Mini Movie Review: The Thing From Another World (1951) vs. The Thing (1982, vs. Who Goes There? (1948)

 

Mini Movie Review - Van Helsing (2004)

 

“Van Helsing” is one of those movies that’s just….fun. Yes, the whole premise of Dracula trying to make his wives happy by creating children for them is about as far-fetched as you can get. But if you can suspend the total disbelief that idea might cause and just let yourself become immersed in the world of the movie? It’s a rippin’ good time.

This movie is old enough, and was just popular enough, that I’m not going to worry about spoilers here. So, just as a quick refresher, here’s the gist of the movie. Van Helsing works for the Vatican, dealing with problems that the everyday folks just can’t. Heck, most of the everyday folks don’t even know about things like men who become wolves. Or benign doctors who become grotesque monsters when they take a potion. So, he’s also wanted by the law.

Now we’ll introduce our beautiful heroine, Gypsy princess*, who along with her brother, is trying to defeat none other than Dracula. What they don’t know is that their success will admit generations of their family to Heaven. And the only two surviving members of the family’s line are her and her brother. Van Helsing needs to make sure this happens. Apparently, there’s some sort of curse on them.

Now Dracula’s wives are feeling bereft because they can’t have children. (Why this would be an issue when you’re undead, I don’t know. I mean, you’re no longer human or living, so the drive to procreate should be gone, but hey, it’s a movie.) To make this happen, Dracula has encouraged the experiments of one Dr. Frankenstein, thinking that the creature he creates will provide the extra something-something needed to zap the “children” into a state of life.

Sounds bonkers to me, but that’s part of what makes it so fun! What makes it even more fun is watching Richard Roxburgh’s Dracula. I swear that man could just stand there and still steal whatever scene he’s in. (You might also recognize him as “M” from “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”.) The fact that he gives us a somewhat sympathetic Dracula just adds to the movie. And yes, he scores on the sexy scale as well. Maybe not Langella levels, but still up there.

And can we talk about Hugh Jackman’s hair for just a moment? It rivals even Kate Beckinsale’s in its gloriousness. I have no idea how much hair spray was used in the movie, but their hair stays in place regardless of what they’re doing. And Jackman’s mane may actually outshine Kurt Russell’s in “The Thing”. (Who knew I had a thing for men with amazing hair? Apparently, I didn’t!)

The movie is a fast-paced, adventurous romp from start to finish, with a few bits about family ties and what makes us human tossed in for good measure. It’s got moments where you’re worried about the protagonists. It’s got moments where you tear up a little bit. AND it makes you feel, at least a little, for the monsters as well. And it’s beautiful to watch.

The basic premise of “Van Helsing” could easily translate to a Ravenloft setting and campaign, but it would also be fun to toss in just about any horror game. Tone down the over-the-top nature of the movie as much as you need and substitute appropriate horror monsters for your setting. You can either have your characters trying to save a good and virtuous family from a curse or, have some added fun and make some of them the ones with the curse. Either way, you can’t easily go wrong.

October and the horror movie challenge are over, but I’m still getting caught up. If you’d like to see my movie selections, you can find them in this post. And if you’re curious what themes Pun Isac originally proposed, check out his post here on the Halls of the Nephilim.

*Now, why did I use the word Gypsy instead of Roma or Romany? Well, because that’s what they are in the movie. However, they are also not wondering travelers, going from town to town, in the movie either. Rather they are settled in a Transylvanian village as its leaders. In normal writing situations, I try to no longer use the word Gypsy and instead rely on Roma.

Mini Movie Review - Renfield (2023)

 

"Renfield" is a great movie to watch when you want your laughs with a good side dish of gratuitous violence. There’s a fair bit of bloody dismemberment, but it is also so outlandish that that it mainly registers as hilarious. I mean, I still cringed, but I also laughed. If you really, really don’t like blood or extreme violence, then consider yourself warned. This movie has buckets of (very fake) blood and bodies appearing to be ripped apart. There’s a scene where our hero, Renfield, appears to rip some bad guys’ arms off and then proceeds to defeat two other bad guys with an arm each.

