Day 10
Another orange spider one. This time a d12.
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Wednesday, October 9, 2024
October Horror Movie Challenge: The Sentinel (1977)
The Sentinel (1977)
Alison Parker (Cristina Raines, who was a model in real life) is a model in love with her lawyer boyfriend, Michael Lerman (Chris Sarandon). He wants to get married, but she wants to live on her own for a bit. She finds a new apartment and moves in. She meets her neighbors, Charles Chazen (Burgess Meredith), Gerde (Sylvia Miles) and Sandra (Beverly D'Angelo who barely speaks in this), and encounters the blind priest Father Francis Matthew Halliran (John Carradine). Alison has serious migraines and a history of suicide attempts, once after she caught her father in bed with two other women.
The movie is slow to start, building up by showing us the collection of odd inhabitants living in the building. Alison has all sorts of weird visions and nightmares. We also learn from the landlady that aside from the Priest and Alison, no one else actually lives in the building. When the landlady takes her to each apartment, she learns that none of them has been lived in for years. We later learn that all of the people in the apartment are, or were, all murderers who were killed years ago.
We learn that Michael's previous wife killed herself. We also learn that Michael hired private detective Brenner to kill his first wife and now scare Alison, only he ends up dead in the exact same way Alison hallucinates that she killed her dead father. The film has a real "Gaslighting" feel to it, both the movie and the term, with actual supernatural overtones.
Michael breaks into the priest's office and learns about all these priests and nuns who, in life, attempted suicide and then were given a new name. There is a list going back hundreds of years and Alison's name is next on the list, to become Sister Theresa. These names are all Sentinels, the guardians of Gates of Hell tasked by the Archangel Uriel. The only time a Sentinel can be stopped is if they kill themselves before taking over their post. So Micheal (now dead), Charles and the other lost soulstry to drive Alison to suicide.
Father Halliran shows up at the end to help Alison and gives us a great demonstration of cleric turning.
The building is demolished and new one is put up. In Apartment 5a we see a now blind and older Alison, now Sister Theresa, standing her vigil.
Additionally, this movie features Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, Jerry Orbach, with Tom Berenger, and a young Nana Visitor as the couple at the end.
David Caradine is barely in this, but he still shows us why he was one of the big names in horror.
The 1970s were a great time for demonic and satanic themed horror and this one is still good example. Not the best example, but a very good one all the same.
Featured Monster: Devil
While there are no overt devils per se in this film, I would argue that Burgess Meredith's Charles Chazen was not so much a damned soul as a devil. Not an Archduke, but certainly a higher-ranking one. I ran his name through an anagram program and created Charnazel Sech or Sharcazel Chen as possible diabolic names.
Game Content: Sentinel
A Sentinel is a Theosophist (in NIGHT SHIFT) that has somehow lost their way. Their holy task is to keep demons and devils from escaping hell. They no longer advance as a Theosophist and now advance as either a Survivor or as a Veteran. Their task, much like the Paladins of old, is to guard one of the many gates of hell. They position themselves near the gate to fight the demons, devils, and other lost and evil souls who might escape.
A Sentinel works best as an NPC or PC, if they don't mind not traveling too far from the Gate of Hell they are supposed to guard.
Does this sound like Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Yeah, it does, but this movie predates that movie by 15 years, and the book even more than that (1974). It is also similar to the idea of the Wynonna Earp.
This shows that there are not any new ideas.
October Horror Movie Challenge 2024
Viewed: 12
First Time Views: 5
Daddy rolled a 1: Witches
Over on his YouTube Channel, Daddy Rolled a 1, Martin R. Thomas has put up a pretty comprehensive overview of all the various Witch classes.
So, of course, you know it has my attention.
It is great overview.
Nothing new to anyone who reads this blog regularly, and I think I have covered more, but still a great overview.
It's Halloween after all and more witch discussion is always welcome!
Review: Darklords and Book of Crypts
The great thing about the AD&D 2nd Edition version of Ravenloft's demi-plane was that the borders were completely malleable. Lands came in and out, even darklords would come and go. So the first two accessories for the Ravenloft setting capitalized on this. The first was RR1 Darklords and the next was RR2 Book of Crypts and both gave us more expansions to the Demiplane of Dread.
1991. By Andria Hayday (with some additional design by William W. Connors, Bruce Nesmith, and James Lowder). 96-pages, color covers (Tim Hildebrandt), black & white interior art (Stephen Fabian).
This soft-cover tome gave 16 new darklords and their domains for use with Ravenloft. There is a mixed bag here, but I tried I to use all of them at one point or another. These new lords felt less "gothic" in their presentation and more "AD&D" in their origins. For example, Tristessa, the Banshee Darklord, is a Drow mourning over the loss of her son, who turned into a Drider. The Hags of Tempest certainly have a William Shakespeare veneer over them, but they are pure AD&D hags.
