FROM THE DIRECTOR OF

AND THE PROOyCER.OF, HyUll

AND .UPj^RUDGE

^IRECTi

rcL-n i;[i- -ion:

Soincihing given
fi or demanded in re])a\nieni

^ especially punishment.^

FEATURES INCLUDE FILMMAKERS Q

AND TWO ALTERNATE ENDINGSt .

TAKE POSSESSION

APRIL 15
[some violent content —DOLBY
m
m
“diGiTAT!
'
‘
www.lionsgatedvd.c^-A^;.^g
LIONSGATE
Inyseilgf]
-

Program Content: O 2006 Sakebi Film PartnersJtli Rights Reserved, 'scarce: American Herjtage^^naiy.$'l
 -

Winner of the**
BEST FEATURE Award
at the New YorR^pit y
Horror Film Fefufat

“A SPOOKY ghost story....

the picture delivers.”
-CreatureCorner.com

starring
Kristin Cavallari
Leah Pipes
Josh Henderson
Lou Diamond Phillips

Special Features
“Making of” Featurette
“Scariest Moments" Interviews
Director Commentary
Original Theatrical Trailer
English Subtitles for the Hearing-Impaired
and Spanish Subtitles

NOW AVAILABLE ON
gyp
VIDEO

n this terrifying supernatural thriller, a troubled teenager sets out on

a grisly path to discover the disturbing truth behind a well-known
urban legend. Haunted for fifty years by the horrifying tale of a train
colliding with a school bus, killing all the children aboard, the small town
Violence, Language, Some
and Drug/Alcohol Content
All Involving Teens
Sexuality
gmMMK
left behind continues to suffer as a stomach-churning chain of murders
claims victim after victim.
Supplemental Materials Not Rated image
2006 Fmqerpririls Productions. LLC All Rights Reserved Art and Design " - 2008 Image Enterlainirient. inc. Wl Rights Reserved. www.image-entertainment.com
 • Rjco. Behind the Mask" featurette •
"Music & T^ie Sounds" featurette
•
"The Beat Down” featurette* Special Makeup and effects featurette

A iiniup of ixipular high scluxil Miidents stumhlc inlu the path of a vicious killer. The gruesome result leaves the town in horror, as two tietcclises work to crack the i

.Suspicions mount as the school recluse is seen wamicring around in the dead of night and the remaining surs ivors fear the worst: a knock that no lock can withstand.

LIONSGATE- Piograin Content <!' 2006 Anota Ptoduclions, LLC All Rigtits Reset 'Subiect 10 change www.iionsgatelink.com teci I
OI4ftAt6D ~|
cnpD
 'error m

f T

THE LAST INTERVIEW WITH VAMPIRA NOTE FROM UNDERGROUND 6

Just prior to her passing earlier this year. Rue Morgue was fortunate Vampira's funeral.
enough to have the final conversation with Maila “Vampira'' Nurmi,
POST-MORTEM 7
the first horror host and glamour ghoul.
world 's

Letters from fans, readers and weirdos.

Plus:Her long-time friend Dana Gould paints an intimate portrait of
Nurmi from her halcyon years to her golden years, a look at the new DREADLINES 8
Vampira documentaiy, as well as her last feature film appearance in News highlights, honor happenings.
the Ed Wood-penned / Woke Up Early the Day I Died.
by Dave Alexander, Dana Gould and Paul Corupe THE CORONER’S REPORT 12
Weird stats and morbidfacts.

THE REAL GHOST BUSTERS 26 NEEDFULTHINGS 14

The skeptics of Ghost Hunters try their damnedest to explain the
Strange trinkets from our bazaar of the bizarre.
.seemingly unexplainable - with sometimes surprising resulis.
Plus: A round-up of the best and worst paranormal TV shows CINEMACABRE 44
and more! The latest films, the newest DVDs and reissues.
by Claire Horsnell and Monica S. Kuebler
BOWEN'S BASEMENT 56
Spotlight: Speck and Speculation.
.
- THE WITCH HUNTER’S BIBLE 32
A new translation of the notorious Malleus Maleficarum BLOOD IN FOURCOLOURS 58
^ reveals further truths about the Medieval witch hunts. The horror comic book gospel.
by Last Chance Lance
THE NINTH CIRCLE 61
O;: THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS 36 Spotlight: Varney the Vampire.

Kris Kitksi priticizes humanity through his intricate, morbid

.

'
TRAVELOGUE OF TERROR 66
sculptures.
The Hollywood Forever Cemeteiy.
by Monica S. Kuebler
THE GORE-MET 68
THE BLEAK LANDSCAPES OF DIMMU BORGIR 40 Menu: China 's Category HI films.
A conversation with Norway’s popular black metallers.
by Keith Carman AUDIO DROME 71
Spotlight: Johnny Hollow.
I THE DEVIL YOU KNOW 42
PUY DEAD 74
Rock community legend Del James jams with Rue Morgue about the
New and upcoming games.
personal triumphs and tragedies that inspired his highly sought-after
collection of horror stories, The Language of Fear. CLASSIC CUT 78
I by Jovanka Vuckovic Lars von Trier's The Kingdom.

y'-
 ‘Cffhr/Vr /> i0u//ur{f &: ^ ^ufcr/u/nninnf

vlinilJiHhYQfjtiue #77 RuQMOilGllE MAGAZINE

MARR5 MEDIA INC
2926 DUNDAS STREET WEST
TORONTO, ONTARIO M6P 1Y8 CANADA
P: 416.651.9675 F: 416.651.6085
mWWKRUHMBBUlC^ MAk: [email protected]

Publisher
RODRIGO GUDINO
Editor-Ih-Chief
JOVANKA "VUCKOVIC
Managing Editor
DAVE ALEXANDER
Associate Editqr/Webmistress
t’s 10 a.m. on 17, and just as I’m putting the finishing touches on my make-
Sunday February
up. the doorbell rings at my pal
Spooky Dan’s house, where 1 always lay myself to rest when 1
MONICA S. KUEBLER
y
CJ visit Los Angeles. Here. opened wide the door, and standing there, wearing a grin and an over-
I
Art Director
sized, untucked black and white skull shirt is Bill Moseley. “Morning!” he exclaims, in that GARYPULLIN
characteristic Chop Top/Otis voice. “You ready to go to a funeral?” Graphic Designer
I sure was. and soon we arrive at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery (see Travelogue, p. 66). Bill’s end- JUSTIN ERICKSON
less bad jokes and mad cassette tape DJing skills have us both giggling as we drive tlirough the enormous Copyeditor
gates and swing the car around into a parking spot. We note that the famous “Hollywood” sign is plainly LIISA LADOUCEUR
visible in the distance between the gates of the graveyard, which bills itself as the “Resting Place of Hol- Contributors
lywood’s Immortals.” It is perfectly befitting as we are gathering here today to attend a funeral service for STUART AN DREWS
one of Tinseltown’s genre icons: horror host and glamour ghoul Maila “Vampira” Nurmi. JOHN W. BOWEN
PHILIP BROWN
Maila’s death on January 10, 2008 was not a major event in the mainstream media - disheartening to GARY BUTLER
those who loved her, and yet somehow apropos. Her quiet passing suited her character as an individual who. KEITH CARMAN
in her most auspicious years, loved beatniks, bohemian artists and poets, mad schemers and other outcasts. PAULCORUPE
She became one herself early
TOMB DRAGOMIR
in her career, and lived her life in relative obscurity, revealing her true iden-
JAMES FISHER
tity to but a select close few. As such, her funeral was a small, invite-only affair, one that 1 was honoured THE GORE-MET
to be invited to. DANA GOULD
JAMES GRAINGER
As wc approached the chapel on foot, a motley murder of live ghouls - who'd likely be dressed in black MARK R HASAN
anyway - assembled at the mouth of the building. We're greeted immediately by comedian Dana Gould RICHARD HIPSON
(her benefactor and long-time friend, see p.22), musician Matt “Piggy D.” Montgomery and his fiancee, CLAIRE HORSNELL
CHRIS HANLEY
photographer Gabrielle Geiselman. Their tireless efforts, along with donations from the Maila Nunni
DAN RAZOR
Memorial Fund they created, helped secure the deceased icon a final resting place in the gorgeous, palm LAST CHANCE LANCE
tree-lined cemetery. ANDREW LEE
morose proceedings was the
AARON VON LUPTON
In contrast to the levity of the 50 guests. Not surprising, Nurmi her-
really;
BILL MOSELEY
self was a quick-witted, morbidly black comic, who wouldn't have wanted it any other way. The mood was JASON PICHONSKY
respectfully solemn, yet undeniably full of mirth. Her last living relative. Sandra Niemi, arrived casually SEAN PLUMMER
SHADE RUPE
dressed, boasting one of the most cheerful and friendly personalities I've ever witnessed at an obsequy. TREVOR TUMINSKl
The attendees were then herded into the chapel where we were treated to a loving video montage memo- JUSTINE WARWICK
rial of photographs provided by Geiselman. A collection of images, many never-before-seen, danced grace-
Office Manager
fully across the screen; Maila the student, Maila the pin-up, Maila the deadly vampire dominatrix, Maila
AUDRAJACOMBS
the wizened With great reverence and, again, much comedy, she was remembered by friends, one of
lady.

whom regaled us with an unusual story about giving her a bouquet of flowers only to find them arranged Financial Controller

in the toilet where she claimed they “would get fresh water several times a day.”
MARCO PECOTA
The picture that quickly emerged was of a woman who was enigmatic, eccentric and intelligent. We Intern
learned that Maila allegedly dumped Marlon Brando for stepping on a trail of ants, owned a file folder of JESSA SOBCZUK
“Elvira demises” (news clippings about anything negative that happened to the woman who Nurmi had MarketingMdvertising Manager
once sued for stealing her character), which gave her much pleasure, and that her beloved dog, Houdini, JODY INFURNARl
was a feral animal that ritualistically bit her and anyone else who ventured near it. Houdini was also respon- PH; 905-985-0430 FX: 905-985-4195 E; [email protected]

sible for the death of her projectile-diarrhea-prone cat Violet, once it was unleashed from couch it was
the
RUE MORGUE #77 would not have been possible without the valu-
chained to for many years. Animal control put the beast down after Maila’s passing. It too was about to be able assistance of Alexia Anastaslo. Shadow Ang^lna, Jay Boileau,
interred in the cemetery, together with the one person on the planet who loved it. Piggy D., Gabnelle Geiselman, Steve Gonsalves, Dana Gould, Clint

Eulogies delivered, pallbearers carried Maila and Houdini's velvet-wrapped jewelry box-style urns out- Hickman and vamplrasatbc.com, Mary-Beth Hollyer, Us Lewis, Al
McMullan. Kevin Sean Michaels, Bryan Moore and Bill Moseley.
side where tliey were gingerly placed in the back of a 1951 Cadillac hearse (the same one Lisa Marie rode
/?A4#77is d^lcated to James Hollyer Grant and #)e memory of
in as Vampira during the Bride of the Monster premiere scene in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood), leading the pro-
Sen Chapman.
cession graveside to Maila’s plot, adjacent to that of Darren (Kolchak the Night Stalker) McGavin and a
stone’s throw from Cecil B. DeMille (“But try not to throw stones if you can avoid it," Gould quipped in

his speech).

Reverend Aidan Comerford recited a few final words before Gould and Niemi placed Maila and Houdi- flue Morgue Magazine Is published monthly (with the exception ot

ashes into a vault, which was then lowered into the earth. Each of us paid our February) ^d accepts no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts,
ni's last respects by deliver-
photos, art or other materials. Freelance submissions accompanied
ing a handful of dirt into the plot before the gravediggers filled it. Nearby, a jack-o’-lantem appears to be by SAS.E. will be senously considered and. If necessary, returned.

weeping, joining us in mourning the passing of Hollywood's First Lady of Horrm

R.I.P. Maila “Vampira” Nurmi. Canada
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada,

through the Canada Magazine Fund, toward our editorial costs.

HUE MORGUE Magazine #77 ISSN 1481 - 1103

Agreement No. 40033764
morgite.com UEOK
6 RUE MORGUE EnbrecontentscopyrightUAIISS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED
IIC E0Q8.

IN CANADA.
 JOVANKA, thank you for being one of something was amiss. Where is Chris I AM a long-time subscriber; I received
the good guys. After reading your editorial Alexander? The Schizoid Cinephile seems my renewal notice and was going through
in RM#76, I had a newfound respect for to be MIA. Mr. Alexander has been a part the motions of writing out a cheque when I

you (not that it wasn’t already there). See- of your magazine even longer than I’ve saw at the end of the current issue a give-
ing you stand up for the creative rights of been reading it. At first, 1 did not care for away for new subscribers. I wrote a brief
writers and remind everyone that stealing his writing, but over time his sense of note, which enclosed in my renewal about
I

from each other, especially in such a small humour and undying love for Fulci and how it would be nice to receive some kind
community, is ethically wrong, was a thrill. Franco won my respect. I can only assume of notice for being a long-time subscriber. 1

It takes brass balls (you have them in spir- he has left to pursue other ventures and if did subsequently receive a personalized
it) to write something Thank you
like that. so, I wish him all the best. This brings me note thanking me for my subscription - a

for having the integrity good

to fight the to a major complaint. I mentioned that I very nice touch. A few days after that, I

fight and support horror writers (I myself read each issue of Rue Mo/gue from cover received notice in the mail that I had a par-
am an aspiring screenwriter who is afraid to cover. Well, that will soon change as 1 cel to be picked up at the post office. I

to show my work to others for the reasons have read the first three installments of headed over there and to my surprise and
you outlined in your piece on theft). Bowen’s Basement and can assure you I delight, it was from Rue Morgue\ Inside
I tip my hat to you, warrior woman! won’t be reading another. It’s boring, con- were two DVDs and a small collection of
Lisa Strange - Pensacola, Florida descending, and about as funny as an stories from Edward Lee, Jack Ketchum.
impacted wisdom tooth. From now on, Mr. etc. that I’d won. 1 just wanted to say what
I BELIEVE there is an error in James Bowen's column will just be a page I skip a class act you guys are. Yours is the only
Burrell’s article "Sweeney’s Stage Fright.” over on my way to Blood in Four Colours. mag I subscribe to as you arc the authority
He writes: "As directed by renowned veter- How about giving Last Chance Lance his on all things horror, you are Canadian and
an stage director/produccr Hal Prince, the own column? Surely he’s earned it by now. you have the courtesy to respond with such
play - based on a book written by author Robert Amackcr a kind personal gesture to my inquiry. 1

and playwright Hugh Wheeler, as well as a - Poplarville, Mississippi seriously doubt I would have gotten such a

previous 1973 play by Christopher response from Time, or even Hustler, for
Bond...” Hugh Wheeler wrote the book of 1 REALLY LOVE hearing about sleeper that matter.
the musical, meaning the dialogue in the horror hits that have been out for awhile but Pete V P - address withheld
show, and Stephen Sondheim wrote the have passed under my radar. An example of
music and lyrics. this is a movie called Battle Royale\ I first DEAR GRUEL GURUS, can you
Mark Conrad - Burlington, Vermont heard about this wickedly gory gem in the please tell me why the best of the Phantasm
October 2005 Halloween issue. You named movies. Phantasm II, is not available on
I AM WRITING in response to the Battle Royale as one of the top 100 Alter- DVD when all the other films are?
"Top Ten Alternate Chair Jumpers” in John native Horror Films. Seeing this, I had to Tom Karpe - Oriskany, New York
Bowen’s column (RM#75). I was delighted get my hands on a copy because if Rue
Anchor Bay was unable to obtain the rights
to see The Exorcist III at the top of the list. Morgue said it was good... IT HAD TO BE
That film is highly underrated and is the GOOD! It took a while but 1 finally got it.
to this title from MGM and therefore was
unable to reissue it last year. It is. however,
reason 1 have been such a huge fan of the What an awesome movie! I have since gone
horror genre. The mentioned scene is also back to this issue to uncover more amazing
available in the Anchor Bay UK Special Edi-
tion Region 2 5-disc Sphere Box Set (limit-
one of the greatest scenes in horror history. movies that I was unaware existed, includ-
ed). Ed.
Thank you for giving The Exorcist II! the ing Calvaire. The Devil's Backbone, Ichi
recognition it deserves. May. Opera, Spider Baby... I can
the Killer, I > We encourage readers to send their corrunente via
-

Amanda Gragg — Mansfield, Ohio go on and on! I’m sure there are way more r mail or e-mail. Letters may be edited for length andlor
- txinlenL Please send to [email protected] on
great movies that have yet to discover so
1

I PURCHASED my first copy of Rue keep churning out those "Greatest” lists.
POST MORTFM
Morgue way back in July 2002 (RM#28) Mike Ede - address withheld C/fl m
MORGUE MAGAZINE
2926 RUNDAS STREET WEST
and I haven't missed a single issue since.
TORONTO. ONTARIO M6P 1Y8 CANADA
However, starting with RM#73, I noticed

RUE MORGUE 7
 ew^c^Igf?liLfhU^

Coscarelli pushes ahead with Ho-Tcp prequel and novel adaptation

Devotees of Don Coscarelli’s films are i
role. Bubba Nosferatu really
used to lengthy waiting periods between !
allows the Elvis character to
releases, largely since the LA-based film- grow, exploring not only the
maker (best known for his Phantasm series elderly Elvis we know but also,
and Bubba Ho-Tep) is a notorious stickler via parallel flashbacks, a young
for autonomy. Nonetheless, there’s a verita- and vital 1970s Elvis in all his
ble flurry of activity in the Coscarelli camp karate-chopping glory, battling
these days: he’s acquired the film rights to |
hideous demon-chicks with
David Wong’s cult hit novel John Dies at the wicked big fangs and way skimpy
End, a prequel to Bubba Ho-Tep is in the tube tops. Casting another actor to
works and rumours of the long-awaited fifth assume the Elvis mantle is not
Phantasm film continue to hover in the something I take lightly.”
ether, even though details are scarce. Coscarelli’s recent purchase of
While he’s reluctant to predict which of the rights to John Dies at the End
these projects will materialize first. Bubba \
{RM#75), is also something he’s
Nosferatu and the She-Vampires would |
quite serious about seeing
appear to be farthest along, with budget in through. The horror-comedy tale
|

place and several actors attached. “Stephen I

sees a pair of college drop-outs
Romano and I wrote a terrific script,” trying in vain to slop an inter-
Coscarelli says. “Based on that screenplay 1 dimensional invasion caused by a
secured full funding for the production, at drug called “soy sauce.” The
almost ten times what we had on the origi- director hadn’t heard of the story
nal." when it was originally published online, but the theme of loyalty in the story between the
Coscarelli also secured actor Paul Giamat- discovered it via an Amazon.com recom- two friends who must face down the forces
ti {Sideways, Lady in the Water) to co-star as mendation after it was released as a novel of darkness together when all instincts tell
Elvis’ manager Colonel Tom Parker. In addi- last August by Pennuted Press. them to run like hell!”
tion, a major box office star, who he won’t “One day in my email I received a note Despite having scripted eight of his own
name as of yet, is set to appear as the film’s from an Amazon bot saying. Tf you liked films before trying his hand at literary adap-
lead vampire. The biggest surprise the book you just read, you’ll tations, Coscarelli maintains that he enjoys
for fans of the first Bubba Ho-Tep. really likeJohn Dies at the End. ’
working from existing material, providing
however, will be that the filmmaker I guess the Amazon bots bad the that material is right. At the very least, he
must recast the lead role, as Bruce audacity to decide what my next notes, the process is a far cry from the labour
Campbell won’t be remming to play movie project would be.” pains of the first Phantasm script 30 years
Elvis. As for why he bought the ago.
“Unfortunately, after lengthy dis- rights, Coscarelli says it was no- “Starting the writing process with three
cussions with Bruce Campbell we brainer. solid acts and the lead character’s voice
were unable to see eye-to-eye cre- “I don’t know was it the dog already created is a wonderful luxury. . . , It’s
atively,” explains Coscarelli. "Obvi- who can drive, or the powerful not like working alone up in a cabin trying to
ously. I would have loved to work with street drug that can open inter-dimensional figure out original reasons why your villain
Bruce; he’s a great actor and would have portals, or the cellphone calls from the crosses time and space to shrink the dead.”
been absolutely terrific in this expanded dead? Actually, 1 think it might have been John W. Bowen

HE’5 n LOVEH! '^ HE’S in HILCER!]

HE’S n 1
a LEWIS BfidlHEBSFiMl filmed in NEGROSCOPE!

mUTHHFUC This film depicts totally

scenes of murder and rape.
NO ONE UNDER
awesome

17 WILL BE

PUPPET! ADMITTED!

www.MacKdevildolI.'cdiii Sticldn’ittothe man in 2008 !

8 RUE MORGUE
Lee Demarbre prepares tribute to
the Godfather of Gore
Back in the 1960s, director Herscheli
Gordon Lewis pioneered the splatter-happy
horror aesthetic with a series of films that
took cinematic bloodshed to an all new
level. His sardonic, gore-drenched epics
continue to earn the director new fans,
including Ottawa-based filmmaker Lee
Demarbre {Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter),
whose own genre-mixing cult hits invoke
the deliriously crude aesthetic of Lewis’
early efforts. Now, Demarbre is preparing a
tribute to the Godfather of Gore with a
back-to-basics celebration of the bloody
and bawdy celluloid worlds that Lewis first

created,
Demarbre’s film, slated for production
this spring under the shooting title In the
Name of Gore, was originally conceived as
a remake of Color Me Blood Red. the last

installment of
Lewis’ infamous
Blood trilogy. In
that mad killer
flick, an artist finds
Director Lee Demarbre, and (left) lucha libre star
that fresh plasma Ian Hodgkinson (a.k.a. Vampiro) In The Dead Sleep Easy.
provides just the
right vibrant crim- depressed Sorg eyeballs - pig eyes that I bought.” he says.
son hues he needs accidentally “In terms of the gore, that’s what I want to
for his paintings. runs over and do here. A lot of horror films arc trying to
"When [screen- kills a pedestri- do the next big thing in terms of gore, but
writer] Ian Driscoll an, then decides they all look the same, because it’s all CGI
and I started discussing the remake, we felt to use the victim’s real blood and guts as or it’s all latex and foam rubber. I want to
that a lot of familiar characteristics that props in his new film to hide the evidence. do something different, something... fleshi-
make up Lewis’ movies aren’t in Color Me When the producers are blown away by the er.”
Blood Red.’' Demarbre explains. “For realism in his latest footage. Sorg must In addition to a planned cameo by Lewis
example. Blood Feast is kind of a police evade the police and go on a killing spree to himself as the voice of a radio announcer (a
procedural, and I thought it would be great finish his latest masterpiece. role he will reprise from Blood Feast),
to include that kind of an angle. All of a For the all-important gore scenes, Demar- Demarbre also notes that adult film star
sudden, we were bringing in different ele- bre plans to take direct inspiration from Sasha Grey will appear in In the Name of
ments from all his different movies, and it Lewis' own innovations of using butcher Gore.
became less of a remake than a tribute to his shop scraps to represent human remains. “She has agreed to be in the film as a trib-
entire oeuvre, even his non-gore movies.” It’s a technique Demarbre also used in his ute to Playboy Playmate Connie Mason’s
According to Demarbre. In the Name of latest film, the action drama The Dead role in Blood Feast. It’s also kind of a nod
Gore will feature a frustrated horror direc- Sleep Easy. to Marilyn Chambers’ casting in Rabid. It’s
tor. named after Color Me Blood Red’s mad “There’s a scene where the hero, played a Canadian tradition to hire a top porno star
painter Adam Sorg, whose amateurish gore by lucha libre star Ian Hodgkinson (a.k.a for your low-budget horror movie!"
effects are laughed at by audiences and crit- Vampiro). rips out the eyeballs of a villain, Paul Corupe
ics alike. While out driving one day, the and drops them in a fish tank. They’re real

R.UE MORGUE 9
 New website enables users to
develop horror film online
Trying to make art by committee is often
considered the reason so many movies fail,

yet that’s exactly the approach Kenneth

Woo and Brett Icahn are taking with Mas-
sify.com. The project intends to create the
“first film developed entirely over the
- a horror title, no less.
internet”
petercallesen.com/index/index2.htmi
“The horror community is the type of
Peter Callesen crafts intensely atmospheric and mor-
passionate audience that we felt fit with
bid sculptures out of paper. His works include a skele-
what we're trying to do with Massify,”
tal hand rising from a blank page, a 3-D coffin sur-

rounded by intricate flower cut-oute and a pathway of

Woo tells Rue Morgue over the phone

shattered glass that leads to a life-size dilapidated

from New York.

door. Intricate, captivating and strikingly original.

