Thor The Conqueror (1983)

Did you know that snake venom on moss can restore the sight of someone who has had their eyes burned out with torches? That's just one of the many nuggets of wisdom I picked up from the totally bat-shit crazy Thor The Conqueror (aka Thor il Conquistatore).

This is Italian '80s, swords-and-sorcery at its finest with a picaresque plot that makes no sense whatsoever, where things happen without rhyme nor reason and the titular hero of the piece is a rapist and a simpleton with delusions of grandeur.

After a bizarre opening with stirring music and nothing happening for a couple of minutes, baby Thor is born to a barbarian with a stubby sword just before the proud parents are slain by bandits led by Gnut The Archer (Raf Baldassarre) - for no explicable reason. Thor is spirited away by his father's pet sorcerer, Etna (Christopher Holm), whose main power appears to be the ability to transform into an owl.

Misogynist Etna (who may - or may not - be a ghost) raises Thor as his own son, teaching him such gems as "women are stupid and are only good as playthings and to bear children" (both men make Deathstalker look like a feminist), and often forgetting he has access to potentially useful magic at key moments when Thor might have benefited from a helping hand.

Etna acts as a combination narrator and Greek chorus, several times addressing the audience directly even when Thor is right there. He also has a habit of hanging around whenever Thor is getting it on with one of his lady friends!

At one point Thor is tormented by static visions of papier-mâché monster faces and fun fair ride skeletons, but this - like much else that happens along his journey - has nothing to do with anything.

For some reason Thor has to attack the Queen Of The Virgin Warriors, but instead defeats a couple of her hand-maidens (who wear wicker baskets as helmets) and then forces himself on a third, Ina (Maria Romano).

He then ties her up and drags her half-way across the country. When she finally has a decent chance to escape - as Thor has wandered off and gotten himself ambushed by a tribe of nature-worshipping primitives - she instead decides that she's actually rather fond of  the man who assaulted her and so goes to rescue him.

The primitives were guarding the "Golden Seed" - which look like a stash of corn - and I think the movie is possibly supposed to be some prehistoric allegory about how Thor brought agricultural to humanity (or something). At one point, later on, a passing mention is made of Thor being descended from the god Thor - but this is totally out of the blue and not backed up by any evidence on the screen.

Having wandered into a random valley and declared it his kingdom, the irredeemable Thor heads off to the Land Of The Unknown, which is basically a beach, where he and, now pregnant, Ina set up home.

They are soon approached by a local village that has decided to make Thor their "Chief Of Chiefs" (no, I don't know why) and they promptly hand the village's oldest virgin over to him as a mate... which, Ina, is disturbingly in favour of.

There's then a battle with Gnut The Archer and his boys again, while Ina is giving birth to Thor's child.

Thor defends the village with the world's first horse, magically summoned by Etna ("Centuries from now it will be called a horse," the demented wizard helpfully explains), which scares the jeepers out of Gnut's crew and sends them all packing. So, yes, he does get revenge on the man who slew his father - and shot an arrow into him as a baby - but it's more by luck than judgement.

A true spectacle of ineptitude across the board, oddly Thor The Conqueror (despite its uncomfortable gender politics and generally bleak, ugly presentation) is a pinnacle of the "so bad, it's good" genre of low-budget movie making.

It isn't particularly gory, there's very brief nudity and pretty much all the sex occurs off camera, but it's the head-scratching story that will hold your attention as you try to puzzle out why things are happening... and asking where the giant snakes and pterosaurs from the DVD cover are? (spoiler: neither of these monsters appear in the movie. In fact, there are no monsters at all. Just lots of grunting cavemen and a handful of women).

What Has The House of Mouse Got For Us Now?

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Following The Whispering Road Made Us All Both Storytellers and Gamers

Back at the tail end of 2018, the Tuesday Knights (our tabletop roleplaying gaming group) did something unusual: something that goes against my zealous protection of our precious, limited gaming slots. We played a one-shot. And I really enjoyed it. I mean I really, really enjoyed it. 

I'm still quite adamant that while we are bound to "one gaming session a month" (meaning a maximum of 12 a year, and we rarely achieve that for sundry health, family, and work reasons) I would rather play (or run) something with the potential to become an open-ended "forever campaign".

