Black Corset Candles, a relatively new webshop that aims to inject a little sensuality into waxwork, have actually been at this biz for about eight years and spurn paraffin in favor of soy. Their creations come in a variety of cute packages, and the industrial-chic silver tin pictured above is their “One Night Stand” travel candle. And going from the black raspberry & vanilla blend they picked out for us, the scents are quite delicious when lit up. The travel candles run five bucks a pop, and you can choose the cheaper route of two-dollar votives or splash out on a glass container festooned with tiny handcuffs.

Lipsticks and Pistol Whips blends rocker strut with hiphop ice in their small line of tees, splashed with lipstick kisses, rhinestones, skulls, and gold cursive. Printed on supersoft cotton, the attitudinal imagery is flaunted on babydolls and tanks – the “Hellcats Revenge” top they sent us is a fitted, feminized version of a muscle tee, with a wide neck and cap sleeves that look freshly scissored but have been thoughtfully serged at the edge so they won’t fall apart or roll back. Shirts are available in standard sizes, and prices run between $10-$20 for classic tees to $50 for longsleevers.

A few weeks ago we welcomed Seraphemera Books to our directory, and noted the Houston enthusiasm around their comic Polyglot and Spleen. A charming meander through a goth perspective that doesn’t take itself too seriously, the first issue is “How I Met My Spleen.”

This introductory story focuses on the poetic wanderings of Polyglot, the gentleman of the pair, and ends with the sudden appearance of vampy Polyglot. There are a couple of fashiony pinups at the back, as if to make up for her absence throughout the story, and it looks as if she’s a trickster type.

Reality is never far away from these characters, but it’s presented as more laughably absurd than depressing, with sillier and sillier stuff appearing in the background – a mysterious labyrinth outfitted with restrooms and a souvenir stand, a nineteenth-centrury gambling hall transforming into a game show. It’s a nice deflation of the pervasive, outdated “mopey goth” stereotype, while pointing out the ludicrous balms of the mainstream.

Always feeling like there’s an arched eyebrow lurking in the background, Polyglot and Spleen looks fun to follow if you dig dressing up, nightclubbing, and pondering a dark existence with a sense of humor. Issues run five bucks, and #2 will appear in March 2007.

Mandrake Apothecary is a pagan-run perfumerie that specializes in cruelty-free, handmade scents. They first appeared in the Chateau back in November, and they recently sent us a surprise package full of dabbables.

First of all, a moment for the care taken in the packaging. An almost clothlike butterfly tissue…

…cocooning a meticulous arrangement of samples. You gotta love it when a merchant puts your merch together like this.

I love what happens when the underground reinterprets traditional beauty packaging. (Ridiculous tangent: A few months ago, a salesperson in Macy’s bombarded me with a yelp of, “would you like to try HEIRESS?” Good gods, why don’t you just ask me if I’d like to try on a spritz of formaldehyde?) Here we have the little sample dram nestled booklike between an ingredients list and explanation of the name.

So what have we here? The Natural Perfumes are artisan scents, such as Asherah, a blend of grapefruit and florals named for the Queen of Heaven. Anima reclaim the feminine aspect: Medea, which features ginger lily, pink lotus, and blood orange, Sophia, where the frankincense and myrrh of her biblical background is sweetened with vanilla, white lotus, and orange flower, Lilith, who’s made of sage, three kinds of frankincense, and a distillation of baked mud from the Ganges in sandalwood, and Jezebel, a pairing of jasmine and leather. Spiritus is a line of autumn-themed oils and includes Pan Dulce, “sweets for the dead,” in homage to both Day of the Dead and the origins of trick or treat in Ireland, Cafe y Cacao, chocolate warmed up with coffee and cinnamon, and Ofrenda, a meditational oil for All Saints Day blending Mexican copal, fir needles, and tonka beans. A couple more scents that I didn’t see on the website but were thrown in anyway were Nyx, flowers with musk ambrette, and Tisane, darjeeling mixed with rose. (which, now that I’m reading the site again, is part of a new tea-themed collection.)

Samples run $4 apiece, with discounts on volume ordering. Overall, quite nice between some unusual ingredient combinations and the gift-wrap presentation.

New designs from Sick on Sin, which are all about zombies and zombie animals, served in oversized matchbook packages.