Unlike sites such as YouTube and iFilm,
which allow burgeoning filmmakers to
www.darkscribemagazjne.com
distribute their already completed movies,
Fans of horror fiction and thrillers will want to book-
Massify attempts to build a mechanism for set, where another round of voting decides
mark tois online genre lit info destination (and be sure
'

to include the “wwrw"). The blog-style magazine

creating a professional product. The site’s who stays and who goes. This stage should

indudes author interviews, fiction reviews, book trail-

name comes from the broad ideal of open- happen near the end of May, when pre-pro-
ers, round-table discussions with industry profession- ing up the filmmaking process and making duction on the film begins. The contest
als and contests. Dig the darkness! the tools available to a massive audience. aspect of the film will be over, but the com-
“The community will be able to vote on munity will continue to contribute input
bt.uk/iearning/artimages/bodies/freak/gallery/
almost every aspect of the production,” through the website.
freakgaliery.html
Visit the British Library website to read up on Victori-
assertsWoo. “Projects like these live and Because this is Massify’s first project,

an-era freak shows and take in some authentic, vin- die by theircommunity ... and we want to certain things are being prc-sclcctcd outside
tege freak show posters from across the pond. make sure that the community has a say in the community to smooth the process, most
Midgets, conjoined twins. Krao: ITie Missing Link, they every step of the process.” notably the project’s yct-to-be-announced
are all here for your inspection. The inaugural Massify project is the director and title (film names proposed by
bioodymessygirls.com After Dark Films-backed Ghosts in the entrants have included Amish Zombie Tax
Less pornographic than Suicide Girls, but one hun- Machine contest. The process began earli- Collectors From Mars!, Nothing at Stake
dred percent more gore-soaked. Bloody Messy Girls er this year when community members cre- and When the Children Ciy). “On subse-
is for those who like a little horror and viscera with ated story pitches that the rest of the mem- quent projects we want to leave everything
toeir pin-ups. More than just fiendish photo galleries, bers read and rated. The pitching process is up community and be more hands-
to the
toe website also offers streaming lo-fi film trailers, a wide open, with pitches only having to off,” says Woo. “But since this is the first
fomm, a shop and free registration. Devilish ancf dirty!
conform to loose genre constrictions. project, we needed to control more ele-
justsayhi.com/bb/zombie Once a pitch is accepted, the person that ments."
Ever wondered how well you’d do in toe event of a pitched it will work alongside a profes- When eveiything is finished. After Dark
zombie apocalypse? Take this fifteen question quiz sional screenwriter to bang out a finalized Films will distribute the final product as
and find out. For the record, I only stand a 42% script while still from the
taking input part of its 2008 8 Films to Die For program,
chance of surviving, but toen again we're not allowed
community. This input comes via message playing it in select theatres with other titles
to pack heat in Canada - which makes those head
board suggestions, as well as though vot- before releasing it on DVD.
shoto all the more difficult to pull off!
ing. The votes arc sometimes weighted, so “We saw this working perfectly with the
that community members who have horror community,” says After Dark Films
received “karma” points from their contri- founder Courtney Solomon from London.
TDE I^UE MS^TUAIJV.
\)iSiT
butions to the community have a stronger “They love their genre and have such a
i^ue Msiisurs oFFiCiAL
say in decisions. sense of ownership over the material,”
MESSASE BOAIJI} AT
While the script is being developed, He adds with a laugh. “I see this as some-
J(MWM.IiUE-MaqSUE.CaM/FaiiUMS
audition tapes are submitted and voted on. thing fun for the audience. There’s a power
AND JaiN USSSS!
The best submitters, as decided by mem- in numbers that might end up being a good

bers. are then flown to LA for a final set of thing. Or it might turn out poorly."
auditions on the film’s newly constructed Dan Kazur
 -

-T'

mm
Ssil^1li1i>‘lfa7ili'

’
tJtieSisn^/ISiafkllorse.coin'
mimsm.
 * ii' Si- "J

IDP BIX
Walrd atats Instances of
CRUSHED CRANIUMS
rbld Faets

+ Poland boasts roughly 70 priests who are trained to perform exorcisms, while 1. The Toxic Avenger
Italy has an estimated 300. Weight machine melon-mashing
+ Musician/singer Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle. Peeping Tom) did 2. Friday the I3th Part III
the voiee work for the vampires in / Am Legend.
Jason’s eye-popping coconut clamp
+ Stephanie Conover, beauty queen and current Miss Toronto Plus title holder,
3. Hot Fuzz
was recently dismissed as a judge from the Miss Toronto Tourism pageant
because she reads tarot cards. In a letter to Conover, pageant officials suggested Falling rock dome disaster
that she uses the cards to “commune with dark forces.”
T Death Race 2000
+ Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder was shot in 3-D. but never released Joe’s belfry-bursting burn-out
in that format.
5. Irreversible
+ “Horripilation” is defined as “the bristling of the body hair, as from fear or
Face extinguisher
cold” and is another term for “goose bumps.”
6. Riki-Oh: The Legend of Ricky
+ During an interview in 2007, director John Carpenter told Rue Moigue that
Brain-bashing bell-ringer
he feels Blue Oyster Cull’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper" is one of the ten best songs
ever written.

+ In January 2008, a package containing a human eye en route to a hospital for

transplant was accidentally delivered to a hotel guest in Tasmania.

+ Actor Paul Birch (The Beast with a Million Eyes) was so troublesome during
Roger Corman’s Not of this Earth that he was fired and replaced
the filming of
by a double who bore only a passing resemblance to him. According to co-star ^iiCCing Your Jle^
Dick Miller, this double appears in about one third of the scenes involving
Birch’s-character.

+ A partially mummified body was recently discovered in a dirt-filled bathtub

in an abandoned, garbage-packed Phoenix, Arizona apartment. Police believe
the corpse may be that of a former tenant who hasn’t been seen in seven years.

+ Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando were both considered by the producers of
The Exorcist for the role of Father Damien Karras, but director William Fried-
kin didn’t want an easily identifiable star and held out for Jason Miller.

+ When the roommate of an elderly gentleman passed away sometime between

five and eight years ago, his friend never reported the death. Instead, he left the
corpse to decompose on the couch, while he continued to live alongside it in the

Bristol, UK apartment they'd shared.

+ Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff once lived next door to each other.
+ Gunther von Hagens, creator of the human plastination technique and the
travelling “Body Worlds" exhibit, is now selling plastinated human cross-sec-
tions to private citizens. Depending on the “slice” selected, prices range fi-om
250 Euros to 1 2,000 Euros.

Compiled by Monioa $. Kuebler

Got a weird stat or morbid fact?
Send it through to [email protected].

RUE f>4,ORGUE
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 n the horror genre, women ore seen much more ofiAi^an they're heard. Look of the post 76 issues of Rue Morgue for

proof: female images have been featured on the cover tdbout 20 times, usually in a state of stress or undress. As far as

cover stories go, in issue #20 Ginger Snaps writer Karen Wolton was interviewed in tandem with director John Faw*
cett, issue #27 featured a round-table discussion with the women of Evil Dead, and issue #61 saw Antonella Fulci talk-

ing about her late fother lucio. If this is an accurate reflection of the genre over the past decade, then imagine what the

citmote was like 54 years ago when Vampira made her debut os the world's first television horror host.

Wkur MoRciUi
 regime, including a photo spread in the June 1954
edition of UFE magazine. She also hit the town in-

costume and regularly hung out with James Dean

(at times she was also acquainted with Marilyn
Monroe, Elvis, Anthony Perldns, and she dated
Orson Welles and Marlon Brando). Vampira tirelessly

promoted herself to toe emerging Monster Kid gener-

ation, and boasted a massive fan club.

However, despite - or perhaps more accurately because of- her pop-

ularity, The Vampira Shawms cancelled after a year when Nurmi refused
Vampira was the alter ego of pin-up model and then-aspiring actor Maila to give up confro! of toe character to the station. Although a veision of it

Nurmi. She was born Maila Elizabetfi Niemi (her father anglicized the Finnish resurfaced briefly on a competing network, she was blacklisted. Before

family name from “Syrj^iemi”) in Gloucester, Massachusetts - not Finland, as long, Nurmi was out of work and broke. She would’ve remained a blip on

was often claimed- on December 11, 1922. Nor was she related to Finnish the genre radar if not, ironically, for agreeing to appear in Ed Wood’s Plan

Olympian Paavo Nurmi, as is often stated (rather, she chose to go with the last 9 From Outer Space. Put off by the terrible dialogue but needing the $200
name Nurmi). per day that the job paid, she agreed to play toe role, but only as a non-

After mgddng her way to Hollywood in 1953, she attended a masquerade party speaking part.

in a form-fiffing gothic dress with a plunging neckline that emphasized her unbe- After Plan 9, Nurmi appeared in a few more low-budget films before

lievably tiny waist and complemented her jet-black wig and pale makeup. Based leaving acting to open an antiques shop in Hollywood. In toe ’80s toere

on Charles Addams’ comic character Morticia Addams (a fact she was always was an attempt to resurrect The Vampira Show with Nurmi serving as an
quick to acknowledge), her vamp creation led to her being hired to introduce hor- executive producer, but she left toe project when Cassandra Petereon
ror movies for LA TV station KACB-TV. Her husband at toe time, Hollywood became involved; in toe late ’80s Nurmi unsuccessfully sued Peterson
screenwriter Dean Riesner, dubbed his wife’s morbid vixen creation “Vampira" {a.k.a. Elvira) over her similar “Mistress of toe Dark” persona. While Elvi-

and Nurmi moulded her into a more sexual, comical and ultimately campy ver- ra became a pop-culture icon, earning big money for Peterson, Nurmi

sion of Morticia - a new ghoul with a potent personality and plenty to say. View- lived on social security pay-
ers were immediately captivated by The Vampira Showwhen it debuted in 1 954. ments. Vampira had also

Before tois, Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff had been packaged as inspired Forrest J Acker-

horror personalities, but until Vampira, a woman’s place in horror was relegated man's illustrated Vam-
mainly to victim, Elsa Lanchester {Bride of Frankenstein) was as close as horror pirella character, was
had come to cultivating its own female personality. Only Nurmi actively shaped immortalized in several

herself - literally, by binding her waist - into something intended to take a bite songs, including The
out of polite society. Misfits’ “Vampira” and
Unlike typical horror heroines in the movies (toink Fay Wray or Universal’s “Plan 9 Channel 7” by The

screamer-for-hire Evelyn Ankers), she wasn’t just an object to be looked at as she Damned and her (unli-

cowered in terror. Instead, she looked back at the audience, staring into the cam- censed) image was appear-
era as she shrieked, slinked torough fake fog and told morbid jokes. Because it ing on more and more
was live TV and the show wasn’t recorded for posterity, only a brief segment of posters, T-shirts, etc., yet

it from a promo reel remains. There are however plenty of photographs (many Nurmi herself lived in relative

published here for toe first time), as Nurmi kept up an aggressive promotionai obscuri^ and poverty.
 .

It’s no surprise then that she was rather solitary in her later years and professed to love
mals more than people. This misanthropic image was perhaps tempered, though, by a resur-
in her popularity spurred on by both the resurrection of Plan 9as the best bad movie ever
and Tim Burton’s 1994 feature Ed Wood, in which Lisa Marie piayed Vampira^urmi.
Nurmi granted interviews, appeared at conventions, was able to license Vampira’s likeness
{fetish model Masuimi Max was promoted as the new Vampira for a while), launched an official

website and even got back in front of the camera. Appropriately, her last feature film appearance

was in the 1 998 Ed Wood-scripted / Woke Up Early die Day I Died (see p.24).

Most recentiy, she was the subject of Vampira: The Movie (see p,1 9). With the help of the film’s

director Kevin Sean Michaels and editor Alexia Anastasio, Rue Morgue interviewed Nurmi late

last year. She passed away from natural causes shortly after this, on January 10, 2008, at age

85.
:

As those close to the outspoken, opinionated and sometimes caustic Nurmi attest, she had
much to say about anything and everyone, and she could be her own worst enemy. She refused
to compromise and was very guarded after several bad experiences in the entertainment indus-
try (see p.22). In many ways Maila Nurmi was a tragic, self-sabotaging figure punished for not
playing by the rules.

Yet Vampira was a true trailblazer - the fimt TV horror host, beamed into people's homes as a
mysterious, alluring mixture of sex, death and female empowerment. She tempered those
uncomfortable notions with sharp wit and mesmerizing charm - her defining goth pin-up girl

look and piercing gaze becoming something wickedly subversive in an era of staunch repres-

sion. After all, there just might be fengs hiding behind that smile. .

But let's give Maila Nurmi the last word, as Rue Morgue pays tribute to a truly original horror

personality, in Vampira’s final interview.

buildings and office workers in them then.

Office workers would have a break at lunch,

and they would have to go out of the building

Not ttiat know I of. And it was not all my cre- and out on the street to get lunch, to a lun-

ation. Like when a chef makes a famous dish cheonette, you know, because that was the
to eat. there is inventing and things he knows way ttie world was structured here. So !

from history. Everything comes into the cre- knew, 1 was aware tiiat the streets were
ation, my inspirations were manyfold. I crowded just like Manhattan, crowded with
worked on it and some of
was accidental. it people walking to and from lunch, thousands
Well, Morticia didn't have a name so was 1 of people, so we rented a car to tour the city
“Mrs. Addams” at first, and that was what i and go down to Pershing Square. That's
was trying to sell. But when the local station when the people let out at noon, right, so we
brought me in they said they can't afford to were there when they got out of the offices,

do the whole Addams Family. So if it was and the streete were suddenly crowded. My
going to be the one character, 1 had to driver, who looked a little like an undertaker,
change ft So added the bondage and disci-
1 pulled up in front and rolled a red carpet and
pline. ! was only going to emulate Morticia, I picked up a bouquet of lilies and walked in

but that became very different from Vampira. a trance, not seeing the people, over to [one
So ttie whole thing came together incidental- of the statues in the Square] of my
ly... the creature that she was. A Victorian, “beloved,” put the flowers there and people
matronly dominatrix! A strange mixture. I were startied. They stopped and stered, they

didn’t design that intellecttjally, it just came were frightened and they were mystified

about. because I wasn’t on the air yet. They didn’t

know what it was. And ! fried to behave as
though was I real, not a character in costume
but a real strange woman who lives alone
and who only comes out to leave flowers for
somebody long dead. Then 1 got back in frie

Well, the first time that 1 car and he rolled up the red carpet and we
went out at all was left. Thousands of people were stunned,
downtown in Los Ange- mystified, and then frrey took me to meet a
les, and there were tali Hollywood columnist. He was with one of the
 A NEW POCUMENTARY FASCINATING ANP
OFTEN NURMI.

ne of the most influential horror hosts of Michaels, who became a came to learn that Maila exaggerated

O all

DVD documentary by
time, Maila Nurmi

mysterious in life
was
as she
Vampira: The Movie, a 2007 stralght-to-
director Kevin

features a wealth of captivating interview footage

often just as

was in

Sean Michaels,
death.
lifelong fan

trash classic

Outer Space,
of Vampira
viewing Ed Wood’s immortal
Plan 9 From
devotes
majority of the documentary
after

the
things
trying to
if it

that the fruth

she
bolstered the point she

make,
was
really believed

to her, these things

it was obvious
bent over time, and
what she
were true.”
to

said,
was
me

so

with Nurmi, as she discusses her career, relation- to his interview with Nurmi, Another highlight of bie documen-
ships and personal outlook on life as a horror icon. whose eccentric recollections tary are the few clips from Vampira’s
“My goal was to preserve Maila’s essence in are die high point of the low- horror hosting duties on KABC-TV,
some way, so people could see what an afternoon budget production. Through- which Michaels says are taken from a
was like with her," explains Michaels, a former art out the film, Nurmi’s unfet- rare 1954 16mm promotional short
director for Troma Entertainment. “Maila is the icon- tered personality shines, even from the station’s vaults. “The Vampi-
ic horror host that all others would be judged though Michaels admits that ra part runs only two minutes - that’s

against, yet very few would ever see. The weird getting her to talk about cer- all that exists. There’s a great cob-
thing is that her show was never seen outside of the tain topics could be difficult, web-filled opening sequence and
Los Angeles area, so many of those who read the including her relationships with Marlon Brando and then Maila introduces The Thirteenth Guest, which
LIFE magazine article about her in 1 954 had no idea James Dean. “Maila was guarded sometimes and is not a horror movie. KABC-TV rented only films

what her TV show was really like. It seems bizarre very free at other times. One example is the story that they could obtain for $1 00 or less, so a big per-
that someone with a local show could get such she tells ^out how the Vampira makeup was so centage of frie movies Vampira showed were film

national attention.” intimidating that her boyfriend wouldn’t have sex noir, not horror, as people believe.”
with her, and she had to ‘rape a doorknob.’ It’s like, Providing some much-needed context for Vampi-
‘What did she just say?!?" ra’s rise to fame, several other interview subjects
Always quick with unexpected and are included in the proceedings, such as Forrest J.

controversial quips, Nurmi dishes out Ackerman and noted horror expert David J. Skal.
several contentious claims Brief tributes from fellow horror hosts Zacheriey,
a|E throughout the film, stating that Penny Dreadful and Svengoolie are also included,
she had a worldwide fan club after along with horror convention regulars such as Sid

f M Vampira’s quick rise to fame, how Haig and Bill Moseley. Especially interesting, how-
M she was the “first woman in Cali- ever, is Cassandra Peterson’s level-headed defense
9 fornia to wear backless shoes” of her alter ego, Elvira, to Nurmi’s accusations of
and the way she believes she was plagiarism - just one of several controversies that

blacklisted by Hollywood following Nurmi doesn’t talk about with Michaels.

her stint as Vampira. According to “Everyone has heard about the lawsuit between
Michaels, that’s just part of the fun Vampira and Elvira, and some felt it was a sacrile-

when trying to decipher Nurmi’s gious decision to put Elvira in there,” he admits.
larger-dian-life persona. "But why not give someone a minute or two to

“I’ve gotten some flak for includ- explain their viewpoint?”

ing some of ttie statements she Currently available on DVD from Alpha Video,
made, but it's kind of like Ripley’s Vampira: The Movie may not quite be the definitive
Believe or Not - people who word on the original glamour ghoul, but its eccen-
watch the doc are smart enough tric portrait of Nurmi’s unique personal history in

to decide what’s true and what horror will no doubt help maintain her eerie appeal,
seems like distortion,” he says. *
“I even from the great beyond.

On The Set Of Plan 9 From Outer Space: (left lo right) Vampira. Tor Johnson. Bela Lugosi
replacement Tom Mason and Criswell and (above) Maila Nurmi (photo by Gabrielle Geiselman).

RUE MORGUE I') 8

 focus in on my eyes, and then I'd have some digestive disorders anyway, so ! don’t
stare into the camera and pretend I know how much was due to squeezing. I never
was staring into the eyes of my lover. And I did have had a rib removed, as some people say.

am a hypnotist. I hypnotized silentiy without say- I did not. I have a peculiar bone structare that is a

1
newspapers... I knew him personally well; ing anything. “You’re fascinated. You’re fascinat- wide and low rib cage and nothing underneath
when was a 1 hat check girl he was a regular cus- ed. You’ll come back to the camera, you’ll come and the hip bones are very wide. So the waist
tomer of mine, maybe two years earlier. So now I
back to the camera,” was saying I silently. People looked that much slimmer by comparison. Noth-

was not revealing my identity beneatii all the would have parties on Saturday nights, and ing there, nearly nonexistent.

makeup, you know. So my producer said, “Wei! they’d turn on The Vampira Show and not listen:

I’m bringing a woman for you to interview and they’d have it on in the bedroom so people could

you know her, who she is,

but I’m not telling you be entertaining themselves in the living room and
so you have to figure was brought into
tiiat out.” t
somebody would be stationed listening in the

his office and he couldn’t figure out who was. He I

bedroom and tell everyone when the commer-
said, “I don’t know you." 1 said, “Indeed you do, cials were going on and they’d come in to see the

you know me very well." He tried to figure it out commercial. And then tae newspapers were writ-

but he couldn’t for the life of him. We had a din- ing about that,how people were running in to see Oh, well you mean the article after James Dean’s
ner date at Giro’s, and he still couldn’t figure out the show. was hypnotizing them and they didn’t
I death? The woman who wrote that arficle was
who was. I 1 finally said who was and he
I said, know it - physically, mentally intending to do it. writing for a scandal magazine. Whisper maga-
“No. you’re not her, she’s a Russian princess.” He Not just generating it, but deliberately intending zine, and it was all lies. She was called by Amer-
was one of my favourite columnists. Even when to do it. Maybe that was part of it, staring into the ica’s foremost criminal attorney for slander. A

LIFE magazine interviewed me, they called me by camera that way. I had been for fifteen years whole bunch of young Hollywood starlets got

my full name...Maila Syrjaniemi, the name on my before that a monologist, so 1 together and had a suit against the magazine and

bifti certificate. He still couldn’t believe that it

knew how to handle my
'
was 1, Maila Nurmi, the most publicized person crowds. So 1 was handling my
besides President Eisenhower. It felt like that. crowds. Or trying to, and 1

guess it was working.

Well, when I first went on in 1954, it was tae fimt

time taat a local TV show had developed fan clubs

all over the world, it had never happened before
and the paparazzi were much smaller and didn’t I

have any paparazzi to speak of, but lots and lots I think I might have. Not at the

of &3romotiona0 photography, and just from the time that I knew about, but i

still photographs they got excited. All kinds of squeezed and stretched and
people, all over the world. dieted and it probably wore
out my digestive tract. Four

years in all. I am not as

healthy as I was then. But no
! was hypnotizing the camera. It was like home doctor has ever said that,

cooking. 1 would tel! the cameraman to come although I abused my

closer, closer, closer. And I would tell him to just intestines. People my age
 You know the cover photo for the [DVD] box? That
was the end of Plan 9 From Outer Space, ttiat
was the final shot Ed Wood said, “You have to
walk toward the camera in an alpha-state and
when you get to it SCREAM!” was startled by the 1

camera. And that’s better hoiror than when a

monster goes “Boo.” That doesn’t compare to
this. When the monster is frightened, the monster
is out of control. That is dangerous. That’s scary
to me. That picture was taken when was actual- I

ly scared. Coming out of my alpha-state, starUed.

That’s a good photograph.

Lilith stole Eve away from Adam. She was the first
woman with that instinct. To seduce away anoth-
er one’s love, just to see them crushed, to be
superior to her - that’s who Vampira is in anoth-
er incarnation. am just the
I opposite of that. I

have never to my knowledge ever dated a mar-

ried man or even one with a steady girlfriend. I

am too moral for that. ! am a prissy creature.

they said one woman did 90% of the writing and

He hardly ever mentioned Vampira. don’t know
was 90%
i

it lies. The CIA escorted the writer to the

what year he started Famous Monsters. He was a
Mexican border and [she] was told that as long I am not a moviegoer. I like black and white
big Vampira fan and a personal friend of mine.
as she lived she could not step foot in the US. movies. I detest colour. Soft colours are nice;
But 1 was blacklisted very quickly and everyone
There were many stars that were maligned in everything else feels like razor blades on my eye-
avoided me. Forry did not. He was hanging
that magazine, She wrote the article, and it, of balls. I hate the high-definition colour that they use
around anyway. Until one day he dropped out of
course, was humbug. now. But I do watch television. So there are clas-
my life and pretended that he never heard of me.
sic movies that I’d love to see, our [locaO motion
Vampirella had the same opening as 1 did, she
pictijre theatre is out of business. I never say to
said, “Hello my name is Vampirella, but you may
someone. “Let’s go see a movie.” I would be
call me Vampy.” I originally said that 1 was Vampy;
dragged by my first husband to see movies. He
they had the same wordage. /Vid the article that
was a screenwriter. And we’d go every Saturday
he sold to Harris Publications was exactly the
night to see the new biggie. Cowboys were big in

know why he wanted Vampira, but when

same tiling we were doing on my show. He stole
I don’t I those days. How i hated it I would go to the ladies
was from an
the whole thing for $25. How valuable he deemed
first found out, it article in the news- room and sit in the lobby and watch people
them to bei He claims to
paper. At tile time, tiiree major movie picture because to me that was interesting. Universal
have created that char-
companies wanted to do a movie witii me. The energy. People dressing a certain way and buying
acter which is dis-
story would have Vampira as tiie central figure, i buttered popcorn. I wanted to know why people
gusting and
was owned 49% by my little station and tiiey said wanted to buy popcorn. I wanted to know the real
shameful. He is
no to all of them, for what reason I don’t know. pure psychology of life, not canned imagination. I

not a very cre-

There was a bidding war for my services as a always found their imagination pale to my own, so
ative man, but
I
leading lady in major motion pictures. Then read
1 it was boring to watch. But no, I have not been a
in an article that this little jerk was going to make moviegoer of my own volition. Especially

a movie and wanted Vampira. Isaid, “How dare today's horror movies, which are not
he, how dare he!” I’d worked so hard to tiy to get horror, they’re violence. I don’t
up to where i am from the bottom of the ladder, like to see violence or
and now he was going to pul! me down into the think about it I

slop with him! “That stopid little no-talent,” is vintage horror. I

what I thought. So I said, “that ignorant man.” I like Nosfer- ..f-ATf.

was Incensed. That was my initial reaction. Oh, atu.

whatever.

Famous Monster: A 2007 picture of Maila Nurmi (by

Gabrielle Geiselman) and (above) a publicity shot of Vampira.
 DM GODLD, COMEDIAN, ACTOR AND EMMY
AWARD-WINNING WRITER FOR THE SIMPSONS,
WAS ALSO ONE OF MAILA NURMI’S CLOSEST
FRIENDS IN HER LATER YEARS. HE EXPOSES
THE COLOURFUL, COMPASSIONATE ARTIST
BEHIND THE COOL VENEER OF WHITE
MAKEUP AND BLACK DRESSES.

