systemmastery – System Mastery: Recent Episodes
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Expounded Universe 305 – Jedi Twilight Wrapup
Why, it’s the twilight of Jedi Twilight! And frankly? Good.
System Mastery 304 – Runequest (1984)
This is one of the venerable old giants of the fantasy gaming industry. Avalon Hill producing Chaosium’s Runequest. Couldn’t be more classic. But how does it read 40 years later? Let’s all find out together.
Neon City Outlaws!
Go support an awesome game, you’ve got like two days and a late pledge window if you’re lucky! Jef’s been reading it and it’s so good!
Movie Mastery – Carpool (1996)
From a hotel room in Wisconsin, we drag James into our muck and watch a Tom Arnold film that is extremely Tom Arnold
Expounded Universe 304 – Don’t Call it a Comeback
That ended abruptly! Sure enough we get a chapter containing both Vader and Xizor, but… eh you’ll see. Also there’s some robots and some big-ish reveals, I suppose!
System Mastery 302 – Capers
By all account, this is the first ever superhero RPG, but don’t let that fool you, it contains virtually nothing you’d recognize as a superhero game. In fact, it’s wild what it contains. You’ll see.
Mutants From the Archives: Pet Shop Blues Kickstarter! Go support this at once, you!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arbco/mutants-from-the-archives-pet-shop-bluesjk! Games site:
j-k.games
Relationship Mastery 12
Hey, we made another one! I wasn’t sure, but here it is. That means yes, it’s finally time to change the tag for questions to RM13. Will that episode happen? Probably!
System Mastery 302 – Capers
Okay the rumors that we like every supers game are scurrilous, devious, and increasingly accurate. This is Capers, and it’s a supers game set in a slightly less socially shitty 1920s, which is a neat thing.
Movie Mastery -Sexy Evil Genius (2013)
Buffy, BSG, and Lost collide in a bar with a Baldwin and what happens is, you know, fine.
Expounded Universe 303 – All I Need Is a Miracle
Vader packs up and rides to join the party, Jax and company fight some crazy robots, and Xizor meets Nick Rostu, surely that’s fantasic, right?
System Mastery 301 – The Arcanum
Hi folks, let’s start up another 300 of these, what do you say? This one is about The Arcanum, an early 80s game that sure seems similar for some reasons (the same reasons they always do? Probably!
Movie Mastery – Battlefield Earth (2000)
It’s taken a while but we finally have gotten to the movie that every bad movie podcast has to talk about eventually.
Expounded Universe 302 – Here Comes a Special Droid
Honestly, I-5 isn’t even super important here, we just think it’s so funny how he keeps having a module for exactly what the group needs every time. Really, this is the “Xizor Makes His Move” set of chapters.
System Mastery 300 – Palladium Fantasy
Well that certainly was 300 times we did a thing, I tell you what! Let’s take a little victory lap by cracking open a cask we’ve been saving for a special occasion, a feisty little 1983 vintage called Palladium Fantasy that definitely isn’t just dust and vinegar by this point, right? Right?
Announcement Mastery!
Check out Gamer Mom: The Mom Who Games right now on Kickstarter!
Movie Mastery – The Astrologer (1976)
Another Astrologer? That’s right, it’s the other movie from 1975 with this name and probably the one we were supposed to watch initially.
Expounded Universe 301 – A Special Pinch
Man is I-5 ever useful. But who's also a protocol droid with a weird gun hand that everyone wants to know about? I bet you all forgot about Bug Eyes, who is theoretically the MacGuffin of this production, and who JUST TURNED UP. Yeah!
System Mastery 299 – Bleeding Heart
We’re hard at work on our giant pile of weird old box sets, and that means it’s time for Bleeding Heart, a game that Jon assures me is loosely based on something called the Corman Poe film era of the mid-sixties, and he’s a total horror nerd so I gotta go with him on this one.
Announcement Mastery!
Obelisk is launching on Kickstarter April 7th.
Visit obeliskttrpg.com/kickstarter to get notified when it launches!
Help listener Alex Shaw and his family recover from a devastating home fire! https://gofund.me/92b44dd2
Relationship Mastery 11
We’re not done yet! More relationship questions, more fun stories, and Claire has a podcast pitch for you.
Movie Mastery – The Astrologer (1975)
We might have ended up watching the wrong The Astrologer from 1975 since there are two bad movies of that name from that year. This one is 90% dialogue!
Expounded Universe 300 – Slut Plate Summer
Well dang, this was episode 300? Then I guess we shall podcast in the shade. In today’s episode Jax and the gang escape some droid police (DROID POLICE, BEEP BEEP BEEP) on flying Segways, while Rhinann whines and Nick Rostu… also kinda whines.
System Mastery 298 – Wild West
I really hope you’re enjoying this string of very old games, we’re doing our best to get back into them quickly (ever since I found one of my old box sets fully eaten by bugs and had to fumigate). In this case, it’s a game about real old timey cowboys! Like Boot Hill but not TSR!
Movie Mastery – Van Helsing (2004)
Wolverine fights the Duke from Moulin Rouge in a movie that sucks so bad and yet is a spectacle of absolute joy to watch.
Expounded Universe 299 – Pardon My French, But Jax Pavan is an Asshole
Oh hey, this book has act breaks! And we just found what might be the only one! You can tell because I-5 finally finds Jax Pavan. Who is an asshole about it.
System Mastery 297 – Star Trek the Roleplaying Game
Can we review an 80s Star Trek game without our pacemakers exploding? What if FASA made it? We’re looking at the Star Trek RPG from roughly 1983, which means (if you’re counting) that it’s based on the original series, the animated series, and the first three films. Is it okay or does it have to go home and copy 10 pages out of the K section of the dictionary? Let’s find out!
Go forth and support Celestial Bodies on Kickstarter! It’s a game about harvesting the remnants of dead gods in cool upgradeable mechs out in space, which is… pretty cool really.
Movie Mastery – Robin and the Dreamweavers (2000)
The maker of He-Man and Fat Albert decided to make an adult cartoon movie about fighting the personification of internet porn addiction as a pitch for a show that I can’t imagine being sold to literally any television company.
Expounded Universe 298 – Rostu on the Smuggle Bus
This episode is a Jax-free space. We focus on Den, we check in with Nick Rostu, and somehow Kaird is still kicking around, but we aren’t seeing what’s up with Jax and Laranth. Also, Rhinan is making strong moves towards just ruining the Empire’s public relations division.
System Mastery 296 – Lewd Dungeon Adventures
Finally someone bought that game that advertises on Facebook, and it was us. It’s a fantasy adventure game with some sex-themed rules, but honestly I don’t want to spoil anything here because it’s a tiny wee little game that could never possibly satisfy any REAL gamer. Damn it, still with the jokes. It’s a sex RPG and we read it. That’s for sure.
Oh and hey, go support Solo But Not Alone 5, okay? Good cause. We’re supporting it. You get a lot of solo games for a small amount of money and contribute to a cause that’s literally never been needed more.
Movie Mastery – Sex and the City 2 (2010)
Having never seen a full episode of the show, this movie is possibly the worst way to be introduced to the property. It’s just rich white people complaining and being awful but not in a fun way like Arrested Development.
Expounded Universe 297 – Rokko’s Modern Light
Finally Laranth turns up, and she brings with her something we were missing last time we did this series, an explanation of what a Gray Paladin is exactly (besides the lamest D&D character that your lamest gaming buddy won’t shut up about). Meanwhile, Dhur is a reporter and Nick is apparently a gambler, but good news! Joyous news! It’s not sabacc!
System Mastery 295 – Insurgent
A very quick little modern game designed to be played solo or with a small group but no GM, in which you rebel against something. What do you rebel against? Whattaya got?
Movie Mastery – Roller Blade (1986)
From the guy that brought us Baby Ghost, comes a movie that is just about the same level of quality but way more nudity, knives, and n-roller skates.
Expounded Universe 296 – Rostu to the Rescue
No one new, and we’ll still moving pieces into place, but hey Nick and Jax have met and headed off for a just-dudes sushi brunch, which if you think about it, Star Wars doesn’t have nearly enough of.
System Mastery 294 – OGL Ancients
It’s what it says! Though it’s adding a lot of stuff to the venerable old combat engine of 3.X OGL, it’s an OGL game where you play as primarily Greeks and Egyptians from antiquity (you can get a Scythian or someone from Thessaly in if you want, it’s just not a great plan).
Announcement Mastery
Coffee, Cults, and Empires is a brand new AP launching February 2025 that is a story, within a story, within a festive autumnal squash. Wait, no, it’s within a third story! Hang out with the intern that takes down the story of several professors playing RPGs as the world around them prepares to end!
Movie Mastery – The Beastmaster (1982)
A bog standard barbarian plot that gets just enough spice from the animal telepathy stuff to be kind of worth watching.
Expounded Universe 295 – The Den Dhur Bender
We’ve met almost everyone we know we need to now! Just Laranth to go! But hark, we’re meeting a subvillain for the book this time, and he hates Xizor, and now we’re hearing that old classic Xizor bragging. Feels good to be home.
System Mastery 293 – Alas Vegas
This is a little recent for our usual stuff, but Jon was really interested after the Fastlane review to keep looking at games that utilize classic casino games as RPG randomizers, and this one’s a doozy! Combining Blackjack and Tarot stuff, no less! Right in Jon’s very wheelhouse. The game is neat too! There’s a ton in here, it’s definitely one of those big rocks that rolled down a Kickstarter success story and accumulated content as it went, so we made some calls on what to focus on that we’ll explain within. At the end of the day, this is pretty dang neat.
Announcement Mastery
Ravenswool.com! Check them out, they make awesome yarn colorways, and they’re even maybe making some based on our very jokes, it’s super cool.
Expounded Universe 294 – Smoggy Bottom Boys
Oh right, I just remembered that as much fun as Den and I-5 and laughing at Aurra Sing were, Jax Pavan is a dude what sucks. It’s all coming back. Yes, that’s right folks, welcome back to Coruscant Nights, the noir Star Wars. We’re meeting a few new to us names today. Even Piell, Nick Rostu, and of course Jax are all running around the bowels of the city planet having remarkably similar adventures, all things considered.
Movie Mastery – Kraven the Hunter (2024)
We return to the theaters to complete our grim duty of bearing witness to the slow and tragic mutilation of everything Spider-Man related that Sony shoves into the grinder.
Relationship Mastery 10
We did it! We got back on the mics. It’s the little podcast that maybe can! I bet we answer a bunch of listener questions and discuss fandom and sex stuff!
System Mastery 292 – Unbidden
Back to basics, some game you probably never heard of that we didn’t like. That’s the basic essence of the show, right? It has to come up sometimes. I’m talking about the show here because honestly I can’t think of much to say about this sort of generic “There are secrets in the world that you can’t learn about without going crazy” type game that isn’t already in the episode.
Movie Mastery – Ocean Drive Weekend (1985)
A listener’s recently deceased dad worked on this movie but don’t worry, they just did director of photography so they aren’t fully to blame for this turd of a 60’s nostalgia movie.
System Mastery 291 – Fastlane
Oh buddy you better believe we love it when the game has a weird alternative randomizing mechanic, and this thing is all about roulette. Yes, it straight up tells you at the start that you can use a digital one or even a dice based approximation, but for max results, you should get a roulette wheel. What else? Well, it’s a generic system besides the ruleset, so we go all in on that.
Expounded Universe 293 – Fatal Alliance Wrapup
Your burning questions! Answered! Our final thoughts on this book! Given! And the next book? Announced, baby!
Movie Mastery – Dragon Storm (2004)
Sci-Fi Channel trying to cash in on Reign of Fire of all things spent a million dollars on this with almost all of that going to the cost of dragon effects and pyrotechnics and none of it to lighting or sound equipment.
System Mastery 290 – Icarus
As we bring Sweater Weather to a close we are faced with the realization that we accidentally double-themed this month, since both of these games are explorations of civilizations over time, and in fact would make a pretty good double feature game night played together. Weird! Anyway, this is a little box set where you make a dice tower.
Movie Mastery – Runaway Nightmare (1982)
This 70’s movie that took so long to edit that it came out in the 80’s has no redeeming factors. A comedy without humor. An exploitation film without anything risqué. Grainy sound and fuzzy images that serve no purpose.
Expounded Universe 292 – Avoid the Amnioid
The Amnioid is Lema Xandret. Forget to say that in the episode, so it needed explanation here. Okay, we’re wrapping it up! Another story in the can.
System Mastery 289 – The Quiet Year
Hey folks, welcome to Sweater Weather. We’re going to keep things light and distracting here for the next few months, sweater weather or not, so don’t worry about heavy topics. If you’re looking for a getaway, we got you. Also, this book is about impending change and possible doom. So. You know, we’ll figure it out.
Movie Mastery – The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue (1998)
Special guest Taylor Moore joins us to discuss an animated film that truly nobody asked for and that wastes an all star voice cast on the most direct-to-video sequel you could imagine.
Another Horrortoberfest season comes to a close and on this Halloween, I decided to end with the first feature length appearance of what has become a new icon in horror, Art the Clown. I’ve yet to delve into the Terrifier series beyond seeing some of the kills in clips but finding out director Damien Leone has been pushing the character for a decade shows the belief that he has in Art as a character. He ends up being the unifying thing between the segments.
The framing narrative for our 3-part anthology series is a woman babysitting a couple kids on Halloween when one of them finds an unmarked VHS in their candy bag. Obviously the kids manage to cajole the adult into letting them see what’s on the tape and this kicks off our segments as well as causing weird stuff to happen around the house. I like the wrap-around story here more than most things like the V/H/S series where it barely matters. Also the other segments (two thirds of which were shorts that Leone had already previously made) feel less professional than this. I get that they are going for a more grindhouse aesthetic but it ends up feeling cheap rather than grimy.
The first segment is Leone’s previous short work The 9th Circle with some added footage. In it, a girl is drugged and kidnapped by Art the Clown and wakes up under a subway station. There she meets a couple other girls that are also chained up and they try to escape. Turns out the subway is full of mutants(?) or possibly devil cultists. Maybe both. We see a couple people get killed before our main girl gets raped by the devil (though only implied). It’s a weak short that goes for 70’s grime but really just feels like someone doing a bad job of aping that style. Since we don’t spend time with any characters and the plot isn’t particularly engaging, it just sort of happens and then ends and whatever.
You would think that would be the worst segment but the second one manages to absolutely outdo it. The only brand new segment for the movie, this one follows a woman who has just moved into a brand new house away from the city with her artist boyfriend. Then a crash happens and all the lights and phone go on the fritz because it’s time for an alien home invasion. Having just watched No One Will Save You this season, I’ve seen what an amazing alien home invasion looks like. What it doesn’t look like is a guy in the cheapest alien get-up flouncing around a house while someone runs around screaming. There’s no tension. The whole thing feels like cheap filler. Even the Art the Clown bit is just his face as a painting. This segment blows.
The third and best segment is the original short film version of Terrifier. Here Art is front and center and this serves as a showcase of what the movie could be. It’s weird to see Art as being supernatural in this since he generally just seems to be a murder man in the other movies. Maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, he chases around a young woman trying to get home and is fully capable of teleporting around and tunnelling up from the ground. The look and silent creepiness of Art goes a long way to elevate what would have been a fairly ok short slasher segment. It’s no surprise Leone decided to put his movie eggs into that particular basket.
In all, this isn’t a very good movie. You have 1 decent segment with 2 stinkers and a good wrap-around story. It’s fine for anyone that’s an Art the Clown lover but honestly you’d be better served just watching the short film and skipping the anthology.
Score: 2.5 out of 5
You know, I’m not entirely sure how this managed to get onto my list for this year’s Horrortoberfest but here we are. I’m honestly surprised I haven’t seen more Covid horror movies out there. I’m sure there are plenty of them inspired by it but odd there aren’t more directly about it.
It’s April, 2020 and college students Mira and Parker are leaving campus in order to quarantine. They have decided to spend their lockdown at Parker’s family cabin at a lake to wait out the pandemic. Just beautiful woods and nobody around for miles. The perfect place to ensure you don’t come into contact with anyone else. Except when DJ, Parker’s situationship shows up at the cabin unannounced because he’s jealous that Parker was seen kissing some boy in a social media post. Oh, I guess also there is somebody with a knife that’s trying to kill them.
In the movie’s favor, I do like the way that they present the slasher as a very normal, very human person. At least most of the time. When they get into a fight or try to stab someone, nobody has supernatural strength or the ability to just teleport around. There are a few points where they end up making him absolutely ninja quiet in the cabin they are in which, if you’ve ever been in one of those cabins, you know you aren’t going to be able to go up those wooden stairs without making a bunch of creaks. I do also appreciate the resourcefulness and tenacity of our leads. Mira and Parker aren’t your standard disposable slasher fodder but they are also not perfect by any means.
Unfortunately, the movie suffers from having the goofiest slasher premise that it wants to take seriously. Since there are really only a handful of characters, you also aren’t going to be getting a particularly high body count but if you’re favorite part of a slasher film is the chase sequence, you are in luck. So much of this movies run time is given over to an extended chase sequence that at turns feels very tense and others times it’s of ridiculous. The killer’s actions fluctuate between being these believable intelligent scenes and then sometimes you are left scratching your head like “Why would you possibly do that?”. While not a bad movie, Sick does often feel like it is constantly just falling short of being as good as it could have been.
I think in like 10 years or so, this will be one of those movies that people that went through the pandemic might look back on and be, if not nostalgic, at least like “Oh shit, yeah” about. For now, it’s still a little close to the actual time for the Fauci jokes to feel anything but kind of eye-rolling.
Score: 3 out of 5
Expounded Universe 291 – It’s a Sebbadonomenon
Definitely on the homestretch here, as some secrets are revealed and we start to see our Padawan/Sith Apprentice consider the merits of their respective other sides. Everyone’s starting to unveil their big plans, but what of Dao Stryver? He’s just flying around! What’s that guy all about?
Another movie that I’ve been meaning to check out and this one comes from Australia. I’m glad that A24 is out there giving people the chance to make some weird horror movies. I don’t always like them as much as other people (I bounced off Hereditary for instance) but it does mean that sometimes you get something like Midsommar or this.
The movie centers around a brand new party craze that has been going viral with the local Aussie teens. You light a candle, you grab a ceramic hand, you say “talk to me”, and you will see a ghost. That’s not enough, though, because if you then say “I let you in” you get possessed until they can get the hand away from you and blow out the candle. When Mia goes to have her turn, it ends up going longer than the 90 second limit and things start getting out of hand (pun very much intended). Now she is seeing things even without the hand and has to deal with the spirits and their agenda.
I love this movie for the portrayal of not only the way in which idiot teens would totally jump on this kind of thing but how it turns into a party trick to be filmed and posted for laughs. After the teens get possessed they end up experiencing a rush from it from having this out of body experience. Treating ghosts like a NOS whippet to be passed around is such a wonderful metaphor for drugs. Literally letting death into your body and losing control just so you can have a brief period where you are free from your own pain and trauma. Mia getting more and more lost in the experience as she tries to cope with the anniversary of her mother’s suicide is shows how lost you can get in addiction, even when it gets to the point where it isn’t even offering the same escape it used to.
