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Goth Chick News: 39 Years Ago This Week Regan Blew Chunks

Goth Chick News: 39 Years Ago This Week Regan Blew Chunks

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birthday-exorcistThis week in 1973 a fourteen-year-old girl hurls obscenities, vomits and behaves like Satan himself.

Today this would be just another episode of an MTV reality show, but 39 years ago it was a move called The Exorcist which changed the horror genre forever.

The Exorcist was released theatrically in the United States on December 26, 1973 by Warner Bros. On April 2, 1974 the film had earned ten Academy Award nominations, winning two (Best Sound and Best Adapted Screenplay). In the years since it has been voted the Scariest Move of All Time by Entertainment Weekly, Maxim and the UK’s The Times newspaper and according to BoxOfficeMojo, has taken in around $232,906,145 at the US Box Office and $208,400,000 in foreign markets for a combined worldwide total of $441,306,145; huge numbers for a movie with a production budget of $10.5 million.

In short, the movie wasn’t just a hit – it was a global phenomenon. If adjusted for inflation, The Exorcist would be the top grossing R-rated film of all time.

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Goth Chick News: Norman Bates You’ve Been a Very Bad Boy…

Goth Chick News: Norman Bates You’ve Been a Very Bad Boy…

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bates-motel-smallNormally, I’d be prone to bust on this, but either the holiday season has taken a little edge off my snark, or this is actually kind of a cool idea.

This week, A&E released a featurette to promote its upcoming mini-series / prequel Bates Motel. Looks like we’re finally going to find out how Norman became psycho and got his mother fixation.

Freddie Highmore, the adorable little moppet last seen in Finding Neverland and Tim Burton’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, has grown up quite a bit and takes on the role made famous by Anthony Perkins, as a teenager this time; with Vera Farmiga (George Clooney’s love interest in Up In the Air) portraying Norman’s eventually-mummified-Mom, “Norma.”

Hot Mom with an only son who she named after herself…yes the creep-factor is mounting…

A&E joins NBC in bringing another monstrous movie murderer to the small screen to more closely examine what makes him tick. Similar to what Bryan Fuller’s upcoming Hannibal series plans to do with Hannibal Lecter, A&E’s Bates Motel will focus on young Norman’s serial killer psyche and how his backstory turned him into what he’s most known for cinematically.

“Norman has been through a lot. He’s a sensitive boy,” Norma Bates can be heard to say in the new promo. We get a glimpse of Norman fraternizing with some of his female classmates (before Mother put a stop to that) and displaying an early eeriness.

It also looks like we discover where Norman got the idea to hide bodies in the lake behind the hotel. The cast seems especially enthusiastic about the writing talking about crazy turns, suspense and emotional characters, and the music sets a sufficiently ominous mood.

See for yourself with the full trailer, after the jump.

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Star Trek Into Darkness Official Trailer Released

Star Trek Into Darkness Official Trailer Released

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It’s been a packed few weeks for Star Trek fans.

First Paramount released a one-minute teaser trailer which generated more questions than it answered. Then, viewers who attended the opening of The Hobbit on Friday were treated to the first nine minutes of the film. And now comes the release of the first full trailer.

It’s been fun to watch all the speculation that’s resulted (see Chris Lough’s entertaining article Has Star Trek Into Darkness Revealed That It’s the Contemporary Wrath of Khan? over at Tor.com, for example). If you’re looking for Wrath of Khan similarities, there’s a few big ones in the full trailer.  Check it out below.

Goth Chick News: Troll – Rise of Harry Potter

Goth Chick News: Troll – Rise of Harry Potter

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image0021Honestly, I don’t know where to start with this news.

Back in 1986, Sonny Bono, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Noah Hathaway (who played the lead character “Boxy” in the original TV version of Battlestar Galactica and “Atreyu” in The NeverEnding Story), got together in a cinematic train wreck called Troll. This film, such that it is, is not to be confused with Troll 2, called “the most beloved-best worst movie of all time,” which was released in 1990 and had zilch to do with the plot of its namesake.

