Table of contents for RM#191 in RUE MORGUE

Earlier this week, the Rue Morgue office agreed to take on an intern to work co-op hours toward completing high school. Later that day, the school called to cancel the internship – the student’s mother, a deeply religious woman, forbade it. I hope that sharing this anecdote doesn’t embarrass the student in question (hey, you made it into Rue Morgue anyway; suck on that, Mom!) because my intention is to draw attention to the fact that, in spite of the horror T-shirts being stocked at Hot Topic and the fancy cocktails I sipped on Warner Bros’ dime when they whisked me off to the It: Chapter Two premiere in LA, and in spite of the indignation I saw online when we polled last issue’s VS debate (Has Horror Finally Been…

WITHIN THE HORROR GENRE, STORIES INVOLVING CHILDREN ARE AMONG THE MOST HARROWING. Innocence personified and beset by evil is a troubling subject, but that’s part of the appeal for filmmaking duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, the masterminds behind 2014’s Goodnight Mommy (German title: Ich Seh Ich Seh). A spectacularly frightening and twisted story of a pair of twins who question their mother’s identity following her facial cosmetic surgery, the German-language film met with universal acclaim and was selected as the Austrian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. It’s no small praise for a European genre entry, and Goodnight Mommy’s critical success made Franz and Fiala’s next film a highly anticipated one. This brings us to The Lodge, out November 15 from VVS Films, a film in which…

WE’VE ALL HEARD THE STORY: LOVING PARENT SITS IMPRESSIONABLE CHILD IN FRONT OF THE TV AND POPS IN TOY STORY, BLISSFULLY UNAWARE THAT SOMEONE HAD SWITCHED IT OUT FOR A COPY OF SAW. Thirty minutes later, said parent comes to check up on the kid, only to find them wide eyed and traumatized. The story inevitably gets splashed across headlines, kicking up a dust storm about the evils of the horror genre and how bad it is for society. But the question needs to be asked: why does the media still make such a fuss over these events? Could it be because there is a latent fear and disgust within society of the very juxtaposition between horror and children? Though seemingly progressive and sophisticated, contemporary society still retains an archaic…

THEY SAY THE HOTEL WAS HAUNTED BEFORE THE BOOK, ITS SEQUEL, THE OPERA, THE MOVIE, AND THE TELEVISION MINISERIES. But there’s little doubt that Stephen King’s 1977 terrifying tour de force, The Shining, brought the Stanley Hotel to the forefront of an appreciative horror community. The 110-year-old hotel in the picturesque mountain town of Estes Park, Colorado, was the inspiration for King’s haunted Overlook Hotel. For some, the 142-room hotel is as famous as Long Island’s Amityville Horror house, or even Michael Myers’ South Pasadena home. As many as 400 people a day sign up for a tour of The Stanley, making the small staging area feel a little like a macabre Disney attraction. On a warm Saturday afternoon, visitors milled around the hotel’s lobby or followed tour guides who…

HORROR AND THE HOLIDAYS MIGHT GO TOGETHER LIKE THE PEARL WHITE AND BLOOD RED OF A CANDY CANE, but Deathcember is the world’s first ever Advent-themed horror anthology. Conceived by German filmmaker Dominic Saxl, the upcoming film from Epic Pictures features a whopping 24 short segments by 24 international directors that genre fans are sure to recognize, including Ruggero (Cannibal Holocaust) Deodato, Lucky (The Woman) McKee, Sam (The Quiet Room) Wineman, and Pollyanna (Darlin’) McIntosh. “The ABCs of Death franchise left a tremendous impression on me, because it showcases what an interesting, diverse and exciting movie you can produce with a very small budget,” Saxl tells Rue Morgue. “But to make an anthology of this sort work, you need a strong frame story, a theme that connects the vast number…

