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Author: Sue Granquist

Goth Chick News: The Hairy Problem of Werewolf Movies

Goth Chick News: The Hairy Problem of Werewolf Movies

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Wolf Man (Universal Pictures, January 17, 2025)

Why oh why can’t Hollywood produce a decent werewolf movie?

I’ve had my heart broken twice in the past few months, first by The Beast Within (2024) and most recently by Wolf Man (2025).

I first told you about The Beast Within starring Kit Harington, back in August. In summary, it was lousy. Though the trailer implied a suspenseful, cohesive tale, Beast was a rambling affair that didn’t seem to know what it wanted to be. As for an actual werewolf transformation, it was implied but never really materialized. Instead, director Alexander J. Farrell tried to distract us from this fact with a knee-jerking series of events that barely held together as a story. Even putting Harington half-naked in a dog collar wasn’t enough to make me forgive this mess.

So, if you tell me I should have known better when, with renewed hope, I ran off to the theater last weekend to see Wolf Man, I wouldn’t argue.

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Goth Chick News: Hitting the Show Circuit Hard in 2025

Goth Chick News: Hitting the Show Circuit Hard in 2025

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This is why BLACK GATE gives out press passes

And so this happened last week…

John O (the big cheese): People probably imagined you lot (Photog Chris Z and I presumably) are just hunkered down there in the subterranean offices of Black Gate sequestered with a blender, several bottles of adult beverages and the Roku horror channels.
Me: So…?
John O: So – that’s not the image we want to portray here at Black Gate.
Me: We have an image?
John O: OF COURSE WE HAVE AN IMAGE! Why can’t you be more like Bob Byrne?
Me: Bob? Oh… you mean Sherlock. Right. Wait, what was that first thing again?
John O: [insert unpublishable adult language] Would you please just go be visible somewhere? Be a reporter – get out in the field and report. That’s what Bob does. He reports… on detectives… for Black Gate.
Me: The ice machine is broken again.
John O: ARG! [insert more adult language and stomping up the stairs]

What John O doesn’t know but what — and I’m just guessing here — he wants to know, is the following.

About the time “the season” has officially concluded for Goth Chick News (and the season runs from March through November), we have a short holiday break before plunging headfirst into a new annual show circuit: hell bent on bringing you the warmest, moistest, gooiest news from the underside of pop culture.

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Goth Chick News: Celebrating Our 666th Black Gate Article with an Exclusive Announcement

Goth Chick News: Celebrating Our 666th Black Gate Article with an Exclusive Announcement

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Dirk and yours truly, Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo 2014

A couple years back, my long-time friend comic writer/creator Dirk Manning called dibs. He let me know that when the time came for me to publish my 666th article for Black Gate that he wanted to be my subject.

I first introduced Manning to all of you in 2011 during his nationwide tour promoting his horror comic series, Nightmare World. As a fan of horror comics since they were contraband for my young self, I loved how Manning’s work reminded me of everything I enjoyed about the genre. His most recent project has been a collaboration with the estate of legendary actor Lon Chaney to bring the lost classic horror film London After Midnight back to life in graphic novel form. Since 2011, Manning has made multiple appearances in GCN marking his many projects and his ever-growing fan base.

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Goth Chick News: The Christmas Cat, the Yule Lads, Troll Couples and Other Terrifying Christmas Legends

Goth Chick News: The Christmas Cat, the Yule Lads, Troll Couples and Other Terrifying Christmas Legends

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Another masterpiece by Emi Boz

It all started with Big Cheese John O’s Facebook post in which he tagged me on a painting of a Yule Cat by Emi Boz [Macabre Cabaret Artist]. True, I love pretty much everything Boz does, but that’s not the reason J.O. tagged me. Instead he was commenting on how I had warned him about the Yule Cat. Actually, this legend is one of the many which are referenced in The Dead of Winter, a new holiday release I wrote about a couple weeks back, so technically I did warn him. But it made me want to know more about the Yule Cat — welcome to the deep dark hole in the frozen ground, into which I have just descended researching this.

It starts with the Yule Lads.

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Goth Chick News Classics: Ray Bradbury’s “The Wish,” a Timeless Christmas Tale

Goth Chick News Classics: Ray Bradbury’s “The Wish,” a Timeless Christmas Tale

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The Book

For the last few Decembers I have reposted an article I wrote about Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Wish.” It is a Christmas tale of loss and love and magic which Bradbury penned following the death of his father. When it first appeared in Women’s Day magazine in 1973, my Dad was deep in his own grief having lost his own father, my beloved Grandpa, earlier that year. The story I told in Black Gate was how “The Wish” helped ease my Dad’s grief and led to my lifelong love of all things Bradbury.

