Urban Fantasy Fridays: NightLife (1990)

 NightLife is a game I have had on and off for a number of years. I only ever owned the core rules and the Magic book. I never got a chance to play it, but it is a game we talk about every so often in our Elf Lair Games meetings. The game is quintessentially early 90s. It's filled with blood, dark, and dirty streets, and where you get to play the monster. Vampire: The Masquerade may have done it better, but NightLife gave it its all a year earlier.

NightLife is set in New York. A strange New York that is sandwiched between the movie Warriors and the First World Trade Center bombing.  A city that is hot and perpetually at night. Something like Dark City meets Nightbreed.

NightLife

by Bradley K. McDevitt, L. Lee Cerny, Walter H. Mytczynskyj
1990, 1992 Stellar Games, 256 pages.

Much like Beyond the Supernatural, NightLife is wonderfully crunchy.  Character creation is a prime example. Roll 4d10 for the eight attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Fitness, Intellect, Will, Perception, Attractiveness, and Luck. Then there are another twenty d10s to put toward your skills. And there is a lot of them. It is very much an RPG of its time in that having a skill for something matters, and you will find them for everything from firearms and martial arts to pharmacology, manuscript illumination, seduction, and even skateboarding. Honestly, it already feels like the heart of this game is a cyberpunk game gone horror, splatterpunk. This will not be the last time I feel this while going over the rules.

The underlying system is simple enough. Your attributes and skills yield a percentage, and you roll under on percentile dice. A 20 in a given skill denotes you are competent at the everyday task without needing to make a roll; it is only when things get difficult, or you are under pressure, that the dice come out. Character generation can be a bit of a time sink, but once you are in the game, the central mechanic is not hard to grasp. 

The art is very early 1990s punk style. Cool for the time, but looks a bit dated by today's standards. To be fair, one of the creators, Bradley K. McDevitt, has his own stock-art service, and his stuff is great. I have used his art many, many times in my own work. So, to me, despite its age, the art is very much a "draft" of what I consider "urban horror art." Later on, the artists for Vampire: The Masquerade and WitchCraft RPG would help define this style in my mind. But credit where credit is due for starting here. 

The Kin

What sets this apart is that you do not go after the monsters. You are the monster. Like I mentioned above, it covers similar ground to Vampire: The Masquerade, but the tone here is less Anne Rice. 

The supernatural types refer to themselves as the Kin, leaving ordinary people with the rather condescending title of "the Herd." The book has seven varieties of Kin: Vampyres, Werewolves, Ghosts, Daemons, Wyghts, Inuits, and Animates. They all have their Edges, or powers, and the traditional Flaws of being a monster. The Magic sourcebook also adds Witches to the mix.

Vampyres are of the old school. Give them sunlight, garlic, a wooden stake, running water, or holy objects, and they will be stopped. They turn into bats, mist, and wolves. These vampyres are more akin to Dracula than Lestat, but his DNA is in there as well. Werewolves change shape. Ghosts are the dead with unfinished business. Animates are your Frankenstein’s monsters and golems. Daemons are extradimensional and have been magically put here. And Wyghts are unpleasant undead affairs that siphon the youth from their victims.

Then we have the Inuits.

Well, yes. This is where the game’s age shows, and not in an endearing way. The handling of Indigenous spirits under that moniker is something I would either not use or rewrite. 

Edges, Flaws, and Humanity

You have Edges, the supernatural side of things. Some are common, some are for a particular Kin. Claws, telepathy, weather control, possession, invisibility, speed, and armor are among the options. But the cleverness lies in the price.

That price is Humanity.

Humanity is not merely a morality stat on the sheet for the GM to levy punishment with. It is a resource to be spent. 

Your monster can do some very cool things, but they are the very things that erode what is human about him. That is a fine mechanic. There is a built-in temptation in the rules. You can have more power, but how much of yourself are you prepared to put on the line?

It goes both ways. High Humanity can make you functionally human. Let it drop, and the character becomes more visibly monstrous, his weaknesses more pronounced. Lose too much Humanity, and now your character has become a true monster and an NPC. I like this idea. The World of Darkness games made this idea their central thesis; other games have a form of this as well. NightLife wasn't the first to do this, but they did do it well.

The City at Night

An urban fantasy needs somewhere for its denizens to put down roots, and NightLife gets that. Not just a crypt or a haunted house. We are talking clubs and bars, record stores, and warehouses. Back rooms and street corners. The sort of places for showing off, making bad decisions, and hearing what is going on. You could say nightclubs are the heart of the game's culture. Style is everything, as is the right music and the right clothes. The book is so preoccupied with fashion that a modern retrospective put it best: in NightLife, a gun can sometimes look like the more economical option than a proper wardrobe.

Then there are the particular modifiers for a fight on the dance floor. That's about as much of a NightLife rule as you will find. I can't think of another game that does that.

Do not mistake this for Gothic horror moved to an urban environment. This is urban horror. The monsters are of the city; they have their neighborhoods and their enemies three blocks away; they have favorite clubs, and they listen to the music. It is easy to see why the comparison to The Warriors holds up.

New York is as much of a character here as it is a setting.

The supernatural is divided into factions and gangs with differing views on humanity. You have the Commune, which is content to let Kin and humans coexist, or the Complex, which would rather control and make use of them. The Morningstar Corporation will undermine society with its wealth and politics, while Red Moonrise is far less subtle and has no qualms about terror and slaughter. And if one wants to be hunted, there are human outfits like the Van Helsing Society and Target Alpha who know the Kin are out there. In short, there is always someone to have a go at. NightLife anticipates as much.

There is some wonderful worldbuilding here that sadly went unnoticed at the time.

Putting the Splatter Back in Splatterpunk

This is no subtle affair. The rulebook will tell you exactly how big a wound is from the damage taken. A Kin can take some horrific injury and come back for more unless put down in a certain way. That kind of durability is what lets the game live up to its splatterpunk side.

Shadow of the Vampire

One cannot help but compare this to Vampire: The Masquerade. NightLife came first in 1990 with Vampire behind it in 1991. They share the d10s, the Humanity stat, the urban backdrop and the same sort of player characters. Yet the tone is worlds apart. NightLife is punk where Vampire is Gothic. It is all about the leather jackets and the loud music, the blood on the wall, and the monsters having it out in the alley behind the club. There is plenty of angst to be had, but also a motorcycle chain and a switchblade.

In NightLife, everyone is Clan Brujah or Tremere.

What do I get out of NightLife? More than one might expect.

