Zatannurday: The Jewel of Gravesend

And even more Zatanna releases! And this one is new to me too.

Zatanna: The Jewel of Gravesend, is a new Young Adult graphic novel featuring the Other Side's favorite sorceress.

Written by Alys Arden with art by Jacquelin De Leon this new Zatanna story features "a 'Brooklyn-centric' YA story, Zatanna: The Jewel Gravesend spotlights a younger Zatanna than comic fans have traditionally seen."

The art looks great.

Not sure who the others are, but I love the art for Tibbar. 

Can't wait to read the book.

You can find them on the web here:

Alys Arden 

• https://www.alysarden.com/
• https://twitter.com/AlysArden

Jacquelin De Leon

• https://www.jacquelindeleon.com/
• https://twitter.com/whaojackie
• https://www.facebook.com/jacquelindeleon
• https://www.instagram.com/jacquelindeleon/
• https://jacquelindeleon.tumblr.com/

October Horror Movie Challenge: Midnight Offerings (1981)

A made for TV movie about early 80s witchcraft?  Sign me up!  I am a little shocked I have never seen this one.  Maybe I did, hard to say, but I certainly don't remember it.

The move features a who's who of early 80s TV stars.  We have Melissa Sue Anderson (Little House on the Prairie) as evil witch Vivian, Mary Beth McDonough (The Waltons) as good witch Robin. Cathryn Damon (Soap) played Vivan's mom and Gordon Jump (WKRP in Cincinnati) played her dad. And everyone's favorite mom Marion Ross played the older witch Emily.

The plot is simple, even a little weak, but still a lot of fun. Writer Juanita Bartlett tried to use everything popular about witchcraft in this tale and it works really.  I mean I have seen better, but I have also seen much worse.  It was a fun bit of 80s TV horror.

Also, I do believe that this is where we get the "Noctila" from the AD&D 1st ed Monster Manual II. The timing is just about perfect really. Yews, yes the word existed before this, but I am talking about her particular inclusion in the Monster Manual as a Lady of Hell.

In any case, this was a fun little trip.

Watched: 11
New: 6

Night Shift: The Craft

The Kickstarter for Night Shift is now in full swing. We got off to a great start and would love to see so more pledges.  I *REALLY* want to get this game out you all, it has been so much fun.

If you are long-time reader here you know of my desire to have a system that lets me play or stat any character I want.   So it should not be a surprise then that I am trying out Night Shift with a lot of different types.

Here are some that should be familiar to everyone here.  I rewatched the movie this week and have been running them for this week's The Other Side Rewind.  Here they are, the dangerous types, the girls of the Craft!

Note:  Sarah, Bonnie, Nancy, and Rochelle are all owned by Columbia Pictures.  These are my playtest versions to see if I could make them Rules-as-Written.

Sarah Bailey
Relax... its only magic. Now, who's pathetic?

Str -1 Dex +0 Con +0 Int +2 Wis +2 Cha +3
XP: 42,000 (Level 5)
Hit Dice: 5d4 Hit Points: 17 AC: 9  Attack Bonus: +1 Check Bonus: +3 (Primary) +2 (Secondary) +1 (Tertiary)
Armor: none
Saves: +4 vs. spells and magical effects
Class Abilities: Arcana 75%, Spellcasting 75%
Other Special Abilities: Arcane Bond (with Nancy, Bonnie and Rochelle), Telekinesis.

Spells: 1st level-charm person, cure light wounds, minor illusion  2nd-level protection from evil, phantasmal image, 3rd-level fly

Gear: Book of Shadows, Spell Components

Nancy Downs
You know, if I were as pathetic as you are, I would have killed myself *ages* ago. You should get on with it.

Str 0 Dex +1 Con +0 Int +2 Wis +1 Cha +2
XP: 42,000 (Level 5)
Hit Dice: 5d4 Hit Points: 18 AC: 7  Attack Bonus: +1 Check Bonus: +3 (Primary) +2 (Secondary) +1 (Tertiary)
Armor: leather jacket
Saves: +4 vs. spells and magical effects
Class Abilities: Arcana 75%, Spellcasting 75%
Other Special Abilities: Arcane Bond (with Sarah, Bonnie and Rochelle), Telekinesis.

Spells: 1st level-charm person, command, disguise self  2nd-level cause fear, phantasmal image, 3rd-level fly

Gear: Book of Shadows, Knife, Spell Components

Bonnie Harper
A new wholeness and with it a new balance. Earth, air, water, fire. Maybe it's our fourth.

Str -1 Dex -1 Con +0 Int +2 Wis +2 Cha +3
XP: 42,000 (Level 5)
Hit Dice: 5d4 Hit Points: 15 AC: 10  Attack Bonus: +1 Check Bonus: +3 (Primary) +2 (Secondary) +1 (Tertiary)
Armor: none
Saves: +4 vs. spells and magical effects
Class Abilities: Arcana 75%, Spellcasting 75%
Other Special Abilities: Arcane Bond (with Sarah, Nancy and Rochelle), Telekinesis.

Spells: 1st level-charm person, detect magic, light, 2nd-level continual flame, levitate, 3rd-level fly

Gear: Book of Shadows, Spell Components

Rochelle Zimmerman
She doesn't want to be white trash anymore. I told her, You're white honey! Just get over it.

Str +1 Dex +2 Con +1 Int +2 Wis +2 Cha +3
XP: 42,000 (Level 5)
Hit Dice: 5d4 Hit Points: 21 AC: 7  Attack Bonus: +1 Check Bonus: +3 (Primary) +2 (Secondary) +1 (Tertiary)
Armor: none
Saves: +4 vs. spells and magical effects
Class Abilities: Arcana 75%, Spellcasting 75%
Other Special Abilities: Arcane Bond (with Sarah, Nancy and Bonnie), Telekinesis.

