October Horror Movie Challenge: A Sorority House Double Feature

Heading into the homestretch here, and I like doing more double features. Just like being at the old 67 Drive-in! For tonight’s double feature I am going back to my college days with a pair of slashers set in sorority houses, namely 1982’s The House on Sorority Row and the 1986's Sorority House Massacre.

They are not subtle films by any means; honestly, they are just excuses to have college girls run around in various stages of undress, but both have ideas I can get behind, especially for my own West End Girls adventure for Jackson.

The House on Sorority Row (1982)

Mark Rosman directs this one, with Kate McNeil as Katey and Eileen Davidson as Vicki, and Janis Ward, Robin Meloy, Harley Jane Kozak, Jodi Draigie, and Ellen Dorsher playing the rest of the sorority. The film opens on seven sisters getting ready for graduation under the thumb of their house mother, the imperious Mrs. Slater. When a mean-spirited prank turns deadly and appears to have killed her, the girls put the body out of sight so the graduation party can go ahead.

Then someone starts killing them off.

What makes it a better-than-average early-eighties slasher is that there is more to it than a killer in a room full of young women. The crisis is of the girls’ own making. They do something terrible, then panic and compound the problem in an effort to cover it up. The murders have some consequence to them instead of being random. In trying to hold onto the secret and the party, they only open themselves up to more trouble. It is a trope I have seen many times, but it works.

There is history to the house as well, which gains in importance over the course of the movie. It is not just the apparent death of Mrs. Slater that is the horror, but the older secret tied to the place and its inhabitants. That is what holds my interest. A sorority house is a location with memory, not just where the characters reside. By the final act, the girls are not being made to pay for a prank so much as having come across a story that was underway long before they got there. Very effective horror.

This movie is also a great example of the Generational Horror that I really want to achieve in Jackson. The sins of the past are not necessarily revisited by the younger generation, but most often it is the younger generation that has to pick up the bill. This one also has that empty college campus I am looking for in West End Girls.

Sorority House Massacre (1986)

Four years on we have another bunch of college women in a house with a past. Beth comes to the sorority following the passing of the aunt who brought her up and at once has nightmares and déjà vu about the building. At the same time, Bobby, a murderer in a mental institution, feels that she is back at the house and gets out.

Beth/Laura is a psych major, but she also has a lot of visions and/or memories. Could be both given the bad psychology in this one. But it's a horror movie and not my PSYCH 212 lecture I used to give. 

He has his reasons. Bobby is Beth's brother. He killed the rest of the family some years back and went after her too. She lived and was raised somewhere else, repressing the memory to the point where she does not know the sorority is her old home. Yeah. We have seen this plot device as well.

Then, of course, all the girls stay the night in the house he killed everyone in.

Carol Frank wrote and directed the film for Roger Corman's New Concorde. Having done The Slumber Party Massacre with Amy Holden Jones, Frank's hand is evident. One can also see Halloween all over it. Bobby is your typical escaped killer coming home to put things right and Beth has her psychic warnings and dreams. I find the psychic side of it the most compelling. Beth has no conscious recollection of Bobby. Her mind does, however. She will have dreams of the murders before she can put any meaning to them. The house is what brings back the memories she has put away, and Bobby in some fashion is aware of her from miles off.

Once more, the building has the memory before the person. In that way, the sorority house is something more than mere scenery. It is almost a character in its own right.

West End Girls

These two films have me thinking about West End Girls right away.

The setting for that one is set during Memorial Day week in 1985 by which time the students at Illinois Beecher and MacAlister Colleges have for the most part vacated their dorms. A nearly deserted campus is what makes it work. The buildings are there, and the few students left are in them, but the college’s ordinary social life has run its course. It is not unlike the sorority houses in the other movies, only you do not need a sorority for it. The women’s dorms turn into isolated communities where all are privy to each other's routines, yet there are not many witnesses on hand should anything come to pass.

Then there is the buried history.

With The House on Sorority Row, the violence is set off when present day students let an old family secret tied to the house get in the way of them. In Sorority House Massacre, Beth goes back to the scene of her family’s murder without really knowing she is doing so.

West End Girls covers the same ground, if on a bigger scale. I still need to detail more of the adventure, but it is based on a rumor that used to float around my hometown. In some ways this is the Ur-Adventure of Jackson.  Some fifty years back, Edwin Harrow killed five freshman women and Clara Deane in an attempt on Marian Ashcroft. The colleges did their part to cover up the truth, putting Edwin down as one of the victims instead of the killer.

In 1985, that kind of violence starts to happen again.

It is the notion I find with these college slashers. From a student’s vantage point, the place is transitory; you live there for a while, get a degree, and leave. The building endures and with it the stories.

The girls in West End Girls are not targeted because they were unwise or went into the wrong house. They have come to a spot where something awful was done and never properly put to rest. There is a difference. They are living in the wrong place and it is up to the player characters to stop it.

Edwin is not just another slasher after college girls. He is what remains of a wound the institutions refused to acknowledge, half a century ago. It lends the piece more of a ghost-story air than your average slasher, even though I want it to start like one.

Again. If I am waxing political in the adventure, well, no one lives in a vacuum. 

The opening death(s) should be of a type we are very familiar with. A young woman by herself in a largely vacant dorm at night. A figure at the end of the hall. A door that ought to have been locked.

After that, the PCs try to find out that the pattern predates them, and the adventure takes a turn. This isn't a slasher movie. This is a ghost story.

For the most part, the girls in these two films are hemmed in by someone else’s secret. With West End Girls, my girls will try to get to the bottom of it and put an end to the role history has for them. That is how they are not like the ones Edwin put to death long ago.

The old tale has five young women dying. But not the West End Girls.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 33
First Time Views: 21

October Movie Challenge: Frankenstein (2025) and The Bride (2026)

Another double header tonight. With the disappointment of Dracula 2025 still on my mind (damn, that movie got on my nerves!) I wanted to see something Christoph Waltz was good in.

There have been many versions of Frankenstein on the silver screen, including one of the very first films ever made. This movie did not come out in time for me to review it last year, so I saved it for this year. Now, while this is the first time I have reviewed this, I did watch it back in November. So I really can't count tonight's re-watch as a first-time view.

Frankenstein suffers the same issues as Dracula, in that the novel is rarely portrayed with fidelity on the silver screen, and what most people think of as the story has a lot more to do with the Universal Studios versions from the 1930s and 1940s. That's fine; those movies are classics for a reason, but they are not the story on the page.

Frankenstein (2025)

Guillermo del Toro’s 2025 take is not 100% faithful to the novel, but it comes very, very close. I am inclined to rank this and Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as the two best efforts to put Shelley's story on screen. It has occurred to me that a Frankenstein marathon is in order at some point.

