Table of contents for RM#189 Queer Fear Special Issue in RUE MORGUE

I'll start by saying I’ve envisioned a special queer issue of Rue Morgue since taking the helm as editor in 2017. I’ll follow that up by acknowledging that it’s long overdue. So why now? Frankly, I was waiting for the perfect catalyst – a story that not only centred on queerness in horror but addressed the subject head-on with the kind of grit, integrity and heart that made me fall in love with this genre in the first place. A young Mark Patton who landed the lead role in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, one of the genre’s most highly anticipated sequels at the apex of its popularity, should have skyrocketed straight to horror stardom. But the world wasn’t ready for light to shine on his particular…

THE FINAL DISPATCH Ten years ago, I found myself at a horror convention alongside former Rue Morgue editor-in-chief Dave Alexander, when we began talking about our mutual fascination for the subject of cryptids. We were intrigued by the numerous spooky legends and sightings that had been reported over the years, not to mention fans of the films that featured these alleged beasts. That’s when the idea of incorporating some consistent cryptid coverage into the magazine sparked, and starting with RM#105, I began a writing tenure at Rue Morgue that has lasted nearly nine years. Looking back, our timing seemed perfect, considering the rise in popularity of cryptid culture which would take place in the ensuing decade. Perhaps the primary reason for cryptozoology’s rise in popularity is the plethora of reality shows that have hit cable…

1 RAINING BLOOD PENNYWISE UMBRELLA $27.99 USD It’s raining, it’s pouring, this umbrella ain’t boring! Take your waterproof wear to the next level with this officially licensed IT accessory that runs red with blood splatter when wet. You’ll look forward to rainy days! merchoid.com 2 BABASHOOK PIN $9.99 USD The eponymous villain of The Babadook became a queer icon back in 2017, thanks to a rash of memes that left the internet Baba-shook. Drag that monster out of the closet and onto your jacket lapel with this soft enamel pin inspired by drag queen Pissi Myles’ hit single. strange-ways.com 3 DAWN OF THE DEAD CROSS-STITCH KIT $15.30 USD Holing up during a zombie apocalypse can be a grind, but now you can put your idle hands to work with this…

GENDER AND CONTEMPORARY HORROR IN FILM Samantha Holland, Robert Shail, and Steven Gerrard, eds. Emerald Group Publishing Not all academic texts are dry, especially when they drip with blood. Gender and Contemporary Horror in Film is a collection of academically inclined essays that, as the title says, focus on particular aspects of the function and representation of gender in movies of the scream screen. Of course, the trickiest aspect of any project aiming to address contemporary cinema is that time marches on in a way that makes it difficult for the printed page to keep up. Even so, several of the essays in this collection feel especially current, notably Kath Dooley’s words on the female body and cannibalism, including the 2016 film Raw, and Francesca Sobande’s look at 2017’s…

When seeking out new authors, one of the best places to be exposed to a variety of styles, talents and perspectives is within the pages of an anthology. So, in honour of this very special LGBTQ issue, I’ve compiled a list of three contemporary volumes, spanning nearly twenty years, all of which make an excellent ledge to leap in from as a new or returning reader. Queer Fear (2000) Michael Rowe, ed. Arsenal Pulp Press Queer Fear is, of course, the granddaddy of LGBTQ horror anthologies, first hitting bookstore shelves nearly twenty years ago. The book featured contributions from some notable names in horror at the time, as well as some who’d become known in the coming decades: authors include Caitlin R. Kiernan, Nancy Kilpatrick, Brian Hodge, Gemma Files, Douglas…

THE EMPEROR OF DREAMS SOUNDTRACK Various CADABRA RECORDS Clark Ashton Smith was one of the “big three” writers published in Weird Tales magazine, and though the California resident did not achieve the level of fame of fellow scribes H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, a recent documentary, The Emperor of Dreams, sought to bring his considerable influence to light. Cadabra’s soundtrack compiles the various soundscapes that make up the doc’s storytelling background, as created by various relatively unknown artists. Together they generate a consistent ethereal quality, beginning with the acoustic strings of Jacob Mingle’s “Opening Theme,” through to Peter Scartabello’s warm synths on “The Hashish-Eater” and orchestral suite “City of the Singing Flame,” to director Darin Coelho Spring’s own music set to a reading of Smith’s “To the Daemon”…