This is about as dark as they get, as the rest of their imagery trades on unabashed cute. A good way for horror-lovin’ parents to gently introduce the Romero world to little ones.

November Fire is a webshop that specializes in all sorts of dark-themed tees, and within their pages of politics, Halloween, occult, and general outlaw shirts, they’re particularly good for b-movie horror imagery and Olde Witchcraft engravings. Even better, they have a variety of styles to print them on – in addition to the classic t, there are girls fits, longsleevers, strapped, oversized hip-hop 8XL, and hoodies. And their name is derived from a kickass Samhain album, which is what prompted us to list them in the first place ;)

Above: The Girl’s Spaghetti Strap is printed on American Apparel Classic Girl. The image is Coffin 13, from their Everything Else page. Skull, wings, coffin – yep, everything’s present for a decent goth tank top.

And look, it’s available as an emboidered patch! Yes, there’s a page of wearables for your jean jacket, again with a good range, from sacred hearts and Celtic dragons to poison labels and pentagrams.

The Girl Cut tee is also printed on Classic Girl, and this little guy can be found on the Halloween page. Yep, even through you’re warned not to come in unless you’re over 18 – they really don’t want to be bothered with people complaining about offensiveness – there are some pretty cute things for younger goths, even if they don’t technically carry kids’ sizes.

The Escutcheon of Death hoody combines righteous imagery from 1538 (death as a dispenser of justice, according to the catalog) with modern, comfy streetwear. On a Hanes no-shrink Beefy-T, no less.

A close-up of the righteous imagery.

And if you’re always in the market for new shirts, this site’s worth bookmarking – new designs are added about every 2 weeks.

“A Pantomime of Deviltry and Debauch in Seven Acts” has made its debut at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab in thirteen limited-edition perfumes. Served in apothecary bottles, each scent is named for a shadowy carny figure, depicted in sinister portraiture not only on the label but on a tarot-style trading card to match. Black Phoenix is a site that has never rested on the laurels of their success, not only dreaming up seemingly infinite fragrance concoctions, but putting their money right back into making a more exciting product – and their time into writing some of the most baroque catalog copy ever, often sounding straight out of a bawdy fantasy novel. And it was a wonderful cosmic coincidence to end up doing this review right after reading A.W. Stencell’s Girl Show: Into the Canvas World of Bump and Grind.

This current crop of scents is particularly food-heavy, with lots of inspiration pulled from fairground sweets. Midnight on the Midway is a confection of “sugared incense and night-blooming flowers,” yum. The Candy Butcher swirls chocolate and cream, and Xanthe the Weeping Clown features an unusual union of white pepper and spun sugar. Tea also makes an appearance in the minted honey of Gennivre L’Artiste du Diable and the musky vanilla of Theodosius the Degerdemain. The Phantom Calliope darkens cherry with patchouli and earthiness, and Mme. Moriarty Misfortune Teller features pomegranate and wild plum. The masculine scents include The Organ Grinder, which blends tobacco smoke with white pine and almond milk, and Doc Constantine’s heady mix of leather, black amber, and wood. Pulcinella & Teresina is a bold brew of labdanum, woods, and rose, and Antonio the Carny Talker is heavily lavender sweetened with fig, coconut, and plum. The florals of the bunch are Melisande The Puppet Mistress (has someone been reading Jacqueline Carey? ;), a violety little cauldron, and the signature Carnaval Diabolique, a bouquet of opium-smoked flowers.

The Carnaval Diabolique is scheduled to run until September 2007.

Arcane Nonesuch, Massachusetts purveyors of soldered picture jewelry, have been getting up to all kinds of good stuff with the addition of found objects and shadowbox designs to their catalog. We were sent a piece which represents their latest creations – keys encased in glass, backgrounded with that scrawled parchment they like to use in their pagan charms. Pictured is the rosary version from their one-of-a-kind artisan page, which also has winged death’s heads on chokers and bracelets. Another new page is full of jewelery made from pottery, porcelain, and glass fragments washed up on the beach of Salem Harbor. And if you needed one last reason to head over their their site, shipping is now free on all their jewelry.