However, let's flashback to December 20, 2018, and see what I wrote in my gaming log:

This week's RPG session with the Tuesday Knights could, possibly, have proved to be a game-changer.

It was our first exposure to a so-called "storytelling game" - Brent Newhall's The Whispering Road - and I was anxious about getting my head around playing a game devoid of such traditional mechanical trappings as character statistics, hit points, armour class, experience points, equipment lists etc

Instead, our character's were made up of a number of traits (some were personality quirks, others minor abilities or powers) and a "need".

Further taking us out of our comfort zone, there was no definitive setting for the game and it didn't even require a gamesmaster!

Clare, whose game it was, took the role of "Architect", meaning she framed the story and set the scene, while Pete was nominated as "Driver", making it his job to ensure the story kept moving and we didn't get bogged down in rules discussions or non-gaming distractions (not, it turned out, that he needed to worry about that because we all quickly got on board with The Whispering Road).

Beforehand, via our super-secret Facebook group, Clare had nudged us to create a setting for the game: and we cooked up a snow-bound Medieval land (which in play veered between Celtic and Norse) where saints and demons walked the land, and everyone had a pet mouse as a companion.

Our characters were:

• Ceitlen (Pete) - first born daughter of the chieftain, guardian of the clan's symbolic magical shield, whose motivation was protecting the shield and what it stood for (ie. the community);
• Torg (me) - third born (second son) of the chieftain, a trickster and troublemaker, who wanted to prove that he could be as good a hero as Ceitlen;
• Glau (Kevin) - a miserable farmer, gifted with a magical spade and the ability to see the future, who just wanted the snow to stop;
• Master Mouse (Erica) - the custodian of the clan's mice, and a mentor to all, who wanted people to listen to her advice;
• Sister Prudence (Clare) - a nun and fanatical follower of Little St Therese (patron saint of mice), who sought to stem the rising tide of secularism in the village.

After everyone described their typical day in the village, the story began with Glau coming to the chieftain with dire warnings that the snows were getting worse.

The village was whipped up into a frenzy, and, led by an army of mice to clear a path, headed up into the mountains to find the cause of the supernaturally worsening weather.

After being ambushed by dire wolves (not common in these 'ere parts), the bulk of the village were sent home for their own protection, leaving our small group of heroes to carry on.

I stumbled upon an old ruin (Torg, as a "rascal", had more traits than anyone else and these included a couple of doses of "dumb luck" as well as being the group's "magic-user"), from where we headed to an ice cave that actually turned out to be a frost giantess called Midhilda.

Before we knew this, she had rolled a giant boulder at us, which had crushed Ceitlen's shield and shattered it in to three pieces.

While the others were determined to talk to the giantess, Torg transformed into a mouse and started to scuttle up her leg, with a typically Viking-esque bloody plan in mind to kill her (thinking he would be saving the village that way and proving himself).

However, Master Mouse called out to him to stop because they had discovered that she was simply looking for her giant boyfriend Jordmund.

Unfortunately, giants' sense of time isn't the same as ours and we discovered he'd passed through this area hundreds of years ago.

During the conversation, she also revealed that her oversized enchanted sword had been shattered, and Torg suggested that he could magically repair it using one of the fragments of Ceitlen's shield.

Ceitlen, already upset over the loss of the shield (despite Master Mouse explaining to her that it was only a symbol and she was still protecting the community), was initially not happy about this.

But then she came round to the idea and tried to claim it as her own, much to Torg's annoyance. He lost his rag, which - in turn - freaked out the giant (who couldn't handle extreme's of human emotion) and so Master Mouse and Sister Prudence had to calm down Midhilda and Torg.

Assisted by a small coterie of mice summoned by Prudence, Torg then wove the pieces of shield and sword together with some colourful sorcerous hand gestures, and went on to proudly explain that this was also forging a bond between the frost giants and our village.

And, boy, was he feeling smug about all this... right up until the point where Midhilda declared that her new magical sword would be named after Ceitlen.

Torg's jaw hit the floor (and everyone - including me - around the table roared with laughter).

In return, Midhilda handed Ceitlen with a large fragment from her old broken sword, which could be reforged into a new shield.

