Tarts, Elder Gods, and New Companions

Photo by Dayne Topkin on unsplash.com

Sable had to practically carry Devanya back down the Nachtmahr Mountains. Devanya experienced moments of lucidity, but most of her days and nights were spent raving about the voices of the elder gods that whispered and howled inside her head.

When she had control of herself, Devanya clung to Sable and insisted that they need to make their way to Chancel to seek an audience with the Choristers. "They have to be told," she said, "they have to know that the great old ones have returned."

Sable didn't like the sound of that, but she reassured Devanya that she would drag her to Chancel come hell or high water.

When they ran out of food, Sable left Devanya in a placid grove and began to forage. She surprised a beautiful young woman picking berries. The woman dropped her basket and stammered, "Oh, I didn't see you there. Mother sent me to gather fruit. She's making a tart."

Sable ran her good eye up and down the maid's comely form in what she hoped was a rakish and suggestive way. "It looks like she already has made a little tart."

The lady blushed.

But she also invited Sable and Devanya to stay with them and be fed before they resumed their journey to Chancel, which Sable described, half-correctly, as a "pilgrimage of sorts." Whatever else transpired in that humble cottage must remain a mystery, but Mandalia, so the girl was called, did leave her childhood home and accompany Sable and Devanya to Chancel.

* * *

The contrast between that rustic idyll and the muddy, smoky streets of Chancel could not have been more pronounced. Devanya was able to arrange a meeting the the Choristers. They paled at what she had to tell them, but the exact nature of that meeting, and what directives they may have given her, were hidden away behind closed doors. However, it was clear that when she emerged from the cathedral, her status as a priest was restored and she had been re-embraced to the bosom of the Church.

Sable, meanwhile, has roved the streets in search of a new companion who could provide aid in their quest to find the missing heir to Krevborna's throne--a fell task that been given to them by Thronzeker. Her search of the kind of places adventurers frequent--taverns and gutters, mostly--turned a likely candidate: Malachi Vulcra, an inhuman warrior who had previously been a member of the Knights Labyrinthian. Malachi's strange physiognomy--impossibly lanky, with mottled green skin stretched over a gaunt face--evidenced a link to the ancient Lilitu, but more promising still were his claims to knowledge of tracking, arcana, and the history of Krevborna's royal line.

* * *

Previous Adventures

Losing a Fight in a Frontier Tavern

The Cleric and the Cannibals

In the Court of the Vampire Queen

In Thrall to the Dragon of Regicide

At the Seraphic Gate

Bloodletting on the Kiss, The In-Between, Firelights

Howls of the damned for a snowed-in December:

Bloody Hammers, "Bloodletting on the Kiss"

In This Moment, "The In-Between"

Swallow the Sun, "Firelights"

Nautical Flags as Alignment

International meanings for nautical flags. Or, alternately, I think they would do just as well as signifiers of the alignment of your character:

A: Alpha – diver down; keep clear

B: Bravo – carrying dangerous cargo

C: Charlie – yes

D: Delta – keep clear

E: Echo – altering course to starboard

F: Foxtrot – I am disabled

G: Golf – I want a pilot

H: Hotel – a pilot on board

I: India – I am altering course to port

J: Juliet – vessel on fire keep clear

K: Kilo – I want to communicate with you

L: Lima – stop your vessel instantly

M: Mike – my vessel is stopped

N: November – no

O: Oscar – Man overboard

P: Papa – vessel is about to sail

Q: Quebec – I request free pratique

R: Romeo – reverse course

S: Sierra – engines are going astern

T: Tango – keep clear

U: Uniform – you are heading into danger

V: Victor – require assistance

W: Whiskey – require medical assistance

X: X-ray – stop your intention

Y: Yankee – am dragging anchor

Z: Zulu – I require a tug

Weird Beauty, Authors as D&D Characters, Shades of Darkness

Weird Beauty: The Weird Fiction of Tanith Lee
- Craig Laurance Gidney, Weird Fiction Review

What Famous Authors Would Look Like as D&D Characters: This is what happens when your Norton Anthology meets your Player's Handbook
- McKayla Coyle, Electric Lit

Shades of Darkness
- John Coulthart

Rooms and Shadows, Blackest Magick in Practice, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie

Howls of the damned for a wintry Friday:

Swallow the Sun, "Rooms and Shadows"

Cradle of Filth, "Blackest Magick in Practice"