6t| 3>ana ^oufb

comic strip in The New Yorker. Twelve years later, the strip makes it to

refer to it as a blessing and a curse. This is especially true television as The Addams Family, but by then the character had undergone
of actors in the genre. Bela Lugosi spent his whole life try- a peculiar transformation. Now named Morticia, she bears a striking

ing in vain to escape Dracula’s typecasting clutches. In resemblance to... well, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

the end, he was even buried wearing the Count’s cape. Maila takes first prize at the ball and comes to the attention of a TV pro-

Leonard Nimoy’s love/hate relationship with Mr. Spock ducer named Hunt Stromberg, Jr., who asks her to recreate the getup on
has been weli documented, often by Nimoy himself, in the books I Am Not local station KABC, hosting late-night, grade-Z horror flicks. Maila, despite
Spock an6 its later refutation I Am Spock. But never have the roles of actor being broke and looking to jump-start her career, turns him down. Not
and character been so intricately intertwined as in the strange case of wanting to rip-off Charles Addams, she steals off into the night and cre-
Maila Nurmi and her alter ego, TV’s original “Glamour Ghoul,” Vampira. ates her own character: “Vampira."
The story of Vampira ’s origins has been told many times. In 1953, young Maila once published a “Recipe for Vampira,” revealing the character to
Maila Nurmi attends Lester Horton’s Ba! Caribe, a popular Los Angeles be a cocktail of screen sirens Theda Bara, Norma Desmond, Tallulah
costume ball, dressed as the morose housewife from Charles Addams’ Bankhead, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich and the aforementioned
Morticia, all gussied up in clingy, black fetish wear. It’s an accurate
description, missing one obvious ingredient, a big dollop of an ambitious
young pin-up model and aspiring actress named Maila Nurmi.
This Glamour Ghoul appeared on the cultural landscape of the all-white
world of Happy Days and Howdy Doody, certainly no place for a strong-
willed, acid-tongued hepcat hottie who tooled around town in an old
hearse sneering, “I sign epitaphs, not autographs.” Though known as a
horror icon now, Vampira, like Maila Nurmi herself, was just a beatnik
chick at heart.
Vampira was so identified with the beat culture of poets, writers, artists,

jazzbos and other be-boppin’ ne’er-do-wells that came boiling out of New
York’s Greenwich Village in the late 1 940s that the early ads for her show
read like a primer on hipster slang: “Dig this real nervous devil doll every

Saturday at the stroke of twelve, midnight, as she screens some long gone
KABC-TV’s Lady of Horrors. . .
.” (For those who would like to get
look at the real deal, a small clip of the original The Vampira Stow can
be found floating around YouTube.)
r-
^ ^
The headquarters of beat cutture in LA (or ‘The Cemetery. She took the photo, scribbled, “Darling,
Coast" as they called It then) was a swinging, all- come and join me!” across it and sent it to Dean as
night coffee shop on the Sunset Strip called Goo- a joke. When the police investigating the accident
gie’s. One group of regulars so dominated the entered his apartment, they found the postcard; it

scene they had their own name, the Night Watch. was passed on to Whisper magazine, which made
The charter members included doomed matinee up ttie curse story with the “James Dean’s Black
idol James Dean, actor Jack Simmons and Maila Madonna” headline, insinuating that Maila was a
Nurmi. witch. Some lunatic James Dean fans took It very
Maila was an incredibly funny lady, and beatnik seriously and began peppering Maila with death
humour, known as “sick jokes” at the time, was a threats. This trauma, piggy-backed upon the death
huge part of The Vampira Show. “People ask me of her close friend, shook her deeply, and affected
why I don’t have electricity in my pad,” she would her approach to new people for the rest of her life.

deadpan to camera, “Silly. Everyone knows elec- Although ! had no idea what to expect, I found
tric!^ is for chairs." This brand of dark humour was Maila quite charming and funny. 1 wanted to tiiank
all the rage at the time, and it became personified her for helping me launch the show but, despite it surrender the rights to the character, wanting
on stage in the form of one Brother Theodore, a being 1995, she didn’t have a phone (“Ugh! Awful instead to maintain ownership of the copyright. It’s

particular favourite of Nurmi’s. wrote her a thank you

things.”), so I letter. She a common practice and an indisputably wise busi-
Born Theodore Gottlieb, a German Jew who lit- wrote me back and we became pen pals of a sort. ness decision, but it cuts much deeper. Vampira
erally bought his way out of Dachau, Brother This evolved into a genuine friendship and, though was a lot more than just a character Maila created.
Theodore was a comedian and monologist who my time was limited, with a wife and family, Vampira was very much a part
I of Maila herself,
gained fame performing dark, Grand Guignoi- greatly enjoyed our back-and-forthing. and she couldn’t have given her away if she want-
esque horror-comedy monologues in long-running finally convinced Maila to get a telephone and
I
ed to.
midnight shows at various New York theatres (he she began to let her guard down. Over time, I real- There were differences of course. Where Vampi-
also played creepy Uncle Reuben Klopek 1989’s how
in ized hard she woi1<ed at keeping up with who ra was cold and aloof, Maila was deeply compas-
The ’burb^. His best stuff - "I gazed into the she ttiought she was supposed to be. The caustic sionate. Vampira surrounded herself with Victorian
abyss, the abyss gazed into me, and neitfier one of wag, so was a smokescreen.
willing to dish, It was splendour; Maila, bohemian to the end, slept on the
us liked what we saw” - paints him as something the show the public expected and she was honour- couch, having turned her bedroom into a painting
of a spiritual sibling to Vampira. Later in iife, Maila bound to oblige. In reality, she liked her Vampira had a pet
life quiet stijdio. spider, Rollo, who drove
would entertain friends by leaving Brother and uneventful. She stayed up on the events of the her to distraction; Maila lovingly took in strays of
Theodore nuggets on their answering machines, world, had a friend or two from the old days, would any and all variety, claiming even to have a pigeon
without even a “hello” or “good-bye.” paint and write letters - “a not-so-sterving, starv- that made regular visits.
It’s ironic, therefore, that this bright, colourful ing artist’s life.” Maila Nurmi and Vampira. Separate entities,
person is primarily known for her "role” in 1959’s One can even track down a film called The Beat hopelessly entwined. And so they lived, until the
Plan 9 From Outer Space, a movie in which she Generab'on, a 1950s cops-and-robbers potboiler night of January 1 0. 2008, when they joined hands
mostly staggers mutely through a cardboard where Malta plays a snide beat chick, reading
slyly for one last time and disappeared into the mist for-
graveyard. I first discovered the film when it resur- a nasty little poem called “Dear Parents” in a ever, There is one crucial difference. Vampira will
faced as a so-bad-its-good classic in the mid- smoke-filled coffeehouse. She is basically playing live on. Maila Nurmi will be missed. J
1 980s. I was an aspiring comedian and thought it herself, dressed in sneakers,
was the funniest movie I had ever seen. I was also jeans and a sweater, her
a monster kid and appreciated, let’s just say, the blonde hair a short-cropped,
Bela Lugosi of .it ail. casual mess, but she is billed

Ten years later, I was living in Los Angeles, work- as Vampira.

ing as a comedian and looking for a way to satisfy And therein lies the rub. It’s

my monster jones. Produced in 1995, The Big difficult to find where Maila
Scary Movie Show ms my version of The Vampira Nurmi ends and Vampira
Show, only instead of a wise-cracking, goth’d-up begins, which possibly
fetish model, the show would be hosted by a explains why she felt so
dumpy, white guy in an old suit. Wanting to kick off wronged when Cassandra
the festivities in style, my first guest was the orig- Peterson assumed the char-
inal Lady of Horrors, Vampira herself, Maila Nurmi. acter of Elvira in the 1 980s.
I had been warned that she was very private, It’s well established that
reclusive and wary of strangers. Years ago, imme- Maila was approached to
diately after the death of James Dean, a gossip help re-launch The Vampira
magazine ran an article that insinuated Maila had Show, with a new Vampira,
put a curse on Dean, and that was the cause of his and tiat somewhere along
car accident. What occurred in reality was a sad the way there was a falling
coincidence that was misinterpreted and exploited. out. Maila claimed to have
During a Vampira photo shoot, Maila had posed been fired from the project,
in front of an open grave at The Hollywood Forever based on her refusal to
 MAILA NURMI’S FINAL FtATURt FILM
APPEARANCE REUNITED HER WITH ED WOOD
^ he
many
is a very bright man
gifted people.
for finding talent. He found

TWENTY YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH.

1 was looking for a new Vampira in 1980. 1 couldn't

play it. I think she has to be 34. the age that she is. i

[originally] played her three years older than I was. I

J ^kb
felt that she had to be in early middle age because

(V ^ijt| that

doesn’t
is more appealing
know
has the beauty of youth but
anything yet. To
to men

wiftt
woman who
than a
have the woman who
some of the wisdom
that has been accrued. A woman is in her peak of
Oi) Pooe ^toonbcr beauty at 35. It doesn’t have to be me at all. I didn’t

want to do it again myself in 1980. i wanted some-

one else to do it and they couldn’t find anyone. I cer-

was made way Edward Wood

tainly wasn’t going to do it when was 58 I years-oid.
t exactly the D. Jr. would've wanted it, and that meant a
g wouldn’t do that again.
I part for Vampira.
1

K “She’s part of the Ed Wood crew, and I made sure that whoever was around [from that
crew] got a part - Eddie operated a family system,” explains Aris lliopulos, director of /

Woke Up Early the Day I Died, the movie tfiat Wood spent eight years writing but never got to

make before dying in 1978, at age 54.

For the 1998 film, shot nearly 30 years after her now-famous somnambulist-like role in Plan I haven't done anytiiing now for several years. I’ve
9 From Outer Space, Maila Nurmi did not appear in-character as Vampira this time, but as a tarot been drawing since I was a very iiffle kid. Laying on
card-reading madam at a flophouse who pimps out her granddaughter (played by Christina my stomach in the living room the way people do. I’d
Ricci). ask my modier, “What should do now?” And she’d I

“When I found out that Vampira was available and was gonna play the part, we designed a say to shut up. But was doing something with my
I

character and she jumped into it immediately,” recalls lliopulos. creative energy. 1 was an artist, doodling, i was never
Appropriately, like her role in Plan 9, this part was also played silently. As was Wood’s wont, a trained artist. I was gifted with imagination and
no one’s heard talking in the entire movie; there’s just off-screen narration, sound effects and a
courage and that’s about it.

bizarre soundtrack.

“His goal was to make a movie without dialogue, a really successful movie,” says lliopulos,
“It was his masterpiece. [Ed’s widow] Kathy Wood told me that he loved that script so much that
one time they had a fire at their house while Eddie was sleeping in bed. He jumped out of the

window; he was not wearing anything, but the first thing he grabbed was the screenplay. He
used it to cover himself up!"

Working with Muse Productions, lliopulos secured a cast of like-minded Wood fans, notably
co-producer Billy Zane (Demon Night, Titanic, Bloodrayne), who stars as Ed Wood look-alike
“The Thief,” a noise-sensitive escapee from a mental institution. After assaulting a nurse and,
in true Ed Wood-style, dressing up in her clothes, he embarks on a crime spree involving stolen
loot that goes missing in a coffin. Along for the ride are not just Ed Wood alumni Nurmi, Kathy
Wood and Conrad Brooks, but a long list of Hollywood actors including Ron Perlman, John Rit-

ter, Karen Black, Tippi Hedren, Eartha Kitt, Andrew McCarthy, Bud Cort, Tara Reid and Sandra
Bernhard.
lliopulos points out that Nurmi, despite a mere four days on set, stood out more than most.
“We were on the set [when] she took me aside and showed me her hands and said, ‘You see
. . this? These are the ones I wore in Plan 9 From Outer Space' - the red nails
she was wearing, she had made those herself out of red Tupperware from
the ’50s, and I thought that was quite amazing.”
As / Woke Up Early the Day I Died was touring the festival circuit -

«
where it received mixed reviews, mainly for its bizarre concept - its

distributor went bankrupt and the movie was never released in

North America, lliopulos says that's about to change, as a special

edition DVD release is planned for this spring, and Vampira fans
can get a look at her final feature film performance. (Her final

onscreen appearence is in the 2007 John 5 instructional

guitar video The Devil Knows My Name,

directed by Rob Zombie bassist and
friend of Nurmi’s Piggy D, available

atjohn-5.com)
think she’s one of the jewels of
/y* “I

the movie,” affirms lliopolus. “She

^
" -
was quite the character." S

Maila Nurmi in I Woke Up

Early the Day I Died,
{photo by Chris Hanley)
Change your
social life.
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RUE MORGUE 25
 OJ w p]

By CLAIRE NORSNELl

\
pectres, shadows, spine-chilling cold spots - it’s all in a day’s work As the TAPS organization grew, and eventually launched TAPS Pam-
for The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), members of which also magazine, more staffers were brought on board, including a formal case

^
^
do double duty as the stars
Hunters. But unlike much
of the hit Sci-FI Channel series Ghost
of their competition, they don’t claim to be
manager, several additional investigators and, of course, Gonsalves. Then
came the TV show.
spiritualists, psychics or clairvoyants - or even keep any on staff. In fact, “The team did a case where we were able to disprove the haunting,” says
Steve Gonsalves, the show’s technical manager and evidence analyst, par- Gonsalves of the show’s origin. “At this particular case there was a New York
tially credits tfie success of Ghost Hunters to the fact that the TAPS team are 77mes writer along with the team. The story went out in the New York Times,
really just regular folk. then over the wire. From that story, many production companies contacted
“Rve or six years ago, paranormal investigators looked a lot different than TAPS, and Jason and Grant chose one to work with. Pilgrim Films and Tele-
your everyday person," he explains. “They would wear outlandish clothes, vision [which is] also responsible for Survivor, Dirty Jobs, The Ultimate Fight-
they would even have crazy hair - that’s what people were used to seeing. er, American Chopper and many others.”
Then we came along and people said, ‘Wow, here’s all ttiese regular dudes.’ Luckily, all this success didn’t go to their heads, and as a result TAPS con-
We’ve got a cop, we’ve got plumbers, we had a teacher, an engineer - you tinues to be staffed by average Joes. Their awesome arsenal of technical
know, just regular, everyday people.” equipment and passion for the paranormal may set them apart somewhat,
Sure enough, TAPS was founded in 1990 by Jason Hawes and Grant Wil- but perhaps not in the way one might suspect. The TAPS members, unlike

son, two Warwick, Rhode Island plumbers-turned-paranormal investigators. many so-called paranormal investigators, are extremely wary of attributing

26 RUI-; MORGUE
 not work. But if that’s what the client wants, then
that's the first step we’ii take,"

One of the most productive techniques they use

in their investigations is the recording of electron-
ic voice phenomena (EVP) - the inexplicable

appearance of voices on sound recordings that

weren't apparent when the recordings were being

made. Various theories have been offered to

explain EVP; one theory purports they’re ghosts,

another suggests that they’re psychokinetic trans-

missions from iiving beings, while others think

they’re the result of paraidolia - essentially, the

investigators hearing whatlhey want to hear on

the tapes.
Gonsalves elaborates: “A lot of skeptics will say,

‘Okay, these voices that you’re getting, that are

supposedly voices from the other side - people

that have passed, ghosts, whatever you want to-

call them? You know you could be picking up a

rogue television transmission or a rogue phone

call or voices from outside the room.' And they’re

right: how do we know that that’s not true?"

He goes on to explain that another potential

issue with EVP is something called “pattern recog-

nition” (also known as matrixing), the process by

which the human brain seeks to extrapolate the

familiar from the unfamiliar. Next time you see a

The Ghost Guys: TAPS founders Jason Hawes (left) and Grant Wilson (nght). (below) TAPS
gnarled face in the bark of an old tree, for exam-
Paramagazine, and (opposite) technical manager/evidence analyst Steve Gonsalves.
ple, you can rest safe in the knowledge that your
otherworldy influences to the strange occurrences a drafty window may be the culprit behind a per- brain is matrixing properly,
they examine, however, they’re not about to rule ceived cold spot. Gonsalves says ttiat this bal- As such, the team have put a series of safe-

out the existence of ghosts either. anced and skeptical approach is another reason guards in place to reduce the chances of that hap-
“I definitely believe, but I'm not here to make that Ghost Hunters has been so successful. pening with their recordings,
anybody else believe,” states Gonsalves, who “We were the first paranormal show to come “Every single noise that we hear, we tag,” says
became interested in the paranormal after watch- out into the public as a group that disproves Gonsalves. “So if we’re doing EVP work and we
ing horror movies as a child and wondering if any hauntings," says Gonsalves. “People had never hear a door open outside, we say, ‘Hey, a door just
of the unexplained phenomena that occurred in seen that before. People didn’t think that even opened.’ If we hear someone else talking in anoth-
therh was real. “1 tell everybody, ‘Please don’t existed. ... We’re trying to disprove them, er room, we’ll say into the recorder, ‘There’s a
believe. Have your own experiences and make up because we know that once you’ve disproved voice coming from outside the room.’. We do that
your own mind.' For myself, I don’t believe any- them, the one single bit diat you can’t disprove is with everything that we hear; that way, when
thing I haven’t seen with my own eyes ... I think where your possible paranormal activity may lie.’’ we’re analyzing, we don’t say, ‘Hey, those are

everybody should be that way.” .

Surprisingly, TAPS doesn’t voices? Are those ghostiy foot-
Each episode of Ghost Hunters covers two charge for its services (but will
^ . _ steps?”’
investigations taken on by the TAPS team. A typi- accept donations to cover travel The team also runs question-
cal investigation includes spending the night at costs and other expenses), and if and-answer EVP sessions, where
the site of the apparent paranormal activity and they do encounter something :£} they’ll ask specific questions such
gathering evidence. From there, the evidence is they can't explain, the team will as, “What is your name?’’ and see
analyzed thoroughly before any findings are pre- sit down with the client and dis- ab* what turns up on the tape,
sented to the clients - which have included home- cuss what to do next. Gonsalves “When you get [a] direct answer,

owners, restaurant managers and, in one case, admits that many clients are sur- it would be a huge, huge coinci-

military personnel. prisingly cool about discovering * ^ second that happens.

Basically,

thing
if

potentially
you’re having trouble with
paranormal, you can call
some-
the
they have apparently genuine
supernatural activity in their
— • •
•

/
you just so happen to pick up a con-
versation,” explains Gonsalves.
.’
Society and tiiey’il send out a team equipped with homes. “‘What year were you born?’ ‘1 971
electro-magnetic frequency (EMF) gauges, video “You’d be surprised, a lot of clients just want to What would be the chances of a television station
and audio recording equipment, thermometers know if they’re crazy or not,” says Gonsalves. “So at that second saying 1971’? Not that it counte it

and a ton of other high-tech devices that measure that’s what we tell them. ‘We found real evidence out one hundred percent, but it helps us when we
what’s actually going on in the area - surges in here, you’re not crazy. So as long as you’re not bring that to skeptics, and we do that with every
elechical force, changes In temperature, inexplic- scared, we’ll just leave it’ We suit our techniques kind of evidence we collect"

able noises, etc. They then spend another night to the client For instance, if the client is very reli- Yet some skeptics, such as Joe Nickell, Senior

reviewing the data they’ve collected in an attempt gious, then we’ll recommend they have clergy Research Fellow of the Committeee for Skeptical
to uncover scientific explanations for what they’ve come in. call priests in, do blessings, anoint the Inquiry and winner of the American Humanists
found. Leaking power sockets or microwave windowsills -you know, do everything they need /tesociation's 2004 Isaac Asimov Science award,
ovens can cause spikes in EMF, for example, while to do to free the house. That may work or it may still distrust paranormal investigators who attempt

RUF MORGL'E 27 O
 jl/i/ij^Mili/ilHVESTlEATES THE | AND J OF GHOST-HUNTING ON TV.

DEAD FAMOUS SCARIEST PLACES ON EARTH field of parapsychology, and the show featured a
A believer and a doubter investigating the You'd think that it’d be an excellent day for an selection of their best evidence. Cashmore also
paranormal? That’s the concept behind Living exorcism when presenter Linda Blair teamed up appeared in the piiot of the American version of
TV’s Dead Famous, in which clairvoyant Chris with narrator Zelda Rubenstein for this show {on Ghost Hunters, but then decided to pursue other
Fleming and skeptic Gaii Porter travel around ABC Family), which detailed hauntings in the projects.
America investigating places where famous United States and around the world. Unfortu-
dead people, Including Marilyn Monroe, JFK, nately, in 2000 the show was accused of fabri- JANE GOLDMAN INVESTIGATES
Jim Morrison and the like are said to still hang cating photographs, newspaper clippings and Novelist, screenwriter and “Gothic Goddess”
out. Episodes feature three locations associated even an interview for a segment on the Villisca Jane Goldman lightheartedly scrutinizes
with each particular celebrity, though some of axe murders in Iowa. All told, this pretty much rumours of hauntings, as well as exploring other
their connections are comically tenuous at best. threw a tree through the window of this show’s occult stuff such as reading tarot cards and
credibility. casting horoscopes for Living TV. Goldman her-
MYSTERY HUNTERS self is an easy winner for the “Best Hair in the
In many ways a younger version of Ghost GHOSTHUNTERS Genre of Ghost-Hunting TV” award.
Hunters, this Discovery Kids show features two Not to be confused with Ghost Hunters, this
teenagers, Christina Broccolini and Araya British forerunner ran between 1 996 and 1 997 on THE GIRLY GHOSTHUNTERS
Mengesha, who use science to try to rationalize the Discovery Channel. Rather than focussing on This slightly surreal Canadian reality show for
all sorts of weirdness, including vampires, UFOs the investigations of a single team, presenter Ian SPACE was aimed at younger viewers and follows
and a hefty helping of ghosts. Cashmore interviewed professors working in the a female team of young investigators who hunt

28 R.UE MORGUE
 ,

ghosts with the assistance of pendulums, cam-

eras, audio equipment... and a large garden
gnome called Gnomie, who (the girls’ website tells

us) doubles as both a mascot and a handy weapon

should you attempt to sneak up on them in the
dark.

SIGHTINGS
One of the first shows to deal with the paranor-

mal in depth, Sightings ran from 1 992 to 1 997 on

the Sci R Channel and handled hauntings, as well
as a multitude of other unexplained happenings
such as crop circles and UFOs. It was eventually
rehashed into the show Unexplained Mysteries,
which was broadcast in 2003.

SOUTHERN HAUNTS Ghostwatch: (left to right) Gordon Smith,

A PBS Show with a more traditional docu- Yvette Fielding and David Wells, and (inset) Jane Goldsmith.

mentary format, Southern Haunts visits various

cies towards spontaneous violent possession
haunted locations in the southern United States,
and (ahem) channelling the spirits of fictitious
filling viewers in on their respective histories CREEPY CANADA
people are said to have gotten him kicked off
and interviewing the people who claim to have While Creepy Canada purported to be
experienced the local ghosts themselves. Mel-
Most Haunted - although there continues to be
“an investigation of paranormal activity in

low as a well-aged bourbon, may not have the

some disagreement about whether he left
it the Great White North,” the show drew a
drama
because his contract ran out or because he was
of the team-based shows, but it’s fasci- fair amount of criticism for sneaking sev-
making things up.
nating nonetheless. eral hearty American spirits into the mix
as well. The producers ended up putting a
I'M FAMOUS AND FRIGHTENED slightly apologetic (and somehow oh-so-
GHOSTWATCH This godawful UK show has “celebrities” stay
Canadian) explanation on their website,
Rather than being accused of faking
for three nights in a haunted castle in Northum-
emphasizing that they ti'ied to focus on
TV footage to make look more real,
berland, raising money for charity by undertak-
it places near the Canadian border, since
the producers of 1992’s Ghostwatch
ing “terrifying" challenges. The cast list reads
lots of Canadians travel to the US, and
like a Who’s Nobody of British TV from the ’80s.
put together a drama so realistic that that the production team tfiat filmed the
but if you’re a Brit and you’ve ever wondered
many people had a War of the Worlds- offending segments travelled to the
esque response to Although writing
what Keith Chegwin’s up to these days, here’s
it. cross-border locations in an uncomfort-
your answer.
credits were prominently displayed able van, just to make sure they couldn’t
during the show’s opening, it was go too far. (Best direct quote regarding
broadcast in a slot reserved for drama, minor scandal: “Viewers New-
and while several TV
PARANORMAL STATE this in

listings printed
Demon foundland and Labrador, we will continue
stalkers, hand-held cameras
Ghostwatch's cast list prior to its airing, to go to you, since you aren’t close to any-
and high production values - all in a
casual viewers were treated to the thing.”) Creepy Canada aired from 2002
day’s work for the cute college kids of
sight of well-known BBC presenters to 2006 and is currently on hiatus, possi-
the Penn State Paranormal Research
playing themselves in an apparently bly due to the fact that in large parts of
Society. Lead investigator Ryan Buell
“live" broadcast from a haunted loca- Canada, it’s difficult to tell a supernatural
was allegedly haunted by a demon
tion. The show had even been promot- cold spot from a spot where it’s just
named Belial, one of the devilish anti-
ed as a “ghost hunt” rather than a bloody cold.
stars of the Dead Sea Scrolls. (No one’s
drama by presenter Sarah Greene on
ever possessed by low-status entities,
one of her other vehicles, the children’s
but that’s demonic infestation for you.)
show Going Live. The tabloids had a
field day with this; the British Medical
As of January 2008, however, Belial has MOST HAUNTED
suspended his TV career and Ryan has Presenter Yvette Fielding travels the UK,
Journal documented two case studies
declared himself officially fiend-free, spending nights in purportedly haunted loca-
of children who had to be treated for
which has proven fortunate for the team tions looking for signs of ghosts. Less tech-
post-traumatic stress disorder after
members who had allegedly been savvy than Ghost Hunters, these folks employ
watching Ghostwatclr, and one news-
attacked by Belial as he tried to get at psychics and table-tipping once in a while, yet
paper reported that a teenager had
Buell. Why Buell should be the focus of the show still has a strangely down-to-earth
committed suicide as a direct result of
his attentions has never been made vibe, compounded by Brits muttering things
viewing the show.
clear, since various critics have like, “Well, bugger me!” and “That was bloody
described him as “not that compelling’’ odd.” That said, skeptical investigator Will Storr
and his team as “gullible.” The A&E Net- Storr the Supernatural, RM#63)
THE ANTIQUES GHOST SHOW work show has
(of Will vs. vis-
also been criticized for ited the set and discovered a secret schedule of
For one season only (2003, Living TV), former
focusing on style rather than substance, “happenings” slated to occur during one show’s
British footballer and TV psychic Derek Acorah
and the fact that they refer to demons as live broadcast. However, Storr couldn’t explain a
examined people’s heirlooms and told them
“bunnies" is one of the scariest things sudden and dramatic power drain to battery-
about their ancestors. Acorah’s alleged tenden-
about it.
powered equipment...
RUE MORGUE 29©
DO SOME SUPERNATURAL SLIUTHIND OF i

tourowhihTHEIWTW.

MCHRIR
mi
THE L9ST CROWN;
A GHOST-HUNTING ADVENTURE

Got Game Entertainment

A town with a secret, a bevy of hauntings and to use science and technology to add credibility to “There have been times when we’ve found
a hidden treasure? What more could an intrepid
evidence and the producers of the show have
their investigations. In fact, Nickell has openly
puzzle-loving video gamer need from a budget- questioned the validity of non-scientists using sci- decided not to show it," explains Gonsalves. "It’s
priced title? How ’bout a challenge?
entific equipment for purposes which it was never usually to protect TAPS. For instance, there was a
As you begin this point-and-click Afysf-style
intended. piece of evidence where [a table] moved and we
game, your life and purpose is almost as big a
But Gonsalves trusts his team’s methodology, wanted to put it on the show so bad, but the pro-
mystery as the isolated
pointing out that at least one alternative, the use ducers were like, ‘Listen. People watching this
British coastal town that
llb^CR^SiiVN of psychics, is much less verifiable. are going to think that this is phoney, you know;
you find yourself dropped
“For me, most of the problem with ghost shows we can’t see the legs of the table to see if some-
off outside of. Through
body was dragging
documents you discover Hr is that they use the psychics, they use the medi- [it]. They’re just going to think
ums, and that doesn’t make sense, because how that there was someone ttiere moving it.’ They
on your person, you learn
that you are Nigel Danvers,
can you validate anything they’re saying?” won- do things like that to protect the TAPS team’s
and that you’re on the run ders Gonsalves. “How credibility.”

