Galloping Ghosts, Another Apocalypse, Leggy Mermaids

Wanna play rare and classic horror/sci-fi-themed pinball? Then you’re gonna have to gallop to the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield, IL. Depending where you live if not in Brookfield, the cost of getting there will be a LOT of quarters.

The famed arcade now has said super rare pinball machines, ready to suck up your pocket change like a hobo Roomba™: Twilight Zone, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Addams Family, Godzilla (the sucky 1998 monster, not the non-sucky 1954 version), Tales From The Crypt, Creature From The Black Lagoon, Aliens, and the super-rare one-of-a-kind prototype of Predator, with red skulls on elongated skeletal spines mounted on each side of the machine. If you lose, your skull plus spine gets ripped out and hung on the trophy wall. (It’d be cool if that were true.)

$15 — $20 gets you unlimited play on all the machines all day. I would’ve paid at least $20.01. So while you inner weep with anguish that you’re not within tilting distance of the Galloping Ghost Arcade, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi TV series and movies that may or may not give you unlimited viewing for $20, give or take a few quarters…

THE PASSAGE (January 14, 2019/Fox™)
“Based on author Justin Cronin’s trilogy of the same name, The Passage is a character-driven action drama that focuses on Project Noah, a secret medical facility where scientists experiment with a dangerous virus that could lead to the cure for all disease — but it also could potentially wipe out the human race. When a young girl is chosen to be a test subject, a federal agent is tasked with bringing her in, but he becomes her surrogate father, determined to protect her at any cost — even as Project Noah’s work threatens to unleash an unimaginable apocalypse.”

This one’s a TV series and sounds apocalyptical-y edgier than we’re used to getting from the Fox Network. The irony here being that most of Fox’s programming qualifies as apocalyptical-y craptacular, Gotham, The Exorcist and Lucifer notwithstanding. (Hell’s Kitchen? Is that stupid thing still on the air?)

10 (January 18, 2019/Netflix)
“Sam, a teenage girl, is one of the last people on a post-cataclysmic Earth. With the final shuttle scheduled to leave the planet, she must decide whether to journey to the launch point and join the rest of humanity, or remain on Earth, a castaway in the only home she has ever known.”

This looks to be based on an episode of Futurama (“A Farewell To Arms”/2012). Don’t screw with a guy who knows his cartoons.

THE GOLEM (February 5, 2019)
“During an outbreak of a deadly plague, a young woman, Hanna, must save her tight-knit Jewish community from invaders. Turning to Jewish mysticism, she conjures a dangerous entity to protect her and her people. However, the powerful creature she summons may be far more evil than anything she could have ever imagined.”

Wrote about the original Golem before — several times. It was done in 1915 and was a German silent film, blah, blah, blah. And yes, there have been remakes with the EXACT SAME PLOT.

THE ISLE (February, 2019/Limited theater release)
“Set in 1846 on a remote island off the west coast of Scotland, where three survivors from a mysterious sinking of their merchant ship find themselves stranded on a small misty isle. The isle’s four sole secretive residents, an old harbor man, a farmer, his niece and a young mad woman, are anything but welcoming and reluctant to aid the sailors back to the mainland. The promise of a boat never materializes leading one of the sailors to question why people had abandoned the island. Through his investigation he discovers that every year around the same date a tragedy at sea would occur and young men from the island would perish. When his two shipmates meet with fatal accidents, the myth of a ghostly siren haunting the island leads him to try and uncover the truth.”

Sounds like mermaids with legs. (Come to think of it, nice visual.) This also seems to echo the plot of the new movie, The Vanishing (2019). I haven’t seen that one yet, but I don’t think it has mermaids with legs. Too bad; I might’ve watched it twice by now. 

Horror Shaken, Not Stirred

You’d think the tens of dozens of new horror movies coming out right now would keep me in a state of perpetual giddiness. It kinda sorta does. But Christmas came early for me in the form of Amazon Prime™ putting up the entire James Bond catalog (minus the Daniel Craig years) for free viewing (if you have a subscription). Don’t worry horror movies, I still like you. But you’re like an ex-girlfriend until I’m done re-watching all the Bond movies for the 12th time each.

So here’s what I’m spying (heh) on the horizon…

SLASHER HOUSE II (2017)
Red has arrived in the big city just time to find herself tied up in an epidemic of vanishing serial killers. But who is taking them and what do they want with the world’s most horrific masked murderers? As Red fights her way through a maze filled with assassins, monsters and maniacs she comes closer to discovering the truth behind the mystery and the mastermind behind the Slasher House.”

A maze filled with “assassins, monsters and maniacs.” Um, isn’t this the same plot as Rob Zombie’s 31 (2016)?

VOICE FROM THE STONE (early 2017)
“Verena, a solemn nurse, is drawn to aid a young boy named Jakob who has fallen silent since the untimely death of his mother nearly a year ago. Living with his father in a massive stone manor in Tuscany, Jakob not only refuses to speak, he seems to be under the spell of a malevolent force trapped within the stone walls. As Verena’s relationship with the father and son grow, she becomes ensnared and consumed by a severe force. If Verena is to save the boy and free herself, she must face the phantom hidden inside the stone.

I talk to rock, too. And rock talks to me. And you know what rocks tell me to do? To rock out. It’s the only conversation needed when conversing with gravel.

ANGELICA (2017)
London in 1880. Shop assistant Constance, who lost her parents at an early age, falls in love with doctor and vivisectionist, Dr. Joseph Barton. When their daughter Angelica is born the pair is overjoyed, but the birth almost costs the young mother her life. From now on she must practice sexual abstinence – she is to think of herself as a beautiful garden enclosed by a tall iron fence. Before long her bid to suppress her desires and erotic feelings gives birth to demons. A ghostly being emerges from Constance’s hysterical fantasy; the spirit penetrates closed doors, terrorizing the sleeping child and her fragile mother. When an assistant with para-psychological skills is called to their home, their middle-class world finally falls apart…”

I have two questions: Why would you want to marry a vivisectionist? Secondly, why would you want to become a vivisectionist? Surely, butcher school is a lot cheaper and easier to get a degree in. As for Constance and her “hysterical fantasies,” sounds like she’s just being a normal gal to me. (I’m probably gonna pay for that one.)

LUCIFER (pending 2017)
A young caretaker believes her family is being tormented by the devil after she agrees to write the chilling story of a patient haunted by the relentless demonic being.

Hope the book comes with pictures.

ICE CREAM TRUCK (summer 2017)
“Mary’s husband gets relocated for work which allows her to move back to her suburban hometown. A local ice cream man with a love of nostalgia starts to kill some of her neighbors. Mary is torn between her mature instincts that something wrong and the distracting memories of her younger days.”

WTF?!? Who cares – ICE CREAM, man! Some people just can’t accept the little pleasures in life without gooning out.