Oh, look what we got in the mail! A bundle of joy from the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab! Whilst everyone is anxiously awaiting the arrival of their scent lockets, here’s a peek at new debuts and old favorites in their ever-expanding catalog.

Shanghai is a light green tea, and Twenty One captures the scent of a martini, named after a former New York speakeasy. Queen of Sheba’s honey almonds smells almost edible. Somnus aids in restful sleep and Baku is named for a Japanese nightmare-eating spirit, both crafted to calm, along with Water of Notre Dame. Death on a Pale Horse makes for a lovely goth cologne, its strength coming from subtlety, something that most male scents are not known for. Aureus is made for “true, perfect golden light” and brings to mind a warm summer day, while Asphodel is “the grey and ghostly flower that fills the fields of Hades” but actually smells a lot more cheerful, akin to honeysuckle. Undertow, the Dark Side of Water, is a bright hard bite of mint. Single note florals include Shadow Witch Orchid and Tiger Lily. And if you like roses, Two, Five and Seven – an offering from Mad Tea Party collection – brings together nine breeds with a touch of green grass.

But you want to hear about the love oils, don’t you? Follow Me Boy is a wicked floral said to be favored by prostitutes and others in the sex trade, and Love Me is another potent attraction oil. The Perfumed Garden is a Tunisian-inspired confection that mixes flowers and juices – this one was our favorite of the bunch. Veil is a soft bouquet secreted with the all-important ingredient of orris, and Pannychis, named for the celebration of darkness, gathers the appropriate blooms. Blood Kiss, however, is right up front about its debauchery with the nightife scents of wine, musk, and cloves, played against cherries. Even more shameless is Smut, “three swarthy, smutty musks sweetened with sugar and woozy with dark booze notes” and after getting a whiff, the Chateau pronounces this the official scent of longhaired rock stars with tell-all autobiographies. On the darker side of things, Sin is a earthy blend, Voodoo is an intense mix of woods and herbs sweetened with lime and vanilla, and as we’ve reported the first time we tried out Anne Bonny, there is no way you wear this and appear innocent. Snake Oil still remains the Black Phoenix house favorite.

If all this is making your head spin, imps are the ever-popular sampler-pack catalog navigation. Hit their site for more details, and be prepared to spend a couple of hours browsing.

If you’ve ever gone through the horrid process of dying clothes, you will know what a godsend a company like We Love Colors is. This merchant not only does all the work for you, but offers 45 hard-to-find colors to choose from, and even better when the dyables include vertical-striped thigh-his, plus-size fishnets, laced gloves, and bitty little hotpants.

We were sent two pairs of wide-net fishnet pantyhose, violet (top) and lavender (above and below). The net is very sturdy, and prices are reasonable considering these are hosiery colors that can’t be easily scooped up on ebay.

And a bonus of thoughful craftsmanship – reinforced toes! A front panel of stretchy fabric provides ouchless pinup feet. Bravo!

Fiend Magazine hails from Australia, and is damn proud to say so: “Considering our numbers are not that huge, what we have to offer the rest of the world, and our own local subcultural and/or artistic communities, is something to be proud of.” This is the country that gave us Vicious Venus, so I’m inclined to agree. This quarterly mag features global coverage of all things dark, while rooted in a fierce hometown pride.

Subcultural mags frequently focus on the music with a few cultural tidbits here and there, and of course bands and album reviews get the most ink. But fashion, art, fiction, video games, and DVD’s are all given their due, and their choice of subjects is delightfully eclectic: issue 8 features Diamanda Galas’ new album, The Blythe-meets-Clockwork orange dollygirl fashions of Wendy Where, an interview with Tim Burton, lovely photography from Viona Ielegems, critiques of Sin City and Chuck Palahniuk’s post-Fight Club scrawlings. And while Fiend is on top of all the latest in goth, they also dip back into the past for homages to the Prom Night slasher series and a camp deconstruction of Flash Gordon, as well as new wrinkles in the mystery of Jack the Ripper. It’s a potpourri with something for everyone, mixing a little history in with what’s happening now.

