October Horror Movie Challenge: Witch Story (1989)

I am getting to the end of this, and I am running out of movies for my theme.

Witch Story (1989)

Witch Story, aka Streghe, is a 1989 Italian horror movie directed by Alessandro Capone, but most of it was shot in Florida. That combination actually fits the movie pretty well because the basic story feels much more European than American.  

A brother and sister have come into possession of an old farmhouse and with some friends in tow they find that the place is haunted by Helena, a woman put to the torch as a witch half a century ago. One will also find demons, possession, a priest with a past and no end of bloody supernatural retribution.

I like the premise. An inherited piece of family land with a buried history, a curse that has made its way to the present and some witchcraft is my kind of thing. The setup is nearly Gothic despite the location. But the film does not hold up in the middle; it drags, and the characters are not great, nor are the actors. Ian Bannen carries some of the weight as Father Matthew, the most familiar face in the cast.

The lead is listed as Amy Adams in the role of Susan. She is not the one you would see in Enchanted or Arrival, but a credit like that makes you double-check. None of the actors here went on to much more. This is not atypical of horror movies.

NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson Connections

As for my 1980s "Horror Comes Home" theme, this is right up my alley. There is no quest for a far-off castle here. The terror is in the house you have been left with, in an old family tale, and in what the locals did decades back. The past has been biding its time for someone to return.

It fits well with Sunny Valley and its older history, though there is nothing here I couldn't do in any of my three settings. I can always use the "50 years ago" idea from this movie, but 1939 is already a crowded year in Jackson!

It has a good premise and some entertaining supernatural mayhem. Only too much dead space in the center. I would have liked it better.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 46
First Time Views: 32

October Horror Movie Challenge: Sukkubus (1989)

Sukkubus, also known as "Sukkubus - den Teufel im Leib" or "Succubus the Devil Inside (in the flesh)" is a German film that has been on my list for a bit. I finally found a copy.  The plot, indeed the entire story, is basically the same as Sennentuntschi (2010).

Sukkubus (1989) 

The film is in German, but you almost don't need to know any to follow the movie. Two shepherds and a boy are up in the Alps tending their flock. They are a bad combination of cruel, horny, and overly religious. One night they decide to add drinking to the mix, and the two shepherds make an artificial woman out of the old rags they have lying around. 

The doll comes to life the next day as a succubus, played by Pamela Prati, who is pretty much only wearing colored contacts. The shepherds, in their fear, alternate between assaulting her and trying to kill her. Unlike Sennentuntschi, there is no doubt about the maliciousness of the succubus. She wants them dead as well. 

But who is the monster here?

The movie identifies the created woman explicitly as a succubus and leans much harder into the supernatural than Sennentuntschi does.

That is where the comparison gets interesting.

When I watched Sennentuntschi in 2021, the question I kept coming back to was whether the woman was a demon, a witch, or simply an abused woman onto whom everyone else was projecting their fear. The film deliberately complicates the old legend. The men create the doll, but what follows becomes tangled up with rape, murder, religious hypocrisy, and decades of violence against women. By the end, the supernatural explanation is almost less horrifying than the human one.

Sukkubus is much closer to the legend in its raw form. The men are isolated, sexually frustrated, drunk, and foolish enough to make themselves a woman. Then the fantasy becomes real and punishes them.

There is something almost fairy-tale simple about that.

Be careful what you make.

Especially when what you are trying to make is another human being for your own use.

The 1989 movie is also much more direct about sexuality. The title itself tells us what sort of creature we are dealing with, and Pamela Prati is presented as an explicitly erotic supernatural presence. That puts the movie squarely into the territory where sexploitation and folk horror overlap. The men want a woman reduced to an object of desire, and then that object becomes a subject with desires, power, and violence of her own.

That is probably the strongest connection between the two movies.

Both begin with men constructing an imaginary woman.

In one version, she becomes a demon.

In the other, the real horror is what the men do to the woman once she exists.

NIGHT SHIFT and Sunny Valley Connections

For NIGHT SHIFT, Sukkubus and Sennentuntschi take me straight to Sunny Valley, not Jackson.

Sunny Valley is where the old stories aren't quaint folklore. They are survival instructions. The mountains are full of things that were there before the town, before the settlers, maybe before humanity itself, and people learn quickly that some traditions exist because someone once ignored them.

That is where The Ragwife fits.

The Ragwife is Sunny Valley’s version of the same basic "made woman" story behind Sukkubus and Sennentuntschi. She is assembled by lonely, cruel, or foolish men from whatever they have at hand: feed sacks, corn silk, quilt scraps, broom straw, flour paste, coal dust, stolen hair, even a church dress. The men make something shaped like a woman because what they really want is a woman without will, without demands, and without the ability to say no.

Then the Hall’er gives her life.

That is the part that makes her very Sunny Valley.

The men think they are performing the act. They think they are making her. In truth, they have only built the invitation.

Something older notices.

The Ragwife is not necessarily a succubus, demon, ghost, or witch. Sunny Valley has plenty of things that do not fit comfortably into those categories, and I am perfectly happy keeping such categorizations vague. She exists because the men tried to reduce a woman to something they could own, and whatever lives in the mountains answers that act by giving their creation exactly what they tried to deny her.

A soul.

A will.

And anger.

The local version of the story probably comes down to one warning:

"A man makes a Ragwife when he wants a woman without a soul. The Hall’er always gives her one anyway."

That makes her closer to the moral machinery of Sennentuntschi than the straightforward demon of Sukkubus, even though she can still function as a supernatural monster. Her violence is not random. She responds to ownership, coercion, shame, and abuse, and her revenge has a symbolic quality to it. The men who tried to make a woman into an object discover that the object can remake them in return.

For a NIGHT SHIFT adventure, I would not explain exactly what she is.

The characters might find three different versions of the story. One old woman insists the Ragwife is a demon. A preacher says she is punishment for lust. Someone else says the Hall’er simply reminds people who forget that living things cannot be owned. 

All three explanations may be wrong.

All three may be dangerously right.

That is how Sunny Valley works.

Jackson has monsters with histories, grudges, motives, and names. Sunny Valley has things that feel more like parts of the landscape. You don't necessarily defeat them by learning their Vitality and Defense and finding the right weapon.

You learn the rule.

You figure out who broke it.

And sometimes the smartest thing you can do is put things back the way they were and leave the mountain alone.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 41
First Time Views: 28

October Movie Challenge: Poltergeist II & III (1986, 1988)

 I wanted to do these two movies back-to-back since they are more connected to each other than they are to the first movie. The original Poltergeist is not just a great horror movie; it is a great movie, full stop. Spielberg shows the promise here that will earn him the accolades he gets with ET and Shindler's list. 

Sadly, Poltergeist directors Brian Gibson (II) and Gary Sherman (III) don't quite live up to the bar Spielberg set, but then again, who can? But if you ignore the first movie and take these two on their own merits...well, they still don't live up, but there is a perfectly serviceable horror movie here.

Niether of these re first time views.

Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

"They're baaack."

I can't say with 100% certainty that the title of this movie didn't have a roundabout way of influencing the name of this blog. The name of my blog comes from an older website of mine, which in turn came from a newspaper column about weirdness I used to write for my high school newspaper. Though I am pretty sure I started that in 1985. In any case, the movie and the blog both take their name from the same sources.

In another bizarre connection. I guess I connection I used to talk to my dead grandmother on my play telephone too. But in my defense, I was only 2 at the time. 