There aren’t a lot of jump scares in the movie as most of the film ends up being this slow but constantly ramping tension of Mia’s struggle with the spirit world. Which isn’t to say it’s one of those entirely atmospheric slow burns as there are plenty of very fucked up sequences with some bloody effects that never go over the top but are just real enough to get under your skin. I wont get into specifics to avoid spoilers but the way the movie interweaves the imagery and events from the beginning into the ending of the film is great. I also love the fact that you light the candle to “open the door” and there is so much background talk about closing doors and even Mia’s mom is said to have been blocking a closed door when she died. Just thematically very fun to have those little details.
I think this is a fantastic movie and definitely recommend a watch. This is going on my short list of modern horror that truly gets it right.
Score: 5 out of 5
We are closing in on the end of the month and I’m just going back to the non-themed grab bag of horror that I hadn’t seen yet to end it out. Like so many other movies I’ve done for this year, I’ve been wanting to see this since it came out but just never got around to it. I love the premise and the new look for the Predator is fantastic.
Set in 1719 around a group of Comanche, the movie follows a young woman, Naru, who wants to prove that she can be a hunter. When a mountain lion attacks and drags off one of the tribe, she goes along with the hunting party in order to finally show everyone what she can do. Unknown to everyone, however, is that there is something much more dangerous than a mountain lion hunting them on the plains. Naru tries to warn everyone about the threat that she has seen but when nobody takes her seriously, she takes it upon herself to hunt down the ultimate hunter.
I appreciate how much this movie feels like the original Predator, and even has a couple references to it, without tipping over into being a boring retread. Instead it follows the same kind of flow from the first movie with the Predator itself being a sort of background threat and observer while working to establish the setting and cast. The final confrontation between our heroine and the monster also feels as satisfying as the original with some absolutely astounding action sequences between the two. I also appreciate that everything that the movie set up through the beginning of the film got paid off by the end of it. Just a tightly plotted film.
What really sets it apart, for me, is how the movie uses the trappings of the franchise but makes them unique to this. The Predator is itself a much more interesting villain in this because it plays into a different kind of hunter. The first movie was much more of a typical “big game hunter” where some rich asshole goes out and shoots things to death from a distance while never being in danger and calls themselves a hunter. This Predator is all about proving its worth and fighting its prey on more equal footing. It is more physical and martial in the way it hunts. While still obviously more technologically advanced than its prey, it favors melee weapons and direct confrontation. Between that and the way Naru has to rely on being clever rather than the brute force of Arnold makes the movie feel familiar while offering something new.
This was a lot of fun to watch. Obviously not the scariest of horror movies but still a great entry in the franchise.
Score: 4.5 out of 5
I said I was done with the folk horror theme and, for the most part, that is true but this movie was recommended as part of the theme by a member of the Discord. It ends up being much less of a folk horror than it is just a western horror. It’s also a movie with an unreliable narrative that may or may not be an example of the very real affliction that existed back in the old west known as prairie madness.
The movie starts with a long opening with no dialogue as our main character, Lizzy, exits a cabin covered in blood and carrying something wrapped in cloth. The blood isn’t hers but Emma’s, the only neighbor of theirs out on the frontier, and the bundle is the baby that they couldn’t save. Emma apparently shot herself and we get a good long look at it as she gets buried with her baby. The rest of the movie then jumps back and forth in time. We see Emma and her husband Gideon’s arrival and the events that led up to the opening. We also follow Lizzy in the present as she has been left alone to clean up the blood and mess and fend for herself while her husband, Isaac, goes to town for supplies and to guide Gideon. What is real or imagined from that point on is anyone’s guess.
The character of Lizzy is an interesting one as the movie invites us to sympathize and share in her problems but doesn’t make her a hero. She is a deeply troubled character that is losing control of her life and the blame for that isn’t something that can be placed at any other character’s feet. There isn’t an antagonist in this movie, as much as Lizzy has confrontations with Emma and Isaac. Instead, the antagonist is the setting itself and the isolation that consumes Lizzy in her daily life. As we learn more of the backstory of what happened with Emma and events even before that, the film continues to present Lizzy as a character that isn’t entirely relatable but one that is still compelling. Caitlin Gerard is forced to carry so much of this movie by herself as Lizzy and does an excellent job in the portrayal.
The plot of the movie being a scattershot narrative that jumps all around in the timeline without any clear pattern makes it challenging but plays into the overall theme of uncertainty with what is happening. The movie doesn’t ever make it absolutely clear one way or the other if the things Lizzy is experiencing are symptoms of a troubled mind or actual demonic influence. It needs to rely heavily on the tension and uncertainty since this is a movie without almost any real traditional scares and the ones we do get towards the end feel like some of the weaker parts. At its strongest, the movie is playing into the isolation and desperation that Lizzy feels and the ending certainly pays that off.
I wouldn’t say this is a great film but it’s an interesting one. The direction and writing make what could have been a very dull, forgettable movie into one that manages to engage the viewer.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
We are at the end of folk horror week for this Horrortoberfest and I saved the one I was most looking forward to for last. I love a movie with a good capgras syndrome theme because it’s one of the most terrifying mental disorders to me. Believing that those closest to you have somehow been replaced is absolutely fucked and a classic idea all the way back to the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It’s also holiday appropriate.
Char is a teenage girl that lives with her mom, Angela, and her Grandma in Dublin, Ireland. While she is a bright and excellent student, her mom is suffering from severe depression and can barely manage to get out of bed to take her daughter to school. When she goes missing one late October day and her car is found abandoned in a field, people obviously assume the worst has happened. Imagine their relief when she returns the following day seeming no worse for wear and maybe even doing a bit better than she was. Something isn’t quite right with Angela, though. It’s not just the change in disposition but there is something wrong with her can’t be set right with bedrest and antidepressants.
I loved this movie and how extremely uncomfortable it made me. The acting in it is great and is mostly a younger cast with Hazel Doupe as Char putting in a solid performance but it’s Carolyn Bracken as Angela that steals the show. The way she moves from depression to mania to a slow and simmering hatred is an absolute wonder to watch. You could easily excise the more supernatural ideas of changelings and folk magic and have a gripping, tragic story about a family struggling with mental illness. Which isn’t to say I would want that because I far prefer to have my sad, fucked up stories also include some monsters so there’s something you can actually fight back against. If only all mental illness were able to be fought off with fire and blades.
The folk horror aspects are fully in the Granny’s keeping of the old ways and not so much in the standard structure of a stranger intruding on a frightening rural presence. Instead it is the frightening presence making someone into a stranger. This is a movie that does not have much in the way of gore and kills but it makes up for that with some truly unsettling moments that might not have you jumping in fright but will definitely leave you tensed. So much of how this is shot is so well done to make things feel uneasy, even when nothing is happening. The mother’s bedroom door is always slightly ajar and dark in the room so that you can’t see anything but the reflection of the mirror on the wall. Every time Char has to walk past it you just get unnerved even before anything starts to pop off.
I recommend the movie and the fact that it’s set during Halloween makes it a great one to watch for the holiday season as well.
Score: 4.5 out of 5
Time for some good, old fashioned horror where nature is terrifying and we are but insignificant beings that crawl upon the earth. It’s always nice to think that the planet could actually just wipe us out instead of us slowly causing it to become less and less habitable. Also a lovely backdrop of this movie coming out in 2021 so we’ve got some pandemic fear thrown in for good measure to mix in with the generic fear of the natural world to add to the whole isolation theme you normally get in folk horror.
Our two main characters are Martin, a research scientist, and Alma, a park ranger. Alma is supposed to lead Martin to a research camp that has been set up in the English woods somewhere. They are doing some sort of study of mycorrhiza, a fungus that grows in a symbiotic relationship with the roots of plants, in order to, I don’t know, improve crops or something. It doesn’t really matter. The camp is a couple days hike away and there is no way to get there but on foot and there is no cell reception out there. As you might have guessed from the theme of the week, the outsiders intruding upon the rural natural world leads to some horrific and downright trippy consequences.
This movie is so goddamn British in the way that people respond to things. Like, once things really get going and our main characters are drugged and held hostage, their kidnapper is straight up going to mutilate Martin and he’s just like “Oh please, I would prefer you didn’t. Can’t we just go to the hospital?” Like, my dude, come on. Resist slightly. It’s ok. You don’t need to worry about being rude to the guy with an axe. Their kidnapper, however, is probably the best character in the movie (not that there are more than a handful of actual characters). He is simultaneously grounded and charismatic while also being completely off his shit crazy. He’s also so goddamn British. “Well, nothing for it but to carve these runes into your flesh. Terribly sorry but, as you can see, it’s the only way for you to see him. You understand.”
The movie isn’t overly long but does feel like it could have used a little more editing. There are a few scenes that feel like they drag on a bit longer than they need to. The thing that will really either get the viewer to love or hate this movie is the sound design and imagery. Especially in the back half of the movie, there is a lot of discordant noise and electronic sound that is diegetic but also purposefully included to put the viewer on edge. Couple that with the scenes of weird, trippy flashes of images and strobe lights and you could very easily have someone be fully incapable of enjoying this. I thought it was fine but the trippy imagery feels like it undercuts the horror of what’s going on. Like it gets so frenetic and hard to parse that I just checked out during those points.
In all it was a fun way to do the folk horror tropes without having the standard folk horror people. You still end up with weird ancient rites and what not but without your standard cultist townsfolk.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
I was originally going to save this one for the end of the week since it seemed like it was going to be the weirdest of the ones I was going to watch. Then I thought I’d follow up Moloch with this since they’re both Scandinavian films. Then I realized that the Netherlands isn’t actually a Scandinavian country and at this point I just gave up and said “Fuck it” and just put it on because that’s what I was in the mood for.
Ingvar and Maria run a little farm in the middle of nowhere in Iceland. Which is most of Iceland, to be fair. They have a simple life together until they are helping one of their sheep give birth and it births a sheep/human hybrid. The couple decide that the only course of action when a sheep gives birth to a child with a human body and lamb head is to adopt it and raise it as their own child. Surely whatever it was that impregnated the sheep with this creature wont be angry and you can live your life in calm assurance that nobody will ever care you have a genetic impossibility for a kid.
The plot summary there is fairly short but that’s because this movie is almost entirely devoid of plot in the traditional sense. There isn’t a lot of action in this film. There isn’t a lot of dialogue in this film. It takes almost 10 minutes before our main characters utter a single word. Frankly, there isn’t a lot of anything in this movie aside from some really well done CGI splicing for Ada, the name of the titular lamb. It isn’t boring, per se, as the cinematography is top notch and the acting has you believing the actions of this couple in an otherwise unbelievable story. Unfortunately, the movie has maybe two scenes of tension that are then almost immediately resolved and don’t impact the rest of the story.
I would be hard pressed to actually call this folk horror. I would be hard pressed to call this horror at all. This is more surreal slice-of-life than anything else. The ending has a little bit of the feel of a horror movie but it is otherwise completely devoid of anything scary and doesn’t even have the atmospheric spookiness that you would hope would replace outright scares in something like this. I’d say this is much closer to a fairy tale than anything else. I appreciate that the movie does a lot of showing not telling where the couple not being shown to talk much at first and then becoming more chatty when Ada shows up gives a good indicator of a strained relationship without beating you over the head. When they happen to have a crib in the barn and some child clothes and blankets already even though they don’t have a kid, you also understand what might have caused that tension and why they are so ready to adopt this mutant.
It’s a movie that is good at telling a story. It’s just that the story isn’t horror and whoever decided to put it in that category is really stretching the definition.
Score: 3 out of 5 (on a horror scale. Would probably be closer to a 4 if you didn’t go in expecting a horror movie)
System Mastery 288 – Rats!
So these aren’t really furries, but hey, I think this was just called Hairy Ween, right? Like that sounds more like a dick joke anyway. Anyhow, this book is all about playing as vile, disgusting, brilliant little rats trying to retake the world from the foul humans that don’t deserve it. It’s a mixed bag!
To to get into some bog standard folk horror. It’s a pun, you see, because the movie takes place around a bog. I hadn’t heard anything about this movie before I was doing research for the week’s theme but it certainly ticked all the boxes. Rural place. Isolated people. Outsider intruding. Ancient mythology that still has a grip on the locals. Everything you want in a folk horror film.
Somewhere on the edge of a bog in the Netherlands, Betriek lives with her parents and her daughter, Hanna. One day a group of researchers of some kind come to the bog because they found a body that had been dug up by a local town crazy who also died digging out there. As Betriek and the head researcher, Jonas, get to know each other better, the quiet life is destroyed when a member of the research team goes crazy and attacks the family. As the team begins to find more and more bodies in the bog, all killed in the same way, the local legends of a woman that sold her soul for vengeance start to seem like more than just myths.
The movie goes back and forth between being spoken in Dutch and in English, which makes for a fun time with the subtitles. As is so often the case with this genre of horror, it focuses on atmospheric tension and moody set pieces rather than gore and jump scares. The movie is also not worried about immediately giving you an exposition dump of the mythology it’s working with. The name Moloch doesn’t even get mentioned until about two thirds of the way through. I do love the way they handle the mythology, though. I don’t want to get too deep into it since I’m trying to avoid spoilers but the casual way the backstory of the town is told and the way the people reacted to what happened in it is such an interesting way to frame things.
The mystery of what is actually going on and why people are having violent freak outs is so slowly trickled out that you could end up getting bored, especially in the first act. That’s just a problem that feels pretty inherent to the subgenre, though. You have to establish a seemingly boring and quiet rural life first before you can have that reality shattered by the dark truth, after all. The movie adds in some weird stuff about psychic sensitivity about halfway through that feels like it should have probably been either abandoned or developed into something more. Sallie Harmsen, who plays Betriek, does a great job and the movie never gives you that moment where you are screaming at the protagonist for being an idiot. I appreciate that.
This is a movie that couches the way generational trauma is passed down in a story about pagan gods and ghosts. It might not be a great film but it’s certainly one worth watching if that sounds at all interesting to you.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
Halfway through the folk horror week at this point and the back half is going to be all European but I figured I’d round out the last of the non-Euro folk horror with one from Korea that has gotten a ton of high praise. It showed up on a ton of lists for the best of folk horror and I do love seeing more international takes on the genre. I did not realize on starting it that it would be over two and a half hours long, however.
In the small mountain town of Gokseong, there is a complete shlub of a policeman, Jong-goo, that has his entire world turned upside down as the village is beset by a series of horrifying deaths. Something has been infecting people in the town causing them to gain hideous rashes all over their bodies and go violently insane, killing their friends and family. Everything started when a strange Japanese man came to town and the mystery of what, if any, connection he might have to what’s going on becomes far more urgent once his own daughter begins to show signs of the illness that has afflicted so many others. Now, Jong-goo must unravel the mystery of what the hell is actually going on in a race against time to save his daughter and his town.
I feel like maybe I just don’t have the disposition for the types of horror films that get huge praise by critics at film festivals. I looked up some reviews after watching this and it seems like I’m the only person that fully thought this was unnecessarily long. Which isn’t to say that the movie is bad. Far from it. It’s just packed to the gills with a lot of slowly paced atmosphere that didn’t particularly grab me and an absolute grab bag of ghosts, demons, zombies, shamanism, Christianity, Eastern exorcism. They don’t clash, per se, but without a focus on any particular theme, the movie feels like it meanders around before becoming truly worth it in the last half hour. Almost like it was trying to fill as much time with as many different types of things so it could double and triple twist what’s going on by the end of the film.
I did like the subversion of the standard folk horror trope of “outsider comes to rural place and that rural place is fucked up” by flipping it into “outsider comes to rural place and outsider is fucked up”. However, outside of the times that it focuses on the shamanic rituals, there isn’t all that much folk in the folk horror. The town isn’t small or remote enough to get that good isolation vibe and it doesn’t veer into the whole cult conspiracy that is also a staple of the genre. While the mystery of the movie does make you continually guess at what is going on so that you aren’t exactly bored while watching it, it also didn’t ratchet up the tension and scares until the very end.
If you’ve got two and a half hours to spare and want a slow burn movie with an admittedly great ending, The Wailing has you covered. If you have a fairly low tolerance for watching a cop bumble his ass around being an idiot, then it might not be worth it.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
Continuing on with the folk horror theme for the week, I am looking at another movie that has many of the same trappings of traditional folk horror without the typical European setting. This time we are taken to a small, Midwestern American town. It’s based on the novel of the same name which I haven’t read so I wont be able to compare to the original.
As mentioned, our setting is a small Midwestern town somewhere in America during the early 1960’s. Every Halloween a monster named Sawtooth Jack rises from the corn fields and makes its way to the local church. It’s up to the young boys of the town to compete in “The Run” where they try to kill it before it can reach the church so as to prevent tragedy from befalling the small hamlet. The boy that manages to take down old Sawtooth Jack wins a brand new car and a ticket out of the tiny town while his family gets a new house and $25,000 which is an absolutely bonkers amount of money for 1962. Jim Shepard won it the previous year and now, one year later, his brother, Richie, is determined to win The Run as well so he can finally escape but the Sawtooth Jack isn’t the only dark secret in this town.
Dark Harvest is a fun movie that feels like a Stephen King story at first before descending into The Purge by the second act. The boys of the town are locked in their room for 3 days without food or company in order to “get them hungry” for The Run. By the time they are let out on Halloween, the town goes absolutely berserk with the pent-up insanity of dozens of teenage boys let loose. The little glimpses we get of The Run from the opening make it seem much less chaotic but after what happens in the year that the movie centers on, I have to wonder if it’s even worth it for the town. Which is one of the weaknesses of the movie, we don’t really get a lot of information on how exactly it is this town has a regular monster and nobody outside of it seems to know or care. What little background information we do get is almost entirely an Act 1 exposition dump.
I do love the main characters in this. Well, the main teenage characters. Richie (Casey Likes) and Kelly (E’myri Crutchfield) have great chemistry and I love the dynamic between them. I would have loved to have seen more of Richie’s friends and got a bit more character development on everyone before shit popped off so you gave a shit about them. There are some memorable kills in this with some impressively shot creepy scenes. Also, production did a great job of making it look and feel very 60’s. The time period feels very right for the story with the idea of sending out young boys to die against some monster that would have nebulous consequences if it isn’t stopped fits right in with the Vietnam War era.
The movie is a lot of fun with some great monster design and an interesting hook. I will say, the “ending” is not great but the real ending is about a minute into the credits, so be sure to stay for that if you end up watching this.
Score: 4 out of 5
It’s a brand new week and a brand new theme. This week we will be looking at a selection of folk horror movies. Folk horror is generally characterized by an outsider protagonist coming from their modern urban life and intruding upon a rural area with old pagan beliefs and superstitions. The big poster child for this would be the original 1973 The Wicker Man but you also get more modern stuff like Midsommar. The genre is normally fairly euro-centric with lots of focus on druids and fae and pagan ritual so I figured I’d start the week looking at a Mexican take on the classic tropes.
Our outsider protagonist for the movie is Cristina, a journalist from Los Angeles that had originally lived in rural Mexico until her mother died in what might have been a botched exorcism or she might have just been sick. She starts the movie in chains, being held by a bruja and her assistant as they insist that she has a demon inside of her and they need to get it out. They say because she went to La Boca, a cave/ruin that houses many demonic entities, that one managed to possess her. With no way out and no one to help her as even her cousin is helping her captors, Cristina is forced to go along with the rituals until she can find a way to escape. But is escape really going to save her or is there a demon inside her that is waiting to be freed from its captivity?