The writing is smart and informed, while not taking itself too seriously – potshots at BlutEngel and references to “La Vida Spooky” abound – while delivering snark where deserved: who else but an underground cinephile would be able to point out the plot of techno-torture flick Demonlover was lifted from Cradle of Fear? A dispatch from the Wave Gotik Treffen festival in Leipzig is written in freewheeling Hunter S. Thompsonesque prose: “…footpaths were a mass of discarded cigarette butts, lost eyebrow pencils, and stray hanks of mesh like gothic tumbleweeds in the wake of these baby-bat battallions.” And an editorial questions the intentions of “flesh tourists” making a buck off the scene without being in it, and while I don’t agree with what the writer considers “bona fide,” it’s nice to see someone actually asking the question. The longest articles run only a page, but the bite-size presentation crams an impressive amount into 68 pages. Fiend can be ordered online for only $6.95, with subscriptions available.

The Carnal Morgue is a brand-new line of indie movies devoted to “twisted tales of macabre erotica” and we were sent a DVD of their first title, Slaughter Disc. The case featured a goth girl vamping it up in a corset and stage blood; not only was this our first indie film review, but it was smut, too! We just couldn’t keep this to ourselves so joining us for a screening were the hauntress HorrorVenus and SF filmmaker Ms. Becka Star.

Shot on high-quality video, the movie chronicles the downfall of college student Mike, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Neil from The Young Ones, and who starts out with an already-depraved taste for clown porn. (why is everybody so eeked out by clown porn? I HATE clowns but yet there’s something really cute about the big polka-dotted ties falling between bare breasts…but I digress…) Seeking out more extreme videos, he runs across Andromeda Strange in a skin mag, and her appearance on his TV screen is where the movie comes alive. Played by porn star Caroline Pierce, Andromeda is a low-budget Elvira getting down with a skull dildo, akin to the underground cult-tape starlet of the comic Dogwitch. (And because this is Chateau Bizarre, we of course took note of the fashions: Alchemy Gothic, Lip Service, and a bondage getup that we’re pretty sure is Madame LeGoth all made appearances.) And when she’s not busy getting down, she’s playing with blades or killing her co-stars. And Mike just gets more obsessed, losing his job, his girlfriend, and his – gasp! – sanity in the process.

We are treated to Andromeda hosting both root menus (and things get really self-referential when Mike first pops in the DVD and Steel Web Studios – the real-life production company who made Slaughter Disc – is given the credits to Andromeda’s “fictional” movie. Ahhh, indie film!) Her lair consists of a chair shaped like a pair of puffy red lips, a prop tombstone, and a skull candleabra – none of which is helped by the unfortunate industrial-gray carpet or bland bedding. We also get a striptease where someone thought 70’s disco effects would be a great enhancement. (Uh, no.) These little flaws aside, Ms. Strange is lovely and a lot of fun to watch sashaying around her boudoir, especially when practicing cannibalism and happily eating the brains of the guy she’s just boinked. Not to mention, she looks damn cute when she’s pissed at Mike for turning off his TV.

This is being marketed as a horror movie with erotic scenes, but the flat dialogue and one-dimensional characters, intercut with long, close-up shots of oral sex and phallic toys, make this feel just the opposite – this is a lot more like porn drenched in corn syrup, with slow guitars replacing the standard chikkawakas. (and for plausibility’s sake, who on earth would bury a body in full view of a busy highway, while clad in screaming punk tartan?) But that doesn’t mean this wicked little brew of improvised gore and amply pierced pink parts is necessarily a bad thing – if naked goth chicks rolling around in haunt-prop bedrooms blows your hair back, you’ll get what you’ve come for. It’s better viewed as a campy b-movie late-night romp, not diehard horror. And for the squeamish: despite the warnings of “too horrific and explicit for theaters,” there really isn’t anything in here that’s worse than your average Marilyn Manson video.

Overall, our focus group felt that this was an earnest attempt and had potential, and could really benefit from better storyboarding and more attention to what what the haunt industry refers to as “boo spots” – we were all expecting to see Andromeda’s face appear in the reflection of a mirrored medicine cabinet, or blood to come pouring out of a showerhead. Probably the most important comment we have to offer is: “naked male costars who are less doughy, please.” Because it’s not sexy to see beautiful goth women crawling all over clean-cut Ken doll fratboys. Please find men that match!

Slaughter Disc is available at The Carnal Morgue and a second feature is currently underway: Mail Order Bride.