I am fond of the way it treats Humanity. It is not a passive number for the GM to judge by. Your very existence as a supernatural puts your connection to humanity at risk. I can make a lot of use of that.

I also appreciate the Kin being a single culture. Vampires and werewolves do not need to be in separate societies that never cross paths; they can be in the same faction and have the same enemies. Very fitting for an urban setting. They can still hate each other. Fight in gang wars or even have an uneasy alliance. Same with the other types here. 

The factions are fine, though I would not use them verbatim. What interests me is the concept: supernatural beings at odds over how to deal with ordinary people, and those differences turning political or violent.

But the thing NightLife offers above all is a sense of place. The supernatural has to be somewhere on a Friday night. It may sound foolish, but a community is only convincing when there is a bar they all know, a record store open till two in the morning, a diner where the night staff won’t remark on odd patrons, and an alley to settle scores. I put that to work in NIGHT SHIFT.

For example, in my 1990s sequel to Jackson set in Chicago, Faye Thorne, now calling herself Fiona Voss, runs a record store called Muse. Muse is where people (and not-people) congregate and hear things. Even those who would not normally work together can be found across from each other because they both know it is safe ground. 

And that is what NightLife does best. It is not a matter of monsters hiding in the city, but of them having a life in it. The distinction is important. The vampire has a band he likes. The daemon has a drink with an old friend. The ghost knows her way in. The werewolf has friends and enemies and the clothes and the neighborhood to prove it. The supernatural is not in town for a visit. It lives here.

And regardless of the Kin, they all need somewhere to buy the new Inkubus Sukkubus album. 

My Jackson Kids: Chicago 1992

This campaign does not have a name yet. Nor is it even very well defined. I just know this. Like my real kids, my Jackson, IL kids will grow up and move out at some point. Some end up in Chicago in the 1990s. Why Chicago? Why not! I LOVE Chicago. 

Among the PCs/NPCs I'll work with, there will be Larina, Faye/Fiona, Roderick Morgan, and Moria Zachary. There will be new characters too, but the players will create those. 

Fiona, Larina, and Moria, Chicago 1992

And...that is about all I have for that campaign! Really. I have some other idea involving the Maxwell Street Market and other things I loved about Chicago in the 1990s, but this notion is in it's infancy. 

So I am trying out a lot of different ideas. Namely, this campaign is an attempt to move from Modern Horror (Jackson, Sunny Valley) into Urban Fantasy. The horror is still there, but it isn't the same sort of thing.

So, for NightLife, I started with the core book and create a character who fits. I considered turning one of my Jackson kids into a ghost, but in truth I just couldn't bring myself to do that. So instead, I am using a character and keeping her more or less as is. Then I grabbed a copy of the magic book and created twom more characters.

Edited to Add: In my online research, I see that there is a book for NightLife called "America After Dark." I didn't really have the time to buy a copy. Though maybe I will grab it later on since it covers the time period when I was living downtown. In truth I should assemble all the RPGs and supplements that cover Chicago sometime. Especially if I get this Chicago game off the ground.

Moria Lucille Zachary

Race/Kin: Daemon
Age: 21

Abilities
Strength (STR) 23
Dexterity (DEX) 34
Fitness (FIT) 27
Intellect (INT) 26
Will 21
Perception (PER) 27
Attractiveness (ATT) 27
Luck 19
Magic Ability (MA) -

Base Hand-to-Hand (HTH) damage 4
Max Humanity 80
Humanity 36 (40)
Survival Points 46

Edges and Flaws
All Kin
Armor 5, Aura Sight 27, Claws 27, Danger Sense 27, Drain 27 (diet: Human or Animal Life Force), Speed 34

Kin Specific Edges
Alter Form 21, Body Control 27, Flight 27 (true form only), Telepathy 26, Travel 21

Flaws
Substance Vulnerability: Flint, Holy Relics, Fire (double damage), Command: Majestic Daemonic

Skills
Combat Skills
Pistol 41, Streetfighting 52

Archaic Skills
Kin Lore 37

General Skills
Alertness 34, City Knowledge (Chicago) 32, Disguise 30, Language (English) 30, Persuasion 31, Psychology 33, Seduction 31, Stealth 57, Streetwise 42, Theology (Catholic) 32

Occult Skills
Occult Knowledge 34

Connections
Bar Bouncer, Bartender, Police Detective

Money: $13,000.

Moria is great for this. Plus, we haven't seen her in Jackson for a while, so it has a nice "what the hell are you doing here?" vibe. I also like the idea that the girl who was considered dangerous in Jackson is just mildly threatening here in Chicago. 

Larina Stephanie Nichols

Race/Kin: Human, Witch
Age: 22

Abilities
Strength (STR) 15
Dexterity (DEX) 28
Fitness (FIT) 25
Intellect (INT) 35
Will 34
Perception (PER) 34
Attractiveness (ATT) 30
Luck 21
Magic Ability (MA) 30

Base Hand-to-Hand (HTH) damage 5
Max Humanity 100
Humanity 48 (50)
Survival Points 46

Edges and Flaws
All Kin
None

Kin Specific Edges
None

Flaws
None

Magic
Shadow Paths, Deflection, Escape, Magic Sight, Vibes, Word, EMT, Lighter, Open

Skills
Combat Skills
Knife 31, Pistol 27, Martial Arts (Judo) 42

Archaic Skills
none

General Skills
Alertness 39, City Knowledge (Chicago) 38, Driving 31, First Aid 34, Language (English) 35, Language (Greek) 35, Language (Latin) 35, Persuasion 37, Psychology 43, Research 48, Streetwise 31

Occult Skills
Library Research (Magic) 48, Talismanic Magic 40, Herbal Magic 40, Occult Knowledge 44

Connections
Bar Bouncer, Bartender, Police Detective, Elder Kin

Money: $8,000.

Larina only lives here during her undergraduate and Master's degrees, from fall of 1987 to Spring/summer of 1993. I have her going on other adventures in 1993 that correspond to her Chill 2nd edition period and flowing into her WitchCraft RPG time. Whether those games involve the same "mirror shard" of Larina or not, I don't know yet. But for now, this is Larina in 1992.

