Table of contents for Issue 217 Mar/Apr 2024 in RUE MORGUE

Rue Morgue · 001 Rue Morgue #217 Intro If you’re inclined to read these editorials, you’ve likely learned quite a bit about Andrea Subissati by now: houseplant enthusiast, craft witch, proud mom to a spoiled Pomeranian, apologist, etc. Would it surprise you to know “arachnophobe” is on the list, even though I have not one but spider tattoos? It would seem contradictory for someone to so immortalize that which terrifies them, but let’s be real; if you’re reading this magazine, I needn’t explain that fear and fascination are easy bedfellows (or friends with benefits, at least). When it comes to spiders, I respect their game – as a fellow tiny creature who craves being feared, I admire their ability to strike terror in the hearts of beings who could easily…

The earliest iterations of video gaming can be traced back to the 1970s (Pong, anyone? How about Killer Shark?), but from arcades to bars to bus stations, that decade was the last to be unequivocally ruled by pinball. Hence, in 2024, theming a pinball machine after the biggest blockbuster hit of 1975 may seem like just another nostalgia trip, but according to Zach Sharpe – an internationally acclaimed pinball champ and now Marketing Director at Chicago-based Stern Pinball – the feeding frenzy has ebbed and flowed but never really stopped. So who’s playing these days? “It’s everyone,” he says without hesitation. “I’ve got a five-year-old, he plays; my mom’s 82, she still plays. If you can hit a start button and flippers, pinball is for everybody.” Admittedly, the trend of…

BUZZKILL 5:20 mins/YouTube via the Alter channel Brooklyn-based animator Peter Ahern begins this story with the familiar scenario of Becky and Rick (voiced by Kelly McCormack and Ahern himself, respectively) about to get cozy after hitting it off on their first date. Before they can get down to business though, Becky retreats to her bathroom and things escalate for both of them as chilling discoveries are made. Ahern packs a lot into Buzzkill’s five-minute run time, pulling influences from such varied titles as The Breakfast Club and Maniac. Even more impressive is that Ahern used the slowdown of the pandemic to finally get his project underway, meaning he had to wear many more hats than he originally intended. The comedy and gross-out factor work in tandem to provide a deliciously…

https://www.longcatmedia.com/mockery-manor MOCKERY MANOR THEME: Murder Mystery FORMAT: Audio Drama FREQUENCY: Monthly The 1980s, summer slashers, creepy theme parks, family mysteries – if that particular assortment of words makes you happy, then you need to know that the Mockery Manor podcast comprises all of these in its monthly episodes. A long-form fiction audio drama, its story takes place in the darkest depths of England in 1989 at an oddball theme park of the same name. In addition to the naturally creepy elements of the park (including the deeply unsettling Dreamland attraction, weirdo feline mascots, and secret tunnels that run underground), Mockery Manor also has a history of people disappearing – sometimes even turning up dead. Sent to the park to work and live onsite in a staff cabin, eighteen-year-old twins Bette…

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2357910/Home_Safety_Hotline/ HOME SAFETY HOTLINE PC Night Signal Entertainment Anyone who’s ever worked a call centre knows it’s dreadful enough to raise hairs. Home Safety Hotline, a cheeky point-and-click adventure from Night Signal Entertainment, pairs the horrors of wage slavery with strange home infestations and the result is an oddly heartwarming experience. The Windows 3-inspired interface sets the era in the mid-’90s, when the common citizen had yet to enjoy the convenience of googling such topics as “ant infestation” or “what to do when a tree is growing out of your teenager’s abdomen.” Instead, troubled homeowners call the Home Safety Hotline, where a faithful technician (you) awaits their call. The job is simple: listen to the problem and consult your list to determine the most likely culprit. With a quick click,…

HEY RODRIGO, KUDOS TO YOU and Rue Morgue’s horror empire. I’ve been a reader since 2005 and a repeat offender at the Festival of Fear for many years. I remember the year you brought George Romero and Dario Argento together on Toronto soil. Man, those were some good memories. Any chance of bringing the horror show back to Toronto? We sure could use it. TONY FEDERICO, VIA EMAIL Thanks Tony, you can join us every October just a short drive away in Niagara Falls for Frightmare in the Falls Horror Expo presented by Rue Morgue. Hope to see you! SALUTATIONS! IT’S BEEN A WHILE since I saw any new Rue Morgue merch around and, as a proud owner of several t-shirts from your 20th anniversary line, I expected there would…