Bloody Hammers, "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie"

Not Working Too Long or To Hard, Derrida and Friendship, Severed Hands

'I Do Not Like Working Too Hard or Too Long': A Refreshingly Honest Talk With The Witcher's Creator
- Beth Elderkin, Gizmodo

What Jacques Derrida Understood About Friendship
- Hua Hsu, The New Yorker

Fists of fear: severed hands in films – ranked!
- Anne Bilson, The Guardian

This Story Takes Place in the Distant Future

For my money, this opening image from the first Vampire Hunter D anime is the most powerfully succinct bit of world-building I've ever encountered. It does everything with very little. The ominous image of Castlevania-style castle paired with two blood-tinged moons screams Gothic, while the texts fills in the other important aspects of the setting: it takes place in the future, so get ready for incongruous technology; there are mutants and demons, so get ready for the monster mash; this is a world of darkness--and you know what that means.

All that in a single pairing of image and terse text. Brilliant.

Noise, Burning Bridges, Blood, Tears, Dust, Stellar Tombs

Howls of the damned to entertain and edify.

Nightwish, "Noise"

Delain, "Burning Bridges"

Lacuna Coil, "Blood, Tears, Dust"

Draconian, "Stellar Tombs"

The Inheritance

I saw this on Twitter:

Challenge accepted.

The characters have been invited into the back room of a tavern by a lawyer, who has summoned them to a reading of the last will and testament of a woman they have never heard of. It transpires that this mysterious woman has left them the deed to her ancestral home just north of Chancel.

Unfortunately, the manse is perched atop a hillside cliff that is riddled with mazes of tunnels, dungeons, and catacombs occupied by inhuman monstrosities. The upper levels are absolutely haunted by spectral horrors and the unquiet dead.

The site is theirs...as long as they are willing to cleanse it of the evils lurking within. Thus stipulates the will.

CONGRATULATIONS, new home owner. Now roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Passion of the Zeitgeist, Favorite Characters and Books, Ready or Not Wedding Dress

Passion of the Zeitgeist: Judging the Relative Elevation of “Midsommar”
- Scout Tafoya, LA Review of Books

Authors and Their Favorite Characters and Books
- more2read

How ‘Ready or Not’ Turned a Wedding Dress Into a Powerful Tool for Feminism and Murder
- Matt Donnelly, Variety

Something is Not Right in the House of Mald (Part 2)

 

Photo by luobulinka
on unsplash.com

This is the second half of an actual play write up of a Necro-Cavaliers of the Astral Galaxy game. The first half of the write up is here. Also, did you know that you can get the game on my itch.io page here?

Back to the adventure: Anomi used her necromantic magic to make the ward sealing the door to the basement disengage. Down in the basement, she discovered an alien creature that matched the drawings she had discovered on Micah's dataslate; the creature was being kept in a cage with laser-bars and it had some sort of wound in its side. Attempts to communicate with the creature yielded nothing. Deputy Durango was sent upstairs to make some tea while Anomi pondered her next move.

Unfortunately, when he returned he was vaporized by a laser rifle blast from Sperlington Mald at the top of the stairs. Anomi was able to talk Sperlington down and get a better picture of what was going on at the homestead. Sperlington said that the alien creatures had abducted Micah and Joela, and that he had captured the one currently in the cage in hopes of trading it back to the aliens for the return of his family. However, when Anomi questioned Sperlington about what was in the barn, his eyes glazed over and blood began to trickle from his nose; something was not letting him remember what was in there. 

Sperlington also informed Anomi that a trap by the back entrance of the house had claimed the life of a traveling Bible salesman. Thinking fast, Anomi convinced Sperlington to take the corpse of the Bible salesman to Captain Varrigan and pin the death of Deputy Durango on him. Sperlington loaded the corpse into his hauler and set off for the constabulary office. This gave Anomi time to investigate the barn on her own. Inside, she discovered crates of large, flat stones that were inscribed with the same symbols depicted in the woodcuts she had found while researching the strange alien creatures Micah had been drawing. There was also a laser etching machine in the barn presumably used to mark the stones.