The Freeling family has moved from their haunted house, now a hole in the ground, to live with Diane's mother. Missing and unexplained is older daughter Dana. The script for the movie has her at college, but that sequence was cut from the final shooting script due to the murder of Dominique Dunne, the actress who had played Dana. I have to admit that bothered me a lot at the time.

A dig at the former site of their home reveals a burial pit under the graveyard already there. Yes, it is an extra graveyard! BUT this becomes the key feature of this and the next film, introducing Rev. Henry Kane (played by Julian Beck), one of the creepiest horror movie villains in a long time. So the movie is redeemed by this alone.

We get a Magical Native American, Taylor (Will Sampson), to help the Freelings against Kane. This would be the last film roles for both Sampson and Beck.

What follows is fairly predictable, but not unenjoyable. This film has an uphill battle afterall. There are some great special effects. The "Worm" stands out, but the "Spielberginess" of the movie is gone.

Poltergeist III (1988)

In some ways, I enjoyed this one more. This movie only has Carlo Anne (a sadly very sick Heather O'Rourke) and Zelda Rubinstein as Tangina Barrons, as in the previous two movies. Henry Kane is back, played by Nathan Davis, with voice-overs by Corey Burton. The setting switches to Chicago, a place I was already in love with, so there was that.

Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams are out as the Freeling parents as Carold Anne is sent to live with her aunt Patricia (Nancy Allen) and her new husband, Bruce (Tom Skerritt). I like both Nancy Allen and Tom Skerritt, so I was fine with this, and if the plot contrivance was to send Carol Anne to a special school, well that is fine, though I did have concerns about parents sending their child away after two traumatic experiences.  

We do learn from Tangina that there have been no incidents since the last movie and they only start now because Carol Anne's psychiatrist, Dr. Seaton (Richard Fire) dredges it all up again via hypnosis. 

This movie also features an early outing for Lara Flynn Boyle as Bruce's teenage daughter Donna Gardner. 

This moves the action from haunted houses built over graveyards to the modern John Hancock Center in Chicago. A good example of my "Horror Comes Home" theme. 

The Poltergeist Tragedies

I do at least want to acknowledge the various deaths that took place. Dominique Dunne was just 22 when she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 1982. Her death really bothered me at the time. Later on, both Will Sampson and Julian Beck would die soon after the second movie, and of course the most famous was Heather O'Rourke, age 12, who died in February of 1988 after filming, but before the movie was released in June.

Poltergeist 2015

I wanted to watch the 2015 Poltergeist with Sam Rockwell, but honestly I am a bit tired now. This was a lot easier to do 15 years ago.

NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson Connections

Both NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson, IL can draw on ideas from both Poltergeist II and III, though for different things. And honestly this is why I picked these two for tonight even though I have already seen them both.

With Poltergeist II it is the notion that one can get away from the supernatural and not have escaped it for good. The Freelings in Cuesta Verde have left town to put their lives back together, doing as much as anyone would in their position to leave it all behind. It does not keep Reverend Kane from putting in an appearance. I think of this with Jackson. Put down a haunting, and you are not guaranteed a clean ending. Some things have a memory of those who hurt them, some places hold on to former residents, and a family can be tied to something that will follow them anywhere.

I want room in NIGHT SHIFT for such stories. A bunch of characters can put an end to an artifact or a terrible encounter and go home to finish school and grow up. But come five or ten years, and something happens that makes them realize the experience has left its mark. They thought the matter was settled years ago, but then they have to consider they may never have understood what went on. In Poltergeist II at least, getting out alive and leaving something in your past are not the same.

Poltergeist III is in some respects more interesting to work with. The move to Chicago alters the whole mood. Carol Anne is older and with relatives in a high-rise. The supernatural is to be found in the elevators and mirrors and parking garages rather than another suburban house. That is along the lines of what I have in mind for my Chicago 1992 campaign.

By 1992, the Jackson kids have put some distance between themselves and their former home. They are at college or at work, sharing an apartment, having relationships, and paying bills. They have obligations and have let some of their old friends go. This is significant because in Jackson they had a support system. If something odd happened, there were people around who knew what it was, and even if the adults didn’t believe them, they had each other.

In Chicago, none of that applies. Old friends are hundreds of miles off, and no one at work or in college has any idea what transpired in Jackson. It is hard to tell someone who has never seen anything supernatural why you are afraid of a certain sound or reflection. The characters are more capable, but their support system is gone.

The city also puts the horror in a different light. In Jackson, I see it in the woods or an abandoned house outside of town. Chicago has its share of forgotten spots, but there is something about having the supernatural in the heart of a crowded city. An apartment building can have hundreds of people who don’t know one another. You might hear screaming through the wall and be told to mind your own business. The elevator could stop on a floor where a tenant is not remembered. There is a reflection in an empty hallway. You can be in the company of others all day and find nobody to put stock in what is happening to you.

That is the horror I am after in Chicago 1992.

There is a contrast too between the supernatural and the demands of being an adult. As a teen, a haunting might mean missing school or lying to your parents. At twenty-two, you still have to be at work in the morning, and the landlord wants his rent. Your classes do not stand down because you saw a dead woman in the lift, and your partner may well think you are losing it for not looking in the bathroom mirror. Those pressures put a different spin on the story. The characters have more freedom but also responsibilities they cannot shirk.

And that is how Jackson and Chicago differ. In Jackson, the kids are coming to realize that the world is stranger and more perilous than the adults say. They are young enough to hope an older head has the answers. By the time we get to Chicago 1992, they are the adults. They have to make the calls and make sure everyone is alright when things go sideways. There is no parent or teacher standing by with the solution.

Poltergeist III stays with me for that reason. I have no desire to rework Reverend Kane, the film’s mirror tricks, or Carol Anne’s tale. I want to see what happens when the supernatural tags along from childhood into adulthood.

The Jackson kids have made their way and put down new roots. But the trouble they ran into back home may have done the same.

Now I am in the mood to do a Chicago-based horror movie marathon. I bet there are enough movies. According to IMDb, there are 152 movies tagged "Horror" and "Chicago, Illinois." I might have next year's theme! Though I do want to do psychic movies sometime as well.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 31
First Time Views: 19

October Horror Movie Challenge: Hold the Dark (2018)

Tonight I am stepping outside my usual range for this year’s challenge. This one was my wife's choice because she likes werewolves and Alexander Skarsgård. 

Most of what I have been watching has been from 1984 to 1987, but as I was watching, I began to think about something specifically for my Valhalla, Alaska, setting. It has wolves, isolation, strange local beliefs, and the tournaq, or tornrak, wolf-demon.

Hold the Dark seemed like a good choice for all of this.

Hold the Dark (2018)

Medora Slone (Riley Keough), a young mother from the Alaskan backwater of Keelut, puts in a call to wolf expert and naturalist Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright), with an urgent request. Her six-year-old Bailey is gone, and with two other children having vanished in much the same way, she believes wolves are to blame. She wants him to come up north and put down the animal before her husband Vernon (Alexander Skarsgård) comes home from his tour in Iraq.

Core makes the trip thinking it will be a hard but straightforward job. He is relieved of that notion rather quickly. What he uncovers about Bailey is far worse than Medora let on, and when Vernon does return, he sets off on a course of violence all his own. In time, the film sheds its missing-child premise for something stranger and harder to pin down.

