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Author: Sue Granquist

Goth Chick News: Days of the Dead – Season Greetings from Our Family to Yours

Goth Chick News: Days of the Dead – Season Greetings from Our Family to Yours

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That time of year has once again rolled around. “The Season” is officially over. Black Gate photog Chris Z has thrown a tarp over the Hummer and sent his kilt to the dry cleaners. We’ve emptied the final airplane-sized bottles of Fireball, and filed our last expense report with BG’s financial fun police. Because on the weekend before Thanksgiving we attended the final convention of our annual show circuit, Days of the Dead.

It certainly doesn’t feel like nearly ten years since we attended our first DotD convention at its sophomore outing in the Chicago suburbs. I readily admit that Chicago isn’t Los Angeles or even New Orleans when it comes to sub-cultures, though the elements that do exist are certainly worth wading into — if you know where to look. But when DotD came to Chicago for the first time in 2011, its home was the Schaumburg Marriot of all places.

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Goth Chick News: Showtime’s New All-Girl Survival Drama Yellowjackets Promises to Be a Wild Ride

Goth Chick News: Showtime’s New All-Girl Survival Drama Yellowjackets Promises to Be a Wild Ride

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Mike Bockoven’s book Fantasticland is one of my favorites. It takes the concept of Lord of the Flies and plops is right down in an imagined Disney World competitor theme park whose employees get cut off from civilization due to a hurricane. It explores what happens when once normal college-aged kids divide into Mad Max-esque factions to fight for survival. I’ve long thought that, in the right hands, this story would make for an incredible movie. But though an ambitious theater company in California took it on as a play earlier this year, there have been no murmurs about Fantasticland making it to the big screen.

However, it seems like Showtime is going to take up the concept with their new series Yellowjackets, and it looks like this could be the savage girl thriller we all need.

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Goth Chick News Polls: Do You Believe in Ghosts?

Goth Chick News Polls: Do You Believe in Ghosts?

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Now that my favorite “season” has passed for another year, and the Black Gate interns keep making attempts to hang holiday twinkle lights on my office skeleton, I am left with time to ponder the attraction many humans have to all things scary. Consumer spending on Halloween exceeded $10 billion in 2021; an all-time high. Horror movies continue to be the top revenue generators for the Hollywood machine when production costs are compared to box-office takes. And if you believe in ghosts, you are far from alone. In 2019 the magazine Scientific America stated 45% of Americans believed in, and as many as 18% of people will go so far as to say they have had contact with, ghosts.

A few months back I told you about my personal ghost adventures. How I have sat up all night, surrounded by EVP recorders, EMP detectors, spirit boxes, full spectrum POV cameras and EDI meters. How I’d done this in places like the catacombs under the streets of Edenborough, Scotland, in the burial chambers beneath St. Martin-in-the-Fields church in London, Waldfriedhof Cemetery in Munich, Germany and the battlefields of Gettysburg. I consider myself an open-minded skeptic who would love to believe that spirits walk among us, or at least that the shadowy imprints of past events are occasionally visible. However, the most consistent thing I captured on the numerous outings to these damp, chilly places, was a cold.

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Goth Chick News: Netflix’s Night Teeth is a Surprisingly Fun Vampire Thrill Ride

Goth Chick News: Netflix’s Night Teeth is a Surprisingly Fun Vampire Thrill Ride

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As “the season” came to a close for another year, so did my 31-day binge of all manner of scary movies. I had been saving Night Teeth on Netflix for Sunday afternoon before the official trick-or-treat hours kicked off. I wasn’t expecting much so I was prepared to bail on it and watch something more traditional. Instead, what I got was a very pleasant surprise.

The premise shown in the trailer is what first got my attention. I love a good vampire tale, especially when it has a unique spin (like Midnight Mass). Night Teeth tells the story of Bennie, an aspiring young musician from East L.A. (played by Jorge Lendeborg Jr. – Spiderman: Far from Home) who takes his brother’s limo shift to earn some extra cash. He winds up hosting two swanky young ladies on what looks to be an all-night party hop. What he doesn’t know is that the two are vampire assassins sent by their boss to wipe out his rival, blood-sucking gang leaders in a bid to take over Los Angeles.

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Goth Chick News: What’s the Scariest Movie of All Time?

Goth Chick News: What’s the Scariest Movie of All Time?

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As the date around which the entire Goth Chick News calendar revolves, draws ever nearer, the horror movie marathon in our subterranean office continues. Of course, there is much debate on the topic of “scariest.” Is it classic vs. newer releases, or blood-baths vs. atmospheric? Is it high tech and CGI or micro-budget? I decided to do a little research among the dozens of “best of” lists to settle some of the debates, when amazingly enough I found a scientific study on just this topic.

UK-based broadband comparison site, Broadband Choices has tackled the question for the second year with their Science of Scare research project. The goal? To scientifically discover the scariest horror movie of all time. Broadband Choices invites 250 study subjects to watch 40 horror movies considered the “scariest” based on Reddit recommendations and critics’ “best of” lists. This years’ offering included the top 30 films as ranked in the 2020 Science of Scare experiment, plus and additional 10 new entries.