JUAN ROSARIO LOCATION: NYC INSTAGRAM: @morbidchemistry Horror tattoos don’t have to be big to be awesome. Just ask Juan Rosario, an NYCbased artist with a flair for packing maximum punch into teeny tiny designs. Putting big detail in images as small as a quarter is a fun challenge for the artist who specializes in vibrant splashes of colour, no matter the size of the tattoo. “I draw my inspiration from nature and the beautiful balance of life and death,” he says. “In the wild, the deadliest animals are often the most vibrantly coloured ones; I typically add vibrant colours to contrast with dark images, just as Mother Nature does.” ANDREA SUBISSATI HAVE A GREAT HORROR TAT? SHARE IT WITH US AT: INFO@RUE-MORGUE.COM.…

Arguably one of the most iconic figures in horror, Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) has been entertaining horror fans all over the world for decades. Scantily clad in a vampy black dress and a signature bouffant hairdo, Elvira made her TV debut in 1981 hosting Movie Macabre out of L.A. Her self-deprecating and sarcastic humour was an instant hit with the late-night horror crowd, where her comedic commentary on horror’s lesser-known B-films found a cult following over the ensuring three decades. Since then, Peterson’s tenacity and business acumen made Elvira a veritable evil empire through two feature-length films, a reality TV show, officially licensed books, cosmetics, handbags and clothing lines. Now, the mistress of the macabre is finally having her likeness celebrated by Royal Bobbles, a company that specializes in historic figures,…

Has there truly been an increase in LGBTQ representation in modern comics? Writer/artist John Jennison is one creator on the vanguard of this change. Growing up a gay fan of horror movies and TV shows such as The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, Jennison never felt represented by what he saw on screen. Craving more queer content, he eventually began making his own comics and zines and launched Astonishing Queer Tales in 2015; short black-and-white pieces of haunting, true crime stories. One highlight was his take on The Doodler, an active serial killer in San Francisco’s gay community in the 1970s. “As with most forms of media, it is a slow growth bringing in LGBTQ content,” Jennison tells Rue Morgue. “We are starting to see more queer characters pop up…

THE SECRET CEREMONIES: CRITICAL ESSAYS ON ARTHUR MACHEN Mark Valentine and Timothy J. Jarvis, eds. Hippocampus Press So far this has been a standout year for fans of the cult Welsh author Arthur Machen (RM#131). This is largely thanks to Hippocampus Press, who is publishing the three-volume collected fiction set edited by S.T. Joshi, containing all four of Machen’s novels, along with all of his great weird short fiction. What better way to accompany this than with a selection of the most relevant writings on the man who gave us The Great God Pan (1894) and significantly influenced Lovecraft and so many other writers, occultists, etc? “There were, indeed, many Arthur Machens,” says co-editor Mark Valentine in the introduction, referring to the complexity of a writer best known for his…

THIS MONTH: The Corrupted Conventions of Colin Verdi NAME Colin Verdi HOMETOWN New York City WEAPON OF CHOICE “I work both digitally and in a mixed media process that includes watercolour, coloured pencil, acrylic paint, and gouache. I think it’s important not to get too comfortable in either, so I switch it up as often as possible!” DEEDS “I’m currently in my first year working full-time freelancing as an artist in several different capacities. In the past year, I’ve worked as an assistant painting murals; I’ve been hired to draw live at corporate events for Kiehl’s, Google, and The Met Opera, among others; and I’ve completed illustrations for advertising and print, one of which was recognized for inclusion in this year’s Society of Illustrators annual.” MY NIGHTMARE FUEL “Open…

NAME: Knifepoint Horror THEME: Supernatural fiction FREQUENCY: Every 1-6 months FORMAT: Storytelling Telling a story through diaries and letters is a wellknown narrative device, especially in genre storytelling. Knifepoint Horror host Soren Narnia (or an occasional guest narrator) uses this technique to recount a supernatural tale, such as a mysterious family that no one else can see, or a strange childhood memory with “a single human voice, describing events exactly as it experienced them” over the course of an hour. Narnia refrains from acting and tells the story as if he were reading aloud from his journal. It’s a simple approach, but an effective one in building tension, detail and nuance. For full immersion, Knifepoint Horror deserves to be enjoyed with headphones as episodes run a little on the quiet…

ISSUE # 189 Horror veteran Sid Haig (Spider Baby, The Devil’s Rejects) is a certified hypnotherapist. Stomach enzymes that break down food begin to consume a corpse within three days of death. Ruptured cells become food for living bacteria in the gut, which releases noxious gas that bloats the body and causes the eyes to bulge outward. Filmmaker Larry Cohen directed his cult film It’s Alive! and his crime drama Hell Up in Harlem simultaneously, working on the former from Monday to Friday and the latter on weekends. The difference between a “coffin” and a “casket” is the shape; a coffin tapers towards the bottom, where the legs go. Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman once revealed that he wears earrings prominently because they “are worth just enough to buy me a…