At its heart, this is a movie of self-discovery. Of finding your place in the world and claiming it. And perhaps making amends for past sins and failures by realizing there are things worth fighting for. "Renfield" has the best use of positive affirmations I have ever seen either in real life or on film. It is worth seeing for that scene alone. And you’ll know it when you get to it. It was cathartic even just watching.

As for Nic Cage as Dracula, it was brilliant. He’s so good at making candy floss of the scenery, but in this movie, it was only when it fit the scene. And then he would just let loose and enjoy the moment. There are even a few nods at the beginning to the most iconic Dracula of them all, Bela Lugosi. It was beautifully done. Nicholas Hoult makes a delightfully vulnerable Renfield – someone you find yourself rooting for, even as he hangs yet another empty-sounding motivational poster on the wall. And Awkwafina managed to be both abrasive and likeable at the same time.

As for a gaming twist, I honestly don’t know. This would be an odd story to turn into a scenario. You could – maybe – use it to inspire your own redemption arc inspired game, where your player characters get sucked into helping some poor sod find his way to freedom and a new life. If you want to make it as over-the-top as Renfield, I’d suggest maybe making it a one off for some special reason. If you kept the horror aspect of a servant trying to escape a monster master, such as a vampire, it could be a fun game for Halloween. Don’t hesitate to make the idea fit your needs.

As always, if you’d like to see what movies I intended to watch this month, you can find them in this post. And if you’re curious what Pun’s original themes are, check out his blog, Halls of Nephilim, here.

Mini Movie Review - Wallace and Grommit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit

 

 

Oh for goodness sakes! This one is super easy. It's Wallace and Gromit. You just need to watch it and enjoy the technological, cheesy hijinks and find out how Gromit saves the day. As usual. There is a chase scene in here that is pure gold. 

How can you work this in to gaming? Well, you could just adapt the whole shebang, because it's great fun. Or, you could have some fun giving your players something that's not as it seems. 

You can find the rest of my  movie selections for the month in this post. And if you want the daily themes suggested by Pun, go to his blog, Halls of the Nephilim. 

Mini Movie Review - Winchester

 

It was a name that drew me in on this one – Helen Mirren. I absolutely LOVE Helen Mirren. And let’s be honest, the entire concept of the Winchester House also brings out one’s curiosity.

Critics aside, this movie was a fun watch. It just over an hour and a half, so it’s a quick watch. A nice movie snack if you will. And its fun to watch Helen Mirren play what you think is a crazy old rich lady, who maybe isn’t so crazy.

I love how they utilized the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which was devastating to the city. That was one of the few historically accurate bits of the movie. And there a very few. There were only 8 rooms when the home was purchased. And Sarah did set about adding to the property over time, but the construction wasn’t constant like the movie claims. Also, she did have controlling interest in the Winchester Company. She did lose both her husband and daughter prior to buying Llanada Estate (her name for the home), but it didn’t happen in the same year. And I think that’s about it for the historical accuracy. Oh, and the Union Army did use a little over 1600 Winchester rifles in the Civil War.

SarahWinchester was apparently not a superstitious person. She did not hold regular seances, if she held any at all. Nor, as far as we know, was she ever evaluated for her mental fitness. Many of the bits in the story about Sarah and her spirit house where inventions AFTER her death.

John Brown leased the house in the early 1920s and opened it as an attraction in 1923, six months after her death, and the rumors started. They’ve only increased over time as the house has become a bigger attraction. It’s good business to bill it as the Most Haunted House in America, regardless of the truth.

(Hey, I live in Athens County, Ohio, said to be one of the most haunted areas in America. And I hate to tell you, but nearly every one of those stories that make the rounds in TV specials this time of year are true. But that’s a blog post and a rant for another time.)

