Table of contents for Issue 79 June 2008 in RUE MORGUE

+ ACharles Town, West Virginia woman made a grisly discovery while cleaning out her late mother’s home: the dead body of another woman, wrapped in plastic and blankets, and hidden in a bedroom closet. + Mary Shelley’s father, William Godwin, was also a writer; he penned a three-volume novel titled Things as They Are or The Adventures of Caleb Williams, a thriller which is considered by many to be one of the first mystery novels. + The Tower of London still includes ravens among its residents, as an old superstition suggests that should the birds depart, Britain’s monarchy will collapse. + In Thomas Edison’s 1910 silent film Frankenstein, the monster is created in an oven. + A Spanish man recently tried to evade capture after breaking into a funeral home…

THE MACHINE GIRL Starring Asami, Honoka and Yûya Ishikawa Written and directed by Noboru Iguchi Media Blasters If The Machine Girl proves anything, it’s that the Japanese need to have their blood pressure checked – because the stuff pumps out of people in the movie like a 100psi power-sprayer with a high-pressure stream regulator. The newest entry in the more comical wave of youth violence films from Japan follows Ami (Minase Yasharo), an exceptional student and responsible sister, through a revengespolitation saga of gruesomely heroic exploits that delivers on everything its trailer promised (Yakuza! Ninjas! Tempura! Sushi! Chainsaws! Flying Guillotine! Drill Bra! Revenge!) and more. When her younger brother Yu (Ryôsuke Kawamura) and his friend Takashi are killed by the bullying children of a prominent Yakuza family (of ninjas!), Ami…

For many Western audiences, the shrill singing and choreographed dance numbers that often define the cinema of Bollywood – and Lollywood, its Pakistani equivalent – have painted the region as a suitably “exotic” setting far removed from the rest of the world. In order to close this ever-widening cultural gap, one director has turned to the distinctive and universal language of horror cinema, with its deadly weapons, screaming victims and uncompromising bloodshed. Hitting DVD this July from TLA Releasing, director Omar Ali Khan’s debut feature Hell’s Ground (or Zibahkhana – an Urdu term that literally translates to “slaughterhouse”) is a fascinating and gory Pakistani fright feature that rejects over-stylized South Asian film gloss for a grittier, more tactile, vision of the country. “Sadly, many of our films depict life in…

They penned litanies to Satan and revelled in tales of necrophilia and cultural decay. They attacked respectable society with their excesses and amorality, and when critics condemned their writings as “decadent,” this band of authors took up the insult like a banner, transforming their individual blasphemies into a fully realized literary movement. Though the names of Decadence’s key contributors – Charles Baudelaire, Victor Hugo and Oscar Wilde, to name a few – are familiar to those with a knowledge of 19th-century literature, the movement itself remains relatively obscure. Spawned in France at the twilight of the 19th century (its peak was from 1887 to 1900), Decadence was a literary attack on Europe’s lofty faith in human progress and civility. Fuelled by books such as The Decline and Fall of the…

HEED YOUR MEXICAN CABBIE! THE RUINS Starring Jonathan Tucker, Jena Malone and Shawn Ashmore Directed by Carter Smith Written by Scott Smith DreamWorks “Four Americans on vacation don’t just disappear!” Memo to Jeff, our pretty boy hero: actually, they do, especially in Mexico. They might not usually get attacked by cannibalistic plants, shot by superstitious peasants or left for dead at the bottom of wells, but there are enough travel advisories out there to know that when a taxi driver doesn’t want to drive you somewhere, maybe it’s a sign you should just spend another day at the swim-up bar. Of course, then we wouldn’t have The Ruins, the latest entry in an unwelcome subgenre that’s growing like bad weeds: hot young travellers in peril. Lucky for this one, it’s…

LOVE AND LUNACY SCHIZO (1976) Starring Lynne Frederick, Stephanie Beacham and Jack Watson Directed by Pete Walker Written by David McGillivray and Murray Smith Redemption This first-class slice of British sleaze caused an uproar in the mental health community when it was originally released with the clever but controversial tagline, “Schizophrenia: When the left hand doesn’t know who the right hand is killing!” It stars the beautiful and bouncy-bottomed Lynne Frederick (Vampire Circus) as socialite and figure-skating champion Samantha, whose wedding celebrations are dampened by a complicated domestic situation. You see, she’s in love with her husband Alan, but Alan wants to bang her best friend Beth (Stephanie Beacham from Dracula A.D. 1972), however Beth has the hots for Samantha’s psychiatrist, who, in turn, wants to bone Samantha herself. And…

Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema Jay McRoy Rodopi Cultural angst begets trends in dark art, and as Jay McRoy’s scholarly Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema makes clear, there are plenty of compelling, sometimes traumatic, reasons that the country boasts such a vibrant, original and often shocking canon of genre films. The author begins his 200-page academic exploration with an introduction that sets up the following six chapters, including a lay of the historical and political landscape that fostered traditions such as supernatural kwaidan tales and the post-war giant monster movies. The book’s major topics, however, include torture/gore films (e.g. the Guinea Pig series, Flowers of Flesh and Blood); other forms of body horror (including a comparison of Hisayasu Sato’s Muscle with Pier Pasolini’s Salò); J-horror ghosties; the often…

I celandic ghosts kick ass… literally. Far from being the wispy, incorporeal spectres that North Americans envision, the spirits of dead Icelanders are believed to return from the grave with their bodies intact, often with a malevolent or evil bent driving them to acts of mischief and even murder. Rather than dragging around chains and screaming “boo!” at the hapless, they fight, wrestle, sit on and pummel their victims into submission, leaving them bruised, frightened and sometimes dead. Some believe that destroying the corpse entirely is the only way to drive these poltergeists away permanently. And many do believe. In Iceland, ghosts, trolls and “hidden people” (these include gnomes, dwarves and elves) are considered everyday Icelandic citizens. In fact, elements of the supernatural can be found in both the Eddas…

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IN THE REVIEW for Wrestlemaniac (RM#78) Joseph O’Brien calls wrestling a sport for guys in trucker caps and Nascar shirts listening to Toby Keith. I feel as both a wrestling and horror fan I should set Mr. O’Brien straight. I do not like Nascar or country music. I watch Argento films and listen to The Misfits. I do not, however, like to read allegations of homosexuality in a review because I like wrestling. What Mr. O’Brien needs to realize is wrestling is not what it once was and not to judge what he doesn’t know a damn thing about. I thought this was a magazine that encouraged individuality and being different but I see I was wrong. Just like everything else, you draw lines of what’s cool and what’s not,…

SPIDERWALK REGAN $14.99 T’is an excellent day for an exorcism with this sculpture of the famous “spider walk” scene from the director’s cut of The Exorcist. The young Miss MacNeil comes with multiple moveable joints, including her neck, so if this one doesn’t make your head spin, we don’t know what will. Possess Regan at necaonline.com INSECT LAB $250-$1000 Seemingly inspired by Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos, Mike Libby brings together the intricacy of clockwork and the fragility of insect bodies in these tiny, delicate sculptures made from real (albeit dead) insects and arachnids. Each biomechanical critter can be displayed in either a black shadow box or classic bell jar, and is signed by the artist. Viddy these clockwork buggywugs, o’ my brothers, at insectlabstudio.com COFFIN BATH MAT $13.99 Bashing your…

Thought The Machine Girl was nuts? Hold on to your Battle Royale hat, kids, because Tokyo Gore Police is going to make your freakin’ head spin. If you have yet to see the trailer (posted on YouTube), you might want to do so before you read on because TGP is balls-deep, head-through-the windshield, “What the fuck is going on?” kinky derangement like only the Japanese can deliver – it’s destined for cult status. TGP has about as much Asian cult street cred as a movie can have. It’s produced by the people that brought you The Machine Girl (Fever Dreams), written by Kengo Kaji (who co-wrote the weird masterpiece Uzumaki), starring Audition‘s Eihi Shiina, with fight choreography by Tak Sakaguchi (the inimitably sexy and kick-ass Prisoner KSC2-303 from Versus). Add…

Don’t look for any Best Foreign Film Oscar winners on Mondo Macabro’s slate. The DVD company spawned by British genre enthusiasts Pete Tombs and Andy Starke is dedicated to unleashing the most bizarre films from around the world, but critical prestige is not a deciding factor in what makes a movie Mondo Macabro-worthy. Insanity, however, is. “I guess most of the people behind most of the movies we’ve put out have been a little bit crazy and a little bit obsessive,” says Tombs. “We generally tend to avoid ‘career’ moviemakers. You know, the kind of folks who go into the industry with a ten-year plan to get to the top. Most of the movies we love come from people who in one way or another were crazed visionaries. Even if…