As the storm intensified, lightning struck a spot out in the fields near the Mald homestead, leaving behind a humanoid figure. Anomi recognized the figure as Joela Mald. Anomi rushed out into the field to retrieve her; the woman had been left behind on a stone embedded in the field with the same markings as the ones she had found in the barn. Anomi got Joela inside and into a bath and began to question her. Joela didn't remember her time as an abductee, but she was sure that the creature claiming to be Sperlington was not, in fact, her husband. She noted his changed behavior, particularly his reluctance to have his son treated for whatever blood condition was afflicting him. As Joela dressed, she asked Anomi for a laser pistol; a confrontation with the creature calling itself Sperlington Mald was inevitable. 

As indeed it was. Sperlington arrived back at the homestead with Captain Varrigan in tow. As they exited the hauler, both armed themselves with laser rifles. Anomi asked Joela to stay hidden, and to come out firing should it prove necessary, while she got herself into position for an ambush. As Captain Varrigan came through the door of the house, Anomi leapt out and slapped necromantic handcuffs on him--effectively taking him out of the fight. Lightning flashed again outside; Anomi could see that another of the alien creatures had appeared atop the summoning stone out in the field and was now making its way to the house. A firefight broke out within the house between Joela and Anomi on one side and Sperlington on the other as the alien strode into the melee. After taking quite a few blows from the alien, which absolutely ruined her couture, Anomi buried her sword into it with ballet-like precision and managed to blast it into oblivion. 

Anomi and Joela dragged the body out to the summoning stone. Another stroke of lightning fell and Micah was exchanged for the alien. Anomi called for further aid and the farmstead was soon crawling with galactic agents. As the pieces fell into place, it was revealed that the Mald family (as well as others on Ogra V, such as Varrigan) had long been in league with the aliens--who were pursuing ways of hybridizing themselves with humankind to facilitate a hidden invasion of the Empire. Micah's blood disorder was evidence of their most successful hydridization to date; he was the template for the coming invasion--an invasion that had been disrupted by the actions of the sly and stylish Anomalisa Monalisa of House Satomi.

Director's Commentary

I stole the outline of this scenario from the movie Devil's Gate. Crap movie, but made for a fun session. 

October's Horror

What follows is a recap of the horror movies and tv I watched in October. Fair warning: there may be spoilers.

Fantasmagorias

Fantasmagorias is a collection of short animated films that retell the supernatural legends and murderous tales of Latin America. And I do mean that the episodes are short; each one is about 2-4 minutes long, essentially the perfect length to get a nice quick dose of Halloween feelings. I loved Fantasmagorias; from the Sin City-esque art style to the grim folklore it details, it was a pitch perfect fit for my interests.

Girl on the Third Floor

A married man with a child on the way buys a fixer-upper to make into a home. This is his second chance at treading the straight and narrow path after being caught defrauding his financial customers of their life savings. Of course, the house is haunted. Obviously so, in fact. Look, if you don't realize that a house shouldn't be constantly jizzing all over the place and randomly shitting out marbles, don't try to do the home repairs yourself. The last third of the movie is complete bullshit; oddly enough, the most eerie part of the film is the opening credit sequence before the movie proper even starts. Girl on the Third Floor also wants to SAY SOMETHING about how MEN who TREAT WOMEN POORLY should be PUNISHED, but the moral is compromised by the way that innocent people (and a dog!) get caught in the crossfire.

We Summon the Darkness

Three teenage girls on their way to a heavy metal concert in the midst of a spate of Satanic ritual slayings meet up with three boys in band...surely the killings and this chance meeting couldn't possibly be connected, right? Well, they are, but with a twist you're likely to see coming a mile away. We Summon the Darkness is mildly fun, but it also feels like a series of missed opportunities; not enough thought was put into the characters' behavior or how to stitch the film's various tangents into a coherent whole. As always I want my Satanic murder sprees to be more Satanic.

The Vatican Tapes

The first rule of making a horror movie about demonic possession is that it can't be boring. The Vatican Tapes unfortunately pays that rule no mind. Everything in this movie can be found done better in a superior movie. There's a seen of uncanny vomiting...that absolutely pales in comparison to The Exorcist. Add a little levitation, a little bodily contortion, and what do you get? A by-the-book checklist of obligations that adds nothing new. However, there was an unintentionally funny riff here. The main character was selected for demonic possession because her mother was a prostitute, but her father insists that he wasn't a client; he was just giving her money to get her out of the lifestyle. Don't kid yourself, man. You were paying her for exclusive access to her services.

