“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.

Madame Talbot’s Victorian Lowbrow is an online gallery of morbid weirdness by Seattle artist Ashleigh Talbot, who eschews the popularity of digital manipulation in favor of hand-drawn pen and ink. Laid out in snazzy, easy-to-navigate site design, her portfolio invokes the come-one-come-all mood of yesteryear sideshows up through 1950’s pulpiness with vampires, devils, famous crimes, tombstones, tattoos, and the birth of the blues. Here we have “The Bell Witch,” printed on parchment stock, invoking medicine-show ads with twirling banners and an ornate border tucking esoteric symbology in each corner.

“Halloween” draws on turn-of-the-century greeting cards with that fat smiling moon and witching hour dance, with another detailed border filling in the traditional hissing black cat and grumpy pumpkins. You can usually only find images like this by looking up vintage Halloween art on ebay – nice to see someone blow it up to a cool poster.

Speeding up about fifty years, rockabilly art also features as one of the Madame’s favored themes, and how! Those leering wolves! Those legs! It just screams sin.

And, of course, we have classic goth. Reminiscent of The Gashlycrumb Tinies, “The Undertaker’s Cabinet” is a very organized image, detailing all the necessaries for the proper Victorian funeral pomp that the times demanded.

Posters are 17×22 inches and high quality, and run about fifteen bucks a pop, and definitely recommended if your tastes in art run toward the darker corners of the old world. Also, check out her highly detailed curio exhibits which are also for sale but at a prettier penny.