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This Is Literally a Killer Garden That Morticia Addams Would Love

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This might be the world’s deadliest garden. The rules are that if you visit you are not allowed to smell, touch, or taste any plants. But you run the risk of fainting from the toxic fumes, at least that is what they say on the website.

Visitors to the Poison Garden must walk through a tunnel to enter.

This is called the Poison Garden and it is a small attraction of live plants on the grounds of the beautiful Alnwick Garden located in Northumberland, England.

Fortified with large iron gates and a skull and crossbones warning, this plot of land contains 100 potential organic killers that come in a variety of colors.

Alnwick Garden

Whose idea was it to cultivate such a toxic environment? That accolade goes to the Duchess of Northumberland, Jane Percy, who inherited a castle after the death of her husband’s brother. The expansive estate also included a large garden. At first, she envisioned a paradise of roses and other pretty innocuous flora, but a trip to Italy motivated her to do something morbid.

Inspired by the Medici poison garden in Italy, the Duchess decided that example was just what her garden needed to set it apart from others. On another trip to Scotland, her mind was made up. She learned about how certain poisonous plants such as opium and hemlock were used to anesthetize patients before surgery.

The seeds of the Ricinus communis plant produce castor oil, but also contain the deadly toxin ricin. 

“I thought, ‘This is a way to interest children,'” she told Smithsonian Magazine. “Children don’t care that aspirin comes from a bark of a tree. What’s really interesting is to know how a plant kills you, and how the patient dies, and what you feel like before you die.”

Alnwick Garden

One of her favorite varieties is the angel’s trumpet which is a part of the deadly nightshade family. “It’s an amazing aphrodisiac before it kills you,” says the Duchess, noting that some Victorian ladies would place a bit of the flower’s pollen in their teat to get an LSD-like high.

“[Angel’s trumpet] is an amazing way to die because it’s quite pain-free,” the Duchess says. “A great killer is usually an incredible aphrodisiac.”

In Victorian England, women used to put pollen from the angel’s trumpet flower in their tea to induce LSD-like hallucinations. In large doses, Angel’s Trumpet is deadly.

The Alnwick gardens aren’t just filled with malevolent plants. It also has an innocuous rose garden, a pavilion, a grand cascade, and an ornamental garden.

From deadly nightshade to hemlock, the only way a plant can take root in this garden is if it is lethal to humans. This is one garden where you won’t want to stop and smell the flowers.

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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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