Oscar Isaac stars as Victor Frankenstein here, with Jacob Elordi as the Creature. Mia Goth plays both Elizabeth and Victor’s mother, Claire, and Christoph Waltz plays Heinrich Harlander, the arms maker who puts up the money for Victor’s experiments. Harlander is one of del Toro’s more substantial inclusions; he is a wealthy man with his own reasons for wanting to make inroads on death. He is not part of the novel, but that is fine, really.

Waltz is good, as you would expect. He does not have to resort to rants or chewing scenery to make his mark. In Harlander, he has a chance to be charming and intelligent while also being deeply unsettling and vaguely amusing. One gets the sense right away that he is not bankrolling Victor out of any particular faith in the progress of science.

Where del Toro makes his biggest change is with Victor. The original is obsessive and irresponsible enough, but del Toro takes his arrogance and cruelty a step further. Isaac’s version is brilliant and driven, yet damaged by his father and the loss of his mother, and he seems to think that gives him license for all he does. There is an ego to the project as much as a desire to vanquish death.

Which leaves Jacob Elordi’s Creature as the film’s emotional core. Elordi is excellent in the part. What you see at first is something almost childlike, taking in the world through imitation and sensation. But he grows into a creation that is articulate and self-aware, as Shelley intended. Film versions have a habit of losing that; they make the monster out to be stupid when he should be reasoning, reading, and fully comprehending what Victor has made of him.

Del Toro seems to grasp that the real tragedy is not the accidental making of a monster, but rather that Victor has made a person and then shirks his responsibility for him. That is the heart of the novel and why the adaptation works for me.

You will find the Arctic framing device intact, with the narrative set against Captain Anderson’s expedition in the frozen north. It is not exactly as Shelley wrote it, but it has more of the structure and spirit than the typical fare of lightning and torch-wielding villagers.

Then there are the visuals. From the laboratories and machinery to the costumes and bodies, it is all gorgeous, with the kind of beauty mixed with decay that del Toro excels at. Victor’s work is impressive but grotesque.

It is a horror story, to be sure, but not the Creature who is the monster. Victor is. Or at least he creates the conditions for disaster and acts as if it were done to him. The Creature is capable of terrible things, but there is more to it than that.

I was fond of the movie when I saw it in November and even more so the second time around. Being aware of where del Toro has departed from Shelley allows one to see the purpose behind it. It is not a perfect adaptation; perhaps we never will get one. But this one knows the novel, and that is worth something.

The Bride! (2026)

 Ok. I want to start out by saying I really loved what this movie was trying to do. I am not 100% sure it always succeeded in doing what it wanted. No worries; the best bits overwhelmed the weaker parts.

This one doesn't fit my theme either, but like last night it was my wife's choice. She sits through these with me, and I have to sit through things like Hot Frosty around Christmas. ETA: I have been informed I will be watching "Christmas at the Zoo" sometime next month.

This movie opens with narration by Mary Shelley. That is quite appropriate, really, and a nice callback to the very original Bride of Frankenstein, and even a little bit of Young Frankenstein. Much like Elsa Lanchester, Jessie Buckley plays both Mary Shelley and the Bride. She also plays Ida, the woman who is reanimated into the Bride. Christian Bale, in his usual chameleon-like display, plays Frankenstein's monster. It was directed and written by Maggie Gyllenhaal. 

Mary Shelley provides the opening narration for The Bride! which is a fitting touch, and in its own way a nice nod to the original Bride of Frankenstein where we were treated to Mary, Percy and Lord Byron talking shop over her story. Jessie Buckley is on hand as both Mary Shelley and the Bride. In fact, she appears as three related people: Shelley, Ida, and the resurrected woman who will be the Bride. Christian Bale is in fine chameleon form as Frank, or what you would now call the monster, while Maggie Gyllenhaal has put her stamp on the project as writer and director.

The premise is simple enough. Take the old mythology of Bride of Frankenstein and put it in 1930s Chicago. Frank is in need of company, and he goes to Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening) to have a creature created for him. They happen upon Ida, a young woman who was murdered by a mobster, brought back to life. 

Gyllenhaal poses the obvious question with this: what if the Bride had a movie of her own? What if she were allowed to determine her own identity? In so doing, she makes this less of a straight adaptation and more of a rejoinder to the whole Frankenstein tradition.

Buckley is outstanding. She is not grateful to be put back together, nor will she take it for granted that Frank is her soulmate by virtue of having made her. Her Bride is damaged and sexual, funny and angry, unpredictable and very much alive in spite of herself. She has strong opinions on the matter.

As for Bale’s Frank, you can see the line of descent from Boris Karloff’s Monster far more clearly than in Jacob Elordi’s Creature. He is a lonely, scarred man, weary of being hunted, and the film is well aware that he is carrying decades of cinematic history on his shoulders.

Then there is the setting. 1930s Chicago brings with it a host of gangsters, the press, radical politics, and a city in flux for these two outsiders. The synopsis touts a combustible romance and a cultural movement, and in a way the film is as excessive as that description implies. It can be a weakness at times, but also a strength.

There are scenes where The Bride! seems to be straining to be a Gothic horror, a gangster film, a screwball romance, and a feminist take on Frankenstein all at once. Not every bit of it lands. But I would prefer to see Gyllenhaal go after something with such ambition rather than another serviceable retelling of the monster making for a windmill.

Buckley is what keeps it all in order. She gives the part an identity of its own, quite unlike Lanchester’s character, and that is the point. James Whale gave the Creature a companion when he asked for one; Gyllenhaal wants to know what that companion has to say about it. As it happens, quite a lot.

I like the notion of Buckley playing Mary Shelley too, alongside Ida and the Bride. It draws a line between the author and the women made and remade by others. After Hollywood has been at it for two centuries with their versions of Frankenstein, it is only right the Bride should push back. A clever idea.

Hollywood has "dug up" and remade Mary Shelley so many times. 

Don’t get me wrong, not everything in the movie works. The tonal changes are sudden, and at points the characters have to make room for the film’s arguments. I would have liked to have seen it let Frank and the Bride just be for a while. 

But when it does work, it is very good. And it is not trying to usurp the original Bride of Frankenstein, which would be a fool’s errand. It is having an argument with it. Far more compelling.

A case of two Frankensteins

It was a happy accident to put these on one after the other; in doing so, you see how they handle the same mythology from opposite ends.

Then there is Guillermo del Toro, who has no trouble going backward. He makes a point of returning to Mary Shelley and the Arctic setting, giving the Creature the intelligence and emotional depth he is due. It is a reminder that the tragedy is Victor's for not owning up to the life he has made.

Maggie Gyllenhaal moves in the other direction. She is concerned with a movie invention, not something from Shelley, and wants to know what transpires once the laboratory is left behind. What if the Bride is not done for? What if she has her own wants and is under no compulsion to love the one who put her together?

One film is about what Frankenstein was, the other about its potential. I have an appreciation for both. Coming off Dracula 2025, it is a relief to be with filmmakers who actually care why these old monsters are worth our time. Gyllenhaal and del Toro, even in their different takes, respect their source material much more than Luc Besson. 