Spells: 1st level- bane, charm person, inflict light wounds, 2nd-level levitate, suggestion 3rd-level fly

Gear: Book of Shadows, Spell Components

What do you think?

Edited to add: Now available, Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars. You can get the PDF from DriveThruRPG and both the standard and special edition hardcovers from Elf Lair Games.

October Horror Movie Challenge: Saga of the Draculas (1973)

This is quite a bizarre movie but I enjoyed it.  I remember watching it on VHS back when I was in college and it became part of my own Dracula mythology for my AD&D 2nd Ed games.  I guess this was back in the very early 90s.

I never saw any reference to it in the various books on Dracula-related movies and it seemed to have been largely forgotten.   I did see a DVD of it at a Half-Price Books a few years ago for $350.00.
I went back to check on it and someone actually had bought it.  I recently found it again on Amazon Prime Video and knew I had to watch it again.

The movie itself is odd, but not bad.  It is dated feeling and the pace is slow.  But the tale holds up nearly 50 years later.

Berta de Tepes the now pregnant granddaughter of the current Count Dracula (not his famous ancestor) has returned home to her family's ancestral castle with her new husband.  Here she expects to meet with her Grandfather and her cousins only discover graves of all her family and the household staff.  She is a little surprised when they all ask her to dinner later that night.

Dracula's new wife seduces Berta's new husband Hans (with Dracula's approval) and then his two nieces take a turn with Hans as well.   Berta suspects something but is soon rendered helpless by her imagination and pregnancy.

We get some random murders, vampires gotta eat.  And then there is Dracula's inbred heir, Valerio, a one-eyed monster boy that likes to eat gypsy girls.

The story, interestingly enough, is close to the first few chapters of Dracula with Berta in the Harker role.

Berta eventually gives birth, but the baby appears to be still-born.  Berta then goes through the castle killing everyone.  She gets back into her bed and dies herself.  The baby, now alive, feeds on the blood of his mother.

The voice-over at the end implies that the spirit of the old Dracula entered into the new baby to live again.

The movie held up rather well, to be honest.  While it was never a cinematic masterpiece it was a good a Dracula flick.   Narciso Ibáñez Menta will not be remember as one of the great Draculas, which is kind of a shame because he put in a good performance here.

Cristina Suriani, who played Dracula's granddaughter Irinia looks a lot like Abigail Cowen who plays Dorcas on Netflix's Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

Watched: 10
New: 5

October Horror Movie Challenge: Little Witches (1996)

I was going to watch this one last night, but I got distracted by a giant shark.

Little Witches came out the same year as the Craft (1996) and in the video releases of it have tried to tie it more closely to the Craft (a vaguely Fairuza Balk looking actress on the cover, the Morpheus font, the back cover of the DVD claiming they "mastered their craft").

While watching this I realized I had seen it a few years back.

School girls, underground evil temple, ancient evil cult.  Though there are a couple of highlights.
First it is the acting debut of Clea Duvall.  Zelda Rubinstein is in it.  Sheeri Rappaport is not bad in it. And it was only filmed in two weeks.

There is a kernel of a good movie here, buried under cliches and mediocre acting, again Clea Duvall and Sheeri Rappaport are the exceptions here.   The demon at the end was neat, kinda like a poor man's Demogorgon.

It did not get any better in time really.


Watched: 9
New: 5

TBBYANR: Reviews from R'lyeh

I have not done one of these in a long time.  One of the reasons is of course is it much harder to know what people are reading or not.  So I really have no idea if you are reading the blogs I read or not.  But here is one that has been doing some good work of late and you should all know about it.

Mathew "Pookie" Pook runs Reviews from R'lyeh and he has been doing some cool things lately.
Now this is not a new blog by any stretch, Matthew has been doing his thing as long a many other blogs have, since 2009.  What has set his blog apart lately are his reviews of the B series adventures and all of the homages, clones, official and unofficial sequels.

He has done, to date, 1000 reviews, but it is his focus has largely been on B1 In Search of the Unknown and B2 Keep on the Borderlands.  I mean by all mean read the reviews, but it is the B-series that has me coming back for more.

In addition to being a great overview/review of the classic B1 and B2 modules, the series also covers a lot of the "homage modules" as well, many I have never seen before.

I would have loved to have done this series myself, it is the sort of crazy, obsessive-compulsive type of in-depth review I love.  So just go over his site and read them all.  Then use his links to download all the related adventures.  There is enough here to make an entire campaign from these two adventures.  In fact, I think that is a great idea.

Then go back and read all his other reviews and posts.

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Meg (2018)

This is another one that I have been wanting to watch for some time.  Mostly because I really like Megladons after seeing the jaws of one in a museum as a kid.  Also because I like Jason Statham's movies.

This movie is as much humor as horror and a fair amount of action-adventure.

Essentially this is a monster movie.  The most obvious comparison is to Jaws and to Alien, but there is a bit more hop in this one; you actually think that Statham's character has a chance here.

Oddly enough I am also reminded of an old Aquaman cartoon about an ocean under the ocean, so there is a lot of things going on in this movie that I liked.

Statham's comes off as being cocky, but not a jerk, and even people he has a rivalry with he respects.  There are also some good performances from Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson (of course) and Ruby Rose.

I wish the shark had been a bit scarier though.  Still, a fun flick and the sequel should also be fun.

Watched: 8
New: 5