Table of contents for Issue 97 Jan/Feb 2010 in RUE MORGUE

Abraham Lincoln’s embalmed corpse was subject to a three-week-long funeral procession before reaching its final burial place in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois. Susan Denberg, star of 1967’s Frankenstein Created Woman, was committed to an asylum for a time following the release of the film, and never returned to acting. The teeth of the viper fish, which lives in the depths of Earth’s oceans, are so large that they don’t fit in its mouth, but do prove useful for hunting, during which it impales its prey on the toothy protrusions. During actress Mary Tamm’s first day of shooting for 1973’s Tales that Witness Madness, her film debut, she not only barely avoided a disastrous car wreck on her way to work, but her trailer on the film’s set burned…

MONK-ON-MONK ACTION EULOGY FOR A VAMPIRE Willing Suspension Although I’ve had hundreds of lesbian vampire movies sent to me, I rarely come across a vampire flick featuring gay men (besides Tom Cruise in Interview with a Vampire, possibly). But then Eulogy for a Vampire showed up at my back door. It follows a group of monks in a secluded rural monastery who spend most of their time skinny dipping in a nearby lake or getting flogged in the basement. When an amnesiac backpacker shows up, the monks start getting killed off by a vampire, or possibly a ghost or… something. Although low on scares and rife with stilted dialogue and amateurish acting, it manages to convey a moody, campy, art-house ambiance – like something Jean Rollin might have made if…

PRODUCE YOUR OWN DAMN MOVIE! Lloyd Kaufman, with Ashley Wren Collins Focal Press In 2003, Lloyd Kaufman put out Make Your Own Damn Movie!, purporting to tell you everything you need to know to write, produce, direct and distribute your own low-budget films, just like he’s done with Troma Entertainment for more than 25 years. Then, earlier this year, he put out another book called Direct Your Own Damn Movie! Wasn’t that covered in the first book? Now comes Produce Your Own Damn Movie!, and we can say for certain that all three of these books should be called Capitalize On Your Own Damn Pseudo-Celebrity! If you’re serious about learning how to produce a film from a book instead of doing an apprenticeship (which is how you’re supposed to learn…

Nancy Kilpatrick and David Morrell, eds. Edge For 22 years, the Tesseracts anthology series has been gathering short stories and poems from some of the best Canadian writers of speculative and fantastic fiction. Although mythical creatures and alternate realities are standard fare in this series, its newest entry, Tesseracts Thirteen, is edited by Nancy Kilpatrick (Power of the Blood series) and David Morrell (First Blood), so it’s no surprise that these are the darkest, most disturbing tales yet. The 23 shorts within, from a variety of authors both established (Rebecca Bradley, Alison Baird, Michael Kelly) and newer (Suzanne Church, Jason Ridler), make extensive use of our country’s cold, snowy, barren landscapes to evoke feelings of isolation and desolation. But there are also variations on this theme; for instance, Kevin Cockle’s…

SOUNDTRACK CHILD’S PLAY Joe Renzetti LA LA LAND RECORDS A lot of people are going to want to be friends to the end with La La Land Records when they discover that the eclectic soundtrack label has reissued composer Joe Renzetti’s killer score to Child’s Play. Orchestral flourishes bring a little extra life to this synth-driven work – ambient tones drone and grumble as they build to suspenseful stings. Like the film itself, there’s not much subtlety to Renzetti’s music, which often stops on a dime to deliver a thudding jump scare, such as in “Opening Chase” or the bombastic “Batter Up.” Other tracks mix it up with heavy electro-percussion, such as “Good Night A.H.” and the tribal funk of “Street Music.” Besides the comprehensive liner notes with annotations from…