(with stolen research) from !

can a spirit say, ‘My Still, they do make
the company that used to
'

name begins with J,’ but many of their findings

employ you. Thing is, Hadden industries is a lot it can't say Tm John,’ if WE WERE THE FIRST available online (at

more like Big Brother than you ever suspected you know what I scifi.com/ghosthunters),
and they know exactly where you've fled to, and mean?” and the video evidence
now want you to investigate the unusual sea- Because they believe PRRHNORMRLSHDW posted there actively
side town for them. Armed with a digital cam- so strongly in what they encourages viewers to
,

era, nightvision camcorder, EMF meter and dic- make own

taphone (for recording EVP), you are tasked with
do, retaining credibility
TO COME OUT INTO THE up their

continues to be para- minds.

documenting ghostly activity, uncovering the mount to the TAPS “We say, 'We don’t
town's long-kept secret and
elusive “lost crown” treasure along the way.
maybe scoring that
team, especially consid- PUBLIC HSR GROUP know what this is,
ering that several simi- please help us out!'”
Only none of this is particularly difficult.
lar shows have been notes Gonsalves, who
The most frustrating obstacle you'll encounter
alleged to schedule THRT DISPROVES also invites academic
in The Lost Crown is the inability to move on to
“happenings” or fake researchers to view the
the “next day" because you’ve missed doing
supporting details (see unexplained footage
something. Like most point-and-click offerings,
sidebar, p. 28).Abig part
HRUNTINGS.
and try provide a con-
you must accomplish various goals, such as
of Ghost Hunters, there- clusive explanation for
talking to a certain villager, finding a specific
clue or recording some selected ghostly phe-
fore, is scrutinizing the STEVE GONSRLVES it. “In season one, we
nomena, before you can continue. data and weighing the had an apparition - a
Where the game excels is in its atmospheric balance of probabilities. dark figure came up and
visuals and sound design. The mostly black and Hawes has joked on several episodes that the back from the camera and it was not a person,

white graphics, accented witi splashes of advantage of being a plumber and a paranormal because we keep track of everybody [on the
colour, give the proceedings an otherworldly investigator is that you can often attribute “activi- team]. It was - we don’t know.”
feel, suitably amplified by the eerie sound ty” to the water pipes. Over the past four years. Ghost Hunters has
design - creaking, thumping, non-corporeal “We one hundred percent believe that its not followed TAPS as they’ve investigated libraries, „
whispers and creepy music. worth fooling ourselves,” confirms Gonsalves. museums and even the Wright-Patterson U.S. Air ' i
Unfortunately, because it lacks the much- “Why do we want to fool ourselves? If we’re not Force base. While the jury may still be out on the i
needed complex puzzles. The Lost Cmwn plays sure that it is a ghost, why do we want to sit there actual cause of the various phenomena they’ve I
more like an interactive movie than a video and pretend to ourselves that is?” found, the show’s focus on verifiable evi-
it it’s
|
game. You may want to visit once for the ghost- Some argue that it makes for better TV when dence that ensures its continued relevance and %
hunting, but we highly doubt you’ll stay.
mysterious activity happens onscreen, but both popularity. One thing’s certain, there’s no short- |
Monica S. Kuebler
TAPS and the show’s producers work hard to pre- age of purported hauntings to investigate. Now,
|
sent their evidence reliably. who ya gonna call? % f
30 RUE MORGUE
 '

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Once upon a time, c'hurch-backed inquisitors armed with the
MAllEUS MALEFICAfiUM SPREAD TERROR THROUGHOUT EUROPE,
TORTURING AND KILLING THOSE WHO THEY DEEMED WITCHES.
A NEW SCHOLARLY TRANSLATION OF THE BOOK SHEDS LIGHT ON ONE
OF HISTORY’S DARKEST PERIODS.

BY LAST CHANCE LANCE

Malleus
Maleficarum
centuries, is not attested before
the early 15th century, and the
Malleus played a large role in the
early dissemination of the new
‘theory’ of witchcraft.”

Though the Malleus had been

published 28 times, by the end of
the 16th century it had failen into

relative obscurity and had not been

reprinted since 1669. It wasn’t until

1928,when Augustus Montague

Summers {an English clergyman
whose interest in the occuit led him
to write a plethora of books on
witches, vampires and werewolves)
translated it into English.

But many scholars believed that

Summer’s translation was lacking in

its scope and accuracy, and that a

new, English translation was long
overdue.
“Summers is a dilettante and - to

some extent - a fraud," says Mackay,

“There is a biography from the 1950s
written by a friend that (unintentionally)
presents a very unflattering picture of
the man. He was studying to be an
Anglican - I think - minister at the

beginning of the 20th century, when he

got caught up in some sort of scandal, edly move around as though they were living

seemingly involving homosexuality, though the for Satan and therefore became excellent ves- animals feeding on oats and corn.

details are hazy. He then became a Catholic, sels for his heresy. "It sounds vaguely reminiscent of the joke

and apparently did some study to become a The next section deals with select cases of that’s taken at face value in the Malleus,” says

priest but there is no evidence that he was ever witchcraft and presents itself as undisputed Mackay. “A guy pisses off a witch, so she

ordained, despite his friend’s valiant efforts to evidence of the many spells that witches are makes his putz disappear. He goes and pleads
argue this away. ... Anyway, he had enough able to cast and how they use their bodies and with her to get it back, and she relents. She tells

Latin to make an okay job of translating the feminine charms to torment and seduce even him to climb a tree and he’ll find a lot of penis-

text, but it isn't very accurate.” the most devout Christian followers. It is es in a nest. He can take which ever he wants.

In 1999, Cambridge approached Mackay to described how witches have the ability to He gets up there, and pulls out a big one to ask

take on the daunting task of re-translating the destroy crops and livestock and cause extreme if he can take it. She says, ‘No, that one belongs

Malleus. weather conditions such as floods and to the parish priest’ - ba-dum boom,”
“I began by transcribing the Latin text from a droughts. One of the examples cited details how The last section of the book deals with the
facsimile of the first edition of 1486,” he an accused witch who was angered at the fact correct way to properly prosecute a person

explains, “and it soon became apparent that a that she had not been invited to a wedding, dug accused of witchcraft. Every part of the trial is

proper edition of the Latin was necessary. I also a trench in the ground and filled it with her own meticulously detailed from the gathering of evi-

undertook the laborious task of finding all the urine, which she then stirred with her finger dence and the selection of witnesses to the for-

sources upon which the original composition while calling upon Satan, who promptly raised mal charging of the accused. This was also the
was based.” the liquid up into the sky where it was trans- section that dealt with the proper way to punish

Several years later, Mackay returned with a formed into a storm of hailstones which rained a person who was found guilty of witchcraft and

2000-page manuscript that would prove to be upon the wedding guests. She was found guilty detailed the type of torture and the method of

the only accurate English Translation ever of her “crime” and burned alive at the stake. execution to be used.

made. His two-votume work offers a meticu- It also details eyewitness accounts of witches Even though it was widely accepted by the

lously edited Latin and English version of the murdering newborn infants and stealing chil- Catholic church and the inquisition that torture

Malleus, as well as an extremely informative dren, which they would cook in cauldrons to was not a viable or reliable way of extracting

185-page introduction and notes. make soups. the truth from the accused, was
it still com-
The tome is divided into three main sections, In a particularly Freudian example of the root monly employed in many witchcraft investiga-

the first of which exhaustively deals with the of the witch-hunting craze, there are seven tions.

existence of witchcraft, stipulating that the chapters atone concerned with the horrible The Malleus justifies its use as long as a

Devil does indeed exist as a very real and pal- things that a witch can do to a man’s penis. His- prosecution could be corroborated by the

pably evil entity and that he requires servants to torically, there are even supposed accounts of accounts of two or three witnesses. If only one

do his work on the Earth. According to the text, witches causing men’s penises to disappear, witness could be found, than it became permis-
these servants, or witches, tend to be women and witches who would collect as many as sible to use excessive torture in order to elicit a

far more often than men because of their inher- twenty or 30 penises and hide them in a box or confession. And in an effort to prove that it was
ent feminine inability to control their carnal lust a bird’s nest, where the members would report- not a confession that had been culled under the

lUJE MORGUE 33 ^
 ...IF ONE IS WILLING TO

TAKE THE OLD TESTAMENT

AT EACE VALUE, THEN YOU
CAN WIND UP WITH A VERY
STERN AND UNEORGMNG
GOD. AND THAT’S THE ONE
PRESUPPOSED IN THE
INFERNAL DEVICE:
UiCHINERI OF TIRTIIRE AND EXECUTION MALLEUS.
Erik C. Riihiing
^
The Disinformation Company
CHRISTOPHER MACKAY
Head Crusher, Chain Scourge, Iron Maiden, The
Pear of Anguish - they might sound like the line-
up for a heavy metal festival, but in reality they’re

some of the most terrifying examples of human- pain of torture, the accused would be compelled witches ranges from 40.000 to 100,000, just
ity’s penchant for cruelty. In his new book. Infer- to confess again the next day without any tor- how much misery it caused is impossible to
nal Device, Eric Riihiing has gathered 30 of the ( ture being applied to them. Any person who calculate. If the Malleus does nothing else, it

most barbarous and terrifying creations that man t recanted his or her confession would be tor- most certainly provides us with a frightening
has ever invented to inflict pain on, or end the life tured again until they once again confessed. If insight into the medieval mindset of the late
of, his fellow man. that were not enough, torture could also be 15th century. Religion played a massive role in
Each item is described in all of its gory detail, authorized even after a confession had been the everyday life of people who believed that
from the dreaded interrogation chair, which obtained order to attain a accomplices. demons walked
in list of the earth, angels flew through
would pierce anyone unlucky
Many of the accused would the sky and questioning the word of God. par-
enough to be forced to sit upon
admit to a crime they had not ticularly you were a woman, was not an
its 2000 sharpened metal iNieRNaL Device if

committed or implicate inno- option.

spikes; the knee splitter, which
cent friends or acquaintances “Part of the problem with the Malleus from a
clamped onto a person’s elbows,
rather than undergo torture of modern perspective.” Mackay expounds, “is
knees, ankles or wrists and
any type, resulting in many thatmost people view Christianity as a religion
slowly crushed their joints as it

more atrocities. of love. Certainly there are a lot of passages in

was gradually, agonizingly tight-

ened;
Mackay says, “Institoris the New Testament to go with that conception,
or the aforementioned
copies over verbatim the but even there, there is more than enough evi-
Pear of Anguish, a pear-shaped
injunction from
metal device inserted into an anus or vagina, a the Directorium Inquisitorum dence to support a severe and vengeful inter-

which would then open up as the torturer turned '"I

that only the traditional method of the strappa- pretation of God's will, and if one is willing to

a screw, causing major damage as expanded. do was to be used. (This involves tying the per- take the Old Testament at face value, then you
it
J
Accompanying the descriptions are computer- -g son’s hands behind their back and hauling them can wind up with a very stern and unforgiving
rendered images that, while quite detailed, often M up by a rope attached to a pulley and tied to God. And that's the one presupposed in the
look really fake, undermining the sinister nature i their hands, so that all the weight of the body Malleus."
of the torture implements. Riihling’s decision not 1 hangs from the shoulders.) The torturers are Five hundred years later, one wonders how
to at least complement these graphics with his- i told to be sad - bad sign if they are otherwise - Hammer of Witches fits into history, and if it

torical photographs, woodcuttings or line art is -J and itwas thought to be unseemly to come up offers any relevant lessons. In light of a rash of
unfortunate.
j with clever new methods.” daycare workers being falsely accused of child
Still, one of the highlights of this book is the I That didn’t stop other methods of torture from abuse in the '80s and '90s. and goth kids being
informative and often amusing histories that being used, however, as the book became more persecuted in the wake of the Columbine mas-
|
accompany each of the devices. For instance,
popular. Both ecclesiastical and secular bodies sacre. Mackay says yes.
|
Riihiing notes how the family of famed French
| found themselves prosecuting witches for the “...[Wjhile we may laugh at this and dismiss
physician Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the man J very first time with little to no idea on how to it as benighted medieval ignorance’." he
whose name graces the guillotine, was upset that ^
! proceed and turned to the Malleus as a guide. explains, “we are just as susceptible to such
the device, which became associated with the
With the political and legal authority of Ger- faults today... The only difference between
bloody French Revolution, was named after him
many fragmented at best, the desire to seek out such cases and the witch craze of the past is
by an adoring public.
and destroy witches was one of the very few that it's a lot easier with modern forms of com-
Though many of the devices featured within
doctrinal beliefs that both Catholics and Protes- munication for the falsehood of these concep-
the book are familiar as macabre museum
pieces, reproductions in carnival haunted houses
tants could agree upon, which made it possible tions to become manifest (and even then it can

or as set dressing in gothic horror flicks, Riihiing

for panic to spread en masse. People began to take years to undo the harm). The Malleus is a

presents many more obscure ghastiy imple- see the Devil's hand at work all across the land, very clear example of the sorts of logical (and

ments, which help spotlight some unpleasant and witch hunts became increasingly common. seemingly benign) results that are based in

examples of humanity’s penchant for creative Though most informed sources estimate that totally false preconceptions. It's a lesson that
cruelty. the number of people who were executed as we should always bear in mind." T
Last Chance Lance

34 RUT MORGUE
 Irtcs
IgLjJjf

HAND'/LLUSTRATED BY MADAME TALBOT

http;//www.blackphoenixalchemyIab.coTn
TH 0 V
f Hieronymus Bosch had been an architect, his creations
-
would likely resemble the obsessively intricate sculptures

of American artist Kris Kuksi. Not only are each of Kuksi’s

pieces carefully steeped in macabre imagery and social

I commentary, but according to his artist’s statement, one of

the primary goals of his work is to “expose the fallacies of
man.”
“Man is a funny creature,” explains Kuksi, who also draws
and paints professionally but considers himself a “builder” first
and foremost. “He tries so hard to escape his animal impulses
by creating religion, government and morals. But mankind con-
tinually creates a hellish world filled with racism, war and

-U> RUI-: MORGUt

crime. So, mankind sets itself to fall by its own rules and idealism. If the
animal isn’t good enough to be human, maybe humans aren't either."
Thematically, the 35-year-old artist’s diorama-like sculptures examine
and deconstruct the idealism that forever preoccupies mankind. His
sculpted scenarios, which can take up to two weeks to con-

struct, but much longer to plan, design and prepare, are j

fashioned using materials such as model parts, toys
and the bones of anatomical models, as well as
finely photo-etched brass work. Most of Kuksi’s
’

pieces allude to the human condition, particu-

lady the innate, lifelong struggle for power,

and control. As such, his works are full of

people (many naked) indulging in

various ribald and sexual {

excesses, religious iconogra-

phy, death imagery and even
cultural icons - Propaganda
Am-Bush Machine, for

instance, uses a modified

tank, complete with sev-

^ ^
ered skulls, pincher claws and a
bifurcated sculpt of George W.

Bush’s head to make a political

statement.
Not surprisingly, Kuksi’s exploration of

human excess and idealism is merely an

extension of his ongoing fascination with the
“corrupt and demoralized fall of modern-day soci-

ety.” Another sculpture, The Deadly Sins, which features ani-

The Fallacies of Man: Original Sin, The
mals with human heads, bifurcated torsos and all manner of lasciviousness
Deadly Sins (top) and (opposite) A New
lorded over by a horned human skull modified to include crab-like
Divinity.
appendages extruding from its cheekbones, serves as a pitch-perfect
example of this theme at play in the artist’s work.

IU)E MORGUE 37 ^
 I WAS VERT FASCINATED WITH DEAD ANO
PRESERVED ANIMALS. I THINUT IS THE

STRDCTDREDF SKELETAL REMAINS THAT

REALLY INSPIRES ME.

KRIS mm

Kuksi, who first developed an interest It really is just an aesthetic that I am

in creating art at the age of five, has also drawn to.”

studied the subject at the post-sec- Quite simply, he sees the grotesque as
ondary level. Yet, he is somewhat dismis- beautiful and death as inevitable.

sive of his education, explaining: “I did “Man in most Western cultures is in

get two degrees in art here in Kansas but denial about his own death," says
I'd say that it was something picked up I Kuksi, whose pieces often
by looking at the work of the old mas- function as shrines to
ters, really. A work of art can teach so our own mortality.

much to a keen observer.” “Though it is a force

But it’s his childhood, spent growing of nature you can’t do
up in an isolated, stark, rural environ- anything about, man
ment with an alcoholic stepfather, that instead treats death as
he credits for both his imagination and tragic and accidental.
introversion, as well with his fascination Sorrow and remorse
with the unusual. surround the death
“I always had a lean towards ideals of Western man,
grotesque images and ideas,” says so in defense, he would
Kuksi, a long-time fan of Edgar Allan Poe. much rather find a path

“I was very fascinated with dead and to immortality! An after-

preserved animals, i think it is the struc- life beyond the grave

ture of skeletal remains that really sure sounds good!”
inspires me. It is the framework of the For a list of Kris

body. I can have the same sort of interest Kuksi’s upcoming

in the construction of a building, seeing '^allep' e.xhibitions

all the truss work and underlying struc- visit kuksi.com. %

tures. But in the macabre side of things.

38 RUE MORGUE
 ^ WINNER! \#
flUOlEMCE CHniCE
W'NNER!
BEST ACTOR
’V #„PRETTY/SCARY A •

shSSS JAMES DUMONT

SHRIEKFEST •
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The problem with the Bandera family is, they’re immortal. Cut them
in half, split their heads open, take a chainsaw to them and not only
do they come back, they come back with a vengeance.

This over the top splatter fest is one of the most brutal filjns ever
to come out of the German Underground. Unearthed Films is proud to
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RUE MORGUE 39 @
 NORWAY'S MOST FAMOUS Ol'aC^ mCtaffprS WANT LISTENERS TO
CONSIDER THAT THIS EXISTENCE IS THE REAL HELL AND THE MORE YOU
KNOW ABOUT IT, THE WORSE OFF YOU ARE.

The BLEAK DIMENSIONS, of

BY KEITH CARMAN

ome bands strive to convey an image. Some nurture it "I need entertainment from the dark side,” Silenoz tells Rue Morgue
inherently. And while many acts embrace the world of hor- just prior to their North American tour, kicking off in Toronto this month.

ror and haphazardly tie it Jo their preferred musical genre, "It's authentic. The dark side is the most positive thing to us because it’S

there are certain dark souls who define what it is to be a the most creative and constructive, a continuation of how we are as

genuinely horrific band. beings. \A/e transform ourselves in the art and music we make.”
In the case of black metal, Oslo, Norway’s Dimmu Borgir {which According to Silenoz, the members of Dimmu Borgir (who take their

includes vocalist Shagrath, guitarists Silenoz and Galder, keyboardist name from a volcanic rock formation in Iceland, roughly translated as

Mustis, bassist ICS Vortex and drummer Tony Laureano) has managed to “dark cities”) aren’t content to simply suggest the illusion of evil, rather,

forge a union between the scene’s stark, morbid atmosphere and an they are evil in the core of their being, and prefer to channel mysticism and

almost spiritual twist to horror. mental torment over the blood ’n’ guts, Insert-axe-wielding-maniac-here

-lO lUJI- MUKGUl-

 .

generic barbarism that defines many of their

contemporaries.
“Atmosphere is our direct link to horror and we
create it by challenging the world through our
lyrics,” he explains. “As a band we couid never
beiieve in something we can’t understand. The
fear of uncertainty is more attractive than a goofy

siaughter-fest. The unknown is aliuring but fear-

fui. To me, the word ‘occult’ is not a negative

thing. It means 'things that are unknown and hid-

den.’ That’s how we see a lot of this world, espe-

cially ourselves.”
Dimmu Borgir formed in 1993 and quickly rose
to the top of the black metal heap with their

debut EP Inn I Evighetens Morke (“Into The Dark-

ness of Eternity”). While still embracing tradition-

al elements of the genre - corpse paint, studded

leather (by LA's Junker Designs, who will also

direct the band's upcoming video), gothic set-

tings -they have been heralded as musical inno-

vators for expanding on the raw
ences such as Venom and Celtic Frost with
drive of influ-

more OUR ART IS TO BE A

supernatural imagery/lyrics
elements including symphonic synths. As such,
and experimental
DEVIL’S ADVOCATE AND
they are credited with elevating black metal CONVEY IT THROUGH
beyond the simplistic
and suggestive artwork (looking
relation of explicit lyrics

in Mayhem’s
'
AN ATMOSPHERIC
direction...), relating cryptic tales on musical SOUND.
dirges such as “Architecture of Genocidal
Nature,” “Blood Hunger” and “Sinister Awaken-
ing.”

“Lyrically, that's so natural for us,” shrugs

Silenoz. “We intend to unsettle people by offering by attention-hungry early scenesters over a "Unveiling the darkness of the world, be it

our own opinions on life and religion and asking decade ago still haunt the genre), Dimmu Borgir satanic or whatever, is not only about image," he

a lot of questions. It's up to everyone else to think is often considered to be little more than yet asserts. “There’s something deeper behind it. I’m

for themselves. Our art is to be a devil’s advocate another collection of Satanists praising the Bad more comfortable with light and dark than just

and convey it through an atmospheric sound.” Word of the Dark Lord. And while the band more one of them. You need the balance. That’s how
As “devil’s advocates,’’ Silenoz notes that than dabbles in demonic imagery, Silenoz you develop as a human being.”

Dimmu Borgir's primary intent - all while strives to quash that mentality by removing the While many oppose bands like Dimmu Borgir,

enshrouded in evil imagery - is to force stag- religious association to Anton LaVey’s Church Of a strong portion of the metal world embraces
nant minds into action. Refusing to accept that Satan doctrine, which was rooted in the belief them. The band’s last album, 2007’s In Sorte Dia-

complacency is living, the band presents a bleak that Satanic worship was- about the self, not boli (Nuclear Blast USA) has been inundated with
alternative in an attempt to some deity. praise, receiving multiple awards and reaching
spurn their listeners into “It’s easy for people to see #1 on the charts in the band’s home country. Not

some sort of elevated intel- and hear [the satanic connec- bad for a collection of songs revelling in malevo-

lectual state. tion in our music] because that lence and spiritual darkness. Anticipation for a

"We want that feeling of is what our image represents, follow-up is reaching a critical point, yet Silenoz

almost negative escapism, but more informed people admits that the band is still only in the planning

like you’re trapped but you understand that there is some- stages.

keep searching for answers thing a lot deeper that connects “We are working on lyrical ideas and we’ll be

or a way out,” he says. “The us to the dark side,” he relates. getting together soon to work on musical ones,”
'

only way to get that across “Lyrically, we take a satanic he reveals. “We’ve always tried to do something
is to make people think stance in the individual sense of different from what you’d normally expect from
more. The more you think about your current the word. We don’t have the need to profess the us. At some point in your career you know what

reality, the more unsettled or potentially fearful wonders of Satan [or] Satanism. Then it will work and what won’t, though. Then you work
you become. Most people don’t think about their becomes something organized. [We] don’t want in those frames, but we’re not afraid to test the

own death most of the time, but when they do, to be associated with anything that has an ‘ism’ waters. With this last album, it was more jam-
they start to worry about how or when it will at the end of it.” based, the old way of writing songs in your

happen and they get freaked out. That’s how we Still, Silenoz declares that not all things rehearsal space rather than writing with a com-
perceive life. It’s the reality and the beauty of Dimmu Borgir are morbid. He emphasizes the puter. That helped the new album sound more
darkness." need for contrast in order to understand all intense. The songs were shorter. Some people

Due to a bloated negative misconception of aspects of life and death, reiterating that the like it, some hate it. That's how it'll always be.
Norwegian black metal via the stigma of a few majority of the band's main themes are subtle Regardless, you’ll never get it perfect. That’s why
misguided acts (church burnings and murders and sub-contextual. you make new albums anyway.”

