Table of contents for Issue 80 July 2008 in RUE MORGUE

zombiecon.co.uk UK zombie enthusiasts, listen up! ZombieCon is coming, and it isn’t taking any prisoners. Visit this website for more details on the event which will run September 5 to 7 and feature celebrities, undead makeup workshops, zombie choreography lessons, a masquerade party and much more. Dead is better! anthonyclarksonart.com When not on graphic design duty at Century Media and Nuclear Blast Records, Anthony Clarkson paints demented cartoons. Inspired by the likes of Jhonen Vasquez and Gris Grimly, we wouldn’t be surprised if the creatures in his grim wonderland appeared in a storybook of their own in the near future. templeofthedemon.com Monster lovers unite! Temple of the Demon investigates your favourite monsters (werewolves, vampires, zombies) and deviations (science run amok, evil toys) from film and literature. While not overly indepth,…

“TRUST NO ONE” “DENY EVERYTHING” “DECEIVE INVEIGLE OBFUSCATE” Each of these taglines appeared at least once during the opening credits of The X-Files over its nine-year run on the Fox television network. And every one is suitable when describing the level of secrecy and studio paranoia surrounding the show’s latest feature film installment, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, which hits theatres on July 25. In fact, the mystery surrounding the movie’s plot and the speculation brewing over the various leaked stills is practically worthy of an X-File itself. “[The plot’s] been completely hush-hush as far as we’re concerned,” the series creator Chris Carter tells Rue Morgue in mid-May. “We’ve tried to keep it under wraps because in the age of internet spoilers we think the element of surprise is…

40 YEARS OF FLESH EATING GEORGE A. ROMERO’S NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) Starring Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea and Karl Hardman Directed by George A. Romero Written by George A. Romero and John A. Russo Dimension Extreme A thriving cottage industry of books, academic papers, articles and fan sites celebrating the genius of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead has spread like a zombie contagion since the low-budget masterpiece rampaged through the drive-in circuit in the post-Summer of Love ’60s. So, at this point you can take it as gospel that the movie is and shall always be one of horror cinema’s high benchmarks. What better excuse then to revisit Romero’s Pennsylvania apocalypse than this new, directorapproved (the copyright was accidentally lost decades ago on this long-time public…

DRIVE-INS, DELETE BINS AND OTHER SINS The midsummer night’s screams you’ve recently heard emanating from the basement have been my own. It happens around this time every year, when I suddenly wake up in a cold sweat with the realization that the next winter of our discontent (yeah, like there’s any other kind in Canada) is only months away. But this year I’ve got a plan, and it doesn’t involve praying for accelerated global warming. Just four easy steps: 1) quit job, 2) apply for welfare, 3) lay in huge supply of cheap hooch and Swanson Hungry Man TV dinners and 4) procure a few Mill Creek box sets to hunker down with as I await the eventual horrors of our northerly climate. Minneapolis-based Mill Creek Entertainment offers a wide…

Wild Beyond Belief! Brian Albright McFarland In 1995, just weeks before he was murdered by a building contractor in a dispute over money, legendary exploitation filmmaker Al Adamson (Blood of Ghastly Horror, Dracula’s Castle, Blazing Stewardesses) was interviewed by aspiring genre scribe Brian Albright. I’m unsure whether the interview was Adamson’s last, but it’s now the centrepiece of this entertaining collection of conversations with luminaries of ’60s and ’70s American grindhouse cinema. In fact, the ubiquitous and much-loved Adamson provides a common thread throughout the book – virtually everyone interviewed here seems to have either worked with him or known him socially. Other notables from the heyday of exploitation include crewman-of-all-tradesturned-director John “Bud” Cardos (King dom of the Spiders), Jack Hill (Spider Baby), Monte Hellman (Beast From Haunted Cave), legendary…

Ah… Paris. The name conjures up images of panoramic views from the Eiffel Tower, a romantic stroll down the Champs-Élysées or having lunch at a chic sidewalk café. Attracting an estimated 30 million visitors each year, France’s capital is said to be the world’s most popular tourist destination. And with a history long associated with the macabre, the City of Light is an appealing getaway for horror aficionados, as well. The stalking grounds of the Phantom of the Opera, the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Belphégor, Paris has been the setting for several of the greatest classics of horror literature and film. The Paris Opera (Palais Garnier) Since its release nearly a century ago, The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l’Opéra), Gaston Leroux’s 1910 gothic classic, has been…