You could almost, but not quite, call it a werewolf movie or even a supernatural horror in the conventional sense, yet for most of its running time it leaves you in doubt as to whether it might be one. I find that uncertainty to be its best quality.

Take the wolves themselves. They are present from the start, though the film is cagey in how it presents them. Core will study them and insist they are animals, not moral agents; he can make sense of a pack culling its own young as a matter of nature, which is violent but not evil. The villagers of Keelut have a different take. Once Core gets to the bottom of what happened to Bailey, some are quick to say Medora is under the influence of a wolf-demon, or tournaq as the movie puts it.

You will not get a tidy resolution on that here. There is no scene of Medora breaking out in fur, nor does Vernon undergo a full-moon metamorphosis. No one is on hand with an old tome to lay out the rules. The wolf imagery is there in the hunting and predation, in parents turning on their children, and in people acting on instincts others cannot fathom. Whether you see it as supernatural or merely human is left open, and that is more to my liking than a run-of-the-mill creature feature.

Then there is the village of Keelut, perhaps the most effective horror element of all. It feels cut off from the world, not by some contrived fantasy setting but because the distance imposes its own order. An outsider like Core will notice right away: the people know each other, and they know things they are not sharing with him. The landscape is vast, cold, and indifferent. It is exactly what I was looking for in this movie. Alaska is a character in and of itself, it was one of the reasons I began Valhalla, AK.

Director Jeremy Saulnier and writer Macon Blair seem to have an eye for dark fantasy rather than for Alaskan realism. As someone considering an Alaska setting for inspiration, I can put that aside. Hold the Dark is not a documentary, but it is invaluable for atmosphere. The silence and the sense that the modern world thins out once you are far enough from the centers of population are very well done. There is something about the cold, the dark, and the isolation that keeps ideas like Valhalla, AK alive for me.

The masks in the film do this well. Vernon and Medora both wear them, and the movie leaves us wondering what they mean. Ritual, identity, a change in the person beneath without any physical alteration. That could serve Valhalla nicely. A wolf-demon need not make a man into a werewolf; the mask is transformation enough. Wear it and your thinking changes. You stop feeling the cold; you smell blood and recognize fear. There comes a point where you can no longer fathom why the rest of the world is so put off by your actions. That's a different sort of creature.

Violence Without Explanation

What makes Hold the Dark violent is its suddenness and brutality. You have an extended gun battle at one point that could be mistaken for something from another film, yet it serves to make a point: here, violence is hard to put a lid on once it starts. Saulnier has a way of rendering it ugly instead of heroic, and this story requires that. Vernon is as dangerous as they come but never an action hero; he is unsettling because his conduct follows a logic that eludes everyone else. Medora is no different. They are both driven by something older and more instinctive than what we would call morality. Whether one wants to call it supernatural is beside the point. For Core, it might as well be. My wife kept thinking they were werewolves. I don't think she was wrong.

Valhalla, AK and the Tournaq

My Valhalla is quirkier than Keelut, somewhere nearer Northern Exposure and Resident Alien, where the oddities and monsters are local complications rather than an unending tragedy. But humor only goes so far. You need places where the jokes end. Put some miles between you and town, lose the road and the radio, and you will hear wolves. Then you are in another place entirely.

I went to see the movie for the wolf-demon. The film refers to its possible wolf-spirit as a tournaq, but I would not put much stock in that as a mythological artifact. Inuit lore has its share of helping spirits for the shaman or the hunter, but "wolf-demon" is the film’s own construct.

If I were to put Valhalla on paper, I would fictionalize it. Let us say the locals use the term tornrak for it, though no one can tell you where the word originates. An anthropologist will say the name is incorrect, and an old-timer will reply, "Yeah. So is the thing." That is the sort of place Valhalla is.

The beast is not a werewolf in the sense of a man becoming a wolf. A tornrak is what gets people to become wolves in every way but the physical. It latches on to someone who is already isolated or angry. At first it is just a presence at the periphery of vision, a wolf at the window with no tracks in the snow to account for it. Then there are the dreams of hunting and running with blood in the mouth and snow on bare feet. When the person wakes, he feels better than he has in years. One should not overlook that. A proper supernatural corruption gives you something before it takes anything: strength, a release from guilt or fear, the means to endure the cold. Before long the victim is thinking in pack terms. Family is pack, outsiders are to be put down, and instinct has done away with moral choices.

And then the tornrak wants something. Hunger does not require words.

Final Thoughts

There is a strangeness to Hold the Dark. It sets out as a mystery over children being killed by wolves and devolves into a crime thriller of the most violent kind, all while skirting the edge of the supernatural without fully committing. You could be left frustrated by the ambiguity and the questions the film has no intention of answering. Even the director and writer seem content to let the atmosphere be dark and mythic rather than literal. To my mind, that is precisely what makes it such good material to draw from.

I don't want the tornrak explained. I do not want somebody to find a nineteenth-century book saying it has 8 Hit Dice and can only be killed by silver. At least not at first. I want people in Valhalla to disagree about whether it even exists. I want the old locals to tell contradictory stories. I want the rational explanation to remain possible long after the players have stopped believing it.

And I want the wolves to remain wolves. 

Because the most disturbing possibility in "Hold the Dark" is not that human beings can turn into animals. It is that maybe there is not as much difference between humans and animals as we would like to believe.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 28
First Time Views: 18

October Movie Challenge: The Initiation (1984)

Tonight’s movie is The Initiation, a 1984 slasher featuring college students, sorority pledges, buried family secrets, recurring nightmares, and a late-night trip to a department store that goes very badly.

This one has been on my list for a bit now. Despite the title, there really is not all that much initiation going on here.

The Initiation (1984)

Kelly Fairchild, played by Daphne Zuniga in her first major role, is in the midst of pledging a sorority but is also haunted by a recurring dream in which her parents and a stranger are being set on fire at her old home. With large holes in her memory of the event, she enlists the help of Peter (a pre-Charmed James Read), a psychology graduate student, in the hope a sleep study will jog things loose.

On the other hand, Kelly and the rest of the pledges have their work cut out for them in preparation for the big night. They are to make off with the night watchman’s uniform from the department store her family owns. It is a convenient way to get a bunch of students locked up in a sizeable commercial building after hours, which I do not mind. When the killer shows up, the matter of the initiation becomes secondary.

Larry Stewart has directed this from a Charles Pratt Jr. script. Along with Zuniga, you will see Vera Miles, Clu Gulager, James Read, and Marilyn Kagan in it. Some of the campus footage was done at Southern Methodist University, and the Dallas Market Center was used for the Fairchild store. Ignore the fact that the sign out front is just a banner draped over the real mall's sign. 

Zuniga is very good in what was her first major part. She has to be the anchor of the film as Kelly and, later, as the murderous twin, Terry Randall. The whole evil-twin business is straight melodrama, but she makes the difference between the two convincing enough for me to accept it. 

Then there is James Read as Peter. He is fine in the role, though these days I am more accustomed to him as Victor Bennett, the father on Charmed. There is something oddly fitting about the future dad of Prue and the girls delving into psychic dreams in an eighties horror.

College Horror 

I have to say the college atmosphere is what I enjoy most, even if the film could have made better use of it. There is a different dynamic to college horror than to high school horror. In high school, you are still tied to your family and the identity you have had since you were young. College is meant to be a chance to put that behind you, to leave home and figure out who you are going to be as an adult. I have brought this up with both college and boarding school movies this month and it is a fertile ground for a game.