Mary Shelly, Feminism and Horror

Of course, before there was Boris Karloff, before there was the Universal monster, and long before Hollywood decided that every Frankenstein story needed a castle full of electrical equipment, there was Mary Shelley. In the summer of 1816, an eighteen-year-old Mary Godwin joined Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori in Lake Geneva, Switzerland, where a challenge to write ghost stories ultimately gave us Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Published in 1818, the novel has never really left us.

What I find remarkable is not simply that Shelley was a young woman writing horror in the early nineteenth century, though that is remarkable enough. It is that she understood something about horror that we are still exploring today. The frightening part of Frankenstein isn't merely the reanimated flesh or the unnatural creation of life. It is what happens when someone creates a living being and refuses to take responsibility for it. Victor Frankenstein's greatest sin is not necessarily that he creates a monster or even his hubris, but that he abandons his creation and then refuses to face the consequences.

It is also worth remembering that some of the foundational works of horror were written by women. Mary Shelley helped establish the traditions of both Gothic horror and science fiction, long before those genres acquired their modern names. She wrote about death, obsession, murder, unnatural creation, and the destruction of families, and she did so without sacrificing the emotional and philosophical questions that make the story endure. More than two hundred years later, we are still finding new ways to tell her story. That is a legacy few writers, regardless of genre, can claim.

The Bride of Mary Shelley

There is another connection between Shelley's original novel and both versions of The Bride of Frankenstein that I find especially interesting. In the novel, Victor begins creating a female companion for his Creature but ultimately destroys her before she can come to life. He fears what she might do, whether she would accept the Creature, and what might happen if the two could reproduce. In James Whale's 1935 film, the Bride comes to life, but things don't work out as her creators intended. She takes one look at the Creature and wants nothing to do with him.

There is something wonderfully tragic about that moment. Both Victor and the Creature imagine a female companion who will fulfill their expectations, but neither has considered that she might have expectations of her own. The film gives her very little screen time and even less opportunity to express herself, but her rejection of the Creature becomes the emotional climax of the story. A woman created to be someone's companion chooses otherwise, and everything falls apart.

Now jump ahead ninety-one years to Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! (2026). Here, the Bride is no longer simply a companion created for the Creature. She was a woman named Ida before her death, and when Dr. Euphronius brings her back to life at Frank's request, she becomes something neither of them could have anticipated. She is angry, confused, passionate, violent, and determined to discover who she is. Frank wants someone to love him, and as the two develop a relationship, the Bride is not particularly interested in being defined by his desires. She has her own identity to discover, her own desires, and a whole lot of rage.

What I find fascinating is how the three versions build upon one another. In Shelley's novel, the female Creature is denied existence because Victor fears what she might become. In Whale's film, she appears only briefly, but she is allowed to reject the role assigned to her. In Gyllenhaal's film, she finally becomes the central character, and she is every bit as monstrous, complicated, and unpredictable as the men around her. She isn't a perfect heroine, nor does the film ask us to excuse everything she does. She is a monster, after all. But she is also a person, and that is an important distinction. She is a monster of her own choosing.

I also love the casting connections. Elsa Lanchester plays both Mary Shelley in the opening of the 1935 film and the Bride herself. Gyllenhaal takes that idea even further by having Jessie Buckley play Mary Shelley, Ida, and the Bride, with Shelley's restless spirit becoming part of the story itself. Whether you like Gyllenhaal's interpretation or not (and I do), that is a clever way to connect the author to her creation. The woman who wrote the original story is quite literally demanding to be heard through the woman the story has so often left silent.

And perhaps that is what I find most interesting about these films. The horror isn't simply that someone has brought the dead back to life. It is that these creations have their own thoughts, feelings, desires, and wills. The people responsible for creating them seem genuinely surprised when they don't behave as expected.

Mary Shelley was exploring these questions in 1818, and here we are in 2026, still finding new things to say about them. I think that speaks rather well of her original idea.

All from a teenage girl who was challenged to write about monsters.  

Or as Mary says in the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein. "Why shouldn't I write of monsters?"

NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson Connections

I am not sure where the kind of mad science we see in Frankenstein would find a home in Jackson. The Mauvaiseterre has more than its share of witches, psychics, demons, and ghosts without anyone building from spare parts.

The premise, however, is right at home there. All it takes is a death and someone who will not let it stand. In Jackson, any effort to reverse it would be of a magical order: a parent stumbles upon an antiquated rite, a witch makes an exception to the rules for raising the dead, or a psychic is certain the lost one is within reach.

Perhaps it succeeds. That is when the horror sets in. Not from any malice in the returned, but because death has altered them in ways no one comprehends. You could make that work anywhere. The spectacle is in the making of life; the story is in having to answer for it.

I mean. That is what I have done with Elowen Hale, but chronologically speaking, she isn't born until 2005 or so. So that is still 20 years in the future as far as my Jackson is concerned. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 27
First Time Views: 17

October Horror Movie Challenge: Witchboard (1986)

Tonight’s movie is one I have not seen in a very long time.

I saw Witchboard when it first came out, but I have not watched it since. I remembered the Ouija board, obviously. I remembered Tawny Kitaen. I remembered that it was one of those movies that seemed to be everywhere on video shelves for a while.

Witchboard (1986)

Jim (Todd Allen) and Linda (Kitaen) are throwing a party at their new place when Brandon (Stephen Nichols), Jim's friend and Linda's ex-boyfriend, produces a Ouija board.  He wants to show how he has been in touch with "David", the spirit of a ten-year-old. Linda can’t take her eyes off it; Jim is far from as enthralled. After Jim has a word or two insulting the spirit, the tires on Brandon’s car are found slashed in response. One would think that was the moment to put the board away and be done with it. 

Yeah. Then we wouldn't have a movie, now would we?

Left to her own devices after Brandon forgets the board, Linda begins to use it. At first, David is amiable, if not a little too helpful. He will answer her questions, tell her things she could not possibly know, and even lead her to a missing engagement ring. We also learn that Linda is pregnant.

And then the deaths begin.

We learn that Linda has really been talking to a spirit with the impossible name of Carlos Malfeitor (seriously, just call him "Gary Evil" while you are at it).

Brandon dies. Jim and Linda defeat Malfeitor and live happily ever after. Until their landlady finds the Ouija board in the trash and wonders aloud if "it still works."

Kevin Tenney wrote and directed this one, and had penned the script at USC under the working title Ouija, but legal and production issues forced a name change to Witchboard. The film is built on what Tenney calls "progressive entrapment": the notion that a person is worn down by repeated contact with a spirit until possession becomes possible.

That concept at the heart of the movie. It is not as if Linda is taken over with a single touch of the board. The spirit goes about its work. It is of service to her at first, then it becomes something of a confidant. She starts to depend on it, using the board in private and growing more isolated. Her behaviour alters; she is left physically and emotionally drained. By the time those around her notice the trouble, the spirit has made itself at home.

