![]() Frankenstein’s monster make-up, as created by Frank Pierce for James Whale’s film of the same name is perhaps the most important gothic image of the last century, influencing everything from films to toys, to Halloween costumes and then there is Dracula (1897). Vampires, wolfmen and zombies fill our screens, video gaming platforms and social media. The gothic sensibility saw the rise of science fiction through Mary Shelley, detective fiction through Edgar Allan Poe and dark romance through the likes of the Bronte sisters. At the same time older gothic tropes are constantly revisited and reworked in new contexts. 1 With the appearance of Covid-19 in 2020, London became, for a moment, an empty space: a dead city of a gothic apocalypse.Įvery new medium, from film to television to the Internet and social media, has remoulded gothic tropes for a new generation. One may multiply examples from around the world, but in London alone the gothic experience seems alive and thriving. Last and most significant of all, is the Grand Guignol of The London Dungeon, a horror experience originally devised as a ‘wax museum’ now a horror venue currently with nineteen shows, twenty actors and two thrill rides. ![]() ![]() Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was yet another example of immersive theatre, playing during May of 2019. In front of the prestigious Royal Academy, Cornelia Parker exhibited a scale model of the Bates Motel (called ‘PsychoBarn’), whilst The Woman in Black, Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s novel has been playing since 1987 and has been in the West End since 1989, the second longest running non-musical after Agatha’s Christie’s The Mousetrap. Exotic drinks and fried insects may be consumed at tables inlaid with skeletons at the Victor Wynd Museum and cocktail bar in Hackney and elsewhere in East London the enthusiast may visit the Jack the Ripper Museum in Cable Street or eat at the Serial Killer Café in Brick Lane, or even shop at a Romanian convenience store called ‘Dracula’ in the suburbs. In 2019, London was host to an immersive zombie exhibition at the Truman Brewery, Brick Lane in East London attached to the television show The Walking Dead, a new play about Dracula was staged at the London Library and an art installation, sponsored by the Ben Oakley Gallery and called ‘Monster’ by Giles Walker, featuring headless clowns and other freakery, was set to be held in an empty warehouse near Greenwich later in the year if sufficient crowd funds could be raised.
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