There are some very interesting ones here too. Merilee, the Child Vampire, brings "Interview with a Vampire's" Claudia to mind. Von Kharkou is twice cursed. He was panther transformed into a man killing machine, then cursed again to vampirism. Zolnik is a different sort of ice-age Werewolf. Anhktepot and Tyet give us two very different takes on the Mummy.
Among all of these, The House of Lament (a haunted house as a darklord) would go on to see new life in future editions of the game, and the intelligent sword, Ebonbane, would get a full adventure in the pages of Dungeon magazine.
1991. by Dale "Slade" Henson with J. Robert King. 96-pages, color covers (David Dorman), black & white interior art (Laura and Kelly Freas, Stephen Fabian).
This book has nine short and loosely connected mini-adventures taking place in the core realms of Ravenloft. Of these, the "Bride of Mordenheim" was my favorite.
This was (is) actually a fun book. Horror lends itself well to the short story format and by extension horror RPG also does these smaller adventures well. They help remind us that not every adventure is going to part of some Grand Conjunction or even dealing directly with a Darklord.
Re-reading them now there are many that I would like re-run for newer versions of the game.
And to round off the pages nicely we get three new monsters in AD&D Monstrous Compendium format.
The PDF is a scanned document and it is a little washed out compared to my original from the 1990s. But still perfectly readable. At present, there is no Print on Demand option for either titles.
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
October Horror Movie Challenge: The Blob (1958, 1988)
The movies largely have the same plot and story with minor differences.
The Blob (1958)
How many horror movies have their own catchy pop song? Well the Blob does.
This one also features future action star Steve McQueen as a squeaky clean teen.
The blob comes from space, a big deal in the 1958, and proceeds eat the towns-folk and get larger all the time. Effective as a scare and I can recall watching this one with my dad back in the 1970s. Actually I recall watching it on an old Black & White TV in my parents basement. My dad had set up a movie-watching area down there. It seems like a perfect place to watch old horror movies.
The cure? The discover that it can be frozen and this stops it.
The sequel Beware! The Blob (1972) features the Blob getting defrosted and going on a rampage again.
The Blob (1988)
This a remake to fit what will become part of the Paranoid 90s, thanks X-Files. In this, the Blob was created by the military and shot into space.
This one has Kevin Dillon, Matt's brother, as our teen hero. Of course, now he is a little punk just south of the law, but that is not a big shock, really. These were the roles he was type-casted in. To be fair, he did give a good performance as drummer John Densmore in the Doors. Shawnee Smith, who plays our "good girl" heroine, is still quite active in movies today.
The special effects are better here and still surprisingly effective when you consider they are all still practical effects (for the most part). The plot, though, is the same as the first movie.
The twist of the Government to create the Blob is a nice but utterly expected twist.
Del Close, who portrays Reverend Meeker, also had a small part in the 1972 Beware! The Blob movie, so that is the sort of thing I enjoy.
Featured Monsters: Black Pudding, Gray Ooze, Green Slime, and Ochre Jelly
The Blob must have left a serious mark on the creators of D&D. We have four monsters that can fit the bill. And this doesn't even cover the Gelantinous Cube. Of these four, the Black Pudding and Gray ooze might be the closest in how the movie Blob acts. The Green Slime doesn't really move (and the blob is fast) and the Ochre Jelly is slow(er) moving.
A "Blood Ooze" would be good, one that starts out gray or even pale and getts redder and redder as it eats people.
October Horror Movie Challenge 2024
Viewed: 11
First Time Views: 4
Review: House of Strahd
by Tracy and Laura Hickman, with additional material by Bruce Nesmith. Art by Dana Andrews, Clyde Caldwell, James Crabtree, and David C. Sutherland III.
PDF and Print. 64 pages.
For this I am considering the PDF from DriveThruRPG and my original print copy from the 1990s.
This is the original I6 Ravenloft Adventure from 10 years prior. This time the action has moved to the Demi-plane of Dread.
Bruce Nesmith does the "Demi-plane" conversions here which include AD&D 2nd edition conversions, using the fear and horror rules from the Ravenloft boxed set AND the updated Strahd stat block.
Strahd, in I6, was a 10th-level necromancer vampire. Now, he is a 16th-level one.
The text is largely the same as the original I6 but yet it somehow feels like it is "less." I have run Ravenloft many times, and while I have run it using the AD&D 2nd ed rules, I have never used to book save for the updated stat block and some monsters. For lack of anything I can put my finger on, the I6 presentation is vastly superior.
Still, though, I am happy to have it. If I were to run AD&D 2nd Ed Ravenloft I would certainly use this adventure. I'd just use the maps from the I6 version and maybe some ideas from the 3e or 5e versions as well.
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