We all returned to the village, satisfied that our story arcs had been achieved, the magical snows had eased, and Midhilda had opened a new pass through the mountains for us.

Writing up the adventure primarily from Torg's POV and my recollections, I haven't really done the evening's game justice.

It was a surprisingly layered escapade, with everyone's actions dictated by whether they were satisfying their own character's needs or those of others in the group.

When you're not spending 20 minutes on a fight sequence, it frees up time for character development and The Whispering Road was all about co-operation and working together to achieve our goals (even when they were pulling us in opposite directions).

Although I'm not a fan of listening to "actual play" recordings, part of me wishes I'd recorded the evening on my phone to release as a podcast.

From the initial group world-building, through the speedy character creation, right up to the hilarious climax of the story and the satisfying denouement, this really was a game unlike any we've played before.

I've always been fascinated by the simple idea of characters who are related by blood somehow, and the dynamic of Pete's Ceitlen  and my Torg unfolded brilliantly as both of us tried to one-up each other: Ceitlen with her strength and charisma, Torg with his tricksiness.

Unintentionally, as Kevin pointed out, this developed into a perfect Thor/Loki dynamic.

The whole adventure was contained to a single, two-and-a-half hour session, but - because the game was structured into scenes (with prompts for The Architect) and acts - the story we freestyled together really felt as though it came together like a movie.

I backed The Whispering Road on Kickstarter, in early 2014, on behalf of Nick and Clare, thinking it might make an interesting introductory RPG for my godson Alec (it's inspired by Studio Ghibli films, which Clare is a great fan of, and doesn't revolve around killing things that look different to you and then stealing their stuff).

Little did I realise that it would actually serve as The Tuesday Knights' introduction to the weird and wonderful world of Story Games!

I was so impressed by The Whispering Road and the story-crafting techniques the game subtly deployed throughout, as well as Clare's first stint at running a roleplaying game for adults (as opposed to her children).

There were simple dice-rolling mechanics for resolving conflicts (for instance, in a fight the roll would say whether you won or lost, not dictate a blow-by-blow account of the battle), complementing the system's aim of creating a thematic narrative, driven by the characters' needs and desires.

We weren't restricted - or bound - by the rules, in fact they encouraged our creativity and communal storytelling skills.

What's happening to us? Are we becoming New Age gamers? Are we waving goodbye to the Old School Renaissance and becoming Story Game aficionados?

I think it's a bit early to be binning all our d20 rulebooks, but I can definitely see us returning to The Whispering Road.

The evening ended with talks of a 'sequel movie' to our adventure, but, as much as I really liked all the characters the Tuesday Knights had cooked up, my mind was racing towards other settings and environments I'd love to explore via the game's very open mechanics.

It was a shame Simon was unable to make our final gathering of 2018, as it was a grand send-off to another fine year of gaming.

Mordenkainen Headlines New Dungeons & Dragons Comic

Main cover art by Esad Ribić

Gary Gygax's wizard Mordenkainen stars in a new ongoing Dungeons & Dragons comic coming from Dark Horse in November.

Powerless in the face of a draconic apocalypse, the story follows:

"... Mad Mage Mordenkainen as he assembles Faerûn’s most legendary heroes, including Volo, Tasha, and more fan-favourite adventurers, for a high-fantasy epic that spans the Forgotten Realms!"

Each issue will also include roleplaying-themed backmatter penned by RPG "personalities" or D&D gaming material.

Issue one will feature an essay by Erika Ishii, voice actor and actual play participant in the YouTube show Dimension 20.

The Dungeons & Dragons series will be written by Eisner-nominated creators Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly (Star Trek: The Last Starship, Captain America, NYX), penciled by Ibraim Roberson (Star Wars, Weapon X, Thor Annual 2023), inked by Arabson Oliveira, coloured by Dan Brown, and lettered by Haley Rose-Lyon.

Issue one variant cover gallery:

And There's Doomsday To Look Forward To In December

Thor - God of Thunder (2022)

Over here in the UK, the rebranded SyFy Channel - now the much more palatable Sky Sci-Fi - christened its late night Asylum Movie Slot in 2022 with the latest from the mockbuster factory: Thor - God of Thunder.