1BR

A young woman flees her toxic family and finds a room for rent in an exclusive apartment complex that seems too good to be true. It is, in fact, too good to be true. Despite a strong performance from the lead, this film just doesn't go anywhere interesting; it suffers from a malady common to the modern horror film: it just isn't willing to go to an extreme place, even thought the potential for real horror is there, which works against the genre it tries to claim some space in. Also, it is very weird how her aspirations as a fashion designer are noted in the film, particularly with lingering shots of her sewing machine, but that doesn't end up being a matter of any import in the movie.

Devil's Gate

Devil's Gate squanders a strong premise: an FBI agent is called in to investigate a missing woman and her child, while the husband and father is holed up in his trap-laden remote farmhouse standing guard over something unnatural kept in a basement cage. Unfortunately, the movie doggedly insists on getting steadily worse as each minute ticks by. By the time the resolution of the movie is clear, it's impossible to care about the convoluted mess on display. It doesn't help matters that every character in the movie acts in ways that fail to resemble recognizably human behavior. That said, I did rip off the plot line mercilessly for an rpg session that was quite fun, so I managed to get something of a return on my hour and half investment watching it.

Distorted

A traumatized wife is convinced by her husband to move into an ultra-deluxe apartment building boasting cutting-edge security and internal surveillance. It turns out about as well as you'd think; she soon finds herself plunged into the world of conspiracy theories and the possibilities of technological mind control. It just doesn't really work; I think we're supposed to be thrilled by the ambiguous nature of the threat--is it real or is our protagonist mentally ill?--but it's super clear from the outset that whatever is going on cannot be blamed on her mental state. Also, I find it hilarious that supposed to believe that Christina Ricci is using the internet in a cafe and only has ONE tab open on her laptop. My suspension of disbelief can only handle so much.

The Appearance

I'm a simple man: you give me a moderately atmospheric horror movie set in the Middle Ages with ominous monks wearing plague doctor masks and a creepy witch lady and I'll be happy. On top of that, The Appearance is the rare Gothic-inspired horror flick where the agent of the Inquisition is the good guy. Called to an abbey to investigate a mysterious murder that has been blamed on a caged young woman who is suspected to be a witch, out heroic yet troubled Inquisitor finds himself embroiled in a far darker history than he had any reason to expect would be awaiting him.

The Tenant

A Polish man living in Paris moves into an apartment that suddenly became vacant after the previous tenant jumped from the balcony in an apparent suicide attempt. The former tenant's life begins to invade his own; for example, the owner of the nearby cafe insists on serving him the usual order of the now deceased woman. He starts to suspect that the people around him are trying to turn him into an uncanny replication of the former tenant. And yet, part of his replacement of the dead tenant is due to his own seemingly willful strangeness; why does he go out of his way to befriend a beautiful young woman who was friends with the former tenant? (And their relationship really strained my suspension of disbelief, although it does have the prefect date moment: making out while watching Enter the Dragon.) The Tenant had some really striking imagery and direction, as you would expect, but ultimately the movie just feels weirdly cheap and limp in comparison to Rosemary's Baby or Repulsion.

Books of Blood

Clive Barker's Books of Blood collections were absolutely formative horror short fiction for me. The good news about this mediocre adaptation of them is that they bear so little resemblance to the stories they're based on that you can't really feel all that disappointed by their many failings. Barker's stories pulled no punches, but their film versions seem obsessed with keeping things nice and watered down. Also, I laugh out loud every time these movies feature a professor character with an on-campus office the size of a small apartment. I suppose that's something that exists somewhere, but that is entirely alien to my personal experience.

The Invisible Man

There's an invisible man, sleepin' in your bed--who you gonna call? Well, don't call the cops because even after it's revealed that your genius ex has made an invisibility suit they won't believe you that he's been using it to stalk you and murder your loved ones. Elisabeth Moss kills it in the lead role, but The Invisible Man stretches credulity by granting the evil ex the physical strength and uncanny coordination of a Marvel villain, which actively works against the real horror of narcissistic, possessive former partners that the movie is ostensibly trying to delve into. Frankly, the mundane reality is more terrifying than the exaggerated monstrosity this movie plays with.

Monsterland

Monsterland is a horror anthology adapted from the stories in Nathan Ballingrud's North American Lake Monsters, a collection that I thoroughly enjoyed. Though not every adaptation in the series is successful, I thought that about half the episodes were fantastic; the remaining episodes range from poorly conceived to just a little flat, which is par for the course when it comes to a wide-ranging anthology series that is the work of diverse hands taking the wheel. The best of the episodes preserve the incisive intensity of the original stories. The worst of them lose the plot, especially when they jettison the context of Ballingrud's critique of toxic masculinity--the powerful through-line of North American Lake Monsters. Fair warning, though: many of the episodes in Monsterland bring a naturalistic bleakness to the table that won't be for every viewer.