So, what’s the takeaway from the movie? Honestly, I really enjoyed it. It was a little predictable in a few places, but it was still a fun way to pass the time. And it even had me on the edge of my seat a few times. So, if you like haunted house stories and incredible ghost tales, check it out.

When it comes to gaming, this is another lesson in limiting the space your characters can explore. In this case, it’s a rambling maze of a house. And by the end of the movie, the characters are literally trapped in the house until a resolution is reached. It’s a great way to force them to act. Do the same at your table and sit back to enjoy the results. It works great in a horror setting but can also be used for any mystery or puzzle.  

That’s it for this one. I’m only about 8 movies behind still, but we’ll get there. You can check out my full calendar of selections in this post. And if you’d like to see what Pun’s themes for each day were – which I don’t always follow – you can find them on his blog, Halls of the Nephilim. 

Mini Movie Review - Alien (1979)

True story – I first played in an “Alien” taple top game before I ever watched the movie. And that was just about 4 years ago. We caught “Aliens” on TV back in high school, but I’d not seen the first of the movies. Coming out like it did in 1979, I would have been old enough to catch it at the theater. And it probably would have honestly given me nightmares at the time. But now? It’s one of my top 5 favorites.

That game of “Alien” got me hooked. Not only did I have to have the game, but I also needed to watch ALL of the movies. The first is still the best, although the second does give it a run for it’s money. After that you can save yourself some time and just read about them on IMDB or Wikipedia. If you do watch the next two, they aren’t bad. They’re just not necessarily good either. And do not get me started on the prequels. Someone should have just said no, but they were too busy looking at potential dollar signs. Seriously, the characters in “Prometheus” are all to stupid to survive, as I’m sure anyone with even a basic background in a lab or science classes would back up.

But I digress. Monday night’s movie was “Alien” from 1979. The basic starting premis is that the crew is in cybersleep on their way back from a run when a distress signal causes the computer, MU-TH-ER, wakes them. As part of their contract with Weyland-Yutani, the big corporation behind their recent run, they need to answer the distress call, even if it means they won’t make it back as early as they were going to. (That would have netted them a bonus.)

Of course, as most of you are reading this, it’s all a setup and what they instead wind up bringing onto their ship is the infamous xenomorph. I’m not going to give away anymore of the plot. Most of you reading this have probably already watched it. And if you haven’t, I don’t want to spoil anything. (And if you haven’t watched it, you really, really should.)

“Alien” is considered one of the classics for a reason. As has been said before, Ridley Scott essentially created a haunted house situation, only with a murderous alien instead of an actually ghost or poltergeist. And then, he put it in space, where they characters were well and truly trapped. It’s brilliant. And he then kept the pacing and the tension just where it needed to be. (“The Thing”, also on my schedule for this week, also keeps the pacing just right.)

The other brilliant move Scott made with this movie was to fight for the casting of Sigourney Weaver as the determined Warrant Office Ripley. The role wasn’t assigned a gender in the script but the producers wanted a man in the role. Scott thougth a woman would have more impact (he was right) and that Weaver had just the right look and mannerisms for the role. (He was right again.) This was a movie that helped make her career in film.

When it comes to a gaming connection with this one, it’s easy. You need to play the RPG. Having played the game before watching the movie, it was fun to sit there and figure out where some of the game settings and mechanics were influenced by the movie. And I just knew there had to be an andriod in there somewhere, but who was it?

If you’re not lucky enough to have the game, or know someone who does, then take the setting and work it into whatever game you are currently playing. It doesn’t have to even be in space. Just place the session somewhere truly isolated and remote, then toss some murderous entity into the mix. It’ll be fun!

If you want to follow along with my choices, you can check out my calendar in this post. There have been a few changes as I go along, but it’s mostly intact. And if you want to check out the suggested themes for each day, they are complments of Pun, over at Halls of Nephilim. 