I love that this movie hits all of the standard tropes for a folk horror movie but uses them for so many different thematic things. The demon inside of Cristina is representative of so many things that it ends up being hard to nail down the exact metaphor. She is addicted to heroin, which is one of the demons that she is carrying around. She abandoned her home, her culture, and her language and this disconnect from her heritage represents another demon. The guilt and anger that she feels over her mother’s death is another demon inside her. All of these heavy thematic ideas are wrapped in a demonic possession movie that does more with that genre than simply having someone get a fucked up looking face and scream obscenities. Though it does also do that.
Brigitte Kali Canales, who plays Cristina, does such a good job of carrying this film. Everything is either her interacting with others or having to act solo and she does a great at displaying the character’s full arc over the course of the run time. The movie is not big on gore or kills and has only a couple jump scares, so it relies on the emotion that Canales brings to sell the horror of what is going on. From a personal standpoint, I think it would have been better served with a bit more of the standard folk horror trope of “is this real or are these people crazy” but I understand. It was more about the celebration of tradition and titular old ways than the normal euro folk horror which makes the old ways out to be barbaric and horrific rather than something to be embraced.
I really enjoyed watching this and would love to see more folk horror end up embracing the folk aspect rather than making it the villain. Definitely worth watching for fans of the genre.
Score: 4.5 out of 5
The holiday theme week ends on back-to-back horror versions of Christmas classics. I had actually only seen this come up when I was thinking about doing horror versions of other movies as a theme week but I had already seen most of them so I put it in the holiday theme instead. I assumed it was going to be some hyper low budget schlock, so imagine my surprise to be greeted with an actual talented cast of actors and a fun twist on the plot of the movie’s namesake.
Our story takes place in Angel Falls, a nice little town that loves Christmas, and focuses on the Carruthers, a nice little family that loves Christmas. Daughter of the family, Winnie, ends up killing a slasher but not before it murders several people including her best friend. A year later, the town and her family are doing great but things aren’t so amazing for Winnie. She is dealing with the trauma of having murdered someone, the loss of her best friend, she finds out her boyfriend has been cheating on her, and everyone refuses to talk about what happened the previous year. She eventually wishes she was never born while standing under an aurora and just like that, she wasn’t. Now she has to save a town where nobody stopped the killer and everything has completely fallen apart.
First off, I have to say that this movie immediately had my number because anything with Justin Long in it is guaranteed to be a delight for at least the scenes he’s in. Sure enough, he is fantastic as the sleazy, manipulative rich dude that wants to own the town. Really most of the cast does a great job in this. I love the fact that the story turns out to not just be about appreciating what you have but also being there for other people and standing up for what’s right. The movie is also very gay. There are more queer relationships than there are straight ones here and I kind of love it. The slasher stuff is also done well with a great, striking look for the “Angel killer” and good practical effects on the kills.
The place where the movie mostly falters is in the execution of its main conceit. In the original It’s a Wonderful Life, we have an angel that takes George Bailey into the alternate timeline to teach him a lesson. This movie decides to forgo the religious aspect and makes it so that the aurora is what did it but also the aurora is maybe the spirit of the killer because he died violently and they have to kill the killer again so that she can be sent back? But why would the spirit send her back? Is it like “Hey, good job, you killed me twice. Sorry about the whole ‘never being born thing’, I was just goofin’.” There is also another aspect of the ending that further muddies the waters on this whole thing. I know the movie doesn’t give a shit about the details and just wants its fun slasher premise but as soon as it presented an explanation I couldn’t let it go. Better to have just let it be a weird supernatural mystery.
I enjoyed this a good deal and think this is the exact right balance of goofy premise and serious slasher. I already watched it so it’s not going on the review list for this year but, if you enjoy this type of thing, I would also recommend Totally Killer, which is like the horror version of Back to the Future. Same goofy premise/serious slasher balance that I enjoyed here.
Score: 4.5 out of 5
We’re nearing the end of the holiday theme week of horror movies for the year so it’s time to go to the old standby of Christmas horror. This one also follows the trend of recent movies like Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey or Mousetrap where people are taking anything that goes into the public domain and turning it into a horror movie. Unlike those ones, however, How the Grinch Stole Christmas isn’t public domain so they have to skate by on parody protection and not actually saying the word Grinch.
In this version of the story, little Cindy comes downstairs on Christmas to find a green guy stealing all their decorations and before she can make his heart grow three sizes, her mom attacks him ends up falling on a spike and dying. When Cindy returns to the town 20 years later, she finds that the city of Newville doesn’t really celebrate Christmas anymore. When her father tries to create some holiday cheer, he has a run in with The Mean One and the killings kick off. Now it’s up to Cindy to try to hunt down and end the reign of terror that this green menace has inflicted on the town since she was a little girl. Also, there’s a guy named Dr. Zeus. Haha! Jokes.
The issue with most of the cash grab horror movies about public domain stuff is that they are rushed out with little concern for plot and even less concern for budget. This one, thankfully, feels a bit more fleshed out and interesting than its brethren but there’s still only so much you can do with the premise. By the time you get an hour into the film, you’ve basically seen everything it has to offer but it still needs to wrap up for another half hour which just feels a bit tired at that point. The make-up and physical acting for the Mean One is meant to evoke Jim Carrey’s version of the Grinch and it does a pretty good job for not having a particularly large budget. However, once you’ve gotten the references and seen him in action, there’s not a whole lot more to it.
The acting in this is better than I had hoped for but that might just be because I am coming off of having seen Beaster Day: Here Comes Peter CottonHell. There are actual relationships between characters that get developed. We get a backstory for the town and what happened after the initial killing of Cindy’s mom. I’m willing to extend a lot of forgiveness to a cheap film like this if it’s willing to at least attempt to be real movie. The kills aren’t particularly amazing except for the scene where a group of tourists from SantaCon roll into a diner and get taken out. That has not only the most interesting kills so it isn’t just “Grinch slices a guy with his claws” but it also feels like the movie really hitting on all cylinders. The physical acting and slapstick reminiscent of Jim Carrey getting mixed with actual inventive kills is a delight but makes the otherwise bland kills feel all the more disappointing since you know they could be doing better.
This would be better served as a much shorter film but at least it doesn’t make you hate it by the end. The rhyming narrator doing a Seuss pastiche is a fun inclusion and if you have nostalgia for the Carrey Grinch, you could watch worse things.
Score: 3 out of 5
Expounded Universe 290 – Sith Lightning Crashes
Oh ho, so we’ve swapped masters and apprentices for a couple of little Jedi field trips, and the action is literally heating up with literal actual lava. Literally!
Movie Mastery – Beaster Day: Here Comes Peter CottonHell (2014)
This is a movie that almost certainly stemmed from finding a weird rabbit marionette and then “writing” a “script” to use it.
I hadn’t watched this movie before because everything I had seen or read about it made it seem like an entirely forgettable slasher. Turns out, after having finally watched it, I was definitely correct in my initial impression.
The story starts with a junior high Valentine’s Day dance as Jeremy, the bucktoothed nerdy kid, tries to ask the popular girls to dance and gets rejected one after another. That is until he asks Dorothy, a barely overweight girl that the movie tries to say is super fat. They end up making out but when some guys see them and start making fun of them, Dorothy says that Jeremy actually attacked her and forced himself on her. He gets stripped to his underwear and beat up in front of the whole school. Fast forward 14 years later and the girls that he tried to ask to dance are now getting stalked and killed by someone in a cherub mask, just like they had at the dance for some reason.
I’m gonna get into the spoilers for the review because it’s hard to explain just what this movie does well and poorly without getting into it. Also, this isn’t worth watching so spoiling it shouldn’t be a problem. One of the worst things this movie does is try to present itself as a mystery for who the slasher is. I assume mostly because of Scream making every slasher feel like they need to do this. The problem is the movie fully half-asses this by presenting us with one consistent male character and a bunch of barely seen, obvious red herrings that would make no sense as a killer. The ending of “Oh my gosh, it was David Boreanaz all along!” is such a wet fart of a twist since he’s the only character we’ve spent any time with other than the victims. Also, him being the killer makes no sense in movie as we are supposed to believe that Jeremy Melton grew up to be David Boreanaz through the magic of plastic surgery and if that’s what plastic surgery can do, sign my ass up.
The only remotely clever thing the movie does is set up the order and type of kill with the opening dance sequence. Shelley is asked first and is the first to die with the others following in the same order. Kate doesn’t reject him but says “Maybe later” and is the one to survive. Dorothy is last and falsely gets him charged with assault and she is the last to die and also gets dressed like the killer so she gets falsely blamed for the murders. That’s a fun little detail to have in the movie and I appreciate it. The movie is otherwise fairly tame almost bloodless in its kills. One of the red herrings get killed by being beaten with a hot clothes iron and we see none of it or even the body afterward. Also the movie randomly has its most drawn out, tense chase/murder done for some random woman that Jeremy never knew, was in barely one scene earlier, and then also gets the best kill in the film. Why waste the best scene in your movie on someone we don’t know or care about?
This is an easily skippable movie and would only really be worth watching in a series with stuff like I Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend to have a retrospective on what Scream did to the horror genre for a full decade.
Score: 2.5 out of 5
The holiday horror theme moves into the patriotic realm of the 4th of July with one of the rare holiday themed horror films that isn’t Halloween or Christmas based. I knew all about this one going in but it was still a neat experience to watch it. This came out just before Scream was released and was arguably one of the last slasher type films of its kind before being almost entirely replaced with the meta heavy, witty teen slashers that would follow in its wake.
Our killer corpse is Sam Harper, a soldier whose helicopter was shot down in Kuwait from friendly fire. The main focus, however, is Sam’s nephew Jody. That way we can get the whole Uncle Sam angle. Jody idolizes the idea of his uncle and has a child’s perception of what it means to be a hero and what it means to fight in a war. He doesn’t realize that his uncle was actually an abusive, violent piece of shit that was in the army mostly as an excuse to kill people. When his uncle’s remains get sent back for a funeral just before the 4th of July, his hero worship reaches critical mass. Uncle Sam rises from the dead for some reason, possibly because of Jody wishing for it or maybe because some punk teens were burning a flag near where his grave would be. Anyway, he gets out of the coffin and it’s patriotic murder time.
For being a horror movie about a zombie solider that kills people on Independence Day, Uncle Sam ends up having a very interesting way of presenting the whole war and soldier worship aspect. We start immediately with his death being friendly fire. Isaac Hayes plays an old Korean War vet, Jed, that had told Sam his war stories and inspired him to become a soldier. This fills Jed with regret and when Jody says he wants to be a soldier some day too, he has to tell him the ugly truth about war and that nobody is a hero in war. It’s not just in the dialogue, though. We also see the kills that Sam does at first seem like he’s being righteous or patriotic. He kills a peeping tom, flag burners, a crooked lawyer, and so on. But eventually he just starts killing people that are in the way or one girl in particular for no reason. It shows there is always a veneer of justice that can be put on killing but in the end, murder is still murder.
All that is well and good but it should also be said that the acting and pacing in this is pretty much what you would expect from a low budget slasher in the mid 90’s. Bless Isaac Hayes but he is not a good actor and his line delivery in this is as wooden as his character’s leg. It’s also always a risk having a kid be your main character and Jody is not the most charismatic or interesting character to hang a film on. The movie also randomly introduces another kid an hour in to the runtime that got burned and blinded by fireworks the year before and suddenly it makes him a main character for the last half hour. They also make it so that Sam says more to this random kid at one time than anyone else in the movie and he gets some weird psychic ability to know what’s happening with Sam and Jody. The script isn’t the best.
A decent enough movie to watch but mostly noteworthy as a historical signifier for the end of the old style of slasher. Also corners the market on being the one movie horror fans have to watch for a 4th of July party.
Score: 3 out of 5
Moving only slightly forward in the holiday theme week, we’re going from Thanksgiving to Black Friday. I had been wanting to see this for a while. You’ve got a pretty stacked cast with Michael Jai White, Devon Sawa, and the main man himself, Bruce Campbell. And who doesn’t love a good zombie movie with capitalism trappings?
The movie takes place at a store called We Luv Toys on the night of Thanksgiving for one of those midnight Black Friday sales. We mostly focus on Ken (Sawa), the divorced dad and coolest guy at the retail store. He and his fellow employees are getting ready to deal with the hell of working on Black Friday when it gets even more hellish due to an infection being spread by meteorites. The infection causes people to not just turn zombie-ish but to also begin to transform into something else. It’s up to a bunch of coworkers that barely tolerate each other to try to save themselves from a horde of infected shoppers and whatever it is that they are gathering to do in the middle of the store.
Let’s face it, the script for this movie isn’t going to wow anybody. The trope of consumers as zombies is an old one at this point and the characters aren’t exactly fleshed out beyond having pretty singular traits. Single Dad. Germaphobe. Shitty Manager. Woman. Old Woman. What makes the movie worth watching is the way that it presents these very tired cliches with gusto. The twist of the zombies being an alien infection makes it at least far more visually interesting. They end up infecting people with these strands of white goo that kind of look like when a sea cucumber shoots its guts out of its body. It looks great and the way they slowly keep changing as the movie goes on looks awesome. Big respect to the special effects team on this one.
The comedy in this movie varies wildly from some genuinely funny interactions between the characters to some bad jokes to the baffling inclusion of a depressed talking teddy bear named Dour Dennis (voiced by Seth Green) that gets way more screen time than that premise deserves. For a horror comedy, this does end up having at least a couple good scares in it. The effects budget goes more towards the infected than any kind of gore or over the top violence. Which is almost a shame because you cast Michael Jai White in the film and he barely gets to kick ass at all. Why even put him in your movie if you aren’t going to let him do some badass shit? It was fun to see Campbell in a very much not leading man role as a shit heel manager but he feels a bit wasted as well. There’s only so much anyone can do with very one note characters.
In all, it was a decently fun movie to watch. Definitely the kind of popcorn flick that you could put on for friends that don’t generally like horror and still have a good time.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
It’s a new week and we’re going to kick it off with the first themed week of this year’s Horrortoberfest season. I’m doing a full week of non-Halloween holiday themed horror starting with Eli Roth’s full length feature version of the fictitious trailer he made for Grindhouse. Having never actually seen Grindhouse or the trailer this was based on, I only really knew about one very particular kill in this movie before going in and I have thoughts on that but first, the standard plot summary.
Thanksgiving starts on Thanksgiving day in Plymouth, Massachusetts with the local Wal*Mart equivalent having an early Black Friday sale that night. Things go horribly wrong when a riot breaks out and the ensuing carnage ends up killing multiple people and leaving the town’s star pitcher with a broken arm. Fast forward a year later and someone is stalking the streets of Plymouth in a John Carver mask punishing the people that they deemed responsible for the tragedy. Who could this masked killer be and will our heroine be able to stop them before everyone she loves is Carver-ed up. (I would like to apologize for that joke and won’t happen again)
Roth is a very hit or miss director for me with more misses than hits. I was not especially hopefully that this would be anything more than watchable but I found myself enjoying it, for the most part. I think part of it is that the movie ends up being a fairly straightforward slasher that leans into the mystery/who dunnit aspect. Playing with the format and giving some decent twists that don’t feel stupid or forced means the movie can deliver a really good example of the slasher genre. It has the great practical gore effects that you would expect and doesn’t end up trying to be something it isn’t. I do, however, want to take a second and talk about the one more infamous kill in this so I guess Spoilers in the next couple paragraphs if you don’t want to know about any of the deaths.
The step-mother, Kathleen, is killed by being cooked alive like a turkey. A horrific death to be sure but also one that fits the theme so I get it. The thing that gets me is how the movie lingers on it. Kathleen wakes up while being basted and covered in salt and pepper. She escapes and flees for a long time. We stick with her for an extended period as she continues to get the better of the killer until her luck runs out and she gets put in the oven. We then linger on the death, see her begging for her life, burning as she touches the heated metal, and finally dying. I can’t help but compare this to the tanning bed scene from Final Destination 3. Similar deaths but also similar in that the camera lingers, it takes its time and makes the viewer uncomfortable.
The difference is that the tanning bed scene does it almost as a punishment for the viewer’s desire. It’s the two mean girl airheads that in a normal horror movie you would cheer as the killer decapitates them. Then the movie makes you sit with their pain and terror for so long as if to say “You wanted this. Here it is. Watch it.” The death has something to say. In Thanksgiving, we barely see Kathleen. Sure our main character doesn’t like her new step-mom but she is never shown to be especially mean or nasty. She is given the single most brutal and uncomfortable death while having almost nothing to do with the events that inspired the killing. It feels like the movie just went “She’s a step-mom and therefore bad” and then punished her for the crime of being someone’s second wife. I’m not writing a full college essay on the role of step-mother in stories but it just felt so weirdly gratuitous in a movie that otherwise didn’t do that sort of thing. It’s that “cruelty for its own sake” stuff from things like Hostel bleeding into this movie that lessens it.
That aside, I think the movie is a good choice for anyone that is a fan of the slasher genre. While I doubt the John Carver killer will be up there with the ranks of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, I do think it’s a fun movie that’s worth watching.
Score: 4 out of 5
I had never heard of this movie before and, honestly, when I saw that it was on my list for the month, I had no idea why I had put it there. But it’s a horror movie with Heather Graham and Barbra Crampton so I figured it must be decent. What I was mostly surprised by was the movie actually being based on a Lovecraft short story.
Our main character is Dr. Elizabeth Derby (Graham) and we start with her in the Miskatonic psych ward in Arkham, Massachusetts as she talks to her friend and colleague, Dr. Daniella Upton (Crampton). The movie is told in flashback of how Dr. Derby got entangled with a young man that came to see her in a panic because he was sure his father was trying to “take his body”. She tries to help the young man because she believes he is suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder and thinks this could be a major study for her. However, she ends up having sex with him and then becoming the next target for the thing that jumps from body to body.
The movie is hypersexual with a lot of double entendre of “being inside” someone else but never feels lewd. For the most part, sex in this film is a stand in for power with pretty much every sex scene being about who is in control. Whether that be in control of the situation, the relationship, or just who is in control of a body. That loss of control of one’s own body coupled with the sexual overtones fluctuates between it being a metaphor for giving in to passion and the terror of losing bodily autonomy that comes with sexual assault. The fact the movie can do both of these things without getting overly graphic or explicit means it was able to expertly walk a line that many others have failed to.
The story is gender swapped from the original short story it’s based on, “The Thing on the Doorstep”, and is way hornier. Not that it’s particularly hard to be hornier than ol’ H.P. Lovecraft. The expansion of the lore out from the short story gives a broader scope. The original story is more familial with it being specifically the main character’s father-in-law that is doing the soul swapping. Detaching the threat from being in a family makes the horror more about the way the temptations and desires outside our normal life can consume us. The first patient we see Dr. Derby dealing with is someone addicted to smoking and the parallels of not being able to help ourselves even when we know something isn’t healthy for us is the main thrust of the film.
I liked this a lot more than I thought I would given that I haven’t really heard anything about it online. It also has some nasty effects towards the end but this is much more of a psychological horror than a bloody gorefest.