In Troll, the sister of Hathaway’s character (played by ex Charlie’s Angel Shelly Hack) is possessed by an evil wizard in the form of a troll.

Hathaway’s character in Troll was “Harry Potter Jr.”

Since JK Rowling first published her famous book series about a boy wizard in 1997, I rather doubt she stole the character from John Carl Buechler’s wretched film (or even saw it for that matter). But the people behind Troll do have a claim on the name Harry Potter; and we are in the middle of a remake craze…

Can you guess where this is going…?

If you guessed a remake of Troll called Troll: Rise of Harry Potter, you’d win. You’d also likely win a lawsuit from Rowling and Warner Brothers Studio.

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Adventure on Film: Could Holy Grail be the Funniest Film Ever?

Adventure on Film: Could Holy Grail be the Funniest Film Ever?

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arthur-kingJust as an older generation recalls with perfect clarity where they were when they heard of Kennedy’s assassination, I know precisely where I first saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975): perched on the floral-print sofa in my parent’s house, watching the film on a poor, weather-impacted PBS broadcast. I also remember falling right off that sub-par couch in paroxysms of laughter when the animator saved King Arthur’s band by conveniently suffering a heart attack.

I’d never seen anything like it.

And you know what? I’ve never seen anything like it since –– except perhaps Brian’s rollercoaster romp aboard a purple-people-eater’s spaceship in another Python outing, Life of Brian. (That one I saw in a theater, with my church-going mother sitting next to me. She laughed her head off.)

What I didn’t know back when I fell of that couch, as I’m fairly sure I do now, is that comedy is little more than tragedy plus time.

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The Black Gate Christmas Gift List

The Black Gate Christmas Gift List

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a-guile-of-dragons[Apologies in advance for not being politically correct enough to call this the Black Gate Holiday Gift List. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, kindly ignore this post. Or use our suggestions to buy something for yourself, we won’t tell anyone.]

If you’re a Black Gate fan, we already know a lot about you. You’re almost certainly a fantasy devotee, well-read, with impeccable taste, and accustomed to the natural adoration of your peers. Pretty close, right? And you’re probably also a procrastinator who puts off Christmas shopping until the last minute, and ends up buying Wal-Mart gift certificates on December 24.

You can do better than that. In fact, we’re here to help you. Here’s a handy list of the best fantasy books, movies, games and comics of the season, with a link to a recent review, courtesy of the editors and staff of Black Gate magazine. We have gifts for every price range, from $5 to $150. Good luck, and happy shopping!

  1. A Guile of Dragons, James Enge ($17.95)
  2. The Bones of the Old Ones, by Howard Andrew Jones ($25.99)
  3. American Science Fiction: 9 Classic Novels, edited by Gary K. Wolfe ($70)
  4. Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection ($149.98)
  5. Lords of Waterdeep, Wizards of the Coast ($49.99)
  6. The Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer ($39.99)
  7. Epic: Legends of Fantasy, edited by John Joseph Adams ($17.95)
  8. A Throne of Bones, Vox Day ($4.99)
  9. Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone ($24.99)
  10. Books To Die For, edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke ($29.99)

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First Teaser Trailer Released for Star Trek Into Darkness

First Teaser Trailer Released for Star Trek Into Darkness

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Hot on the heels of our Monday speculation surrounding the upcoming Star Trek Into Darkness, comes word that Paramount has released the first teaser trailer. In terms of creating a spectacle, I think there’s a good chance they’ve succeeded admirably… there are at least three brief scenes that clearly take Star Trek places I’ve never seen before.

True, there’s an awful lot of fisticuffs for a Star Trek film. And a lot of screaming, and what looks like 23th Century kung fu. That’s weird.

But there’s also some terrifically exotic alien landscapes, a huge cast, and what looks like breath-taking urban action. Overall, I think the positives outweigh the negatives.

The clip sheds no further light on whether or not Benedict Cumberbatch is indeed playing Gary Mitchell — although he is shown in Star Fleet uniform, so that puts to bed conjecture that he’s playing Khan.

Check it out below.