Study subjects are fitted with heart rate monitors and seated in screening rooms to watch all the movies over the course of several weeks. Researchers (and medical personnel) observe the subjects and measure the average impact the shortlisted movies had on the heart rate (measured in BPM) of the subjects, compared to the average resting BPM of 64.

So, what movie collectively raised the heart rates of this year’s study subjects most?

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Goth Chick News: The New World That Is Wizard World Chicago

Goth Chick News: The New World That Is Wizard World Chicago

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As life cautiously assumes a stance something close to, if not entirely, “normal,” some of the most anticipated events are finally sliding back into the Goth Chick News calendar.

It’s no surprise that pop-culture conventions took an especially hard hit in 2020, which saw large, in-person events cancelled across the globe. Wizard World put on some of the biggest conventions in the US, hosting annual cons in six cities; Chicago, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Portland, Cleveland, and St. Louis. This year, Wizard World Chicago was back, albeit later that its usual September dates, but with another significant change. Fan Expo, which already runs almost a dozen events across North America, has just acquired the rights to Wizard World conventions.
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Goth Chick News: Netflix Original Series Midnight Mass Is the Perfect Halloween Offering

Goth Chick News: Netflix Original Series Midnight Mass Is the Perfect Halloween Offering

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Admittedly, the numerous streaming services make the month of October a whiplash of incredible viewing opportunities. Gone are the days of rehashing classic horror movies on commercial TV. In October 2021 you can navigate to “horror” or “Halloween Favorites” on everything from HBO Max, to Netflix, to Amazon Prime and find movies from Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) to brand new original series such as Jason Blum’s Welcome to Blumhouse horror anthology.

Dedicated goth chick that I am, I’ve committed myself to watching some version of horror every day (sometimes more) in the month of October. It was important to include classics while liberally peppering in new works as well. October 1st kicked off with Young Frankenstein (what else?), and thus far I have worked my way through Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein (1994), all the original Universal Studios monster classics (which I own in multiple formats), Brendan Fraser’s Mummy (1999), Johnny Depp’s Ed Wood (1994) and several of the “firsts” such as the first Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Halloween. However, I simply couldn’t ignore the new entries in the binge-watchable series, of which there are a plethora to choose from.

Enter Midnight Mass, an original from Netflix.

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Goth Chick News: Yet Another Way to Spend My Money in October…

Goth Chick News: Yet Another Way to Spend My Money in October…

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While it is somewhat of an American tradition to go broke in the month of December, I try my hardest to do it in October as well. You’d think at this point, my obsession with the strange and unusual would have nowhere left to turn. I mean, there are only so many dead-things-under-glass one girl can have, right?

According to the National Retail Federation, spending on Halloween-related items is expected to reach $10.14 billion in the weeks surrounding October 31, 2021; up from $8.05 billion in 2020 which was an all-time high. This doesn’t happen if places like Spirit Halloween keep cranking out the same plastics skulls year after year. And here in lies the dilemma – there is a new batch of gothic splendor every October. What is a goth girl to do when faced with news like this?

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Goth Chick News: I Finally Made It to the Stanley Hotel, and It Was Perfect

Goth Chick News: I Finally Made It to the Stanley Hotel, and It Was Perfect

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The Stanley Hotel

Personally, I have two bucket lists. One is filled with experiences that sound familiar like “learn a new language” or “ride in a helicopter.” The other is my goth bucket list, filled with things that cause my parents to ask, “why can’t you just go to Vegas like a normal person?” Quite high on this particular list was a visit to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, CO. I say “was” because due to attending a wedding in Boulder, I was less than an hour away. That meant a gracious “no” to the invitation to a ladies brunch the day after the nuptials, and a great big “yes” to a giddy 55-mile drive.

Stephen King’s book The Shining is one of my favorites, and the Stanley Hotel was King’s inspiration. That much I knew, but exactly how much of an inspiration I was about to find out. To clarify one thing, the Stanley has no connection at all to Kubrick’s film. The hotel which represented the exterior shots of The Overlook Hotel in the movie, is actually the Timberline Lodge in Oregon. All the interior shots were filmed at Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, outside London.

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Goth Chick News: Welcome to the Blumhouse…

Goth Chick News: Welcome to the Blumhouse…

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Though I can’t say I love everything Jason Blum produces, I would say that if he ever calls the Black Gate office looking for me, someone bloody well transfer him to my cell phone pronto.

Though Blum has been the driving force behind nearly 200 films dating back to 1995, it was when he created his own micro-budget company, Blumhouse Productions, in 2000 that he finally had the creative freedom to scare the living crap out of us. Blum’s low budget model launched his horror career with a serious winner. Paranormal Activity cost $15K to make thanks to Blum borrowing a location and camera equipment, and paying two of his friends $500 each to star.

Flash forward a few years to when Paramount acquired the U.S. rights for $350K. PA went on to pull in $193 million worldwide, making this the second most profitable film ever made based on a return of investment, behind only The Blair Witch Project. Word is that during PA’s first test screenings, people started leaving the theater. Blum thought he had made a flop, only to discover that people left the auditorium because they couldn’t handle the intensity of the scares.

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