It is a more compelling approach than to view the Ouija board as some kind of supernatural telephone. The board is the bait, and Linda is the one who keeps answering.

This movie was made before Tawny Kitaen's famous Whitesnake video appearances.

Jackson Connection: The Spirit in the Room

There is an odd fascination with the Ouija board as a tool of horror, given that one can hardly find anything to be scared of in its design. It is simply a board with its letters and numbers, the words "yes," "no," "good-bye,"and a planchette. Nothing more. You will not find any skulls or human bones here, nor some Latin tome bound in dubious leather and put there by a curse. On the face of it, it is a game.

Perhaps that is the source of the unease it engenders. I have been in conversations with people well on their way to sixty who will recount a fright they had with a Ouija in their youth. Or they will begin to. They stop short. Something happened, they will say, and they are under no illusion that they will ever put one to use again. But the details of the story are not for you to know.

As a rationalist I do not make the mistake of thinking a piece of plastic and a factory made board from Parker Brothers (now Hasbro!) can call up the dead; the ideomotor effect is explanation enough for most Ouija sessions, and it is easy enough for someone to spook themselves in a dark room if they are primed for it.

Horror does not care for such logic though. The fear is what counts.

Take four teenagers and an Ouija board at midnight. Extinguish the lights and light a single candle. Pose the question: "Is anyone here?" and let them wait on the planchette. The scene is set. The screaming will start soon enough. 

I am reminded of a slumber party happening at a house in my neighborhood. A bunch of preteens were out in their yard after dark using an Ouija board (my wife and I had walked by) and by the time we got down the street a bit they were all screaming. We had to laugh.

The film has this down. Witchboard is smart in that it need not make Linda out to be a fool for the spirit to gain her confidence. David appears to be nothing but a harmless child who will answer your questions and put his hands on things. Which makes the truth of the matter all the more jarring.

David is not who he seems. Malfeitor is the one in contact with Linda, a murderous type wearing the dead boy’s name to work his will. The whole affair has been an elaborate deception to put him in position to take her over. That is the stuff of good occult horror. The peril is not in the existence of ghosts, but in the fact that what is on the other side is capable of lying.

I can lift this whole cloth and drop it into my Jackson setting with hardly an edit.

Again, this movie follows my established theme of horror coming home. 

Kinda wish I still had an Ouija board around; I'd pull it out as a prop for the game night.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 19
First Time Views: 10

RPG Retrospective: The Adventures of Indiana Jones RPG

 On this day in 1981, 45 years ago, I went to see the newest George Lucas/Steven Spielberg collab called "Raiders of the Lost Ark."  I went with my best friend Steven and it was a life changer for both of us. Steven watched it and wanted to become a big Hollywood director. I watched it and wanted to become a university professor. We both got to our dreams, more or less. Steven became an art director and is now fed up with Hollywood. I became a professor, but sold my soul to the dot-com world during the late 90s/early 2000s dot-com boom. I, too, had become a little burned out on academic life. 

But Raiders of the Lost Ark still remains a perfect movie in our minds. One we still talk about to this very day.

It is just too bad the RPG was so, well, terrible. At least that was my recollection of it. But is that true? 

Let's pull out my copy and have a deep dive into the game and what it has to offer.

Fortune and Glory, Kid

When TSR picked up the license for Indiana Jones, it looked like a slam dunk. After all, Raiders of the Lost Ark had been a massive success, Temple of Doom was hitting theaters, and TSR was flush with cash and ambition. Iron Crown had Middle-earth. Doctor Who and Star Trek had a home at FASA, and now Indy was coming to Lake Geneva. 

And let us not forget, this was TSR we were talking about, the very company responsible for Dungeons & Dragons, Gamma World, Top Secret, Boot Hill, and, by 1984, the excellent Marvel Super Heroes game.

What could possibly go wrong?

As it turns out… pretty much everything. 

TSR put out The Adventures of Indiana Jones Role-Playing Game in 1984. David "Zeb" Cook and John Byrne, the comic book writer, are credited with the design.  On the surface, it’s a boxed set with everything you'd expect: dice, minis (well, cardboard cutouts you had to assemble), a rulebook, character cards, and an introductory adventure. Inside, you get a chance to live out pulp adventures in the style of everyone’s favorite bullwhip-wielding archaeologist. Sounds great, right?

Except here’s the first problem: you had to play Indy. Or at best, one of a handful of established characters like Marion or Sallah. The rules didn’t include any way to make your own characters. That’s like handing a bunch of kids the Star Wars RPG and saying, "No, sorry, you can’t be smugglers or bounty hunters, you can only be Luke, Han, or Leia." Half the fun of role-playing is creating your own hero to drop into wild situations, and this game just locked the door on that entirely. It gives you some movie characters and tells you, "don't mess them up."

One could argue the later Indiana Jones Judge's Survival Pack made amends by introducing rules for original characters along with the kind of chases, ruins, and vehicles that ought to have been in the core box from day one. But that was the patch, if you will. TSR coming around to say "Oh, you wanted to role-play." But by then, the writing was on the wall. The original set had already conditioned people to think of this as the game where you couldn’t make your own character, and that is the way it was remembered.

The system itself is light, almost perfunctory. There’s some resolution mechanics, a few skill checks, and some chase and combat rules, but nothing that feels like it captures the frenetic energy of Indy punching Nazis or dodging rolling boulders. Instead, it feels like TSR wanted a quick "introductory RPG" to tie in with the movies without giving much thought to longevity or depth. The end result is that it plays more like a board game that forgot to include the board. Or, more on point, an RPG that forgot to include anything about role-playing.

There are percentile skill rolls versus Strength, Prowess, or Backbone, and the like. Nothing too difficult really.

There are rules for "danger" and some perfunctory chase rules (it is Indian Jones after all). So don’t think of it as mechanically useless. The bones are all there, you just have to look past some rather peculiar design decisions. 

But let's not pretend here. This is really not a good game. 

It is a shame, really. The ingredients for an outstanding Indiana Jones RPG were right there. You had the ancient ruins, the lost temples, secret cults, and their terrible artifacts. Nazis, gangsters, and the odd occult society. University politics and rival expeditions. Mummies, curses, ghosts, forbidden manuscripts, hidden cities, and desert tombs. Zeppelins and seaplanes, and a map with a red line across the ocean. You could build a campaign from all that without breaking a sweat.

Yet TSR produced an Indiana Jones game that was far too fixated on the man himself and not enough on his world. West End Games would get it right with Star Wars some years down the line. They grasped what was important: the player doesn’t want to be Luke or Han or Leia. He wants to inhabit the universe, with his own ship and his own Imperial entanglements and the kind of awful plan that somehow comes off.

Indiana Jones called for a World of Indiana Jones, as West End would call it later. All we got from TSR was the star when what we wanted was the stage.

