Table of contents for Issue 99 - April 2010 in RUE MORGUE

Tattoos, rogue taxidermy, surgical abominations and a gruesome burn victim – this issue of Rue Morgue is brought to you by the letters R and M and by the organ Skin. Headlining our unintentional epidermis theme, of course, is the last entry on that list, Freddy Krueger. I never watched an Elm Street movie as a kid, but I definitely knew who Freddy was; it was impossible not to, as he was seemingly everywhere in the late ’80s: TV, games, comic books, T-shirts, teens dressed up as him at Halloween and hung pictures of him in their lockers. In the US, he did MTV specials, and there was a call-in line where you could hear him tell you a scary story (with parental permission). The guy was even on lunch…

A California woman was recently found guilty of murder, after stabbing a fortune teller and her daughter repeatedly in their faces for failing to provide her with an effective love spell. The title of Robert Rodriguez’s 1996 film From Dusk Till Dawn was inspired by signage often posted at drive-ins, which stated that the night’s entertainment ran “from dusk till dawn.” A Staten Island woman stands accused of selling her dead eight-year-old child’s identification for $10,000. The $8 million Broadway musical adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie debuted in 1988 and promptly closed after just five shows, making it one of the biggest failures in Broadway history. Police investigating the death of a female patient following an abortion procedure uncovered no less than two dozen fetuses tucked away in a freezer…

IT’S A COMMON CONCEIT IN MOVIES THAT WHEN THE MAD SCIENTIST REVEALS HIS INSANE PLAN, THE PROTAGONISTS WILL DO ANYTHING TO ENSURE HE DOESN’T PREVAIL. But in The Human Centipede (First Sequence), the full implementation of the evil doctor’s diabolical scheme simply gets the party started. “When I wrote the script, I really wanted the crazy idea to happen,” explains Dutch filmmaker Tom Six, “because I knew the audience would think, ‘Hey, you’re never gonna show that! You’ll build up the tension but that’ll never happen!’” Before The Human Centipede lapses into irretrievable mentalness, however, it begins like many a horror film, with two mindless American girls (played by newcomers Ashley C. Williams and Ashlynn Yennie) stranded in some backwoods. (In this case, in Germany after blowing a tire on…

PAUL ACKER’S WORK IS A BIZARRE CIRCUS OF CANDY-COLOURED NIGHTMARES MADE FLESH – LITERALLY. The Philadelphia-based artist is enjoying a growing reputation as one of the best horror tattooists in the business, racking up dozens of awards at tattoo and horror conventions. Though his repertoire includes a wide range of styles and subjects, Acker specializes in realistic portrait work inspired by more than a century of macabre culture and entertainment. His portfolio is a rogues’ gallery of the most iconic creations in horror history; besides classic heavies such as Nosferatu, the Gill Man and Frankenstein’s monster, he’s inked practically every contemporary flesh-eater, bloodsucker and masked killer you care to name. The artist’s work recalls the legendary monster portraits of illustrator Basil Gogos, whom Acker cites as his childhood hero and…

This issue: Lance Fudges The numbers 2 DUMB 4 WORDS 5IVE GIRLS Momentum Pictures I hate movie titles that needlessly use numbers in place of letters. Though I can forgive David Fincher for Se7en, I draw the line at the likes of Thir13en Ghosts and and the new 5ive Girls. The latter is a forgettable tale about schoolgirls with magical powers who are sequestered in a dormitory run by a sadistic headmistress with an evil agenda. Although it got my attention with its sexy strip searches, spankings and naked bathtub wrestling, the babes’ battle with a demon known as Legion left me limp, as you never actually see the body-jumping beast (possession = a deep voice and dumb grin). Ron “Hellboy” Perlman enjoyably munches scenery as a creepy priest, but…

RAY OF THE DEAD DAY OF THE DEAD (1985) Starring Joe Pilato, Lori Cardille and Terry Alexander Written and directed by George A. Romero Arrow Video Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What better way to celebrate the 25th anniversary of George A. Romero’s grim, claustrophobic zombie masterpiece than with this two-disc restored version of Day of the Dead on Bluray? Although this release originates from the UK, the good news is that it’s region-free and should work in players the world over. Developed with the input of Cult Labs (cultlabs.com), a forum where fans can weigh in on the features of a film’s release, this latest edition is almost the quintessential version of the film, which sees a small group of survivors living in an underground military bunker after the global…