OVERLOOKED, FORGOTTEN AND DISMISSED THIS ISSUE: LANCE CAVORTS WITH CORPSES SQUEAL LIKE AN UNDEAD PIG! ZOMBIE FARM BLB Media C’mon, with a title like Zombie Farm you just know it’s gonna be good! The latest entry into the ever-growing slew of low-budget zombie-comedies follows two FBI agents and a group of college kids who arrive in the California town of Muerto Verde just after Taliban terrorists have poisoned the water supply and turned the local populace into flesh-munching stiffs. This wildly entertaining film never takes itself too seriously and is loaded with buckets of gore and more rotters than you can shake a chainsaw at, including a hilarious zombified kids’ football team that decides to take a bite out of the competition. Try watching it with the “audience reaction” feature…

THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DOCTOR SADISM (1967) Starring Christopher Lee, Lex Barker and Karin Dor Directed by Harald Reinl Written by Manfred R. Köhler DEATH SMILES ON A MURDERER (1973) Starring Klaus Kinski, Ewa Aulin and Angela Bo Directed by Aristide Massaccesi Written by Claudio Bernabei, Joe D’Amato and Romano Scandariato Legend House He may be known as “The Rasputin of Rockabilly,” but Johnny Legend has dabbled in much more than just rock ’n’ roll. From wrestling promoter to sexploitation and horror film actor, producer and director (the 1987 documentary Mondo Lugosi), Johnny has been around the block. Now, through his DVD label “Legend House,” he’s become a film distributor. The first feature on this double DVD bill, The Torture Chamber of Doctor Sadism, is a German take on the…

If we’ve all been betrayed by our bodies at some point, Stef Lenk has arguably been traumatized by hers. Deceptively sedate in its title, the Toronto artist’s twelve-issue miniseries The Details chronicles the Expressionist exploits of an unnamed little girl. Each chapter finds her in a different location, lost but never panicking – in fact, more often than not, motivated to round dark corners out of mere curiosity. The character is clearly inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. But what’s less obvious is that every chapter stands as an independent analogy for an individual system of the human body: a pretty scary place, it seems. Consider the locations of the first four issues: a carnival (pictured), a dressmaker’s boutique, a backyard garden, an antique shop. These represent circulation (consider…

FILTH KISS C.J. Lines Hadesgate Two brothers return to their childhood home on the English countryside for their father’s funeral, only to discover that his death is part of an ancient prophecy of devil worship and virgin sacrifice. Lines’ writing style grips readers from the very first page and absolutely seethes with intense, visceral gore and morbid sexuality that will have you squirming in your seat. Last Chance Lance DAEMON Harry Shannon Delirium A tough, squinty-eyed Black Ops specialist comes out of retirement for light duty only to face the demon he unknowingly foiled during a bloody mission into Iraq. Now the ghoul won’t stop until he’s dead. It jumps from corpse to corpse, eating its way to the finish – much like you will with this simple but…

Horror is arguably the one cinematic genre that is a truly level playing field. The delineation between the mainstream and the underground has become increasingly blurred since the Blair Witch Project phenomenon. The differences between films like Captivity and Scrapbook, or Hostel and Devil’s Experiment, or Cloverfield and August Underground are minimal when you get right down to it. But as much as a grubby underground aesthetic has come to influence traditional theatrical fare, heretofore unimaginable gloss and polish have come to self-financed films, thanks to affordable, high-quality cameras and powerful editing software. For as little as a couple thousand bucks, anyone with enough vision and talent can make a film that will look and sound as good as any you will see. AMICUS MORTIS Starring Gerard van Kempen, Frank…

Lonesome Wyatt is doomed, just ask him. “My core is rotten,” says the frontman for Madison, Wisconsin’s Those Poor Bastards. “I just look at the darkness as more of a realistic view of the world.” Those Poor Bastards, along with a handful of similarly styled groups such as Sons of Perdition and The Old Scratch Revival Singers, has helped resurrect a slice of America long shovelled under – the country and blues music of the 1920s and ’30s – albeit with a more sinister aesthetic. The band’s recently released fourth album, The Plague, finds Wyatt and his co-conspirator, known only as The Minister, staging a hillbilly exorcism that would surely cause rabid coyotes to head for the hills. Grinding shavings of Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Johnny Cash and, strangely, Marilyn…

