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Welcome to The Gingerbread Bates Motel

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Written by Maxwell Robison

Gingerbread houses are an important part of any Christmas tradition, many families use the time building them to celebrate the season together. The Keeling family decided to take that tradition to a new and slightly morbid level this year with their gingerbread interpretation of The Bates Motel from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960’s thriller Psycho.

Made entirely from edible material this master piece took 3 weeks to build from conception to completion with jaw dropping detail that any model maker would be envious over.  I had a chance to speak with Aaron Keeling, one of the artists involved in the construction of this behemoth of a gingerbread house to ask him some questions about what went into it.

https://imgur.com/gallery/OeSOu

cred. Aaron Keeling

https://imgur.com/gallery/OeSOu

cred. Aaron Keeling

https://imgur.com/gallery/OeSOu

cred. Aaron Keeling

iHorror: Thank you for taking the time to talk to me today, I’m sure you are exhausted from all the work this took. How long did it take to create this monster?

Aaron Keeling: Thank you! My back is killing me from leaning over cookies for a week and my hands are stained with food coloring, but i think it was worth it. My dad started doing blueprints and baking pieces about 3 weeks ago, but once we all got together and started putting it up and decorating it took just under a week.

https://imgur.com/gallery/OeSOu

cred. Aaron Keeling

iH: Is everything edible?

AK: Everything is edible except for the base (which is made from styrofoam) and the lights.  The windows are melted candles and the super clear windows for the interior scenes are made from thin sheets of gelatin.

iH: How many pounds of gingerbread did you have to use?

AK: We ended up using about 25 pounds of flour, 6 bottles of corn syrup, 3 pounds of butter, 4 pounds of brown sugar, 18 pounds of icing (two 9 pound bags of sugar) and a bunch of spices. It was probably 30 pounds of gingerbread that we made, though not all of it was used in the final piece.

https://imgur.com/gallery/OeSOu

cred. Aaron Keeling

iH: How large did the finished piece end up being?

AK: The finished piece was 4 feet by 4 feet at the base and about 2 feet high at the top of the house.

https://imgur.com/gallery/OeSOu

cred. Aaron Keeling

iH: Some of the detail is amazing, how did you do the carpets?

AK: The wallpaper and the pictures were posted on edible paper and the rugs were printed on thin sheets of fondant.

https://imgur.com/gallery/OeSOu

cred. Aaron Keeling

iH: How many people worked on the whole project all together?

AK: Our core family of 5 worked on it. My Dad, Mom, my brother Austin, my brother Carter, and myself. We had some help from three friends as well. So, 8 total, though not everyone worked on it the whole time.

iH: How did this tradition get started? Have they always been this big?

AK: The tradition got started about 30 years ago when my parents got married.  We’ve been making a gingerbread house every year since then. Every year they get bigger and better!  Last year was the first year we ever attempted to do the interior with our “Overlook Hotel” gingerbread.

iH: What is your favorite scene that you worked on?

AK: My favorite scene is the bathroom scene, because I loved flicking all the blood everywhere, haha. I definitely got a bit carried away with it, theres way more blood in our version than the movie, but it is more fun that way don’t you think?

https://imgur.com/gallery/OeSOu

cred. Aaron Keeling

https://imgur.com/gallery/OeSOu

cred. Aaron Keeling

https://imgur.com/gallery/OeSOu

cred. Aaron Keeling

https://imgur.com/gallery/OeSOu

cred: Aaron Keeling

https://imgur.com/gallery/OeSOu

cred. Aaron Keeling

https://imgur.com/gallery/OeSOu

cred: Aaron Keeling

https://imgur.com/gallery/OeSOu

cred. Aaron Keeling

Make sure you check out the whole shoot of The Gingerbread Bates Motel right here.

and if you want to check out The Keeling Family’s 2015 The Gingerbread Overlook Hotel go here.

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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