Score: 4 out of 5
Today I’m looking at another Dracula related movie that centers on something other than the main story. Also, like The Last Voyage of the Demeter, this movie ends up featuring a lot more Dracula than I was initially expecting. Though I think this movie ends up being probably better for that use rather than diminished by it.
As one might suspect, the story centers around the titular character of Renfield, Dracula’s familiar/servant. The story is set in the modern day with the events of the novel and particularly the Bela Lugosi movie having played out more or less the same but with Dracula surviving. Renfield is going to support groups for people in abusive codependent relationships, not just because he is in one but also so that he can use the abusers as food for his master. In so doing, he winds up getting tangled up in the criminal underworld when the mob sends a hitman to go after someone he was already going to get. Also, Renfield has super powers whenever he eats a bug.
While the basic premise of the movie is pitched as a horror/comedy, it honestly feels much closer to a gory superhero movie than anything else. Renfield’s ability to gain “Dracula powers” when he eats a bug makes it so that most of the big confrontations in this movie more closely resemble something like Deadpool than Dracula. That isn’t to say that it’s a bad thing for the movie. It’s a fun, action packed romp with a lot of jokes that end up landing far better than I was expecting them to. The only problem is if you go in expecting something more horror focused because, outside of the admittedly copious amounts of CGI blood, there isn’t much in the way of scares or horror.
The real horror in the movie is the focus on abusive relationships and the control that they can have on someone’s life. This theme is obviously the forefront of the movie and not a subtle thing and that actually hampers it a bit. The affirmations and reading from self-help books would be decent as either a throwaway gag or as a more blatant framing of the theme for those that didn’t get it. Unfortunately, it ends up being used so often in the film and usually in the comedic scenes that it can feel like the movie is making fun of those support groups. I understand it is a comedy but Renfield telling Dracula that he deserves happiness and freedom being done for laughs is low hanging fruit and the same scene could easily have been a dramatic, emotional one.
On a final note, I will say that Nicholas Cage as Dracula gives just enough of that wild energy that people are always trying to capture when they cast him. It’s a good role for him and is just over-the-top enough without it becoming distracting, like the worst of the Nic Cage stuff.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
When I first heard about The Last Voyage of the Demeter, I was fairly positive on the whole thing. Taking the doomed voyage from Dracula and adapting it into a movie seemed like it should be a interesting and mostly unexplored part of the mythos. Then the commercials started going back and forth between trying to hide that it was a Dracula movie and leaning into it so much that they just outright show the monster form in the trailers. The marketing made me uncertain what exactly the quality of this movie would be.
The story is, as mentioned, loosely based on the captain’s logs of the Demeter from the novel Dracula. Since the logs are barely a couple pages long and only loosely describe what happens, the movie takes it upon itself to introduce a few more characters than is mentioned in the book. Foremost is Clemens, a doctor and our main character. We also get Toby, the grandson of the captain because I can’t seem to go a day this Horrortoberfest without having a movie that kills a kid. Finally, there is Anna, found in the cargo hold as Dracula’s lunchable that got packed up with him so he could have a snack on the trip. There are a bunch of other sailors and they are mostly there to get picked off during the night.
I think the choice to put the Dracula monster front-and-center makes the story a little bit worse overall. The logs in the book are all about the creeping uncertainty of what is happening and when people start going missing, there isn’t any clue about what happened. Making the story more of a monster flick with the, admittedly cool looking, vampire on screen from fairly early on ends up making the story less about the tension and paranoia of being stuck on a ship and not knowing what’s happening and more about sailors running around trying to shoot a big bat demon. It feels like the more flamboyant, obvious kills should happen later but it’s pretty quick we get guys with their throats ripped out and the simmering tension becomes violent action.
While the story feels like it could have been handled in a more interesting way, the acting from the main characters keeps you engaged. The quiet compassion of Corey Hawkins’ Clemens is juxtaposed with first mate David Dastmalchian’s Wojchek, who is hard-as-nails and trying to keep the crew together. Liam Cunningham as Captain Eliot is phenomenal as the old sea captain that is going on one last voyage before retiring so he can make a better life for his grandson. While most of the deckhands are there more to be lunch for a hungry vampire, some still manage to bring enough life to their small parts to make you care for them when things take a turn for the worst. Stefan Kapicic plays the part of Olgaren with such a great degree of kindness and concern that, even though he isn’t exactly a main character, you still feel for him in the aftermath of his attack.
I went in fairly worried that this wouldn’t be good since I hadn’t heard any reviews for it that were glowingly positive. While it definitely feels like it could have been better, I don’t think it was bad and definitely keeps your attention for the run time.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
System Mastery 287 – Orkworld (Crunch)
Blessed Ween everyone! This year we’re focusing on animal inside of us all with a Furry Ween! Or a Hairy Ween! I dunno, whatever, we just wanted to read Mutants in the Now.
There wasn’t a whole lot that I knew about this movie aside from it had gotten positive reviews and was mostly about a pregnant lady being terrorized by something. I was not expecting the focus that the film ended up having beyond the pregnancy. As someone that is both unable to bear and uninterested in having children, I might not have gotten as much out of this as others would.
Our main character here is Valeria, a woman that is trying to have a child and seems to have it all. She has a loving husband, a nice home, and has finally been able to get pregnant with her first kid. While preparing for having a child, she starts to be haunted by something that moves with unnatural cracking and has no mouth or eyes. Obviously nobody believes her when she says she sees this woman haunting her except for her super cool lesbian aunt who also knows a bunch of witches that might be able to help her with the whole weird monster thing.
The movie has a focus on the myth of the “perfect life” that comes at the loss of individual dreams. Valeria used to be a punk in a relationship with another woman. She had a shaved head and dreamed of a life with her girlfriend. We don’t know precisely what happened but when her brother died, she decided to go to college like her brother was going to because her family was so excited that there was going to be someone that went to college in the family. Apparently that was the first domino in her transformation from young queer punk into the picture of heteronormative family life. Thankfully, the movie is framed around how the aunt and her ex are the most supportive of what she’s going through and seems entirely supportive of not conforming to the standards that others would force on you.
While the messaging that empowers rather than vilifies queerness is refreshing to see in a horror movie, it’s also so much of the focus that you tend to lose the horror a lot of the time. We’re so caught up in the regret of a life fashioned to conform that you forget this is supposed to be a horror film and not just a drama about the harsh reality of growing up and pregnancy. Which isn’t to say that the movie is boring but it almost feels like the horror is such a thinly veiled metaphor that it doesn’t even need to be there. The sound quality of cracking knuckles and popping bones is exceptionally well done to be off-putting but the whole bone thing doesn’t really relate to anything outside a throwaway line that giving birth can feel like your bones are breaking. But since we keep that up even after she has given birth, it feels like its mostly their for the sake of being nasty sounding.
I wouldn’t say I disliked the movie. It has a lot going for it and the performances are great, especially from Natalia Solián as Valeria. It just didn’t resonate with me and I found myself thinking it was taking a while.
Score: 3 out of 5
This is a movie I really wanted to see because it’s always nice when someone does something interesting with the slasher genre. Whether that’s moving into a meta-commentary on horror itself like Scream or finding a new way to present the events, which is what this movie does. It also doesn’t hurt that I am now for sure going to put this on my list of cosplay options for conventions.
While the movie does involve a group of horny teens out in the woods, it doesn’t revolve around them. Instead, we follow Johnny, the “definitely not Jason Voorhees” killer of the movie. The other characters only really get screen time if Johnny is around. Through some background information we learn that Johnny used to be the some of the guy that ran the local company store for the loggers out in the woods. When they accidentally kill Johnny and then his father, Johnny comes back for revenge. None of this is seen, however, as we only get the modern day version of Johnny without any real flashbacks or changes until the very end of the movie.
We hear snippets of conversations and see some pictures and things that give more background information about what is happening but what we mostly get is Johnny walking around in the woods. With only diegetic sound used in the movie, we get what feels like a relaxing nature sounds ASMR video that is occasionally interrupted by some of the gnarliest violence imaginable. Both the beginning and end of the movie make that juxtaposition out to be the main point of the film. That while nature can often seem soothing, like when Johnny walks amongst the sounds of birdsong and the rustling of the breeze, nature can also be terrifying and violent, like the story of a ranger getting attacked by a bear we get at the end of the film.
I was amazed to see how many 1 star reviews there were of this movie, mostly by regular viewers and not critics. I get that some people might not be as willing to go along with the almost meditative way the movie moves through space but I never felt bored or uninterested in what was going on. Also, the kills in this are truly ridiculous and not just in that they are gory (which they most certainly are). They also get enhanced by the slow pacing and the lack of musical score. Watching the deliberate dismemberment of someone where the camera isn’t cutting away, the music isn’t blaring, and it’s just seeing over-the-top violence is both a commentary on nature but also the horror genre itself. The way we take pleasure in these acts normally in a movie but when stripped of all pageantry, it becomes something else entirely.
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and the way the movie switches at the end is also another great commentary on the “final girl” trope and how movies tend to just end when the last person gets away without having you consider what surviving something like that might do to someone.
Score: 4.5 out of 5
Piggybacking off of yesterday’s review of a movie about possession and evil destroying a family, today I decided to look at the not-quite-sequel, not-quite-reboot in the Evil Dead franchise. Not sure what it is with this year’s Horrortoberfest but I have been going heavy on the movies with child murder/endangerment for this first week. It’s not even the theme, just happens to keep showing up in recent films.
There is a wraparound story that more closely resembles the classic Evil Dead with one of the single best opening title cards to a movie I’ve seen in a while but it isn’t our main focus. Instead we are focusing on mother Ellie, her children Danny, Bridget, and Kassie, and her visiting sister Beth. When an earthquake hits, it opens up an entrance to an old vault beneath the ground that Danny can’t resist checking out. Turns out the vault was holding some dusty old records and the Book of the Dead. Danny ignores his sister’s protestations to not mess around with them and decides to play the records setting off a classic deadite free-for-all inside the high rise apartment building.
The movie does a good job of both referencing the original movies while also doing something new with them. While many of the Raimi signature zooming shots can be seen and classic lines like “I’ll swallow your soul” or “dead by dawn” can be heard, the film eschews the campy, comedic tone of the original films in favor of a much more serious horror setting. Instead of horny young adults in a cabin, we have a single mother and her children plus a sister who is about to become a single mother herself. The change in setting and characters makes the possession of Ellie much more tragic and horrifying than it might otherwise have been.
This is also a movie made to please the gore-hounds out there that want nothing more than buckets of blood from their horror films. The director, Lee Cronin, said they used over 6,500 liters of fake blood for this movie (with most of that being for one especially blood-soaked scene). The generally unkillable nature of deadites (a term not actually used in the film since it would be a bit too jokey) means that you can get all sorts of nasty slashes, stabs, burns, and blasts. I also appreciate that every time I would think “But what about X” while watching, the movie would almost immediately address the concern in the most gruesome way possible.
There are things that don’t land especially well like Beth doing Bruce Campbell’s classic “Come get some” line, which feels tonally out of place. That said, I think the movie took the franchise and did something worthwhile with it.
Score: 4.5 out of 5
This is probably the movie on my list for the month that I have been most looking forward to seeing. Everything I’ve seen or heard about this film has been great and I always love getting to see some non-American horror. That said, there is a big old warning for this movie where if you’ve got issues with animal or child death/endangerment, that is going to a large portion of the things that happen.
The movie takes place in a version of our world that has some very stark differences that slowly become apparent as the movie goes on. We follow our main characters of Pedro and Jaime, a pair of brothers that live out in the “middle of nowhere” countryside. One night they hear some gunshots out in the woods near their house and when they investigate the next morning, they find a body with some clues that lead them to a nearby woman’s house where one of her two sons has become “rotten”. This is a term used to mean that they have become possessed by a demon and now it’s everyone’s problem. Trying to take care of this problem spirals out of control into a terrifying series of events.
I’ve been intentionally vague on the plot because this is a film I think is best gone into without more than a notion of what it’s about. The world and the way it is different from our own being slowly revealed through the way people talk about things in conversation rather than an exposition dump is so engrossing. The tension between the characters trying to do what is right for them vs doing what they want to do is played perfectly. Things get exceptionally fucked up pretty quickly and Ezequiel Rodriguez as Pedro does such an amazing job of conveying the anguish, confusion, and anger that would come from being in his situation.
That being said, this is an unrelentingly bleak film. If you are the type of person that watched The Mist and thought “That ending was a bit too much” then maybe give this one a pass. Things start off being pretty bad and quickly become soul crushingly awful and it never gets better. This isn’t a movie about overcoming evil. This is a movie about the way in which evil is left to fester and rot by people in charge. How governments and society tend to view things with an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality when it comes to places “in the middle of nowhere”.
The effects on this are also incredible and serve to further make the things that are awful be truly brought to life in grotesque detail. I could go on and on about what this movie does well and I will certainly be looking forward to seeing more from director Demián Rugna.
Score: 5 out of 5
Yesterday’s horror selection was a horror comedy that left a lot to be desired in both the horror and the comedy sections. I figured I would take today to look at a different horror comedy that I had been wanting to see so I could hopefully find a better representation of that genre. It wasn’t until about halfway through the movie that I began to realize that I might just not be the perfect person to be doing commentary on this. Oh well, here we go.
The movie centers around a group of friends getting together for a Juneteenth celebration. They were all friends in college and this is the first time they are going to be all together again in 10 years. They have rented a cabin in the woods to spend the weekend together but things start to go murderously wrong when they discover a board game in the cabin called The Blackening. This kicks off a struggle for survival against a masked killer that will test their friendship while taking a deep look at what it means to be Black in America.
I was extremely pleased to find that the movie didn’t sacrifice the tension or drama in order to have the comedy. So often horror comedy movies will either lazily hope their “hilarious” premise will carry the film so they don’t have to write any actual jokes (see the review of Slotherhouse) or it is so jokey as to be tiresome and overshadowing anything else (pretty much the entire Scary Movie franchise). The humor in The Blackening comes naturally from the characters interactions and the situation they’re in with some exaggerated bits for laughs. The characters are all believable and the way they play off each other feels like a real group of friends.
The main thrust of the movie, however, is about what it means to be Black. The entire plot hinges on the concept of blackness being a thing that one could quantify or solve for. The titular game that they are forced to play requires them to test their knowledge of black cultural touchstones and eventually says that they can survive if they sacrifice the one the deem “the blackest” among them. This sparks debate about whether blackness is tied up in how African one is, how gangster one is, how hard one fights for civil rights, and so on. It helps elevate what could have been a very simple horror comedy into something that engages with and pokes fun at the idea of a monolithic Black culture.
While I probably wasn’t the target audience for this movie, I thought it was a lot of fun. I think the horror aspect of it could have been amped up a bit more but that tends to be a failing in even the best horror comedy movies.
Score: 4 out of 5
Movie Mastery – Slotherhouse (2023)
A horror comedy that forgets it’s supposed to be comedic until about the last 10 minutes of the movie. At least the sloth puppet is kinda fun.
I chose this movie as a direct response to yesterday’s absolute flop. Skinamarink tried to eschew standard pacing and dialogue with an atmospheric creepy vibe that absolutely did not work for me. No One Will Save You is also doing something different with having an entire movie that only really has two lines of dialogue spoken in the entire thing. The difference between them is that this movie has tension, drama, and a main character you give a shit about.
Our story revolves around Brynn, a young women that has a troubled past and even more troubled relationship with the small town she lives in. She is isolated and ostracized from the community and then things get much worse when she has to defend herself and her home from alien invaders. What could have easily been an interesting concept for a 15 minute short film blossoms into a full hour and half of not only intense action and fear but a gripping story about trauma and coming to terms with our own grief.
I have to immediately applaud the main actress, Kaitlyn Dever, on a spectacular job delivering a performance that grips you without uttering more than handful of words. Without being able to rely on dialogue or interplay with other actors, Dever manages to convey so much. Like most good horror movies, the monster is a stand-in for other things and the aliens here can be seen as a stand-in for the guilt and inability to let go that Brynn has. She attempts to act happy and pretend like everything is ok but that trauma invades every aspect of her life until she is ultimately forced to confront it and reconcile with it.
That isn’t to say that the movie is an emotional slog of silent contemplation. There is about 10 minutes of establishing the character, some quick background information given through visual clues, and then we are off to the races with some very freaky takes on the classic grey aliens. While the CG isn’t good enough to make the aliens seem as real as practical effects might have, they do allow for them to move and speak in ways that would be impossible with practical alone. The invaders range from terrifyingly sinister, to monstrous, to almost comical but they all are uncanny and great to watch on screen.
I am so glad I had this as a palate cleanser from yesterday’s nonsense. Both took what probably could have been nothing more than a neat idea for a short film and turned it into a full movie. No One Will Save You is the only one that managed to justify its runtime, though.
Score: 4.5 out of 5
Expounded Universe 289 – Ula Vii en Rose
Look, I thought of that title like two months ago and I don’t think we’re ever gonna get it to line up perfectly, but I’ll be damned if we don’t use it! So in this episode Ula sort of takes control of the combined fleet, and that’ll have to work!
Day 2 of Horrortoberfest and I’m still going through the recent horror movies that I missed. Skinamarink is one of those movies that I was sort of dreading watching. Not because I thought it was going to be scary but because of the exact opposite. The movie became this indie darling with so many people singing its praises but I had this sneaking suspicion that I just wasn’t going to vibe with it. Turns out, I was entirely correct and the movie is very much not for me.
Normally this would be the part of the review where I would briefly go over the plot of the movie that I watched. Unfortunately, this film doesn’t so much have a plot as it has a series of grainy establishing shots with static playing in the background broken up by the music of free use cartoons. The framing of this is ostensibly two little kids (like 4-6 years old) are in their house but the windows and doors are gone and maybe it’s a nightmare or maybe there’s a demon or maybe I don’t care because it’s an hour and half of what should have easily been a 5 minute short film.
To give you an idea of how this movie was for me, I continually felt like I was going to fall asleep and once it ended I had to go into the other room and rant to my housemates about what a crock of shit I just had to sit through. Maybe if you’re the type of person that gets creeped out by grainy shots of carpet while listening to someone rub a blanket on a microphone then this will be a fantastic watch for you. For me, I spent most of the runtime with the They Might Be Giants song Experimental Film running through my head so I would at least have something entertaining to occupy my thoughts.
It takes almost an hour into this movie before it does anything remotely scary but, unfortunately, that is immediately undercut by the fact that the movie doesn’t seem interested in it. The children don’t really react to things in a way that makes them seem afraid or in danger. We don’t even see anyone’s face so it is harder to gauge those reactions and makes connecting with them all that much harder. I know that it’s supposed to evoke the feeling you had as a kid when you had a nightmare about being in your home and you can’t find your parents and maybe there’s a monster. I get that. But have you ever had someone tell you about a dream they had and it was the most boring, banal shit you’ve ever heard? That’s what this is but in movie format. For 100 minutes.
I had toyed with the idea of making this one of the podcast episodes but decided against it and I’m glad because I honestly doubt Jef could have made it through this without just playing a video game while this ran in the background.