 

Movie Review - Bone Tomahawk (2015)

 

I’ve been putting this one off, so let’s get it over with. Let me know if I succeeded in at least making the review entertaining to read. Oh, and there are a few spoilers hidden in here.

The name drew me in. A horror movie set in the late 19 century West that wasn’t a Native American slaughter fest. Oh, and it has Kurt Russell, looking very fine. The name is evocative of something faintly romantic. Interestingly enough, “Bone Tomahawk” is, at its core, a love story of sorts. What lengths would you go to, what hardships and challenges would you endure, to save the person you love? In the case of Arthur O’Dwyer, it would be quite a lot.

That said, this is NOT a good movie. It’s also not a BAD movie. It is an okay movie that’s problematic. And the more I think about it, the more problems I find. If this were a short story I was beta reading for a friend, my red ink pen would be out of ink.

Okay, let’s get into the plot. Bad men rob and murder a small group a few days outside of town (Bright Hope), trespass on forbidden land, and only one survives to make it into town. There he arouses the suspicions of the local “backup” deputy, gets himself shot and carted to jail. The next morning, he’s missing, along with the actual deputy and local woman who’d been tending his wound. Trigger the entrance of the movies token Native American (played by the incredible Zahn McClarnon) character, and the formation of a very small rescue party to go onto said forbidden territory – seriously, the actual Native tribes in the area avoid it because the cave dwellers (Troglodytes) there are so murderous (and cannibalistic) that they know better.

And for the next hour and a half you get four white dudes wandering around in the dessert scrub breathing heavily. (There is a very sparse score for this thing.) Their horses are stolen just a couple of days out by some Mexican bandits, so they decide to continue on foot. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Mrs. O’Dwyer’s husband is in the rescue group? With a broken and splinted tibia? Yep. I think that’s where most of the horror is in this movie, as anyone ever on a pair of crutches can attest to. And he’s only got ONE.

The husband gets into an altercation with one of the other rescuers and compounds his broken leg, so he’s left behind. The others go on and, of course, get caught. By this point we’re now down 2 rescuers – one is killed by the Trogs – and two cannibals. The sheriff and his backup deputy are tossed in a cage up in a cave up on the hillside, where they find the wife and the actual deputy, who dies shortly thereafter in a VERY graphic and gruesome manner and is eaten by the Trogs.

The very lame, yet determined, husband saves the day. Although they do lose the sheriff. They do not show them getting back to town, probably because there is no way they’d make it without provisions or horses. And even then, he was probably going to lose that leg, at the very least. It says something right there about the movie – those were my final thoughts about things.

 One of the most obvious problems is the pacing. It starts at a good pace. And then it slows down. I mean, there are so many shots of them riding, then walking, through the scrub, stopping to refill their canteens, looking concerned about O'Dwyer’s broken leg, and bedding down for the night. When they are on foot, shots of them going up and down hills are added in. I think it’s partly to show how much discomfort and pain O'Dwyer is in, and yet he continues. I’d like to think there’s a reason for it other than just dragging the movie out to fill time.

And you would think that it would be building towards the big climax and the final encounter with the Troglodytes. But nope. The ending moves at about the same pace, only now we can at least enjoy how clever O'Dwyer is as he looks at the evidence of what maybe happened around him and then thinks it through. He’s also the one to note something that looks like jewelry implanted in the throat the Trog he first kills. That proves rather crucial to his survival overall, but so does his taking a few moments to plan and not just charging in like the others have done. But, while this makes me appreciate his character a little more, it still does nothing to wake me up and make me sit on the edge of my seat in anticipation. Nothing in this movie manages that.