We have a taste for the ugly,” admits Francis K, guitarist for Brazilian punk/psychobilly/polka trio, Damn Laser Vampires. K, along with her bandmates, Ronaldo Selistre (vocals and guitar) and Michel Munhoz (drums), have seemingly appeared out of nowhere with a debut album, Gotham Beggars Syndicate (Devil’s Ruin Records), that sounds like nothing short of a big, rowdy, gothic roadhouse bar fight. Their name? Mysterious even to them. Their sound? Difficult to categorize. Punk and psychobilly guitars as jagged as broken beer bottles, simple beats (some of them polkas!), nods to new wave in their minor melodies and occasional accordion, all dressed in a wicked lo-fi recording aesthetic that sounds like it went down to tape in a dank, after-hours club. Imagine the Stranglers challenging Joy Division to a chemical-fuelled drag…

I AM 21-YEARS-OLD and I am writing you from my 5x9 cell in the Texas Department of Correctional Justice. I am currently serving an eight-year sentence for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, which is south-Texas prosecutor slang for “my apartment was broken into and, in grabbing the only weapon I could think of, I attacked the trespasser with my replica Freddy Krueger glove.” After being arrested, my state-provided legal counsel consisted of “If you don’t sign for eight years now, they’re going to give you twenty.” I naively and unfortunately signed the next eight years of my life over to the State of Texas. Since I’ve been incarcerated, I have had an unexplainable amount of time to read and I recently began to write to people whose work I…

Oscar winner Diablo Cody is a hot property in Hollywood right now, but if the Juno screenwriter has her way, she’d like to get even hotter. “There might be an insurance issue, but I really want to do a burn,” Cody says of her Jennifer’s Body cameo as a bartender who goes up in flames. “It’s actually a dream of mine.” Jennifer’s Body is Cody’s follow-up script to Juno, the Jason Reitman-directed comedy that earned some quarter of a billion dollars at the box office worldwide and Cody an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. It stars Megan Fox (Transformers) as Jennifer, a beautiful girl living in the town of Devil’s Kettle, Minnesota. When the up-and-coming band Low Shoulder comes to town, Jennifer and her nerdy best friend Needy (Veronica…

Defeating city-smashing forest gods, pummelling trolls, nasty “tooth fairies,” rebel princes and generally saving humanity from extinction is all in a day’s work for Hellboy, Mike Mignola’s titular comic book Beast of the Apocalypse-turned-wise-cracking working stiff paranormal investigator. Big Red, as he’s come to be called by his pals at the B.P.R.D. (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense), made his big-screen debut in 2004, via Guillermo del Toro (The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth), a self-professed comic book nerd and “world’s biggest Hellboy fan.” Now revered for his fairy tale masterpiece Pan’s Labyrinth (which was nominated for six Oscars last year and won three), del Toro returns to the Hellboy universe to tell a new tale that should satisfy any Hellboy dissidents who griped about the first movie’s similarities to X-Men…

The lights dim in the main hall of Dogpatch Studios in San Francisco. The smell of nerd sweat and hot stage lights fill the air. Atari is about to show us the opening moments of the newest entry in their seminal Alone in the Dark series. Of course, the original Alone in the Dark (1992) title became famous for not only being the first game that was truly scary, but because it was also one of the earliest progenitors of the survival horror video game – a subgenre in which players are forced to face the dual obstacles of limited resources and his or her own fear. Atari’s presentation begins with a sequence that features Edward Carnby, the supernatural private investigator from the series, gaining consciousness in the present day,…

DORFF TOSSING BOTCHED Starring Stephen Dorff, Jaime Murray and Sean Pertwee Directed by Kit Ryan Written by Derek Boyle, Eamon Friel and Raymond Friel Warner From the plain-Jane DVD cover and dull synopsis, you’d be forgiven for dismissing Botched as nothing more than a typical heist flick starring perennial scruffy-faced, asshole bad guy Stephen Dorff (Blade). Miss this surprisingly quirky balance of comedy and horror that has all the makings of a cult classic, though, and you might never forgive yourself, especially if you’re a fan of splatstick. Dorff plays Ritchie Donovan, a painfully unlucky professional thief who’s run out of second chances with his sordid financiers. Forced to take the heat for the latest in a string of mishaps, Ritchie gets dispatched to Moscow by an underworld kingpin to…

