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Author: Sue Granquist

Goth Chick News: Universal Takes Up Its Dark Universe Again (insert facepalm here)

Goth Chick News: Universal Takes Up Its Dark Universe Again (insert facepalm here)

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Dracua Tom Cruise Goth Chick-small

A few weeks ago I shared the news that Universal Studios was adding to its theme park property with a new attraction called Epic Universe. That park would be made up of four ‘lands’, one of which will be dedicated to Universal’s classic monster characters. In my euphoria, I completely overlooked the inevitable truth that there was no way Universal was going hope the classic monster fans would make this new investment successful. No, they would have to try to attract a new generation of monster movie fans. They would have to modernize. Forget they blew it a couple of times already. The time is now to breathe life back into…

The Dark Universe.

Crud.

If you haven’t been keeping score, this marketing idea was pretty much left for dead after the real-life horror that was the 2017 ‘modernization’ of The Mummy, starring (and I use that word in the absolute broadest sense) Tom Cruise.

This, of course, was the second death of Dark Universe, which quietly imploded the first time with the 2014 retelling of Dracula in Dracula Untold. Never heard of it? Of course not. But as Douglas Adams famously reminded us, it will be the marketing people who will be first against the wall when the revolution comes. Until then, they’re just banging away.

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Goth Chick News: Watching Pet Sematary in a Pet Cemetery Is the Distraction We All Need

Goth Chick News: Watching Pet Sematary in a Pet Cemetery Is the Distraction We All Need

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On Set Cinema

With the zombie apocalypse bearing down on us in the form of this year’s flu season, Big Cheese John O has given up and ordered the Black Gate staff to work from home. I mean, there was really no point in Clorox wipes when this office is full of boys who haven’t dusted anything since we moved in. Trying to disinfect surfaces simply resulted in swirls of little antiseptic-smelling puddles everywhere. Weeks ago, I had fully abandoned the office’s unisex bathroom as a bad bet and started dropping in at the far more hygienic bus station down the street. And since no bakery would deliver individually-wrapped donuts, the only safe alternative to keep Black Gate running was to separate everyone. Of course, there’s no telling what leaving the staff unsupervised will do to the quality of the writing, but time will tell.

So, though hunkering down for some serious binge-watching seems fairly attractive at the moment, there are still some extremely good reasons to go out, besides having the outside world pretty much to yourself.

Namely, a company called On Set Cinema.

The concept is a simple one. Kenny Caperton, owner of The Myers House NC, which is a life-size replica of the infamous Michael Myers house from John Carpenter’s Halloween, came up with the idea to show movies in their actual filming locations. Though he screens content from all genres, his focus is horror films.

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Goth Chick News Reviews: The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

Goth Chick News Reviews: The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

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The Sun Down Motel-smallEver since Psycho, there has been something distinctly creepy about motels. You know the ones. Originally built along highways as a respite for weary cross-country travelers, the name literally comes from “motor hotel.” They were usually long, one-story building consisting of side-by-side rooms with doors that opened out into the parking lot, enabling guests of the time to sleep pretty much beside their beloved vehicles.

They’ve also been the location for a whole lot of up-to-no-good. Besides being the preferred location for extramarital shenanigans, they’ve been the site of murders (Psycho, Vacancy and Motel Hell), serious mental breakdowns (Identity and Insane) and all manner of general badness (Bad Times at the El Royale).

These days you can still find motels, though for the most part they look like perfect location shots for any one of the aforementioned films. And with some rare exceptions, any one you come across isn’t going to be a preferred place to spend the night.

Which is why my latest listen from Audible.com has made me late for my day job, three days running. I cannot audibly ‘put it down.’

The Sun Down Motel, written by Simone St. James (Broken Girls) and performed on the audio book by Brittany Pressley and Kirsten Potter, is set both in 1982 and 2017. It tells the story of Viv, who disappears from her night job at The Sun Down in 1982 after doing a bit of poking around in some local, unsolved murders. In 2017 her niece Carly follows in her footsteps, to see if she can uncover what happened to her.