Horror of Dracula

Horror of Dracula is the first entry in Hammer's long-running series of Dracula films. Although it takes some huge liberties with the source material, it's an exceptionally fun riff on Bram Stoker's ideas. Really, you can't beat Christopher Lee as Count Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. And aside from the most iconic duo in horror movie history, everything else falls nicely into place: the side characters are well portrayed, the costumes are exquisite, and the backdrops are perfectly Gothic. The breakneck conclusion to the film still feels impossible after you've seen it; a quick glance at the clock and it will seem like things can't be resolved in the few minutes left in the film's runtime, but things fall neatly into place--what a ride!

The Wolf Man

I'm not sure how unpopular an opinion this is, but I sincerely think The Wolf Man is one of the best of the classic Universal horror movies. Dracula and Frankenstein are certainly more visually iconic, but they both suffer from being slow and overly talky in places. The Wolf Man, despite being a product of its fairly tame time, feels much more visceral and emphatic. It also feels like a movie with more to say; Larry Talbot's wolfish pursuit of Gwen, which includes violating her privacy by spying on her with a telescope and hoping to get her alone in the woods despite her avowed engagement to another man, eerily presages his descent into bestial bloodlust as a werewolf.

Layers of Time, Across the Sea, Victims of Contingency

Three howls of the damned:

Lacuna Coil, "Layers of Time"

Leaves' Eyes, "Across the Sea"

Epica, "Victims of Contingency"

A Monstress Comes of Age, Angela Carter's Vampirella, Lovecraft with Clay Puppets

 Three videos for your delectation.

A Monstress Comes of Age: Horror and Girlhood

by Yhara Zayd

Angela Carter's Vampirella

H. P. Lovecraft's Dunwich Horror and Other Stories

Something is Not Right in the House of Mald (Part 1)

Photo by Tim Mossholder
 on unsplash.com

It's not often that I get a chance to play an rpg one-on-one, but the other day I had the chance to run Necro-Cavaliers of the Astral Galaxy (my science-fantasy hack of Lasers & Feelings) for Anne of DIY & Dragons. Anne's character was Anomi Anomalisa Monalisa, a noblewoman trained as a necromancer and cavalier of House Satomi, a family attached to the God Empress's court as historians and scholars. 

Anomi was called upon to visit Ogra V, a backwater agricultural planetoid. A woman named Joella Mald and her son Micah were expected for a visit with Joella's sister Selenia, but they never arrived at Selenia's home. Anomi's first task was to locate the homestead of Sperlington Mald, Joella's husband and Micah's father. Anomi's initial face-to-face with Captain Varrigan, the constabulary administrator of Ogra V, did not go particularly well; it was clear that Varrigan was trying to dissuade Anomi from investigating further. He posited that perhaps Joella or Micah had fallen ill and forgotten to notify Selenia.

Anomi returned to orbit to delve into the records on her data slate to get a little additional information. Her first suspicion was that Sperlington Mald had run afoul of some enemies and his family had been abducted, but she uncovered no obvious enmity. However, she did discover that Sperlington and Joella had been taking their son to a variety of blood specialists. Delving deeper into the medical records, she found out that Micah seemed to be suffering from an unknown blood ailment that had so far resisted all treatment. In fact, there was something in his blood that seemed...inhuman.

The time had come to investigate the Mald homestead directly. The homestead consisted of a two-story house and a large barn surrounded by soybean fields. Mald's hauler was docked at a nearby landing port. As Anomi made her way up to the porch of the house, she heard a beeping sound that became more and more rapid; she realized, too late, that she was about to fired upon by a laser beam trap! Fortunately, she was tackled out of the way just in the nick of time by a handsome, clean-cut man raised on Wonder Bread. After extricating themselves from each other, he introduced himself as Deputy Durango. Captain Varrigan had assigned him to watch the house for "intruders," but he had found someone by the back door who had similarly fallen prey to the house's traps.