LUCKER THE NECROPHAGOUS (1986) Starring Nick Van Suyt, Helga Vandevelde and Lett Jotts Directed by Johan Vandewoestijne Written by Johan Vandewoestijne and John Kupferschmidt Synapse Thanks to the DVD format, even a grubby necrophiliac like John Lucker gets to have his day in the sun. Lucker was one of the most notorious offerings on the video bootleg market in the late ’80s and early ’90s, circulating almost exclusively via tenth-gen dupes whose crappy quality tried the patience of gorehounds worldwide. Now the film has finally been given a proper release – albeit in a slightly less glorious transfer than we are used to from the House of Synapse. Lucker (Nick Van Suyt) is a despicable serial killer/rapist/necrophiliac who escapes from a private clinic to hunt down the sole survivor from…

In This Issue! M Jon J. Muth Abrams CTHULHU TALES #2 Various BOOM! GABRIEL Jaime Portillo (Self-published) THE LOST BOYS: REIGN OF FROGS Hans Rodionoff and Joel Gomez DC/Wildstorm STRANGE EMBRACE HC David Hine Image THE STRAW MEN #1 (OF 12) Joseph Brusha and Brett Weldele Zenescope THREE SHADOWS Cyril Perdrosa First Second M. It means “murderer” in Fritz Lang’s classic 1931 film, loosely based on a real-life post-Great War child killer in Germany. The simple symbolism of the title became a powerful, encapsulating statement, one that has carried forward through almost eight decades. Still, for this comic book fan, the letter “M” took a slight detour in the early ’90s when, while still standing for murderer, it also signified “madman” and “masterpiece.” Jon J. Muth, the man behind that…

THE RICHARD MATHESON COMPANION Stanley Wiater, Matthew R. Bradley and Paul Stuve, eds. Gauntlet The Richard Matheson Companion could be best described as the Holy Grail of Matheson memoirs. Genre luminaries such as Harlan Ellison, Ed Gorman, Dean Koontz, William F. Nolan, Jack Ketchum and David Morrell, as well as the author’s friends, publisher and family, provide moving thoughts on the master storyteller’s life and career. Add to that a definitive guide to his published work (fiction and non-fiction) and The Years Stood Still, a previously unpublished Matheson novella written when the author was just fourteen years old. Insightful and indispensible. Jovanka Vuckovic SHADOWS OVER NEW ENGLAND David Goudsward and Scott T. Goudsward BearManor Media Shadows Over New England is a guidebook to New England locales made famous by their…

Sift through the racks at your local blueand-yellow consumer electronics retail megalith and you just might find the latest release from prolific indie writer/director/actor Bill Zebub, The Worst Horror Movie Ever Made, a garishly packaged piece of merchandise likely to give even the most laissez-faire CEO apoplexy. This film might best be described as Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain as interpreted by John Waters. Zebub stars as Bill, a death metal everyman who embarks on a quasi-existentialist journey with his scantily clad girlfriend Jeanne (Andrea Zsel) after a bloody axe massacre and a deadly 52 Pick Up accident at a strip poker party. While on the lam they encounter a shit demon, rape-happy military men, gay Muslim jihadists, and a “misfortune” teller who gives Jeanne a birth control potion that turns…

FanTasia rings in its twelfth year with over 100 global genre titles July has arrived, and that means only one thing for horror fans with the will and the means to invade Montreal for a few weeks: FanTasia. North America’s largest genre film festival is back with a vengeance for its twelfth year of cinematic mayhem. “Yep, and do I ever feel old when I think about that!” confesses Mitch Davis, FanTasia’s Director of International Programming (other programmers include Festival Director Pierre Corbeil, Fangoria’s Tony Timpone, Twitch Film’s Todd Brown and Simon Laperierre). “I’ll let you in on a little secret. All that coffee I drink is actually embalming fluid.” The hyperactive Davis – whose volatile enthusiasm for genre film is as infectious as the flu – is tireless when…