Goth Chick News: Evil Dead is Alive and Well

Goth Chick News: Evil Dead is Alive and Well

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image002You really shouldn’t read from that book.

I mean seriously.

Put it down.

Oh well, you’re screwed.

A remake of Sam Raimi’s horror film franchise Evil Dead finally has a release date in 2013 after a couple of false starts, some casting shuffles, and a change of director that had fans screaming for the wrong reasons.

As early as 2005, it had been confirmed that a remake of Evil Dead would be made. At that point, it was to be produced by Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi, but would not include any references to the original characters. It was also said that the movie would be about a group of teenagers that go to the cabin and find the book, but the similarities with the 1981 version would end there.

However, in August 2007, Bruce Campbell revealed in a radio interview that the proposed remake was “going nowhere” and “fizzled” due to extremely negative fan reaction.

The rumor mill went quiet after that, until July, 2011 when Ghost House Pictures (Sam Raimi’s production company) announced it would be producing a remake with Fede Alvarez directing and Diablo Cody refreshing the script. That’s when the legions of The Dead cried foul.

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Star Trek Into Darkness Poster Fuels Gary Mitchell Speculation

Star Trek Into Darkness Poster Fuels Gary Mitchell Speculation

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star-trek-into-darkness-smallJust to review, Black Gate is a website with a laser-like focus on the best in new and neglected fantasy. If you want science fiction, there’s plenty of other places for that. Except maybe for Star Trek, because that has William Shatner and we’re big fans.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, I’d like to point you to the just-released poster for the upcoming Star Trek Into Darkness, featuring a trenchcoat-clad badass standing on a mound of rubble that used to be Federation stuff, starting at other Federation stuff he could also knock over. Just to drive home the point, his profile forms part of a crumbling Federation emblem (click the image at right for a bigger version).

That’s one cool poster. It’s also done absolutely nothing to dampen ongoing speculation that the villain this time is none other than Gary Mitchell, Kirk’s friend and helmsman who became all glow-eyed and megalomanical after slamming into the edge of the galaxy at warp 3 in “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” Neither has the film’s official description:

When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home, they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis. With a personal score to settle, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one man weapon of mass destruction.

As our heroes are propelled into an epic chess game of life and death, love will be challenged, friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Kirk has left: his crew.

For the record, I think this is a great choice. “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was the second pilot and one of the show’s earliest episodes, and frankly one of its best. And if the poster and teaser description are any indication, the action this time won’t take place on a remote planetoid covered in giant styrofoam rocks, but a populated center where the stakes are a lot higher and the explosions a lot bigger. Finally, as reported some time ago, Sherlock actor Benedict Cumberbatch has been cast as the film’s villain, and I think he’d make a magnificent Gary Mitchell, both as a jovial lieutenant commander and as an all-powerful psychic loonie.

Star Trek Into Darkness is directed by J. J. Abrams, and written by Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof and Roberto Orci. It is the twelfth feature-length Star Trek film and the sequel to 2009’s Star Trek. It is set for release on May 17, 2013.

Adventure on Film: The Horseman On the Roof

Adventure on Film: The Horseman On the Roof

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tumblr_lu78az8s9c1qlll6ko1_500I didn’t know it at the time, but back when I was ten and surfing through horrendous Tarzan movies on rainy Saturday afternoons, The Horseman On the Roof (Le Hussard Sure le Toit, 1995) was the film I was actually hoping to see. Not that I would have understood much of what was going on, but the kinetic energy of it –– the film’s unswerving certainty that these events matter –– would have transported me right out of my seat.

Better yet, it still does. Horseman opens with a kidnapping and an execution, then tears off on a cross-country pursuit. Nor does the pace slacken. Director Jean-Paul Rappeneau fills even potentially tranquil moments –– a patriot hurriedly donning his overcoat, a restless horse being chosen by torchlight –– with kinetic punch. Horseman is a period piece, make no mistake, but it is also an action movie, and a great one.

True, there’s no overt fantasy element –– beyond the ready fictionalization of history necessary to the telling –– but Horseman is a six-course meal with all the trimmings: call it sword and sorcery without the sorcery.

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