The Problem with Being Indiana Jones

The system is just one problem. Take Indiana Jones: he lives because he is who he is. You don’t have to worry about him being put down by some guard in scene two or perishing in a truck chase. Even if he comes up short, it is in service of the plot. In a film, that is how it should be. But in a role-playing game it is another matter. The TSR version makes an effort to keep that sort of movie logic intact, but at the cost of any real peril. 

There is "Danger" but no real danger. 

Sure, Indy can have his moments, but the game will bend to accommodate him. Your heroes are not the run-of-the-mill pulp types putting their lives and limbs on the line; they are movie stars sporting a kind of narrative armor. I get why they went about it that way, but it doesn’t work for me.

What is the point of a pulp adventure if your character can’t come to grief? Maybe you shoot the swordsman, maybe you are the one who drops the gun. You could put your trust in the wrong guide or be unceremoniously thrown from the back of the truck. That is where the fun is. When the game goes to such lengths to shield the movie, it gets in the way of playing.

There is a contradiction at the heart of this RPG. It aspires to be an Indiana Jones movie when a good one ought to let you have an adventure in his style. They are not one and the same.

What It Gets Right

I wouldn’t want to be entirely unfair about it, though. There is much I like in this game.

To start with, it has the sense that Indiana Jones is a pulp character and makes no pretense of being a scholarly archaeological simulation. Good. What you get instead are your villains, your action, the clues and exotic locales, some perilous artifacts, and a kind of cliffhanger pacing. It puts Indy in his proper context, the same vein as Doc Savage or The Shadow, or one of those odd interwar stories from Republic serials and lost world fiction, where there is a blank spot on the map and someone is off on a secret expedition.

Then there is the speed of the thing. A slow, tactical affair would have been a disaster for an Indiana Jones game, so the fact that this is built for pace is important. Sure, it can be clunky at times, but it isn’t going to have you work out the tensile strength of your whip before you put it to use over a chasm. As it should be.

The Diana Jones Award and Nazi™

You could argue the afterlife of this game is nearly as good as the thing itself.

Game historians and fans know that TSR eventually had to pulp unsold copies of the boxed set after losing the license, which only adds to the mystique. One of the last copies to be burned was salvaged and became the Diana Jones Award. Which itself has been a focus of some gamer legend, with the original award now lost somewhere in the mail. 

There is a certain poetry to it, bordering on the mythic. The temple is destroyed but the artifact endures, you pull the relic from the ashes and it is handed down as a prize from one year to the next. In a way it has more of an Indiana Jones feel to it than the game did.

Then you have the old legend of the "Nazi™" figure that has been going around as long as anyone can remember. It is about as accurate as any gamer tale is, but then again, it is funnier for it. It has a ring of truth to it, the sort of thing a big 80s product with a name on it would get up to by mistake. The facts don’t have to be tidy for it to become part of the folklore.

Final Thoughts

There are some movies you can put on at any time, and they are just right; Raiders of the Lost Ark is still one of my perfect films. Put on that John Williams', score, and I am instantly 12 again, back in the Illinois Theater with my best friend. We were two kids looking at the same movie but seeing our own futures in it. He was watching the camera work, I was thinking of the classroom, yet we both saw the adventure.

You won’t get that from the TSR Indiana Jones RPG. It doesn’t come close to the feeling and perhaps never could. There is a fascination to its failure, though, in how instructive it is. It puts the distinction between adapting a story and a world in sharp relief. You see why player freedom has to be there, and that no license in the world is going to prop up a game if it loses sight of what players want to do when they sit down at the table.

They aren’t there to watch the hero. They want to be him. Or make their own kind of hero out of it, with his own hat and scars and bad decisions, and an impossible way out of a temple coming down around them.

For all that, The Adventures of Indiana Jones Role-Playing Game isn’t some lost classic. More of a lost opportunity. I don’t mind owning it for that reason. A failed artifact has its place in a museum, or on my game shelf at the very least.

Indiana Jones and the Cauldron of Hecate

Create a character for a game with no character creation rules? Of course, I can't resist a challenge like this. Yes, there were character creation rules introduced later on, as I mentioned, but it was too little too late, really. Plus, I don't have those rules, so I can check them out. 

I mentioned above that watching this movie made me want to be a University professor, which I did for many years. So it would seem natural for me to want to stat up Prof. Scott Elders, my erstwhile self-insert character. Really, he is perfect since I have a Call of Cthulhu version where he is at a University researching occult artifacts. 

He is almost too perfect, in fact. The name of the game is "Indiana Jones," and bringing along Dr. Elders would be about the same thing as inviting Solar Pons into a Sherlock Holmes RPG to solve a case with Sherlock. No, I need someone who can look up to Indy, ask questions like "What is that, Dr. Jones?" and stand on their own.

I have the perfect choice, and she is a lot on my mind lately. Enter graduate student of ancient religions, Larina Nichols, from the University of Chicago.

How would she work this into this adventure? Simple, Indy has discovered some sort of clue that leads to the mythical "Cauldron of Hecate."  In typical movie tradition, I am also going to blend the myths of Hecate with the Cauldron of Cerriweden, in that it can be used to bring forth an army of undead soldiers, so of course, the Nazis, excuse me, Nazis™, want it.  Indy heads back to his alma mater, the University of Chicago, to speak to Prof. Scot Elders, who was a grad student when he was there. Dr. Elders is not there, but his star grad student, Larina Nichols, is. She is able to translate the fragment and tells Indy she will tell him the rest of the translation when they get to Greece and Turkey! 

And off they go to Turkey, Greece, and wherever else, with Nazis hot on their tail and an army of the dead at the end. Plus, Indy, as far as I know, has never had to deal with a redhead before.

The best Indiana Jones adventures always have a few elements:

• A legendary artifact.
• A historical mystery.
• A rival faction.
• An expert who knows more than they admit.
• A supernatural truth hiding behind what everyone thinks is merely legend.

This has them all!

Larina Stephanie Nichols

Graduate student of Ancient Religions at the University of Chicago. 

Attributes (Normal/x2/½/¼)

Strength 46/92/23/11
Movement 52/104/26/13
Prowess 60/120/30/15
Backbone 76/152/38/19
Instinct 80/160/40/20
Appeal 92/184/46/23

Movement Rate (running): 20 squares (5 areas)/turn
Weapons: Knife
Money: $100
Languages: English, Greek, Latin, Turkish, Aramaic, Hittite
Irrational Fears: Fire
Notes:

I completely guessed at these. I figured she was slightly better at fighting than Willie (but only a little), a little under Indiy in intelligence, but she knows more languages. That is her "in" in this adventure; she speaks the languages Indy doesn't. Though I would say she is every bit as smart as Indy, if not smarter (that is her thing), but Indy is still the star of the show...er adventure. 

Since I have been going over her 1986 character sheet in detail recently, I am also bringing back her fear/fascination of fire here. 

She has a knife, likely a ritual blade she picked up somewhere, but this is a grad student with no training in weapons. She is not carrying a gun. 

In truth, I like this version a lot. I might try this version out as a 1930s Call of Cthulhu character one day. She needs her own theme music!