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CONGRATS ON THE Rituals issue (RM#96). It was great to see VHS get some love. I especially liked the Deliver Us From Analogue segment, as there are a slew of films that have yet to be released digitally. For every Hardware, Four Flies On Grey Velvet and Rituals that have enjoyed recent releases, there is a Deadly Eyes, Screamtime or Paperhouse. Speaking of which, I loved the piece on the latter film, as it’s one of my faves. Keep up the great work, Rue Morgue. Dave, you are off to an excellent start! JAY CLARKE – TORONTO, ONTARIO THE COVERAGE OF William Castle in RM#95 provided a very enjoyable evening of reading. You guys did a great job, as usual. I had just watched Homicidal on a Friday night. The…

youtube.com/watch?v=fWkEjT1r3Fo This hilarious spoof of 1950s newsreels, titled A Guy’s Guide to Zombies, provides guidance on how to co-exist peacefully with the flesh-munchers, now that the Undead Equal Opportunities Bill has passed. Learn about zombie labourers and the simple needs of the undead, while debunking all those pesky myths about brain-eating along the way. theoatmeal.com/comics/zombie_how If, after watching the above clip, you still find yourself with some zombie-related questions, perhaps this handy flow chart can help. This easy-todecipher, comic-style analysis of “how everything goes to hell during a zombie apocalypse” should provide you with all the info you need to avoid making any tragic, world-ending mistakes yourself. monsterbrains.blogspot.com Horror fans love their monsters. Blogger Aeron Alfrey knows this and has programmed his website, Monster Brains, accordingly. This virtual art gallery…

1.BLOOD ENERGY POTION $3.99 Sleeping all day and partying all night can take its toll on the heartiest of vampires. This fruit-flavoured energy drink – full of wholesome stuff such as protein and iron – is packed in a resealable transfusion-style bag, and will put a spring in your creeping step. Kick-start your dead heart at livingwithbloodlust.com. 2.B-MOVIE BAGS £150 to £390 GBP Scottish artist Julia Griffin fuses retro fashion and classic B-movie poster art in these stunning hand-painted purses. Each is crafted from a genuine vintage bag (mostly made from leather) and Griffin has a strict policy of never making two exactly alike, so you know you’re getting an original. Bag one at b-moviebags.com. 3.TIM BURTON SKINS $14.95/$29.95 Life isn’t easy for the Pincushion Queen, but when she’s using…

TRYING TO PICK THE BEST (AND WORST) OF THE YEAR OFTEN PROVES TO BE A REAL HORROR. BUT NOT THIS YEAR. OUR CHOICES FOR 2009’S Best Feature Film and Worst Cinematic Atrocity to Wound Your Retinas – both of which involve our favourite time of year – were no-brainers. In fact, for Michael Dougherty’s Trick ’r Treat we could’ve created a category called “What the Hell was the Studio Thinking by Not Releasing This in Theatres?” while Rob Zombie’s Halloween II certainly warranted one titled “Please Stop! No, Seriously.” Among the other categories that required minimal blood spillage were Best Indie Feature (it’s a horror-comedy crowd-pleaser), Best Monster (we all fell in love with a certain one-eyed blob – didn’t you?), Biggest Disappointment (how could a film in which Bruce…

TRY THINKING INSIDE OF IT THE BOX Starring Cameron Diaz, James Marsden and Frank Langella Written and directed by Richard Kelly Warner When sci-fi and horror icon Richard Matheson’s short story “Button, Button” was adapted as one of the writer’s many contributions to the original Twilight Zone, he was reportedly so displeased with the new ending it was given that he changed his name for the screen credit. Chances are he’ll be even more pissed with Richard Kelly’s The Box. The writer/director of the wildly absurd cult classic Donnie Darko and the nonsensical non-classic Southland Tales apparently forgot what story he was adapting, choosing to use Matheson’s morality play as a launching pad for another bat-shit crazy plot. It’s 1976 in Virginia and English teacher Norma Lewis (Cameron Diaz) and…

