving newer horror fans a chance to finally see movies they had only ever read about in horror magazines. Lighter ’80s fare tends to be more popular than the sleazy gorefests of Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, and William Lustig these days, but Eibon Press’ new line of horror comics is keeping the flame alive in a different format, with ink-on-paper releases of Fulci’s Gates of Hell, Lustig’s sleaze classic Maniac, an officially licensed Zombie series, and their first original title, Bottomfeeder, “starring” Day of the Dead’s Joe Pilato in a role reminiscent of Harvey Keitel’s Bad Lieutenant. The artwork, packaging, and bonus materials of these paper-only titles are truly impressive, but…