Fiona Voss

Race/Kin: Human, Sorceress (near Kin)
Age: 22

Abilities
Strength (STR) 20
Dexterity (DEX) 24
Fitness (FIT) 28
Intellect (INT) 34
Will 46
Perception (PER) 30
Attractiveness (ATT) 34
Luck 20
Magic Ability (MA) 35

Base Hand-to-Hand (HTH) damage 4
Max Humanity 80
Humanity 30 (Soul Burn)
Survival Points 48 (36 in stored spells)

Edges and Flaws
All Kin
Drain 28 (Fiona "recharges" herself by going out)

Kin Specific Edges
None

Flaws
Substance Vulnerability: Metorite iron, salt (she makes up for it with hot peppers)

Magic
Black out, Shadow Paths, Deflection, Escape, Hotwire. EMT (white), Dispel Magic (white), boombox (white), Binding (black)

Skills
Combat Skills
Pistol 28, Streetfighting 32

Archaic Skills
Kin Lore 40

General Skills
Administration 42, Alertness 36, Business 44, City Knowledge (Chicago) 42, Dancing 29, Driving 28, Fashion Sense 34, First Aid 38, Intimidation 50, Leadership 54, Musical Style (Goth/Alternative) 46, Profession (Record Store Manager) 46, Research 38, Security Systems 39, Stealth 29, Streetwise 56

Occult Skills
Occult Knowledge 42

In many ways, Fiona has become my standout NPC in my Chicago games. 

Larina is a human witch; Fiona is a near-kin Sorceress. I opted to go in this direction so I could see the differences between the two magic types in the Magic book. Fiona is still recovering from her near Hag-conversion. So her magic feels more like a Kin than Larina's coven magic does. 

So, I want to talk about the differences between Jackson-era Faye and Chicago-Fiona. Same girl, different experiences. In some ways, Fiona becomes more Fiona in NightLife. Faye hated high school, and she hated (hates) Jackson. She flees first to UIUC and then to UIC, but it isn't college or university academics that give her life. It is Chicago. Here is a giant city filled with strange new people, and she LOVES it. 

I get it. I remember leaving class one summer night and looking out at the city from a Blue Line L station and just being in awe of how beautiful it was. In my mind, Faye saw the same sight, but where I was in awe, she fell in love. Faye embraced Chicago in such a fundamentally deep way. From that moment on, she was never, ever going to leave.

NightLife also gave some great ideas for Faye/Fiona regardless of what game system I might use. She works till close at Muse (before she owned it) and then goes out to clubs that would have been too dangerous for a girl in her 20s to go to by herself, but she is a powerful sorceress/witch. She dances until 3 am, eats Thai food or whatever is still open (lots of places), and turns around and goes back to work the next day. 

While all of this is wonderful for Fiona, it is the start of Fiona and Larina growing apart. They still remain close; you can't erase that. But they are setting their sights now in different directions. 

Jackson to Chicago

I did not set out to create another campaign this month. I certainly don't need another campaign. But somewhere along the way I followed these kids out of Jackson and into Chicago. By 1992 they are no longer kids, and the supernatural isn't something hiding beneath their hometown anymore. It has neighborhoods, jobs, stores, clubs, politics, and a social life. I don't know what I am going to do with that yet. For now I am calling it Chicago 92. I suspect I will be coming back to it. 

Jackson was about discovering the supernatural. Chicago is starting to look like it will be about living with it.

Final Word

NightLife will not replace NIGHT SHIFT on my table. NIGHT SHIFT is just a far better fit for what I want out of a horror RPG. But I would not have NIGHT SHIFT in my hands now if it hadn't been for the nightclubs and streets of NightLife. 

I intended to explore how a single campaign idea could be viewed through the lens of different games; I ended up with much more than that. I got so much out of these games that I think I'll do a proper retrospective later. Likely next month. 

October Horror Movie Challenge: Vicious Lips (1986)

Vicious Lips is not a great movie, nor does it fit well with my theme this month, but I had fun with it.

Vicious Lips (1986)

Directed by Albert Pyun, the premise follows an all-female rock band traveling across space for an important gig. In the course of their journey, they crash on a desert planet and have to deal with a killer alien, while spending much of their time in neon-lit sets looking as though MTV has exploded on them. 

It is an all-female Streets of Fire, but with a Heavy Metal sequence, then run through the mid-1980s MTV filter. I like that description better than the movie itself, but it explains why I enjoyed it. 

Style is what does the heavy lifting here. The hair is enormous, the wardrobes are louder than the music, and the sets are awash in a neon glow; it is as if someone set about making a science-fiction universe from a nightclub, a music video and the left-overs of the Empire Pictures warehouse. The band's new lead singer is called Judy Jetson. Subtlety was never on the agenda.

It gets off to an energetic start but once the band has crash-landed the film loses much of its steam. The middle section is overlong with the band tramping around the ship and the desert when I would have preferred more of the space-rock craziness. There is a Venusian beast and other ghoulish oddities, but the film could have used more aliens. 

A lot more.

There is no call for restraint when making a picture of a glam-rock girl band going intergalactic. That is the lesson. If you are going to go full speed, go warp 9.9.

The 1980s Were Not Afraid to Mix Things Up

In watching these movies all month long, I am reminded of how open the 1980s were to mashing genres. Vicious Lips is at once science fiction, horror, rock musical, comedy, creature feature, and music video. It does not seem to care whether the parts fit. They are put on screen, and the audience is expected to follow along.

They do not always fit. Which is part of the appeal.

You have your killer creature and spaceships, your rock concerts and futuristic nightclubs, some horror imagery and scenes that seem to have come from another production altogether. Pyun pushes the visuals even when the story isn't moving and, as some have pointed out, the neon and editing are far more memorable than the plot.

I miss that kind of genre mixing. Modern films are boxed in before the cameras roll. Horror is horror, sci-fi is sci-fi. 

The 80s would ask "What if the girl band has a spaceship?" or "What if there is a serial killer on board? An alien monster too?" and just go with it. Then throw in some sexy, half-naked sand sirens and call it a wrap.

That doesn't necessarily make for a good movie; Vicious Lips shows us that. The acting is inconsistent, the story gets lost, and the pacing falls apart at times. At times, the movie seems to forget its purpose. Where were they going? I forgot at points.

But it is never shy about being strange. And that is worth something.

Final Thoughts

This doesn't really fit my hometown-horror theme for the month, but it does fit what I have been rediscovering about the 1980s. These filmmakers were willing to take a chance. Some of it was great. Some of it was Vicious Lips.

I had my fun with it.

Give me the neon and the big hair, a girl band in space and a killer alien, a film that thinks *Streets of Fire*, *Heavy Metal* and MTV can exist in the same world.

Only put in a few more aliens next time.

NIGHT SHIFT, Jackson, and Thirteen Parsecs

No. I am not about to send my Jackson kids into space à la "Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space."  Certainly, I should remember that unrelenting horror is just torture without some fun. 

