Table of contents for Issue 206 May/Jun 2022 in RUE MORGUE

So you might have heard there’s a feature-length doc in the works called Mental Health and Horror: A Documentary. Currently in production after a successful crowdfunding campaign and directed by Jonathan Barkan (whose name you might recognize from his stint as EIC at Dread Central, and bylines at Bloody Disgusting), it’s a doc that aims to discuss the positive impact of horror movies on the psyche. It’s a worthy subject on something many of us have suspected all along. After all, much has been written, in these pages and elsewhere, about the cathartic function of seeing fictional horrific narratives play out in the horror genre: they reflect our anxieties, real or imagined; they put a face (albeit sometimes behind a mask) to the dangers we fear on a primordial level;…

STEPHEN KING HAS BEEN ONE OF LITERATURE’S MOST CONSISTENT PURVEYORS OF PSYCHICALLY GIFTED YOUTHS. But perhaps due to awareness that, especially during the first decade of his career, many of his fans might be or have been misfit kids themselves, his younger characters weren’t usually outright monsters (those pesky Children of the Corn excepted). As horrifying as the destruction wreaked by Carrie White is, we can sympathize with the travails that lead to her telekinetic eruption; Danny Torrance’s “shine” is a protective ability rather than a dangerous force; and Firestarter’s Charlie McGee struggles to contain and control her pyrokinetic gifts, both in King’s 1980 novel and the 1984 film version starring Drew Barrymore. Carrie and The Shining were both revisited on screen decades after their classic initial movie iterations, and…

BY DAY, THE MILD-MANNERED CHRIS SEMTNER IS CURATOR OF THE EDGAR ALLAN POE MUSEUM IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA. But he also moonlights as an author, writing books in his spare time. Books about… Edgar Allan Poe. The Poe Shrine, about the storied history of the museum itself, was published in 2017, and Semtner is now following it up with Haunting Poe, which traces the late author’s curious “afterlife” in Richmond and beyond, via numerous purported ghost sightings. “There’s obviously always a lot of interest in ghosts and hauntings,” Semtner explains, “and a while ago I thought it would be nice to do a compilation of all the people who claim they’ve seen Poe show up at different places. There’s houses, museums, and libraries he’s supposed to haunt; people see him on…

AFTER 30 YEARS IN THE MAKING AND OVER 80 MINUTES OF STUNNING HANDCRAFTED DEPRAVITY, GROSS-OUT HUMOUR, REPULSIVE BEASTS, BILE AND EXCREMENT, WAR AND VIOLENCE, SENSELESS PAIN AND CHILLING SILENCE, stop-motion master Phil Tippett’s magnum opus Mad God (streaming on Shudder this June) has a clear and unrelenting vision, but one that doesn’t point towards any easy answers. The veritable cavalcade of surreal imagery shows many unforgettable sights but also begs one important question – who, or what, is this God that is so unimaginably angry? Is it one of the few human characters in this stop-motion puppet masterpiece – an enigmatic red-robed and curly-fingernailed scientist/politician/pope played by Alex Cox (director of Repo Man and Sid and Nancy) who seems to be orchestrating a league of assassins, each taking a turn…

FILTH 14:45 mins/YouTube via Adam Ciolfi’s channel Adam Ciolfi’s claymation short opens with a literal bang as the film’s protagonist is abruptly shot in the head. Things only get more violent from there as the antihero dusts himself off and proceeds to rampage his way through grimy alleys and rundown high-rises, using less-than-gentle methods of persuasion on people to find out why someone was paid to put a bullet in his brain… and why that bullet didn’t kill him. Ciolfi clearly has a fondness for discovering novel ways to mash and mangle the clay creations he put so much time into developing; his premise is a simple one, giving him the opportunity to play in a sandbox of over-the-top gore, grungy noir aesthetics, and growled narration, all building to a…

