Owner and visionary behind Ghoul-Girls.com, Candace Miller was brave enough to visit Horror Yearbook not once, but twice. First she took on a very inebriated WIL Keiper live on HYB Radio, then stopped by to chat with Morgan Suzek about horror movies and her Ghoul Girls on HorrorYearbook.com.
Ghoul-Girls.com is a free website that features different women dressed up as your favorite horror icons and reenacting your favorite scary moments with a “tantalizing twist.” It seems almost like the perfect thing for HYB readers and maybe one day we can even get our own Molly Celaschi featured…Hmmm!
Horror Yearbook: Alright, just as a formality, what’s your favorite scary movie?
Candace Miller: Typically I am not afraid of scary movies, but I do find some of the intense gore filled ones make even me cringe at times. Some of my favorite horror flicks are Shaun of the Dead, From Dusk Till Dawn, The Lost Boys, American Werewolf in LondonJu-on, Ringu and Recycle are some favorites.
HYB: Now that that’s out of the way, let’s focus on Ghoul Girls. Could you tell us what your site’s all about?
CM: We call it “Horror with a Tantalizing Twist,” it’s a mix of modern pin-up with classic and modern horror icons. Sort of a sexy tribute to our favorite things in horror. We post photosets of the girls along with video sets of each photo shoot. The website includes forums, blogs, articles, interviews and a great amount of original content, like our very own comics drawn by a good friend of mine who goes by Foth. People are responding to it in a positive way and seem to appreciate what we are doing.
HYB: Okay, so now we know what you’re about, but how did you come up with the idea? What inspired you?
CM: I am a huge fan of movies, especially horror flicks. The amount of effort, time and man power that goes into them just astounds me. I wanted to do a sort of tribute, coffee table book of my own modeling dedicated to the men and women of horror portraying classic and modern pinup forms as horror monsters. I decided it was something I wanted to get other models in on and the rest is history. HYB: What’s the one thing that you feel sets Ghoul Girls apart from other pin-up style sites? CM: Well we aren’t gore porn or strictly pin-up we are tease and horror. What sets us apart from all others is that the style we shoot has never really been done on a large scale like Ghoul Girls before. Sure you have other sites with hot women dumping blood on each other, but it just seems to repetitive. Ghoul Girls has a theme with the gore and a theme with the classics. I mean, recently we started dumping a lot of blood on our models, but it goes without saying that your looking at the models and not just the blood. HYB: When did you make the website official? CM: The site was launched on October 31st, 2007. HYB: About how many models have you featured since the site began? CM: As of now we are at lucky thirteen models, including myself (VampireKitten) and one who has yet to be added to the site. HYB: Making my own site made me realize starting a website is tough, did you see a lot of support while Ghoul Girls was under construction? CM: Honestly, not a whole lot of support came in when we started. I am a self taught web and graphics designer so I built the site myself and had no problems doing it. However, when I brought up the idea to people who I wanted to be apart of the project, as a whole, a lot of them weren’t sure about the idea of mixing horror with pinup. I found a core crew of people interested, who have helped from the beginning, but other than that it was a hard process. HYB: Do you feel that being a woman in the horror industry has made it harder for you to accomplish something legitimate like Ghoul Girls? CM: I am part of two growing industries, gaming and horror, and both are very weird toward women. I can’t seem to understand why, maybe it’s just that my brain can’t seem to comprehend the fact that in a male dominated industry women can do it just as well as the men. I have not had any problems other than trying to market us, it’s difficult when some companies don’t even want to hear us out because we are predominantly women. Yet when they need models for clothing or booth babes they are always ready to call us. At Ghoul Girls we want to show people we are more than that. HYB: Disregarding the models, about how many people do you have working for Ghoul Girls? CM: There are five core people who have run the site and our efforts since day one. Joshua Even does all of our video and video editing. Chrissy Lynn has done all the makeup and hair for all the sets starting with Frankenstein’s monster, before I was struggling with it. Kurt, my fiancé, steps behind the camera and video sometimes and helps getting set up at locations. MacabrI, who is also one of the models, has recently started doing a lot of our PR work and myself as a photographer, some special effects makeup, and web designer. With that, a huge thanks to our model Stormie Psi who is starting to become more involved with the process, Moomooch Clothing, Medusa’s House of Dread and our other models who have all helped in some way to make it a success. HYB: Is it hard to find models for this type of work? CM: It can be difficult at times, believe it or not, a lot of models aren’t into horror. It takes a special type of model to sit for hours at a time in a makeup chair then be put under hot lights in latex applications and demand that blood is poured over them. HYB: The horror genre is rich in ideas, do you ever find yourself stuck trying to figure out a theme for a photo shoot? CM: Yes, actually, but the road block is in a different way. I often find myself stuck trying to figure out how to make horrific, sometimes grotesque and very masculine characters into sexy women. To this day I am still stuck on how to make a sexy Michael Myers and Pennywise (It). HYB: Out of the photo shoots so far what was you favorite theme? CM: That is a hard question because every time a new set goes online I like it more than the last, not to say that the last one was terrible, but you can really see how much better we are all getting at this with each set. Every set is almost like a new practice session, whether it’s makeup, lighting or video. If I had to choose one it would be the “Jason Voorhees” set with the runner up being “Barbara” (Night of the Living Dead). HYB: Alright let’s talk merchandise. You just recently put out a calendar, congratulations. Are there any other items that the men reading this might be interested in? CM: The calendar was a big undertaking, that should be reason enough to check it out. Right now we have loads of little things in our store from designer shirts to a few posters. We are working on getting our prints together and those should be available in time for Fangoria 2009. HYB: What’s do you see in the future for Ghoul Girls? CM: We have a DVD coming out soon, some of it will include a lot more risqué and some topless material. You can probably count on a few more DVD’s and an art book or two. We really don’t know where we are going with this, we are just kind of going with the flow of things and watching it grow. HYB: Anything else you care to add? CM: Keep an eye out for some cool contests and check out the website, we have everything from videos, photosets, forums, blogs and more. Stay spooky!