This could work as a crazy "Space Truckers" adventure. Instead of hauling space-beer to the outer colonies, you are hauling the latest girl band. Trouble is there is a price on their head!

Or something. 

If we learn anything from Vicious Lips, it is that don't be afraid to mix it up a bit.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 45
First Time Views: 31

October Horror Movie Challenge: Spookies (1986)

Last night's movie was Spookies from 1986, and crimony, what an absolute mess. Normally I write these up as I am watching them and then a little time at the end to cover some more. But I needed time to read up on this mess, so I am posting it tonight, early. I might need another movie to work this one out of my system.

Spookies (1986)

A group of people wander into an old mansion and start getting picked off by an astonishing collection of monsters. Normally I would describe the characters a little more carefully, but this is one of the strangest collections of supposed friends I have seen in a horror movie, and that is saying something. We get a couple who seem to have wandered in from a 1960s greaser movie, a buttoned-down yuppie, some idiot with a puppet, an Englishwoman for reasons I never quite understood, and a woman saddled with the unfortunate name Meegan. Not Megan. Meegan. The credits and closed captioning confirm it. There is a sorcerer, his dead wife, a kid who makes me long for the intellectual discourse we got from Gamera's Kenny, and a weird-ass spider woman who is inexplicably the best actress of the lot. 

The acting is terrible, and the story barely holds together. Characters appear, disappear, and occasionally seem to be participating in entirely different movies.

Turns out they are.

Spookies began as a movie called Twisted Souls, written by Frank Farel, Brendan Faulkner, and Thomas Doran and directed by Faulkner and Doran. They shot it in 1984, primarily at the Jay Estate in Rye, New York. After a falling out with financial backer Michael Lee, the original filmmakers lost control of the production. Lee subsequently brought in Eugenie "Genie" Joseph, who shot a substantial amount of completely new material with different actors and storylines. The filmmakers then edited the footage from the two productions into Spookies.

Suddenly the movie makes perfect sense.

Well, no. Not really. It still makes absolutely no sense.

But at least now I understand why it makes no sense.

The partygoers wandering around the mansion and encountering monster after monster are largely from the original Twisted Souls. The sorcerer Kreon, his imprisoned bride Isabelle, the kid wandering around, the werecat, and several other pieces came from the later material. Genie Joseph herself described being hired to rescue what she saw as an unsellable rough cut and rewrite, reshoot, and re-edit it into something releasable.

The seams are not merely visible. They are basically load-bearing walls.

What saves Spookies, at least somewhat and why I didn't turn it off the moment the idiots from Twisted Souls opened their mouths, are the monster effects. There are muck creatures, zombies, a spider woman, demons, a Grim Reaper, and all sorts of other rubbery horrors. The original filmmakers were clearly more interested in creating monsters than coherent characters, and honestly, I can respect that. The creature work involved effects artists like Gabe Bartalos and others who went on to work in practical effects.

There are several moments where I found myself thinking, "That is actually a pretty good monster." And a lot of them were good as far as the effects go. The Muck Men, the makeup, especially that Spider Woman. 

Then someone starts talking again and reminded me that yes, as bad as this movie is, the original Twisted Souls was likely a lot worse. I know. That is a bold statement given how bad this one actually is. 

Still, there is something almost endearing about a movie willing to throw this many creatures at the screen. If Spookies had a coherent story, halfway competent acting, and characters who seemed like they had actually met one another before arriving at the mansion, it might have been a fun little monster movie. Maybe.

Instead, it is cinematic taxidermy. Two dead movies stitched together and propped up in the hope nobody notices the seams. 

Everybody notices the seams. 

The Maria Pechukas Rabbit Hole

Then Spookies sent me somewhere completely unexpected.

Maria Pechukas plays Isabelle, Kreon's imprisoned wife, and naturally I looked her up afterward. Pechukas apparently had a very small filmography after Spookies, but that led me into an extremely obscure corner of shot-on-video horror.

She later worked repeatedly with filmmaker Jay Lind, whom she was also married to for several years. It immediately made me think of the relationship between Lina Romay and Jesús Franco (and not Rob Zombie and Sherri Moon Zombie).  Her credits include Blood Dreams (also known as Sangre Songes), Valerie, Do You Like Women?, Night of the Cat, and finally Carmilla in 1998.

I initially thought I had stumbled onto a whole series of no-budget Carmilla knockoffs. It is not quite that neat, but it is close enough to be fascinating.

Blood Dreams was a 40-minute lesbian vampire film made in 1991 with Pechukas, Debbie Rochon, and Amy Lynn Baxter, reportedly intended to attract financing for a feature-length version. Valerie again paired Pechukas and Rochon in another lesbian vampire story. Do You Like Women? veered sideways into an erotic horror-comedy about a society of female cannibals, while Night of the Cat involved a woman transforming into a murderous cat creature. Then Lind finally made an actual adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla in 1998, with Pechukas herself playing Carmilla in modern-day Long Island.

This is exactly the sort of obscurity that makes me lose an hour on the Internet and not get to bed until very late.

Unfortunately, finding information about these movies is much easier than finding the movies themselves. Most appear to have had tiny VHS releases and essentially no modern distribution. I found one DVD listing for over $130, which is more than I am willing to spend to satisfy my curiosity about an obscure lesbian vampire movie shot on video thirty-five years ago. Not to mention I am not even sure it is the right one. 

SIDE NOTE: Actress Lili Reinhart has been all over social media (well, at least mine) talking about how she wants to do "Carmilla" as a movie and Hollywood is too afraid to do it. Seriously? I found one, maybe two, new versions of this tale that I have never seen before, and I have covered this tale a LOT here. Message to Lili Reinhart: Read my blog; you can learn what has worked and what hasn't for Carmilla. 

So, somewhere out there, though, is an entire little ecosystem of early-1990s microbudget horror starring Maria Pechukas, Debbie Rochon, Amy Lynn Baxter, and others. And now I know it exists.

This is how these things start.

You watch Spookies. Then you look up one actress. Three hours later you are trying to locate a 40-minute lesbian vampire movie from 1991 that may only exist on somebody's deteriorating VHS tape.

The October Horror Movie Challenge is working exactly as intended. This is why I haven't gotten out of the 70s and 80s for horror, too many side quests!

Jackson Connection

Oh. Shit. Yeah, I am supposed to talk about what I can use from this movie for my settings...Uh. I got nuthin'.