I don’t envy those horror writers who decide to tackle often-trod ground in their work. Sure, including nefarious and wildly popular creatures such as vampires or werewolves may generate a certain amount of interest in your story, but on the flip side, you also run the risk of being pigeonholed within a specific subgenre, driving some readers away. For example, take The Waking, a new four-issue limited series (out now from Zenescope) featuring the king of the undead, the zombie. Undoubtedly, images are already forming in your mind: deserted and ruined city streets, a small band of survivors, hordes of flesh-eating corpses shuffling about, calling out for fresh brains. And while some of you are salivating for your latest living dead fix, others are sighing, “Zombies? Oh, brother, not again…”…

HOW TO SPEAK ZOMBIE: A GUIDE FOR THE LIVING Steve Mockus Chronicle Most novelty books are one-joke wonders, and How to Speak Zombie is no different, only its joke is particularly good. Mimicking a children’s book in which buttons are pressed to play unique sounds for each page, HtSZ offers ten different zombie vocalizations, as well as some clever blurbs about undead life and appropriately drippy illustrations. “B” is for “Braaaaaaiiiiiinns,” and we guarantee you won’t be able to press that button just once! MONICA S. KUEBLER THE FRENZY WAY Gregory Lamberson Medallion If living in New York City wasn’t scary enough, imagine how bad it would be if it was teeming with bloodthirsty werewolves. That’s the premise behind this menacing new police procedural that’s absolutely thick with character development,…

BLU-RAY MAKES ME BLUE. As an obsessive-compulsive collector who amassed an excessive amount of VHS tapes, then an even more obscene number of DVDs, I am wary – and weary – of being rooked into buying the same damned films all over again. In my often absurd quest to have the ultimate home video version, I’ve even upgraded some titles several times within the same format, so I wasn’t particularly keen to go this route again. At some point, you have to say, “enough is enough!” Certainly the HD DVD/Blu-ray format war just two years ago did little to bolster my enthusiasm; the quick obsolescence of HD DVD scared my wallet shut. But with a hi-def TV not being properly utilized, the threat of irrelevance in these pages, and the…

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MY NAME IS SERGIO MOLINA and I’m Paul Naschy’s son. I've known for years about your wonderful magazine and want to thank you for the coverage you did on my father. He knew very well about Rue Morgue and I remember an interview you did with him for Rojo Sangre some years ago (RM#46). Thank you so much for your support. Keep in touch! SERGIO MOLINA – MADRID, SPAIN I HAVE TO SAY that even though February only has 28 days, it is the longest month of the year for me, having to wait for a new issue of Rue Morgue! From January 4 to March 4 is a long time. (I usually am done reading it cover to cover in a day or two.) I was beyond happy to…

youtube.com/watch?v=lweCOW4nwg0 Watch Freddy Krueger pimp snack food in this clever four-year-old Italian commercial that was allegedly banned for being “too scary for children.” And, if you’ve ever wondered how Freddy (not played here by Robert Englund) eats, well, it answers that question, too – hilariously. supernaturalfiction.co.uk R.B. Russell’s ever-expanding Guide to Supernatural Fiction offers bios and bibliographies for more than 360 genre authors and editors. While the website seems to somewhat favour classic horror scribes of yesteryear, there is an undeniable wealth of information collected here. Recommended for bibliophiles and more casual fans alike. igloooftheuncanny.blogspot.com Horror movie blogs are a dime a dozen these days, but The Igloo Keeper serves up a novel premise: he’s trapped in an igloo, surrounded by a forcefield, with only an old TV to keep…

