RUE MORGUE Issue 203 Nov/Dec Xmas 2021

It sometimes surprises people to learn that while I love horror movies and I love gaming, I don’t especially love horror video games. Well, I should specify – I don’t especially love the prevailing form of what is known as horror gaming, which is to say a game with first-person perspective, sneaking around a dark environment with a flickering flashlight and near-to-no ammo, waiting for a jump scare à la Alien: Isolation or the new-fangled Resident Evil entries. I find them exhausting, to be honest – their narratives never tickle me on the same level as movies do. Imagine strapping in and riding a roller coaster – thrilling, right? Now imagine you’re responsible for also steering that roller coaster at 92 mph. It’s still thrilling (for some?) but that’s a…

WHILE I’VE BEEN reading Rue Morgue since the beginning and have consistently enjoyed every issue from front to back, the past few issues have been nothing short of phenomenal. I’ve had issue #202 in my possession for less than 24 hours and have read the Roots of Folk Horror three times already. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed an article this much in at least ten years. Kudos to Dejan Ognjanovic for another outstanding contribution and also to Andrea Subissati for a Note From Underground that was somehow equal parts humorous and touching. Your readers are lucky to have you at the helm. STACEY DURST, VIA EMAIL FANTASTIC ISSUE [RM202]! I let my subscription lapse a while back and I can’t remember why, because I have always adored Rue Morgue. Needless to say,…

ISSUE # 203 WEIRD STATS & MORBID FACTS For 1992’s Dracula, star Gary Oldman hired a singing coach to help him lower his voice by a full octave in order to give the title character a more sinister quality. Last August, at least seventeen people were killed and more than a dozen injured when lightning struck a wedding party on a boat on its way to the bride’s house in northwestern Bangladesh. At six feet in height, Mads Mikkelsen is the tallest of the four actors to play Hannibal Lecter to date. In January 2018, Spanish prison authorities were baffled when 29-year-old Gonzalo Montoya Jiménez, who was declared dead by three separate doctors, woke up in the morgue – just hours before his autopsy was set to commence. Tom Baker, who portrayed the fourth incarnation of…

Joseph Ruben’s The Stepfather (1987) is a smart psychological thriller that critiques the ’50s-era conservatism that resurfaced during the Reagan years. As Jerry Blake, Terry O’Quinn oozes with the menace underlying the “family values” zealots as he takes on a series of identities to exploit widowed mothers and kill those who don’t live up to his standards. But as deranged as Blake is, the story of his real-life counterpart, John List, is far more disturbing. A devout Lutheran, List was a successful banker who moved his family into an eighteen-room mansion in West Field, New Jersey. But when he unceremoniously lost his job and failed to secure another one, he faked going to work each day and spent hours at a local train station, mulling over his situation. Eventually, List concluded that…

For a role of a ghoul among the denizens in George A. Romero’s 1978 undead epic Dawn of the Dead, Mike Christopher’s brief appearance as the Hare Krishna zombie is particularly memorable – and not just because he’s the one to break into the staircase that leads to the surviving characters’ hideout. Maybe it’s the tongue-in-cheek blasphemy of a spiritual disciple risen from the dead, Christlike, or the absurdity of his posthumous grip on his tambourine. Regardless, Christopher is no stranger to the horror convention circuit and loves an opportunity to connect with fans of the film. Nee Michael Berhosky in North Hills, Pennsylvania, Christopher continued a career in show business, performing in laser light shows for acts including Tangerine Dream, and working behind the scenes as an animator, a…

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