So Kelly can't recall anything from her life before the age of 9. Which is convenient since there are plenty of red herrings here that make you believe she might be our killer. 

As Kelly is put through the motions of a ritual to induct her into a new social family, she is also starting to realize that her own flesh and blood are not what they seem. One could make the case for a better film that would have done more with such a parallel, but what is on offer here is sufficient to draw an audience to the multiplex.

The Mall After Dark

This is where The Initiation becomes a far more compelling affair. Even if it doesn't differ much from Chopping Mall in some respects. 

For the sorority challenge, Kelly and the rest of the pledges are tasked with going into the Fairchild department store after it closes. Some students slip in to put the frights on them, and before long all of them are trapped. The well-lit world of commerce is transformed into a slasher’s maze.

Using the Dallas Market Center as a stand-in gives the movie a scale you do not get from an average house or dorm setting. Malls and the like are fine horror territory precisely because an empty one is an entirely different place. I have already argued that malls are the second-best place for 80s horror, next to schools.

In the day, they are designed to put you at ease so you will part with your money; there is music, displays to catch the eye, and people about. But when the doors are locked, the mannequins, mirrors, and furniture are still there, and the people are not. The film makes good use of it. It is something I see in a lot of 1980s horror this month: the modern commercial world can be as haunted a castle as any isolated Gothic spot. You head to the mall, and the monster is already there. Or, more to the point, it follows you there.

Jackson finds this useful for Lincoln Square Mall. By day it is all very ordinary. Teenagers are shopping, parents are grumbling about the cost, kids are congregating at the food court, and Stephanie likely knows half the staff. Put out the lights and bar the doors and it is another matter altogether.

Family Secrets

Kelly’s nightmares turn out to be repressed memories. The man she recalls being burned is Jason Randall, her biological father, which means the tale her family has been telling is mostly lies.

But the real twist is yet to come.

There is a twin sister. If you want to say that in your best "Return of the Jedi" Darth Vader voice that is up to you. 

Terry Randall has been put away in an institution since she was a child and expunged from the family record. Daphne Zuniga is on hand to play both parts for us, delivering the kind of amnesia and secret parentage you would expect from a mix of soap opera and horror. She would later go on to "Melrose Place" so yeah, this is a good turn for her.

It is preposterous. Yet it works, perhaps better than it ought to. It's the 1980s. 

An evil twin is a straightforward notion for horror because it is an assault on identity, not just the body. A killer in a mask is concealing himself; an evil twin can take your place. Your friends will swear they were talking to you; your family will spot you in a place you have never been. You may have an alibi, but witnesses will vouch for having seen your face. That is a more interesting proposition than someone simply running after you with a blade.

The rest of the movie is fairly predictable, though. Terry kills all of Kelly's friends and decides to kill Kelly and take her place. Not sure if she really thought this one out well, but hey, she was crazy.

Jackson, IL Connections

I mentioned already I am a touch disappointed I didn't make Stephanie and Grant Vale twins. In truth, it does work better for Steph to have an older brother she thinks is great, but is also away at UIUC, so he doesn't pop in all the time except when I need him.

But near the end of this movie, I had an idea.

Why not make Stephanie into a forgotten twin? 

I would put this down as a Stephanie adventure. But as always, you sub in your Characters here.

Picture someone with the exact features of Stephanie Wren Vale making an appearance in Jackson. In the beginning, there is no violence to point to a monster, just oddities. A teacher is adamant he had words with her after school; one of the cheerleaders will tell you Stephanie called and was deliberately cruel. Then someone spots her coming out of Lincoln Square Mall, even though she was elsewhere.

Stephanie dismisses it as a joke until someone is actually hurt. The witness has no doubt that Stephanie is responsible, and suddenly she has a very personal problem.

Her first thought is likely to be something quite ordinary. She has a sister. Or at least that is what she comes to believe: that her parents have been keeping the existence of another daughter from her. So she starts to probe. She pokes around in the family records, puts questions to her parents, and reads their every hesitation as proof they are up to something.

"Do I have a sister?"

They say no, but are really cagey about it. Stephanie does not buy it. For a Vale, a family scandal is far more credible than a supernatural duplicate. It is only Larina who will eventually put forward the answer Stephanie is not looking for. What if the girl is not her sister? What if she is a doppelgänger?

That is where the story gets frightening. The copy is not content to simply resemble Stephanie; it is studying her. At first there are errors. A wrong nickname is used, or she is wearing something Stephanie would not touch. It knows the facts but not their significance. An associate of Stephanie’s might notice the smile is right on time but not in the right moment. With each meeting, the copy improves.

The doppelgänger is not so much trying to frame Stephanie as it is practicing. Its aim is to take her place. That is the true danger. Stephanie is adept at managing social spaces and how others view her; the creature turns that identity into a weapon.

For the climax, you want to be inside Lincoln Square Mall after hours. There are mirrors and mannequins and dressing rooms aplenty for the thing to vanish and come back a little more like Stephanie. By the end, Faye and Larina may find themselves confronted by two Stephanies, both claiming the other is the monster. Faye (you characters in your) is the one to sort it out. Not with some spell, but because she knows Stephanie.

In my game this would work because Faye would be a good choice to spot an evil twin. 

Final Thoughts

I would not call The Initiation a great slasher of the decade. It's not even really a great slasher for 1984. The title sets you up for sorority stuff the film doesn't really deliver; the initiation is little more than a way to get everyone into the department store.

Still, there are merits, and I did enjoy the second half. The college environment allows Kelly the freedom to question what her family has told her, and the psychological side means her nightmares are not just foreshadowing for its own sake. Daphne Zuniga handles the double duty well in her first major outing, and James Read makes Peter likable enough to make the investigation bearable.

But my favorite part is the mall. There is nothing like a deserted one at night for 1980s horror. It strips the safety from a familiar place. And then you realize the one on your trail has your face. 

In Jackson’s case, I prefer the doppelgänger to the evil twin trope. One character goes through half the ordeal fearing her parents have kept a sister from her. Then the good news: there is no secret sister. Too bad something else is wearing her face. 

I am going to need more "Evil Twin" movies.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 23
First Time Views: 14

October Movie Challenge: Dracula (2025)

 I have a theme this year, but I need to get this one out of the way first. I had heard a lot about it, both good and bad, but a quote from Director Luc Besson filled me with dread. And not the good kind.

Besson had described the project as the "ultimate love story" and even going as far as to say (and I am trying to remember his exact quote) "if you read the novel it is a love story."

NO.

Dracula has NEVER been a love story unless you count Stoker's dedication in the novel to Hall Caine, aka "Hommy-Beg."  It was only a love story in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 Dracula. Well...yes other movies worked that bit of plot, but Christopher Lee's Dracula was never in love with his "brides." Bela Lugosi's Dracula was never in love. Frank Langella's...well, his Dracula was just lust-filled all the time. That is fine. 

I am ranting, and I have not even clicked play yet. And it is after midnight now.

Dracula (2025)

Ok. So right away, some liberties are being taken with the story. Not a big deal. Again, many characters are gone, and a few new ones are added. Set in France. Gods, this is going to be a pain.

I am a few more minutes in. One thing is 100% clear to me. This movie would have never exsisted without the FFC 1992 Dracula. Remove any Dracula movie in existence, and the others still survive, albeit with some minor changes. The 1979 shots would look different if the 1931 movie were removed. The shadows would be different in the 1992 movies if Nosferatu were removed. Remove the 1992 movie, and this one falls apart.