Score: 1 out of 5
Horrortoberfest is back and to start I figured I would look at some of the more recent horror films that I just never got around to watching or, in several cases, I specifically didn’t watch because I was saving it for Horrortoberfest. Starting out the season with one of the bigger releases from the last couple years that I will never not think of as Mthreegan. I had some decently high hopes for this one and had seen several making-of shorts about it that impressed me.
The story of M3GAN revolves around a little girl, Cady, that loses her parents and is forced to live with her Aunt, Gemma. Gemma works for a toy company creating Furbys that are somehow even more off putting than normal even though she is apparently the worlds greatest robotics engineer. Her latest project is M3GAN or Model 3 Generative ANdroid, a robot that can learn and imprints on its user to be the best companion ever. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with creating a super strong titanium android with full artificial intelligence that has the parameters of “protect your user” and so the movie is mostly about the heartwarming joy that a toy can bring into a child’s life. Oh and murder. Several murders.
Warning for anyone that wants to watch this, it does include both the death of a dog and a child. The dog you don’t really see what happens but the kid one is pretty rough if that’s a trigger for you. The kills in this aren’t particularly gory or explicit for the most part. The camera will either cut away or not show exactly what’s happening most of the time so if you’re someone that isn’t a big fan of things being super bloody, that won’t be a problem. The movie handles the tension and increasing malevolence of M3gan really well, though, so the lack of bloody dismemberment doesn’t feel like it’s all that noticeable since you’re generally focused on how unhinged the doll is.
The theming of children and the growing way in which technology takes up more and more of their life and the anxiety around that is played well. At does at times feel like it’s going to take a sharp turn into “Boomer” territory with the moral being “Kids should put down the screens and go outside” but it honestly handles it much better than I expected. The idea of attachment to things rather than people and overreliance on technology is an actual concern that is valid and the movie presents them without becoming preachy. If it can be said there is a moral at all it’s mostly that parents need to try to relate to their kids more and be present for them.
I quite enjoyed the movie, overall. The behind the scenes work on having animatronic and real actor blend seamlessly is so well done and M3gan is a fine addition to the horror villain pantheon.
Score: 4 out of 5
System Mastery 286 – Orkworld (Crunch)
Oh, oh no. We thought all the worst stuff was going to be in the fluff and descriptive section. We were wrong. If you’re a fan of angry Jef and Jon, well, you probably already noticed the 84 minute runtime of the episode and got your hopes up, correctly.
Expounded Universe 288 – Dao and the Art of Shuttlecraft Maintenance
And the action fires right back up! Is there something special in the space past where the books get better, because this is starting to remind us of Red Harvest with how much actual “doing shit” is happening.
Movie Mastery- The Dirt Bike Kid (1985)
A kid buys a magic dirt bike that helps him save the local hot dog restaurant by doing things that have nothing to do with riding a dirt bike.
System Mastery 285 – Orkworld (Fluff)
Well, this might be divisive, if we hadn’t spent years discussing how we feel about ol’ John Wick and his famously terrible advice. But what about his games? Well, let’s look at Orkworld, a game about Orcs.
Movie Mastery – Soldier (1998)
I know I had seen this movie before but couldn’t remember much and now having reviewed it for the show I know why. There is nothing to remember about this very boring movie about a a man that proves you’re never to old to murder a bunch of people.
Expounded Universe 287 – Hex Based Space Combat
And the action fires right back up! Is there something special in the space past where the books get better, because this is starting to remind us of Red Harvest with how much actual “doing shit” is happening.
Expounded Universe 286 – What’s the Buzz Satele Me What’s A Happenin’
(Oh no, this one has sat a minute, my bad)
Everyone must find their own way to figure out where the trail leads, and this episode is all about how they’re doing it.
Relationship Mastery 9
Jef has some bar stories to tell, and also we answer a bunch of questions. What else do you want to know? We’re about to hit ten episodes, so please keep your questions coming in, we want to make it!
System Mastery 284 – Time Master
Travel through time at the behest of a futuristic society at the end of time? Sounds familiar! But before you break out the Wyld Stallyns shirt, let me burst your bubble by saying this actually has a weird war game at its weird core.
Movie Mastery – Dracula 3000 (2004)
A vampire movie that is continually setting up interesting ideas and refusing to do anything with them because it needs that run time for sex jokes and weed references.
System Mastery 283 – Eden
Hi everyone! You’ll never guess that now the other one of us has COVID. This stupid planet and country. Anyway, this game is about people learning lessons in a primordial garden from the animals that live there. Cool, right?
Movie Mastery – Bio-Dome (1996)
A movie that tries to be about two bumbling idiot heroes in the vein of Bill & Ted or Dude Where’s My Car but has none of the charm, earnestness, or humor that make those work.
Expounded Universe 285 -The Mojo Dojo Encaasa Bareesh
Finally, a bunch of heroes get sent on a quest. Honestly this book is actually shaping up to match that Lucas quote about Star Wars rhyming like poetry, which is frankly wild.
Relationship Mastery 8
Sound’s a little weird on this one, because we recorded it in a hotel during San Diego Comic Con! Features returning guest Jon (does he even count as a guest? Like it’s more that he’s just always around, really) and in a way bigger get, our buddy James D’Amato! This episode is discussion only, we are moving the Q&A section over to a patreon bonus episode due to some sensitive discussion topics. This isn’t intended to be the norm, it’s a one-time plan.
System Mastery 282 – Spectaculars
Part of wallowing in weird old stuff unfortunately is that it’s hard to keep abreast of what’s going on in the last decade or so of gaming, but Jef still pretty much orders any superhero thing if he sees it on sale, and that’s what happened here! This time it paid off even, as Spectaculars turned out to be in a form factor neither of us expected but both of us enjoyed, so let us tell you all about it.
Announcement Mastery!
Develop both company as well as your character as you navigate the downtime phase, prospects of mutiny and the ever-closer reaching hand of old age, as you try to survive in a time of terror, violence and terrifying wickedness. SOUDARD!
The Core Rulebook is available on itch.io/soudard-crb as well as DriveThruRPG and will soonish be joined by the campaign which will take you on the journey through the first war and allow you and your friends to experience the late middle ages as never before. SOUDARD!”
Movie Mastery – Cool Cat Saves the Kids
What the hell did we just watch? This is “What If Neil Breen made kid’s movies” and that’s not a thing I thought I would have to experience.
Expounded Universe 284 – Shigar, We’re Going Down Swinging
The grand battle plays on, though I think we’re both getting fairly sick of Dao Stryver just being immune to absolutely everything. Meanwhile a few things are explained, a few folks are rescued, and we’re seeing the seeds of our spy switching sides again.
Relationship Mastery 7
No foreplay this month, right to the questions. Maybe we’ll try and go to a thing and get a trip report, would people like that?
Relationship Mastery 6
In this one we actually do it. We master a relationship! Oh and Jon is here.
Relationship Mastery 5
On today’s super sized episode we’re joined by Claire’s awesome sister Lee who is going to tell us all about what the youth (in this case early 20s) folks are thinking and doing, plus definitely how embarrassing us olds are talking about sex like we know. Jon is also here. Fine.
Relationship Mastery 4
Hey we did it! Most shows die before this point and we didn’t die! You might though if you listen to this one in public. Warning, extremely graphic descriptions of fluids and such lie herein. Headphones advised. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Relationship Mastery 3
In this episode, I’m fairly certain Jef and Claire probably talked about sex and relationships, like they both like to do so very much. Sorry, we forgot to futureproof the descriptions of these, so the first seven will have… vague descriptions. But this is groundwork for episodes 8 and beyond. Please enjoy.
Relationship Mastery 2
In this episode, I’m fairly certain Jef and Claire probably talked about sex and relationships, like they both like to do so very much. Sorry, we forgot to futureproof the descriptions of these, so the first seven will have… vague descriptions. But this is groundwork for episodes 8 and beyond. Please enjoy.
Relationship Mastery 1
The inaugural episode of our silly new show. If you thought Jef and Jon weren’t qualified to discuss RPGs, just want until you hear Claire and Jef discuss relationships, sex, fandom, and anything else that springs to mind.
System Mastery 281 – Modern Knights
Pssst, hey buddy, wanna buy a superhero game from 2002 that was pretty clearly written prior to 1999? How? Oh, let us explain. It’s Modern Knights! At least we know that much.
Expounded Universe 283 – Hex on the Breach
Well well, we’re already at a lightsaber fight. And get this, it’s like three chapters of action sequence in a row! In a Star Wars novel this is considered something of an anomaly, as the middle of the books is normally utilized largely to introduce the identical cousins of background cantina characters or extending the page count. But not here! Here we’re getting a fight!
System Mastery 280 – Thirsty Sword Lesbians
Hey who likes lesbians what have swords and powerful yearnings related to the other sword-bearing lesbians they encounter on their wild adventures? You I bet! Let’s review this game for the end of Pride Month, because we were in a hurry and this one has a big old gay word right there in the title. Nothing’s gayer than swords!
Announcement Mastery!
Collapse of the State of Iron is a weird book (definitely read the preview) about the end of a collapsing state, and is available on Amazon right here!
Movie Mastery – Billy Jack (1971)
A movie that seems by all measures to be one thing ends up being something else entirely. While not exactly a masterpiece because of some glaring issues, this might be one of the few 70’s movies we’ve watched we didn’t hate.
Expounded Universe 282 – Holy Stryver
The streams have begun to cross, but gently at first, as Ula Vii the reluctant spy has met everyone’s instant favorite, JET NEBULA. Meanwhile, Ax does sith stuff, Shigar does jedi stuff, and Larin is apparently quite hot. Good for her.
System Mastery 279 – Iron Kingdoms
This one is close to home, we both sorta like this game, used to play the wargame, and wish it all was still good. But times change. But hey, what do we think of this game now?
Announcement Mastery!
Branch Riders (which funded in eight hours already) is currently on Kickstarter!
Movie Mastery – Tower of Terror (1997)
Based on the Disney ride of the same name, this made for TV movie is desperately trying to not be scary. Or interesting.
Expounded Universe 281 – Rancor Ridin’ Dirty!
Okay, this one I remember. Our characters one by one begin to converge on Nal Hutta, the current homeworld of everyone’s favorite big slug gansgters. No one meets anyone else yet though. We’re saving that for sweeps.
Expounded Universe 280 – The Toxic Moxla Avenger
Okay, apparently I forgot to post this very important episode for a while and a half, between work trips and some ongoing medical drama, it just slipped my attention. I officially apologize. Also, I have no idea what happened in it. I don’t even know what a moxla is anymore. Some sort of venomous thing, I trust. Please enjoy!
Movie Mastery – Now You See Me (2014)
An otherwise decent heist movie that gets dragged down by some bad choices on CGI and presentation that could have easily been reworked.
System Mastery 278 – The Skeletons
Is it too late to call this a theme month? Because it turned out to be a theme month. Cool minimalist projects by designers we like. Weird! The Skeletons is a thoughtful game about playing as skeletons guarding a tomb, by Jason Morningstar.
Movie Mastery – Death Bed: The Bed That Eats
A 70’s horror film that was mostly forgotten because even with a premise that seems like it should be wildly memorable, the entire thing is about as interesting as someone describing paint drying.
System Mastery 277 – For The Queen
Who says we can’t do cool modern design reviews? Or interview the cool working designers of today that make them? Whoever said that, lemme at ’em! Today we’re discussing For The Queen, a game we both enjoy enough to also want get Alex Roberts (already our expert dog correspondent if you’re in the Patreon) to join us to talk about her awesome game and the new edition of it that will be out the same day as this episode! (that’s synergy)
Announcement Mastery
Find Amerarcana on Kickstarter between May 14th and June 14th. Search for Amerarcana, spelled A-M-E-R-A-R-C-A-N-A or find it here: https://tinyurl.com/Amerarcanaprelaunch
Expounded Universe 279 – Cinzia Been Gone
Welcome back to Star Wars! Specifically that special brand of Bioware-era Star Wars (like, they got their own era) set 4000 years before New Hope! Meet a bunch of new characters with forgettable fantasy names and also JET NEBULA.
System Mastery 276 – Muse
Who would have thought this weird little collaborative storytelling shared narrative exercise game could be so divisive? We discuss Muse, a game that uses cards and tokens and lots of paper to help you and your group tell a story and definitely not make everyone hate each other, at all.
Movie Mastery – Hard Rock Zombies (1984)
A literal afterthought of a movie that manages to survive mostly on being so weird that you can almost ignore how bad and boring it is.
System Mastery 275 – Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth (Part 2)
Fine, we finished it. This was truly just an awful thing to keep reading through, I think it’s been a while since we’ve both been this angry. Anyway, if you come support us on Patreon to hear the bonus content, we couldn’t be assed to make Aria characters. They suck. So we made characters in the game LIFTS instead, which doesn’t suck. This is your update on that topic.
Movie Mastery – Puppet Master 4
It’s another Full Moon Features picture which means low budget kills and the absolute bare minimum of thrills. Unless you find extremely slow back-and-forth reaction shots between actors and puppets thrilling, in which case you might want to pace yourself on this one.
Expounded Universe 278 – Shadows Rising Wrapup
What did we think? What did you want to know? What are we doing next? The elements? We answer all the questions!
System Mastery 274 – Tower 22
Yeah yeah, we hit pause on Aria, we just couldn’t deal with that noise anymore. Instead, it’s time to dive into the ever-generous well of dumb OGL titles, with this bizarre 2002 Fantasy Strike classic, in which the authors really really want you to know about beach lifeguards and how important and cool and… military they are.
Announcement Mastery:
Seriously, go help out Owen KC Stephens already, get yourself a bundle of goodies and help out a positive force in this industry!
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/473197/owen-kc-stephens-is-rad-bundle
Movie Mastery – The Stolen Princess (2018)
Not every cartoon movie funded by a country can be as absolutely bonkers as Sir Billi or Millionaire Dogs. Sometimes you just get a mid Shrek/Disney pastiche.
Expounded Universe 277 – Bwon with the Wind
The climax is reached, can this book actually change anything or move any of the in-game story along? Will Bwonsamdi survive? Who rides what mounts? The elements? You better believe it.
System Mastery 273 – Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth
Show update first, everything’s been a bit late because of travel and the deadly scary norovirus, which isn’t pretty. Sorry about that. Show news on this episode? The sound a shudder that indicates a man has seen too much, written down, thank you.
Movie Mastery – Morbius (2022)
As requested, we are doing the follow up to the Madame Web watch with a look back at the first sign that maybe Sony just doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing.
Expounded Universe 276 – Nick at Nite Reference
The penultimate episode dawns! A race begins as the Zandalari and Horde fight to stop the Widow’s Bite from killing Bwonsamdi. You know what all those words mean, right? I sure do.
System Mastery 272 – City of Heroes Playtest
Gather up, all you various tankers, scrapper, controllers, uhhh… that healer one… I’m just kidding I loved this game. It’s City of Heroes, sort of! Insofar as it’s a Unisystem take on the popular superhero MMO. Some of one. This is just an old playtest doc. We talk about why and what and all the rest today!
Today’s Announcement Mastery was brought to you by LET’S QUEST, a non-profit helping to provide fun and learning for kids after school via supplying RPGs and accompanying tools to schools across the US. Learn more, especially about how to assist and contribute, at www.letsquestafterschool.org.
Expounded Universe 275 – Anduin Jereks It For Stress Relief
Well, I’d love to tell you things are coming to a head, but we still don’t know what that would look like. We are getting mentions of actual Shadowlands content though! That’s neat!
Movie Mastery – In Theaters Now: Madame Web
We have returned to the theaters again. We just needed to know exactly how bad could this movie be and why in the world would you think Madame Web is the character to have an origin movie.
System Mastery 271 – Active Exploits
This was a tough read. Active Exploits is more of a toolkit than a game, but despite basically having every possible tool any kit could ever have, especially for a diceless engine, we still just aren’t seeing how the numbers line up. But hey, who knows, right?
Today’s Announcement Mastery was brought to you by Perfect Draw!, a tabletop roleplaying game based on the PBTA engine that combines collaborative storytelling with trading card game mechanics in the realms of shows about those games, drawing inspiration from shows such as Duel Masters, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Cardfight! Vanguard. Back it today while there’s still time at Backerkit using the following link: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/double-summon-games/perfect-draw-a-ttrpg-about-people-who-play-card-games
Expounded Universe 274 – That Girl is Poison
Well, we know Shaw is still alive now, and meanwhile we settle the debate from the end of the last episode (Jef was right, weird) and see what’s going on with Thrall and Ji now that they’ve arrived on the insurrection-torn shores of Zuldazar.
Expounded Universe 273 – History Would Prove Them To Be Roommates
Okay so I may have lost this episode for a few weeks. And that definitely means I forgot what’s in there, besides that there was definitely some fairly intriguing Matthias Shaw romance. So hopefully you’re into that!
System Mastery 270 – Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game
I think… I think this is all of them? If you count the review of the Multiverse pre-test (we’ve skimmed the final version, it’s pretty close), then yeah, this is the last of the Marvel licensed RPGs we hadn’t covered yet. Saga edition, with the card deck and one of the two diceless systems. Is it cool? Will it Marvel? Do we have to start tracking down DC games now?
Movie Mastery – Money Plane (2020)
A trip to the seedy sky of the crime world where the most hardened criminals can gamble on the most degenerate games like checks notes Texas Hold-em.
System Mastery 269 – Strike!
This one is a little near and dear to us, we’ve used it to run Blimpleggers content in the past! Strike! is an RPG that sort of combines the very abstracted narrative structure of a FATE style game with the tactical grid combat of a 4e D&D style game, and for the most part, it works. Let’s talk about how!
Announcement Mastery Links
Support Solo But Not Alone 4 on itch.io here: https://itch.io/b/2256/solo-but-not-alone-4
Movie Mastery – Bulletproof Monk (2003)
Chow Yun-fat teaches Seann William Scott that wuxia style martial arts is all about believing in yourself or whatever but it’s fine since the movie is really about punching Nazis.
Expounded Universe 272 – A Loa Down Dirty Shame
In this installment, we finally do what WOW must do, devote way too much time to Thrall. After he meets with the other people the game frankly could abandon for six expansions and everyone would be happy (obviously Tyrande and Malfurion), it’s time for Zul’More Trolls (Hah, remember that? I’m so old) in Zuldazar.
System Mastery 268 – Crime Scene Police Investigation
Starting the year off the right way, with a shovelware-style OGL game about playing as real cops. Real boring cops.
Announcement Mastery Links
Check our Knight: Remastered, now on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/armouredgames/knight-remastered
Support Solo But Not Alone 4 on itch.io here: https://itch.io/b/2256/solo-but-not-alone-4
Movie Mastery – Life-Size 2 (2018)
In a hard turn from the original movie that was about the acceptance of loss and moving on from grief, this movie is about how dynastic corporate wealth is a good thing, actually. And it’s a Christmas movie!
Expounded Universe 271 – Press F to Torture Human Dad
I’d like to say that this is the start of a depressing trend of torture in this book, but at least the book seems aware of it, and it’s just Alleria and Turalyon both times, so maybe it’s part of the story and will be dealt with. We can hope it gets fixed instead of getting the 24 treatment. Meanwhile, Mathias Shaw is sailing along with Flynn Fairwind, who is actually from the games! And Nathanos is meeting up with Apari the Blood(?) Troll again for various dark purposes.
