October Horror Movie Challenge: The Frozen BrainS that Wouldn't Die (1962 & 1967)

Every year I like pulling out an MST3k version of a movie.  This year it was 1962's "The Brain that Wouldn't Die".  I saw this years ago of course and I had forgotten parts of it.  For example, I remember the ending being different.  Turns out the movie I was remembering was "The Frozen Dead" from 1967.  Both feature the head of a woman in pan.  The Frozen Dead head gains the psychic powers that apparently all heads or brains get when removed from a body.

Neither movie is particularly scary, but the image of Jan asking to be killed or Elsa begging to be buried is quite a haunting image.  One that stuck with me for years.

Frozen Dead

2016 Movie tally
Watched: 12
New: 9

Review: Victoriana, 2nd Edition

Victoriana and I have a long and complicated relationship.  I find it interesting that to date I have not done a review for this game.  So let me fix that now.  I discovered Victoriana, 1st Edition around the time I was writing Ghosts of Albion.  I picked up the game, but since I was deep into working on and playing Ghosts at the time I didn't look at it much.  Finally, I did and then learned a 2nd Ed was going to come out.

I spent some time reading the 1st Edition rules and thought it was interesting, if odd.  For starters, I am not sure why there was no U.S. Civil War. I was also not a fan of the Fuzion system.  I liked all the odd races for the game (even if it did lead to the infamous Orc from Africa debate) and felt like it was, as it has been later described as Victorian Age Steampunk.

The thing that struck me though is how similar that cover is to the Ghosts of Albion BBC logo.  In particular the silhouettes of  William and Tamara.   I am sure it is nothing but coincidence,  but I could not help but notice it all the same.  Save for the pointy ears on the Victoriana cover that *could* be Tamara and William from Ghosts.

I went into the 2nd edition with a lot of preconceived notions of what the game was.  That is until Gen Con 2007.  Friday night I ran a Ghosts of Albion game and a lot of the authors and playtesters for Victoria 2nd Ed came.  I later joined them on a 8:00am Saturday morning game.  I was hung over, battling the oncoming con crud.  I played an Ogre butler with a Wits (intelligence) score of two whose saving grace was a giant shotgun that he wielded like a pistol.  I had a GREAT time.

Victoriana is a perfect example of why you need to play a game instead of just reading it to do a full and proper review.  Reading through the rules the first few times gave me a bit of headache, but playing it was a snap.

Victoriana, 2nd Edition is a 286 page book. Color covers, black and white interior.  A couple of words about that.  The art for this book moves between D&D-esque fantasy races and vintage photographs.  Many of the photos are of author Andrew Peregrine's own family.  I think this gives the game a unique touch.  Personally, I do not want color art in my Victorian-era games. This is a world in black and white.

Vic is best described as a Victorian "cyberpunk" game; not just in terms of ethos, game design and play but also mechanics.  The game is based on d6 dice pool with the extra advantage of a "black dice" to add more random flavor.  Roll your pool of Characteristics, Skill, and Specialties and see how many successes you have.

The system that powers Victoriana is known as the Heresy system. Maybe an allusion to the game company that published Victoriana 1st ed.

The real feature of this game is the ability to play a number of fantasy races in a magic-is-real and in-the-open Victorian London 1867.   The similarities to ShadowRun continue here.  You can play dwarves, ogres, elves (Eldren) and other fantasy races.  It could also be described as Steampunk ShadowRun or even Steampunk D&D. To call it that would really be selling the game a little short to be honest.  I often described it as most Victorian games turned up to 11.

The game won a Silver Ennie for Best Writing and there is a ton of great material in this game, if viewed from Victoriana's own lens.

Appendix 3 Source Material is a great read for any fan of the Victorian era.  Six pages of great and pretty exhaustive material.

The supplements for Victorana are all top notch with the same artistic style and flare of the core book.

Victoriana is one of those games I always seek out to play at conventions when I can.  I have always had a great time.

If this sounds fun to you there is a free preview of the game here.

October Horror Movie Challenge: Honeymoon (2014)

I will admit it, I am huge fan of Rose Leslie.  Honeymoon is a creepy little flick about what happens if something replaces someone you know.  It starts out and builds tension with each moment.