Another problem I picked up early on is, well, the Indian problem. The movie does use the term Indian, which would be in keeping with terminology for the 1890s, so that didn’t really bother me too much. (It might some folks who are of Native American descent, but as far as I know, I don’t fit into that category. Nor can I speak for everyone, even if I wanted to. I sadly only remember ONE Native American in the entire movie – The Professor, or Tall Trees, towards the very beginning of the movie. The Professor must be nickname for our lone Native American, although he’s presented as cultured and learned. I suspect that’s more of a nod to modern sensibilities. *One member of the rescue party is a known “Indian Hunter” and boasts of how many he’s killed – including women and children. He gets called out on it by the rest of the rescue party, but his reasoning is that Native Americans killed his mother and sisters, so it’s all justified. The others just seem to nod or shrug, and they move on.) The Professor points out that his people don’t recognize the Trogs as Native, but the people he’s talking to will, because we lump them all together. And that’s pretty much how it goes.

The movie also makes broad use of stereotyped characters, but the quality of the acting, and the actors, helps mitigate some of my frustration over it. Regardless of whatever else I think about this movie, the acting is excellent. So is cinematography. It’s another beautiful movie to watch. Id’ say those are the plusses.

More negatives: the Trogs are wiped out, but at a high cost. Only half of the rescue party makes it out, and with only half of the captives they went to rescue. And the Trogs did have to “blind crippled pregnant women” as part of their group. Those women are just left there – they are neither harmed nor killed by the rescuers. So, in the end, it was all to save one white woman, upon whom I’m sure the irony isn’t lost as she is the only one who seems to have any sympathy for the Trog women.

Some point out that the movie’s message is about how generally bad decision making and stupid actions cost more lives on the frontier than anything else. I’d say that’s true, but it doesn’t excuse the sloppy storytelling. I mean, true, they had no idea what was happening to Mrs. Dwyer, but it would have made so much more sense to gather a properly-sized group of people to go deal with the Trogs. And yes, eradication would not have been a bad thing, given their viscousness. They killed White, Hispanic, and Native alike.

I’m still not sure how the Trogs survived long enough to even be known. Seriously, 12 men and only 2 women, who need at least a minimum of tending to since they’d been crippled. This is not a group of people looking at long-term survival as an ongoing concern. Also, they apparently had a fire, but didn’t bother to cook their food – including the deputy.

There are plenty of other problems, but I’m going to stop here before this gets much longer. Seriously, given the talent and the germ of the story idea, I expected so much more. It would have been nice to see more Native American involvement with the rescue, even if it was to swoop in at the end and help the survivors get back to town.

I feel like some said how about a movie with a tribe of cannibals, but we set it in the American West? And someone else said F’yeah, let’s do it! And then either no one read the story looking for obvious gaps in information, or it got lost on the cutting room floor. Perhaps the reason Mrs. O’Dywer is a backup doctor in town fell to the film editor in exchange for 15 seconds of men wandering around in the scrub. We’ll never know. But it would have been a much better movie if someone had asked a few more questions about what was going on…and why. And as glorious as Kurt Russell is, 90 minutes plus of him wandering around in West for 45 minutes is too long.

From a gaming perspective, there are a several Western and Weird West settings out there for various systems. And let’s be honest, at least in our home games, political correctness doesn’t always come into it if it interferes with our fun. And that’s fine as long as no one gets offended at the table. Part of the fun of gaming is trying on different hats and types of roles. So go ahead, add in a quest to rescue someone or something from a tribe of overly violent, murderous cannibals in some caves in the desert. Have at. Just please don’t let me know you made the definitely Native American without a really good reason. Figure out a way to turn the tried, cliched trope on it's head. Oh, and don’t have your characters spend that much time on travel. We all know there’s no need unless there are some serious encounters happening. Otherwise, your plays will all be asleep on their dice.

If I were awarding stars for this, I’d give it 3 out of 5, but one of those stars would be just for Kurt Russell’s hair. Sorry.

If you’d like to see what other movies I’ve got on my schedule this month, check out my post here. And if you’d like to play along, check out Pun’s blog, Halls of the Nephilim, for his daily theme suggestions.