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Memoirs from the Rue Morgue
by Rodrigo Gudiño
Published in the October 2007 issue of Rue Morgue Magazine.
Rue Morgue recently celebrated its 10th anniversay. This is the story of how we came to be.
The year was 1997 and horror was in the air. David Lynch's Lost Highway was in theatres; Scream was a fledgling franchise and Event Horizon was being touted as the scariest movie of the year. The DVD reissue craze was in full swing and Anchor Bay Entertainment was leading the pack in classic releases from the video era – stuff like Argento's Suspiria and Raimi's Evil Dead. The X-Files was on its fourth season and White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade role playing game was at its peak. Nine Inch Nails was huge, Marilyn Manson had just declared himself AntiChrist Superstar and Rob Zombie was working on his first solo album. Horror was in the air...
At the time I was still in my twenties, a frustrated journalist caught in the star-making machinery of Canada's music industry, an overqualified graduate in literary studies and philosophy with a restless desire to find something more meaningful. I was fortunate: I had some experience running a student newspaper which meant I could write, edit and layout, and was familiar with the economic model for publishing. So I was uniquely suited to start a magazine but had no idea what it should be about.
Having grown up reading Weird Tales and Rod Serling's Twilight Zone magazine, I briefly contemplated doing something literary, but in the end I felt there was not enough money in fiction and passed on the idea. At the time my mind was humming from my studies in 20th century philosophy and this brought me to Stephen King's book-long essay on the horror genre, Danse Macabre. And although I found King's reflections to be somewhat superficial, I was intrigued by his Appendix, in which he listed 100 of the most influential horror films of all time, many of which I had never heard of. I decided to watch all 100 films in chronological order, to get a better feel for the genre which I had loved since I was a kid.
And so it came to pass that every Sunday night was horror movie night. Friends heard about it, as did friends of friends, drawn – I think – to the academic conceit of the project and to the discussions that always followed. It was a good time; things were easy, relaxed and stimulating. It felt like I was discovering horror films for the first time, even though I had grown up on a steady diet of Carpenter, Romero, Craven, Cronenberg and Lynch. Here were horrors I'd never known: Peeping Tom, The Witchfinder General, Let's Scare Jessica To Death and Séance on a Wet Afternoon. The more popular classics were there too, such as Creature From the Black Lagoon, Carrie, Halloween and Alien, but seeing them in chronological order gave them a sense of history, that sense of being part of a greater tradition dating back to the dawn of cinema.
Largely as a result of those viewings, I took a greater interest in rediscovering the horror genre, which naturally took me to bookstores and specialty stores. One day I wandered into Toronto's Suspect Video and I realized how much horror had grown up: there were trading cards, games, toys, clothing; there were critical works, anthologies, omnibuses and encyclopedias. And, of course, there were the films, so many now, from every part of the world. There were also horror magazines. Glancing through them I was surprised that none of them seemed to see what I was seeing, that horror had evolved beyond movies to become some sort of wider cultural experience, a culture that was booming.
Horror In Culture & Entertainment
A week or so later, over lunch break at the RPM Magazine offices where I worked, I found myself in a gift shop filled with Halloween trinkets and looking at them all gave me a little epiphany. It dawned on me that perhaps the popular culture's fascination with horror was somehow reflective of the twentieth century's interest in existentialism, alienation and anxiety. I imagined that two world wars and the threat of nuclear holocaust probably exacerbated this general feeling. The possibility of exploring, however superficially, this wider context excited me beyond the possibilities of a mere horror magazine. My magazine would tackle the art and culture of horror, and perhaps satisfy some of my more esoteric interests. At last I had found my idea.
The magazine would be called Rue Morgue because the composite of a French and an English word made it distinctly Canadian, because Poe had been the idol of my youth, because “Murders In The Rue Morgue" was a detective story and the idea of becoming like a detective and asking questions about why people liked horror seemed fresh and unique. Lastly, my magazine would critique the genre as much as celebrate it: too many times had I sat through a bad horror film only to have friends defend it like it was a work of genius. Rue Morgue would be more honest than that; the magazine would only devote feature articles to stuff I believed in.
Almost immediately I began working, flowing dummy text to design and redesign a look for the new mag. I brainstormed column ideas, headings, fonts and design formats. I began jotting down story ideas, writing reviews and assigning articles to some of the film night regulars. I worked late into the night and on weekends my friend Mary-Beth, whom I had worked with at the student newspaper, helped me edit and proof. Then, six months later, the issue finally went to the printer. A week after that, it was in my hands.
The premiere issue of Rue Morgue was delivered to my place of work late in October 1997 and the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw it was how many things were wrong with it. But my co-workers at RPM, among them Jody Infurnari, were impressed, as was my boss who kept shaking his head in disbelief that I had pulled it off under his nose.
But Rue Morgue had a long way to go. I was immediately thrust into handling every single editorial and business aspect of the magazine, including selling the ads and dealing with the printer. I was still full-time at RPM, so it was a tough slog and I can't honestly say I enjoyed everything but I was happier than I had ever been in my life. Overnight my tiny apartment became crammed with boxes; the next day I began distributing the magazine for free to select stores in Toronto and mailing it off to every horror-related company I could think of. Before I knew it, I was deep into RM#2.
And so it went, issue to issue, hand to mouth. To be honest, I think I was flying by the seat of my pants for the first three years, what I would consider to be the first period of Rue Morgue's history. It was a lonely time, filled with long hours, no social life and a gnawing insecurity that everything would be for naught. Even so, I was happy – maybe ecstatic is the right word. I was now on horror movie sets, talking with horror writers and directors, and in 1998 I was flown to LA to meet John Carpenter and his wife Sandy prior to the release of Vampires. This period is also notable for two major things in Rue Morgue's history: our US premiere issue (RM#7) and the arrival of some very key people in the development of the magazine.
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