Well. That's not 100% true, but the ideas I do have have been better executed in other movies. So let tonight's movie be a cautionary tale about researching movies late at night, and about how all my Peach Tea Monster Energy drinks (my current drink of choice these days) are down in my office, not here next to me when I needed them most. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 44
First Time Views: 30

This Old Dragon: 40 Years of the Dragon #114 Witch

 This October marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Dragon #114. All year long, I have been waxing nostalgic about my gaming experiences from 1986 and how they set the tone for the next 40 years of my gaming life. I have also spoken at great length about the witches who have shared those gaming experiences with me over the last four decades. 

So I would be remiss if I didn't mark this particular anniversary as something important.

But the question is, after spending so much time with the witch and this particular issue of Dragon magazine, what do I have left to say?

Turns out, more than I thought.

The Witch on the Page

I have already talked at length about how my understanding of witches and witchcraft grew out of my love of stories about witches, as well as historical documents, and modern occult and New Age interpretations of the witch. So seeing her in the pages of Dragon was exactly the sort of thing I had been looking for at the exact time I was looking for her.

Now, I had been working on my own witches for some time before this issue came out. Some of my earliest surviving notes date back to 1982 at the latest (could be 1981 even, but 82 is a safer bet). But Dragon #114 showed me something bigger than what I had been putting together in my haphazard collection of notebook pages.

This was a complete class.

Based on Ronald Pehr's Witch in The Dragon #20, Bill Muhlhausen created the original witch class, with Kim Mohan and Tom Moldvay revising the version in #43. Roger E. Moore expanded and revised it for #114, with Karen Martin, Robin Jenkins, and Kim Mohan editing.

Beyond the name, beyond the mechanics, and beyond the particular choices made in its design, the Dragon #114 witch taught me something very important.

The witch, as a class, could work.

Maybe not exactly the way I would have done it, but that was part of the lesson, too.

There was one thing about the Dragon #114 witch I never quite agreed with. She was presented primarily as an NPC, and the editors warned she might be too powerful for regular player characters. There was an implication that this character, while maybe not 100% evil, was certainly up to no good (or even good, for that matter; yes, there is a distinction).

But I wanted to play a witch, not just fight one.

I had already been thinking about witches as characters who could be heroes, villains, or anything in between. Their relationship with magic made them witches, not their alignment. And I certainly wasn't interested in limiting my witches to being somebody else's adversary.

That was another lesson I took from Dragon #114. Just because the designers had one particular use in mind didn't mean their rules could accomplish only that. 

I knew the class was capable of more.

"Me and Thee"

The witch I was building and the Dragon #114 witch had many similarities. While I marveled at that back then, the reasons turned out to be largely mundane and practical. We were all reading the same books.

Back in Dragon #43, Tom Moldvay pretty much spelled this out in his revision of the witch class, which would eventually form the basis for the version in #114.

I detailed that here: Tom Moldvay on Witches.

Moldvay outlined six things he felt a witch class needed: herbalism, fascination or charm, a combination of clerical and magic-user abilities, sympathetic magic, secret religious practices, and powers tied to nature and the changing seasons. When I revisited his article in 2011, I added two more things I felt were essential: covens and ritual magic.

Looking back now, I find it remarkable how many of these ideas were already in my notes, even if I hadn't yet figured out how to turn them into workable game mechanics.

Among other things, we agreed that the witch should have a combination of clerical and magic-user spells, though I originally had my witches avoiding flashy magic and spells that did a lot of damage. So, no fireballs. I wanted witches to have magic that was more subtle, more personal, and often more frightening. Curses, charms, divinations, transformations, and magic that could affect people without necessarily blowing them up.

I already had the idea that witches could have healing magic, but never to the degree that clerics did. Herbal healing, potions, and magical cures all seemed perfectly appropriate. A witch should be able to tend to the sick, heal wounds, and perhaps cure certain ailments through her knowledge of herbs and magic. But she should not replace the cleric in an adventuring party. Maybe at low levels she could be a stand-in, but never once the real combat started. ETA: I am reminded of a scene in one of my Jackson playtests where Candy, the "thief," is a better healer than my witches.

Also, under no circumstances would a witch have a Raise Dead spell.

This was something Moldvay's discussion helped me articulate more clearly. The witch's relationship with nature and the seasons also meant a relationship with the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Bringing someone back from the dead in the same body seemed to violate that cycle. Reincarnation, however, was another matter entirely. That fit the witch's worldview much better. Death was part of nature, not just another condition to fix with enough magical power.

The High Secret Order (HSO) spells were great, and many of them fit right into what I thought witch magic should be. I just had a group of spells I originally called "witchcraft" and later "hex magic." My witch was more focused on occult powers and familiars.

Sympathetic magic mattered most to me. The idea that a witch could use a lock of hair, a personal possession, a poppet, or some other object connected to a person to work her magic felt much more appropriate than simply pointing a finger and casting a spell. A witch's practice of magic should feel different, not just in the spells she can cast.

In my 2011 post, I suggested that clerics rely on faith, magic-users on intellect, and witches on personal connections and magical correspondences. A wizard might regard such things as unnecessary props, but to the witch they are part of the magic itself. This also gives the witch something distinctive to do in the game. She might need to gather ingredients, prepare a charm, or perform a ritual before a spell can take effect. These are not just trappings, this is good roleplaying.

Herbalism and alchemy were also natural fits. I had long associated witches with herbs, potions, and strange concoctions bubbling away in cauldrons. But there was also a practical design question here. How much healing could I give the witch before she started replacing the cleric? How much magical power could I give her before she became just another magic-user?

I asked these questions in 1986, and I still ask them when designing witches today.

The power of fascination was another interesting idea. Witches in folklore and fiction have always been able to beguile, charm, or otherwise influence others. Morgan le Fay and Circe came to mind, along with countless other witches from stories, television, and movies. I liked the idea of this being more than another charm spell. It was part of what made a witch a witch.

The religious aspects of witchcraft were a little more complicated. Moldvay drew on historical and anthropological interpretations of witchcraft, including Margaret Murray's work. Murray's theories about a surviving, organized pre-Christian witch-cult have long since been discredited, but they were enormously influential on twentieth-century ideas about witches, including modern Paganism and fantasy fiction. Not to mention, great for my gaming ideas.

Like Moldvay, I drew on many of those same sources. But I was also interested in the idea that a witch's relationship with the supernatural differed from a cleric's. A witch might honor gods and goddesses, work with spirits, bargain with supernatural powers, or call upon something older and stranger. Her magic could be spiritual without working the same way as clerical magic.

