Black Gate

It’s probably an analogy that falls firmly under the category of “graveyard humor,” but all the recent Covid headlines keeps reminding me of the tag line for the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers film from 1956:

“You’re next!”

Well, let’s certainly hope not. But the sci-fi movie we are currently all living in seems to beg for a lookback at the iconic film. These days, something about a black and white thriller seems more comforting and nostalgic than ever, and the 1956 Invasion, the very first in the list of several screen adaptations of Jack Finney’s 1954 science fiction novel The Body Snatchers, has a whole lot of backstory to explore.

First, a quick refresher on the plot.

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Hemlock Grove by Brian McGreevy (FSG Originals, April 16, 2013)

When Netflix first premiered Hemlock Grove back in April 2013, it was originally aimed at an audience of teenage horror fans. The cast was ridiculously good-looking, twenty-somethings playing high schoolers living in an insanely quaint and beautiful New England town. It might have been The Addams Family meets 90210, or at the time, a darker alternative to the anxiety-ridden vampires du jour of the Twilight series.

What we got instead, at least in Season 1, was an intricate and blood-soaked modern retelling of pretty much every classic monster imaginable. Hemlock Grove is a tale well worth you visiting (or revisiting) this Halloween season.

An American horror/thriller from executive producer Eli Roth (Grindhouse and Hostel) and developed by Brian McGreevy and Lee Shipman, Hemlock Grove is based on McGreevy’s 2012 novel of the same name. It examines the strange happenings in a fictional town in Pennsylvania where a teenage girl is brutally murdered, sparking a hunt for her killer. Roman Godfrey, heir to the town’s wealthy Godfrey family, befriends the town’s newcomer and gypsy outcast, Peter Rumancek and the two work together to shed light on the case while also concealing their own dark secrets.

I managed to find Hemlock Grove’s one and only red band trailer which should make you at least a little curious to check it out.

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We here at Goth Chick News would normally begin this time of year doing two things: checking out what’s new on the local haunted attraction scene, and spending hours in a darkened theater taking in the new seasonal offerings. However, as we explained last week, Halloween seems very well positioned to reinvent itself amidst the B-movie plotline we’re current living in, and the horror film scene is no exception. Though streaming services are busy dropping or about to drop quite a lot to be excited about (Ratched, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Lovecraft Country), it takes my horror-film-director-crush to show up bearing the epitome of surprise Halloween treats.

Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Production announced this week that they have been sneakily working on a sequel to the 1996 cult favorite The Craft, schedule to drop directly to your living room this month. “We’re thrilled that our partners at Sony Pictures are looking at the landscape opportunistically this Halloween, for audiences to watch at home in the U.S.,” Blum said in a statement.

Entitled The Craft: Legacy, the story is a continuation of the original, with a new cabal of girls experimenting with supernatural powers. Here’s the official synopsis.

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House on Haunted Hill (Allied Artists, 1959)

In 2019 (aka “the Time Before”) one of the quintessential horror movies of our time celebrated its 60^th birthday. The House on Haunted Hill (1959) starring Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Alan Marshal and Julia Mitchum was not only critically acclaimed in its own time, but still has an 88% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes today. Filmed for $200K over the course of 14 days in 1958, the film has netted over $1.5M and counting, thanks to video rentals and streaming. Ironically, its 40^th anniversary remake in 1999, starring Geoffrey Rush and Famke Janssen cost $37M to make and has only netted $43M to date worldwide, making the original House proportionally the clear winner with fans.

What you may not know is the many ground-breaking elements of the film which still influence entertainment and promotion today. To start, director William Castle was the original master of guerilla marketing. His technique first appeared with his movie Macabre (1958) but due to its success, it was replicated with House a year later. Mr. Castle offered $1,000 Lloyd’s of London insurance policies for those brave enough to watch his horror film. However, if anyone with the policy by the died of fright during the movie, that person’s next of kin would be paid $1,000. In addition to this, Castle had select theater owners station nurses in their lobbies and park hearses outside. Castle himself said it was a shame no one actually expired during his movies as it would have been exceptional publicity. Today, directors such as J.J. Abrams (Super 8) and J.A. Bayona (Jurassic World; Fallen Kingdom) have taken such gimmicks even further to promote their films. Just Google the name of the movie and “guerilla marketing” to see the examples.

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I could not leave the topic of early aughts nightmare-inducing films without bringing up this one. As rife with symbolism as it is horrors, Guillermo Del Toro’s 2007 dark fantasy, Pan’s Labyrinth is a simple story which explores complex and sometimes violent themes about human morality and free will. When I Googled “symbolism of Pan’s Labyrinth” I literally got back 35K responses, including several university thesis papers.

If you skipped this one because it is filmed entirely in Spanish, with English subtitles, I urge you to give it a go. Del Toro went to great lengths to avoid making this a main-stream English language film, including turning down several big-budget studios. He personally created the subtitles to ensure his meanings were translated perfectly, and gave up his entire salary, including back-end points, to see this film make it to production. The result is a visually stunning fairytale, which has been twisted for an adult audience. For example, after the first week Pan’s Labyrinth played in theaters in Mexico and Spain, signs were put outside the venues warning the audience about the graphic violence and urging parents not to bring children to see it.

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Last week’s robust discussion about the 2002 horror flick Ghost Ship, got me to thinking about the look of the genre in the early 2000’s. A peruse through Rotten Tomato’s top horror movies of the 90’s reveals a trend toward monsters in all their iterations. Werewolves, vampires and demons were primary themes, so it is interesting to see the change brought on by the new decade. With the new millennium came introspective horror of the psychological kind. Collider’s list has titles like Saw, American Psycho and The Orphan where the frights came from our fellow humans. Even Ghost Ship had the mortals onboard being the victims of their own human failings. Maybe what we learned by the end of the 20^th Century is that the human psyche is the scariest monster of all. So, when The Cell popped up on one of my feeds on its 20th anniversary this month, I thought it was worth looking at it again – especially if you haven’t seen it.

When The Cell hit theaters on August 18, 2000, audiences either loved it or hated it. There was literally no middle ground. On one hand Roger Ebert awarded The Cell four out of four stars, while dozens of other critics took issue with the subject matter and violence, not to mention the sympathetic slant the plot has toward an entirely deranged serial killer.

Now, 20 years later, The Cell, with its insane costume design, over-the-top production values and an Oscar-worthy performance by Vincent D’Onofrio, is well worth a look.

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Call it a phobia, but I am completely creeped out by things which seem too big to be allowed. I have no explanation for it, but as an example, I nearly drove off the road on a rainy night when I looked up to see a huge satellite dish looming over the intersection from behind the walls of a military installation in California. My heart also leapt out of my chest when I got an up-close look at a Kimoto Dragon (stuffed of course). And because this is something that unnerves me in real life, it stands to reason it is one of my favorite frights on the big screen. It’s probably why I liked Cloverfield, and Kong: Skull Island, and its most certainly part of the reason I liked Ghost Ship (2002) when it pretty much sunk at the box office.

If you haven’t seen it, a salvage crew discovers a cruise ship, lost for over forty years, floating lifeless in a remote region of the Bering Sea. When they attempt to bring it back to shore, they begin to discover there may still be “passengers” on board. Without spoiling anything, I will tell you that as horror movies go, it’s fairly predictable, though the twist at the end is pretty clever.

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