Black Gate

Socially distant Zoom call. Earlier this week:

Black Gate Photog Chris Z: Do you think they’ll ever fix the Alien franchise?

Goth Chick: By ‘fix’ do you mean ignore the hot mess of Aliens 3 and 4, along with the travesty that was those Prometheus movies?

BGPCZ: Though I’m clearly not as emotionally scarred as you, basically yes.

GC: I am still holding out hope for the Neill Blomkamp / James Cameron reboot that picks up Ripley and Hicks’ characters after Aliens 2. You know, the one Ridley Scott utterly destroyed with his announcement he was coming up with something better?

BGPCZ: The ‘something better’ that gave us Prometheus.

GC: (gagging noise) Yes. Cameron was hinting it was a go early last year, so there’s still hope.

And that, dear BG readers is what caused me to go hunting to see if there were any new developments on that front, which is when I discovered this – embarrassed as I am to be so late to this party.

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Just when we thought the boredom might overtake us, Universal Pictures comes up with the best idea with the crappiest amount of promotion behind it. When this came to my attention from another industry writer, I actually had a heck of a time finding the details on directly from Universal. Which in a way makes it all the cooler and more exclusive.

The studio has come up with a way to promote existing movies with an added twist, and this Saturday’s offering is about the best news I’ve heard since I found out I can work in sweatpants for two months. Universal Pictures Home Entertainment has announced plans to host interactive watch parties on Twitter each weekend, featuring some of their most iconic films. This Saturday (May 16), Jason Blum of Blumhouse will play host to David Gordon Green, joined by Curtis, John Carpenter, Judy Greer, James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle, to watch the 11th installment of the Halloween franchise, while providing live commentary.

According to Universal’s event website:

No one does horror quite like Blumhouse and Michael Myers. Join the production company that specializes in horror as they watch the return of Halloween along with the cast. Lee Curtis returns to her iconic role as Laurie Strode, who comes to her final confrontation with Michael Myers, the masked figure who has haunted her since she narrowly escaped his killing spree on Halloween night four decades ago. #HalloweenAtHome

So, how does this magic happen?

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What do you get when creative people have a lot of time on their hands? Well, if you’re the Black Gate staff you start choosing obscure, pulp-SciFi paperback covers to use as Zoom backgrounds and then geek-shame your colleagues when they can’t name the artist and the year. But if you’re writer/director Michael Dougherty (Trick ‘r Treat, Krampus, Godzilla: King of the Monsters) and editor Evan Gorski, you get on the horn, fire up the iMAC Pro, and get to work creating the most timely and entertaining genre movie mashup ever delivered to a stir-crazy public.

Titled “Everything I Need to Know to Survive COVID-19 I Learned By Watching Sci-fi & Horror Movies,” this perfectly-strung-together, 3-minutes of clips from movies like Alien, World War Z, The Thing, I Am Legend, The Mist, Terminator, The Shining and Jaws seem eerily suited to the current mess we call reality. And what do they tell us?

Stay together.

Stay indoors.

Stay safe.

Wash your hands.

And hole up until spring when the rescue teams arrive…

In an attempt to not succumb to the stresses of working above ground near windows, rather than in the cozy, underground bunker of the Black Gate offices, I have been systematically making a list of my favorite movies. I am then ranking them in watch order, with a view to not overindulge in too much of a single genre. I do know people who have done Friday the 13^th or Halloween marathons during the lockdown, but most of them are on the verge of not being suitable to ever be in public again. Therefore, my movie list, though heavy on the horror, still runs the gambit from hardcore to light-hearted fun; from Evil Dead to High Spirits and a whole lot in between.

But any list I compile, regardless of how it is organized, would have Beettlejuice right up there near the top. Yes, I’m partial to Tim Burton on most days, but the ghost with the most is nothing short of a classic.

Hard to believe that it’s been just over 33 years since Michael Keaton offered to chew on a dog to get the hapless, recently deceased Maitlands to hire him to scare the living out of their charming, New England farmhouse. The movie, also starring Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin and Winona Ryder among others, earned close to $75 million at the box office, which is roughly five times its $15 million budget, and bagged an Oscar for costume and makeup. Since then, Halloween costumes, pop-up bars and museum exhibits have paid homage to this comedy-fantasy-horror flick to the point you’d think it would have all been done.

Thankfully, we’re wrong.

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