Sucking It Up “THOSE WHO CHOOSE TO SPEND A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF TIME AND ENERGY TRYING TO ALTER THE PAST MAY DISCOVER, LIKE THE LEECH WOMAN HERSELF, THAT THEY’VE LOST FAR MORE THAN THEY’VE GAINED.” Regrets? We’ve all had a few. But when things don’t turn out the way we hoped – and in life, that’s more often than not – the best that most of us can hope for is to make peace with our past mistakes and move on. It’s usually only on the big screen that second chances are possible, as flawed characters discover they can revisit their formative years and correct unfortunate choices in ways that can have life-altering consequences. The fleeting hope that our life history isn’t always a closed book is a Hollywood daydream…

THE FRIGHTFEST GUIDE TO WEREWOLF MOVIES Gavin Baddeley FAB Press Horror movie guides – the kind that compile a few hundred reviews under some kind of specific rubric, like a particular monster or a given nation’s cinematic output – are a staple of certain publishers. And they can be fun, depending on the talent and enthusiasm of the writer and art director. (Woe betide those with no budget for colour photography.) Fortunately, quality cult publisher FAB Press engaged occult expert/werewolf obsessive Gavin Baddeley (Lucifer Rising, Dissecting Marilyn Manson) to write The Frightfest Guide to Werewolf Movies, the fourth guidebook published under the auspices of the respected British horror movie festival. An introduction penned by Dog Soldiers director Neil Marshall prefaces the book with a thoroughly researched and intriguing history of…

LA MASCHERA DEL DEMONIO Roberto Nicolosi SPIKEROT RECORDS La Maschera Del Demonio, better known to English-speaking viewers as Black Sunday, was the first film officially directed by Maria Bava (he went uncredited on previous efforts) and kicked off a tradition in which the maestro’s film scores were replaced for the US market. Deemed too sparse and “too Italian” by American International Pictures, Roberto Nicolosi’s doomy, gothic music was switched with a more standard haunted house score by Les Baxter, but the original now arrives on vinyl for the first time with twenty unreleased cues, courtesy of Spikerot Records. Indeed, it's a little on the short side, but opens with a grandiose main theme in the vein of James Bernard’s Dracula, before descending into quieter, very bassy sequences designed around percussion,…

WEED AND HORROR MOVIES GO TOGETHER LIKE FINE WINE AND GOURMET CHEESE, with many a fright fan having fond memories of rolling a fat one and tripping out over some choice gore flick (perhaps, fittingly, marijuana became legal in Canada in October 2018). But most pot smokers can also remember a trip gone bad, nights when the buzz spiralled down a rabbit hole of anxiety and paranoia. Marijuana-themed death metal band Cannabis Corpse takes those nightmarish experiences one step further on their latest album Nug So Vile, out November 1 from Season of Mist. The release features eleven tracks of bong-ripping brutality that detail the over-the-top, horror-filled fantasies of a hardcore stoner whose trip has gone very, very wrong. Formed in 2006 in Richmond, Virginia, Cannabis Corpse is (yet another)…

CONGRATS LADIES and gentlemen, you officially knocked the ball out of the park and out of the Gates of Hell with your Halloween issue (which is, in the opinion of this long-time reader, your absolute best). Only at Rue Morgue can I expect to find a twelve-page look at Satan as the biggest boogeyman in history! Kudos to Andrea and staff for keeping it badass, classy and smart every damn time, no small thing. Happy Halloween, freaks, here’s to 22 more years! RONNIE DIABLO, VIA EMAIL EXCELLENT JOB with this month’s magazine [RM190]! Andrea – fantastic article with William Friedkin! Speaking with such a legend must have been an awesome experience. @WCSTUCKEY, VIA TWITTER I’M NOT ABOVE making impulsive online purchases while drunk and, if I’m honest, I’d say my…