WORLD’S GREATEST MAD MONSTER SERIES 2 (Figures Toy Company/Classic TV Toys, 2005) In the mid-1970s, famed toy company Mego Corporation released a set of four monsters – the Dreadful Dracula, the Monster Frankenstein, the Human Wolfman, and the Horrible Mummy – as part of its “Mad Monster Series” of articulated 8-inch figures with fabric clothing. Thirty years later, Rhode Island-based Figures Toy Company/Classic TV Toys reissued reproductions of the original four figures, along with a subsequent second wave of new characters in a set dubbed “Mad Monster Series 2.” The new offerings were comprised of the Grim Reaper, the Gruesome Ghost, the Salem Witch, and the Demonic Devil. Like their predecessors, the figures feature retro-designed clothing (the Gruesome Ghost is a standout with its fantastically creepy face, blue rooted hair,…

To an Australian, exposure to giant, deadly spiders is a part of everyday life. But that doesn’t mean native Aussies like Kiah Roache-Turner, whose alien-spider creature feature Sting hits theatres April 12, have to like it. “I’ve got intense arachnophobia,” admits Roache-Turner. “I’ve had a few times where you wake up in the morning and you draw back the curtains and there’s a Huntsman [spider, just inches] from your face. And it’s as big as your hand! And if you move near them, they move, and they move so quick… that’s not fun for somebody with arachnophobia.” But Roache-Turner has certainly had fun with Sting, spinning a yarn with the same heart and humour that permeated his 2014 breakout debut Wyrmwood and its 2021 sequel, Wyrmwood: Apocalypse. In the film,…

SATAN IN REAL TIME LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL Starring David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon and Ian Bliss Written and directed by Colin and Cameron Cairnes IFC Films/Shudder David Dastmalchian, who’s been all over the genre scene during the past year in supporting roles (The Last Voyage of the Demeter, The Boogeyman, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania), gets to take centre stage in Late Night With the Devil. And it provides him a hell of a showcase, casting him as talk-show host Jack Delroy, trying to drum up much-needed ratings with a 1977 Halloween-night episode that goes awry in both frightening and raucously entertaining ways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frvyaj1wtNA Australian writer/directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes nail all the American pop-culture details here, beginning with a perfectly pitched overview of Jack’s career. Things aren’t going…

REMEMBERING DAVID J. SKAL I’ve waxed on about the importance of preserving and studying horror fiction (and film) ad nauseum in these pages. While authors and filmmakers are the wizards who conjure up something magical that can transport us away from the tedium of life into worlds new and unexpected, scholars and historians are the everyday heroes who catalogue these creative journeys and help us understand their many varied nuances. On New Year’s Day, our genre lost David J. Skal – celebrated critic, historian, and leader in this realm – following a tragic vehicular collision involving a 23-year-old driver allegedly impaired by alcohol. Skal was 71. As a horror journalist, several of his books permanently grace my home library and have proven invaluable to my own genre scholarship, including 1996’s…

https://alanhowarth.com/product/retribution/ RETRIBUTION SOUNDTRACK Alan Howarth MYSTIC VAULT Guy Magar’s 1987 film Retribution may not place high in the annals of horror cinema, but it does include a solid synthpop score from Alan Howarth (They Live, Halloween III). The looping bassline of the theme brings Giorgio Moroder’s “Chase” from Midnight Express to mind, but with a hook that good, who cares? You can tell Howarth is having fun with the material, pounding away on the synths like a rock star. And you can forgive the rest of the score if it doesn’t match the jubilance of those other ones, although “The Gallery” comes a close second, with a love theme on electric piano that sounds like a David Foster cut. Howarth’s background working with John Carpenter (this hearkens from the same…

ISSUE #217 In 1478, George Plantagenet, the first Duke of Clarence, was executed by drowning in a barrel of wine; a death sentence he allegedly requested himself. Both 1986 slashers Slaughter High and Killer Party were originally called April Fool’s Day, but the films’ titles were changed once their makers learned of the Paramount Pictures release of the same name. In Chilean mythology, the Trauco were ugly, footless goblin-like creatures that lured women away with their sexual potency and were often blamed for unwanted pregnancies. Historians still cannot conclusively identify the cause of the Cocoliztli Epidemic, a disease that killed up to fifteen million indigenous Mexicans during the 1500s. The mask design of The Creature from the Black Lagoon (turning 70 this year) was based on a 17th-century woodcutting called…

1 RESIDENT EVIL FIRST AID DRINK COLLECTOR’S BOX $250 CAD She may be on the pricier side of your average Needful Thing, but there’s no denying that this collector’s box is pretty cool. Capcom has teamed up with Game Flavor to deliver a home mixology experience inspired by the iconic survival items from the Resident Evil game franchise. The box contains ten 330ml “first aid spray” cans of cucumber/lime/mint soda, four “ink ribbon cartridges” containing colourful herbs (hibiscus, matcha, turmeric, and aronia), and recipe cards for how to mix it all up into mocktails fit for a Nemesis. Gameflavor.com 2 REGAN MACNEIL GLOW IN THE DARK VINYL FIGURE $24 CAD Move over, Funko Pop! There’s a new collectible in town, packaged in stackable square boxes and bearing the likenesses of…