The Eyes Have It "The nightmare terror of the slithering eye that unleashed agonizing horror on a screaming world!” must surely be one of the greatest taglines ever written. The subject of said tagline, Attack of the Eye Creatures (1967), doesn’t actually deliver on any of that, however; in fact, it’s just flat-out shitty. And yet, the longer I watched this thing one bleak midwinter’s eve, the more familiar it seemed. At first I was all like, “If this is slithering-eye nightmare terror unleashing agonizing horror on a screaming world, then frankly, I’ve seen it done better, that’s all I’m saying.” But then the familiar feeling got feeling even more familiar. You know, like when you’re watching Throne of Blood (1957) and you slowly realize that it’s actually Macbeth? Well,…

WHEN PEOPLE BRING UP “EARLY CRONENBERG,” SHIVERS AND RABID SPRING TO MIND. But before his vision became streamlined through genre tropes, it was nascent in a variety of unconventional forms: short films (Transfer, From the Drain), experimental semi-features (Stereo, Crimes of the Future), and wildly original episodes of TV series (Programme X, Peep Show). While his post-Shivers career has been well-documented and analyzed, Chris Kelso and David Leo Rice, editors of the new anthology Children of the New Flesh (out this June from II:II Press), believe that the origins of our beloved King of Venereal Horror merit some, ahem, fleshing out. “Shivers and Rabid are what put him on the map,” says Kelso. “They revolutionized underground and genre filmmaking in Canada. But there is a whole intravenous layer of artistic…

AS I SIT HERE APPREHENSIVELY awaiting the arrival of 2022’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre (not to be confused with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), I can’t help but marvel at what a strange franchise it is. Don’t get me wrong, all horror movie franchises have their quirks, false starts, and missteps. Over the last four decades, Halloween keeps trying to find a mythology that will stick. Hellraiser quickly became little more than Pinhead appearances crammed into unrelated storylines and settings. But the Chainsaw series is so full of reboots, deboots, sequels, prequels, and requels that it all strikes me as even weirder than, say, something like the Leprechaun franchise that features, you know, a goddamn leprechaun in outer space. There is something truly singular about the…

IT’S A BUMMER how times have changed. As a lifelong reader and regular (current) subscriber I’ve seen so much change since the day Rodrigo handed me a free copy of RM at Vintage Video on Markham St. I understand it’s damn hard to keep any magazine profitable. But I have a sneaky suspicion that the reason we get very few relevant movies profiled and reviewed these days is because RM now allows filmmakers to pay for reviews. I could be completely wrong but the roster of new movie reviews over the last few years is 70-80% stuff that is scraping the barrel rather than moving the needle. And I’ll be honest, I still want to get the odd mainstream review like the new TCM, if only for the fun of…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9dW9OyTxRs A ROTTER ROMP WYRMWOOD: APOCALYPSE Starring Luke McKenzie, Shantae Barnes-Cowan and Bianca Bradey Directed by Kiah Roache-Turner Written by Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner XYZ Films Zombie cinema. Every time I think I’ve gotten out, along comes something like Wyrmwood: Apocalypse to pull me back in. Sure, that’s a terrible Godfather III reference, but reader, I assure you, the sentiment is sincere! This long-awaited sequel to 2014’s Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead takes up the mantles of the two great Georges (Miller and Romero) to deliver a fast-paced, bloody, and funny rotter romp. Rhys (Luke McKenzie) is a gruff loner eking out an apocalyptic existence by capturing the living and delivering them to The Surgeon, an unhinged scientist holed away in a protected military bunker. Rhys believes him to be…

http://www.tartaruspress.com/aickman-the-attempted-rescue.html ROBERT AICKMAN: AN ATTEMPTED BIOGRAPHY R.B. Russell Tartarus Press Robert Aickman (RM#148) preferred to call his writings “strange stories,” but he was certainly a strange man himself. More than 40 years after his death comes the first real biography of this master of subtle chills, and from none other than his most devoted publisher. The humble title alludes to Aickman’s 1966 autobiography, The Attempted Rescue, but the result is an invaluable effort to grasp the mind behind such unforgettable tales as “The Hospice,” “The Swords,” “Ringing the Changes,” “Never Visit Venice,” and many others. The research presented is meticulous and perhaps more iconoclastic towards its subject than many of his followers would prefer. Never content with just Aickman’s own autobiographic words, R.B. Russell compares and contrasts the writer’s claims…