Anomi and her new lackey Deputy Durango resumed exploring the house. The house was in good order, with nothing notable missing, save for the occupants of the house. However, Anomi did discover Micah's data slate, which he mostly used as drawing pad; the first few images were normal, but then it began to seem like Micah was obsessed with drawing a strange alien creature with elongated limbs, dead black eyes, and a mouth full of fangs. Anomi's attempts to search the databases of known alien beings turned up nothing, but she did find strikingly similar creatures depicted in the woodcuts of one culture's historical treatises on witchcraft--these creatures were regarded as "demons" in the historical record.

However, one item in the house caught Anomi's attention: the door to the basement was not just locked with a conventional keypad; it was also being held shut with a necromantic ward made of black magic and bits of ribcage. What secret was it hiding in the depths of the house of Mald? Tune in next time to find out.

Unghosting the Secret Rooms, The Woman in Black, Dracula's Posters

Unghosting the Secret Rooms: Reclaiming Haunted Spaces for the BIPOC Imagination
- Angela Maria Spring, Tor

The Woman in Black: Why did Britain's scariest horror film disappear?

- Andrew Male, The Guardian

Dead! Undead!: The Many Posters of Bela Lugosi’s ‘Dracula’ 1931

- Flashbak

Japanese Horror

Three interesting Youtube videos about Japanese horror.

What Happened to Japanese Horror?

- Screened

The Grudge & Ringu: What Makes Japanese Horror Creepy?

- Bluelavasix

A short history of Japanese Horror

- One Hundred Years of Cinema

Facts About Scary Stories, Women Who Built Horror, Gothic Scooby Doo

14 Terrifying Facts About Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
- Maureen Monahan, Mental Floss

Four Forgotten Women Who Built the Horror Genre
- Bust

How Scooby Doo Revived Gothic Storytelling for Generations of Kids
- Elene Theodoropoulos, CrimeReads

Strahd versus Dracula

Did you know that it is a canonical possibility that Strahd could face off against Dracula?

Let me explain.

It is generally well known that the Ravenloft setting pulls people from other realms into the Land of the Mists. The setting has characters from other settings such as Krynn, Faerun, Athas, and Oerth. The mists of Ravenloft can also abscond with characters from Gothic Earth--a setting that where all the elements of the Victorian Gothic are real rather than fictional. In fact, Ravenloft has a domain--Odiare--that was stolen from Gothic Earth's Italy.

And that's where Dracula comes in.

Dracula is one of the great evils of the Gothic Earth setting. If the mists can incorporate Odiare into its patchwork of horrors, there's no reason why it could not also pull Dracula from Gothic Earth's Transylvania and insert him in Ravenloft as the dark lord of a new domain. Of course, if that were to happen, it's only a matter of time until Dracula and Strahd square off to determine who is the true lord of the undead. What a horrible war for player characters to find themselves in the middle of...

A History of Horror

A History of Horror

This is a three-part documentary on the horror film genre made by the BBC and Mark Gatiss.

Frankenstein Goes to Hollywood

Home Counties Horror

The American Scream

The Quiet Boy, The Eight People Who Murdered Me, The Old Pageant

Three pieces of short horror fiction for your enjoyment:

Nick Antosca, "The Quiet Boy"

Gwendolyn Kiste, "The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westenra’s Diary)"

Richard Gavin, "The Old Pageant"

September's Horror

So it begins! The yearly horror movie binge is upon us. Here's what I've watched so far:

Truth or Dare

We're starting off on rocky shores this year, as Truth or Dare was a steaming pile of garbage. It's funny, last year we accidentally watched a different horror movie called Truth or Dare mistakenly thinking it was this one. It turns out that the off-brand Truth or Dare was the superior movie. A game of truth or dare played in an accursed convent in Mexico makes dead, grinning fools of the participants in what is essentially a poorly conceived iteration of The Ring. 

Death Warmed Up

Death Warmed Up is a horror movie dating from before New Zealand's makeover as idyllic Hobbitland. It's definitely the other scuzzy Australia in this. Death Warmed Up plays like a weird combination of Mad Max and Return of the Living Dead, but with added oedipal anxieties. That feels like a premise aimed at a very specific audience, which I am not a part of.

Gothic Harvest

Just...avoid this one. Trust me.

Okay, if you need a better reason to stay away, try this on for size: this is an "erotic thriller" in which Bill Mosley's character reads pick-up lines from his phone to a young coed to try to get her into bed.

Erotic...as a hangnail. 