1 HORRIFIED: UNIVERSAL MONSTERS BOARD GAME $34.99 USD Team up with your favourite fiends to protect a town against Universal’s classic monsters in this Ravens-burger co-op strategy board game! The gang’s all here, including Dracula, The Mummy, Frankenstein’s monster and his Bride, for 60 minutes of spooky fun for up to five players, aged ten and up. Amazon.com 2 SAM TREE ORNAMENT $19.99 Care to add some Trick ’r Treat to your Christmas tree? Officially licensed and sculpted by Alexander Rey, this resin ornament comes in a collector’s window box in case you prefer to display it on your shelf. TrickOrTreatStudios.com 3 CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST JOGGERS $28 – $33 USD Nothing says health and fitness like an early morning run in the park with these joggers emblazoned with one of the…

ON A REMOTE OUTPOST OFF THE COAST OF MAINE IN THE 1890S STANDS A LIGHTHOUSE MAINTAINED BY TWO MEN: seasoned seaman Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) with a tongue as coarse as the hair beneath his cap, and his underling Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson), a brooding drifter with a mysterious past. As captain of the outpost and bootleg vodka zealot, Wake spends his daytime hours berating Winslow or sleeping off last night’s drunken haze; at night, he tends to the Lighthouse’s beacon, whose hypnotic brilliance captivates him to the point of rapture. Winslow, too, is enthralled by the beacon, but is forbidden by Wake to go anywhere near it. As the weeks wear on, the pair’s relationship turns like the tide from cordial co-workers to uneasy friends. Pushed to the brink…

FREAKS RUINS TOD BROWNING Despite the success of Dracula, The Unholy Three and London After Midnight, the Hollywood industry felt Tod Browning crossed a line with his 1932 release, Freaks. The film suffered many cuts and was even banned in the United Kingdom for three decades. His career derailed, Browning found himself unable to get his projects greenlit, and all his movies produced afterwards were financially unsuccessful and not well received. PEEPING TOM DESTROYS MICHAEL POWELL’S CAREER Few would have heard of British filmmaker Michael Powell and his movie Peeping Tom were it not for the praise of other filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese. The reason you haven’t heard of Powell is because his promising career came to a dead stop upon the release of his 1960 film, which might…

HERE THERE BE GHOSTS ECHOES OF FEAR Starring Trista Robinson, Hannah Race and Marshal Hilton Written and directed by Brian Avenet-Bradley Artist Rights Distribution The husband-and-wife team of writer/director Brian Avenet-Bradley and producer/cinematographer Laurence Avenet-Bradley have been turning out accomplished independent horror films (Ghost of the Needle, Dark Remains, Malignant) for a number of years now. Among other things, their output has delivered some of the best – and most honest – jump scares going, and their latest, the multiple-fest-award-winning Echoes of Fear, is a consistently absorbing horror/mystery punctuated by genuine jolts. From its well-handled opening scene onward, Echoes spins plenty of chills and atmosphere out of the basic alone-in-a-haunted-house scenario. Trista Robinson (The Human Race) stars as Alisa, who takes up residence in her late grandfather’s home in the…

DOUBLE TROUBLE THE DARK HALF (1993)Blu-ray Starring Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan and Michael Rooker Written and directed by George A. Romero Eureka Entertainment Breaking up, as the saying goes, is hard to do – even more so when you’re trying to split from your pulp paperback pseudonym and he takes on an unholy life of his own. That’s what befalls mild-mannered Thad Beaumont (Oscar-winner Timothy Hutton) as he attempts to put his penny dreadfuls behind him and embark upon a proper literary career. His nefarious alter ego George Stark (still Hutton, this time sporting cowboy boots, a gleaming straight razor and roughly a litre of pomade) has taken corporeal form and is carving a bloody swath through Thad’s friends and acquaintances. Adapted from Stephen King’s 1989 novel (King, of course,…