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Goth Chick News: Classic Horror Fans, We Have a New Home

Goth Chick News: Classic Horror Fans, We Have a New Home

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Classic Monsters World-small

Remember when you were a kid, and you had your first epic theme park experience? Maybe it was at one of the Six Flags parks, or even a local attraction like Santa’s Village here outside of Chicago. Or maybe it was one of the Disney parks which for someone under ten would have been utterly mind-blowing. Wherever it was, you probably remember thinking, “I want to live here forever!” having your every sense assaulted, jacked up on too much sugar and endorphins, and grinning until your face hurt.

That was certainly me then. And when I read this news, it’s me now.

I seriously had to check this out through several sources as it seemed too much to get my over-stimulated brain to comprehend.

Universal Studios Orlando is building a new theme park, two miles away from its current property and named Universal’s Epic Universe. It will be made up of four themed ‘lands’; Super Nintendo World, How to Train Your Dragon, Fantastic Beasts, and… and…

CLASSIC MONSTERS.

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Goth Chick News: The Crazy Reality of The Show

Goth Chick News: The Crazy Reality of The Show

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The Show banner-small

A whole 22 years has passed since we marveled at reality TV taken to the extreme via The Truman Show, and my, my, my weren’t we naïve back then? I mean, we were still almost 10 years from the train wreck that would be Keeping Up with the Karadashians, and even 4 years from the first Bachelor episode. Though we had by then voyeuristically tuned into The Real World, it would seem downright pedestrian when compared to what came later in the form of Temptation Island and Survivor. Today, I can’t come up with an accurate count of how many total reality television programs are currently airing, but several sources list at least 15 as ‘must see TV’ so the number must be well into the double-digits. And each year, audiences demand edgier, more titillating, more graphic content until we arrive at…

The Show.

It was a simple idea. Take a man, lock him in a room and film him slowly go mad. That man was Johnny Teevee and he’s been locked away for six years.

But, as Johnny’s antics become more predictable, ratings start to drop, and his producer is forced to go to extreme lengths to keep things entertaining.

It might be cruel, it might be immoral — but it makes good TV.

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Goth Chick News: Follow Me into the Dark…

Goth Chick News: Follow Me into the Dark…

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Twisted Dark Season Two Volume One-small

I fell hard for writer Neil Gibson back in early 2014 at the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo. At the time he was promoting volume one of Twisted Dark, his illustrated story which had just been published by indie comic house TPub in the UK.

A Brit who also writes dark stories with twisted endings?

All I could say to that was “Yes, please.”

By May 2015, Twisted Dark reached number one on the UK Kindle chart, and six volumes later it’s clear I’m far from being the only fan of Gibson’s unique style of storytelling. Along the way, Gibson has been personally responsible for several other unique and riveting tales such as Tortured Life, Twisted Light, and Tabitha, while TPub has continued to produce some of my favorite graphic novels like Transmissions which I told you about last fall.

So, it’s with a shiver of anticipation that I can now tell you Gibson is once again headed back into the dark, with me devotedly in tow.

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Goth Chick News: Grab a Pen, Here Comes Your 2020 Reading List

Goth Chick News: Grab a Pen, Here Comes Your 2020 Reading List

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Coyote Rage-small Inspection Josh Malerman-small The Worst is Yet to Come-small

If you live somewhere that, like Chicago, has been experiencing temperatures incompatible with human life recently, then thinking about a lounge chair, a book and an umbrella drink wearing anything less than a Tauntaun skin is pretty darn appealing. And with perfect timing, here comes the 2019 Bram Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot hot off the press from the The Horror Writers Association (HWA), providing a categorized list of reading material.

Now all you need is the lounge chair, an umbrella drink and a space heater.

Hazzah.