Expounded Universe 270 – Right Click to Torture Orc Mom
Yep, it’s one of the classic staples of the WOW genre, That kind of justified torture that your favorite heroes just can’t help but do, because of the greater good. Oh and also Zekhan meets Bwonsamdi and … I’m sure there must have been a third thing.
Movie Mastery – Christmas Icetastrophe (2014)
A SyFy Original TV movie where an asteroid freezes everything around it and also it’s Christmas time. I don’t know, I let Jef pick this one.
System Mastery 267 – Mörk Borg
Whoa, the art and layout in this thing is cool! What about the rest of it? Is it also cool? Can love bloom on the retroclone-style battlefield? Well, let’s read it and find out.
Movie Mastery – Black Dog (1998)
A movie about a man willing to commit several major felonies and some light murder just so his family doesn’t have to move from their home to an apartment. Dude loves him some suburbs.
Expounded Universe 269 – Zekhan A Mission From God
In which we figure out who’s likely to be our primary Horde protagonist, we send him on his way to adventure, and also Anduin continues to fret in well-known locations.
System Mastery 266 – Cozy Town
Welcome to a charming little community where the townsfolk are all made up and the real world doesn’t matter. It’s Cozy Town, a game that we figured could not have a better title to fit the Sweater Weather time here at the show. Make a whole adorable village, populate it and plan their year of events and charming happenings. It’s cute, basically. Super cute.
Movie Mastery – Swamp Thing (1982)
You’ll come to see Ray Wise be a manic sex pest and then stay because you already turned it on and it would be effort to put on something else.
Expounded Universe 268 – Flame War of the Trolls
Sheesh, I thought we knew some stuff about World of Warcraft but we’re completely in the weeds here. We don’t know about Battle for Azeroth era trolls, and that’s what we seem to have blundered into. Oh well, at least Bwonsamdi is cool. We’re meeting some maybe-important Blood Trolls, hanging out with Talanji, and meeting WOW’s ultimate wife-guy energy man, Nathanos Blightcaller.
System Mastery 265 – Monster Care Squad
Oh boy it’s time for Sweater Weather! You know, our now two year running thing where we review specifically non or low-combat games, helping folks learn that there’s more out there than the traditional “put sword into orc” model (you’d be amazed at what people on the internet are putting into orcs these days), and we’re starting this year with Monster Care Squad, a neat game about rescuing wounded monsters in a world that’s evolved past some of the worst instincts of humankind.
Movie Mastery – The Covenant (2006)
A movie about how rich, old money white men can do whatever they want and if anyone tries to stop them, they’re the bad guy. Also magic or something.
Expounded Universe 267 – Where Was Anduin When the Westfall Fell?
And we’re back! Our new scene is set, it’s split between Westfall and Ogrimmar, in which an author must deal with the dizzying array of world leaders available in the Battle for Azeroth era of a game at least a bunch of us were already starting to forget. You’ll never forget such luminaries as Kiro, Caravan Leader of the Vulpera, right? I sure won’t. Anyway, we barely even get an idea of what’s about to happen here. Something about the elements being angry? You know how these are.
System Mastery 264 – Monsterhearts
Okay, I do have a few more books with Witch in the title, and yes the urge to do Strike Witches was fairly strong, but we’ve been wanting a good excuse to talk Monsterhearts for a while anyway and there’s a witch skin in there so you know, you get what you get. It’s the first edition of one of the biggest PBTA games, in which your high school gets all monster-fied and everyone’s out to mess with everyone else!
Movie Mastery – Blood and Donuts (1995)
I guess the idea that being a vampire might not be great was novel in Canada in the 90’s because this movie really focuses exclusively on that like it was going to blow your mind. It then does absolutely nothing else with its runtime.
Expounded Universe 266 – Rogue Planet Wrap Up
All your questions answered! All our thoughts explained! And of course the next book, announced! I, uhhh, I let Jon pick again. I will always vote for the chaos option given the choice, you know this. What horrors are we due? You’ll soon find out!
Expounded Universe 265 -That Can’t Be Right
The end is upon us! Or at least of this book. Once again a massive amount of stuff needs to be handled in just a few short pages, and this time, well, it kind of isn’t! Do we at least finally figure out specifically what the deal is with Zonama Sekot? No! What fun!
System Mastery 263 – Witch: Fated Souls
It’s witches aplenty this ween, and that means more than just crooked triangle hats, as we see here in a multicultural witch festival including witchy types from all over the world. The game is a little bit White Wolf and a little bit rock and roll, relatively recent, and we’re covering the 1st edition (my understanding is that a second also exists). How powerful are these witches? Let’s find out!
Movie Mastery – Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952)
A knock-off Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis drag poor Bela Lugosi on screen to be as unlikeable as possible at him. Eventually, there is a gorilla.
Expounded Universe 264 -Anakin and the Amazing Technicolor Sekot
A new character has entered the arena, though we’ve been hanging out on them for a while now. That’s right, it’s time to meet Sekot proper, unravel some secrets of the past, and set up for the last 20 pages, where apparently, almost all of the stuff will happen.
Expounded Universe 263 – Wiping at Magister’s Terrace
And, as must happen in all these books when there’s like 40 pages to go, the action kicks into high gear. Anakin, Jabitha (are we sure) and Ke Daiv are in one ship, Shappa Farr and Obi-Wan in another, and all the while our petulant pal Raithe Seinar is up in space being lorded over by Tarkin. All in all, a good time, with a good moment even!
System Mastery 262 – Witch Hunt
What’s that upon the roof I hear? Could it be the pitter-patter of seasonally appropriate witch feet ‘pon my shingles? Why, ’tis! Blessed Ween to each and every! This year, it’s Ween 3: Season of the Witch, and yes I know this isn’t the third Ween, thank you very much. We’re starting our witchy run of RPGs with Witch Hunt, a game about Salem in 1692, so you know it’s gonna just be super tasteful, right?
Movie Mastery – Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)
Nic Cage in a movie that seemed to be tailor made to have Nic Cage in it while simultaneously unsure of what to do with him.
Expounded Universe 261 – Crashing the Ke Party
Man it has been a JOURNEY to get this thing to air. The ship is built and Ke Daiv attacks, I don’t remember the rest.
System Mastery 261 – octaNe
Let’s examine a post-apocalyptic game with a penchant for low-budget outre 90s cinema styles, and a fairly simple core mechanic to boot. It’s octaNe, and it’s pretty interesting, even if I personally never wanna read about Six String Samurai ever again.
Movie Mastery – Star Leaf (2015)
A stoner horror movie that doesn’t attempt to even remotely be scary but also doesn’t lean into the stoner comedy aspect either. Just a big pile of nothing that wastes everybody’s time. Just like us!
System Mastery 260 – Star Wars Saga Edition
And I said GO!
If you’re wondering if we liked this game,
We liked this game,
It’s mostly fine,
But it could use some work.
Movie Mastery – Sinister Squad (2016)
A cash grab mockbuster of Suicide Squad about fairy tale villains fighting against the forces of Death. A sentence that makes this absolute boring turd sound way more interesting than it is.
Expounded Universe 260 – Great Balls on Fire The shipbuilding begins! As Jabitha (that can’t be right) leaves our heroes at the gate of the great factory, they meet new […]
Expounded Universe 259 – Jabitha Hutt In this episode Anakin meets a little girl roughly his age, Obi-Wan is bored enough to start getting crabby, and Raithe Seinar is just […]
System Mastery 259 – Starfaring Sold to us as the first ever sci-fi RPG (a claim we have learned is dubious), Starfaring is basically Tunnels & Trolls, but with some […]
Movie Mastery – War-Gods of the Deep For a while in the 60’s there was a trend of Edgar Allan Poe stories getting turned into movies starring Vincent Price. Then […]
Expounded Universe 258 – Balls on Parade Our heroes emerge from the unexpected ball bath covered in the winnings of victory, which of course are more balls. Then a bunch […]
Expounded Universe 257 – Seed Partners Seek a Third In an attempt to give Anakin some more depth, we introduce… more whines of his? I guess now he loves spaceships […]
System Mastery 257 – Mythic Roleplaying Allow us to introducing our game… It’s finally here, the box set that sat on my shelf for four years while we waiting for […]
Expounded Universe 256 – Zonama Be Startin’ Somethin’ It’s weird to be reading a book that is ostensibly full of weird surprises and decisions that necessarily go nowhere after Attack […]
System Mastery 257 – Mythic Roleplaying Apparently what we have here is often considered to be the first stab at a DM-less RPG system! It’s from 2003, and boy is […]
Movie Mastery – Warriors of Virtue Trying to cash in on the Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers but having none of the charm and fun that made those work. With […]
Expounded Universe 255 – Anakin’s Got Crabs Another episode about shifting pieces into place for a story to happen, but still there’s something here that’s working for us. Not sure […]
Expounded Universe 254 – Tarkin What They’re Given Cause I’m Wormin For A Livin Okay, so now we know the bad guy of the hour! Raithe Seinar, starship engineer and […]
System Mastery 256 – Silvervine This one is interesting! It seems to be a compilation of two books, but is largely a single game about steampunk furry anime fantasy guys […]
Expounded Universe 253 – Raithe Squdron Classic villain introduction this week as we watch a discussion (that we find slightly charged in that good gay way) between Raithe Seinar and […]
Expounded Universe 252 – Jedi Believe I Can Fly We’re opening with just chapter 1! That’s right this is gonna be a 67 episode season! Ah okay I’m just kidding, […]
System Mastery 255 – Horror Rules It’s rules, for horror. From the DTRPG files, we’ve read a 2003 horror game with some neat ideas, some snarky stuff, and a slow […]
Movie Mastery – Cats Don’t Dance (1997) We just keep randomly getting animated movies for some reason. Blessedly, this one is not a low budget European turd but a fairly […]
Expounded Universe 251 – Wraith Squadron Wrap Up Here we are at the end of all things, time to discuss our overall take on this look at the X-Wing side […]
System Mastery 254 – Savage Worlds Rifts So we might be a bit off schedule but that’s okay, because we spent the time stuck in various airports and cities reading […]
Movie Mastery – Millionaire Dogs (1999) A German animated film about the dangers of wealth and the corruption of morality. Just kidding. Some dogs get a mansion and then do […]
Expounded Universe 250 – The Waggler Rides Again The big finale for the first Wraith Squadron book has arrived! Who will live? Who will die? Will Tyria get any lines? […]
System Mastery 253 – Savage Worlds
So we might be a bit off schedule but that’s okay, because we spent the time stuck in various airports and cities reading Savage Worlds so we could talk about it with you! A somewhat new game, Savage Worlds is a toolbox system similar to GURPS or the like, except it has an eye towards fast heroic play instead of accurate simulation stuff. Does it hit the mark? Well let’s talk about it.
Expounded Universe 249 – Can You Trigit
Shoot I forgot to remember what was in this episode. I think Trigit maybe dies? I was supposed to remember this, wasn’t I. Well, put it on my permanent record. Star Wars stuff, I tell you what. That’s what happens.
Expounded Universe 248 – Walking on Broken Glass Prowlers
Finally, a resolution to that whole “Get the crew of the Hawkbat sick via extremely convoluted heist” storyline! They… get the crew of the Hawkbat sick. Also an unexpected assignment, an accidental ambush, and Grinder gets his.
System Mastery 252 – Valley of the Pharaohs
Well well well, if it isn’t a Palladium game. And one of those weird ones where Simbieda didn’t write it or pretend to have written it! Valley of the Pharaohs came out in 1983, making it the first ever Palladium game published, and boy does that age show!
Movie Mastery – Sir Billi (2012)
The final film from beloved actor Sean Connery and the first feature length animated film from Scotland. It is also so bafflingly terrible that Jon kind of lost his mind while trying to review it.
Expounded Universe 247 – Phanan’s Grinder Profile
The heist continues! Along with some sorta obvious character assassination of our Bothan slicer, presumably to set him up for either a betrayal arc or a big ol’ red herring. Meanwhile our heroes just can’t stop brutally killing folks who just have desk jobs! Hooray for the New Republic!
Expounded Universe 246 – Falynn Off The Roof
Well at least they’re not performing psychology on each other any more. Instead now our squadron of heroes is dating, donning stupid costumes, and basically RPG-style infiltrating an Imperial planet to steal some X-Wings and a disease. Will it work? CAN IT WORK?
System Mastery 251 – Heroic Visions
Jon’s special blend of DrivethruRPG search criteria has kicked us up a truly interesting and unusual blend of superheroes, afrofuturism, strong Christian undertones, and Poser art that is definitely connected to a webcomic.
Movie Mastery – Krull (1983)
The cult classic fantasy/action/sci-fi film that that had some awesome ideas and also some poor execution. At least we get a young Liam Neeson that just looks happy to be there.
Expounded Universe 245 – Kell Dommage
Time for a bunch of psychoanalytical work as performed at its best, by a group of die-hard edgy pilot kids with chips on their shoulders! Can our heroes fix Myn Donos and his perfectly understandable PTSD by just being really mean to him? Can Kell Batman his way into being nicer to Wes Janson? These chapters are the worst on today’s Expounded Universe.
Expounded Universe 244 – Communications Down
The plan continues! The wraiths are still blowing up Imperial sympathizing targets while pretending to be the crew of the Night Caller, until they come calling to the wrong band of pirates. Pirates that have endlessly describable uglies!
System Mastery 250 – GURPS
Happy April Fools! Well, sort of. We were busy. We actually were hosting a quiz show thing on April 1st proper. So this early April episode will have to serve.Well I suppose it was about time. Let’s dive into the world of world creation by taking a hard look at GURPS, one of the earliest examples of the “Do anything at all” RPG model, from Steve Jackson Games. If I can post this right. My tech level is pretty low.
Movie Mastery – Robin-B-Hood (2006)
We take a look at a Jackie Chan movie that revolves around two professional thieves that become unlikely parents when they steal a baby. Hijinks but definitely not enjoyment ensues.
Expounded Universe 243 – Have a Blessed (Houghton) Ween
We’ve made it eight episodes in and now we finally get to see this commando squad do any commando business! The Wraiths launch a surprise raid on a secret Imperial window factory (editor’s note: canopy factory, dammit) and immediately ruin everything by using their call numbers instead of their names.
System Mastery 249 – Rifter 9 1/2
Happy April Fools! Well, sort of. We were busy. We actually were hosting a quiz show thing on April 1st proper. So this early April episode will have to serve.
Movie Mastery – The Ice Pirates
A swashbuckling, fantasy, space opera, comedy that fails to effectively be any of those things. But hey, it’s got a young Ron Perlman and Anjelica Huston.
Expounded Universe 242: PIGGY’S IN SPACE
The plan to make a tiny spaceship out of other spaceships continues, before an assault is launched, a captain is killed, and the Wraiths take possession of a super special ship!
Expounded Universe 241: 2 Fast 2 Folor
Finally some action ensues as our heroes face off with a bunch of TIEs, including a nickname for Interceptors we do not care for, then get caught in a complicated bomb situation that we’re still not sure we understood.
System Mastery 248 – Infinite Domains
What is this, some sort of generic universal role playing system? Some sort of master book to rule them all? It’s Infinite Domains and it arrived on the scene in 1996 to throw a new hat into the ring of “do anything” RPG systems, starting with a fantasy set of trappings.
Movie Mastery – Godzilla: Final Wars (2004)
Godzilla runs a victory lap around all of his various kaiju nemeses in this 50th anniversary film. Plus some added in aliens, mutants, and Mayor Hagar from Final Fight.
Expounded Universe 240: Fast & The Furious: Folor Drift
I bet you’re all wondering if they spend more time in this episode training to fly X-Wings. Well I’m not gonna tell you. Instead I’ll just say that Kell Tainor sucks and I wish this book was about Piggy.
Movie Mastery – Assault on Arkham (2014)
A Batman movie with almost no Batman. This is an animated Suicide Squad film based on the Arkham games where they got to imply some nudity and they took full advantage of it.
Expounded Universe 239 – Gray’s Anatomy’s Squadron
Time to really put the team together. Sure enough, we’re switching main character from Wedge to Kell in these chapters, and meeting the rest of the squad. You know the mold, sexy humans, goofy aliens, someone with a chip on their shoulder, that kind of stuff. Han Solo stops by for a brief nothing of a “this is what was happening at this time in other novels” sorta appearance, and we look at some X-Wings.
Expounded Universe 238 – You Killed My Father, Prepare to Fly
It’s the recruitment montage! What sort of weirdos are we gonna get on our X-Wing/Commando squadron this time around? Also, we meet Admiral Trigit, who knows he looks good, and Warlord Zsinj!
System Mastery 246 – Dallas
You know you read about this in some message board or listicle article years ago. And you know you’ve always wondered what the heck it actually is. Well wonder no longer, friends! Answers await you!
Expounded Universe 237 – Lock S-Foils in Exposition!
Welcome to Season 22! We’re going to be spending more time with the legendary destroyer of Death Stars Wedge Antilles now, so get ready for X-Wings, X-Wing shenanigans, wacky pilots, and every Republic character you’ve ever heard of even tangentially. Today’s episode sets a lot of scene work for a book with a high possibility for silly times ahead.
Movie Mastery – The Toy
I thought when we rolled into getting to watch a Richard Pryor film that it would be a nice treat. It was, sadly, not.
System Mastery 244 – Teenagers from Outer Space
Night falls on Darkest Vancouver. Will you be ready to draw your coolest anime sword and battle the eternal dancefight against the other forever-walkers like yourself? Today’s episode is a comedy game that sort of uses Highlander rules to make fun of White Wolf. It’s neat!
Announcement Mastery!
Solo But Not Alone 3 – The awesome charity project by Peach Garden Games in support of Jasper’s Game Day is returning bigger and better than ever, offering a bundle of 148 brand new solo RPGs for you to play all for the low donation floor of only $10 (but you can and should give more!) Help prevent suicide in the games community and get yourself some amazing games in the process? What an amazing deal!
Movie Mastery – Bridge of Dragons
Dolph Lundgren in a movie that tries to blend medieval fantasy with modern warfare and ends up being mostly back and forth shots of people pretending to shoot guns and then falling down but some of them wear jerkins, I guess.
Expounded Universe 236 – Starcave Wrapup
We answer YOUR BURNING QUESTIONS! Also we discuss the Lando trilogy as a whole, what we liked, what needed work, and what we would have done differently. Finally, after we deal with all of that, the announcement of the next book! Don’t miss it!
Expounded Universe 235- Rokur Gepta Crokes
Ooh, a grand finale! It’s all cool space battles and shocking revelations from here on out, so strap on your space belts and get ready for the sudden clash of all this books weird sci-fi concept creatures at once!
System Mastery 244 – Teenagers from Outer Space
A lightweight anime-inspired comedy game from… 1987? Damn, Mike Pondsmith must have been one of those guys that bought unlabeled anime VHS tapes from trenchcoat weirdos at comic cons when they still had walking room in them. Whatever the case may be, this is a fun, weird read. But a good game? Well let’s find out.
Curse 2: The Bite
The old random number generator has really been punishing us the past few episodes and the hits just keep on comin. At least it isn’t Baby Ghost.