1 NEW NIGHTMARE GLOVE $675 No time to slave away at your workbench in the boiler room? Then let the craftspeople at Nightmare Gloves fashion you a custom Freddy Krueger mitt. This authentic reproduction from A New Nightmare isn’t a toy; fully wearable, the handmade replica features “simulated muscle and bone” and machined stainless steel blades. Get fitted for fear at nightmaregloves.com. 2 DETHKLOK FOUNTAIN $40,000 Fan of Metalocalypse? Front lawn sadly bereft of satanic cherubs pissing blood? Forty grand burning a hole in your pocket? Then what you need is a genuine marble replica Dethklok fountain (artist rendition pictured above), 66 inches high with a 96-inch base. “Conversation piece” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Put the mental in “ornamental” at adultswimshop.com. 3 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES JOURNAL…

AS OF THIS WRITING, THE JURY’S STILL OUT ON WHETHER OR NOT THE REMAKE OF A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET will make genre fans flip their fedoras, but one thing’s for sure: it’ll look great. That’s because it’s yet another iconic American horror movie remake helmed by an accomplished music video director. There’s already been Marcus Nispel’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th, Dave Meyer’s The Hitcher and Andrew Douglas’ The Amityville Horror to name some of the big ones. And if these particular films seem to have a similar style – saturated colours (heavy on the blue), ambitious set design and plenty of grime – it’s probably because all of them are produced by blockbuster filmmaker Michael Bay (Bad Boys, Armageddon, Transformers). To round out the biggest…

I'VE BEEN ELBOW DEEP IN THE BLOOD, BILE AND FECES OF OVER 100 DIFFERENT SPECIES OF ANIMALS, INCLUDING HUMAN… …THIS IS MY STORY. I HAVE HAD MANY PROFESSIONS THROUGHOUT THE YEARS… FARMER, SIDESHOW FREAK, PROFESSIONAL WRESTLER, EVEN UNIVERSITY PHYSICS PROFESSOR. Since 2003, however, I have been taking dead animals and sewing them together to create new dead animals that never existed in the first place. I call it “fixing god’s mistakes.” I’ve made alligator boys, two-headed goats, pygmy mummies, griffins, mermaids, shrunken heads, monkey boys, and even a sasquatch, for travelling freakshows, museums and private collectors around the world. My story begins on a farm in the middle of nowhere, where I grew up. The killing and butchering of an animal for the family to eat was a common occurrence…

WE’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER MAGNIFYING GLASS THEM! (1954) Starring James Arness, Edmund Gwenn and Joan Weldon Directed by Gordon Douglas Written by Ted Sherdeman, Russell S. Hughes and George Worthing Yates Warner Brothers A shell-shocked young girl wandering the New Mexico desert, the twisted remains of a trailer, an eerie droning noise and a biblical pronouncement: these are the stark, foreboding elements that set up the harrowing first reel of the pre-eminent giant bug movie of the 1950s. Them! introduced audiences to more than deadly, nuclear-mutated eight-foot ants. It also laid the groundwork for the evolution of the giant monster subgenre for the next decade. Unlike Warner Brothers’ creature feature hit from the previous year, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the studio’s follow-up largely steered clear of the sympathetic…

SATIRIST CHRISTOPHER MOORE WAS SPOOFING VAMPIRES LONG BEFORE THE TWILIGHT FILMS UNINTENTIONALLY TURNED MAKING FUN OF THE ROMANTIC UNDEAD INTO THE LATEST COMEDY TREND. In fact, he began his popular vampire trilogy back in 1995 with Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, a hilarious tale of involuntary vampirism that has horror firmly rooted in its weird heart. He returned to the trilogy in 2007 with You Suck, and now again with Bite Me, the final installment, which sheds more blood (and fur!) than the previous two entries combined. Surprisingly, writing comedy was not the first choice for Moore. “I started off thinking I would write horror stories,” admits the 53-year-old author, whose influences range from Richard Matheson and Robert Bloch to Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins and Douglas Adams. “I took my…

SOUNDTRACK THE ENTITY Charles Bernstein INTRADA SPECIAL COLLECTION Charles Bernstein’s big break came with the 1981 release of this brutal tale of a mother repeatedly raped by malevolent spirits. His composition is comprised of three components – impassioned, humanistic music for the heroine, a stalking motif and the rape music – and part of the film’s continuing ability to terrify lies in this roughly half hour-long score. Each track is derived from one theme, but Bernstein plays with specific shades, such as the orchestral lament in “Carla” (woodwinds and tragic strings) and eerie, undulating, high-pitched synth chords that precede the supernatural assaults. In “Bath/Attack,” Bernstein switches to a compression of bass hits and rippling sounds that collectively mimic the mechanical thrusts of an entity never seen in the film. Both…

