Black Gate

If you’re not familiar with the fairly cheesy but no less iconic television series Fantasy Island (1977-1984), you immediately need to find it on your favorite streaming service and watch a few episodes. I found at least a few of the 286 installments for free on YouTube and those should be enough to hook you as well as give you the context for the most awesome news since Elsa got drunk and crapped up Chicago with 4 inches of snow.

The storyline was fairly simple. The incredibly wealthy and mysterious Mr. Roarke, played perfectly by the exotically-accented Ricardo Montalban, has a tropical island. In each episode he hosts several guests who have come there to live out their most secret fantasies. Mr. Roarke and his rather adorable but equally creepy sidekick “Tattoo” played by Hervé Villechaize, magically transport each guest into their fantasy where they routinely learn a hard lesson / get their comeuppance / get their heart’s desire, etc, etc.

Now, even my grade-school self who was obsessed with this show, wondered why these fantasies were always so G-rated, even if they sometimes bordered on scary. Like most kids I had stumbled across and snuck looks at verboten material and understood in a small way that the dark recesses of the human imagination were far murkier than finally showing up the high school cheerleader who was always more popular than you, by become a millionaire business woman. In college, Fantasy Island occasionally cropped up in discussion as we mulled over what would actually go on if a place like this really existed. And having run across the show on late night reruns, my adult self immediately wondered why some enterprising film maker had never explored that exact question. I figured there had to be some legal hang up somewhere.

And now this.

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First off, being today is the holiday around which the entire Goth Chick News year revolves, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!! The Black Gate offices are positively awash in cobwebs and black candles, while the adult beverage maker is blending at top speed. It’s causing a brown out in the executive suite but is also serving to drown out John O shouting about not being able to hear his Robots of Gotham audio book. Black Gate photog Chris Z, who is wearing a Devil’s Rejects tee shirt with his kilt and army boots, is hosting a screening of Zombeavers for the interns, and the whole place smells like Fireball whiskey and pumpkin spice.

And never mind it’s snowing in Chicago…

So, before I head out to the Uber for my 24-hour bacchanalia of decadence marking October 31^st, I had to take the time to give you this one tib bit of (hopefully) good news.

As you may or may not be aware, Dracula has headlined no less than 61 films since Mr. Stoker first introduced him to us in 1897. There has literally been a Dracula for all times and cultures, appearing on the big screen and small, and telling us about the children of the night in literally dozens of languages. But today we get a glimpse into the fanged-one’s spiritual homecoming. Though the vampire made his home in Transylvania, Dracula as a character was born in Cruden Bay, Scotland rooting his literary origins firmly in the U.K. and it is from London where he is once again being reborn.

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There have been five movies in the Jurassic Park franchise since the original first blew our minds on the big screen in 1993. With a sixth installment due in the summer of 2021, it’s fair to ask what more can be done with this storyline?  I mean, five movies in, we’re very clear that when dinos and human intermingle, things are never, ever going to end well. Also, even the most money-hungry corporate entity (INGEN in this case) couldn’t possibly survive the continual carnage wrought by playing God. As Dr. Ian Malcolm said, “Ooo, ahhh, that’s how it always starts, but then later there’s running, and screaming.”

Which pretty much sums up the last four Jurassic movies.

So where do we go from here plot-wise, without causing audiences to pull a muscle doing a collective eye roll? As it turns out, there still might be one last trick in the JP bag.

This week, Universal Studios and Amblin Entertainment released an official short film giving us a view into what we can look forward to in Jurassic World 3. The 8-minute short, entitled Battle at Big Rock, occurs a year after dinosaurs escaped into the wilds of California at the end of JW2: Fallen Kingdom. We see a campground in Big Rock National Park where a family is enjoying grilling chicken wings with other campers. The dad tells the daughter to take the food inside the camper before it attracts bears and…

Well check it out for yourself.

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