KUl MORCUl -li

 jams with Rue Morgue about the personal triumphs
and tragedies that inspired his highly sought-after collection of
horror stories,

YOU KNOW - fft/ ^/oo(Ui/sa ^/i/c/fomc

Includes the sto/y

llrai inspired the

*1 films N' Boses

Wnifeo Hi

ho would have thought the inspiration for the Guns N’ Roses' overtones. It was an execution of
'‘owndjerBaw” f
mega-hit videos “Don’t Cry,” “November Rain” and sorts, and wore the black hood.”
I
I:
“Estranged” would be borne of a short story a collection of downright seems
in It not much has
nasty horror tales? But that’s exactly how it went down... sort of. changed, as James is still per-
Back in 1986, writer/former rock journalist/tour manager/video direc- forming -
ritualistic executions
tor/horror aficionado Del James wrote a story called “Without You," about a this time, in his stories. Inside
tragic love and a tormented rock star, for his best friend - a troubled, fledg- The Language of Fear a man
ling musician named Axl Rose - as a peaceable gesture to help him through sells his child for heroin (“A Tale
a difficult relationship. Fast forward a few years and the pair were compil- of Two Heroines”), a pervert
ing ideas for a rock ’n’ roll movie starring Guns N’ Roses, based on elements loses his manhood to an acid
of the same short story. bath (“Adult Nature Material”)
“The music videos 'Don’t Cry,’ ‘November Rain’ and ‘Estranged’ were to
be a part of that movie," explains James. "Axl gave me a shout out at the
and another, more desperate, del /AMES
wretch opens his wife’s throat
end of the ‘November Rain’ video for which am forever grateful and sud- for a phone sex
I
prostitute
denly people other than my friends wanted to read my stories.” (“Date Rape”). There’s even an undead biker (“The Immortals”), a man-eat-
Realizing he had a commodity lurking in his word processor, James locat- ing TV (“Mindwarp”), a grotesque thing in the woods eating stoned
ed his accumulated short horror tales (about ten of them), wrote five
new teenagers (“The Nerve”), satanic rituals (“Skin Deep”) and all manW of
ones and collected them as The Language of Fear. The book (published in immoral abomination. It’s no surprise to learn many of the tales draw from
1995 by Dell/Bantam) quickly sold out and has remained highly collectible a filthy well of jarring personal experiences accumulated from a life of dan^
ever since, ranking in at number seven of Bookfinder.com’s top ten most gerous excess. For James, it’s the ultimate devil-you-know scena^fcifjr
sought-after used books, right behind Ray Bradbury’s Dark Carnival. For the “There’s a little bit of me in just about everything I write,” he admits. “The
last twelve years the author has been pushing for a reissue. His muscling overdoses, the violence, going to jail, waking up in hospitals, crashing
paid off, and now a paperback reprint of The Language of fearis once again motorcycles and crimes committed all helped shape my view of the world.
available (again, from Dell Publishing), complete with an introduction by
[As a kid] hung out in dreary apartment basements and got stoned in
I

Rose. graveyards and listened to Black Sabbath-and snuck into the movie theafres
For the casual reader or rock ’n’ roll fan, the book is akin to a punch in the to see all of the latest horror films. My family was the first one on the
block
face. Though “Without You” ends in a blaze of melting skin and unimagin- to own a top-loader VCR, so I would walk for miles to video stores to rent
able emotional torment, it is by far the book’s tamest tale. The rest of the anything that I had yet to see. I remember renting Snuff and getting upset
stories, while still firmly rooted in sex, drugs and rock are horror tales
’n’ roll, because thought I I’d really just watched a woman die. But not upset enough
stemming from the grim side of the human experience - violent and my back on
gritty, to ever turn the genre. My hunger for horror was insatiable. Still
unquestionably dark. fucking is."
“I've always been drawn to the dark,” admits James, a one-time New York True to his word, James is putting the finishing touches on his first horror
City street kid. “It’s just who am. As I a kid I grew up on Creature Feature novel, A Celebration of Pain, and has even written a “straight-up horror”
and Chiller. I read all the comic books of the ’70s and, of course, built all of screenplay based on “The Nerve," both of which he plans to start shopping
the Aurora models. I slept in the living room of our one-bedroom apartment, around soon. Says James: "[Celebration] is q very personal story and one
so after a few days my folks would be like, ‘You’re going to have to get rid that I am quite proud of. Set in New York City, it’s a twisted love story with
of that.’ So would take
i my models outside and either light them on fire or enough sex. drugs and murder to satisfy anyone who digs what do." I

blow them up with fireworks. I mean, even playing with toys took on dark

42 RUr MORCilil
 WRIGHT PAL^^
ARROK' IM'IU- HFAI)

: WELCOME TO
GROCKLETON...
j
> DEATH AWAITS YOU. -OORFZONE MAG.A/.IS'E

CMALL- -
^towN
FOLK High atop a scenic hillside in

Landlord and his galler\-

Grocklecon stands the loneh' Beesleys Manor, govctned by die ominous
of rogues. Always on the lookout for females
over
to earn' on the Beeslei’ name
of his land and brutalK’ dispatches chose
(willingly or not), the Landlord keeps a watchful c\’e all

outsiders who dare set foot upon it.

’^dien three improbable heroes scumble unsuspectingly onto his propert)-. the quiet beaun’ of the
countryside suddenly erupts in a torrent of blood and violence in a menacing hunt and chase for his
future bride.

AVAILABLE ON DVD APRIL 29™ AT [

^ /, J

www.SmallTownFolk.CO.uk © 20OB Artwork ant) Design Seville Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved. Distributed exclusively in Canada by Seville Pictures.

«
CAFTIVANT Liberation

UN FILM TRANGHANT,
TENDU ET FURTIF - The Guardian
»

UN FIL'^ tranchant,
TENDU ET FURTIF
>’
!

lATE DE SORTIE: 18 MARS 2008

Son 5.1 / Fiangais

www.filmsseville.ca © 2008 ARTWORK AND DESIGN SEVILLE PICTURES INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
DISTRIBUTED EXCLUSIVELY IN CANADA BY SEVILLE PICTURES. ©2008 FILMS SEVILLE. TOUS DROITS RESERVES-
 FIRST GORE

EIAMBII

Starring Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz

and Paul Schulze
Directed by Sylvester Stallone

Written by Art Monterastelli

and Sylvester Stallone
Maple

Blood, guts and gloiy... but mostly blood

and guts.
It seems Sly Stallone has been spending
some quality time with his son Sage, the gore
fan behind Grindhouse Releasing, the label
that put out the special edition of Cannibal
Holocaust. Or maybe the aging star, who’s
never come closer than Deathrace 2000 to
making a horror film, is drawing upon the
Italian tradition of gory action films such as
Ricco the Mean Machine
(reviewed last issue).
bleaker as Tsukamoto (best known for his Whatever the case, the
NICHIlilAllE DEIECTIl/E debut feature Tetsiio: Iron Man) employs a fourth Rambo film
Starring Hitomi, Ryuhei Matsuda fairly conventional plot - a police investiga- spews more meat than
and Masanobu Ando tion into series of violent suicides that appear any mainstream horror
Written and directed by Shinya Tsukamoto tohave been triggered by man known only as movie in recent memory.
Dimension Extreme “Zero” - to penetrate the slick veneer of Co-written by Stallone
downtown Tokyo, revealing a city collapsing and Art Monterastelli
The opening scene of Shinya Tsukamoto’s under the weight of its own hypocrisy, greed {Buried Alive), it sees a
Nightmare Detective both signals the direc- and repressed self-loathing. very ripped
still and
tor’s continuing drift into the mainstream of The titular “detective” is a disturbed young very bitter John Rambo
Japanese horror while also confinning his sta- man (Ryuhei Matsuda) who can enter other working as a snake wrangler in Thailand.
tus as one of the genre’s true visionaries. As a people’s dreams at will. When he is asked to He’s approached by missionaries wanting to
middle-aged Tokyo businessman sits down to join the suicide investigation by an unconven- hire him to take them upriver to Burma,
a solitary diimer of noodles and beer, the cam- tional cop, played with suiprising conviction
where military thugs are slaughtering the
era shifts to reveal a strange decoration on the by Japanese pop star Hitomi, the film ftilly locals. After some convincing from a churchie
wall behind him; a thick lock of long black immerses viewers in a vast subconscious named Sara (Julie Benz: Buffy. Angel. Dex-
hair hanging from a simple hook. Before we labyrinth of fear and desire, at the heart of ter). Rambo ferries them into the heart of the
can fully process Tsukamoto 's re-imagining which rages a murderous villain lifted from a conflict. Expectedly, they’re captured, impris-
of this ubiquitous symbol of J-horror may- David Lynch storyboard. oned and tortured. It's up to a Rambo and
hem, a man dressed only in a monkish robe The real mystei-y in need of some detective handful of mercenaries to save them from the
crawls from underneath the floorboards and work is why the film is being released under horrors of the Burmese prison camp.
calmly explains to the businessman that the the schlocky Dimension Extreme umbrella, Sweet Jesus with a hand grenade, Stallone
hair belongs to his unborn daughter, who was but scalp’s off to Weinstein and company for knows a thing or two about how to up the
aborted at the beginning of his marriage. bringing Nightmare Detective to North Amer- ante. Rambo is a cacophony of violence that
The ensuing scenes of surreal metamorpho- ica and including an excellent making-of fea- has to be seen to be believed; arrows shot
„ sjs and violence quickly establish Nightmare ture with the package. Hopefully the sequel,
through faces, bodies blown to spaghetti, fil-
Detecm e as much more than a witty Crave- now in post-production, will get the star treat- leted torsos, heads bloum clean off. a prisoner
nesque kick at J-horror’s exhausted bag of ment it most likely deserves. eaten by pigs, babies thrown into burning
tncks. The movie’s tone is bleak and just gets James Grainger buildings, a throat literally tom out and army

_
44 RUC MORGUE

fe'i;*'.
vehicles painted with brains - all in grisly,

grisly detail. Aside from a poorly rendered

CGI gutting, the film’s 60-plus person effects

team puls on a gore clinic.

Rambo has traditionally been mere degrees

removed from the slasher villain archetype, as

a strong, silent, larger-than-life knife-wielding

killer with an innate ability to avoid detection
and appear behind his victims like a boogey-
man. Abattoir acrobatics aside, that line is

thinner than ever, as Stallone cribs shots right

out of the slasher handbook. Whether he’s a
shadow flitting through the background
behind his victims or rising up directly behind
them, he’s a seemingly supernatural death
dealer. He just doesn’t do it while wearing a
mask (well... maybe a little Botox).
And while Rambo is a giddily entertaining hunt down her donor, leading her and a hunky Chen) and their young son Sammy (Regan
gore show, it’s also bittersweet, as it gets away doctor to Mexico to resolve the mystery once Oey). When Jason’s uncle dies, he and his
with the kind of graphic violence most horror and for all. The action leads to a message family return home to Vancouver (although
movies get censored like crazy for. Ah well. 1 delivered by the dead in the most complicated it’s only ever identified as the “Pacific North-
guess when you’re Stallone, movie-killin' is way possible; perhaps anticipating tlrat Alba's west”) for the funeral. The sad event occurs
as easy as breathin’. target audience wouldn’t pick up on the during Hungry Ghost Month, a time when
Dave Alexander nuances of the original, writer Sebastian people attempt to appease the dead with offer-
Gutierrez {Goihika) annoyingly summarizes ings of fruit and burned money.
NO VISION the plot in the dialogue. At one point Sydney Our point of reference begins with Sammy.
asks her doctor, “I am seeing, what, dead peo- He believes in ghosts and sees several, not all
HE EYE ple?” Then, in the film’s climax (again, an of whom are benign. His mother shares
Starring Jessica Alba, Alessandro Nivola almost exact replication of the original’s Sammy’s ability to see the dead, including a

and Parker Posey memorable traffic jam scene) Sydney pro- beautiful young Chinese girl with dyed black
Directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud vides a concise summary of her donor’s ghost- forearms and a nasty head wound. Sammy
Written by Sebastian Gutierrez ly message, just in you missed it.
case soon takes ill, but Western doctors can’t diag-
Lionsgate For what it's worth, The Eye doesn’t reach nose him. Sarah, aided by a benevolent old
the depths of stupidity as, say. Pulse (a 2006 Chinese pharmacist
Though diluted over time by too many sim- remake of the classic Kairo), and it does deliv- {Rush Hour i’s Henry
ilar films, the Pang brothers’ 2002 spookfest er a few jolts. But where the original Eye O), discovers that the
The Eye remains one of the more effective offers a tense mystery with some stylish long-haired ghost girl

entries in the Asian horror boom. Any excite- scares, this is one transplant that deserves to who holds her son’s
ment for its US remake died, however, when be rejected. life in her blackened
it was announced the lead role would be given Aaron Von Lupton hands is actually work-
to Jessica Alba, an actress known for her beau- ing towards a noble
ty and teen audience appeal but definitely not “EH'-HOimOli purpose - one that

her acting prowess. By the time it was involves vengeance

revealed that David Moreau and Xavier Palud HE! WI\IT against members of
(the French duo behind Them) were having Starring Jaime King, Pei-pei Cheng her husband’s family
parts of their film re-shot by Patrick Lussier and Regan Oey for old wrongs. Soon
{Drctciila 2000), the vultures were already cir- Directed by Ernie Barbarash enough, family secrets are revealed and Sarah
cling. Written by Trevor Markwart, Carl Bessai must trust in forces she does not understand in

As it turns out. this American redoing isn’t and Doug Taylor order to save her son.
quite as awful as one might expect, but simply TVA Films They Wait does a good job of invoking the
a bland, by-thc-numbers retelling of the origi- conflict between Eastern and Western values
nal. with obvious jump scares Regular Rue Morgue readers know without overplaying it. (For example, Sarah, a
in place of atmosphere and that these days, discovering an enter- white Westerner, is not trusted by her hus-
style. taining J-horror-stylc ghost film is akin band’s Aunt Mei, played by Pei-Pei Cheng,
Sticking closely to the origi- to finding a wooden needle in a burning and has trouble believing in forces beyond her
nal’s script. Alba plays Sidney, haystack. They Wait is a J-hoiror-style cultural experience.) Director Ernie Barbarash

a blind violinist who regains film that stars an ex-model, was execu- {Cube Zero) meanwhile heightens the tension
her sight after cornea implant tive produced by Uwe Boll and was with cannily deployed jump scares and well-

surgery. Naturally, her vision made in Canada. Talk about low expec- done CGI, while the smart script neatly shifts

is blurry and unfocused at tations! focus from innocent Sammy to flustered

first, but things get spooky But that aside, it’s entertaining. The Sarah. The result is a horror film that unex-
when she starts seeing strange ex-model in question. Jaime King {Sin pectedly defies its pedigree. Ladies and gen-

visions of the dead and their CGI otherworld- City), plays Sarah, a mother living in Singa- tleman, we found the needle.

ly escorts. The ghostly visions drive Sidney to pore with her Chinese husband Jason (Terry Sean Plummer
 LAMBinrS LAMENT

Starring Elisabeth Moss, Tom Malloy

and John Savage
Directed by Mary Lambert
Written by Tom Malloy
Allumination Filmworks

It’s hard to believe director Mary Lambert

{Pet Semataiy) was once given the reins of
major motion picture fare after watching the
improbable and unoriginal The Attic.
A month after Emma Callan (Elisabeth
Moss) and her family move into their dream
home, she begins to see an apparition in her
own likeness roaming about the house and -
Automatons: Angus Scrimm as the polemic-spouting you guessed - the
“Scientist. it attic. Of course, no one in
her family, including her mentally challenged
robots made out of cardboard, garbage cans brother Frankie (writer Tom Malloy), believes
SCRIMM-BOTS and metal tubing. her and thus, she enters your rtin-of-the-mill
The storyline plays out through the video downward spiral. Unable to eat or leave the
iTOMfllONS diary of a man called The Scientist {Phan- house for more than a month, her obsession
Starring Christine Spencer, Angus Scrimm tasm's Angus Scrimm), which the girl plays devours her. Could this possibly be a twin sis-
and Brenda Cooney as she works. Although he appears ter her parents never told her
Written and directed by James Felix McKenney only as a blurred, grainy image on about? Did her emotionally
Glass Eye Fix a computer video screen, his com- abusive father kill her doppel-
mentary cobbles together bits and ganger at birth?
Throughout the years, science fiction has pieces of the past to help the view-
Have no fear, a romantic sub-
not only been a highly entertaining genre, it er figure out what led to the girl’s plot/love interest is here! Once
has also served as an allegorical medium to predicament. His political rhetoric the police become involved,
comment on problems facing society, and and staunch patriotism fade.s as he enter John Trevor (Jason
done it in a way that’s informed, even edu- gradually realizes that his govern-
Lewis), a chiselled, human Ken
cational. without being obvious or contro- ment has misled him into fighting doll of a detective who buys
versial.Like a cross between an early an insane, unjust war. culmi-
It
Emma’s story and corroborates
episode of Doctor Who and nates in a final gory the suspicion that her twin sister
The Outer Limits, Automa- battle between man and died twelve days after being bom with birth
tons strives for something machine, featuring some great defects. Wlien mysterious Wiccan symbols
more than mere entertain- dismemberments and circular then appear on the attic walls, the duo discerns
ment, as well. saw eviscerations. that Emma’s parents are using black magic to
Filmed in black and white Although Automatons has a bring sis back from the grave. But nothing is
supcr-8mm “Robo-Mon- campy, kitschy feel to it, hid- certain. Emma is losing her mind and the spir-
stervision.” it revels in a den beneath its minimalist it’s haunting only seems to be intensifying.
retro-’50s look as it follows clunky robots, laughable
sets, Can Emma vanquish the demon before she
a nameless girl who sur- miniatures and modest goes batshit? How can she prove to everyone
vived a horrific war and amounts of dialogue are very this girl exists? Will poor Frankie survive his
lives in a claustrophobic strong statements about the steady stream of Cosby Christmas sweaters,
underground bunker, where uselessness of war and the let alone all 85 minutes of this dull movie?
she repairs robots that have devastating effects of nation- Well, the answer to all of those tough ques-
been damaged in battle. The machines alistic xenophobia. tions is, unfortunately, no. The acting and
themselves look like they shuffled off the Automatons is bound for cult status and directing feel forced, it’s not scary in the
set of some low-tech sci-fi films of yore - should be dug up in ten years and viewed and even the scenes
slightest that are meant to
perhaps Radar Men from the Moon (1952) again - that is, if humanity is still around. be jarring have little effect, as they’ve all been
or Target Earth (1954). which featured Last Chance Lance done before in better films. The final act holds
 . — :

Jx.

some redemptive qualities in a twist that rings of

Kubrick, but really, only the unnerving piano
' sonata score is consistent in furnishing this unin-
teresting work with any soul.
Trevor Tuminski

YOKELSPLDITATION

SIORM WARNING
Starring Nadia Fares, Robert Taylor

and John Brumpton

Directed by Jamie Blanks

Written by Everett De Roche

Dimension Extreme

With the rash of niral survivalisl films of the last

few years, it’s amazing that anyone dares to leave

THIS ISSUE: LANCE TAKES A STAB AT SLASHERS
the city to sample the simpler pleasures of the
countryside anymore. If we believe what we see in
the movies, tourists in search of unspoiled natural The Institution
vistas are more likely to

unwilling victims of prolonged psychodramas

find themselves the 1 usually have

a “Jenna'' in
a box of Kleenex at the ready whenever watch a movie with
it, but this time it was in anticipation of crying.
I

This Jenna,
^
'

'
^
^
involving rape, torture and humiliation, all played by Jessica Kinney, is cursed: every guy she falls for ends up dying
' •
*
designed by the vicious locals to reveal the use- a horrible death at the hands of her twisted, incestuous family members. '

lessness of their sissy-fied city cousins. So, she runs away from home to get married, but her kinfolk find her and i||^ -

* '
Storm Warning, from Australia's Jamie Blanks decimate the entire wedding party. Wedding Slashers is a solid film with
(Urban Legend), is the latest film to pit feral coun- clever, funny dialogue, good gore gags and an ultra-cool cameo by Richard Lynch, who has
try folk against latte -sipping outsiders. The city starred in everything from The Ninth Configuration Xo Puppetmaster 3. As Jenna’s father, he
slickers here are a well-heeled couple from Mel- proves the old adage 'bout the family that slays together. . .

bourne who rent a boat for a little fishing and sight- Body Count; 23
by a storm in
seeing, then find themselves stranded Best Slash: A priest’s eye-and-gut pluck.
an isolated maze of mangrove swamps. Hubby
Rob, a wound-up prosecuting attorney, decides
that he and his French wife Pia would be better off
looking for help than waiting for rescue, and his Westlake Entertainment
plan seems like a good one Okay folks, I’ve never done this before, so understand, I’m serious: dp not
when they find an old watch this movie! Do not rent, borrow or download it. This shitty, disjointed

farmhouse nearby. It’s not and abysmally boring flick follows two couples who join their mutual friend
mi
so good when he discovers at his hotel in Mexico and end up being hunted down by a soul-sucking § h*
a thriving grow-op in an demon. One guy spends half the movie prancing around in a leather thong •

j| ^
outbuilding. and ball gag, another is tortured with electrified nipple clamps and a huge
The somewhat pre- dildo, and the “star” talent (Irwin Keyes: who played the retarded murder
dictable set-up scenes are ride attendant in House of WOO Corpsed) spends his screen time crying, yelling or just look-
handled well, with dialogue ing incredibly lost. Yet, it's a total snoozer. Seriously, Dream Slashers is a must-miss if ever
and characterizations far there was one. And coming from me, that's sayin’ something!
superior to the genre’s usual Body Count; 14
prc-camagc bantering. Once Best Slash: Sorry, all the deaths are lame.
the family of farmers arrives home to discover that

unwanted guests, have stumbled upon their cash

crop, any attempts at originality and subtlety arc SLASI
tossed on the compost heap, though. The farmers First Look
are all bad teeth, bad liquor and corny tag lines as From Dark Harvest to The Wizard of Oz, scarecrows have always gotten
they set about terrorizing their captives for no good under my skin - in a good way. Naturally, I was interested when I came
reason. The gormless yuppies, inexplicably left across this rare South African entry in the killer scarecrow genre. Mac,
together in a barely guarded bam while the farm- lead singer of a rock band, is called home to attend a funeral and decides
ers catch up on the latest girl-and-a-horse pom to take the entire group along so they can hunker down at the family farm.
flick in the living room, suddenly reveal them- Here, they’re hunted by a killer scarecrow - simple. If one expects any-
selves as masters of Rainbo-like booby-trapping, thing from slasher films, it’s blood and boobs, yet Slash skimps on both, with formulaic, off-
setting up the obligatoiy gory revenge sequences. screen deaths and not a single nude scene. Luckily, the scarecrow is pretty creepy and actor
None of which make the long drive to the country Steve Railsback {Ed Gein), who plays Mac’s father, saves the flick with some great redneck
worth it.
acting. Yee-haw!
Body Count: 14
Best Slash; Human frappe via thresher.
Last Chance Lance

RUE MORGUE 47 ^
 STRIKES AGAIN WITH THREE qUICKIE CREATURE
FEATURES RIDING ON THE TAILS DF RECENT HORROR BLOCKRUSTERS.

SEND IN THE
'
1 ky.

N[(i "L p;r li.

Starring Mark Dacascos, Geoff Meed
Starring William Katt and Dedee Pfeiffer Starring Sarah Lieving, Erin Sullivan
and Jennifer Lee Wiggins
Directed by Scott Harper and Randy Mulkey and Yoshi Ando
Directed by Griff Furst
Written by David Michael Latt Directed by Eric Forsberg
Written by Geoff Meed
Written by Eric Forsberg and David Michael Latt

How mad does it make you when you buy a

Okay, we get it - this is obviously a mockbuster
movie based solely on its cover art. only to find out A giant monster flattens Tokyo. . . again, but this
based on the 1 964 classic The Last Man on Earth,
tliat the images on the cover never appear in the time its not Godziiia, Camera or Rodan. If you
1 97rs The Omega Man and the recent I Am Leg- movie? haven’t guessed it already, this isn’t The Asylum’s
end. Problem is. where these films offered solid
This barely watchable fiasco is guilty of that as take on the Charlize Theron movie of the same
lead actors (Vincent Price, Charleton Heston and
it deals with a group of people caught in the mid- name, either - it’s a rip on Cloverfield.
Will Smith, respectively), the best that The Asylum
dle of a battle between two aliens (not the ones Presented as footage rescued from a disaster
could muster for / Am Omega was the guy who
pictured on the cover) that tiiat devastated Tokyo, it foliows two sisters who
starred in Kickboxer 5 and played Eric Draven in
have crashed on Earth. have travelled to Japan to film a documen-
The Crow TV series, Mark Dacascos.
What’s supposed to make a tary on global warming get caught up in an
Dacascos plays Renchard, who's supposed to
film like this worthwhile are attack by a gigantic Lovecraftian monster.
be the last human on Eartli after a virus has killed
the special effects. We want As in Cloverfield, the action is filmed on a
everyone else off or
to see the alien and predator hand-held video camera
turned them into blood-
- er, hunter - fighting it out that takes the puke-
zombies (sound
with futuristic weapons and inducing motion sickness
'
familiar?). Though the
spewing toxic goop on each of ultra-shaky-cam to a
•
movie starts out compe-
other. Unfortunately, the new high. But what raises
! tently enough with Ren-
fight scenes are impotent at this film above most other
chard holed up in a cabin
best, the alien is an uncon- Asylum fare is that it’s
fighting off zombies, it
vincing CGI spider-thing and the hunter’s getup competently acted by com-
quickly becomes acutely
i --r looks like a cross between a scuba diver’s wetsuit pany staples Sarah Lieving
boring as he meanders
and a Tin Man Halloween costume. (666: The Child, The Hitch-
around the countryside
As appalling as that sounds, the scariest thing hike!) and Erin Sullivan
looking for supplies, plant-
about Alien vs. Hunter is how horribly lead actor (Transmorphers), who convincingly convey a
ing bombs and generally being introspective. At
William Katt has aged since starring in House and sense of panic and terror as they scramble to
least until a couple of guys show up to enlist his
The Greatest American Hero. He’s barely recogniz- reach what they hope will be the safety of the U.S.
help in rescuing a girl trapped in the city, meaning
able as a scenery chewing, washed-up reporter Embassy.
that the population of the Earth has just quadru-
trying to cover.the alien battle. Whereas most Asylum creature features with
pled. From there, it suddenly morphs into a martial
Even if you’re a true movie masochistic, the any CGI suffer greatly from laughable graphics,
arts spectacle featuring far too much kung fu and
completely unbelievable twist at the end of the this time less is more - in the form of a few slimy
not enough zombie goo.
film may very well turn you off of ever watching an tentacles that appear fleetingly. Out of the three
I just wish they had gone with my idea for the
Asylum title again. new Asylum flicks, this one is definitely the pick of
title: The Legend of the Last Omega Man on Earth.
the litter. But just remember: litter can also mean
trash!

48 IIUI-; MORGUE
 As seen latenight Friday nigjitson SuperstationWGN

WWW.

Walk With Him Meet Disecto When Good People He’s Out of
Through HELL! the Clown... Go Rotten! the Woods!

Select titles available at: amazon.com

Hastings NtIFLI* Buy.com

jMcaS14.98!
Promotional & Marketing Materials for ind other Brain Damage Films tnies can be purchased from our online store at wv/w.braindamagefili

‘•io^un

nsc. AU-Rightt Reiefyed.

^URKSrFi^
Caj ^ tion* Is a registered trademark of Lurker Films Inc.

RUE MORGUE 49 \
 But is it worth trading up? The picture
and sound have been remastered “in High
Definition from the original camera nega-
tive.” Indeed, cinematographer Francisco
Sempere’s work contrasting the ugly Man-
chester locations with the green hills of
Derbyshire is crisp and clean. Likewise,
Giuliano Sorgini’s atonal score, which
mimics the sounds of the film’s undead
antagonists, is brought to life with inhuman
clarity.

