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.
Drinkin' & Drive-in 