GRAPHICS1 PLAYABILITYF SHIVERS CALLING Hudson Wii Your cellphone is ringing but I wouldn’t answer it if I were you, because the person on the other end isn’t a person at all. It’s a ghost, and it’s coming to get you! Available exclusively for Wii, Calling begins with a back story about a website called The Black Page, which lures people into a chat room where they get sucked into The Mnemonic Abyss, a frightening realm that lies between our world and the afterlife. Armed with only a flashlight and a cellphone, players choose one of four characters and attempt to escape the Abyss by moving through its dark backdrop of dilapidated houses, hospitals and schools. The characters: Rin, a sexy college student desperately looking for…

FORGERIES ON THE RISE IN VINTAGE HORROR MOVIE POSTER MARKET If you’ve decided to dive into the high-end market for vintage monster movie posters, beware: that creature feature one-sheet you just laid down thousands for may be a doppelgänger. Recently, the New York office of the FBI opened an investigation into the production and sale of fake movie posters. It seems increasingly crooks are taking advantage of restoration companies to create knock-offs of posters and lobby cards that only experts can tell from the real thing. “Horror movie posters have always enjoyed a special place in the hearts of movie poster collectors,” says Diane Jeffrey, president and CEO of Vista, California poster restoration company Studio Conservation Inc. “[Universal’s posters] still remain the holy grail of poster collecting.” Jeffrey herself landed…

Freddy is vicious, but he has a sense of humour. He has a humanity to him. … In Western slang, you have a guy in a white hat and a guy in a black hat, one’s the good guy, the other’s the bad guy. We have to be aware that within the purest hero is the potential to be a real villain and within any villain there is the capacity for, or even elements of, humour, tenderness, vulnerability and love.– WES CRAVEN, IN AN INTERVIEW FROM THE BOOK SCREAMS AND NIGHTMARES IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE THAT ANYONE COULD APPLY SUCH DEEP THINKING TO FREDDY KRUEGER, the pop culture icon that today is recognized as one of mainstream horror’s goofiest characters. However, there was actually a time when Freddy was a…

TWENTY-SIX YEARS AFTER FREDDY KRUEGER first entered the collective consciousness of North American moviegoers, a new documentary is paying homage to one of horrordom’s most popular and enduring franchises. Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (coming to DVD this spring) is being touted as the most comprehensive retrospective on the Nightmare on Elm Street series to date, featuring more than 100 interviews with the cast and crew of from all eight original Nightmare films (including Freddy vs. Jason), coverage of the late-’80s Elm Street TV series and the inclusion of rare behind-the-scenes footage, storyboards, publicity and archival material. “We officially started this project last August,” says the program’s co-director and producer, Daniel Farrands, who also directed and co-produced the 2009 documentary His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday…

TAXIDERMIA Starring Csaba Czene, Gergely Trócsányi and Marc Bischoff Directed by György Pálfi Written by György Pálfi and Zsófia Ruttkay E1 Best Film You Didn’t See in 2009, that’s what this venerable publication called Taxidermia. Having just watched it a second time, I can see why: it’s got miles of style and a matter-of-fact rococo wit, if that makes any sense. I think it might even out-Cronenberg Cronenberg and that’s saying a hell of a lot. Based on the stories of a Hungarian writer you’ve never heard of (his name is Lajos Parti Nagy), Taxidermia anatomizes three generations of Hungarian men linked by some pretty bizarre hereditary fetishes. The first concerns Morosgovanyi, a post-WWII army orderly wiling his time away by putting his penis in anything that vaguely resembles female…