Following Masters of Horror’s resurrection of the TV anthology format, France embarks on its own series, utilizing genre talent from around the world. Terror Project 6 is a French-language anthology of six short zombie-themed films from six different directors hailing from France, Belgium, Switzerland and Québec, Canada. “The series is comprised of six distinct stories that go surfing on every subgenre: horror, gore, trash, black comedy, science fiction and terror,” explains co-producer Michael Abbate, adding, “In each of them, there’s some comedy.” Episodes include “Lorie the Bacteria Slayer” (directed by François Simard, Québec) about a strange virus that eats its victims from the inside; “Chef’s Specialty” (Grégory Sacré, France), in which a man shackled inside a cold storage locker discovers that he’s that evening’s main course; “Dead Alive” (Julio Mendez,…

In 1990, Troll 2 was just another inept low-budget horror movie, but nearly two decades later it’s being celebrated by cult cineastes through revival screenings across North America, including the largest to date: this month’s Nilbog Invasion festival. “Nilbog Invasion is not only the ultimate off-the-rails interactive Troll 2 fan event, but a gargantuan movies/filmmaking/eating/mayhem-fuelled celebration of inept horror filmmaking throughout the universe!” says festival organizer Zack Carlson. Co-presented by the T2 website Best Worst Movie and the famed Alamo Drafthouse’s Alamo Rolling Roadshow, the Nilbog Invasion (named after the fictional town in the film – that’s “goblin” spelled backwards), is a three-day celebration (June 27 to 29) of all things Troll 2. It will feature every major cast member and the film’s writer and director, Claudio Fragasso. Morgan, Utah…

For Japanese youth, life is cheap. In 1997, a fourteen-year-old boy cut off the head of an eleven-year-old, stuffed a note in the mouth and left it at the gate of his school. In 2003, a fourteen-year-old sexually mutilated a four-year-old before pushing the child off the roof of a parking garage; earlier that year in the same town, another boy was killed by bullies. In 2004, an eleven-year-old walked into her school lunchroom, dripping with blood after killing a classmate with a box-cutter because the girl called her names on the internet. In 2006, police discovered a van of mostly teenagers and twentysomethings who had met online and committed group suicide by poison. Last year, a seventeen-year-old walked into his local police station with his mother’s severed head in…

UNCONSCIOUSLY UNCANNY SECRETS OF A SOUL (1926) Starring Werner Krauss, Ruth Weyher and Pavel Pavlo Directed by G. W. Pabst Written by Karl Abraham, Hans Neumann, Colin Ross, et al. Kino Six years after portraying the mad Dr. Caligari in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Werner Krauss returns to the realm of collective and individual nightmares in G. W. Pabst’s Secrets of a Soul. Unlike Robert Wiene, whose Caligari portrayed the malaise of a post-WWI Germany (twomillion German soldiers died in WWI between 1914-1918) through the tortured nightmares of the insane, Pabst took a “new realist” approach – his film was not simply about portraying collective nightmares, but also showing how to cure them. Krauss plays Martin Fellman, a tormented man obsessed with a desire to murder his wife…

RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION Soundtrack Charlie Clouser LAKESHORE For his first Resident Evil flick, Charlie Clouser wisely built his lengthy score on the hard guitar and metallic sonics erected by Marilyn Manson and Marco Beltrami. For this sequel he integrates his own riff on the duo’s sadistic child’s rhyme into a satisfying and cohesive narrative of percussive cuts, thrashing metallic rage and moody ambient pauses. It’s a good balance of action, suspense and quiet lamentation, but the real surprise is Clouser’s periodic, subtle evocations of a vintage John Carpenter/Alan Howarth score. The bass tones are long and soothing, the simple harmonics nail that fearful sense of being displaced from civilized behaviour, and Clouser’s grander musical scope depicts varying levels of mortal threat, making Extinction a perfect B-level gore score. It eclipses…

GRAPHICS: PLAYABILITY SHIVERS: HORRORCLIX: NIGHTMARES AND FREDDY VS JASON Miniature RPG Wizkids Inc. Garden gnomes clutching bloody shears, a giant purple dinosaur wielding a chainsaw, slobbering zombie reindeer, Sasquatch and a 50-foot-tall ex-girlfriend out for revenge: these are just a few of the 60 scary new figures set to swell the ranks of the popular HorrorClix gaming line. For those unfamiliar with HorrorClix, it’s a collectible miniature game where players put together teams of monsters in scenario-based action to battle each other while either protecting or eating innocent victims. Each of Nightmares’ pre-painted figures comes on a unique “combat dial” base which lists each creature’s powers and abilities. Character cards detail their histories and gruesome capabilities; for example, the Zombie Chambermaid can use her deadly duster to…

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