In 2013, Thom Burgess wrote Malevolents ‘Click Click’, an eerie little ghost story set in London’s most infamous haunted house that features a terrifying spectre that clicks his tongue non-stop. The claustrophobic and intimate tale has now led to the creation of Ghoster, a sprawling, centuries-spanning epic chronicling the adventures of a secret guild of ghost hunters. “When I wrote Malevolents ‘Click Click’ the plan was to explore deeper into the world in which these horrors could exist, and what safeguards would be needed in order protect humanity from deadly Malevolents,” says Burgess. “This was the initial seed for Ghoster.” Thinking beyond the comic page, Burgess contacted filmmaker Toby Meakins, whose supernatural shorts were a favourite of the writer’s. Burgess told Meakins the basic premise of Ghoster, and together they…

MANNEQUIN: TALES OF WOOD MADE FLESH Justin A. Burnett, ed. Silent Motorist Media One of horror’s key effects is rooted in the uncanny suggestion of life in inanimate objects. Enter dolls, puppets, mannequins and the like – humanoid, but not human; lifelike, but not alive. Or are they? The queasy interplay between people and their simulacra has been a staple of the genre for ages, and this fine anthology provides a variety of scenarios which re-enact some of the worst possibilities. Still, as Christopher Slatsky notes in his tellingly titled intro “They Think They’re People,” there is beauty and trepidation in contemplating the notion that the unthinking may lift their uncomprehending faces to the heavens; horror and fascination gather when things with clumsily constructed arms and legs, and perhaps even…

WORSE THAN DEATH iOS, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PC Benjamin Rivers Inc. For many, high school is already a fairly horrific time. With all the insecurities that plague the adolescent brain, it’s an arduous half-decade of mania and depression filled with some of life’s highest highs and lowest lows – a fitting setting for developer Benjamin Rivers’ latest adventure, Worse Than Death. Horror fans may already be familiar with Rivers’ previous title, Home, a psychological thriller that made a big splash in the indie community upon its 2012 release. This time around, players assume the role of Holly, a woman in her late twenties, returning to her small hometown for a ten-year high school reunion. It’s there she reconnects with Flynn, her closest friend and victim of an unfortunate accident…

Legendary Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis is the godmother of Donnie Darko and Velvet Buzzsaw star Jake Gyllenhaal. According to bassist Geezer Butler, Black Sabbath began wearing crosses after a group of Satanists put a curse on the band. The crosses were made out of spare metal by Ozzy Osbourne’s father, who used to work at a metal factory making car parts. Picnic at Hanging Rock cinematographer Russell Boyd enhanced the film’s diffuse and ethereal look with the simple technique of placing a piece of bridal veil over the camera lens. Felicity Kadlec Rossi, 21, recently married a blood-spattered zombie doll she had been in a seven-year relationship with. Felicity procured the doll when she was just thirteen, and claims to have developed romantic feelings for it while still in…

HORROR HAS LONG BEEN THE TARGET OF MORAL CRUSADERS WHO BLAME GENRE MOVIES AND BOOKS FOR REAL-LIFE VIOLENCE, and a recent wave of mass shootings in the U.S. has helped exhume the debate for a new era. Despite what numerous statistics and studies report about the tenuous-to-non-existent connection between on-screen cruelty and real-life bloodshed, believers would rather click their tongues at the entertainment industry thereby giving life to an unlikely boogeyman: a climate of moral panic that has coloured the country’s socio-ethical attitude since its founding. Moral panics – defined as any “mass movement Moral panics – defined as any “mass movement based on the false or exaggerated perception that some cultural behaviour or group of people is dangerously deviant and poses a threat to society’s values and interests” –…

CONFESSION: WHEN THE TITLE KOKO-DI KOKO-DA CAME UP AT THIS YEAR’S FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, I assumed it was some kind of whimsical anime and passed it over. I soon realized my mistake: Koko-di Koko-da is the polar opposite of lighthearted. The second feature by Swedish filmmaker/animator Johannes Nyholm is a brooding, starkly horrific, deeply metaphorical study of guilt and psychological trauma. After taking Fantasia’s Camera Lucida award and winning praise at numerous other festivals this year, it sees U.S. theatrical release, followed by VOD exposure, beginning in November from Dark Star Pictures. Koko-di Koko-da takes its title from a traditional French lullaby that is sung in the film’s opening minutes by Mog (Peter Belli), a sinister showman in a white suit who leads a pair of strange followers through…