Matilda De Angelis appears as "Maria" our "Lucy" stand-in. Though Lucy represented the old world of Europe, the damsel in distress, the "weak-blooded woman." Maria is part of the old French aristocracy. Now. I do like this character, plus I adore Matilda De Angelis. If she were in this movie more I *might* enjoy it better. 

Christoph Waltz plays Van Helsing. Is he a priest here or just pretending to be one? No idea; they are not very clear on that. BUT as always, Christoph Waltz is fantastic and really great casting here. Too bad the rest of the movie is shit. 

Ok, on to our other actors. Caleb Landry Jones as Dracula. Maybe the worst Dracula casting since Jack Palance (although his movie was better). Maybe he was told to play Dracula like Lestat and ended up doing neither character justice. Zoë Bleu was okay as Mina and less so as "Elisabeta" (a character who never appeared in the book and only gained prominence in the 1992 movie). Ewens Abid played Jonathan Harker and was utterly forgettable. He didn't really do anything.

The movie is a mess, really. We are also supposed to believe that Dracula's ability to charm comes from a perfume he had manufactured in Paris? Did the French Film Board give them some kickback for this?

I like Luc Besson. I love The Fifth Element, Léon: The Professional, and even Lucy was fun. This? Fuck this was bad.

I own nearly every Dracula movie there is. Between VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray, you would be hard-pressed to find one I don't have. I am not buying this one. I did get a new Blu-Ray of Frank Langella's 1979 Dracula for my birthday last summer. I might need to pop that one in as a palate cleanser.

Jackson, IL Connections

So. For this challenge, I am going to try to make connections between the movie I watch and one or more of my current settings.  

This one is not going to make the cut. 

There is the question of whether Jackson should have a vampire, aside from the one or two I have in "Better Off Undead." But besides that, this one is not good enough to emulate. Maybe, MAYBE, an argument could be made that this is a better "Strahd von Zarovich" movie, since it features an obsessive love story. Maybe I could bring in Maria to that world. Christoph Waltz would make for a better Van Richten, to be honest.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 1
First Time Views: 1

Urban Fantasy Friday: Slasher Flick Director's Cut

At the start of the week, I posted about Horror Movie rules and the Final Girl. The topic of the Steven Jackson Games Magazine's Slasher Flick came up. I had never played that, but I did know about the RPG Slasher Flick: Director's Cut from Spectrum Games. 

I went back to Slasher Flick to see what it has that I can use to help flesh out my ideas for Jackson, IL. Obviously, Slasher Flick leans hard into the whole slasher sub-genre of horror, whereas Jackson is more supernatural horror. The list of movies is, of course, fantastic and a must-have. Reading the video recommendations is really one of the book's treats.

The obvious overlap is in structure. Jackson, IL is not a slasher setting in the strictest sense. There are slashers in it, certainly. There are masked killers, urban legends, haunted campuses, missing girls, old crimes that repeat, and all the usual things that make people in horror movies say, "I'll be right back," right before they absolutely do not come back.

But Jackson is not really about a killer with a knife. Jackson is about the thing under the town.

Slasher Flick is not just a game about killing off teenagers. It is a game about horror movie pacing. It understands that the first third of a horror movie is not really about death. It is about relationships. Who likes whom. Who is lying. Who is jealous. Who is scared. Who is trying to act brave. Who is going to make the wrong choice for exactly the right emotional reason. The book even notes that slasher films often focus on teenagers or college-aged characters, isolation, and the relationships and conflicts among them, especially in the first part of the movie. That is very useful for Jackson.

A Slasher Flick game asks, "Who is killing these kids?"

A Jackson game asks, "Why is this happening again?"

I'll talk more about this next week, but July 2026 marks 40 years since I first rolled up Larina as an AD&D character. So it seems fitting that I try her and her friends out. Compare and contrast their Jackson and Slasher Flick counterparts.

Larina "Nix" Nichols
Primary Character
Stereotype: Weird Bookish Witch Girl
Role: Smart Girl

Brawn: Poor
Physically Small / Not Built for This (-)

Finesse: Normal

Brains: Good
Occult Research (+), Perceptive (+), Knows the Library (+) 

Spirit: Good
Cool When Things Get Weird (+)

Special Ability: Psychic Power

Tidbits: Has a short temper. Has nightmares.

Items: Backpack, compact mirror, library card, Greek II notebook, flashlight, occult book, wristwatch

Stephanie Vale
Primary Character
Stereotype: Sweet Cheerleader
Role: Ms Popular

Brawn: Normal
Healthy (+)

Finesse: Good
Flexible (+)

Brains: Normal

Spirit: Good
Attractive (+), Annoyingly Perky (-)

Special Ability: Wholesome

Tidbits: Feels like she is the only one holding everything together.

Items: Car keys, cosmetics, mace/pepper spray, sunglasses, brush

Faye "Thornie" Thorne
Primary Character
Stereotype: Snarky Goth Girl
Role: Oddball

Brawn: Poor

Finesse: Good

Brains: Normal
Unconvential Thuinker (+) 

Spirit: Good
Bluff (+), Courageous (+), Witty Remarks (+), Overly Sarcastic (-)

Special Ability: Steel Yourself

Tidbits: Doesn't like to be touched, Loves hot peppers, encyclopedic knowledge of music

Items: Pentagram necklace, knife (in boot), knife (in pocket), knife (in jacket sleeve), leather jacket, cigarettes.

Candace "Candy" Mercer
Primary Character
Stereotype: Fun-loving Party Girl
Role: Smartass

Brawn: Normal

Finesse: Good
Breaking & Entering (+), Stealthy (+)

Brains: Normal
Resourceful (+) 

Spirit: Good
Seduction (+), Inappropriate Humor (-)

Special Ability: Dumb Luck

Tidbits: Shockingly good at First Aid. Uses inappropriate humor as a shield. Uses sex as a means of connection.

Items: First Aid kit, knife, baseball bat, lighter, cheap sweet strawberry wine/

Denise "Duchess" Carver
Primary Character
Stereotype: Party Girl with a heart of gold
Role: Rebel

Brawn: Normal
Street fighter (+)

Finesse: Good
Stealthy (+)

Brains: Normal

Spirit: Good
Bluff (+), Courageous (+), Untrusting (-)

Special Ability: Overcome

Tidbits: Knows where all the exits are. Doesn't trust anyone but Candy

Items: Crowbar, cigarettes, perfume, cosmetics, knife

--

Wow. I rather love these. I was thinking that these could be have been the girls in their next adventure, but this feels like early school year 1985. Maybe their second adventure and the first one with all five of them together.

Originally Candy and Denise were going to be Secondary Characters. But like how they evolved in NIGHT SHIFT, I couldn't help but make them Primary characters. These versions are likely the ones we see in Shadows of the Night.

Slasher Flick Adventure: "Hey Mickey, You’re So Dead"

So I want a good "Slasher Flick"- style adventure that keeps all the characters involved. It's easy to keep Larina and Faye involved; they love spooky shit. Denise and Faye are always in trouble, but Stephanie. She was an issue in the beginning. She didn't have a lot of reason to stay with the others despite their magic connection. This helps me solve that. Granted. Your game will have different issues with different characters, but Steph is the stand-in for the Popular Guy/Girl who would normally not be hanging out with the High School weirdos. 

This adventure involves her.