(Equity Marketing, Inc, 1999) Everyone’s favourite alien mad scientist from Transexual, Transylvania, did a time warp from screen to toy form back in 1999, when Equity Marketing released a line of stylized, limited-edition figurines from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Released shortly before the film’s 25th anniversary, the set was comprised of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, servant Riff Raff, Columbia, Magenta, Janet Weiss, and the doc’s beefy, scantily-clad creation, Rocky. The figurines – which are non-articulated and are more akin to statues than figures – stand roughly 5½ inches tall and feature oversized heads, they come complete with a base that sports each character’s name. Sculpting is very good, with Frank-N-Furter and Rocky bearing especially close likenesses to actors Tim Curry and Peter Hinwood. Limited to a production run of 15,000 pieces…

IT’S A HAPPY INEVITABILITY OF MODERN POP CULTURE: YESTERDAY’S CONTROVERSY MAGNET IS TODAY’S MAJOR MAINSTREAM PRODUCTION. Two decades after becoming the most challenged books in libraries across the U.S. (threatened with banning), Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and its two sequels have inspired the major motion picture that counts Guillermo del Toro among its producers and opens August 9 from CBS Films. In addition, Cody Meirick’s independently produced but ready-made companion-piece documentary titled Scary Stories hit theatres and VOD this spring from Wild Eye Releasing, with a DVD coming July 16. Both films are a testament to the enduring power of Schwartz’s collections of short (but not sweet) tales that captured the imagination of a generation of young readers – in no small part due to…

Wouldja lookit that? Twenty years at Rue Morgue this month. Twenty. Freakin’. Years. Two decades since my first appearance in RM#9, after cold-calling Rodrigo Gudiño and convincing him that he’d never build the world’s leading horror magazine without riding my coattails. Two decades, one full-length book, a dozen cover stories, over 120 columns, nearly that many features, about twenty Classic Cuts, hundreds of film and book reviews, and one measly Rondo Award. Beyond the printed page, toss in 80 pounds, seven home addresses, one change of city, six relationships (didn’t count the flings, but a single digit would probably suffice), one neardeath experience, two kiboshed addictions, six unproduced screenplays, ten jobs DJing in strip clubs, one band, three bass players, no children and no answers. “Never mind that shit,” the…

The universe has come to an end. All that remains is an endless black void, but one lonely space station, the Orpheus, houses humanity’s last remnants. Here, Earth’s survivors try to carve out as normal an existence as possible, but a shocking murder triggers a series of events that leads Security Director Deva Karrell to believe something exists in the void: a creature beyond the confines of time and space that could destroy what little life remains in the universe. With echoes of Alien, Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Infinite Dark wears its influences proudly on its sleeve yet still manages to create a very intriguing scenario. Ryan Cady is more interested in exploring the alien menace’s effect on the suvivors’ psyches than the threat of their bodies being…

A RACHNOPHOBICS BE WARNED – this recipe may not be for you! In the short story “The Red Spot” from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, a young girl wakes up with a strange blemish after finding a spider crawling on her cheek. During a hot relaxing bath, the blemish bursts, unleashing a swarm of tiny spiders from the eggs their mother had laid in her face! In my recipe for “The Red Spot” cupcakes, large chewy tapioca ‘spider eggs’ and cherry pie filling ‘blood’ are lurking beneath a slightly-crunchy, caramelized ‘skin’ and garnished with a candy spider – perfect for celebrating the release of the new Scary Stories film! If you give this recipe a try, let us know! Don’t forget to tag your photo with #ruemorgue and…

Way back in RM#40 and #46, we shone a spotlight on a Las Vegas DJ named Speedy, who came up with a concept that was as unique back then as it is now: a compilation of edited scenes from obscure giallo and eurotrash cinema, set to dark and sexy original techno music. Speedy, a.k.a. Jimmie Gonzalez, is back with two audio visual projects available now on Blu-ray: Reel Cinesound, which focuses on Italian genre movies and their colourful soundtracks, and Video Nasties, a compilation of dirty analog synth scores set to lurid images from that notorious period in horror cinema. “By 2003, I was getting into the new video DJ technology and the possibilities it can bring to a closet cinephile such as myself,” Gonzalez told me. “At the time,…