Fans will be most interested, though, in

the three new supplements. Back to the
Morgue is an informative 45-minute retro-
spective tour of the film’s English shooting
locations hosted by Grau and journalist
Gian Luca Castoldi. while Zombie Fighter
is a perfectly adequate career-encompass-
ing interview with star Lovelock. Zombie
Maker, meanwhile, is an amusing and hon-
est interview with makeup effects master
Giannetto De Rossi {Zombie, Dune, Haute
Tension) who goes into gory detail about
the film’s famous breast-ripping gag and
the rest of his storied career. Fans who own
cither previous version may want to rent
this, while newcomers won’t rue their deci-
sion to purchase this Morgue.
Sean Plummer

psvcHo cIrcus
Jfte Unag 0^ M Manchester Morgue: A fresh zombie rises from the slab.

starring Andrew Prine, ManuellaThiess

and Sherry Alberoni
Directed by Alan Rudolph

Moigiie must be greeted with trepida- Written by Alan Rudolph and Roman
THiS SLeepiNG ter
Legend House
Valenti

CORPSe WON’T Lie tion.

fectly
After all. Anchor Bay released
serviceable version back in 2000
a per-

under one of its other various titles. Let Back in RM#72. marvelled over Stephen
1

IIIE LIVING DEAD AI

Sleeping Corpses Lie. Blue Underground Thrower’s book Nightmare USA, both
MANCDESTED lilODGDE (13H| then re-released it (under the .same title) because it was a great book and also
Starring Ray Lovelock, Christine Gaibo last year. And now BU has unleashed the because it weighed eight freakin' pounds. 1

and Arthur Kennedy aforementioned special edition under the also marvelled (inwardly this time) that a
Directed by Jorge Grau Motgue moniker, outfitted this time with good four ounces of it
Written by Sandro Continenza three admittedly well-done featurettes. were dedicated to a
and Marcello Coscia For those unfamiliar with it. Morgue film I’d never heard of
Blue Underground (a.k.a. Corpses and Don 't Open the Win- but, from that moment
dow) is a stylish and creepy on became determined
Horror fans know the dou- film about reluctant travelling to see. That film was

ble-dip - that oftentimes companions George and Barn of the Naked

nefarious practice whereby our Edna (Ray Lovelock and Dead.
favourite flicks are unleashed Christine Gaibo) whose quiet It’s tempting to
on DVD in multiple versions. weekend in the English coun- describe Barn
Bui which do we choose? tryside is disrupted by lum- directed by Robert
“This one has been digitally bering coipses awakened by Altman protege Alan
scrubbed." “This one has mul- the “ultrasonic radiation” Rudolph - as being equal parts The Hills
tiple making-of featurettes.” emitted by a local agricultur- Have Eyes, Maniac, Mother's Day and
“This one comes with an action al machine. It's a tense, well- Motel Hell, except that it predates all of
figure.” You know the drill. made picture rife with them and isn’t quite as entertaining as any
So Blue Underground’s “2- enough grue and genuine of them. But that doesn’t mean you should-
Disc Special Edition” of Spanish director characterization to please gorchounds and n’t see it. provided that your appetite for
Jorge Grau's The Living Dead at Manches- ordinary moviegoers alike. pure cheese is healthy.

50 RUE MORGUE
 7 TV and B-movie veteran Andrew Prine
'^Grizzlv, Centerfold Girls) is Andre, a desert-
“idweHmg nut job who kidnaps three Vegas-
: bound showgirls and chains them up in his

bara along with some other hapless women

he’s pressed into service as “circus animals.”
(Keep mind the next time you hear
tliat in

Jerry Lee Lewis sing, “Come on over,

babyAVe got chicken in the bamAVhose
bam?AVhat bam?/My barn.”) The "circus”
element is one of many plot points that never

quite get developed, with scenery-munching

Prine occasionally donning a ringmaster outfit
and forcing the women to walk in circles

while he cracks a whip overhead.

And then there’s Andre’s homicidal, nuclear

waste-mutated father, who lurks nearby in the

desert, waiting to pounce on unwary travellers

(shades of the elusive “Queenie” in Mother’s

42nd Street Forever Vol: 3: Blood Beach is one of many exploitation flicks in Synapse’s trailer compilation.
Day). Exactly how Andre has been able to
subdue all these women and keep them cap-
Forever Vol. 3: Exploitation Explosion is highly misleading spots - the trailer for the
tive for months (apparently without any
here to prove you wrong with more than 40 Milton Subotsky-produced killer cat movie
weapons) is left entirely to the audience’s
coming attractions of rare and obscure trash The Uncanny cagily omits the fact that it’s
imagination. The violence (floggings and sev-
treasures. Although this edition of an anthology of several stories, while The
eral murders) and would-be degradation of the
Synapse’s top-notch trailer compilation House by the Lake (a.k.a. Death Weekend)
w'omen might actually have been frightening
series is a bit shorter than is dressed up like a demon-
and even offensive if any of it were even
previous entries, it still ic possession film when
halfway convincing, but the action sequences
may be the best 42nd Street it’s actually a Straw Dogs-
are simply laughable.
Forever yet. styled revenge thriller.
So why watch it? Well, there’s Prine. a
Part of the appeal of the Non-horror highlights
charismatic actor who flings himself into the
42nd Street Forever releas- include the weird Lee Van
role like Iggy Pop throws himself into a
es is their genre-hopping Cleef/Lieh Lo kung-fu
crowd. There’s the unmistakable, authentic
goodness, and this volume spaghetti western The
aroma of grindhouse sleaze that no one -
is no exception, encom- Stranger and the Gunfight-
Tarantino included - has been able to dupli-
passing everything from er, the flatulence-based
cate in the present day. And there’s Johnny
Legend’s Gore Beat., an hour-long featurette.
women in-prison - laughs of King &*''% Frat
exploiters and chop-socky and Franco Nero as a mas-
in which dear old Johnny shoots the shit with
imports to sleazy skin ter assassin in Enter the
Prine. John Landis, Fred Olen Ray, Brian
flicks and yee-haw Ninja.
Yuzna and Ray Dennis Steckler. And there’s
truckin’ epics. But horror But the most interesting
being able to say you’ve seen Barn of the
fiends should be especial- aspect of 42nd Street Forev-
Naked Dead. 1 can. Can you?
ly pleased to find an outstanding lineup of er Vol. 3 is the addition of a
John W’. Bowen
rare and unseen terror trailers this time commentary with Fangoria's Michael Gin-

SHORT, SWeCT around, with only a few readily available on gold, sleaze expert Chris Poggiali and DVD
R1 DVD. Just for starters, you get Joe Don Maniacs/AVManiacs web editor Edwin
^ND SLe^ZV Baker battling rabid dogs in The Pack, Samuelson, who make this more than just a
Antonio Margheriti ripping off Joe Dante disc to throw on in the background of your
^2 SIIIEEI FOREVER VOL 3:
with Killer Fish (featuring Lee Majors!), next party. Despite the short timeframe of
EXPLOIIAIION EXPLOSION the sand, surf and mayhem of Blood Beach each clip, the participants offer up quick

Synapse and even the Saul Bass-directed killer ant opinions and oddball trivia for a laidback,
film Phase IV - a trailer that is far better enjoyable track that will make you wish
For those who think that all the weirdest, than the disappointing film it promotes. most of these films really were playing at a
most fascinating comers of cult cinema It’s also fun to speculate about how well theatre near you.

have been long since exhausted, 42nd Street some of these ads work, including several Paul Corupe

Autumn Moon
the is Bright
^ Heart^^/^ cars

‘e Autobiography of a Werewolf Hunter,. bdq : 2 by Brian Easton

LVailable at all online booksellers More inixit VtHv.hauntedjack.com

RUE MORGUE 51
 BY Jason Pichonsky

lue Underground’s reissue of Anchor Bay’s novel and interesting thriller, but one that leaves a genre

B ian
The

“Who’s Lado?” you ask. Well.

Giallo Collection gives us the perfect

opportunity to revisit the early days of

filmmaker Aldo Lado’s career. Wait

Aldo Lado got his start as a director

.

in 1971. in
itai-

the
-
fan wanting.
Before becoming a director
with legendary
no surprise that an
Italian

art
in his own right,

filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, so

house sensibility runs through
Lado worked

much
it’s

of his work. That said, Lado's next film, 1972's Who Saw
heyday of Italian genre cinema, and the “decade of Her Die?, sticks much closer to the giallo formula. This may
the gialli.’’ That he began his career in the giallo
be the result of writing assistance from Massimo D’Avack
genre is no surprise then, yet his films are not typical and Franco Barilli, who co-wrote The Man From Deep River,
of the genre, as they're often imbued with social and as well as Ruediger Von Spihes, who contributed to the
political commentary. His early surroundings were script for Glass Dolls.
likely a key influence; he was born in Fiume, Italy, a The film stars George Lazenby (best known as the one-off
border town under fascist rule, which after WWII was James Bond from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) as Fran-
renamed Rijeka and rejoined Croatia. While he spent his adolescence co, an Venice. His world
artist living in is shattered when his daughter
in Venice, stories and memories of the era’s political strife must have Robertta (Nicoletta Elmi, Deep Red) disappears, only to be found floating
shaped him. lifeless in the canals. Unsatisfied with the police investigation, he takes it
Lado’s first film. Short Night of Glass Dolls - which he also wrote - upon himself to find her killer, with help from his estranged wife, played by
plays more like a political driller than a giallo. It opens with an entic- Anita Stringberg. Hell, a gaunt, post-Bond Lazenby with a ’70s ’stashe,
ing premise: reporter Gregory Moore (Jean Sorel) lies tossing back his long locks of hair is worth the price of
on a mortuary slab, still very conscious and aware. admission alone.
Moore must piece together the fragments of his failing Sticking closeiy to the template. Who Saw Wer 0/e? deliv-
memory in order to solve his own murder. He begins by ers a number of stylish kills, a roaming camera from the
going over the disappearance of his girlfriend (Barbara killer’s point of view and several red herrings. But Lado also
Bach), which leads him down a path of conspiracy. The understands the importance of building an emotional con-
film, which unfolds in flashbacks, also co-stars Ingrid
nection between his characters and the audience, so he
Thuiin as “an old flame rekindled,’’ as well as Mario
spends a third of the story setting up the relationship
Adorf (Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) as a
between father and daughter before she’s murdered. Even
key player in the dirty dealings. though the opening scene of a different child getting killed
Lado’s inspirationwas a newspaper article about an lets us know Franco's daughter is marked, her death is stilt
Italian judge who was shuffled away to a remote corner
a shock. The use of a children’s choir in the score (by the
of Italy after speaking out against the establishment -a legendary Ennio Morricone), reminiscent of f^nhiin'c:

man buried by those in power, which Moore quite literal-

for Suspiria, adds further emotional weight.
ly is. The metaphor works, and gives the film an immediate hook. The reissues of Short Night of Glass Dolls and Who
Although Glass Dolls is beautifully shot (making the most of its Die? include an Aldo Lado filmography, theatrical trail
Prague setting) and confidently directed, it plays more art short but informative interview with
exploitation and lacks the typical giallo stylized kills. For gialli Be warned, though,
is its obvious downfall; there are no elaborate murders to copies of the previous
audience interest when the plot gets convoluted. In fact, Bay releases. %
kills occur off-screen, slowing the film down - at least until the
ai orgy and operating theatre climax. Ultimately, we’re left

52 RUE MORGUE
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iMARflUEE
J
•
THE LOST COUSIN
OF CALIGAOl

IDE MUDS OF OBIAC |ISM|

Starring Conrad Veidt, Alexandra Sorina
and Hans Homma
Directed by Robert Wiene
Written by Louis Nerz and Maurice Renard

•• Kino

Four years after directing Conrad Veidt in

• the
inet
German expressionist classic The Cab-
ofDr. Caligari, Robert Wiene reunited
with his creepy, dynamic star for The
Hands of Orlac, a dark. Freudian thriller
that again sought to externalize the myste-
rious inner workings of the mind. Based on
the novel Les mains d'Orlac by Maurice
Renard, the film’s exploration of madness
and despair introduced the idea of killer The Hands of Orlac: Conrad Veidt and Alexandra Sorina in a rarely seen silent classic.

body transplants to the screen, and trans-

formed this fantastic plot into one of horror terror that forgoes distorted cubism for a the tragic story. Orlac struggles with a body
cinema’s most indelible and prolific subdued atmosphere. It even uses real-life that has seemingly rebelled, fragmenting his
mythologies. terror as a jumping-off point. The aftermath identity - the pianist’s uncontrollable limbs
In the movie Veidt plays Paul Orlac. a of the train derailment that causes Orlac to deeply threaten his sense of self, making
celebrated pianist whose hands are severed lose his hands is one of the centrepieces of him question his transformation from a
in a horrific train accident. Rushing to her the film; this grim scene clear- world-class musician into a common killer.

husband’s side, Orlac’s wife ly references the devastation This timeless theme has been reinvented and
Ivana (Alexandra Sorina) and death of World War I as reworked many times since, from direct
arranges an appointment distraught rescue crews search remakes such as Mad Love and a 1960s
with Dr. Serral (Hans for bodies under twisted metal British update with Christopher Lee. to less
Homma), who attempts to and machinery, carrying the specific interpretations in the Mexican
salvage the musician's career dead and wounded away on schlocker The Witch's Mirror and Oliver
by grafting the hands of a makeshift stretchers. Stone's The Hand. More recently, as trans-
dead man to his wrists. While Playing almost entirely with plants went from the realm of speculative
recuperating, Orlac learns the stark contrasts of darkness and science fiction to medical reality. Evil Dead
donor was a knife-wielding light. The Hands of Orlac then II, Body Parts and the body horror of David
murderer recently executed slowly merges dreams with Cronenberg have all demonstrated that even
for his crimes, and is subse- reality until Orlac physically as technology progresses, our notions of the
quently by vivid
plagued inhabits the world within his body’s relationship to our identity still lags.
nightmares. His fear grows when his clum- mind, full of dark thoughts and hidden anx- While Nosferatu and Caligari have been
sy new fingers refuse to tickle the ivories, ieties. Wiene creates claustrophobia and in constant circulation since the early days
instead preferring to act out involuntary tension not with off-kilter cinematography of VHS. The Hands of Orlac has, until now,
murderous actions. Driven by mounting and crooked angles, but with tight close- never received a legitimate release in North
financial pressures and the watchful eye of ups. to suggest increasing emotional insta- America, despite its undeniable importance
a mysterious stranger, Orlac visits his bility. Much as he did with Cesare the Som- both as an early German silent film and a
father and finds he has been stabbed to nambulist Caligari. Veidt mirrors his char- pioneering tale of terror. Making its DVD
death. Orlac’s "new" fingerprints are all acter’s descent into frantic insanity by dis- debut from Kino, The Hands of Orlac is
over the knife. torting and twisting his body. available as a standalone release, as well as
Although The Hands of Orlac shares Though the film has thematic parallels to part of on a new German Expressionism
many plot aspects with Caligari - science both Frankenstein and Dr. Jeh’ll and Mr. Collection with The Cabinet of Dr. Cali-
gone mad, psychological obsession and Hyde, The Hands of Orlac avoids the well- gari, Secrets of a Soul and Warning Shad-
mental anguish - this film is a much more travelled monster movie territory by ows.
restrained, methodically paced exercise in putting a distinctly relatable human face on Paul Corupe

54 RUE MORGUE
 A
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RUE MORGUE 55
 CAME FRi]li
BOWEN'S
R.
BAS Ei IIEN T IV
t
DRIVE-INS. DE LET E B NS^iNE 01 BED SI NSl
^PtCK
ANt) ^PtCUlA'^lO^

ome infamous murderers enter the col-

lective consciousness forever, whereas
others... well, sic transit gioria, I guess
(and no, that’s not Latin for “Sally Sfruthers vom-
its on subway”). Take Richard Speck, f r instance,
the most notorious nut-job of the pre-Manson
1960s. Speck remained one of the Western
world’s top boogeymen right up until the mid-
’80s, admittedly less iconic than Charlie and fam-
ily but nonetheless a figure of near-mythic infamy
before being overshadowed by the zany antics of
Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Richard ed to flashback footage of Speck brutalizing his parishioners dead. He then walks the streets of
Ramirez. wife to the strains of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Belfast while a festive pub song plays in the back-
Despite his lengttiy record of petty crime and Your Man," while other familiar ditties by Patsy ground, punctuated by distant gunfire and explo-
domestic violence, no one could have predicted Cline, Lester Flatl and Earl Scruggs, The Rolling sions. As is the case with Targets and / Spit on
the carnage Speck would wreak on the swelter- Stones and Jimi Hendrix lend the film period Your Grave, Born For Hell has no background
ing night of July 13, 1966, torturing, raping and authenticity. score per se - music, when it’s heard at all,

murdering eight student nurses in their Chicago Speck (RM#36}, from 2002, appears to have emanates exclusively from motivated sources.
residence. He was arrested several days later been an even lower-budgeted effort - and occa- French Canadian director Denis Heroux keeps
and, in relatively short order, tried, convicted and sionally suffers for it - but director Keith Walley the violence up close and personal, and, like Tobe
sentenced to death, later commuted to life with- ratchets up the tension admirably and milks a Hooper at the top of his game, skillfully keeps us
out parole. So far, three feature films have been palpable sense of claustrophobia from his film’s identifyng with the victims at all times. Mathieu
based on the Speck case; two, not surprisingly, confined setting, even when his addiction to low Carriere’s cold, dead-eyed portrayal of Speck is
amid the recent onslaught of low-budget fact- angles becomes tiresome. Like Nemec in Chica- remarkably restrained even during the film’s most
based serial killer films, predated by an obscure go Massacre, Doug Cole brings true ferocity to the violent passages: he simply seems resigned to
effort (the best, if also the strangest) from 1 976. title role without overacting, and the script sticks these horrific acts as part of his destiny just as he
Although rife with minor flaws, Mark Feifer’s closely to frie facts of the case. Let's just be seems resigned to getting caught afterward. Sim-
2007 film Chicago Massacre is powerfully real- thankful Walley got this project instead of Chris ilar to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and to a
ized and fuelled by a volatile but never over-the- Fisher (Nightstalker, The Hillside Stranglerd}, the lesser degree Maniac, the film’s greatest strength ,

top performance by Conn Nemec (killer dork Uwe Boll of serial killer film directors. lies in its unflinching objectivity and staunch
Harold in The Stand}. It’s also the first of these There’s a dearth of information available refusal to leer.
three films to give Speck a substantial back story. regarding the best of these three films, the 1 976 Chicago Massacre and Speck are widely avail-
Genre mainsts^s Andrew Divoff and Tony Todd are French/German/Canadian co-production Bom For able (from Lionsgate and Shadow Entertainment,
solid and sympathetic as detectives, despite Hell (a.k.a. Naked Massacre), which is unfortu- respectively), while Bom For Hell, sadly, is not; I

being saddled with some atrocious lines. (There nate since it raises some questions. Principally, stumbled across it under its Naked Massacre
oughta be an Oscar for actors who can maintain why was the setting for an otherwise historically moniker in one of Mill Creek Entertainment’s
their dignity while gamely soldiering through CSI- accurate film about Speck transplanted from awesome 50-movie bargain basement box sets,
worthy butt-clenchers such as, “I think this guy’s 1966 Chicago to 1976 Belfast at the height of but it’s unavailable on its own. The upside? Well,
a scumbag cut from the same cloth as Jack the Northern Ireland’s sectarian violence? with the box set you get 49 more movies, dumb-
Ripper.”) Chicago Massacre's soundtrack aiso Bom for Hell opens with our killer (Mathieu Car- ass.
merits mention for its handful of original hits, a riere) attending a church service that’s rudely Now my basement
get the hell out of so 1 may
curiosity for such a low-budget We’re treat- *
film. interrupted by a bombing that leaves several speculate upon my own crapulence.

,RUE MORGUE
 SALES
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RUE MORGUE 57 ^
 IM ^i^lQ ICCI lel
DELPHINE #3 (OF ')

^ B1
Richard Sala FantagraphicsICocconino

ok V I, # JMH THE DEMONS OF SHERWOOD (WEEKS

Bo Hampton and RobertTinnell ComicMix.com
t-W)

GHOSTING #t-5

W 1 N F UR Platinum Studios

SETEN HC
David Seidman and various Zenescope

( — by
FRIDAY THE I3TH TPB
Palmiotti, Gray and Archer
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE TPB

m a# / .ajr a m aa ifam by Abnett, Lanning and Craig

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET TPB

by Chuck Dixon and Kevin West
DC/Wildstorm

|A have to confess, Richard Sala’s current jumping-oif point, and several plot
B miniscries. Delphine, took me by sur- elements from various versions are
W prise. Very pleasant surprise. am a great 1
woven in.”
• fan of American expressionist cartoonist Careful readers will notice
Sala (the ongoing Evil Eye series, Tlmteen dwarves, a woodsman, a looking
O 'clock and The Ghastly Ones), whose works glass and a disguised matriarchal
blend elements of horror, mystery and dark type who misleads the Traveller. The
comedy in a comic book format with the references are indeed in there, but
relentless pacing of a Republic serial. But often off-panel. Consider the cover
Delphine had somehow slipped under my to issue #1, where the Traveller
radai-, so when the first three (of four) issues walks an empty village street, upon
landed on my desk, I wasn’t predisposed to whose wall is cast the shadow of a
look for a particular storyline, aside from sim- crone unmistakably proferring an
ply expecting a “Richard Sala.” My point apple.
being that I wasn’t trying to find avatars for Sala confirms that this character is
the fairy tale of Snow White, which the series indeed “the stepmother, hateful and
is compared to. jealous of her stepdaughter, takes
This is why, in many respects, my initial drastic measures to get rid of her.
encounter with the mysterious, enchanting Age versus youth is a common
Delphine Penny - the story’s titular but prac- theme in folk tales. The horrific
tically absent lead - was not dissimilar to that images of adults - often parents
of the anonymous hero who sets out to save killing or even eating
her. (Whether she wants him to is another children haunt those
question.) As our hero, to whom Sala simply stories and are still pret-
refers to as “The Traveller.” becomes lost in ty shocking to read
the peculiar town to which Delphine purport- today.” Delphine, for its
edly disappeared, the one thing that becomes part, features walking
clear is how little the young man actually corpses, ritual sacrifices
knows about her. As readers derive giddy and murder-minded
delight watching him falter and fumble and mayhem. Grim(m) stuff.
get all the more lost, we also witness his Appropriate to the
memories of Delphine - the only sections in story, Sala’s famous mock-woodcut style and gives you an idea of how 1 approach a
which she appears - become more confu.sed. distinctive font are. as expected, at play in romance story.”
So, Snow White, the story is not, despite Delphine. But where his previous works have It’s curious, as Sala’s stories tend to end
being rife with conscious nods to the fairy been almost exclusively black and white, this happily, the odd dead body notwithstanding -
talc, which explains why publisher Fanta- one is in duo-tone (black line, sepia wash), in this particular case, the poor woodsman’s.
graphics describes the project as a “re-imag- and the impact is dramatic. Sala’s work is Sala warns that readers may be in for some-
ining of Snow White.” But the story is as always visually rich; now practically tex-
it’s thing more “downbeat.”
much Sala’s as anyone elsc’s, and is addition- tured. He elaborates: “I might also take exception
ally indebted to many other influences; were- As issue #3 concludes, the Traveller still to the idea that my stories have ‘happy’ end-
wolves, Greek myths and Hitchcock’s Psycho has not found Delphine, though he has stum- ings. Maybe one could see them that way.
all lurk within. bled into the stepmother (pictui-ed). Will the Something I hit upon during several years of
“Calling it a ‘re-imagining’ may be a bit of boy get the girl? psychotherapy, though: the closet feeling I’ve
a stretch,” Sala agrees. “You wouldn’t be “If s just as accurate to describe this story as ever had to actual ‘happiness’ in my adult life
wrong to say Delphine has as much to do with my take on romance - which haven’t done
I is ‘relief. And a lot of my stories end not
Snow White as Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow before, in any of my books. half-jokingly
1
with a sense of joy or celebration, but with a
has to do with its inspiration, or The Compa- told a friend it’s ‘boy meets girl, loses girl, character just relieved to still be alive! For
ny of Wolves with Little Red Riding Hood. suffers the torments of hell trying to figure it Delphine, who knows? may I not even allow
But it’s in there. ... Snow White was my all out, things get worse, the end.’ Which that.” I;
58 RUE MORGUE
 the ceiling of eyeballs in issue #1 was killer,

and most of the covers (#3, pictured) were

strong. As for the plot, ome people pull out their hair watching

involving a college hazing horror film series, either from fright or

gone lethal, it’s damn frustration, but more the latter than the

solid, even if the ending former when it comes to '80s franchises such

A weeWy onHne freebie that launched on is, again, rushed. Probably as Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Mas-

ComicMix.com December and wraps

last would have made a good sacre and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Surpris-

late spring. The Demons of Shenvood is an enough movie. The curi-

. .
ingly, this isn’t the case for three comic-book

intentional genre mash-up rooted in swash- ous should pick up the extensions of these licensed properties, all col-

buckling and horror, with a healthy dose of floppies before Ghosting lected in TPBs.

redemption comedy. Co-writers Bo Hampton becomes an urban legend, because a TPB Jason, Leattierface and Freddy have done

and Robert Tinnell are clearly having a ton of collection has not been announced. the rounds in this medium many times. Gore-

fun dragging into action a drunken and past- content has never been an issue, the problem

his-prime Robin Hood who must save Maid Possibly the most has always been quantity (gratuitous blood)

Marian from becoming not only a demonic ambitious licensed over quality (hackneyed plotting and action). I

sacrifice but also - arguably worse - a nun. concept to cross my salute DC/Wildstorm for telling some of the

On art duties, Hampton is, as ever, right on desk in quite a while most original franchise-bound tales these

target, particularly with choreography: in is the Selen minis- properties have experienced in a long time.