Supergirl Teaser

"He sees the good in everyone. I see the truth."

  I admit it, I love Superman. But if you were around here over the summer you know that. And I LOVE Supergirl. I enjoyed the 1984 movie, I loved Melissa Benoist as the CW/DCTV Supergirl. I even liked Sasha Calle as Supergirl in the Flash and Laura Vandervoort in Smallville.

But Milly Alcock? This looks like the Kara Zor-El that would have attracted a Red Lantern ring.

Based on the comic "Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow" this is going to be a Supergirl dealing with the grief of loosing everyone and everything she loved.

She looks fantastic in this. Plus, Jason Momoa was born to play Lobo. There is a scene from the comic that I hope will make it into the movie. But I'll have to wait and see.

I am really looking forward to this. June feels so far away.

October Movie Challenge: 30 Days of Night (2007) and Dark Days (2010)

Here we are, the last day of the Horror Movie Challenge! I figure I'll work in some vampire movies.  Special note: You lose something when watching movies with night and darkness as major plot points during the daylight hours.

30 Days of Night (2007) 

Few horror films capture isolation and predation like 30 Days of Night. Barrow, Alaska, already cut off from the world by a month of darkness, becomes a perfect hunting ground when a pack of feral, ancient vampires descends. These aren’t tragic romantics; they’re apex predators, clicking and shrieking in a dead language, as elegant and pitiless as sharks beneath ice.

The concept alone feels built for NIGHT SHIFT or Occult D&D: a frontier town swallowed by night, a handful of survivors fighting with dwindling light and sanity. It’s brutal, but beautiful too, snow turned red, the silence between screams, the steady unraveling of faith and logic. Josh Hartnett’s Eben becomes the archetypal reluctant hero, giving himself to the darkness just long enough to kill it.

If I ever needed a model for my Valhalla, Alaska, this is it. Swap Barrow for Valhala, add a few protective runestones, a psychic waitress, and maybe a were-bear or two, and you’ve got an entire campaign arc: “The Long Night.”

This one is quite good, and if Danny Huston is in it then I know I am in for some fun. 

30 Days of Night: Dark Days (2010)

Ok. This one is not as good, but it had one thing going for it; Mia Kirshner as Vampire Queen Lilith. I just wish she had more screen time.

The sequel trades arctic survival horror for urban vampire noir. Stella (played by a different actress) still haunted by Barrow becomes a reluctant vampire hunter in Los Angeles, trying to expose the coven that orchestrated the slaughter. It’s grittier, smaller, and not nearly as haunting, but it expands the mythology nicely. The idea that the Barrow massacre was just one act in a long, secret war fits perfectly in a world where monsters stalk the forgotten edges of modern life.

The implied mythology here reminds me of the Blade movies, except that Dracula is replaced by Lilith. Which Lilith? No idea, she could have been any one of a hundred different interpretations, or just a powerful Vampire Queen who took her name as her own.

It is not as bad as the reviews online have led you to believe; it just falls very, very short of the first movie.

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D Ideas

This is another great example for my Valhalla, AK setting for NIGHT SHIFT.

Less for Occult D&D, unless you work in a ritual the vampires are going to perform to blot out the sun. I did that as the main premise behind my "Come Endless Darkness" campaign. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 38
First Time Views: 27

October Movie Challenge: Vampire Weekend

 Hit a few Vampire movies this weekend. 

Fright Night (2011)

The remake of the classic 1985 Fright Night.  This time staring Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell and David Tennant. I watched this one way back in 2014. My wife was looking for movies to watch and this came up. She had not seen it, and she LOVES David Tennant. So I watched it again. Maybe it was the rewatch, but I actually liked it better this time around. Imogen Poots was also much better than I remembered her.

The music for this one was done by Ramin Djawadi of later Game of Thrones fame. 

Fright Night (1985)

We watched this one right after the remake. My wife never saw this one either, but she didn't like it. I thought it was still fun. Chris Sarandon made for a great vampire. Loved his cameo in the 2011 version. 

Amanda Bearse as Vamped out Amy was not the first time I ever said "going evil makes you hotter," but it was an archetypal example for me.  

I am not afraid to admit it, but this movie shaped how I ran vampires in my AD&D games for a while, at least until Lost Boys came out two years later.

We also snuck in the 2nd season of "An Interview with a Vampire" on Netflix. It doesn't follow the book directly but damn is it really good. I don't think I can really count it though. 

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D Ideas

Fright Night (any version) is practically a NIGHT SHIFT adventure as is. It takes place in suburbia, the vampire hunters get their ideas from watching a fake vampire hunter on TV. Craziness ensues. 

Come to think of it, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie (1992) owes a lot to the original Fright Night and Lost Boys.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 31
First Time Views: 25

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Pyx (1973)

 There is something about horror films, especially occult horror, from right before the Exorcist. 

They seem to have a completely different tenor to them, as I showed a couple of years back. Some horror movies get under your skin through shock and spectacle. Others take the long road; quiet, methodical, and drenched in atmosphere. 

The Pyx (1973) is definitely one of the latter. It’s a film that demands patience… and then tests it.

The Pyx (1973)

Along with the Exorcist, The Conjuring movies and more this falls under the umbrella I like to call Catholic-Horror. These movies are created with the point of view that the battle between Good and Evil is held on a cosmic scale and the members of the Catholic Church are the foot soldiers in that battle. Nothing wrong with this point of view, really. It gave us some good films.

Is the Pyx a good film? Well. It has been on my IMDB list forever and my Tubi list nearly as long. I remember seeing it in the video stores on VHS and thinking I really should rent sometime. I thought at the time (the 1980s) it was closer in nature to the Exorcist. Plus I do like Christopher Plummer.  So there was no way this movie was going to live up to what I thought it was. I also seem to recall some kids in school being afraid of it. I have already detailed how my local town had its own Satanic Panic moment, so I guess I should not have been surprised. 

Plus it is just so damn slow, even by 70s standards.

Set in Montreal, the story opens with the death of a young prostitute, Elizabeth Lucy (Karen Black), who falls, or maybe jumps, from a high-rise balcony. The detective investigating, Sgt. Jim Henderson (Christopher Plummer), slowly uncovers her connection to a shadowy occult circle. The deeper he digs, the more the film begins to oscillate between murder mystery and religious horror. The film is interspersed with Henderson's investigation and Lucy's actual events leading up to her death.

The title itself refers to the small container used to hold the consecrated Host (I had to look that up) already a hint that this isn’t your standard thriller. There’s a sense of ritual to everything here: the pacing, the imagery, even the editing. The story unfolds in a slow, deliberate rhythm that mirrors a liturgy more than a narrative. Honestly it was too slow in many places. 

Karen Black is the soul of the film (no pun). She brings both fragility and quiet strength to Elizabeth, primarily through the flashbacks that slowly reveal her descent into the occult underworld. Her performance is the anchor that keeps the movie from drifting into abstraction. Christopher Plummer, meanwhile, gives one of his early “world-weary detective” roles the kind of gravitas that makes you wish the script had given him more to do. I could not help but think that Jason Issacs (Lorca from Star Trek Discovery) would do well in a remake of this.