Michele "Mickey" Wren was the head cheerleader in Jackson for the 1965/66 school year. A senior, popular, pretty, and hated by her rivals. So, while decorating for homecoming in the gym at the Old High School, the other cheerleaders and football players decide to prank her by taking away the ladder she was using. Mickey didn't see this and fell to her death.

20 years later, the pep-squad has convinced the school district to hold the Homecoming dance in the old High School Gym (the "new" gym is not ready yet). This wakes up Mickey's vengeful spirit, and she tries to kill the current roster of cheerleaders and football players. This includes Stephanie, Valentino, and Andy. Steph needs Faye, Larina, and strangely enough Candy and Denise to help.

I am including Candy and Denise, well, because I love them, but I also need someone to climb to where Mickey fell to her death, and frankly that screams Candy. She isn't afraid of heights. 

It starts when someone sees a girl in an older cheer uniform, but wearing a Crimson Cougar mask (Steph sees this first). Then killings start. The clues are in the library (old yearbooks, newspapers) the realization that someone has died in the school every year since there was a Jackson Public High School (Larina figures that out). Someone gets cut (allowing Candy to show off her first-aid skills), gets trapped under the old gym (allowing Denise to show them the way out), and, basically, I want everyone to have something to do. Faye is the one who figures out Mickey isn't mad because she died; she is mad because everyone forgot her. In the end, Steph decides that the Homecoming theme is 1965 and Mickey is remembered, so she doesn't come back to kill again. 

Mickey's Slasher Flick components would be:

Hard to Kill

She keeps coming back after being knocked down, drowned, electrocuted, or locked behind doors.

Linked Location: Jackson PHS Old Gym and Auditorium Wing

She is strongest in the old gym, locker rooms, stage, costume storage, catwalk, boiler access, and trophy hallway.

Signature Weapon: Sharpened Spirit Baton

The baton is part cheer prop, part ritual weapon, part murder implement.

Stalking the Prey

She appears in mirrors, trophy case glass, polished locker doors, and the dark windows of the gym before she attacks.

Tidy

Bodies vanish, blood is wiped away, and the school keeps looking normal until the final act. This lets adults doubt the girls. It also makes Steph trust the others because they believe her right away.

Episode Theme Song: Mickey, which Candy will hum when they are supposed to be sneaking around. 

Candy: (softly) "Oh Mickey, what a pity..."
Faye: "Could you not do that?"
Candy: "Sorry, inappropriate behavior is how I deal with stress."
Denise: "I thought random sex was how you dealt with stress."
Candy: "I have a lot of stress."

Yeah. I like this. I don't think I need NIGHT SHIFT stats for Mickey Wren, but if she comes back, I'll certainly do them. 

This should also be the episode where the players learn that someone has died in the school every year since 1936.

October Movie Challenge: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)

It has been YEARS since I have seen this one. It came up on the Roku Channel, American Horrors, so I thought I would catch it again. I had forgotten that this was Dario Argento's first movie as a director.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)

aka L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo

This is the one that started it all. Before Suspiria, before the neon nightmares and supernatural witches, Dario Argento gave us a razor-sharp modern fairy tale dressed as a murder mystery. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage isn’t just a giallo, it’s the giallo that kicked open the doors for everything that followed. You can't be a fan of Italian Horror and not see this one at least once.

Tony Musante stars as Sam, an American writer living in Rome who witnesses what he thinks is an attempted murder inside a modern art gallery. He’s trapped between two glass doors, helplessly watching as a woman struggles against a black-gloved assailant. It’s a haunting image, clinical, voyeuristic, and painfully symbolic of how Argento would frame horror as both spectacle and paralysis.

From there, Sam becomes obsessed. He’s convinced he saw something that doesn’t quite fit, a visual clue just out of reach. It’s classic Hitchcock territory filtered through late-'60s/early-'70s Italian cool; bright mod interiors, bizarre suspects, and Ennio Morricone’s unnerving, almost childlike score whispering through every frame.

What makes this film fascinating, especially looking back from Suspiria or Inferno, is how mundane its horror initially seems. There are no witches here, no covens, no occult conspiracies, just art, memory, and madness. But that’s where Argento’s dark alchemy comes in. He takes the language of realism and bends it into nightmare logic. The killer’s psychology is grotesque and tragic, a fractured reflection of trauma and repression, a kind of proto–Lucifer Rising through the lens of pop modernism.

And that title! The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. I have to admit it always made me think of the movie as a half-remembered dream. A play maybe you had heard someone refer too or maybe a book. You half-expect a witch’s curse or a magic talisman, but instead, it’s just one more symbol of distortion and misdirection, an exotic bird whose song contains the clue to everything. Argento always did love his twisted fairy tales.

Visually, it’s pure 1970: glass, chrome, and blood. The camera lingers like an artist obsessed with his own canvas, and even now, you can see the DNA of future horror. De Palma, Carpenter, and even Fincher ("se7en") all owe something to this.

Watching it today feels like finding the first sigil in Argento’s cinematic grimoire. It doesn’t yet glow with the supernatural madness of his later works, but the geometry of fear is already here: art as ritual, obsession as invocation, and violence as creation. And of course Argento's near trademark of blood, screams, and sexploitation.

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D Ideas

Looking back over Argento's career, this one can feel like an aberration. A remarkably mundane killer, even one you might pity. 

For NIGHT SHIFT I have thrown this idea out before. The killer can seem like a supernatural creature, but instead the PCs discover it is only a normal, if troubled, human.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
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First Time Views: 25

October Horror Movie Challenge: Red Dragon (2002)

The Silence of the Labs is a horror film, in fact it is one of my favorites. So when the chance came up to watch Red Dragon (2002) I jumped on it. I had read the  Thomas Harris book ages ago and watched the first movie treatment of it, Manhunter (1986). This movie is not as good as the book, but better than the 1986 movie. But both of those opinions are subjective.

Red Dragon (2002)

What Red Dragon does exceptionally well is balance tension and performance. It’s a prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, but it doesn’t feel like an afterthought. Anthony Hopkins returns as Hannibal Lecter, and while he’s clearly older than his supposed timeline, it hardly matters. Hopkins slips back into Lecter’s skin like a comfortable, expensive suit. Every word is deliberate. Every pause, a manipulation.

Edward Norton plays FBI profiler Will Graham, the man who caught Lecter years before. The film opens with that capture, a brutal and stylish confrontation that immediately sets the tone. Graham has since retired, but he’s pulled back in to track a new killer, Francis Dolarhyde, the “Tooth Fairy,” played with a quiet menace by Ralph Fiennes. Fiennes delivers a haunting, deeply tragic performance. His Dolarhyde is terrifying not because he’s monstrous, but because he’s broken and he is doing what he thinks he has to do to transform. Though I do admit, I wondered the whole time what this role would have been like in the hands of someone like Billy Bob Thorton. 

This is what makes Red Dragon work. It’s not just a procedural thriller, it’s a story about the fine line between understanding evil and becoming infected by it. Norton's Graham is empathetic to a fault. He has to feel what the killer feels to catch him, and that empathy nearly destroys him. Lecter, ever the manipulator, senses that and twists it for his amusement. Watching their verbal chess match unfold is as thrilling as any chase or murder scene. There are times when Graham gets way too close to feeling what the killers (Lecter, Dolarhyde) feel.  Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling is good because she understands. Will Graham is good because he feels. 