Named in honor of Dracula’s beloved Pappa, the Stokers are presented annually by the HWA for superior writing in eleven categories including traditional fiction of various lengths, poetry, screenplays and non-fiction. The HWA also presents a Lifetime Achievement Award to living individuals who have made a substantial and enduring contribution to the genre. Previous winners include Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, George R. R. Martin, Joyce Carol Oates, and Neil Gaiman.

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Goth Chick News: The Fireball Makes Our Feet Hurt Less, or 2020 Show Coverage

Goth Chick News: The Fireball Makes Our Feet Hurt Less, or 2020 Show Coverage

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Goth Chick Press Pass

As the winter doldrums settle over the offices of Black Gate, exacerbating the fug which permanently hangs over the men’s WC, the only remedy is to start thinking about all our upcoming events.

Black Gate photog Chris Z and I will once again be crisscrossing the Midwest seeking out new authors, indie filmmakers and the purveyors of the strange and unusual; partially for our own amusement, but mostly for yours. I mean, let’s be honest, once we’ve downed our customary pre-show Fireball shots, pretty much everything is funny. But I am always careful to get a good night’s sleep before telling you about all we saw, to ensure what I share is interesting, if not hilarious, once we’ve sobered up.

So, without further ado, here is the 2020 lineup. Most of these shows are open to the public and many do a wider national tour, so if you’re interested, be sure to click the link to see if a similar event is coming to a city near you.

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Goth Chick News: Disturbing Wood

Goth Chick News: Disturbing Wood

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Disturbing Wood 1

Welcome to a new decade of frightfully entertaining information from the subterranean offices of Goth Chick News. 2020 is already shaping up to be a busy year with multiple trade shows to cover, interesting people to introduce you to, an epic Halloween bash to plan and multiple random bits of creepiness to share, starting with this.

You’ve likely never heard of Japanese artist Nagato Iwasaki. I certainly hadn’t until I came across him in a photo exhibition. The first words that came to mind when I saw Iwasaki’s sculptures were “beautiful nightmare” and I knew I had to share them with you. Iwasaki create humanoid figures from driftwood.

Back in the early 70’s, Masahiro Mori, Japan’s first creator of robots which had a human-like appearance, coined the term “uncanny valley”. He used it to describe the uneasy feeling, boarding on revulsion, which people experience when non-human objects look a bit too much like real humans. I immediately think of ginger roots which look very much like human babies and have been creeping people out for centuries. Inspired by the concept of the “uncanny valley,” Iwasaki set out to purposely create it in nature, by blurring the line between flesh and wood.

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Goth Chick News: “The Wish,” a Haunting (and Forgotten) Winter Tale from Ray Bradbury

Goth Chick News: “The Wish,” a Haunting (and Forgotten) Winter Tale from Ray Bradbury

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Goth Chick winter

In 1973, Ray Bradbury published a short story in the December issue of Woman’s Day magazine. It later appeared in his short story collection Long After Midnight, but it was that Christmas that is forever lodged in my memory, along with Mr. Bradbury.

I wouldn’t turn 9 years old until January but that December I felt much older as I had just experienced real death for the first time. Earlier in the year I had lost my beloved Grandpa and I recall simply not being able to believe I would never see him again. He had loomed exceptionally large in my life and for an 8-years-old me, there had never been a time when he wasn’t holding my hand. But he had gone suddenly from a heart attack and I didn’t get to say goodbye, and that experience had made me feel older than myself.

But my feelings of loss were nothing to my Dad’s. He had been very close with his own Dad his entire life, and when Grandpa died, to me anyway, it seemed like part of Dad went with him. By Christmas, Dad was putting on a brave face and trying to be cheery for me and my very young siblings. But I could see he his grief was winning. Mom tried everything to bring him around from making his favorite dishes to decorating (it looked like Christmas exploded in our house that year), but Dad’s smile was watery and he spent more time than usual ‘working’ out in the garage where I suspected he shed the tears he couldn’t do in front of us.

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