Visually, The Pyx is haunting. It’s all dark gray skies, dark stairwells, and cold city streets. The Catholic symbolism hangs heavy, crucifixes, chalices, and sacred music twisting into something sinister. 

But like I said it is slow. Painfully slow at times. The editing lingers on every moment, and the flashback structure (jumping between Elizabeth’s story and the investigation) makes it feel like it’s constantly restarting. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s one of those films that feels like it’s daring you to stay awake long enough to find the meaning.

I am not 100% sure the ending justifies my patience here. But it does at least turn this from a murder investigation into something a little more worthy of my October Challenge.

Occult D&D and NIGHT SHIFT

If you’re building a NIGHT SHIFT or Ravenloft-style scenario, The Pyx is a great reminder that horror doesn’t need to be loud. It’s about the mood, religious overtones, guilt, temptation, and the slow corruption of innocence.

Tone: Low magic, high dread. Think more investigation than exorcism. This isn't even Supernatural (the TV Show) level. These are Survivors with no magic in a world where the fear of the unknown is very strong.

Structure: The dual-timeline approach (the detective’s investigation and the victim’s flashbacks) would work beautifully for a horror one-shot, each clue in the present triggers a playable memory from the past. Something along the line of what I did with Ravenloft ages ago. 

The Cult: Small, personal, and ritualistic. No robed masses here, just a handful of true believers who think they’ve found salvation through blasphemy.

The Pyx itself: Treat it as a cursed relic. A holy vessel that’s been defiled, perhaps housing a fragment of something unholy pretending to be divine.

The key here (and with the sub-genre of Catholic Horror) is the characters have to be believers of some sort. Either part of the religion (say like the Warrens) or lapsed from it, like Henderson in this movie. But the belief has to be there. That's where the horror grows. Not because of their faith, but the dark shadows where their faith can't reach.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 22
First Time Views: 20

Countdown to Superman: Superman (2025)

The newest Superman is now out, and I have seen it. What did I think? I loved it! It was a fantastic. I am not going to spoil anything here but I will go over the broad strokes. 

The DECU is dead, long live the DCU. 

David Corenswet is a great Clark Kent and Superman. He is bright, optimistic, and hopeful.  He carries the movie on all of this. There is a lot of "All-Star Superman" here, at least in tone and optimism, not so much in plot. 

Rachel Brosnahan is a great Lois Lane. She is smart, observant, and tough. This is a Lois who will get into trouble.

The standout has to be Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor. He is evil, and brilliant, and you want to hate him but he is just so good really.

I loved the "Justice Gang" of Hawkgirl, Mister Terrific, and Green Lantern Guy Gardner, played by Isabella Merced, Edi Gathegi, and Nathan Fillion, respectively.  They played their comic roles fantastically. There are good reasons why we have Guy and not Hal, John, or even Kyle. Merced is channeling the DCAU Hawkgirl more than just a little bit.

But the winner is really Krypto. 

I also loved Milly Alcock as Supergirl for the brief time we get to see her. Now I want to see Melissa Benoist as Power Girl.

My theatre was packed and all the showtimes around it were sold out. People seemed to really love it. I can't wait to talk about it more.

It was great. Go see it.

Cameos

John Cena makes a brief appearance as Peacemaker. Not a shock, given it's a James Gunn show. It was also a DCEU show (1st season), and he was in the second Suicide Squad movie. So that counts as a previous series.  Related is Frank Grillo as A.R.G.U.S. director Rick Flag Sr. from the animated DCU series Creature Commandos.

Michael Rosenbaum, Lex from Smallville and Flash from the DC Animated series voices one of Lex's Raptar guards.

Will Reeve, the son of Christopher Reeve, appears as a Metropolis TV News reporter. Looking every bit like his dad. 

The big ones, though, are the opening and closing credits. They look just like the Salkind movies, and the John Williams' score is back.

Countdown to Superman: The DCEU and the Snyderverse

 As I wrap my coverage of the Superman movies, I want to take an aside and talk about DC's first big-screen attempt at an extended universe. Called the DC Extended Universe, or more often, the Snyderverse, this era produced some fun, some good, and some terrible movies. 

Suicide Squad (2016)

While not a great movie, it is fun one. It introduces us to Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn, one of many perfect castings in the DCEU, and featured one of my favorite characters, Enchantress. Don't go into this movie looking anything but comic book action and plot. I mean one of my favorite scenes is when Harley sees her old Harlequin costume in her box of things and gets all excited about it. Ok, the scene where El Diablo fights Incubus is also pretty cool.  

Wonder Woman (2017)

Honestly, this movie is a masterpiece and is easily in my top-5 superhero movies of all time. Patty Jenkins was great as the director, and Gal Gadot WAS Wonder Woman. She had huge boots to fill from Lynda Carter, and she did it. She gave us a Wonder Woman who is strong and powerful without loosing a gram of femininity; exactly like she should be from the comics. I know the family of William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman's creator, was thrilled with it. This one might be the best movie in all the DCEU.

Sadly, Wonder Woman 1984 just could not live up to its predecessor's heights.

Aquaman (2018) and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)

Both of these were fun and were excuses for Jason Momoa to give us his brand of Arthur Curry. They are also fun, but fall just short of great, really, with the 2018 movie being a bit better.

Shazam! (2019), Black Adam (2022), and Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)

Shazam, aka Captain Marvel, "the Big Red Cheese" is a difficult character to get right. He is a kid in the form of a god really. Zachary Levi did a great job of this in the 2019 and 2023 movies and Shazam! was a really good flick. You have to be a fan of the character though I think. Kudos for the cameo of Michael Gray from old Filmation Saturday Morning Shazam! series. The 2023 movie also has Wonder Woman in the end.

Black Adam was Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's dream gig in the DC Universe. So much so he was a producer on all three movies. As expected it is darker than either Shazam movie. Nice post credits scene with Amanda Waller and Superman at the end. 

They are not great movies, but fun ones.

The Flash (2023)

Pity the poor Flash. It might go down as the movie that killed the DCEU. It didn't, but it certainly didn't help. 

Let's talk about what is good. LOVED seeing Michael Keaton back as Batman/Bruce Wayne. Wonderful, worth the price of the movie. As janky as it was, the Flash running through the Multiverse and seeing ALL the old Supermen, especially Christopher Reeve and Helen Slater, standing side by side as Superman and Supergirl was amazing. Even the Arrorow-verse, which the DCEU always seemed to ignore as an annoying kid brother, gets a nod. Though it does it in a way that shows they are either ignorant of the characters (most likely) or are being purposely disrespectful. NICHOLAS FREAKING CAGE as Superman with a mullet fighting a Thanagarian Snare Beast! If you are a DC fan, you know what this means, so while I would like to give them a pass on being ignorant on the CW-DCU (Arrow-verse) this shows they did know the deep lore. So maybe they were not allowed to use any Arrow-verse characters as their Arrow-verse character...DC does some strange things at times.  The end with the big "Batman twist" is fun. BUT it was also a sign that they knew the DCEU was ending. 