This eventually became an important part of my own ideas about Patrons and how witches gain and use their powers.

The two things I added to Moldvay's list in 2011, covens and ritual magic, were also missing from many early attempts at witch classes.

Witches working together are a fixture of folklore and literature, from the Weird Sisters in Macbeth to the witches of modern television. I wanted covens to mean something mechanically. Maybe three witches working together could accomplish something none of them could do alone. Maybe certain spells required a coven, or their effects grew stronger as more witches participated.

Ritual magic went hand in hand with that. Not every spell should be something a witch could cast in the middle of combat. Some magic should take time, preparation, special ingredients, and perhaps the right phase of the moon or time of year. That sort of magic was often much closer to the witchcraft I had been reading about than anything in the Player's Handbook.

Of course, these ideas weren't all fully formed in 1986. Some were little more than margin notes, or, more often, on paper bookmarks, and others were things I wouldn't find good mechanical solutions for until much later. But the foundations were there.

And that brings me back to Dragon #114.

The witch in those pages wasn't my witch. I would have handled some spells and abilities differently, and I wanted to explore ideas the article never touched on. But that was perfectly fine.

What mattered was that we approached the same problem from similar directions, used many of the same sources, and found that a witch could be something different from either a cleric or a magic-user.

Not necessarily better or more powerful. Just different.

There is a line from one of Larina's binding rituals that goes, "I bind you to me, and me to thee. I bind us with the power of three times times."

I think that fits well here. My witch and the Dragon #114 witch were never quite the same, but they have been connected for forty years. One influenced the other, and my own understanding of both has changed over time.

And I suspect that neither of them is quite finished with me yet.

"If Anyone Falls"

Of course, I can't talk about Dragon #114 without talking about Larina.

I have already gone into great detail about her origins and evolution in my Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986 post back in July. I don't want to repeat all of that here, but something about her relationship with this particular issue of Dragon is worth exploring.

When I created Larina in July 1986, she was a witch in concept but a magic-user on her character sheet. I had my own witch class in various stages of development, but it was hardly complete. So she was a magic-user, with the understanding that she was really something else. I have a rather distinct memory of saying "I am going to play her like a witch." She wasn't the first; hell, she wasn't even my fourth witch character (well, maybe my fourth), but she was the one I explicitly called a "witch."

When Dragon #114 came along, I immediately made her a magic-user/witch. Suddenly, there were rules for something I had been trying to represent for years.

But I didn't quite appreciate then how much those rules would change the way I thought about her.

She wasn't simply a magic-user who happened to call herself a witch anymore. Her witchcraft was something distinct, something she could study and practice alongside her more conventional magical education. That distinction became part of her story.

And more importantly, it made me think about what she could do that other characters couldn't.

Larina was never going to be the most powerful combat spellcaster in the group. That wasn't what interested me about her. I wanted her to know things. I wanted her to understand the strange and mysterious, to recognize a supernatural threat when others couldn't, and to know what to do about it.

The witch class helped me explore that. But then something interesting happened.

Over the years, as I kept working on my own witch classes and playing others (Bard Games, Mayfair, AD&D 2nd ed), Larina became a kind of measuring stick for them. I could look at a new version of the witch and ask myself, "Can I make Larina with these rules?"

It was a useful question, even if it wasn't always fair. After all, not every witch should be Larina, and I'd created plenty who were nothing like her. But she represented a particular understanding of what a witch could be, and if the rules couldn't support that, then I wanted to know why.

In 1986, I was adapting Larina to fit the witch class in Dragon #114. Forty years later, I often evaluate witch classes by how well they represent her. 

So, somewhere along the way, the relationship had reversed.

And that brings me to something else.

The witch in Dragon #114 was a collection of rules. A good collection of rules, one that influenced me enormously, but rules nonetheless. Larina was the character who lived with the consequences of those rules.

She gained experience, learned new spells, met other characters, developed relationships, changed her beliefs, and survived campaigns that sometimes ended long before I wanted them to.

She eventually became a character I could play in games that had no witch class at all. The mechanics changed, sometimes dramatically. But I still knew who she was.

This taught me something about character classes that I don't think I fully understood in 1986. A class needs to be more than a collection of powers and abilities. It should help players create a particular kind of character, one with a recognizable identity and a place in the game world.

And if it does that well, the characters it helps create might eventually become something larger than the class itself.

That certainly happened with Larina.

Forty years ago, Dragon #114 helped me figure out how to play her.

Forty years later, she is still helping me figure out how to write witches.

October Horror Movie Challenge: Gamera (1965)

 Tonight is my oldest son's birthday, and he wanted to watch a Kaiju movie. We have seen all the Godzilla movies and wanted to see something from the same era. To our mutual surprise, we had never seen the first Gamera movie. So tonight it is giant, flying atomic turtles! 

Gamera (1965)

Some airplanes carrying atomic weapons fly over the Arctic. One crashes, explodes, and awakens Gamera, "The Devil's Envoy."

And we are off.

There is no question that Gamera owes a lot, ok everything, to Godzilla. Atomic weapons awaken a giant prehistoric monster, conventional weapons are useless, and Japan once again finds itself being stomped by something enormous. But Gamera quickly establishes his own personality. He breathes fire, feeds on energy, and, most importantly, can pull his limbs into his shell and fly like a gigantic spinning UFO.

That alone was worth the price of admission.

The practical effects are a lot of fun. Miniature cities, tanks, jets, explosions, and plenty of buildings wait to be smashed. Some effects work better than others, but I have always had a soft spot for this kind of physical monster filmmaking. Gamera feels like he is actually there because, in a very literal sense, something really is standing in those miniature streets knocking things over.

It's silly. It doesn't always work. But I love it all the same. 

Another key difference from Godzilla is Toshio/Kenny, the turtle-loving boy who becomes convinced Gamera isn't really evil. Gamera even saves him at one point, planting the seeds for the much more child-friendly direction the series would take later. In this first movie, though, Gamera is still dangerous. People die, buildings burn, and nobody really knows what to do with him.

I would be lying if I didn't admit that Tetsuya "Tetsu" Hayashida wasn't based on the "annoying" kid from all these Kaiju movies.  

Eventually humanity comes up with Plan Z, which is basically: if we cannot kill the giant flying turtle, shoot him into space.

Sure. Why not?

I enjoyed this more than I expected. It is not as polished or as ominous as the original Godzilla, but it has its own weird charm. The moment Gamera pulls everything into his shell and spins off through the sky, you know exactly what kind of movie you are watching.