That article led to my meeting and becoming friends with Bradbury’s editor Peter Schneider from Hill House Books, who published the only standalone hardcover of “The Wish.” He presented me with one of the numbered copies, signed by Bradbury, which is one of my most prized possessions.

In December 2022, as I prepared for the holiday festivities, I was suddenly faced with the loss of my own father. He was 94 and his health hadn’t been the greatest for a few months, so maybe his leaving us peacefully in his sleep should not have come as the shock that it did, but the sense of loss was crushing.

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Goth Chick News: The Dead of Winter by Sarah Clegg is the Perfect December Read

Goth Chick News: The Dead of Winter by Sarah Clegg is the Perfect December Read

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One of my earliest holiday memories is watching Reginald Owen in the 1938 black and white classic A Christmas Carol on the local Chicago channel, at 6pm on Christmas Eve. It was (and still is) one of my favorite traditions, and to my young self, it felt patently unfair that you had to be a grouchy old man to be visited by ghosts on Christmas – well those first few, at least.

Being of first-generation Swedish descent, the stories that were told at my family gatherings in the cold of winter always had a bit of darkness about them. I remember Grandma telling me about the Julbock (the Yule Goat) who kept an eye on me for Kris Kringle. She had a large one made from straw which she moved around her house like an Elf on the Shelf, and which today is the holiday centerpiece on my own dining room table. To the Swedes, the Yule Goat represented the thin boundary between life and death during the long, dark nights of winter.

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Goth Chick News: And That’s a Wrap on Spooky Season 2024

Goth Chick News: And That’s a Wrap on Spooky Season 2024

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Since 2012 Black Gate Photog Chris Z and I have closed out spooky season with the Days of the Dead convention in November. For the past twelve years an O’Hare airport hotel has played host to the DotD, a horror and pop culture convention with annual stops in Atlanta, Las Vegas, Indianapolis, and Phoenix, wrapping up its tour in Chicago (where it also stops in March).

Between the incredible array of vendors, the dedicated and detailed cosplayers, and the somewhat inexplicably long line for a photo with the cast of the Terrifier films, it was once again a weekend where the spooky and spectacular collided in the best way possible.

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Goth Chick News: Somebody at Mattel Is Getting Fired

Goth Chick News: Somebody at Mattel Is Getting Fired

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Though this sounds like something I would plot to do to get around Black Gate Big Cheese John O’s moratorium on any of my content that isn’t family friendly, this is for real, and I’m not responsible.

You can’t spit a piece of gum these days without hitting some type of promotion for the upcoming theatrical adaptation of the musical Wicked. There is the Aldo Wicked shoe collection, the Vera Bradley Wicked cosmetic bag, Wicked makeup, perfume and coasters – and that’s just what I found doing a quick search. Considering the film about to be released is part one of two, the Hollywood promo machine is just warming up.

What all these items have in common is that they are marketed toward adults. The list of items aimed at kids is even longer, starting, of course, with dolls. However, there is one unintentional crossover item that will likely go down as the collectible of the decade.

Unfortunately, instead of getting a promotion for a level of buzz money simply can’t buy, the responsible party over at Mattel will likely be filing for unemployment before the holidays.

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Goth Chick News: My Weekend at “The Overlook” Hotel

Goth Chick News: My Weekend at “The Overlook” Hotel

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I have always loved The Shining.

Granted, I saw the movie first and fell in love. It was the idea of a hotel that comes to life in the desolate isolation of winter, preying on a fragile family unit – a father who was white-knuckling sobriety and dealing with the humiliation of a big comedown in his career, a codependent mother with a tattered self-esteem after years on the receiving end of spousal abuse, and a little boy coping with his dysfunctional parents as well as a supernatural talent. Cutting these three people off from the rest of the world would be a recipe for disaster of the kind that could unfortunately show up in any headline anywhere. But add in the terrors that lurk in the Overlook hotel?

For me, what’s not to love?

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Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for Filmmaker Jake Jarvi

Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for Filmmaker Jake Jarvi

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If you check in here often, you know the only thing we love more than a blended adult beverage is an independent film. This one, entitled Haunt Season, came to me by way of the local paper and combines a whole lot of my favorite things: haunted attractions, Halloween, and horror, with the added bonus of being a very local endeavor.

To get you warmed up, check out the trailer…

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