Zatannurday: It's in the Cards

The upcoming Young Justice will guest-star a young Zatanna.

I don't know a lot about the episode to be honest, but there is this cool card that was being used to promote the show at the SDCC.

Of course I am guessing that the "7" here means she will be the seventh member of the Young Justice team.

Here is what I do know of the episode:

Friday, October 21st, 2011 at 6:30pm (ET) - “#15 Humanity”
The Team is on the hunt for Red Tornado, determined to find out once and for all whether the robot was the mole – even if it means kidnapping new friend Zatanna and dragging her along on their quest!


I am sure Zee does not go quietly.

I like her costume design.  Evocative of her "classic" costume, but still makes her look like she is a teen performer.  So something she would wear given that she would be standing next to her dad on stage.

Looking forward to seeing more of Young Zee on Young Justice.

October Challenge: Black Ribbon

Wow. That is really all have to say about this one.

Black Ribbon (2007)
I am not even sure where to start with this one.

The premise was very cool.  Writer moves out to country to work on new book.  Buys a possessed typewriter, then rape, murder and satanism ensue.
But the movie is so bad I can't even be sure that was what supposed to happen or like the book in the movie it just sort of got away from the writers.
A plot summary here is pointless really.  There is so much wasted effort here that alone should remove this movie from consideration.  No what makes this a true masterpiece of the awful is the terrible, terrible acting, terrible cinematography and just overall cheapness of everything.  It's hard to even enjoy it for camp value.
But like the proverbial train wreck I could not turn away and watched it to the end. But I will say my expectation were already really low, and it still managed not even to rise to that level.
Oh well.  Don't watch if you are easily offended by graphic nudity, implied incest, making fun of the mentally disabled, or satanism.

Tally: 7 movies, 7 new.

So what can I use here for my games?  Well easy I think.  Set up a game with a cursed object an old typewriter is a great choice.  Play in a modern system (like Unissytem) and then switch to the time when the typewriter was new (say Cthulhu by Gaslight) and have the same players play the characters that the first group is reading/writing about.  Go back and forth like this till no one knows which reality is real and which one isn't.  Course I could take a further cue from this flick and resolve it in third system at the very end.

October Challenge: Horror Hotel

Here is a movie with a creepy set, nice black & white photography, a coven of witches and Christopher Lee! The only thing I don't like about this movie is the title.

Horror Hotel / City of the Dead (1960)
Well the American title anyway.  "City of the Dead" is kind of cool.

A British film, set in America with British actors doing American accents.  Brilliant.

The movie starts with the burning of a witch back in the 17th century.  Fast forward to where Christopher Lee is a professor talking about the same burning now in the present.  BTW what do I have to do to get Christopher Lee as a professor of anything?  Anyway he send one of his students out to the town in the story for more research.  She uncovers a creepy town full of creepy people that look just like the people from the flashback.
College girls discovers all sorts of creepy things and is killed half way through the movie by the evil undead coven.  Her brother and boyfriend come to find her.  Rescue another girl and kill all the witches, Lee included, and the main witch dies when she can't complete her sacrifice to Satan.  Maybe she needed a school for girls instead.

This film is most familiar for the opening lines of Rob Zombie's "Dragula" for Christopher Lee's line "Fear, superstition and jealousy".  I didn't know that (and I should have really, there goes another hit to my street cred) and I laughed when I heard it.  I also can't help but wonder if this movie was just a little influence on his song and video "The American Witch".

In truth this film is slow, but a lot a of fun and still creepy 50 years later. The witch stuff is your typical witch = Satanist fare from that time, but it was still fun.  Christopher Lee was great and I didn't even realize the others were all British using American accents.
Patricia Jessel was great as the witch Elizabeth Selwyn and the modern version, Mrs. Newliss (Nywles; get it). If the film were redone today of course Selwyn would be portrayed as more sympathetic and Patrica Russel (the second girl and native to the town) would have her own magic from the "good" side of witchcraft.

Tally: 6 watched, 6 new

So to expand on yesterday's game idea.  The Salem School for Girls is for the best and brightest of America's young witches and it located in the town of Whitewood, MA.  While the school has had troubles in the past and the occasional rumor pops up about Satanism, that is all in the past.  Really. It is.
Guests can stay at the Raven Inn.

Vampire Smackdown

This is kinda cool.

Vote for your favorite vamp in the Vampire Smackdown over at A Piece of My Mind.
http://julia-mindovermatter.blogspot.com/2011/10/thursday-thirteen-229-13-ways-to-take.html

Review: Eldritch High

Eldritch High by John Wick

I like John Wick.  I like how he can keep coming up with these games that are really cool and really different from each other.  His latest is something near and dear to my own heart, magical high-schools.