My son wanted giant monsters for his birthday.

Gamera delivered.

NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson Connections

Ah...yeah. Maybe not this time. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
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Witchcraft Wednesday: Coven 13, Issue #4

In many ways, this last issue is unlike the first three.  It is still recognizably Coven 13, but it has a transitional air about it. The witchcraft is there, to be sure, but fantasy and sword-and-sorcery have encroached on the center. That makes sense in hindsight because this is the final issue published as Coven 13. Afterward, Fantasy Publishing Company acquired the magazine, and it continued as Witchcraft & Sorcery.

The March 1970 issue contains Buddy Saunders' "The Bidderfrost Dragon," "I, Vampire!" by Pronzini/Wallman, S. M. Clawson's "The Convert," Lee Chater's "The Thing on the Stairs," Sidney Harriet's "Eats!", the poltergeist installment of Bell, Book and Tarot, a Robert E. Howard poem, and the enormous (85-page) conclusion to "Let There Be Magick!" 

The editorial is particularly poignant now. Landis says the distributor wants the magazine to remain bimonthly for another three issues, so they have decided to finish Let There Be Magick! early and clear the decks for the "new COVEN 13 of 1970." The proposed new format would have featured two long novelettes, several short stories, an article, and the regular departments. He clearly expects the magazine to continue.  

Of course, that version of Coven 13 never happens.

That gives this issue a strange quality. Landis thinks he is reorganizing the magazine. We know we are reading his final issue.

"The Bidderfrost Dragon" is probably the most overtly game-like piece we've encountered in the entire four-issue run. Aerma is an inexperienced sorceress trying to conjure a dragon to defend her castle. Instead, she summons a Sheridan tank and its four-man crew from an Army exercise in Arizona. She initially assumes the armored vehicle is simply a very strange dragon. 

From there we get language spells, spellbooks, demons, magical bargains, an actual dragon, armies, castles, and modern military technology. Aerma bargains with demons for fuel, but a translation problem results in twenty-four cases of high-proof whiskey. Fortunately, the Sheridan can run on it. Eventually the tank fights a genuine fire-breathing dragon.

This isn't especially useful for witchcraft, but it is fascinating for the D&D side of what we've been discussing. This is March 1970, and here we already have the sort of gleeful collision of fantasy and modern technology that old-school gaming will later embrace. Again, I would not suggest influence. It simply demonstrates that this kind of genre mixing was already part of fantasy's vocabulary. Plus this sounds EXACTLY like something you could have read in an early issue of Dragon magazine. 

Aerma herself is also interesting. Her magic is procedural. She has books, languages, pentagrams, demons with whom she negotiates, and spells that can go wrong. Magic is fantastic, but not arbitrary. That remains consistent with much of what Coven 13 has been doing.

"I, Vampire!" by Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey M. Wallmann has put forth the purest version of Landis’ concept for the supernatural in a modern setting. The whole piece is put together from letters, editorial replies, telegrams, newspaper pieces, and official memoranda. Peter Lewis, a vampire, has written his autobiography and regularly sends it to an editor who takes it for a dreadful work of fiction. The vampire makes it known more than once that he is not making it up. But when the editor puts out one too many rejections, he is found dead in his office not long after, his neck punctured and blood gone, with bat guano on the carpet.

After that, Peter Lewis puts "I, Vampire" in front of Arthur H. Landis at Coven 13.

It is entertaining. What is best is how the vampire fits into 1969 America. He is forced to deal with editors, Western Union, postal delivery, and the indignity of having his memoirs dismissed as poor fiction. You will not find any Transylvanian castles here.ignity of having his memoirs dismissed as poor fiction. 

And there is no Transylvanian castle anywhere in sight.

Bell, Book and Tarot deals with poltergeists this time. The article surveys their recurring characteristics, including knocking, objects moving in defiance of gravity, fires, children or adolescents serving as apparent centers of activity, and cases where fraud explains some events but not everything. It stresses how difficult it is to fit poltergeists neatly into a single explanation.    

The line I would keep for your own purposes is essentially this: poltergeist may describe what is happening without explaining what is causing it.

That is an excellent Jackson principle.

Calling something a ghost, demon, faerie, psychic event, or poltergeist gives the characters a vocabulary. It does not necessarily mean they understand the underlying phenomenon.

Then we get "The Convert" by S. M. Clawson, which is easily the most important witchcraft story in the issue.

Benjie Stone is a biochemist who returns to his old family home after his father's death. He plans to clear the old "witching junk" out of the tower and turn the space into a laboratory. The Stone family, however, is one of the old witch families of the region. Benjie's mother had the talent. His father apparently did not. Benjie has rejected the entire tradition as superstition and replaced it with modern science.     

The neighboring Bowman family has its own magical tradition, and Benjie becomes involved in an escalating conflict with Hiram Bowman. What I like here is that the story never really asks us to choose between science and magic. Benjie's biochemistry works. His manipulation of hormones works. The laboratory is real knowledge.

But the witchcraft is real too.

Benjie's mistake isn't believing in science. His mistake is assuming that one system of knowledge invalidates the other.

By the climax, he is being pursued by something science alone cannot explain. Faced with death, he finally cries out that he believes, and the inherited supernatural world he has rejected responds. 

That is excellent material for Witchcraft Wednesday, and probably the centerpiece of this post. I am thinking of ways to adapt this to the magical families of Jackson (the Vales, Vosses, Thornes, and Cricklows) or better yet, to Sunny Valley.

Right after "The Convert" comes another Robert E. Howard contribution, the poem "Feach Air Muir Lionadhi Gealach Buidhe Mar Or." (Scottish Gaelic translation: "Look at the rising tide-a moon yellow as gold.") It invokes Mananan Mac Lir, the sea, ghostly ships, ancient shores, and the pull of an older Celtic world.

So Howard appears in both Coven 13 #3 and #4. That gives the final half of the original Coven 13 run a direct Appendix N connection. Unlike "The Little People," however, I wouldn't call this a newly discovered first publication without qualification. Bibliographies disagree about an earlier appearance in Howard's amateur-journal circle, The Junto.

"The Thing on the Stairs" by Lee Chater goes back to werewolves, but once again Coven 13 refuses to give us the standard cursed-man-under-the-full-moon version. It also features some of the cheesecakeist art we have seen from William Stout so far.

The Weres, yes, that is their name, are an ancient family who have lived alongside humanity for centuries. They can assume human form so completely that they consider themselves the genuine humans and ordinary Homo sapiens a rather underdeveloped species. 