NOT WORTH JOINING JACKALS Scream Factory I totally get the appeal of joining a cult. Where else can you worship a charismatic head of cabbage, dress in flowing robes, wear a cool mask, and drink Kool Aid every day of your life? In Jackals, a family that totally doesn’t get it desperately tries to rescue their son from a cult by kidnapping him and taking him to their country cabin for a bout of professional deprogramming. What they don’t count on is his fellow cult members coming to take him back with extreme force. Though it does boast a respectable cast with Stephen Dorff (Blade, FearDotCom) and Deborah Kara Unger (White Noise, Silent Hill), Jackals is far too predictable for anyone but the most impressionable and weak willed. BODY…

Bowen Fesses Up What to watch tonight, Wretched Reader? A crime caper about a good-hearted hit man who just wants to provide for his family but must satisfy a randy policewoman to avoid arrest? A splatter-intensive action thriller/satire/softcore skin flick in which a lucha libre-masked, kung-fu fighting private eye – who can locate missing women by sniffing their panties – must save his virginal sister from the clutches of a German crime boss with a god complex? A silent – well, not actually silent so much as just dialogue-free and deeply surreal – rape/revenge maim-fest about a woman who returns from the dead as a retribution-bent killer mermaid? A darker, funnier riff on Falling Down in which a browbeaten milquetoast recovering from a recent heart attack discovers that the one…

HORROR FANS ARE AN OBSESSIVE LOT, AND FOR THIS WE CAN BE THANKFUL. It’s the reason books like Ad Nauseam and Ad Nauseam II exist, because were it not for the collecting tendencies of RM’s Head Online Writer Michael Gingold, we’d have missed out on this fascinating repository of bygone movie marketing. “I started cutting ads, as well as reviews, out of newspapers when I was twelve years old, in 1979,” he says. “Back then, I had just begun seeing horror films in theatres – Phantasm was my first – and it was an easy and cheap way to collect mementos of these movies, particularly the ones I couldn’t actually see. I never lost that bug, and I continued collecting them until the mid-2010s, when newspapers had pretty much stopped…

Between Ari Aster’s Midsommer and the announcement of the forthcoming documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, I think it’s safe to say that folk horror is officially a thing. It’s a difficult subgenre to describe but, generally speaking, it involves macabre happenings on an English countryside, ancient traditions, and pagan rituals gone bad. Bottom line: it pulls cinematic influence from Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973). Since Paul Giovanni’s soundtrack of traditional, seductive folk music played such a key role in that film, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the folk horror label is now popping up in music, used by new artists and retroactively applied to past releases. Folk horror music isn’t just relegated to folk sounds, however, it can permeate across any…

EVEN THE BEST FILMMAKERS STRADDLE THE LINE BETWEEN HOMAGE AND BLATANT COPYING. SOME HAVE EVEN ACCUSED ONE OF THE GENRE’S BIGGEST NAMES OF RIPPING OFF A CANADIAN HOLIDAY CLASSIC FOR HIS SEMINAL 1978 SLASHER FILM. IS HE GUILTY? TWO OF OUR WRITERS ENTER THE RING TO BATTLE IT OUT… YES! CARLY MAGA “If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Carpenter’s reverence for Black Christmas is as clear as Barb’s glass unicorn.” We’ve all heard the legend – Bob Clark told John Carpenter that if he ever did a sequel to his 1974 sorority house horror Black Christmas, it would see the murderous Billy escape from a mental institution a year after the original film and return to the same house, only this time on Halloween. And that’s where Carpenter…