Expounded Universe 234 – Wennis the Menace
Everyone’s gearing up for the big battle. We’ve got Ones, Others, Rests, Whetts, and all the rest of our regulars and every one of them is waiting out the calm before the storm. Gepta is doing regular Gepta business, while Lando suggest a plan that might be a bit shit.
System Mastery 243 – Star Wars D20
No no, not Saga Edition, the other one. This is OGL shovel-ware Star Wars. It’s got a real prominent author all right, but these “Just change the names on D&D stuff” versions of OGL content are so hard to fit to anything, let alone something as demanding and iconic as Star Wars. Did they do it? Well, check it out!
Movie Mastery – Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires
We look at a claymation satire of the 80’s cop films that manages to be mostly preachy about how therapy turns you into less of a man. You can imagine we have opinions on this.
Expounded Universe 233 – Osuna Whett Ass Pussy
SABACC! Lando found a way to play sabacc with the Oswaft, so he’s doing that. Meanwhile, Gepta fumes, Shanga stomps around oozing toxic masculinity all over the drapes and furniture, and we get the least dramatic shock reveal ever regarding Ottdefa Osuna Whett. Remember him? From two books ago? Well, good news.
Expounded Universe 232 – Vuffi Vuffi Raa, Where Are Ya?
No joke folks, I recorded this episode, headed to Vegas for two days, came back with intent to post, and immediately caught RSV from my daughter (who is fine!). I have no idea what’s on it. It’s probably about Lando Calrissian, maybe Rokur Gepta. Vuffi is in the title, that’s a safe bet he’s in here. It’s a mystery!
System Mastery 242 – Like a Rogue, One-Page Apocalypse Vol 1, Christmas Fallout
To close out our year we’ve decided to take a little look at a couple of very little games, because we just had a lot of family business going on around this time. We discuss a solo game about surviving a zombie apocalypse in the dead of winter, and another one about being word wizards exploring a lexicon library. Merry festive times to all!
Movie Mastery – Baby Ghost (1995)
Martin Sheen has a little brother and he apparently was cursed by a witch to never be able to turn down a movie. And boy does this technically, barely count as a movie.
System Mastery 241 – Kill Puppies for Satan
No more Sweater Weather? Guess it’s time for edgy fucked up December. Who wants to be nice to people and solve teddy bear ouchies when you can cram a firecracker in a frog or whatever as a member of Satan’s grimiest little volunteer militia.
System Mastery 240 – Threadbare
If you haven’t played as a bear with a clothes hangar for one arm that has to help solve the mystery of where Starscream’s left wing went, have you really lived? Threadbare is a PBTA game in the stitchpunk genre (more on that within) all about survival, adaptation, and purpose, and it can be played with absolutely no combat so hey, it’s perfect, because Sweater Weather isn’t over yet!
System Mastery 239 – The Play’s The Thing
Sweater Weather just will not let up as we take a tour through the non-combative games that are just so hard to find in RPGs. Today we discuss The Play’s The Thing, a Shakespeare altering game where you play as actors changing the story as the story goes along. So will the game be twice blest? Or is Hell empty and all the devils are here? Also, just up front, we don’t know the first goddamn thing about Shakespeare. Be warned.
Expounded Universe 231 – Ceci N’est Pas Un Poop
Lando puts on a big show, Lehesu can turn your… leftovers into diamonds, and Rokur Gepta keeps killing messengers. Meanwhile we meet the One, the Other, and Rest, and their fantastic inventing comedy routine!
Movie Mastery – Saved!
A movie that makes fun of the hypocrisy of the Christian faith’s message and the actions their followers take. Definitely not going to get in trouble for anything we say during this one.
Movie Mastery – Halloween H20
I fucked up and made Jef watch a halfway decent movie from the Halloween series instead of one of the absolute trash ones that come before and after this one. My apologies to the audience.
Movie Mastery – I, Frankenstein A movie that takes itself far too seriously given that it is on the level of Underworld fan fiction. Maybe lean into the fact that […]
Expounded Universe 230 – The Starcave of Starcave What a difference continuity brings! We’re finishing strong and actually covering the entire Lando Calrissian trilogy. We’ve got giant Manta Jellyfish space […]
https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=OSPN8040875389 The story of Aladdin as a musical brought to you by Disney. Not the animated classic, the live action one. No, not the new live action one, the one […]
Expounded Universe – Flamewind Wrapup Hey! Sorry for the delay, but we’re back on track with the Flamewind of Oseon wrapup. A little conversation, a little self reflection, and a […]
We couldn’t get enough theme months! Welcome to a brand new thing here at System Mastery, Sweater Weather! Reviewing the games that make you feel as cozy and comfortable as […]
This end to the current Halloween trilogy is still in theaters so I will say upfront that there will be pretty massive SPOILERS through this review. Now, finally, we can […]
The requel from 2018 did so well both commercially and critically that they immediately decided to turn this new timeline into a trilogy. This middle child of the new Halloween […]
It’s final timeline! Where H20 was a sequel to Halloween 2 and the Rob Zombie version was a full reboot of the series; the 2018 film is a sequel only […]
A movie so bad that it ends up being in the running for worst entry in the Halloween franchise even though we already have the sloppy pile of garbage that […]
I fucked up and made Jef watch a halfway decent movie from the Halloween series instead of one of the absolute trash ones that come before and after this one. […]
We have now come to the end of the first timeline in the Halloween series. There are a total of 4 different timelines for the series but I’m not looking […]
Bring us your angry apostrophe comments, they’re delicious! Anyway, today’s episode is the crazy finale! Explosions! Torture! Presumably buses full of chafed and weary orgy participants! All that and way […]
Yet more Michael Myers on the way with the 5th installment that ends up being a direct sequel to 4 in the same way that 2 was a direct sequel […]
After a brief flirtation with making the Halloween brand into horror anthology series with the “need to see it to believe it” third movie; Halloween 4: The Return of Michael […]
Time to cap off the Halloween season with a look at the Halloween franchise. While the original Halloween is an uncontested classic, I never felt like I needed to see […]
I figured I would keep on going with Netflix based movie with years as the title and just happened to luck into this perfectly slotting in there. I didn’t intend […]
Time to end this trilogy with a quick trip back into the past to find out exactly what happened with Sarah Fier all those years ago. This installment is actually […]
Oh wow, the shit all hits the fan here! Action! Intrigue! Extended lawn orgy! Thrill as we finally meet the legendary richest man in the galaxy Bohhuah Muttdah and his […]
We saw the Camp Nightwing killer in the first part of this trilogy looking like Baghead Jason and trying to kill Sam, Deena’s girlfriend. This time around, we get to […]
Break time from the major franchises this year but I’ll be back and looking at Halloween in a few days. In the mean time, I just can’t stop doing connected […]
As we draw this festive Ween to a close, we continue the project of a brief examination of newer space horror (Yes, that last game was a heist thing, but […]
The last of the Texas Chainsaw movies came out this year and I am blessedly free from the franchise after this one final review. This sequel reboots the rebooted reboot […]
Here we go. This is the prequel to the second reboot of the Texas Chainsaw timeline. While the previous prequel in the alternate timeline decided to only go back about […]
After two films in the rebooted Hewitt Family continuity, Platinum Dunes sold the rights off because they clearly had no idea what they were doing. Then Lionsgate picked it up […]
Time to go back to the past and find out exactly what it is that drove the Hewitt family to become the sadistic murderers we’ve seen. This is a prequel […]
We are finally getting into the diverging timelines and reboots of this franchise with the 2003 re-imagining of the original film. It’s interesting to note that this is actually the […]
It’s Horrortoberfest and that means I get to force Jef to watch a dumb horror movie and I timed this one to coincide with one of the worst franchise horror […]
Four years after the 2nd Chainsaw Massacre tried to take the franchise in a bold new direction, New Line Cinema got ahold of the rights. This movie has an actual […]
Time to get back into the franchise mines and keep digging up sequels that I never watched. I’m one of the few horror fans I know that never particularly liked […]
Cue the Strawberry Alarm Clock, because it’s time for a trippy flight through a rainbow space montage! Also there’s sabotage afoot, and fighters attacking! Exciting times indeed.
I’ll get back to the franchise reviews tomorrow but, for today, I am looking at one of the Cronenberg films that I had yet to watch. I had just recently […]
This is it. The Final Friday. At least for me. After this there would also be Jason X, Freddy vs. Jason, and the Friday the 13th reboot. I have seen […]
Taking a break from the major franchise film reviews for a couple days and came across this movie randomly. I knew nothing about it going in but saw that it […]
Since I’ve already reviewed Part 7 of the series in HOLY SHIT 2014? Goddamn, how long have I been doing these reviews? Anyway, Jason fights the generic off brand version […]
Aw, hell yeah. The unstoppable, undead murder machine finally arrives in all his gory glory. After everyone unsurprisingly hated the previous film’s attempt at passing the mask to someone new […]
Jason died in the previous “final” chapter of this series but Paramount will be damned if a little thing like that will stop them from milking a profitable franchise. I […]
The customary three great blessings of Ween to each and every one of you! Okay, so this game isn’t especially scary. By now you should have recognized that we may […]
Time to look at the comedically optimistically titled “Final Chapter” of the series where they finally stopped fucking around and let Jason kill someone with an axe. Yes! I guess […]
Back again we go to the Friday the 13th series. Part 3 is notable for several things in the franchise. Foremost among them is that now, 3 movies in, Jason […]
This year, I’ll be taking a look at some of the iconic horror movie franchises that I’ve only seen small bits of. Friday the 13th is one of the series […]
It’s a brand new year and a brand new start to Horrortoberfest. Starting off the festivities this October is a film currently still in theaters and with a pretty hefty […]
A sequel of sorts to the excellent A Goofy Movie, this film sees Max going off to college. This is such a big life change that the characters all seem […]
Well, it may have been a bit, but dang it we aren’t continuing the intriguing tale of Lando in jail, Rokur Gepta in monologue, and Klyn Shanga and his motley […]
Hurray, one of those edgy 90s games where people have superpowers but aren’t superheroes! You know, like the other ones? This one at least has an interesting angle of entry […]
Part of the larger “Roger Corman goes to Argentina” Cinematic Universe. Just be aware, this one has a lot of rape in it and is deeply uncomfortable to watch.
Finally some quality time with Rokur Gepta, who is rapidly shaping up into one of those villains who already knew you were going to do that, which might suck, but […]
Next book! And whoa, this one starts out with the libertarian coming on strong. Man, how did I not notice this when I read these at 14?
Wait, from Psi World to Apocalypse World? Two worlds? One network family? Oh right, I should probably mention that because we both have been down for a bit with the […]
Back to the old psionic grind! This game has almost exactly two whole paragraphs of story. Everything else we’ve had to glean from the margins and unusually informative rules. Wanna… […]
Netflix’s first attempt at making a blockbuster film is mostly fantasy racism and copaganda set in a world where they didn’t spend more than minute thinking about world building and […]
The poll isn’t over yet, but it’s looking very likely that we’ll just stay right here in the Centrality with young Lando and his cool droid companion for at least […]
Time to bring it home! We finally discover not only the titular Mindharp of Sharu, but also what it does! And we confront this book’s big villain… well sort of. […]
Hell yeah, we got some leaked documents up in here! Shame we gotta do it to them. But such is the rule of law here on the wild internet frontier. […]
The movie that fools you twice. Once by making you assume there is going to be way too much Chris Kattan when he’s hardly in it and then fooling you […]
Is this episode big? Little? Both! We’re not sure exactly who’s doing the size changing around here, but everyone is brand new sizes (except Mohs, who instead has liberate’d tutemi […]
We’re stepping up the pace to three chapters. Today we check in with Lando (tied to a tree, dying) and Vuffi Raa (full of arrows, dying), and then amazingly more […]
A rare occasion where the “How the hell did this even happen” question seems fairly obvious (some company wanted a furry game in their line and this was close enough) […]
This movie has famously been mocked for being awful ever since it first came out and was nominated for two different bad movie awards. But, does it deserve the hate […]
First, a brief discussion that has a surprising lack of detail available without going to a website: Does the Falcon have a bedroom? Feels like it should, right? But here’s […]
A man with a gun bursts through the door! And then things get slapstick, confusing, slapstick again, a little weird, maudlin for a second, really really confusing, and finally Jon […]
Let’s GOSR! This here is one a them retro-type clones where the goal was extremely straightforward: The author liked Sword & Sorcery White Box and wanted another edition, so here […]
What starts out seeming like a standard Hulk Hogan action movie, quickly devolves into a strange, dreamlike comedy with cartoonish characters and a nonsensical plot.
Well heck, the last episode was certainly a bottle episode, never leaving Duttes Mer’s office, but this one is almost a bottle episode too, insofar as it’s set exclusively in […]
Bottle episode time! These two entire chapters never leave the office of one of our two villains. This time around, we’re going to meet Duttes Mer, the regional governer of […]
Ever had dreams about the world deep below the world you know? A world where magic and madness swirl, where animals may just speak aloud, a world where the ancient […]
We aren’t reviewing Morbius (yet) but how about another movie that decided to try to lean into the memes and then didn’t make any money because it turns out memes […]
Oh my goodness it is a new book, and instead of dealing with Corran Horn for even one more goddamn second, we can finally hang with the cool man with […]
Well, FFG was sort of driven off this project (it’s a really sad story) so the most recent line of Star Wars games is now in our wheelhouse, I guess. […]
When you adapt a manga or anime into live action, only good things can happen. And what could be more exciting than watching someone drive the exact same route 7 […]
Time for the moment where we ask ourselves what the hell did we just read? A little bit of final thoughts and a lot of listener questions, plus the big […]
And the rocket ride comes to a sudden stop. And was Jef right last week? No! Jef was only about 1/5th right! Oh well, I guess those aren’t just the […]
Ooh, it’s one of those cowboys and also a different thing games! You know, like cowboys and ninjas, or cowboys and dinosaurs, or cowboys and the slow crushing onset of […]
In the vein of A Talking Cat, a celebrity really phones it in while voicing an animal but this movie had the budget to also badly CGI the animal doing […]
As the title may suggest, this is a bit of a Batman set of chapters, as our hero sets about scaring all the pirates off the planet they live on. […]
[/audio] Another episode, another few weeks spent in pirate town. We have the big showdown with Remart, a whole chapter in Horn’s head (shudder) and we meet an exciting new […]
Uh oh, someone better stop us before we get to level 10. It’s Star Munchkin, the RPG! Did you know there were RPGs of these games? You should have guessed. […]
Follow the thrilling escapades of John Canyon as he coerces a girl to marry him for a ride and then be chilled by the worst thing that poor Charles Dance […]
Chapter 36 opens with our new favorite phrase: “Several months later.” The languid pace of this rescue is wild, right? Anyway, all three chapters this week concern Corran’s attempts to […]
Reviewing a playtest? That doesn’t seem right! Well, it certainly isn’t in our usual bag of tricks, but hey, this is a rare situation where someone writing a modern game […]
In the near future, two rival gangs fight for control of Frasier Park, CA by playing a knock-off version of Dance Dance Revolution but mostly just say the N-word a […]
[/audio] Okay, here we go! We’re done with the Jedi temple, we’re done with Grandpa’s house, time to finally rescue Mirax, all we gotta do is… join up with a […]
Mea culpa time (Jef version): This is one of those games where I knew exactly what it was and have been recommending it for years for any RP session that […]
One of the few actually decent DreamWorks animated films but it still can’t escape the dreaded “all the characters dance” ending.
Obviously Corran is feeling a little down on himself for spending two and a half months at the Jedi academy instead of just looking for his wife, so the most […]
Ooh lots of ground to cover this week, as get this, Corran Horn is leaving Yavin 4! With about half of the book left, will we finally start the book? […]
Ooh, a steampunk one! You can tell because of the brown and the gear and the goggles and all. Oh, I guess it also says steampunk on there, in retrospect […]
In what I can only describe as one of the worst movies that we have ever seen; Jenny McCarthy takes some time off from spreading misinformation about vaccines to write […]
The cavalcade of guest stars visiting Fantasy Planet continues, as we are now getting a chance to meet Han (again, remember!?) and Leia, along with the Solo twins, make brief […]
Uh oh, every once in a while a time comes in which we are commanded to rock, and that time has come again. We’re discussing a game in which every […]
Thrill as a very large but not kaiju-sized crocodile harmlessly wanders around the Chinese countryside causing some mild panic and light property damage.
I can’t help but wonder just exactly how much of this book is Jedi school. It became increasingly weird to deal with a book about a missing wife, clearly in […]
I looked at how the book was and realized this first person gimmick was going to wear out its welcome sooner rather than later, even if the book makes it […]
Happy Christmas in July in March! It’s time for some holiday cheer, because we were looking for a different game but ended up with this one (it’s explained in the […]
An earnestly fun, low budget comedy with high gore and nudity content that would honestly have aged pretty well if it weren’t for all the racial slurs and homophobia.
Over and over I’m exposed to characters I’ve heard of, stories I faintly remember, but at each turn I’m confronted with the nagging fact that someone has been inserted into […]
After a little too much time noodling around on Coruscant, I found myself excited to finally get to the Jedi Factory. Am I finally going to get connected to the […]
This is a pretty bog-standard “Recapture the D&D I remember when I was 11” moonshot game, where the lessons learned about what D&D used to be like seem to be […]
When you need a problem solved and nobody else can get it done, you call the legally distinct from G.I. Joe men at Megaforce.
Intrigued, I perused further into the book. “Nonsense!” I exclaimed! It’s already chapter 7! How is he still doodling around on Coruscant receiving praise from all his famous friends? Surely […]
I looked to the opening lines of the novel and couldn’t believe my eyes. A Star Wars novel written in first person? Reviewing my long years of reading other EU […]
How often do we get to do theme weeks? This is great! We have the Lawnmower Man RPG, which is set immediately after the events of the movie, as the […]
A movie that took the name of a Stephen King short story but has absolutely nothing in common with it and yet somehow still manages to be an extremely Stephen […]
Time to take the long view of this game, also answer some questions AND announce the next book. And let me tell you right here and now, it’s a doozy.