A DINGO DID NOT EAT YOUR BABY RAZORBACK (1984) Starring Gregory Harrison, Arkie Whiteley and Bill Kerr Directed by Russell Mulcahy Written by Everett De Roche Warner If you were to set a killer animal flick in the Australian outback, what kind of beast would you have terrorize the locals? A dingo? Meh. A kangaroo? Nah. How about a wild boar? But not just any razorback: a baby-eating, steam-panting, giant, tusked monster. Now, you’ve got yourself a movie! The opening scene – set unmistakably in the outback – establishes the unrelenting pace of the rest of the film. Kangaroo farmer Jake Cullen has just put his grandson to bed when a large, unidentified creature crashes through the house, killing the baby. Flash forward a few years: an American journalist travels…

To date, every writer interviewed for this column has had one thing in common: their love of horror began at a very young age. Whether it was from watching Scooby-Doo on Saturday mornings or huddling under blankets reading creepy comics, their taste for the macabre was ingrained during childhood. I’m not going to get into a deep, psychological discussion regarding the relationship between children and horror, but I think it’s safe to say that a lot of kids enjoy being scared. While it’s unwise to sit a six-year-old in front of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, there is plenty of age-appropriate material out there to give goosebumps to little tykes without scarring them for life. Parents can choose from the works of R.L. Stine, Neil Gaiman and… Howard Phillips Lovecraft. That’s…

UNDER THE DOME Stephen King Scribner Stephen King’s concept for his new novel – an invisible, impenetrable dome suddenly appearing around a Maine town, sealing residents off from the outside world – is not only his best in decades, he also fleshes out that conceit with the energy, originality and narrative economy of his early works. Better still, Under the Dome builds to a truly creepy and spectacularly violent resolution reminiscent of The Stand. This is, hands down, King’s best book since It. JAMES GRAINGER THE 13th John Everson Leisure When an abandoned, notoriously haunted hotel reopens as an insane asylum for pregnant women, you just know that trouble’s a’ brewin’. John Everson’s third horror novel features a doctor with a dark agenda, a spate of missing women and some…

TRAVELLING TO BOSCASTLE, UK IS CHALLENGING UNDER THE BEST OF CONDITIONS BUT IT’S EVEN HARDER BY NIGHT. The narrow roads leading to this tiny village (pop: 888) on the rugged southwestern coast of England wind treacherously through the desolate countryside; despite the aid of an almost full moon and GPS device, I still lose my way. As a low-lying mist rises up from the moors and dark shadows seep in from all sides, the tales of the spectral black hounds with eyes of fire, grim portents of impending doom rumoured to stalk the area, no longer seem so farfetched. The road begins to pitch downward at an impossibly steep angle as the moors give way to clusters of ancient stone cottages. At the bottom of the valley, nestled along a…

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Stephen King came to Toronto to promote his latest novel, Under the Dome, but he left his fans thinking about a sequel to The Shining. The bestselling author appeared before a capacity crowd of more than 2200 at the Canon Theatre, November 19, for a reading and conversation with director David Cronenberg. The two genre icons met more than 25 years ago when Cronenberg directed an adaptation of King’s Dead Zone and their pairing for this event provided a special opportunity to hear them discuss creating for both the page and screen. King entered to a standing ovation from what he described as the largest audience he had ever read for. He then delivered an engaging, relaxed reading of scenes from Under the Dome, the story of a small town…

WHAT IF THE WORLD WAS RULED BY VAMPIRES? That’s the idea behind Daybreakers, the stylish new sci-fi horror show from Michael and Peter Spierig. The identical twin brothers from Australia made a bloody splash among genre fans with 2003’s Undead (RM#36), a flawed but ambitious zombie film with Hollywood-level SFX (created by the brothers themselves), made for about $1 million USD. Now they’ve taken their DIY approach and applied it to a studio picture with a higher (yet still modest by Hollywood standards) budget. Daybreakers (out January 8) is set in the year 2019, a decade after a virus turned most people into vampires and saw the remaining humans hunted down and farmed for their blood. Rather than descend into chaos, society – and consumption – continues. Things have changed,…