The supporting cast adds real weight. Emily Watson is remarkable as Reba, the blind woman who sees more clearly than anyone else in the film. Her tenderness toward Dolarhyde makes his descent even more tragic. Harvey Keitel, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Mary-Louise Parker round out an impressive lineup that grounds the story in gritty humanity. Let's be honest. This is a star-studded cast. 

It never reaches the same heights as The Silence of the Lambs. But maybe that is ok. This is the first Act of Lecter's big three-act play (I am not counting Hannibal Rising here yet). This is A New Hope to Lambs' Empire Strikes Back.

Comparisons to Manhunter (1986)

It has been a bit since I saw Manhunter, and I watched before The Silence of the Lambs. Here is what I do recall. Manhunter feels like it was pulled straight from the ‘80s crime zeitgeist: sleek, minimalist, and pulsing with synth. It’s more procedural, less psychological. For example, Lecter's cell was not as "impressive" as what we see in Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs. 

Anthony Hopkins is a menacing Hannibal Lecter. He is the prefect blend of menace, evil, sharp intelligence, and amorality to give us his Academy Award-winning performance. Brian Cox is...no Anthony Hopkins, but his Lecter has menace all his own. Cox's Lector looks and acts like someone who would have really existed. Hopkin's Lecter is practically a Batman villain. 

 William Petersen’s Will Graham is distant, analytical, almost robotic at times. He’s haunted, yes, but in that stoic, Mann-hero way. You sense the obsession, but not always the emotion.

I liked Kim Greist as Molly Graham, but Mary-Louise Parker also did a fine job. 

Visually, Manhunter is all clean lines and cold light; Red Dragon is candlelight and shadow. One is clinical, the other operatic. Neither is “wrong,” but Red Dragon feels more in conversation with The Silence of the Lambs. It treats Hannibal as a monster out of folklore rather than a psychopath in a cell.

I should really rewatch it, but is so much of a Police Procedural movie I don't think I could count it as horror.

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D Ideas

This works for NIGHT SHIFT quite well. The characters can all be investigators looking for a new serial killer who the press has called "The Baltimore Vampire" (nod to the original movies). Only to discover it is a real freaking vampire. Or maybe it is just a garden variety serial killer who thinks he is, or can become, a vampire if he kills enough. 

For my Occult D&D ideas, well. Interestingly enough, I found the Red Dragon novel because I wanted to suck up anything related to my new obsession, D&D! I read it and thought that a psychological profiler might be a cool job to have. 

For either, Francis Dolarhyde could easily be reimagined as a cultist or warlock possessed by the spirit of an ancient dragon, a literal Red Dragon whispering promises of power and perfection. His killings are ritualistic, each one part of his ascension.

In an occult campaign, you could use this as a slow-burn mystery: murders tied to draconic iconography, victims chosen for symbolic reasons, and a cult leader whose mind is collapsing under the weight of his Patron’s voice. The PCs might be hunting the killer, only to realize his madness is contagious, the Red Dragon’s influence seeps through his victims, through dreams, through art.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 26
First Time Views: 24

October Horror Movie Challenge: Queen of Bones (2023)

 Another pick by my wife. Now, typically when she picks the movie, I get a veto power if it is under a certain IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes rating. She doesn't like to look at the ratings beforehand. This one did not have very good ratings at all, 4.6 on IMBD and no rating at all on Rotten Tomatoes; neither a good sign. But we watched it anyway and really liked it. This in a large part due to the performances by  Martin Freeman and Julia Butters. 

Plus, it is a perfect Witchcraft Wednesday movie.

Queen of Bones (2023)

Fearful or religious men (often the same thing) have always feared women’s autonomy. History has shown that whenever a woman becomes too independent, too willful, too curious, too powerful, someone slaps the word witch on her and decides she needs to be “saved.” That’s the heart of Queen of Bones, a quiet, moody folk horror film that takes place not in the 1600s but in 1930s rural America.

Martin Freeman plays Malcolm, a widowed father raising his daughter Lily (Julia Butters, who’s fantastic) and son Samuel (Jacob Tremblay) in a house thick with secrets. At first, Malcolm seems decent enough, even tender in his grief. But as Lily begins to change, both in body and in strange, supernatural ways, his love curdles into fear. We slowly realize that he’s not just haunted by what happened to Lily’s mother… he’s terrified his daughter might become her.

That dynamic drives the film’s tension. Lily starts having dreams, visions, and odd encounters in the woods. The line between puberty and possession blurs. Is she cursed? Chosen? Or simply awakening to her own power in a world that can’t tolerate that? By the time the third act arrives, the answer feels almost inevitable: Malcolm would rather destroy her than let her become something he can’t control.

It’s not subtle, but that’s fine, it isn’t supposed to be. Queen of Bones plays like a postscript to Robert Eggers' The Witch, set 300 years later but fueled by the same fear: that the feminine divine, if left unchecked, would upend the patriarchal order. It’s witch panic dressed in Depression-era grief, with dust, silence, and old ghosts in every corner.

There’s a scene late in the film, no spoilers, where Lily finally confronts what her father did to her mother. It’s devastating, not just for the violence but for the certainty behind it. Malcolm truly believes he’s doing God’s work. That’s what makes him the monster.

What I loved about this film, and what I think most critics seem to have missed, is how subtle its magic is. It’s not a jump-scare movie. It’s an awakening movie. The horror here isn’t in the witchcraft, it’s in the control. Freeman gives one of his best performances as a man eaten alive by righteousness, and Butters is mesmerizing as Lily, teetering between innocence and fury.

This isn’t The Witch, no. But it shares the same DNA: a girl’s coming-of-age framed as an act of rebellion against divine tyranny. The difference is, this one suggests the witch’s power was always there just waiting for her to claim it.

Queen of Bones might not be perfect, but it’s important. It’s quiet horror with something to say about generational trauma, religious oppression, and the terror of becoming yourself. The final moments hit like a benediction and a curse all at once.

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D Ideas

Let's be honest here. 

I you can't see the RPG potential here I am not sure you are reading the right blog. Generational witches are a topic I discuss frequently here. Like obsessively so.

I wonder what Lily's life would have been like after the movie? She would have been 23 near the start of WWII, in her 40s when the Beatles came to America, her 60s when the 80s began and so on. Interesting. 

For NIGHT SHIT, it’s a modern folk-horror story transplanted to a rural, Depression-era America where witchcraft is whispered about in sermons. A perfect slow-burn scenario: something ancient stirs in the woods, and the townsfolk are eager to call it Satanic. The PCs could arrive as outsiders—teachers, doctors, or priests, only to discover the true evil that resides within the house. Or a perfect Call of Cthulhu game that doesn't involve the Mythos. 

For my Occult D&D ideas, it is a good example of how witchcraft is inherited via bloodlines, and there are witch families.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 25
First Time Views: 23

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Substance (2024)

Oh. Now this one was great. I mean really great. Major kudos to stars Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, and Dennis Quaid for this one. And special kudos to Coralie Fargeat, who wrote and directed this horror as social commentary.  Outstanding work all around.

And kudos as well to my wife for finding this one. For a non-horror fan, she has been doing great this year.

The Substance (2024)

I heard a quote once: “There is nothing subtle about a blood cannon.” Maybe it was from True Blood, maybe it was from GWAR, either way, it’s true here.

The Substance is not subtle. It’s loud, bloody, and unrelenting in both style and message. Coralie Fargeat (who wrote and directed) delivers a film that’s equal parts body horror, feminist manifesto, and acid-drenched satire of fame and aging. It’s one of those movies where you feel like you’ve been punched, bathed in glitter, and dumped in a pool of self-loathing. All at once. And I mean that as the highest compliment.

Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, a former fitness celebrity whose fame has faded. She’s cast aside for being “too old,” (note her character is fired because she is 50. Demi Moore was a little over 60 when she filmed this), a sentiment delivered with the kind of cruelty that feels uncomfortably real. Then she’s offered the Substance, a mysterious bio-experiment that promises to regrow youth, a newer, better version of herself, "Sue" played by Margaret Qualley. But the catch (and of course there’s a catch) is that both versions can’t exist in the world for long. They must share their bodies, taking turns. One week each.  Each needing the other. Until things start to fall apart.

What follows is a slow, grotesque unspooling of identity, vanity, and the impossible standards society puts on women. The horror here isn’t just the blood or the transformation (though that is there too), it’s the realization that both versions of Elisabeth are doomed. One is consumed by jealousy, the other by expectation. Both are victims of the same impossible ideal.

The performances are phenomenal. Demi Moore gives the kind of fearless, career-best turn that deserves every award she can get. She’s raw, furious, and heartbreakingly human. I have liked Demi Moore her whole career. She is one of those actors who will do things you never expect. You told she was going to be in a horror movie that required her to nude most of the time including a full frontal, I would not have been shocked. If you told me she was going to do it at 61 then I would have been completely shocked. Margaret Qualley matches her note for note, switching between innocence, hunger, and sociopathic glee. Their relationship, rival, mirror, mother/daughter, predator/prey, is the film’s beating heart. Coralie Fargeat does a fantastic job of making sure any movement made by Moore is mirrored in Qualley.

And yes, there’s plenty of blood. This film combines Cronenberg’s The Fly with elements of American Psycho, culminating in a glam fever dream of neon, mirrors, and synthetic pop. Every shot drips with excess, but it’s all in service to the story. The gore isn’t exploitative; it’s cathartic, a scream made visible. This is Jekyll and Hyde for the 21st century. 

I’ve been thinking about The Substance ever since I saw it. It’s one of those rare modern horror films that sticks to because it means something. It’s angry about the right things, about how society commodifies beauty, how women are punished for aging, and how self-worth gets twisted into self-destruction. It’s not a pleasant watch, but it’s a necessary one. There is a repeated scene where Elizabeth/Sue has to go to this rundown neighborhood to get her two week supply of the Substance. As Elizabeth in her 60s, she is ignored. As Sue in her 20s/30s every eye is on her. As Elizabeth as an old haglike crone, she scares people. 

And yet, for all its brutality, the film still finds moments of strange beauty. The way Fargeat frames Moore’s face, lit like a fallen saint, staring down the monster she’s become, feels mythic. Like watching the goddess of vanity destroy herself and rise again in blood and glitter.

The Substance is body horror at its most intelligent and furious. It’s not just about flesh—it’s about identity, power, and the impossible pressure to be “enough.” It’s grotesque, funny, feminist, and unforgettable. Fargeat doesn’t pull punches, and she doesn’t care if you flinch.

There is nothing subtle about a blood cannon. But sometimes, subtlety is overrated.

OH! I forgot to mention how perfectly vile Dennis Quaid was in this. I didn't think he had it in him, but as Elizabeth/Sue's producer Harvey, he is sexist, casually chauvinistic, more than a little misogynistic (most everyone in this movie is), and an absolute joy to watch on screen because his character is utterly clueless about how repulsive he is. I had read that Ray Liotta was originally cast as Harvey. While I know intellectually he would have been phenomenal, Quaid gave this one his all. 

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D Ideas

There is a very loud part of me right now that doesn't want to do any sort of game adaptation of this. The movie works perfect on its own and should be appreciated all on its own.

I wouldn't say it was perfect. But damn. It is close.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
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First Time Views: 22

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Living Dead Girl (1982)

 Toxic waste is weird. Sometimes it can give you superpowers, like it did for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or The Toxic Avenger. Sometimes it can drive you mad, like it did for the Joker. But in the hands of Jean Rollin, it can turn a beautiful corpse into an undead creature with a taste for blood.  

Here is my Jean Rollin pick for the Challenge. 

The Living Dead Girl (1982)

Also known as "La Morte Vivante." 

Two workers dumping chemical waste into a crypt accidentally reanimate Catherine Valmont (played with ethereal loveliness by Françoise Blanchard), a young heiress who died years before. Pale, ethereal, and soaked in the fluids of death, Catherine rises and begins her slow, dreamlike return to her family’s estate.

What follows is classic Rollin, half horror, half tragic romance, all atmosphere. Catherine’s childhood friend Hélène discovers she’s somehow alive, and their reunion becomes an aching meditation on devotion, decay, and desire. Hélène wants to protect Catherine, to keep her safe from a world that would destroy her again. But Catherine needs blood to survive, and the film doesn’t flinch from that. The killings are gruesome, but in that strangely poetic way only Rollin could pull off.

There’s a scene near the midpoint where Catherine wanders the countryside in her white gown, streaked with blood, sunlight glinting off her skin like marble. It’s beautiful and horrifying, the kind of imagery that reminds you Rollin was as much a painter as a director. His zombies aren’t Romero’s shambling corpses, they’re revenants, ghosts of passion and memory.

The film moves at a dream’s pace, lingering on eyes, hands, old rooms, and decaying portraits. Rollin’s usual themes are all here: eroticism, friendship beyond death, the weight of memory, and that perpetual tension between beauty and rot. The Living Dead Girl might be his most accessible film for horror fans, but it never compromises his melancholy poetry.

The score by Philippe D’Aram gives it a haunting pulse, equal parts romantic and funereal. It’s the heartbeat of a dead girl who never asked to return. She wants to go back to being dead because she can't stand this half-life she is in now.

Watching it now, what strikes me most is how sad this movie is. Beneath the nudity and the blood (and there is a lot of both) lies a deep loneliness, a yearning for connection that can never be satisfied. Catherine and Hélène obviously love each other in a way that goes beyond just girlhood best friends. So much so that Hélène even gives Catherine the one thing she needs, but can't take. Her life. Given how with each killing Catherine becomes more and more human, this might be the last thing she needs to be truly alive, and the thing she needs to finally end that life.

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D Ideas

This movie is the opposite of The Crow.

Whether a Revenant or a Driven, this person comes back through no action of their own and only wants to go back to being dead.

For AD&D 1e play, Catherine could easily be built as a variant Revenant, but replace her endless rage with hunger, confusion, and sorrow. She retains fragments of her humanity, which makes her both tragic and unpredictable. She might even be a “failed resurrection” spell result, where the spirit returns without the soul.

In a witch campaign, imagine this as the aftermath of a desperate ritual gone wrong: a coven trying to bring back one of their sisters but awakening something else instead. Maybe the only one who can calm her is her familiar, or another witch who recognizes what she has become.

For NIGHT SHIFT, Catherine is pure Urban Gothic. An undead empath, bound to the psychic link of her closest friend, feeding on life energy to stay anchored. Her condition could be used as a metaphor for trauma or addiction, an unending need that destroys the very things she loves. She needs to feed, of friend feels the need to keep giving her what she wants, knowing it will end in death.

Mechanically, she’s not that powerful, her danger lies in the emotional entanglement. PCs who meet her won’t want to kill her. They’ll want to save her. And that’s exactly when she’ll strike.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 23
First Time Views: 21