Week 6. Robin’s eries. Not surprising- None of them are perfect,

rope -swinging “res- ly, it was originally of course, but with the

cue” of the victims of released as seven sep- exception of the original

arate one-shots cover- Texas film, tiie points of

a witch-burning con-
veys a staggering ing the back stories of inspiration were uniformly

amount of visceral the sin-targeted vic- flawed and inconsistent as

well.
action with less than a tims in David Fincher’s 1995 film master-
dozen panels. But the piece. Fonnatted to resemble the killer’s Why fans should read

true highlight for fans infamous notebooks, they’ve now been col- these comics: Freddy gets

magazine: HC with an all-new hella-creatively outwitted by both a girl in a

of this lected in a beautiful
Week 14’s attack of concept cover, this one considering the John coma (is she sleeping or isn’t she?) and a cul-

the living dead, which Doe’s carefully crafted anonymity. The sto- turally accurate Mexican sleep demon. Jason’s

features, hands-down ries themselves are far from flawless - power is made manifest when his lake is

(heads- and dentures-, too), the finest body “Gluttony” and “Sloth” are downright revealed to be far from "Crystal” clear, as pil-

horror-comedy sequence since Evil Dead 2. cliche (too bad for the latter, as it features grims made it a dumping ground for slaugh-

Yes, that good, and it’s a comic book. the best art in the book) - but they come tered natives. And the one-armed Leatherface
together when they need to, which is to say, (per the conclusion of the 2005 sequel) must

Teen-targeted horror with the requisite I- when the process contend with a Rambo-type FBI agent who is

know-what-you-did twist (this time out. a turns inward on the racking up just as many chainsaw executions,

supematurally stalked sorority/fraternity) killer while ensnar- of Leatherface’s own family.

Ghosting delivers overall but suffers from ing Detective Mills. Mileage varies for the art, Fnday standing as

having more groan than Scream. Alas, this In the end, this is a the best with a slew of marvelously arranged

mini was “haunted” by the fact that it’s a book notable for art Jason kills, and fexasthe most functional. But

decade-old screen property that never got over narrative, and perhaps the most important distinction is tiiat

lensed. Ace writer Fred Van Lente’s hands supervising design- these stories simply feel right, in terms of rep-

were clearly tied to some degree, because it er/artist David Seid- resenting the voice of each respective fran-

just doesn’t read like a real Fred book, drab man clearly deserves chise. A recent Freddy vs Jason vs Ash minis-

dialogue in particular. Oftentimes too-car- the credit. It’s also eries was a misstep, but even it sported a plot

toony art is an additional drawback, particu- worth the price of admission for the original driver considerate of the source material. For

larly the flatter-than-boring corpse reveal in series covers alone, any of which could be once, a comics licensee cares more than Hol-
I

the obviously rushed finale; too bad. because posters (“Gluttony” and “Pride” pictured). L lywood.

RUE MORGUE 59
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60 RUE MORGUE
 NEKROmantik the material. Stiglegger examines how the White’s The Films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa:
Various time Buttgereit spent living in the then Master of Fear, as he surveys the direc-
Martin Schmitz Verlag still-divided Berlin influenced his Nekro- tor’s wildly uneven 25-plus title filmogra-

maiUik films, while Loser and Blake both phy.

Nekromantik, made in 1987, was one of postulate on where the film fits within Ger- Kurosawa is known in North America for
the last true underground films - a graphic many’s cinematic history and the horror his arty horror films, notably Cure and the
sex ’n’ death, pre-internet flick that made genre in general, including why it’s been masterpiece Pulse (a.k.a. Kairo), yet his

its way around the world via shoddy boot- so frequently banned. filmography is long and varied, and
leg videos and folks such as film writer Published in both German and English in includes Yakuza films, dramas, comedies,
and exhibitionist Jack Stevenson, who one pocket book-size volume, Nekroman- pink films and some less easily classifiable
toured a print in the 1980s. Watching tik also includes an amazing collection of Eyes of the Spider doesn’t deliv-
fare (e.g.

Nekromantik in a small, smoky screening unseen stills. It’s rare enough to see an er monster mania by any means).

room was just the way to experience this erect penis in a film history book, but to Since all these are explored with equal

out-there grainfest because, really, it was see one alongside a grimacing blood-coat- weight, “Master of Fear” is something of a
something you had to find, had to discov- ed face erupting in ecstasy, pain and dishonest title, although White - a contrib-
er. release - that’s why they call them money utor to Asian Cult Cinema - does offer

In Nekromantik. six Gennan film writers shots. insight into Kurosawa’s horror by juxta-
reflect on discovering Jorg Buttgereifs Nicely presented, well-illustrated, thick posing his fright flicks and non-fright
movie asit unspooled before their eyes for with infonnative film history and boasting flicks. For example. Pulse turns out to be a

the first time. By localizing the contribu- an introduction by Buttgereit himself, harrowing amplification of the filmmak-
book embarks on a region-specif-
tors, the Nekromantik is a priceless addition to any er’s ongoing themes of technology, isola-

ic film, linking it to Germany’s

view of the serious horror film fan’s library, and an tion and apocalypse. On the other hand, for

troubled past and the fact that some of the absolute treat for the closeted corpse lover horror fans, it’s a slog to get through six

most non-erotic porn available still comes in all of us. consecutive chapters on Kurosawa’s Suit
fi'om there. Shade Rupe Yourself or Shoot Yourself! gangster buddy
In the sidesplitting essay “Reality Check series.

The Gravedigger’s Perspective,” The films of Consistency proves to not only be a chal-
Johannes Schoenherr tosses aside the Kiyoshi KufosQwa: lenge for Kurosawa, but to White, as well.
film’s plot and characters with his mori- Master of fear Chunks of Master of Fear feel perfunctory,

bund account of how bodies arc planted Jerry White and overall it lacks the flow and style of

and exhumed; Dietrich Kulbrodl’s contri- Stone Bridge Press similar books, such as Tom Mes’ Iron

bution “Loving Corpses” revels in the Man: The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto.
film’s - and Germany’s - excesses; while Consistency. It’s not a quality Japanese Much of the awkwardness stems from
Marcus Stiglegger, Linnie Blake and Claus filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa is known White’s habit of switching styles; some-
Loser take a more scholarly approach to for. This becomes very apparent in Jerry times he’s offering a more technical decon-

RUE MORGUE 61
 I- -STORY !S DIL „
Kim Paffenroth
Permuted Press
History may be dead, but this
deceptively savage anthology
explores a fictional zombie sub-
culture fliafs been ttiriving since
long before mankind took the
reigns. Though many of the stories stem from Euro-
pean roots - don’t they all? - History is Dead dish-
es out the brains with a modern tongue that’s more
brooding than bloody. Class deceasedi

Richard Hipson

BUTTOfi, Bunci:: stories

Richard Matheson
TOR
In the wake of the big-budget dis- The Films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa: An inconsistent look at the director’s inconsistent filmography, including Loft.

appointment / Am Legend, many

of Richard Matheson’s tales are struction. sometimes a film review and phy or the even-handed academic treatment
being reissued, including his occasionally a jarring personal anecdote. that his subject demands.
short stories. Collected here are a Even the too-short Q&A with Kurosawa at Rather. Film Alchemy is an unsatisfying,
dozen of his best, beginning with
the end of the book seems scattered. weakly written effort that reads more like a
"Button, Button,” die memorable tale that inspired a In all fairness. Stone Bridge Press fan letter to Mikels than an attempt to pro-
Twilight Zone episode as well as ttie upcoming
should’ve fixed this in the editing process, vide readers with honest, or even infonna-
adaptation by Richard Kelly. The Box. It also features
a new
not to mention, made more of an effort to tivc. appraisals of his films. Curry, who pre-
intro by the grand master of horror and sus-
secure the appropriate stills to help illus- viously pennedA Taste of Blood: The Films
pense himself. Essential.
Jovanka Vuckovic trate White’s points. Instead of including of Herschell Gordon Lewis, does muster
the corresponding screenshots when he’s admirable enthusiasm for undeniably
"-:5 r:':[Df'{GHT UEI-fFY: describing a specific scene composition, for flawed and cheap outings such as Blood
CATCH example, a bunch of (presumably) press Otgy of the She-Devils and A.stro Zombies,
Damien Graves stills are crammed together at the beginning but even ardent Mikels fans will find his
Scholastic of the book. praise of “fantastic performances" and
In The Deadly Catch - the latest
Flaws aside, if you’re into Kurosawa’s “arresting, tactile” cinematography far-
trio of tales in the Midnight
strange, genre convention-challenging cine- fetched.
Library series for preteens -
ma, this first English-language book on the During his awkwardly phrased and often
Damien Graves scares up a
filmmaker is treasure trove of painstakingly rambling analysis, Curry does make a few
huge tentacled sea creature, a stubborn infestation
of house mice and some special lip gloss that
compiled info (including a chapter on his attempts to paint Mikels’ filmography as a
grants wishes but only at the pain and expense of obscure Tobe Hooper-influenced slasher cinema of female empowennent, but it
others. Unfortunately, Graves has a penchant for The Guard From Underground'.). never amounts to a credible argument. In
morality tales and think-the-worst open-ended con- Inconsistency forgiven. fact, the book is notable more for its omis-
clusions. making the stories more predictable than Dave Alexander sions than anything else. A discussion of
petrifying, even for the little ones.
Mikels’ nudie-culie Dr. Sex conspicuously
Monica Kuebier
S.
film Alchemy: skips over the then-current Kinsey Reports,

".'.PM'
The independent cinema and a look at 1966’s The Black Klansman
of Ted V. Mikels makes no mention of the classic 1961 book
y Steve Wedel HLRIK
Scrybe Press
When Shara's son
to oblige her mentor's personal
is kidnapped A Christopher
McFarland
Wayne Curry Black Like Me (or its

whose premise Mikels played off of

1964 film adaptation)

Worse, some of Ted's more dubious anec-

agenda, the fur begins to fly in Of all the mad geniuses of genre cinema dotes - The Doll Squad theme was “almost”
this adrenaline-fuelled reinven- who have been rediscovered in the DVD nominated for an Academy Award; Mikels
tion of the lycanthropic world. age. it’s strange that Ted V. Mikels has yet supposedly refused the chance to work on
Shara must now give in to her inner bitch and to receive his due. Christopher Wayne Easy Rider after he caught Dennis Hopper
accept her prophetic role as Mother of The Pack or
Curry’s Film Alchemy: The Independent toking up in his office - arc reported as
they’re all doomed. Written in a style that’s simple,
Cinema of Ted V. Mikels is an ambitious unquestioned fact.
raw, fierce and merciless. Ulhk will seduce readers
film-by-film breakdown of the director’s The meat of
into leaving the path and running with the wolves. real this book is the
Richard Hipson
50-year career, but it falls far short of pro- unabridged Q&A about Ted’s boast-laden
viding either a fascinating personal biogra- history as a magician, bodybuilder, fencer
62 RUE MORGUE
 FIRST PUBLISHED 50 YEARS BEFORE STOKER’S DRACULA. PENNY DREADFUL
STAR VARNEY THE VAMPIRE FINALLY RETURNS TO TERRIFY THE MASSES.

UNDEAD
'-AGAIN BY James Grainger
og descends on a dank cobblestone ed.” Penny Dreadftjis were good reason. “The underpaid
and

F
lane, a lonely church bell chimes in serialized novels stories, writers had no time for revi-
the night, and from the shadows often featuring a mesmeriz- sions. Their tales went from ,

emerges a towering aristocrat in ing blend of incest, rape, their pen to press in minutes, so
black cape and top hat, smelling of murder, cannibalism and naturally, there are errors in plot
freshly dug graves. His eyes blaze and his wolf- witchcraft, printed on cheap details, chronology - even
iike fangs gleam in the gaslight. Swooping down paper and sold on street cor- names shift."

on his mesmerized victim, the vampire feeds, ners in weekly installments The authors, like today’s TV I

ieaving behind a iifeiess body that will reani- for a penny a sheet to the soap-opera writers, also had to
mate with the next rising of the moon. Victorian working classes, keep the story going for as long
Conventional wisdom holds that these images who couldn't afford to buy as the public demanded new
were burned onto the popular imagination by bound novels or pay library chapters, meaning that Varney
Bram Stoker's 1 897 novel Dracula, but if Curt fees. the Vampire piles up the climax-
Herr, an editor, author and professor of gothic lit- "The upper class Victori- es and false endings before its

erature. has his way, vampire aficionados will ans considered the Penny Dreadfuls street liter- eventual ending. Herr insists, though, that read-
finally be able to drink deeply from the real liter- ature and trash, and capable of turning children ers who stay until the end will be amply reward-
ary font of all things vampiric: Varney the Vam- into murderous thieves,” adds Herr. “Much like ed.
pire, or The Feast of Blood, by James Malcolm they do now with contemporary rock and rap “
Varney is a more thoroughiy deveioped char-
Rymer. lyrics, the protected classes blamed Penny acter than Dracula,” he asserts. “He is psycho-
Published a full 50 years earlier than Stoker’s Dreadfuls for terrible crimes.” iogicaliy complex and tormented with guilt. He
work, Varney the Vampire is acknowledged as One of the most successful of these serials regrets his vampiric condition, yet he realizes
the first full-length vampire novel in the English was Rymer’s Varney the Vampire, which went that he must continue to destroy lives in order
language (John Polidori’s “The Vampyre,” pub- from 1 847 to 1 849 and ran for over 250 chap- to survive.”
lished in 1819, is a long short ters, making' its titular anti- Herr’s book is the fimt full edition of the novel i

story) and the template for almost hero a Victorian household not photocopied from the original serialized •

every vampire novel and movie name on the wrong side of pages, which were often smudgy and hard to ;

that’s followed. So why have so Londontown. After a success- read, and he has included plenty of footnotes to |

few people read the work, or even ful second printing a couple of shepherd new readers through the sensational-
heard of it? yeai^ lader, the novel faded ist conventions of Victorian pop culture. With
Herr, who has edited a new into near obscurity. Its reputa- this new edition of Varney the Vampire, the
critical edition of the 700-pius- tion as a lurid mishmash of haunter of London’s back lanes who fed on the
page novel, complete with gothic cliches, subplots that blood and flesh of city's upper classes may yet
essays, footnotes and a readers’ go nowhere and plot holes, all get his due. The story, with its brooding atmos-
guide to the story’s multiple plot written in a style that one crit- phere. pervasive sense of dread and wickedly
lines, has a few theories to ic called “unreadable, ram- high body count would make a great film.
explain the neglect, first among bling, overblown and tedious.” As Herr points out, Varney’s long-dead author
them the very format in which prevented it from receiving just scored a hit with an adaptation of another i

Varney originally published the academic attention of his Penny Dreadful potboilers, The String of ;

appeared. bestowed on other works of Victorian popular Pearls, which introduced Victorian readers to a
“Varney the Vampire was published as a fiction, barber with a razor fetish who plied his trade ;

Penny Dreadful,’’ he explains, “and Penny Herr acknowledges that the novel’s prose can under the name of Sweeney Todd.
|
Dreadfuls were not - and still aren’t - respect- be sloppy and overwrought at times, but with For more information visit curtherr.com. ^
RUE MORGUE 63 ^ |
 .

and bigamist. Comprising less than a tenth of Film Alchemy, howev-

er. this interview once again highlights the book’s missed opportuni-

ties, and serves as a nagging reminder that a definitive Mikcls

overview has yet to be written.
Paul Corupe

inferno
Ellen Datlow, ed.

Qod’s Demon TOR

Wayne Barlowe
Fans of theme-free horror anthologies such as Shadows and Bor-
TOR
derlands are likely to salivate over the impressive pedigree of horror

being a Demon voices assembled by editor Ellen Datlow for Inferno. Pat Cadigan.
It's hell Major, and after
millennia in Hades, Sargatanas, the protag-
Terry Dowling, Jeffrey Ford, Christopher Fowler, Joyce Carol Oates
.

onist Wayne Barlowe’s and Lucius Shepard are just a handful of the writers who attempt to
of novel God’s
stoke the flame in her latest collection
Demon, has had enough. Since Lucifer dis-
appeared shortly after the war •
of short genre fiction, but the throng of
in Heaven,
and Hell has been ttie grip of ferocious.
scribes here seem more determined to
iri
(iOD'S cast light on the bizarre than the truly
regent Beelzebub ever since,- Sargatanas
nTTlinV
mUiV horrific.
figures that the time is ripe for a change.
His sights are set way beyond the palaces .
Datlow’s self-imposed mission with iriiej^no.
and fortresses of Dis, however. You see, the
Inferno was to “provide the reader with

ex-Seraph feels that he’s suffered enough for his sins and plans
a frisson of shock, or a moment of
back
dread so powerful it might cause the
to get into Heaven or end his existence trying. But his good
reader outright physical discomfort,”
intentions destabilize foe uneasy peace between the Demons and
but the two-time Brain Stoker Award
set the stage for a war that rivals the battle with foe Above . .

Questions of repentance and forgiveness lie at the very heart of

winner fails to hit her own mark with
this remarkable book, intended as a modern, sequel to Paradise what is a mostly very well written but

lost inconsistent collection of amorphous

Unfortunately, Barlowe isn't a strong enough novelist to deal n.IlN OATIOW
with them in depth, alfoqugh .he has produced .an action-packed,
oddities. The twenty stories here take

gory book different forms and structures - sure,

full of political intrigue. As a result, the' strength of God's
ZJerno/? ultimately lies in Barlowe’s vision of Hell; from Beelzebub’s
the lack of a common thread is both expected and even invited in col-
bloodsoaked Keep to the slow-flowing waters' of the Acheron, the lections such as these, but with the exception of Lee Thomas’ erotic

award-winning artist and film' concept-designer weaves a highly

chiller “An Apiary of White Bees,” Mark Samuels’ macabre noir
detailed and visceral fantasy landscape in
“Ghorla” and the post-mortem romance of opener “Riding Bitch” by
which you can almost
smell foe rotfing flesh. There’s also a website (godsdemon.com)
K.W. Jeter, Inferno's tales only smoulder, never igniting the raging
blaze of horror that the book’s title suggests. John Grant’s “Lives”
for foe book where several of his visual concepts of Hell and its

denizens have been posted, but the written descriptions of the

may be an imaginative take on a boy with endless life and “The For-
rooms in Dis, apparently built from chunks of
est” by Laird Barron is undoubtedly a psychedelic brain-burner, but
flesh, arteries and
assorted innards, are much more this is not the kind of stuff that’s going to have you sleeping with a
horrific and awe-inspiring.
Barlowe's characters do tend to be a night light.
bit stock (notonly does the
The stories within Inferno are original, and the authors individual-
book only contain one token woman of note, but she’s stunningly
ly and collectively seem to want to push the perimeter of where great
beautiful, takes all her power and status from being Beelzebub’s
shag and has' to rely on her cunning, to survive, yadda yadda), but
horror can come from, but the scares harvested here are as fiaccid as

his nightmarish landscapes, exciting battle sequences and unique

a windsock, greatly diluted by their own vagueness and overly com-
plex construction. Too often the readeris led down a promising path
vision of Cell’s politics go a long way towards making God's
Demon Well worth recommending. ,.
only to be rewarded with a dead end lacking resonance or logic. Dat-
low may have intended to turn the heat up slowly, but unfortunately
Justine Warwick
Inferno will mostly just leave you feeling burnt.
Trevor Tuminski

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64 R.UE MORGUE
 Beyond the unexpected

yond the unseen

F the unbelievable

snd the unholy

d the undead

Beyond the unknown

Lies the unexpected

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 Cemetetv
Foievef
HollYWOOd ,ngetes,CaWorma
w Bill Wos®'®''

as it only a week ago that I was lywood Forever started out as the 100-acre Holly- plenty of them; marble headstones, obelisks,
here at the Hollywood Forever wood Memorial Park back in 1899. The cemetery crypts, and mausoleums - upon which horror
cemetery in the heart of Los Ange- rose to prominence (can a cemetery do tiiat?) dur- films are projected several times during the sum'
les, California, for the funeral of Ms. ing the 1 920s and ’30s with the interment of such mer for public viewing as part of Cinespia Ceme-
Maila Nurmi, a.k.a. Vampira? Now I’m back on a cinema luminaries as Rudolph Valentino, Douglas tery Screenings programming. And guess what?
sunny Saturday with my girlfriend Lucinda and Fairbanks Sr. and Cecil B. DeMille. Alas in 1939 a Bugsy Siegel’s herel So are Darla and Alfalfa from
daughter Marion in tow for a tour of this 60-acre man named Jules Roth bought the place, and The Little Rescals, Tyrone Power and Maxwell
field of dreams -as your intrepid reporter for /?£/e Memorial Park began a slow death spiral. As my Smart himself, Don AdamsI There’s even the
Morgue. Why bring along a nine-year-old on a co-star Jim “The Cook” Siedow says in Texas marker in the shape of an Atlas rocket for graphic
two-hour stroll through the dead and buried, you Chainsaw Massacre 2, “Then after the glory - artist Carl Morgan Bigsby. The husband’s epitaph
might ask? It’s good exercise, there are trees to here comes the shame... reads; “Retired by God”; his wife’s: “Too bad, we
climb, plenty of ducks and geese to chase and, During his ownership, Roth sold off 40 acres, had fun.”
for the Moseleys, this definitely qualifies as fam- bought himself a yacht for “burials at sea” (it was “People like to abandon animals here,” our
ily tirns. actually used as a party boat) and hung a large, guide says as she takes us over to the big cages
Our tour, led by a delightful young necrologist garish painting of Hell in the lobby of the main that line the great grey Santa Monica Blvd. wall,
named Karie Bible, commences at noon at the building! His once-robust workforce dwindled, the There’s a rabbit hutch with a bunch of fat, healthy
gift/flower shop (“Significant Sites” maps, $5; grass grew wild and the park eventually became a bunnies whiskering around, a cage with two black
black and white Tyrone Power postcard, $1 .50) haven for criminal gangs and the homeless. Roth swans and their two grey fuzzy cygnets and a wire
nearthewroughtironcemeterygates.lgatherup actually started making more money from disin- enclosure with five peafowl - there used to be six
Lucinda and Marion -
window shopping
they’re terments than burials as appalled families began that had the run of the park, but someone ran over
for caskets, which somehow makes me nervous, relocating their loved ones to better turf like Ingel- the albino peacock, so now they’re in lockdown
Yes, we’ve got water, sunscreen (and wooden wood Park and the Forest Lawns (there are a cou- “fortheir own good,”
stakes and a mallet - just in case). pie of them). When we reach Maila Nurmi's plot, I’m sur-
Born on Halloween night not so many years Things got so bad, the State of California pro- prised to find that someone has left two black-
ago, Ms. Bible grew up in the South touring Civil hibited Memorial Park from selling plots. Finally, handled kitchen knives, one stuck in the floral
War battle sites and developing a love for the on the verge of closure due to bankruptcy (how do arrangement standing over the grave, the other
world of movies, especially the silents. Today she you close a cemetery?), Memorial Park was sold in laid out on the patch of grass covering the buried
leads our tour, sporting a vintage black dress 1 998 for a pittance to Forever Enterprises, a fam- ashes of Maila and her dog, Houdini. Gifts from
and, according to Marion, has one blue eye and ily-owned business with a string of cemeteries Benihana? Doubtful. Two jack-o’-lanterns from the
one brown eye. throughout the USA. New owner Tyler Cassidy funeral are still side-by-side on the ground near-
As she guides our little packet of paying cus- poured millions into refurbishing Memorial Park - by, one with black teardrops falling from its carved
tdmers past the Garden of Memory and the Pafii- including renaming it Hollywood Forever Cemetery eyes. And notten feet away, the marble headstone
way of Remembrance, Bible informs us that Hoi- - and it appears that both the living and the dead of Darren McGavin, “The Nightstalker,” there to
are happy with the results. So is the State of Cali- engage Vampira in fun-loving vampire games for
~ fornia, for that matter: Hollywood Forever can sell all eternity (consider the stakes!).

plots again, so step right upl Whoops, time for a horror interlude! I mean, this

As we

TunemC
find out during our tour, this place is not exactly crawling with zombies
isn’t your typical "lawn park” cemetery, (“They’re coming to get you, Barbara. They’re
folks. Lawn parks are flat, grassy cems horny; they’ve been dead a long time!”). What to
embedded with grave plates (yawn). Hoi- do for you scare fans? Why, call up Sid Haig, a.k.a.

lywood Forever has monuments, and Captain Spaulding himself, my House of 1000

66 RUE MORGUE , \
' A..:
Corpses and Devil's Rejects co-star - after all, I've

got unlimited weekend minutes.

Sid’s in Chicago at a horror convention, he teils

me he used to work over the cemetery wall at

Paramount Studios. He was on the old Mission
Impossible TV sound stage when a co-worker
came up from the basement looking a little pale.
When asked what the problem was. the man
claimed that he’d heard bumping and banging
through the basement walls. Sid was later told

that the sound was coffins from Hollywood

Memorial Park that had dropped into an under-
ground river that flowed beneatli the cemetery
and Paramount!
Now where were we? Oh. yes....