Long-time readers of RM already know that I’m obsessed with stories about stories. Much of that comes down to the fact that, like in Malcolm Devlin’s And Then I Woke Up (out now from Tor), narratives have power, sometimes incredibly sinister power, and not just in the arts, but in the real world. I’m writing this column twelve days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and one need look no further than the years-long propaganda campaign that Russian president Vladimir Putin has waged on his own people to know this is true. You could even say that these false narratives (and the way they spread and take root in a populace) are like a virus, a thing that grows in strength and virility until it’s easier to believe what you are…

https://www.tangerinedreammusic.com/en/music/index.asp STRANGE BEHAVIOR SOUNDTRACK Tangerine Dream TERROR VISION Tangerine Dream fans rejoice: Terror Vision has released 1981’s Strange Behavior score just in time for Record Store Day. Although Michael Laughlin’s cult classic plays like a slasher on one level, its mad science trappings resonate better with TD’s brand of synthesized cacophony. The band is suited perfectly for the story, with a spacey score suggesting how much the mind control plot factors into the overall storyline without going overboard with the sci-fi visuals. The score seems to seep into the film from out of nowhere, saturating the long takes with a hypnotic vibe. Separated from the visuals, Strange Behavior still retains something of its ethereal charm, and Terror Vision’s single LP is a great little package of mood pieces (although your…

A NEW AGE OF DARKNESS MAY OFFICIALLY BE UPON US, WHAT WITH THE NEVER-ENDING STREAM OF BAD NEWS SINCE 2020, but we horror fans know how to have a good time in the dark. Would it be so wrong to have some fun with our imminent doom and imagine an alternative timeline? The mighty Mac Sabbath thinks so, as evidenced with a brand-new children’s book, Drive Thru Metal, released earlier this year through Poposition Press. For the uninitiated, the infamous fast-food/Black Sabbath parody cover band plays faithful renditions of Sabbath tunes, with lyrics changed to reflect the fast-food theme: “Pair-a-Buns” instead of “Paranoid,” “Frying Pan” in place of “Iron Man,” you get the picture. But there’s a serious side to the band as well, as the satire also jabs at…

When Super Mario 64 was put into my eight-year-old hands, it was the first time I recall being absolutely terrified to play a video game. It’s funny, I know, but it felt wholly different from anything I had played before because everything was three-dimensional: these mountains had edges, and if I wasn’t careful, our jovial, mustachioed plumber might end up in a pile of blood and broken bones – or so I imagined. Mario 64 turned out to be a cartoony delight, of course, but that old terror reared its ugly head when I finally rented Acclaim’s Shadow Man for the system in 1999. Undoubtedly the bleakest of these early 3-D console games and still darker than most titles calling themselves horror to this day, it’s recently been remastered by…

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FOR ALL OF MODERN HORROR’S COMPLEXITY AND NUANCE, MUCH OF THE TERROR THAT DRIVES OUR FAVOURITE SCARE FARE IS SIMPLE ENOUGH IN PREMISE: the powerful dishing out punishment upon the helpless, deserved or otherwise. But when it comes to our most vulnerable demographic, children, questions of power and wrath reside on a whole different spectrum than that of our favourite slashers, monsters, and mutants. Children may be physically small, but their fresh young minds make fertile ground for narratives involving psychic powers and abilities, something less material than knives or chainsaws but oftentimes no less deadly. This is particularly true for author Stephen King, from whose mind sprang forth such unforgettable psychic icons as the titular prom queen in his first published novel, Carrie; the indelible Danny Torrance from The…