Now the bad. Erza Miller turned into a bit of a dumpster fire. I mean, he was kinda fun, but never really right as Barry Allen. Plus, we had a GREAT Barry Allen. Grant Justin was amazing. The script is a bit of a mess. Though the Flash having the Flash as the big bad does fit with the comics. Sasha Calle was great as Supergirl, but we never got to see enough of her, and she was gone before we could know her. 

There were other movies. Blue Beetle was fun. There was a soft-reboot, sorta-, sorta-not of The Suicide Squad. I enjoyed the Birds of Prey movie, even if most didn't.

There were some fun times here, but by and large they did not measure up to the successes or the storytelling of the Marvelverse. Trust me, as a DC fan, those are hard words to write. 

I am hopeful for the new James Gunn helmed DC Studios and the new Superman and DCU. Does this include the newer Batman movie? I don't know really. 

Countdown to Superman: Justice League (2017, 2021)

 Now, here we are at what should have been the crowning achievement of not just the DCEU/Snyderverse, but also of DC comic movies.  The freaking Justice League. The ultimate in superhero team-ups, the royal family, as it were. 

Sadly, real life plagued this production, and director Zack Snyder had to leave the production due to the death of his daughter. So, a replacement was brought in. I mean, on paper, it sounds fine. Bring in the guy who had a successful run of genre TV shows and who directed the Avengers movie (you know the #2 team-up), and let him wrap up filming. Well...the problem is that the guy they brought in was Whedon. Now my own personal issue with the guy aside... no, actually not. But I'm jumping ahead of myself here.

For tonight's viewing, I want to cover the 2021 Snyder Cut of this movie. I can appreciate Superman II with both the Lester and Donner cuts. Each one is a good movie on its own with strengths and weaknesses. Each one is enjoyable and cringy in equal measure. I prefer the Donner cut, but the Lester one is still good. I can't say the same for Justice League. 

I enjoyed the 2017 Justice League, but things felt off. I knew it the moment in the interaction between Steppenwolf and the Amazons. These didn't feel like the elite warriors that took out Nazis in Wonder Woman. These were bikini-clad pulp fighting women. Was it Whedon? Was it Snyder? I don't know, but the dialog was Whedon. It was also not the only thing. We know that after Snyder left Whedon reshot a lot of the movie. He also rewrote the script. There were also allegations of abuse, racism and sexism on the set from Ray Fisher (Cyborg), Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman, though she shut him down), and Kiersey Clemons (Iris West, who's skin was lightened in the Whedon cut, that is where she was left in it). This opened the door for other actors to share their tales of Whedon's long-standing misconduct on set. 

I detailed his fall from grace already, so no need to go over that again. It was reassuring to hear some of my long-time critics tell me, "Wow, you were right back then."  So yeah I really can't watch the 2017 cut anymore, all I see are his attempts to "improve" the movie.

Now, I am not a big Snyder fan boy, but I do think the 2021 cut is superior. It explains things better, the pacing is better, and the character development is much better. 

There is only ONE thing in the 2017 cut that I enjoyed that is not in (nor would it fit in) the 2021. After defeating Steppenwolf Cyborg says "Boo-ya" as a nod to the Teen Titans show. I am sure Whedon's kid watched it, he is the same age as my kids and they loved that show. So did I. 

Oh, yeah, the plot.

Ok, Superman is dead, even though it looked like he might come back to life at the end of BvS. Bruce is feeling guilty and perceives a new threat. So he is gathering up a team of super-powered people, Meta-Humans, to help. Ok, kudos to writers Chris Terrio and Zack Snyder for having Batman build the league. That is a new one and it works here with Bat-Fleck. We get the Flash, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Cyborg.

In the 2021 cut Cyborg is our focus hero. He is the newest and in recent versions of the comic Justice League (New 52 and beyond) he is also the newest member. This was drastically reduced in the 2017 cut.  but it makes sense to have Cyborg, Victor Stone, as our way of seeing the League.

Anyway...Parademons are attacking, Motherboxes, Darkseid, Steppenwolf. All BIG THINGS you would want the League for. Steppenwolf attacks the Amazons to get the Motherbox they are guarding. Then he heads to Atlantis to get their theirs. The third Motherbox is being studied by Victor's father. 

The new League decides they need Superman back, though Diana is reluctant. They devise a plan and bring him back. In the 2017 cut they just come out and say it, in the 2021 cut it is built up more. There is more gravitas to it. More, "is this something we should be doing?" It's not quite the same as The Return of Superman in the comics, but it...no, it really doesn't make much sense in either version. I would have done it differently. But he is back, black suited (like the Return) and they are off to battle Steppenwolf and the three Motherboxes.

The ending battle is fun no doubt. Both Cyborg and Flash prove their worth to League as the youngest members. Superman and Cyborg prevent the Unity of the Motherboxes, and Diana shows how she "takes care" of her enemies. She is a warrior with a sword after all.

Watching the two side by side again (and that's six or so hours, was up till 2:30am), I am left feeling a bit worn out, to be honest. Whedon's 2017 version comes off as creepier, a little more sexist (any scene with Wonder Woman and/or the Amazons), and honestly, like he has something against Cyborg. Is that my post hoc knowledge in the way? I don't know, but I will say this for certain: the 2017 version is weaker by any measure you care to employ. 

Though I will say this, Snyder needs to figure out how to trim down his own stories. 

In the end, the differences are best summed up for me in the scene where Steppenwolf attacks the Amazons. In the 2017 cut, he is creepily referring to the Motherbox as "Mother" and telling the Amazons they will love him.  In the 2021 cut, he is threatening them with annihilation and telling the Amazons they will fear him. To which Hippolyta asks the Amazons to show him their fear and to a woman they shout, "We have no fear."

Mera pulling the water and blood out of Steppenwolf was also pretty cool too. 

I am going to say it. If there was a scene with a woman being a complete bad-ass on her own (not counting Wonder Woman) Whedon pulled the scene from the 2017 cut.

Cameos

As I mentioned before, Marc McClure, who played Jimmy Olsen in the Salkinds/Christopher Reeve Superman film series, has a brief cameo as a police officer in the 2017 version and a different police officer in the 2021 version.

Synder himself makes a cameo appearance in his cut. He is sitting in the coffee shop Lois is leaving right before she sees the resurrected Superman. 

Another "cameo" and one very close to Zack Snyder's heart, are the billboards for the AFSP, or the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. His daughter committed suicide while filming this movie. He dedicated it to her in the end credits.

I know I said I'd talk about Wonder Woman today, but it is late, and my eyes are killing me. I'll have some more to say on the the other films, Wonder Woman, and the end of the DCEU later.