Rue Morgue · 002 Rue Morgue #217 Vermin The horrors of vermin are all too common for those of us who occupy major cities – whether it’s rats, mice, or cockroaches, they’re ubiquitous enough to be grudgingly accepted as the occasional, inevitable freeloader of a flatmate. But historically, the word was also used as a derogatory term for segments of the human population most likely to be afflicted by those pests: namely, the poor. For French filmmaker Sébastien Vaniček, who came of age in the segregated suburbs outside of Paris, that dual entendre provided inspiration for his cinematic – a strikingly original horror film where vermin of one sort are pitted against the other, even as the outside world sees them as one and the same. That film is ,…

Horror fans have it pretty good these days; we can watch movies anytime of the night or day (even on our phones while commuting to and from work), we can listen to newly released soundtracks on vinyl, collect action figures, meet our heroes at conventions, and completely immerse ourselves with the culture online. But long before smartphones, the internet, and even home video, one of the few ways people revisited their favourite fright flicks was by reading one of the many novelizations available on the racks of the local supermarket or drugstore. Typically released to coincide with a film’s debut to theatre and drive-in screens, these paperback (though occasionally also hardcover) adaptations were prized possessions for those who couldn’t wait to relive the thrills and chills of a particular movie.…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSsm_zLxe5o ITS FLEECE WAS RED AS BLOOD MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB Uncork’d Entertainment The new craze for 2024 is apparently horror movies centred around our most cherished childhood joints. Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and even Mickey Mouse circa Steamboat Willie are all getting their kill on as I write this, so it’s high time we featured nursery rhyme horror movies in this column! Based on the nursery rhyme of the same name, Mary Had a Little Lamb gets an update from the crew of a true-crime podcast after they get lost in the woods while investigating a spate of missing teens. Things get hairy when they find a house inhabited by an old lady and her disfigured son, who dons a lamb’s head to visit the truest crime upon…

“ABANDONED” NO MORE When Nacho Cerdá’s The Abandoned opened theatrically in the U.S. in November 2006 as part of the After Dark Horrorfest, it was one of the highlights of that eight-film showcase; so much so that it earned a stand-alone re-release by After Dark Films and Lionsgate the following February. Yet when the latter company brought the octet to DVD a little later in 2007, The Abandoned’s special-features package was distinctly lacking – just a making-of featurette, as opposed to the audio commentaries, deleted scenes, and other extras that graced the other Horrorfest titles. This spring, however, The Abandoned receives its hi-def disc due as Unearthed Films releases it on a fully loaded Blu-ray April 9. This edition will give horror buffs a new chance to appreciate Cerdá’s supernatural…

Cthulhu sucks. At least, that’s the opinion of a certain belligerent and anonymous phone caller to the Great Old One. Yes, even the Spawn of Yog-Sothoth gets trolled. And so begins A Call to Cthulhu, a humorous and irreverent look at the Lovecraftian mythos that is part comic, part children’s storybook, part poem, and completely absorbing. “I was in the middle of doing a 300-page graphic novel, and on the verge of losing my mind,” reveals writer/artist Norm Konyu. “I just needed something different to do for a while. I was tidying up my studio bookshelves and I came across my old Lovecraft paperbacks from when I was a teen, which I started thumbing through. Next to them on my shelf were my kids’ Dr. Seuss books which they no…

HEADLESS Grindhouse Press Scott Cole Judged by premise alone – people’s heads start exploding but they just keep on walking around, becoming increasingly violent – Headless probably shouldn’t work as well as it does. But author Scott Cole takes his wild idea and commits to it so fully in this short novel that the result is utterly gory and utterly compelling in equal measure. The tale begins with Linzy waiting for her partner Ron to return from the bar. A little lovin’ is just what she needs to cure this godawful headache, she thinks, so when Ron comes stumbling in late and doesn’t bother to turn on any lights, it doesn’t faze her, and she launches right into her seduction. It’s going well – apart from Ron being strangely silent…

THIS MONTH: THE IRREVERSIBLE IMPRINTS OF CREATURE FROM THE BLACK TATTOO A RUE MORGUE COLLECTIBLE Gareth Watson, also known as Creature from the Black Tattoo, specializes in horror portraits of the wearable, permanent sort. His tattoos are vivid, highly detailed, and realistic enough to make you think they’re ready to leap off the skin and wreak havoc. It’s that kind of immaculate artistry that makes this creature worth visiting. NAME Creature from the Black Tattoo HOMETOWN HAUNT “I’m originally from Hounslow in London but I grew up and now work in Peterborough in the UK.” WEAPON OF CHOICE “Being a tattoo artist, I would say my main choice is needles, however I love creating digital art on Photoshop too. As for explaining each method, I kind of just make it…