Eldricth High

This is a great little game that you can learn and start play in about an hour. I love how the character sheet looks like a class schedule. The mechanic is a card based one and it lends it self well to alterations. The rest of the game is pure role-playing and story telling. If you ever read a YA supernatural book, watched an episode of Charmed or Buffy, or read a Harry Potter book then you have an idea of what you can do. OR better yet, if you were ever in High School and thought "this is ok, but what I really need is a Fireball to liven things up!", then this the game for you.

Even if you don't use the ultra simple game mechanic there are plenty of ideas here for your favorite game. Just now run it in a magical high school.

5 out of 5 stars.

Now what can you do this this game?
Well if you are regular reader here you can see all sorts of idea I hope.

You could for example take my movie from earlier today and do "Satan's School for Girls the RPG", but I doubt the author would approve.  But it would still be fun IF you played up all the camp 70s stereotypes.
Of course you can do a series about a boy wizard and his friends fighting evil.

Another good choice is "D&D School" where you have young wizards before they go out and adventure. Some spells would need to be tweaked, but it looks like it would work well.

You could also combine it well with a game like Hellcats and Hockeysticks for a full curriculum.

I'll be playing around with this one for a little bit.

October Challenge: Satan's School For Girls

Two things jumped out at me right away about this movie. 1. I am surprised I have never seen this. I swear I had, but I didn't remember a bit of it and the movie I thought I was remembering as SSfG must be something else. 2. 25 year old Kate Jackson was HOT.

Satan's School for Girls (1973)

Ok despite being an Aaron Spelling made for TV movie, this was better than some of the others I have seen so far.  Martha's sister Elizabeth has killed herself and now she wants to find out why.  She enrolls under an assumed name at the same school Elizabeth had been at, the Salem School for Girls (unkown if it is the same Salem School mentioned in the Harry Potter books, but let's say yes for fun).  She is greeted by fellow students and future Charlie's Angels Cheryl Lass and Kate Jackson.  They meet the headmistress and a few of the teachers.  Ok only two.  And the creepy mystery unfolds.  Seems another girl had killed herself recently and Martha begins to look into why.  Plenty of very obvious clues are left lying around.  The art teacher and his subjective reality and the psych teacher and his rats. A few more suicides and Martha is thinking this not the best place to be.
Long story short, the art teacher is Satan and he is recruiting 8 (odd number) girls to replace the 9 he lost years ago.  The school burns down but "Satan" gets the last laugh and fades out while smoking a cigarette.
There is no obvious use of magic here.The girls could be in his thrall due to a psych experiment or any number of mundane explanations.  I kinda wish there had been more though.  Kate Jack's character, Debbie, mentions having Power (yes with a capital P) but nothing ever comes from that.

There is a remake in 2000 with Kate Jackson as the headmistress and fellow Spelling alum and TV witch Shannon Doherty, but I have not seen that one either.  At least the drop the witches down to a more respectable 5.

Not a great movie, but a good one to chill out too.

Tally 5 movies, 5 new (to my surprise)

Of course given this, the remake and fun connection to Harry Potter I HAVE to use this in my games someway.  The Salem School for Girls would be a great Witch Girls Adventures location.

October Challenge: The Rite

When it comes to religious-themed horror there really are only two movies worth talking about, "The Exorcist" and "Rosemary's Baby". Of the two the Exorcist has left the deepest scars in the American psyche. So no surprise then that every so often we get new exorcism movies. One of the latest is "The Rite".

The Rite (2011)

Anytime you see the words "based on a true story" you know you are either in for a good time or a really bad one.  This movie also stars Sir Anthony Hopkins, so we should, by the numbers have a good flick here.
Sad thing is we don't.  Oh, it is not bad but it fails to live up to all it's potential.
Hopkins is good of course, but not great.  Rutger Hauer is a tad underused as is Ciarán Hinds. I mean these are decent names. Again, names I usually associate with better fare.  Now in all fairness Marta Gastini did a great job as possessed pregnant girl Rosaria.
The Rite's biggest sin was not that it was bad, it was boring.  I didn't care about the main character at all really or his crisis of faith.
It might have been a better movie if they had focused on Hopkins' character more and running into dozens of fake possessions till we got to one that was the real deal.
The final possession could have been creepier, could have been more dramatic and could have been scarier.  This was a movie of could have beens.

Tally: 4 movies. 4 new.

So not to ignore my gaming folks, but what can The Rite bring to your games?  Well it seems odd that we have a game full of demons (we even have Pazuzu!) and yet no great rules for possession. And really no good reason why demons would want too.  I think I am going to have to fix that.