The Town That Dreaded Sundown

Now this movie is fascinating. Based on the real-life Texarkana Phantom murders, The Town That Dreaded Sundown veers wildly between gritty, grindhouse-style scenes of murder and comedic Keystone Cops-style inept antics. Did you know that they screen this movie every year in the town where the murders happened? Wild, right?

Knock Knock

An architect left home alone when his wife and kids head to the beach without him is seduced by two "lost" women who show up on his doorstep during a rainstorm. They then tell him the morning after that they are underage, he's a pedophile, and they're going to ruin his life over it. Look, if you believe Ana de Armis's character's claim that she's only fifteen years old, you deserve what you get, buddy. That's clearly a full-grown woman and you should be able to tell the god-damn difference. Anyway, not sure why I gave Eli Roth another try; this one ends like so many of his films do: a meandering search for an absent moral center that collapses into a lame joke.

Piranha

Piranha comes from the era where b-movies were fun. I've seen it called a parody of Jaws, but I'm not sure that's an accurate assessment. Part of my uncertainty lies in that some of the funnier bits aren't easily recognizable as comedy. When a guy says "I swear on my honor as a Texan" in a Bronx accent, is that intentionally humorous? Who can say? Either way, what you get is a batch of piranha who have been altered by the government getting into the water supply and wrecking havoc.

Shirley

My feelings about Shirley are a little complicated. On one hand, it's a really well done movie, with excellent performances and a strong aesthetic sense. But on the other, it felt a bit like a character assassination of Shirley Jackson and her husband. Though they may have had their fair share of problems, they didn't work to disrupt the lives of a young couple living with them for their own entertainment or as grist for the mill of Jackson's next novel.

Demon Seed

Demon Seed is strangely prescient; even though it's from 1977, it imagines a world in which an Alexa achieves sentience and begins to terrorize a woman. It then goes full "what if?" when that terrorizing turns into the artificial intelligence proposing to impregnate her to create the first of a new race of beings.

Trick or Treats

Trick or Treats is a fairly run-of-the-mill iteration of Halloween's premise, but it is enlivened somewhat by how bizarre some of the plot choices are. For example, the sequence where the future killer is chased by orderlies who want to take him to the asylum goes on for a surprisingly long time; it ends up involving wrestling, tree-climbing, and cops being thrown into a swimming pool by the "maniac," who may just be a guy trying to enjoy his breakfast.

The Hitcher

The Hitcher was a much weirder movie than I remembered. It's an unsettling mix of action movie and stalker nightmare. A young man delivering a car to a client in California picks up a hitch-hiker who just happens to be a serial murderer. But instead of killing the kid, the killer marks him out for torment, framing him for the killings and generally putting his resolve to the test. Odd that the most disturbing scene essentially happens off-camera. Also, is it just me or is there something inexpressibly threatening about Rutger Hauer sweating profusely?

Brain Dead

An expert in experimental brain surgery is hired to extract corporate secrets from the mind of a brilliant man who has, apparently, gone insane. But, in the end, nothing is what it seems and everything resides in a state of insanity. It's rare to find small budget films like this packed with talent, but this was produced by Julie Corman (wife of Roger Corman), based on a script by Charles Beaumont (writer of several classic Twilight Zone episodes), starring the two Bills (Pullman and Paxton). Oh, also, Bud Cort of Harold & Maude fame is in the mix. 

In the Mouth of Madness

An insurance fraud investigator is hired to track down horror author Sutter Cane, who has disappeared with the manuscript of his long-awaited next novel. The investigator believes that all of this is an elaborate hoax to promote the book, until reality starts warping around him. In the Mouth of Madness is still possibly the best Lovecraftian movie ever made, precisely because it avoids the most cliche, surface-level appeal elements of Lovecraft's fiction.

The Silence of the Lambs

You already know the premise: a young FBI trainee leverages her connection with a cannibal serial killer to catch a trophy-collecting serial killer. The Silence of the Lambs is still a stunning film, even after years of repeated viewings. Nothing else to say about it. Either you see it or you don't.

Paganini Horror

A rock band struggling to write their next hit song buy a score of unpublished music by Paganini and decide to film the music video for their song that will be based on it in a supposedly haunted house. Bad move, all around. All of this unleashes an undead Paganini, and all many of accompanying supernatural tomfoolery, which means the band, their manager, and the video director get picked off one by one. Not much in this movie adds up and, frankly, the poster is way better than the actual film.