+A Roseville, Minnesota man recently survived (albeit with severe injuries) an intentional headfirst dive into a wood chipper. Despite the absence of a note, police believe the man was attempting suicide. + William Lustig’s Maniac originally had a title song of the same name, but in the end it was not used. The lyrics were subsequently toned down and the song, “Maniac,” later appeared on the soundtrack to Flashdance (1983). + For roughly $2000 US, tombstones in Japan can now have their very own bar codes. These codes, when “scanned” by a camera phone, call up a website which features photos, text and/or videos of the deceased. + Both Bela Lugosi and John Carradine turned down the role of Frankenstein’s monster-in James Whale’s Frankenstein. Lugosi passed because it wasn’t a…

In the monster movie heyday, it wasn’t easy playing a monster. Suffocating prosthetics, thick glue and toxic makeup took a heavy toll on the likes of Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff and their contemporaries. According to Doug Jones – who has a lengthy pedigree playing creatures in The Outer Limits, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and most of Guillermo del Toro’s films – things haven’t changed much.“That heavy toll hasn’t been lifted,” Jones tells Rue Morgue. “But I can tell you that modern techniques and materials have streamlined the application time and the comfort a bit… But I know what I’m saying yes to when I take on a character which will require a lot of makeup and costuming, so it’s also my job to be in the right kind of shape,…

FROM TREK TO DRECK MANTICORE Image Chase Masterson is best known by sci-fi geeks as the bodacious Leeta from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but she has also appeared in a few horror films I recently discovered in the darkest recesses of a Wal-Mart DVD delete bin. Set during the Iraq War, Manticore sees a religious zealot summoning an ancient beast to defend Babylon from the infidels. Chase (as Ashley Pierce) joins fellow Trek actor Robert “Chakotay” Beltran as a reporter covering the ensuing mayhem. Shot in Bulgaria on the cheap, the film has decent performances and gore effects, but they are sadly overshadowed by the subpar CG Manticore. The Blair Witch Project’s Heather Donahue appears as a soldier, probably wishing she was back in the woods somewhere, blubbering away…

A MEETING OF MACABRE MINDS THE SKULL (1965) Starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Jill Bennet Directed by Freddie Francis Written by Milton Subotsky and Robert Bloch Legend Films Long obscured by the towering gothic shadow cast by its classier cousin in the British horror cinema family, Amicus Films has finally been recognized by fans and critics as something more than a lowrent Hammer Studios. Though both companies knocked out their share of high gothic period pieces, Amicus really came into its own with its contemporary-set films, especially its stylized EC Comics homages, including Asylum, Torture Garden and Tales from the Crypt. The latter two titles were helmed by British horror stalwart Freddie Francis, who directed over a dozen films for both Amicus and Hammer, making his mark with inventive…

THE MIST Mark Isham VARESE SARABANDE Soundtrack Even if you didn’t enjoy the The Mist movie, Mark Isham’s score is a wonderful surprise for fans of his Hitcher soundtrack – that all-electronic landscape of bleak evil, peppered with fat, metallic industrial percussion. Similarly, in his Mist score, the creatures that torment the trapped grocery shoppers are heavily augmented by meaty tracks of unrelenting rhythmic textures. Although there are a few moody pauses, the emphasis here is on assaultive music, which makes this album seemingly perfect… except it’s another halfhour CD from Varese, with a jarring jazz source cue at the end. Translation: this is all the label could afford to release due to high rights fees, the same headache that kept the best Dreamcatcher cuts off its own CD, which…

HIGHEST RATING IS THREE. DRACULA: ORIGIN PC Frogwares Ever wonder how Dracula got his fangs? As the title suggests, Dracula: Origin details how the legendary Count abandoned his life as a defender of Christianity and became a servant of Satan. Flashbacks and cut scenes fill in all the details – explaining everything from the best way to kill a vampire to why they can’t see their reflections – while you take on the role of Professor Van Helsing to stop Dracula from finding an ancient manuscript that can resurrect damned souls. (The Count intends to use it to bring his dead wife back to life in the body of Mina Harker.) Action takes place in a variety of extremely well-rendered environments, including a gloomy London graveyard, a Viennese palace, the…