Rose is great as Bea, the new bride that may or may not be what she says she is.

The movie supremely creepy and the ending, while not a surprise, was still satisfying in a horror way.

The only thing that would have made this scarier is if it had been a couple celebrating their 10 year wedding anniversary.  Made the "otherness" of one of them seem even more out of whack.

There are moments in the film where Rose's Scottish accent comes out a bit.  But you could almost excuse it since she is supposed to be Canadian (I think) in this.


2016 Movie tally
Watched: 10
New: 9

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Offspring (2009)

I am not really into cannibal movies.  Too many contrivances to make them work, not to mention I just really don't care for them.   But the movie "The Woman" came up in a list of must see horror films and it is a sequel to this one.  So what the heck.

The film covers a group of feral human cannibals living in the Pacific Northwest (are we sure they just haven't had their Starbucks?) who kidnap and eat humans.  There is also some bit about needing a baby, which is where the title comes from. The acting is not great really, but the story is better than I thought.  It is likely then that the book is even better.

It has some scary bits but not as much as I had expected there would be.





2016 Movie tally
Watched: 9
New: 8

Larina Nix by LadyDeddelit

One of the things I *LOVE* is getting art of my characters.  Art is one of those things I can't do. But I know lots of great artists.  One of my favorites is LadyDeddelit.  In fact, I stalked her for a long time till her commission slots opened up.  She specializes in character art, in particular, RPG style characters.

For a few Euros I was able to get another one of my iconic witch Larina.


Commission 75 Larina part 2 by LadyDeddelit on DeviantArt

I am so pleased with how this turned out.
She does great work.  I love these "character sheets".

October Horror Movie Challenge: Eyes of Fire (1983)

This is one I was sure I had seen back in the day.  In fact, there is a lot I do remember about it. But it wasn't until it wasn't recently covered by House of Self-Indulgence that I remembered it. Or. More to the point I remembered I hadn't seen it.

There are bits I do remember.  I think it is due to seeing it on Showtime or Cinemax late at night.

Leah, the witch from the woods, certainly is a character I would have remembered.  In fact I think I do.  For my 3rd edition game I had a cleric character fall in love with a witch.  Granted this is not something strange for me, but there are a of lot similarities.

I love the idea of the devil-haunted woods/valley.  Keep an eye out for all the faces.   Expert tip: if the local Shawnee tribe is too afraid to go into a place...maybe don't go into that place.  Just saying.

What I like about this film is it mixes bits of witchcraft lore with Irish myths and local Indian legends.  A heady brew for someone that grew up in the mid-west not far from some of the most famous burial mounds in the country.

The final battle was cool, but really dark.  Dark as in a lack of light to see what was going on really.

Naturally, I am going to compare this to The Witch.  This covers the same time period (roughly) and the same area of the country (close enough).  Where the Witch is visually stunning and relies on mood and atmosphere.  Eyes of Fire is more dream-like and tests what we consider reality (in the film).   Comparing them on a visual level though is not fair.  The Witch was filmed in HD and I watched it on a Blu-ray.  Eyes of Fire wasn't and the copy I watched was a poor VHS to DVD transfer.  Both were, and are, stunning for their times.

I fear that Leah and Thomasin would not get along.

2016 Movie tally
Watched: 8
New: 7 (I am counting it as new)

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Church (1989)

Another Dario Argento flick.  The first 5-10 minutes was like Monty Python and Holy Grail that someone decided to play straight.  Seriously. Many points I was going "we are the Knights that say Ni!", "Burn her she's witch" and "Bring out your dead!".   Someone even looked like Patsy there was even a duck.

The rest of the movie is in modern times. And there it slows down to a crawl.  A church is built on the site where the Teutonic Knights killed a bunch of witches and in the modern day the church, now in disrepair is the home of a legion of demons.  The demons look kinda cool though.  Especially the last one.

There are some neat hallucination/possession scenes.

It does feature a very young Asia Argento as the last girl.

Not a great movie, but it have some really neat looking effects.


2016 Movie tally
Watched: 7
New: 6