THE STORY OF THE UNDER-APPRECIATED ARTIST WHO ACHIEVES FAME AND RECOGNITION POSTHUMOUSLY IS A FAMILIAR ONE. And while it’s not quite true to say that Edgar Allan Poe didn’t achieve success while he was alive, it’s certainly the case that he was a bigger hit in Europe and on America's East Coast than he was in his sometime hometown of Richmond, Virginia. Thanks to publishing and copyright quirks of the era, his status as an internationally popular bestselling author didn’t, unfortunately, translate into personal wealth, and Poe famously died in penury in 1849 at the age of just 40 – under infamously mysterious circumstances. Just 60 years later, with statues of Confederate generals all the rage, a group of Richmond writers, artists, sculptors, historians, and even a rabbi, failed in…

GET RID OF IT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoTsWUUB0Tw KEEPSAKE! Darkstar Films Every once in a while I come across a new movie label flogging a handful of unknown European or domestic titles they’ve managed to get the distro rights to. Darkstar Films is one of the newest players, so I gathered up three of their latest titles to see just what kind of gore they’re offering up for our depraved consumption. Keepsake! follows a young couple who hook up at a bar and head off to a love shack to consummate a one-night stand. Things quickly devolve into a goopy bloodbath when a knife-wielding maniac appears, and the slicing and dicing begins in earnest. Blissfully short and filmed without a budget nor any comprehension of human anatomy, Keepsake! is as messy as it…

Devotees of genre Blu-rays know that the best supplements are often found on special editions of vintage independent films. So many more interesting and entertaining memories can be had of budgetarily challenged productions than of well-financed studio projects, with the enthusiasm of coming together for a shared goal, and the added perspective of time and hindsight. Perry Blackshear’s They Look Like People is less than ten years old, but when the writer/director reunited with stars/co-producers MacLeod Andrews and Evan Dumouchel for the new Blu-ray edition, they were nonetheless struck by the passage of years since they made the movie. “The only real challenge, other than the work involved in digging up and going through all our archives, was the psychological trial of facing the aging process,” Blackshear says. “We kept…

Ancient mythology is full of horrific creatures such as vampires, demons, witches, and various half-human/half-animals. The mark they’ve made on our collective consciousness is undeniable: despite many of these tales being thousands of years old they continue to thrill the masses and inspire creators. Black’s Myth taps fully into our long-standing fascination with myths, and not just through its main protagonists, P.I. Strummer Mercado and her assistant Ben Si’lat – a werewolf and djinn, respectively. Though the pair initially wanted to keep a low professional profile, being hired by the mysterious Rainsford Black soon sees them mixing with vampires, the Brotherhood of Fenris, an Old One, a living statue, and loveable Aster, the minotaur (there’s only one). “Black’s Myth is a combination of three ideas I had floating around independently…

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/All-the-White-Spaces/Ally-Wilkes/9781982182700 ALL THE WHITE SPACES Ally Wilkes Atria Set in the last gasp of the heroic age of polar exploration, All the White Spaces follows an expeditionary group forced to "overwinter" alone in the Antarctic wastes. The cold isn’t the only killer; the huts and ice that host this long dark night of the soul are the province of an otherworldly landlord. Author Ally Wilkes has invested Antarctica with a unique menace. Each time the aurora crackles, something indefinable calls victims out into the dark. The enemy remains half-glimpsed and elusive; even its nature is open to interpretation. By extension, so is the novel’s. Is this a ghost story? Is it cosmic horror? If it’s the latter (and there are certainly episodes of suitably high strangeness), it’s a take on…

https://www.ghoststoryguys.com/ GHOST STORY GUYS THEME: Paranormal FORMAT: Stories and discussion FREQUENCY: Bi-weekly If you’ve ever wished for a podcast that combines the thrill of sharing scary stories around a campfire with the structure of a professional ghost tour, Ghost Story Guys is the place to go. Hosted by a paranormal author (Brennan Storr) and researcher (Paul Bestall), the podcast recounts anecdotal stories about spooks, spectres, and other things that go bump in the night, but always with an air of humour, humanity, and an appropriate amount of skepticism. Billed as “conversations that only make sense after the sun has set,” each episode clocks in at around an hour or more, with every show focusing on a loose theme, such as hauntings in forests, on bridges, or in bathrooms. The hosts…