SHEEP IN WOLF’S CLOTHING THE WOLFMAN Starring Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt and Anthony Hopkins Directed by Joe Johnston Written by Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self Universal Horror fans howled in frustration when Joe Johnston’s remake of the 1941 Universal horror classic The Wolf Man was conspicuously bumped from prime haunting time in October to February’s box office graveyard. And though it’s not the total disaster one might expect, the well-publicized production troubles clearly took their toll. Stripped of emotional resonance and light on logic, The Wolfman is not in the same league as Coppola’s accomplished Dracula, but it’s still a handsome effort that’s claws above the popcorn spectacle of The Mummy (1999) and Van Helsing (2004). What brings The Wolfman back from the brink is its expert production…

CABIN FEVER 2: SPRING FEVER Starring Noah Segan, Giuseppe Andrews and Marc Senter Directed by Ti West Written by Joshua Malkin, Randy Pearlstein and Ti West Lionsgate Last year was a big one for director Ti West, who broke out as a genre star with his chilling ’80s throwback The House of the Devil. Unfortunately, his 2010 follow-up is the delayed release Cabin Fever 2, which he has already publicly disowned because it was taken away from him during post-production. The final product’s borderline incomprehensible, patchwork quality reeks of studio interference, and though there are enough scenes to suggest that West made a damn entertaining sequel before the producers took out their scissors, that’s not enough to make this butchered edition worthwhile. Cabin Fever 2 opens with Rider Strong (the…

EVEN THE MOST ARDENT STEPHEN KING FAN will attest that films based on his writing are a woefully inconsistent lot. Naturally, when the work of a single author is helmed by dozens of directors of (*ahem*) varying levels of talent and wildly divergent styles and philosophies, it’s bound to be a crapshoot. But even with that in mind, King on film is a tough call, as the man himself will testify. We could all name a litany of dismal failures by best-forgotten hacks, but in fairness, even members of horror’s royalty are more miss than hit with King’s material. David Cronenberg and George A. Romero had only lukewarm results with The Dead Zone and The Dark Half, respectively, largely because the novels in question were ill-suited to the filmmakers’ strengths.…

AMERICAN ZOMBIE GOTHIC: THE RISE AND FALL (AND RISE) OF THE WALKING DEAD IN POPULAR CULTURE Kyle William Bishop MxFarland Over the past few years zombie fans have had no shortage of non-fiction to satiate their hunger for the walking dead, leaving little fresh meat on the cadaver of one of horror’s most popular subgenres. So kudos are rightfully in order for Kyle William Bishop’s American Zombie Gothic, which manages to unearth some interesting new perspectives on the shambling hordes. Bishop begins his book by pointing out that the walking dead are a relatively new addition to horror. While vampires and werewolves have centuries of mythology spanning continents behind them, zombies have links to only one culture: the Haitians and their voodoo religion. From there, he leads the reader through…

I’M STANDING BEFORE A SET OF BLACK IRON GATES, LOOKING UP AT A ROW OF CONCRETE SKULLS. The gates and skulls are smaller than their Mexican counterparts, but I’m delighted to see them here in Detroit, Michigan, nonetheless. The original gates stand outside the Panteón Municipal Santa Paula, a cemetery in Guanajuato, Mexico famous for its “accidental mummies,” while these replicas guard the entrance to an unusual touring exhibit, currently housed at the Detroit Science Center. In Detroit, as in Guanajuato, the skulls promise a thrillingly morbid experience for all who dare enter. The Panteón Municipal in Guanajuato is strikingly vibrant for a cemetery. The graves are so close together that they almost overlap. To accommodate more corpses, the walls of the cemetery are lined with crypts stacked seven high.…

“Welcome to my nightmare” ALICE COOPER Any movie monster can have his own collectible figurine, but it’s a small gang who have their own, immediately recognizable theme song. If Freddy Krueger has endured as an icon of horror cinema, part of that legacy is thanks to the creepy music playing when most of us first met him in 1984’s original A Nightmare on Elm Street. That sinister synth theme was written by veteran composer Charles Bernstein (The Entity, Love at First Bite, Cujo), who recently took a moment out of his Oscar weekend to describe how his score was born. When Bernstein first met with director Wes Craven to talk about his upcoming film, he recalls, “It looked like one of those little pictures that might not do too well.…

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