Oh boy another supers game! You know how we love those! SIlver Age Sentinels is from the Big Eyes, Small Mouth folks, so you better believe it shares the insane […]
The classic “how do I reach these kids” teacher movie with a military twist and you better believe that there’s a scene where these army teens drop a sick Hamlet […]
The final four chapters! How does it all end, what with the murder being solved already? Well obviously by wrapping up the loose ends and setting up the next book. […]
Well, this generally acceptable (and again, selected entirely off the title) book just succeeded in making us madder than every one of these Star Wars books since The Consent Gun […]
What if everything you thought you knew was actually all evidence of a secret conspiracy? Deja Vu? Real psychic powers. Men in Black? Lizard people in black. That’s the premise […]
Special guest James D’Amato joins us in a review of Britain’s extremely cursed foray into the world of animated movies. A film with a plot so absurd that there is […]
Laranth vs. Aurra Sing! In hindsight this is sorta depressingly predictable. Anyway they have a noir-grade showdown in the midst of a very weird festival, then Jax heads off to […]
Post-Show PS: Turns out there is at least one more of these, Jef’s on-air googling failed to turn up Psychosis: Solitary Confinement. Cool? Cool. Well, when the name of the […]
Whoever it was that decided this should be on our list both understands exactly what this show is about and also is a terrible person. Hitting some surprising new lows […]
Let’s dispense with the obvious question first. This is the OGL version. Now before that gets too depressing, note that this is one of the most modified OGL games we’ve […]
Ok but the movie poster claims “the most bizarre murder weapon ever used” and that’s just not even remotely true. Killing someone with a truck is real fuckin basic. You […]
Whoa, two chapters in a row that are a continuous story? Don’t think we’ve seen that yet! Anyhoo, the gang is still in “sit around bickering” mode, until Den kickstarts […]
We’re about 2/3rds of the way through the book, and for the first time ever any path that anyone is on seems like it might actually cross one of the […]
Heck yeah, one of those weird games so little known I couldn’t GIS the cover and had to take a picture of our copy! Mystic Forces is a 2000 RPG […]
The 4th and final installment of the 3 Ninjas series goes out on a “what?” as Hulk Hogan helps some kids fight terrorists that are also ninjas that have taken […]
Den Dhur spends a little time wandering a big space market full of Wookiee Luau and disreputable merchandise, which he hates (Dhur hates everything), Typho adds bureaucrat to his already […]
Doing things in the wrong chapter order? Why not? It’s pandemonium gone wild as Aurra Sing continues to brag and lose, and Jax shows his… questionable side.
Just because Ween is over doesn’t mean we can’t stay spooky! Or at least one would hope. This is more evil by way of edge than anything else. Jef sought […]
A group of mercenaries accidentally kidnap the worlds most killingest badass for their murder training and he picks them off one by one using nothing but a knife, his wits, […]
Back in action, just in time for the classic noir event of nursing a crappy drink in a low gin joint. Den and Laranth finally meet the Cephalon, and everyone’s […]
Okay so maybe it’s November, and maybe we forgot when October started this year, but that won’t stop us from delivering our yearly load of horror ween stuff! Here’s Outbreak […]
One of the few remaining true classic horror films that I hadn’t gotten around to watching yet. Coming out in 1974, this movie would heavily influence later films like John […]
We’ve come to the end of the Kid Horror week and also the end of theme weeks with just Halloween left to go, which is dealer’s choice on what I […]
This movie is an adaptation of the book with the same name extremely long name. I had never heard of the book when this came out a few years ago […]
You remember those horror books aimed at kids that were super popular in the early-mid 90’s? Well, they definitely cashed in on that in a timely fashion with this movie […]
Alright, I’m gonna go ahead and come right out and admit that I probably should have done a little more homework before putting this one on my list for the […]
Oh no, where once there was only intrigue, now there is… MURDER! Who killed Ves Volette? Who else is working an angle? Rhaninn? Laranth? Certainly not our dear and trustworthy […]
A second stab at an adaptation of the Roald Dahl book of the same name. I, of course, know and love the original with Anjelica Huston but the most I […]
I remember thinking, back when this originally came out, that the house itself seemed like a pretty intense monster for a kids animated movie with a PG rating. Having now […]
The final theme week for this year starts now with a look at Kid Friendly Horror. The genre is often thought of only in terms of the R-rated gore and […]
Since this movie has come out, there have been a ton of various Krampus themed horror movies trying to get in on the fact that the internet has let us […]
I vaguely remember watching the trailer for this when it came out and thinking that the idea of using the facial filter thing for pictures as a way to show […]
A whole chapter devoted to our secondary antagonist, the legendary Aurra Sing, known for… standing on that one rock in Phantom Menace. Also I think she’s probably in the cartoons. […]
With a title like Child Eater, you know that there’s gotta be some boogeyman level shit going on. While the main bad guy in this does eventually seem to fall […]
With a name like The Empty Man making me think of Slenderman and the tag line reinforcing the idea that this is a movie about a boogeyman that comes to […]
At the end of the first movie in this series, we were left with the knowledge of what the pattern to the killings was and also the sheriff’s deputy had […]
Behold our triumph, the ZombieWeen! It’s alive! Well, sort of alive. This ‘Ween around we’ll be focusing on zombie RPGs, investigating games about surviving short infestations and full-blown apocalypses. This […]
New week, new theme. This time around we are starting up “Boogeyman Week”. The rules I set for if something counts as a boogieman are fairly specific. It needs to […]
Queer horror week is coming to a close and we end on a possible theory for what took place in the famous Lizzie Borden axe murders. Lizzie has been reimagined […]
Queer week of Horrortoberfest is nearing the end and we have a movie that tackles one of the scariest subjects of all; spending time with your ex. Rift, or Rökkur […]
After the absolute disaster of a movie that was Sleepaway Camp, the only way I was going to get that taste out of my mouth was with a horror movie […]
It’s still queer horror week for this Horrortoberfest and, unfortunately, this one is the dark side of the offerings given how this movie views gay and trans people. I will […]
When I was discussing the idea of doing a week on queer horror, someone suggested that I look into doing this movie. I had never heard of it before but […]
In the past few years, Jennifer’s Body has begun to have something of a renaissance as people return to it with a different outlook. It has been touted as a […]
And the plot… begins. Both chapters today deal with the psychic fallout of a massive event of destruction and death, so obviously the episode is all jokes. Very much in […]
A new week means a new theme for the horror movies and this time around we are doing Queer Horror week. I’ll be looking at horror films from all the […]
The final film in the Indian horror week is an anthology of different stories that are, despite the title, only half about ghosts. This one was made for Netflix and […]
It’s right back to more ghosts here on Indian horror week. Having some zombies was a nice change of pace yesterday but we’re back to good old fashioned specters and […]
Given how serious and heavy the subject matter of the last movie I watched was, I figured it was time to try out some good, old fashioned horror comedy. Also, […]
Whoa, what the heck did we miss? A lightsaber fight with Xizor and Vader? Oh well! We’re diving headlong into the middle of a trilogy set in the aftermath of […]
I literally picked this movie over one of the other ones I had on my perspective lists to watch because it was an hour shorter and I wasn’t sure I […]
One of the things that is surprising to me after watching a couple of these Indian horror films is just how much back and forth between Hindi and English there […]
Oh geez, this one is gonna get us some letters. Lemme just warn you in advance if you’re as hot on this property as everyone on the internet seems to […]
I always try to do a selection of foreign horror films for the Horrortoberfest reviews every year and this year I’ll be looking at some Indian horror. Apparently, this is […]
I probably should have looked into this a little more because this would have been much better following Crimson Peak since it’s got Guillermo del Toro as the executive producer […]
The last two days have been about watching movies that I’d only heard good things about and, of course, being delighted to see that the hype was true. Today’s pick […]
I had been meaning to watch this one for a while. Not only did it get some good reviews but I generally enjoy whatever Guillermo del Toro decides to make […]
The first day back for a brand new Horrortoberfest and I’m starting out with a few movies that I’ve been wanting to see before getting into the themed weeks ahead. […]
In a pulp fiction alternate 1939, nefarious plans are afoot and only the dashing Sky Captain can put an end to this world ending threat. Also, everything looks like it’s […]
Time for the final episode! What did we think about the episode? How many questions do you have for us? What comes next? All this and more revealed!
Well how about one of these? It’s only the third one in 209 episodes, so I hope they sort of feel special by now! It’s Supplement Spectacular, where we dig […]
A treasure previously lost was found once again by the Alamo Draft House. Now everyone can enjoy the earnest, goofy, terrible movie that is Miami Connection and the rockin’ yet […]
We made it! Time for the attack on the mall, the witch fight, the obvious method by which Juliet’s endless story finally reaches some manner of end, all that stuff. […]
Animal fight! Harmon and Dean start the long walk to Elizabeth’s house as Sam wanders around a mall for two chapters (which would be 20 seconds in an episode, easy). […]
This takes a while, but on the bright side we really find out some new fun and not so fun stuff about the game in the process. Good on ya […]
A terrifying, inhuman elite controls society and keeps people under control through television, advertising, and the help of their recruits that work to maintain the suppression of any rebellious actions. […]
Holy cow, not only are they finally finding out who the bad guy is, but they even finally said “Witch’s Canyon!” It’s happening! Anyway, they walk around, remember their dad, […]
We’re back! Both of us are off various vacations and ready to get through this here Supernatural ghost story. So what happens? Well the brothers finally see some action while […]
Desperately trying to hit a book deadline, we found ourselves in need of something fairly small, so we finally broke the tiny sheet of glass in front of the smaller […]
The classic 80’s film that tried to see if a full puppet movie could work. With some gorgeous design work from Jim Henson and Brian Froud and performances from classic […]
Jon’s out of town but Jef and Claire are making content now? And holy cow is this ever some content warning content. Instead of trying to catch up on Witch’s […]
Comedy roleplaying game anyone? Maybe one that’s got a bunch of jokes about how dumb orks are and how they have special blood that keeps them from ever being smart […]
A movie that dares to ask the unthinkable question: What if the youth of America actually gave a shit about politics and showed up to vote? Truly a terrifying thought.
As tensions rise and the body count increases, the boys finally find an ally that knows anything at all! Will the not especially mysterious Harmon Baird, survivor of two ghost […]
My friends, in the interest of transparency, I am only just now realized this game has a subtitle! So don’t look for that in the episode, we didn’t notice. It’s […]
The Loony Tunes are back and ready to create a giant commercial for WB properties and also basketball kind of happens.
Okay, now the killing has started in earnest. But the brothers are still busy thinking about hotel keys, gun cleaning, girls, just anything but the haunted town scenario. Can they […]
Jon seems fairly confident that this is all right on track, but as far as I can tell this book so far is like a lawnmower that won’t start. But […]
Well hey, surprise OGL! Nothing on the cover, and so when Jon selected this old Sword & Sorcery product to take home and started reading, he was suddenly (after 190 […]
In a cult classic that has bigger star power than you might have assumed for such an incredibly stupid movie; we try to make sense of a snake vampire lady […]
These chapters are just more tension building, so we went sorta crazy trying to fill the space by ourselves. Fair warning, I guess.
So what we have here is a rarity, in that it is an early (1993-1995) LARP game that is also a universal generic system. So there’s not really a story […]
In the same way that the Taken movies are just fodder for middle-aged dads to imagine that they could be super badass heroes still; this movie is for 20-something burnout […]
There’s trouble down by the old mall! But first there’s a bunch of flashbacks to Jeffrey Dean Morgan being mean to children, because this is based on season 1 stuff. […]
What the hell is this. Stock photo of first season Ackles and Padalecki, photoshopped into Joshua Tree? Jon is grabbing the reins and there’s nothing we can do about it […]
My friends, this is a weird one. The vast majority of this book is difficult to explain rules, and then there’s a chunk of fascinating story hidden away towards the […]
Back in the era where comic book movies hadn’t quite figured out the formula for success, a little property about a post-apocalyptic riot grrl could flourish as a unique creation. […]
Questions, answers, thoughts, prayers, and also the announcement of the next book. Oh the next book. Why did I do what I did?
I think we bought this one on the cover alone (and especially the back cover, which is bullet points and a photo of the Twin Towers mid-fall). I mean, look […]
The experience of watching this movie is much the same as Goldblum’s character within the movie: mildly amused but mostly just confused about what’s happening and why.
And just like that it ends, not with a bang, but with a lightsaber twirl and a resounding “meh.” Not sure what we expected, everyone killable was dead already! But […]
Just one more chunk of book left after this! People are dying at a pace I’d call impressive, but Maul and Eogan are still going strong, now on the lookout […]
Hey, we made it to 200 episodes! I’m sure that’s some sort of milestone! And while the choice of game to cover this time may feel kind of arbitary, I […]
If there’s one element that can turn any concept from drab and boring to thrilling and engaging it’s steampunk. The thing that Alexandre Dumas’ classic tale was missing was scuba […]
Great set of chapters if you love pieces being moved around a board, I suppose! We learn a little about the worm, Sadiki is moving to a retreat stratagem, and […]
Heck yeah, comedy superhero parody game from 1997 coming in hot. You know it’s gonna make us mad, it’s just got to! Anyway, this game is designed to be LARP-ready, […]
After World War 3 has devastated the planet and war is outlawed, the remaining civilizations decide that the best use of their limited resources is to have giant fuck-off robots […]
Jabba is making his move! The collapse becomes ever more dramatic as new players enter with the same speed that old ones are dispatched. Maul meanwhile is the man in […]
We’ve had a great track record with games set in high schools, right? So obviously one set in a secondary school should be at least as good as Alma Mater […]
The romantic comedy that lets women know that you can finally find love as long as you are willing to leave your job, friends, and family behind in order to […]
The dizzying spiral of decay and chaos that perpetuates the writings of Joe Schreiber continues ever downwards. Characters are now dying left and right. We near the end as Maul […]
Well, Maul finally finds his way to the “inner circle” but everyone in there is just commanding everyone else in there to kill everyone else in there, so that’s fun […]
So many people have requested this that we finally thought we’d throw you all a bone. Ironclaw is an anthro medieval RPG, so you’ll be playing a lot of foxes, […]
Not to be confused with Star Wars: The Cone Wars the TV show. Or Star Wars: Clone Wars the TV show. Or Star Wars: The Clone Wars the video game. […]
Is it me or do these fights get less interesting over time instead of more? We started with like a Yuuzhan Vong and a monster Wampa and now we’re fighting […]
Time for a bit of the old “surprisingly goopy for Star Wars” violence as gang leaders start tearing guards to bit. Meanwhile Maul just keeps cleaning up loose ends. Is […]
Wanna hunt ghosts but not necessarily dedicate your whole life to it? Consider just getting a daytime job hunting ghosts, goblins, nilbogs, and Son of Kong with InSpectres, a game […]
Back in the 90’s when comics were gritty and the CGI was absolutely terrible, somebody greenlit a movie that’s 85% narration and 15% incredibly poorly done fight scenes.
Lots of setup this time, but we do meet an exciting new character. Or maybe just some nameless bruiser? Who knows at this point? It’s like 90% red herrings in […]
The big fights just keep coming, and this time we’re diving into some filth water with Darth Maul (at this point I’d frankly be surprised if there were even one […]
Who wants to take over the multiverse? Okay, great! Let’s start you out as a nobody with nothing and you can grind XP in… I don’t care, let’s say mythological […]
We’ve talking about Steven Seagal several times on the podcast before but this is the first time we get to finally sit down and sink our teeth into one of […]
Things are about to get cryptic. Turns out our Chadra-Fan buddy Coyle is some sort of statue-crafting bone mystic, and things are just devolving into riddles and puzzles. But even […]
The story is in high gear now! Artagan and his son begin to effect their daring escape but it sure goes wrong! Also there’s spies all over, so that’s sorta […]
From an old hero game to a new one, it’s time to talk about Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game. Sentinels is an expansive setting with a vast cast of characters […]
Inspired by a script from legendary martial artist Bruce Lee, comes Circle of Iron. A movie where a whiny, asshole white guy has people attempt to teach him Zen lessons […]
One thing about these books, they move along. The last episode ended with Maul promising to deal with the gangs, this one starts with him doing it. Then a bunch […]
We’re back! And it’s time for the next big showcase this book has to offer, which is obviously slickly describes scenes of Darth Maul killing gross monsters. You’ll never guess […]
As go the tides, so come the times we’re both dealing with something and need a nice easy Palladium game. Skraypers is both a Rifts and a Heroes Unlimited setting, […]
A movie that both of us had heard of but neither of us knew anything about. This film walks the delicate line of being a loving example of its genre […]
Maul is starting gang fights as we start to meet our colorful and disposable cast of prison fightin’ guys and the weirdos in charge. Can Maul find Zero? Well yeah, […]
It’s Shadowrun! But… faster? Is that the point here? It’s honestly sort of hard to tell the exact point of this Shadowrun 5e adjacent game, but damn if we aren’t […]
If you love pop-culture references to things from the 80’s and early 90’s and also nothing else, then this is the adaptation you’ve been waiting for.
Okay, here we go. If this one isn’t exciting I don’t know what will be. It’s Darth Maul, he’s in a gladiatorial mega-prison, and it’s by the guy who wrote […]
Boot Hill is a colloquial term from the cowboy days for a cemetery. You might think there’s some sort of metaphor their for our opinions pertaining to the game, but […]
We find out if a single gimmick stretched out over an hour and a half can in some way improve upon the action movie genre. Also, Sharlto Copley gets a […]
Several of you had questions, and we answered those questions. Then we announced that next book, and I gotta admit, I’m pretty excited to head somewhere and some time a […]
Wrap up time, I’d say we’re super proud of totally predicting this ending if there was much to have predicted. We cover up the last couple of super short chapters […]
Have you not gotten your fill of Kingdom Hearts yet? Of course not, no one has. Not until someone bursts Nomura like a pinata and eats all the ideas that […]
We’re there! We made it! We’re in the titular ruins of Dantooine! Oh, wait, I guess we’re leaving them immediately. Why is this book called this? Anyway, time to meet […]
Now here’s some good old fashioned back to basics shit. Got to be, right? Name like that? Shirtless axe dude on the cover? Well, color us surprised because this thing […]
When all the young adult novels were fighting to see who would come out on top, Eragon set itself apart by being written by a teen itself. A […]
Another chapter, another session of opening up lootboxes on a shuttle. At least this time we finally make it to Dantooine, even if we don’t see much of the titular […]
The next thing we knew she was getting sexually excited by guns and manhands in the back of a freighter. I never thought it would happen to me. Oh also […]
Oh my, a game about the uncertain moments at the precipice of romance or disaster? Neat! Star Crossed is a 2018 game by Alex Roberts that creates tension and titillation […]
As the dread Captain Nym enters the story, we begin a short but fascinating era where this books is basically based on two video games at once! Our heroes leave […]
The pieces of this obvious romance novel fall into place as Dusque and Tendau head to the hard zone moon of Rori to do some boots on the ground bio-engineering. […]
Out of the four Marvel RPGs that have happened over the years, this is one of them. Specifically, the 2003 diceless one made, inexplicably, by Marvel Comics themselves? Anyhow, it’s […]
In a future dystopia where relationships are no more than business contracts, one man has the romantic passion to fall in love with his sex robot. Now he has to […]
As the book progresses, it begins to dawn on us… oh no, this is self-insert fanfic! Help! It’s official but that’s what it is! We watch as Dusque is pulled […]
There’s nothing quite so exciting to find as a unique blend RPG. Here we see a blend of comedy, furry stuff, light breast expansion and pregnancy fetishes, and superheroes. I […]
Hoooooly crap. You know, this year’s Horrortoberfest crop was actually pretty good, all things considered. However, we are going to bookend this year with another super low budget found […]
Only two reviews left to do and I think I’m going to go for a mini-theme for these last ones that is best summed up as “something is wrong […]
A Horrortoberfest special with guest star Chanel from the Arms of the Tide podcast. Thankfully the episode isn’t just two white dudes talking about a very specifically Black woman issue […]
We’re ending Monster Week with a film that is based around a more classic monster than the ones I’ve reviewed this week. Although, technically, this isn’t strictly a movie […]
A book set in the world created by an MMO licensed from movies, huh? Sure, why not? It’s Ruins of Dantooine, and while I’m sure ruins will turn up at […]
There are plenty of “found footage” horror movies out there but I really like the way that this movie does the entire thing as a documentary. Not even like […]