Black Gate

It is no secret around the Black Gate offices that if the “King of the North” ever drops by asking for Goth Chick, I am absolutely, unequivocally always available. It’s true that Jon Snow could be a little too angsty at times, but it was never about his dialog and all about how he looked saying it.

So pairing actor Kit Harington with one of my favorite classic movie monsters had me watching this trailer for The Beast Within over and over when it dropped Tuesday morning.

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An American Werewolf in London (Universal Pictures, August 21, 1981)

I am relieved to report that this is my final week of traveling which has been utterly unassociated with any fun save for my horror movie marathon. Notice how I carefully avoided additional adjectives like “classic” or “retro” for fear of catapulting you and me into a tailspin of denial. What I will say is that my binge-watching has been confined to movies that have celebrated their 40th anniversaries, so we’ll just leave it there.

Though nearly every evening of the last five weeks has seen me streaming my way through a list of titles inspired by my personal DVD archival vault (a couple of plastic tubs in my crawl space), I’ve chosen to do a deep dive on my favorites. This week’s marathon included The Lost Boys (1987), Prince of Darkness (1987), and Fright Night (1985), all of which would have made wonderful articles. But when the opening of American Werewolf in London (1981) started rolling on my laptop, there was no question what I’d be talking to you about today.

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The Tingler (Columbia Pictures, July 1959), and The Fly (20th Century Fox, July 1958)

Though I have previously described how my Dad first introduced me to classic horror, Mom would likely be mortified to know I credit her as well. Though there is one lone, totally fabulous drive-in movie theater left in Chicagoland, Mom used to tell me how there were a dozen or more ‘back in the day.’ She explained how, when she and Dad were dating, there was no finer way to spend a summer evening than seeing the latest film under the stars. What seemed strange to me about these stories were the titles of the movies they used to see. Apparently, in her youth, Mom also liked horror.

I remember listening with rapt attention as she described a scene from The Tingler in which the disembodied spinal cord crawled up over the front seat to attack a couple at the drive-in. She said this was the scariest thing she had ever seen as she and Dad were watching The Tingler at the drive-in. Mom also talked about The Fly (1958), starring David Hedison, Patricia Owens, and Vincent Price. Apparently, Vincent Price’s performance gave her nightmares.

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The Fury (20th Century Fox, Release date March 10, 1978)

As I mentioned a couple weeks back, I am in the middle of some tedious travel and am amusing myself by streaming from a list of horror films I hadn’t thought about in ages. Some of these titles came from an archeological expedition to the back reaches of my crawl space. There, I have multiple storage bins containing VHS tapes, which I am certain will someday fund my retirement when a future generation becomes nostalgic for the good old days of movie viewing.

I must admit, it was fun to dig through these titles. Each tape is like a 7”x4” bookmark for a point in time in my personal history, reminding me of an evening sitting in front of a friend’s “projection TV” following a trip to Blockbuster, or a date night where I could pretend to be scared.

When VHS began its decline, I collected many meaningful titles from “$3 or less” bins at various stores, finally snagging the motherload when the local “Family Video” store had a going-out-of-business sale. In that case, I pretty much scored one of everything from their horror section allowing me to catch up on a lot of titles I was too young to see in the theater due to the R-ratings.

Which brings me to how I spent last evening; streaming The Fury.

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I have made no secret here of how I feel about Twilight; books, and movies. To be fair, I only made it through two of the books, understanding I was far from the target audience. Over the years since their release, I have managed to watch most of the movies piecemeal, taking them in ten-minute micro-bites, which is about all I could stand to stream in one sitting. Again, I realize I am not the target audience. But to lifelong devotees of vampires in literature, on screen, and in folklore, watching what Twilight did to our favorite monster was more than any fang-fan can be expected to endure.

I mean, would Bela Lugosi ever, EVER trade his cape for a flannel shirt? Or London for Washington state? Or (I can barely type this) sparkle…?

If you must imagine what vampires are doing in the 2000s, for crying out loud binge-watch What We Do in the Shadows.

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Vamp (New World Pictures, released July 18, 1986)

Over the next few weeks I will be taking some trips that are not leisure-related. When traveling alone these days, I most often spend the evening ordering in food and streaming. There was a time when I would to go down to the bar for an adult beverage at the end of the day, but I tend to attract weirdos, and not the fun kind. So these days I hunker down with my laptop and spend a couple of hours watching things I would normally reject at home. The criteria are usually fun (no hack-and-slash), somewhat mindless (I’m usually fried from the day’s activities and/or jet lag) and definitely not rooted in reality (I get enough of that in airports).

And as I never seem to be able to think of any appropriate titles in the moment when determining an evening’s entertainment, I decided to start making a list now. Of course you can find lists of anything with a bit of searching, and this particular search brought me straight to one of my favorite websites Bloody Disgusting, and a list called “Five Underseen Vampire Horror Movies to Stream This Week.”

Well, that’s just about perfect.

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The Blair Witch Project Cast: Heather, Mike and Josh

I have long since been an awed admirer of the genius behind The Blair Witch Project (1999). With a production budget of around $60K the film grossed nearly $250M: roughly a return of 4000x. Considering a movie is labeled “blockbuster” if it returns 3x The BWP was a flipping phenomenon. Not to mention the writers/directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez kicked the project off while they were still film students at University of Central Florida, and the three 20-year-old stars, Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard, who showed up at an open casting call, had never acted in a movie. It also introduced us to the concept of a “found footage” film.

Unbelievable, “lightning strike” kind of success.

With 2024 being the 25th anniversary of BWP, I assumed there would be some press attention in various forms, though this particular form wasn’t what I was expecting.

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If you just sang the title, we can definitely be friends.

There has been Hollywood buzz for more than five years about whether or not a movie version of Stephen King’s 1983 novel Christine would be getting remade. Finally, in June 2021, our favorite horror production company, Blumhouse (The Invisible Man, Black Phone, Insidious), announced they were in, and a script was in development. At that time, King had been on a tear with the success of IT and IT: Chapter 2, not to mention a reboot of Pet Sematary, and by December of that year King was reading over a draft script for a new Christine. However, by February 2022 King was going on the record as saying he had cooled on the idea of a Christine remake.

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The found-footage short Exposure, now available on YouTube

I dearly love guerilla marketing.

The formal definition of guerilla marketing is a marketing strategy that uses unconventional methods to attract interest in a brand or business through viral social media messaging, and the master of this approach in my opinion is J.J. Abrams. For his films Super 8 and Coverfield, Abrams sent fans on Easter egg hunts through fake commercials and misdirected websites. LinkedIn even wrote an article about it, and at the time I thought it was just about the coolest way to generate buzz for a film, which I had ever encountered.

Whether or not this is what writer/director Kris J. Cummins intends with his latest horror short is unknown, but he is definitely generating online buzz.

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