March 5-7 Dark Woods Con Pikeville, Kentucky darkwoodscon.com March 12-14 Monster-Mania Con Cherry Hill, New Jersey monstermania.net March 19-21 Saturday Nightmares Jersey City, New Jersey saturdaynightmares.com March 25-28 TransWorld’s halloween & Attractions Show (Wholesalers’ convention, not open to general public) St. Louis, Missouri haashow.com March 25-28 World Horror Convention Brighton, UK whc2010.org March 26-28 Horrorhound Weekend Indianapolis, Indiana horrorhoundweekend.com April 9-11 Monsterpalooza Burbank, California rubberroom101.com/monsterpalooza2010 April 9-11 Cinema Wasteland Strongsville, Ohio cinemawasteland.com April 16-18 Chiller Theatre Parsippany, New Jersey chillertheatre.com April 24-25 calgary comic & entertainment expo Calgary, Alberta calgaryexpo.com April 28-May 3 HauntCon (Tradeshow for haunted attraction and Halloween industries) Kissimmee, Florida hauntcon.com April 30-May 2 Texas Frightmare Weekend (Sponsored by Rue Morgue) Dallas, Texas texasfrightmareweekend.com May 21-23 Creation Entertainment’s Weekend of Horrors Los Angeles, California creationent.com June 4-6…

THE ECHO Starring Jesse Bradford, Amelia Warner and Kevin Durand Directed by Yam Laranas Written by Eric Bernt and Shintaro Shimosawa E1 Entertainment The flood of American remakes of Asian horror films has slowed to a trickle in recent years, and for good reason: most were inferior to the originals and failed to make as much money as their producers had hoped. Naturally, then, one approaches The Echo – an English-language redo of the 2004 Filipino movie Sigaw – with trepidation. Fortunately, while it is in some ways beholden to its Asian paternity, this version is strong enough not to get lost in translation. Jesse Bradford (Flags of Our Fathers) stars as Bobby, a young man just out of jail. He settles into his dead mother’s apartment where he soon…

Let’s ring in the new year with a sneak peek at Slime City Massacre, the sequel to cult classic Slime City (1988), a gooey gem of low-budget ’80s splatter I’ve championed several times before in these pages. It marks the cinematic comeback of director-turned-author Greg Lamberson, who made two more films – Undying Love (1991) and Naked Fear (1999) – before becoming disillusioned with the movie business and turning to the literary world. “By the time I finished Naked Fear, it was pretty clear that none of my low-budget films were going to lead to the career I wanted, so I switched gears and started writing novels,” Lamberson says. “Johnny Gruesome, Personal Demons and one of my 2010 books, The FrenzyWay, are all based on screenplays I wrote but never…

“Give me light, give me action…living on video” TRANS-X Music television may be dead, but the music video lives on. This delights me, since those three-minute advertorials were my window to an entire universe of strange, new music back in days before dial-up. Last year saw a particularly terrific onslaught of creepy clips, all viewable 24/7 on YouTube and Vimeo. Whether it was the death frenzy-driven resurgence of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” or the new video for MGMT’s electropop hit “Kids,” featuring a toddler utterly terrorized by a cavalcade of monsters – seriously, go watch it right now – there was no shortage of scary shorts in 2009. Above all, one particular group released an entire series of spectacularly spooky videos that seduced my dark soul: Sweden’s Fever Ray. The solo…

GRAPHICS PLAYABILITY SHIVERS HIGHEST RATING IS THREE LEFT 4 DEAD 2 PC, Xbox 360 Valve Like having a cigarette after sex or cramming a Uwe Boll DVD down a trash compactor, blowing some slobbering zombie’s maggot-filled head off is just one of those little pleasures in life. The sequel to last year’s stellar slayfest Left 4 Dead follows in its predecessor’s gore-soaked footsteps by offering players a game where they don’t have to solve any puzzles, complete any lame side missions or get bogged down in any bullshit character development. There’s no illusion that you’ll be able to end the zombie pandemic or put a stop to the evil mastermind(s) behind it – you’re simply trying to stay the fuck alive! Game play is fast…