That is much more interesting to me than another werewolf curse.

The Weres have their own family history, reproduction, attitudes toward humanity, supernatural enemies, and traditions. One ancestor even made a deal with the Devil for a creature called the Watchet, only for the Devil to discover the Weres had no soul to bargain away. 

This is another useful example of supernatural people rather than supernatural monsters. Humans aren't the default viewpoint. The Weres think they are normal.

There is something here for Jackson; I have spent some time these last two weeks trying to figure out how I want to do werewolves and other lycanthropes. I am not 100% there yet. Ok. I am not even 30% there yet, to be honest.

It is not terribly different in concept from last night's Teen Wolf.

"Eats!" by Sidney Harriet may be the strongest Sunny Valley story in the issue.

Gerald Johnson stops at an isolated roadside place during a rainstorm. The locals feed him an enormous meal while everyone else watches. Eventually he learns that they do this once every spring. They feed, fatten, kill, roast, and divide a traveler among the townspeople because the ritual keeps bad luck away and helps the crops. 

That is straight-up American folk horror. It's "Motel Hell" meets "Alice."

And this is March 1970, three years before The Wicker Man. The original, not the Nic Cage "Bees!" version. I'm certainly not suggesting a connection between them, but the similarities in the broad folk-horror machinery are striking: an isolated community, agricultural fertility, seasonal ritual, and an outsider who becomes the sacrifice. The Wicker Man would not appear until 1973. 

For Sunny Valley, this is almost immediately usable.

Then we get the conclusion to "Let There Be Magick!", and it is enormous because Landis compressed what was originally planned as a five-part serial so it could end here.

By the finale, we're deep into armies, sorcerers, undead creatures, magical attacks, alien forces, telepathy, science-fiction technology, kingdoms, and enormous fantasy battles. At the climax, the Pug-Boos summon something like a quarter-million dottles into the battle, turning what should have been an apocalyptic confrontation into something almost absurdly gentle.

And then we finally learn more about the Pug-Boos. The protagonist is a Galactic Adjuster. The Pug-Boos reveal that they are something greater: Universal Adjusters.

So the apparent fantasy world has been sitting inside a science-fictional cosmology all along.

That ending really completes the point we've been making throughout these four issues. Coven 13 doesn't care very much about keeping fantasy, horror, science fiction, sorcery, occultism, folklore, and weird fiction in separate boxes.

The readers noticed this too.

One letter in this issue asks for more ceremonial magic. Another reader calls "The Little People" the best story in #3, asks for more Howard, and praises Let There Be Magick! as sword-and-sorcery. 

But another reader takes exactly the opposite position, arguing that if Coven 13 is supposed to be about "WITCHCRAFT-HORROR-THE SUPERNATURAL," then Let There Be Magick! has no place in it because it is simply fantasy.

Reminds me of the letters to Dragon a bit.

That disagreement may be one of the most interesting things in the whole issue. We've just spent four issues watching Coven 13 show that Landis doesn't really accept that distinction.

And that may be the best angle for the final post.

The first issue asks what modern supernatural fiction should look like. The second argues that supernatural things need context. The third really brings witchcraft, folklore, weird fiction, and fantasy together. And the fourth ends with the readers themselves arguing over whether fantasy belongs in a magazine about witchcraft and the supernatural.

Then Coven 13 disappears, and Witchcraft & Sorcery takes its place. But we won't see it for another year.

More than any previous issue, #4 feels like a crossroads. That seems entirely appropriate for the end of Coven 13.

I don't have all the issues of Witchcraft & Sorcery, but when I do, I'll have to do a retrospective. 

October Horror Movie Challenge: Teen Wolf (1985)

 Ok. So. I was talking with my wife over the weekend while doing yard cleanup (it was 70 this past weekend in Chicago!) and I was talking about how I am trying to figure out what species could be found in Jackson Public High School. I have humans, half-demons, and even some ghosts. I was considering some were-creatures like werewolves. She liked the werewolf idea, but she likes werewolves. So I thought I'd go with the movie at the intersection of high school, werewolves, and the 1980s. 1985's "Teen Wolf."

Teen Wolf (1985)

So yeah, this is a rewatch. I saw this in theatres when it first came out. Michael J. Fox plays Scott Howard, a fairly ordinary high school kid who discovers lycanthropy runs in the family. Instead of becoming a ravening monster, he becomes better at basketball, more confident, more popular, and a lot hairier.

What interests me now is how completely Teen Wolf removes werewolves from traditional horror. There is no curse to break, no silver bullet, no tragic transformation under a full moon, and almost no fear of becoming the wolf. Scott's father is also a werewolf and treats the whole thing as an inherited family condition. The real conflict is not "am I becoming a monster?" but "what kind of person am I when everyone suddenly thinks I am special?"

That is a very useful idea for Jackson.

Werewolves in Jackson

I don't think every werewolf in Jackson has to be a cursed killer. I prefer to think of lycanthropy as something that can take many forms. For some, it's an inheritance; for others, it's the result of a bite or curse. Some have more command over it than others. In any case, it gives the werewolf more range than the simple routine of waiting for a full moon.

The inherited kind is particularly to my liking. A Jackson teenager could find out one side of the family has always been "different," and no one else needs to know. When the kid makes his first change, Dad is not beside himself with horror. He sighs and lays down the rules. It is still a frightening business, but it can also be awkward, funny, and quite ordinary.

Teen Wolf would have it that the transformation does away with the person less so than it amplifies what was there to begin with. Scott becomes more athletic and sure of himself, yet he also gets arrogant because everyone is happy to give him credit for being the Wolf. With Jackson, I see lycanthropy ratcheting up aggression, appetite, protectiveness, and territorial instincts without necessarily making him evil.

So more "Bitten" and less "The Wolfman." 

It is a more compelling teenage werewolf. The risk is not so much that the wolf will get the upper hand, but that being the wolf is very gratifying.

Then there is the very Jackson in that the whole town is in on it. An old family may have been turning out werewolves for ages. The principal is aware of it, as is the football coach. Some teachers recall the father’s own episode twenty years back. No one is phoning the police; this is Jackson, and there are ways of handling such matters.

Trouble comes when the kid stops following the rules.

That is the lesson from Teen Wolf. Werewolves need not be Gothic monsters. In a small town, they are your neighbors and farm kids and the family down the road, or the athlete in class. The horror sets in when what has long been under control isn't anymore.

Or at least that is one idea. It is late, and I am tired. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
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