April Snellings

Did you get your photo on the cover of Rue Morgue at Texas Frightmare Weekend 2013? Download your pic for FREE at the link below! With thanks to Tshirtbordello!

http://celebrityphotoops.com/tfm/

Even if you couldn’t make it to TFW, do check out the pics anyway.  There’s some Texas-sized love for horror on display, and they’re a lot of fun to browse. As proof, I cite the following examples…

[This lovely interview is brought to you by the indomitable Ron McKenzie.]

It’s not news that American Mary, the sophomore feature by Jen and Sylvia Soska, has become quite the cult phenomenon over the past year. The film, which follows the violent rise and fall of a med student turned underground “body modder,” has won both critical and popular acclaim at film festivals and screenings around the world. While the movie’s star, Katharine Isabelle, has garnered deserved acclaim for her fierce performance, one of the film’s secondary performers has also generated her fair share of attention. As Beatrice, the stripper who’s taken her love of Betty Boop to its physical extreme with plastic surgery, Tristan Risk makes her acting debut and nearly steals every scene she’s in.

So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage… Little Miss Risk.

How’s this for instant gratification: the blood’s still wet on yesterday’s Festival of Fear panel announcements, and we’re already back with Round 2!

THE WORLD OF CHARLES BAND
Puppets, mayhem and more puppets in this intimate and interactive session with the mind behind the PUPPET MASTER series, BLOOD DOLLS, SHRUNKEN HEADS and many more!

THE SOUND OF SPLATTER
The great MAURIZIO GUARINI of GOBLIN fame discusses his life-long career being part of the world’s seminal horror soundtrack band, scoring the great Lucio Fulci’s films, and his latest solo album Creatures From a Drawer…

We’re excited to announce the first batch of panels for the upcoming Festival of Fear, going down August 22-25 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in downtown Toronto!

A TWISTED HOUR WITH THE TWISTED TWINS
Filmmakers JEN and SYLVIA SOSKA discuss movies, body horror and the inspiration for their groundbreaking films Dead Hooker in a Trunk and American Mary, as well as their segment in the upcoming ABCs of Death 2.

RE-ANIMATING RE-ANIMATOR
Join us in a very special reunion of the stars who made the classic horror hit Re-Animator. With JEFFREY COMBS, BARBARA CRAMPTON, BRUCE ABBOTT and CHARLES BAND….

Rue Morgue and Raven Banner Entertainment are giving away four pairs of tickets to the June 19th Sinister Cinema screening of Ryûhei Kitamura’s No One Lives. Kitamura is the director of Versus and Midnight Meat Train, so you should know what to expect from his latest flick: over-the-top violence and truly insane gore. The film screened as part of TIFF’s Midnight Madness program last year, and believe me when I tell you it did not disappoint on either count.

No One Lives is playing one night only in selected Cineplex Theatres in the following cities…

[Shawn Macomber ventured into Lair of the Minotaur territory and came back, well, sloshed. Read on for Shawn's interview...]

Here’s something that would probably make good fodder for the renovation-obsessed producers over at HGTV if their viewership could stand a bit of exploitation chic and a whole lot more viscera: Gore-festooned sludge thrashers Lair of the Minotaur recently added a brewery onto the infernal retreat — which means you can now enjoy the band’s ferocious tenth anniversary EP Godslayer along with a bottle (or twelve) of its signature Evil Power Imperial Pilsner.

Lair guitarist/vocalist Steve Rathbone and drummer Chris Wozniak were kind enough to discuss the Minotaur’s mead with Rue Morgue for the following Sinister Seven…

RM art columnist Ghoulish Gary Pullin has kept the internet awesome lately with the Mondo drop of his White Zombie print and our very own reveal of his Re-Animator LP art for Waxwork Records’ upcoming reissue of the film’s score. Yet another Ghoulish Gary creation hit the net this weekend: this extremely cool poster for the Irish horror-comedy Grabbers (coming next month from IFC Midnight).

Click on through to see Gary’s awesome poster, then scroll down for the latest Grabbers trailer, courtesy of IGN.

Todd McFarlane, co-founder of Image Comics, creator of the best-selling Spawn series, and founder of McFarlane Toys, will appear at this year’s Festival of Fear! For his first-ever Fan Expo appearance, Todd joins an ever-growing lineup of horror royalty that includes Joe Dante, Don Coscarelli, Michael Rooker, Norman Reedus, Barbara Crampton, Jeffrey Combs, Nathan Fillion, the Soska Sisters, and many more.

The Festival of Fear goes down August 22-25 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Tickets are already on sale! We still have many more guests and events to announce, so keep an eye on this space and the official Festival of Fear Facebook page for updates.

The Hollywood Reporter broke some news this morning that should make your black heart skip a beat: Paramount has won Jason Voorhees from Warner Bros. in a heated, back-alley craps game!

Okay, that’s not technically what happened. As it turns out, Warner Bros.’ stake in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming sci-fi epic Interstellar cost them a few properties from their stable, and Friday the 13th is one of them. It’s all very complicated and involves co-financing rights and mergers and maybe something about some gophers and a pineapple. You can read THR‘s entire story here, where the deal is explained in detail…

The British zombie mini-series In the Flesh is coming to BBC America June 6-8, and the network is whetting our appetite with a three-minute taste of what’s to come. (You Canucks have already seen it, so please don’t tell us how it ends.) Though these opening scenes are mainly about setting up the show’s concept – what happens when you “cure” zombies and reintegrate them into society? – there’s some brief but gnarly gore, and one gets the definite  impression that the erstwhile gutmunchers won’t be getting the warmest of welcomes…