Halfway through the tour, the sunny day turns

cold and cloudy. Rain threatens. Our guide leads
us past Tyrone Powers' and Han^ Cohn's while
marble stacks to the Cathedral Mausoleum.
Inside, among the life-size Grecian statues and Darren McGavin
stained-glass windows, we visit the marble nich-
es of Peter Lorre. Peter Finch ("I'm mad as hell,

and I’m not going to take it anymore!") and the

late, great Rudolph Valentino. It is at Rudi’s wall

plaque that Ms. Bible confesses she has picked

up the mantle of the Lady in Black, and come
Valentino’s birthday every year, she dons a black
veil and delivers her sleeping knight a single red

'
Movin' raindrops and Johnny
Ramone's
on, fresh air.

rockin' statue overlooking an ornamen- ^

ta! pond filled with koi and courting waterfowl.
From the Garden of Legends, we beeline to the
modest slab of Carl “Alfalfa" Switzer, shot dead at

39 for disputing a $50 reward he had proffered

for the return of his dog. Yet another sad/bad Hol-
lywood tale of a child star come to a bitter and Bunny, Tweetie Pie and Daffy Duck. We pony up what
early end (“Dog will hunt!"). we owe Ms. Bible ($10 a head). Lucinda and Marion
Marion seems more interested in the penny on take off to find some lunch, and I take a final car cruise
Alfalfa’s gravestone than his tragic demise. Bible around the park with Daniel T. Johnston on cassette
explains that people place pennies on the various tape (hey. it’s a ’99 VW Golf!). Over the final notes of
stones for good fortune (e.g.”pennies from heav- “Funeral Home, " I swear can hear Mel Blanc's Porky
I

en"). Apparently, before a weekend in Las Vegas. Pig stuttering, "A-beeka-beeka-beeka that's all,

some high rollers go as far as to put silver coins folks!”

and even paper money on Bugsy Siegel's grave to

improve their gambling luck! The Hollywood Forever Cemetery is located at 6000
Hollywood Forever (clockwise ftom topi A view of
the Hollywood sign from the cemetery gates, the
We can’t visit Mr. Siegel, though, because it’s Santa Monica Boulevard at Gower in Los Angeles. Cal-
headstone belonging to Darren "Kolchak" McGavin,
Saturday and the Beth Olam Mausoleum is closed ifornia. For more Info on the walking tour, visit ceme-
Maila Nurmi's grave. F^ter and wife Anne Made
for the Sabbath. So our final stop is Mel Blanc, terytour.com. Cinespia's Cemetery Screenings begin
Lorre's gravemarker and (opposite) Bill Moseley at
"Man of 1000 Voices," responsible for Bugs in March: more info at cinespia.org/calendar.php.
the front of the cemetery

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(

The Gore-met or<lers up some

Chinese, heavy on the Cat

homespun forensic techniques include groping a

victim’s breasts to test for rigor mortis and sniff-

ing her crotch to determine if she had sex before

being killed, literally stumbles into the gruesome
he government of the People's Republic of
crime scene. His investigation leads him to
China recently declared a ban on “all video
Wong’s boyfriend Kin (Hugo Ng), a fellow cop
and audio products containing elements of hor-
who. when confronted, immediately claims
ror or the supernatural,” citing a need to protect
responsibility for the slaughter. Wong steps for-
the "psychological health" of children. There are
ward as the killer to spare her lover and. in
sinister implications here - how long will it be
flashback, reveals that she was mercilessly tor-
before an authoritarian regime witli a track
mented by her mother and siblings and sexually
record of crushing dissidence beneath tank
abused by her lecherous father (Ka-Kui Ho), who
treads decides to start burning Hong Kong film
was blackmailing her for sex with photos he had
archives?
taken while raping her.
Colour me alarmist il you will, but I fear the
Dmighter of Darkness typifies the broad black
adult Category III titles produced there between
humour, explicit sex. gruelling violence and
1988 and 1997 are doomed. Cat III is more than
ham-fisted melodrama found in most Cat III
a film rating, it's a genre of lurid exploitation
films. The first half is morbidly funny due to a
flicks that truly deliver the titties and tasteless-
wondeiliilly arch performance by Anthony Wong,
ness fans revel in. Following are two examples
which is intended to disarm the audience before
of films I see in imminent peril.
the graphic violence of the second act and
Find them! Hide them!
heavy-handed schmaltz of the third. gear and pick up men for kinky sex, before tor-
Yeah, I cried at the end. turing, killing and mutilating them, taking away

Starling Lily Chung, Hugo Ng body pails (an ear, a nose or a penis) as sou-
venirs, which she keeps in a secret cupboard full
and Anthony Wong
Starring Julie Lee. Chin Gwan of sex toys! However, when Linda learns through
Written and directed by Ivan Lai
and Hob Gei-Yung a news report that one of her victims had AIDS,
Universe laser and Video
Directed by Jiro Ishimura and Julie Lee she comes completely unglued and commits
Written by Julie Lee suicide by gang rape!
This film successfully mirrors the plot struc-
Mei Ah Entertainment The film boasts elaborate set pieces - a man
ture of Cat III Cl line classics Or. Lamb ( 1 992) and
suspended from a sex swing is impaled on a
ftHJ Untold Story ( 1 993) a heinous mass mur-
While other Cat III films may exhibit more steel pipe, another has a dead octopus dropped
dei is (liscoveied. and aflei an ensuing police
ostentatious depravity onscreen, they’re leav- on his genitals before Linda takes a staple gun
invesfigalion, Ihe killer confesses in excruciating
- ened wilh underlying black to his naked flesh and a third is sliced up in a
tiashback seguencrrs
humour. Trilogy of Lust II. how- perverse parody of a cooking show - yet the
hut in this film tlur Killei
ever. is notable for being unre- gore is relatively minimal. What makes this film
IS a woman. (Nolo: Ihere
lentingly nihilistic, without a particularly skeezy in a sleazy genre is the base
is no whodunit aspect to
single intentional chuckle. depiction of sex. The film is full of lengthy and
this genie.)
Linda Li (Julie Lee) is an icy emotionless scenes of masturbation and ani-
Police Captain I aii
office manager wont to bully- malistic fucking that border on hardcore, with a
(Anihoiiy Wong) is iiiter-
ing her workers - who call her couple of fake cum shots tossed off (heh) for
lupled during his daily
“spinster” behind her back. good measure. This HK riff on / Spit on Your
routine of haranguing
Two of them, lovers Lily (Chin Grnvo is possibly the most incessantly crass Cat
petty criminals by [iielty,
Gwan) and Robert (Hoh Gei- III film. Dig it!
young Wong (lily Chung),
Yung). concoct a plan in At one time, these titles were widely distrib-
who reports that her fam-
which Robert is to seduce uted and common in Chinese video stores, but
ily was massacred while
Linda and swindle money rampant piracy has destroyed that market. Hunt
stie was away wilh a
from her. They don’t know them down online and help preserve the perver-
hoyiriend. Lau, a Can-
that away from the office. sion.
tonese Columbo whose
Linda likes to dress in fetish
WWW.RUEMORGUERADIO.COM
TOMB DRAGOMIR THE CAUSTIC CRITICS <^>1^ BLOOD SPATTERED GUIDE

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PRESENTS
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DEMONOLOGY

liyE MflBGll[ [IDEIlllS fFisHis In AssstuiiGii Wiik SOMEONE HE EOE OOOB PBODIIEEIONS

CiGiiiiitojFapliy By OEBEB BOOEBS t.s.i, EJIieiI By GBBBIll EBISBOLM Sooiiil Disijo By POSE CIET SBOND
[KiHlui PfhiIgiiis BODBIGO GOBINB MUBGB PECBEIl Co-PioilBtiJ By BBENEON BENIZ PioOmil By MSBCB PECOH
Wiitlin and DiFtitid By BOBBIGD GODllO
 ^m-DEADLY Sm-DANGEROUS SSS-DECENT • SS-DUIi J-DRIX EL DOA-DEAD ON'ARR3VA£

^UDI0T)R0ME.
REVIEWS BY KEITH CARMAN, TOMB DRAGOMIR, MARK R HASAN,
AARON VON LUPTON AND TREVOR TUMINSKl.

band orchestra to contemporize his this for some weekend when you two-minute blast of hot love over
score, the raw performances and and your lover plan to stay in for a cold earth, while “Rock 'n' Roll
idiosyncratic orchestrations (not to romantic bloodletting. TT ^^1/2 Whore” is a bluesy kind of Beatles-
mention some audacious tribal meets-Alice Cooper carpet ride
vocals) hearken back to the late with surprisingly slick production.
’50s, when genre composers would The live stuff is also decent but
radically shift a cue’s ambiance redundant. Sources say a full disc
from a sly, eerie stalking motif to a of new material is en route for
tidal wave of shrill notes. Most of the 2008, but in the meantime, also
DRIFfWOOD Soundtrack cues here are designed to shock or check out The Undead’s unre-
William Ross unnerve, but a few are quite melod- leased cover of The Misfits’ 12 Hits
BSX Records ic, including some lengthy romantic from Hell album, streaming for free
William Ross is mainstream enough material that's effectively tender but THE UNDEAD Punk at undeadpunk.com. TD
to have conducted last year’s Acad- never cloying. The mono source Still The Undead...
emy Awards (not to mention Harry tapes are a bit rough in spots, but After All These Years
Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) new label Elysee has assembled a Post Mortem
but his score for Driftwood - direc- loving tribute to a composer making After a brief “self-imposed hiatus"
tor Tim Sullivan’s attempt to break his long-deserved international from the music world, legendary
away from goofy horror in favour of debut after 38 years. 'Bout time! exiled Misfits’ guitarist Bobby
disturbing dark drama - is anything MRH Steele is back with Still

but your typically extravagant Holly- Undead.. .After All These Years. The
wood piece. The album is based pri- newish nineteen-cut collection of
marily around a recurring minimalist rare Undead 45s and unreleased
theme, haunting piano reminiscent songs from the last decade, music PIGGY D. Rock

of The Fog. From there the music to the ears of anyone who thought The Evacuation Plan
branches out in various directions, all the good punk icons were either Black Victory Records
but always maintains its tragic and dead or running for congress. The Piggy D (a.k.a. Matt Montgomery)
morose sensibility, moving from recent stuff rocks: “Be My Ghoul” has made a career in horror rock,
beautiful orchestral pieces to near- is utterly classic Undead, a fierce first as a member of long-defunct

industrial suspense numbers, cap- JUDGEHYDROGEN Expenmental

turing the essence of the film’s tor- Atheistic God
tured ghost, Jonathan. The only Rising Occulus Recordings
shortcomings on this soundtrack are Professing to be “the soundtrack for
four irritating alt-rock numbers by the coming human-made apoca-
no-name artists that disrupt what is lypse,” Judgehydrogen’s debut
otherwise a gorgeously chilling Atheistic God is an intoxicating - if

score. AVL 1/2 not a bit pretentious - listen that THE FORBIDDEN DIMENSION nmii
feels like the last few moments A Cool Sound Outta Hell
before passing out underwater. The Saved by Vinyl
monotone vocal delivery (think early Still wet with willies nearly two decades in,

Nick Cave on downers) doesn’t Calgary’s Jackson Phibes (a.k.a. Tom

always observe key, timing or Bagley, whose fun monster art adorns the
melody, but floats well on the sea of album cover and liner notes) finally returns
synths the Judge seems to have with a full-length follow-up to 1997’s stellar
nabbed from John Carpenter’s key- Widow's Walk. Highlights here include “The Night has a Thousand
board collection. “Your Warning," Tongues!,” a hardcore head-fuck which kicks in and out of gear like a
MAD DOCTOR OF Soundtrack “Contempt for Sacrifice" and the ’63 Caddy hearse sputtering then lurching as it sucks on its final drops
BIOOD ISLAND title track feel most comfortable of fuel and “Cradlerobber,” which carves sharp keys into an electric
Tito Arevalo with this treatment, the latter intro- Mannequin Factory” - a break-
gothabilly-surf sound. “Hatchet Fight in
Elysee Productions ducing a bestial wail not used any- neck instrumental number with enormous-sounding drums - doesn’t
Tito Arevalo’s score for this classic where else on the album, but the even have to be good with a title like that, but it actually is! Released
John Ashley/Eddie Romero schlock- overall results are just so depress- by Calgary's Saved by Vinyl on bloody red acetate with a cold blue car-
er is vintage B-movie monster ingly laboured, makes Joy Division
it
toonish cover design, this one comes with a handy download code to
music. While the Filipino composer seem giddy in comparison. Forget access the album's digital MP3s for free. TD
uses electric guitar and a brassy big the coming apocalypse and save

RUE MORGUE 71 ®
 1 ^ cross-dressing horror punk act She an onslaught of technical bril-
DROPS TWO DVDS fUa OF
Demons, then as a guitarist for liance, crisp
recording and audio
OF ITS 25™ ANNIVERSARY. glam icon Wednesday 13’s
goth dynamics - the extreme opposite
solo band, and currently handling of traditional black metal, which is

bass duties for Rob Zombie. On too often mired in shitty production
The Evacuation Plan, Piggy’s first- and overall flatness. Taking a cue
ever solo album, he’s left the car- from Satyricon, the group has
toonish aspects of his other acts in incorporated more rock ’n’ roil rift-

the coffin, choosing instead to offer ing into the songs, which offsets
The 25th Year in Videos a dark meditation on his first-hand the low-end chugging and tradi-
Directed by various experience with Hurricane Katrina. tional blast beats, making Draculea
Remember when you used to set up your Despite its no-frills, ’90s rock their strongest effort to date. Their

VCR to tape the best videos from your sound, this is a solid album - it cover of Venom’s “Countess Batho-
favourite metal TV program? Metal Blade captures melodic punk and mod- ry” only seals the deal. KC
does. Hence The 25th Year in Videos, a col- ern rock in anthemic songs that
lection of production videos shot for the are both hard hitting and infec-
label's artists throughout 2007, featuring an tious. But fans looking for some-
onslaught of gorecore, metalcore and every thing akin to the other bands
other metallic “core” imaginable. As interesting as Piggy's played in will be disap-
it can be ridicu-'?

lous, footage ranges from the eerie, faceless entities tormenting Six 1 pointed. Interestingly, Calico Coop-

Feet Under during “Ghosts of the Undead” and a creepy, biood- er (Alice’s daughter) receives full

soaked little girl preening fiendishly In her mirror on King Diamond’s band member credit as a backup
_

“Give Me Your Soul,” to simplistic live footage via Goatwhore’s “For-- vocalist, though her contributions
ever Consumed Oblivion.” On the hilarious end of the spectrum, are nearly undetectable. AVL
shots of SFU lip-synching to their own death metal in a sunny field
SEVERE TORTURE Metal
Interspersed with a redneck building a pigpen is outright comical.
Sworn Vengeance
Fleshed out with material from the likes of Unearth, The Red Chord,
Earache
As i Lay Dying and more, the collection- is a substantial overview of
While formidably gruff and offen-
the current state. of metal.
sive, this seventh album from
Netherlands-based death metal
2Stii Anniversary Concert
brigade Severe Torture seems typi-
Directed by Dave Gutt
cal at first. The disc, as with its
Shot during ah April 2007 birthday concert
predecessors, pulls its shocking
celebrating The Blade in Worcester, MA, this
NEGRODEATH Meiai lyrical foundation from obvious
disc features more than two hours of live
Draculea influences, such as Cannibal
performances from some of metal’s most
Scarlet/SPV Corpse, and the evil element reeks
commanding acts. Showcasing two songs
Twenty-five years into their career, of seminal satanic purveyors Dei-
each, some of the artist performances are
black metal stalwarts of cide. Yet when one delves deeper
finely executed
but somewhat
Necrodeath are still going strong. into the primal, guttural delivery of
including Corpse,whose members can bare- ;
'

This latest nine-song effort, a con- tracks such as “Buried Hatchet,”

ly muster a few obligatory head-spins during renditibns of
cept album based on Vlad “The “Countless Villains,” “Dogmaso-
“Unleashing the Bloodthirsty” and “Murder Wo^hip.” Others
Impaler” Tepes, segments the his- matic Nausea” and the title track.
off amusing yet half-assed antics: prancing abbut’dressed as a torical figure’s life into its more Sworn Vengeance proves itself to
ting vampire carrying a hatchet, Lizzy Borden (front man of Lizzy
memorable moments, such as be an enduring piece of detuned
Borden, of course) attacks a buxom blonde and her “blood"'spevVs birth (“V.T. 1431”), the first taste glory. Choppy and abrasive while
•{read: dribbles), about the stage. Still,' with 29 tracks from
for blood (“Smell Of Blood”), his still retaining inspired viciousness,
•
bands, multiple, camera angles, pristine sound' ^nd
step into royalty (“Impaler Prince”) the effort is incredibly sadistic and
views/backstage footage, \25f/j Anniversary Goncert is like
and eventual demise (“V.T. 1476”). uncompromising.
Ferocious and steely, Draculea is KC
 BY nmi TUMimi

ooking at the world through the artisan woods fairy tale soundtrack for the world of the Would it still feel like we twisted it into some-
lens of Johnny Hollow, one gets the Johnny Hollow character, which Marcone thing that we’d be comfortable with? We were

L
reality.
sense of a time and place far darker
and romantically tragic

The band’s gothic imagery and shadowy

than present
brings to
album art
life graphically through the group’s
and website (johnnyhollow.com). On
Dirty Hands, Hollow is depicted as a Victorian
happy to discover that the

parents of thirteen twitching and gurgling

answer was
He adds, “So we are now the proud, freakish
’yes.’”

new
lost loves run like a thick, pulsing artery child-man in a top hat with a disturbing bug- ‘pop’ songs. Though I dare you to present our
throughout every aspect of the lush melodrama eyed visage simitar to a brand of ‘pop’ to any fun-
the power trio of Vincent Marcone (electric Mark Ryden character. damentalist Christian
acoustics/vocals), Janine White (vocals/keys “Johnny is the best dance party.”
/electric acoustics) and Kitty Thompson and worst of the three of The group’s disturbing
(ceilo/vocals) conjures up. us combined,” says atmospherics did, howev-
After releasing their 2003 ^If-titlect first Marcone. “I tend to think er, lend themselves per-
album independently, the trio signed to progres- of him as our very own fectly to a short film writ-

sive Canadian imprint The Orange Record Label. personal doppelganger, ten by Rue Morgue presi-
For their newly released second album, Dirty whom we can speak dent Rodrigo Gudino,
Hands, the three-headed hydra from Guelph, through without worry- whose latest directorial
Ontario attracted a dream list of collaborators, ing about any filtered effort is a sort-of music
including Grammy-winning producer David Bot- thoughts. He’s kind of a video set in the world of
trill (TOOL, King Crimson) to mix, producer Dave trickster, he’s capable of Johnny Hollow, called The
“Rave” Ogilvie (Skinny Puppy, Jakalope) and the great kindness.,, but Facts in the Case of Mr.
Tea Party’s Jeff Burrows to sit in on drums. might also shove you off a cliff when you’re not Hollow. Taking place in a stark, crow-populat-
Glasgow. So, with all these legendary black hearts com- looking.” ed forest, it presents an antiquated tableau
ing out of their secret lairs, just what does John- Musically, the direction of Dirty Hands push- that’s slowly revealed to not be at all what it
Tim
ny Hollow 2.0 sound like? es away ever so slightly from the evil laborato- seems.
and
“If Tricky. Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails ry that was their 2003 self-titled debut. The “We are just finishing it up now," says Mar-
Leven
copulated directly into the uterus of Portishead songs are more streamlined this time around - cone, who doesn’t want to give away too much
you might get something similar to Johnny Hol- stilt punctuated by doom-summoning guitars of the project, which will be released to the fes-
Arielle

low,” says Marcone, the music video director and electronic ugliness - but more sweetly tival circuit this spring. “The first track of our
Legault.
(Jakalope, Mushroomhead) and accomplished downtrodden, lending the music a certain album, ‘Alchemy,’ worked perfectly for a writ-
designer/illustrator responsible for the band’s palatability that may have eluded the trio ten treatment that Rodrigo had dreamed up. It’s

Sarah twisted fairy tale aesthetic. “The girls likely have before. extremely strange, where the fine details in the

by another take.” "Before writing the new album we asked movie end up telling the story. I can tell you
White’s poisoned kiss vocals and Thomp- ourselves a few questions,” explains Marcone. that the imagery and theme falls right into
Photos

son’s eerie cello and piano provide the haunted ”Do we have it in us to write a ‘pop’ song? place with Johnny’s antiquated world.” %
RUE MORGUE 73
 .

PLay
Jk ^
Dead
# GRAPHICS PIAYABIIITY SHIVERS
THREE. GAMES REVIEWED BY ANDREW LEE

THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES

DS, PC, PS2, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360
Sierra

Coinciding with the release of the movie based

on a series of children’s novels by Holly Black, The
Spiderwick Cftron/c/es is a fairly good introductory
game for younger players who want to play a
"scary" game without having to worry about the
kind of nightmares that they usually evoke, {I’m
looking in your direction, Silent HilH)

As one of the three Grace siblings, each of whom

has his/her own unique weapons and abilities, you
move through a world of fantastic, often frighten-

ing, creatures in the woodlands around their new house. There’s also a
fourth character, a brownie, who is fun to play, as his diminutive size allows
you to battle cockroaches and sneak through locations that are inaccessi-
ble to the other characters.

As you spend most of your time trying to catch sprites that will grant you
power-ups to boost your health, speed and strength, game play tends to be
painfully repetitive. On top of this, the voice work is subpar and the lack-
lustre graphics appear rushed and unfinished.
Battling trolls, ogres and goblins with slingshots and tomato-juice guns
involves a hell of a lot of button mashing, yet there is something oddly sat-
isfying about smashing the crap out of a goblin with a baseball bat and then
collecting his teeth to unlock a new attack move.
That said, although the game can be completed quickly - on average,
about five hours - it becomes boring for any experienced gamers looking
for more blood and guts and less fairy dust.

lENPERiHlElVf
PENUIIIRA PC
Frictional Games irrearnCatcher
The conclusion to last year’s bowel-loosening Just when it same old
feels like you’ve played the
fright fest Penumbra: Overture {RM#69i, Black survival horror game over and over again, it’s
Plague picks up where the last one left off. Players extremely gratifying to come across a truly unique
"
I
once again take on the role of Philip, who’s gotten title like The Experiment {aM.a. experience 1 12).
trapped in a mysterious underground shelter filled Without any knowledge of who you are or how
with unimaginable horrors while searching for clues you got there, you find yourself trapped in the con-
to his father’s disappearance. trol room of a dilapidated tanker grounded on a
This time around, the developers focus less on remote Pacific island, trying to help a young woman
monsters and more on the psychological terror of who’s the survivor of a failed medical research
being trapped in a dark, claustrophobic space where ambient sound experiment. Though you can only see her through
effects lead you to believe something’s waiting behind every comer. the control room monitors, you must use a vast array of cameras, control
The game employs a series of logic puzzles and play has been ramped- switches and microphones to guide her to safety while avoiding the
up with an advanced in-game physics system that has players mimic real- corpses of her former crew mates and a host of vicious plants and animals
world actions. This means you use the mouse to push objects, twist knobs, that have infested the ship.
turn handles and pull open drawem, just like you would in real life. Stunning graphics and an appropriately eerie soundtrack heighten the
The only complaint is that at six hours to play through, it’s over far too fright factor. Now, if only you could convince her to turn that shower room
fast. camera back on...

74 RUl MOIXIUi;
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 oddball influence of Lynch’s seminal series is felt in almost every
scene of The Kingdom, as is that of The Shining. The haunted
hospital is an undeniably creepy location, but it’s impossible to
watch the characters wandering down its empty and foreboding
halls without thinking of the Overlook.

For a TV show originally broadcast in a small European coun-

try, The Kingdom has made quite an impact. The series predat-
ed the late ’90s explosion of ghost stories (most of which
involved children) that dominated horror cinema following the
success of The Sixth Sense and the J-horror craze. (Not surpris-
ingly, The Kingdom has a huge following in Japan.) The produc-

tion also completely reinvented von Trier, who continued to

experiment with the style he invented for The Kingdom, eventu-
ally applying the aesthetic to his infamous Dogma 95 filmmak-
ing manifesto.

The director returned to the show with Kingdom 2 in 1 997, but

seemed bored with the concept, creating a follow-up that was
more comedic than horrific. He planned to rectify this with a
darker concluding series, but with several of the lead actors now
deceased it seems as though this will never happen.
The show was remade for North American television in 2004
as Kingdom Hospitai (presented by Stephen King), a Craig R.
Baxley-directed failure that had better production values but
seemed to lose sight of what made the original series so special.
Regardless, the recently reissued series (by Koch-Lorber) con-
tinues to attract new fans to the horror hybrid that mashed
together the hospital drama and ghost story, helped usher, in

Japan’s obsession with supernatural children and spawned an

four-and-a-half-hour Danish horror soap opera doesn't seem like entire film movement.
must-see TV for horror fans, but then again The Kingdom is a far cry Philip Brown
from Dark Shadows. Originally shown as a miniseries on Danish tele-
vision in 1994, it’s a remarkable work of horror and one of the finest super-
natural series to emerge after Twin Peaks. It also provided genre fans with the
creepiest haunted building since the Overlook Hotel.
Lars von Trier was an acclaimed director before making The Kingdom {Riget
in Danish), but he was also a cold, analytical stylist far more concerned with
style than storytelling or performances. After signing a TV deal, he and long-
time co-writer Niels Vorsel scripted a ghost story set in a hospital. A lifelong
hypochondriac, von Trier found the medical establishment more terrifying a
prospect than the supernatural and dispatched Vorsel to do all of the hospital
research.
The result is a story set at Copenhagen’s real-life Rigshospitalet (founded in

1 757). A new head neurosurgeon joins the staff, immediately alienating his co-
workers; a young med student steals a corpse’s head for a prank, only to be
caught by another doctor and forced into an extended game of blackmail; and
a perpetual hypochondriac struggles to keep herself in the hospital so that she
can solve the terrible mystery surrounding the ghost of a young girl haunting
the halls (a storyline that incorporates antiquated Mutter Museum-like medical
specimens). All these plot threads (and more) are woven into the first episode,
with more bizarre, often ghastly subplots to come - including a phantom
ambulance, a diseased body part transplant and a very unnatural pregnancy.
Once shooting began, it became clear that von Trier would not have the
resources necessary to construct another one of his formally driven works, so
he decided to experiment with a different type of visual storytelling. Influenced

by Barry Levinson’s Homicide, von Trier elected to forgo any sense of visual
control for a messy and experimental aesthetic. Shot with handheld cameras
and constantly changing blocking. The Kingdom is filled with deliberate jump
cuts and continuity errors. The look of show has more in common with a
straight documentary than the heavily storyboarded visual style common to the
horror genre. As a result, the twisted stories, bizarre characters and frighten-
ing occurrences feel oddly realistic.

Much as David Lynch did in Twin Peaks, von Trier deftly undercuts the poten-
tially cliche horror and soap opera elements with self-deprecating humour. The

78 RUK MORGUE
What will it sound like when you die?

WHAT WILL IT SOUND LIKE WHEN YOU DIE? Based on the film
CHAKUSHIN ARl
Directed by Takashi Miike

What if your life depended on

answering your cell phone?

What if youTtnew when, wdiere

and hdw ifeu are to die?

What if you had chosen to answer f

that One Missed Call? I

iiiiiii
ON BLU-RAY HI-DEF AND
AVAILABLE ON HD-DVD
O 2008 EQUity Pictures Medienfwids GMBH & CO KG All Rights Reserved.
<V.

9 2008 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.

m