Like the majority of The Asylum's output it's not great, but I've seen far worse and, as I've come to expect with this particular genre of film, it has some interesting Asylum-style twists on established mythology and fables.

Thor: God of Thunder opens with some deceptively decent CGI of an aerial Asgard, clearly "inspired" by the version we know from the Marvel movies, but as soon as it cuts to inside we're back on more familiar Asylum turf, resplendent as it is with amdram levels of set decoration and acting.

Loki (Daniel O'Reilly) escapes imprisonment, stabs Odin (Vernon G. Wells), steals some trinkets and flees to Earth, with the aim of freeing the giant wolf-god Fenrir.

Sadly, in hi-def, Loki's staff - clearly made of cardboard and gold-painted gaffer tape - looks rather cheap and nasty.

The god, who may be Thor's brother or uncle, wants Fenrir to destroy Yggdrasil - The Tree of the Nine Realms - so he can plant a new one and shape the universe to his own designs.

Summoned by his dying father, the titular god of thunder, Thor (Myrom Kingery), follows Loki to Earth and arrives at an archaeological excavation in California.

Grace Choi (Vaune Suitt), the site manager, had believed they were excavating an Indigenous Native American grave, but - just moments before the pair of Norse gods show up - she begins to suspect that the cave system is something more, possibly a prison for Fenrir.

The wolf-god is freed and it's now up to Thor and a handful of humans to stop Loki's schemes before the Earth shakes itself to pieces and a new world is born in the image of the trickster god.

On one - very large - hand, Steve Doucette's script, under Noah Luke's direction, is riddled with weak dialogue and plot holes, but on the other the impressive thing about Asylum films is there is usually no unnecessary padding and they don’t tend to hang around.

Thor: God of Thunder makes great use of its 87-minute run time, with enough momentum and action that - unless you're deliberately hate-watching this - will buoy you along with a wry smile on your face.

Sure, some of the CGI is naff and a lot of the acting is overacting; for instance, Vernon G. Wells (possibly best known as Wez from 1981's Mad Max II: The Road Warrior) has clearly been taking lessons from the William Shatner School of Acting, cranking up the mid-sentence dramatic pause to 11.

And while initially I was disappointed that Myrom Kingery's Thor lacked the golden locks we're accustomed to from the old Norse myths and Marvel Universe, he had the physicality of a Viking and his portrayal grew on me through the movie.

Even if every time he cried out for Odin all I could picture was this scene of the brilliant Matt Berry from The IT Crowd :

But for all the slack I'm cutting Thor: God Of Thunder, there was one scene that was simultaneously pure Asylum and possibly a new low.

At one point, towards the climax of the film, Thor is "rowing" a Viking ship across the sea and absolutely no effort is made to suggest that he is actually anywhere near water, it's almost as if Myrom Kingery is simply waving a paddle around in the air.

Honestly, the film is almost worth watching for that scene alone, even if you're not traditionally a fan of The Asylum's unique oeuvre.

I'm also surprised - and I suspect it's due to the lack of budget, which probably also explains the absence of decent wig work - that The Asylum, when mockbusting a Marvel movie (this one's clearly targeted at the Thor: Love and Thunder audience),  don't employ the classic mid- or post-credit scene, potentially setting up a sequel.

Grace even asks Thor: "Will we see you again?"

And I half-expected him to look to camera and say: "That depends on how well this film does!"

However, no matter how much Myrom Kingery's Thor grew on me, I also think it's a shame that The Asylum didn't get back Cody Deal - who played the character for them in 2011's Almighty Thor - as, at the time, he'd said he was up for a sequel.

If they'd also brought back Loki from that flick, Richard Grieco, and Kevin Nash as Odin, it would have gone a long way towards establishing some degree of continuity for their own "Asylum'Verse".

Grimm's Snow White (2012)

Remember the other week when I was reviewing fairy tale films? Well, I thought I'd kick off this week of Asylum movies with one of their "fairy tale"-inspired offerings: Grimm's Snow White.

Once again The Asylum proves that their strength lies in fantasy stories with this joyously gonzo, kitchen-sink spin on the story of Snow White that throws elves, dragons and magical falling stars into the traditional mix.

On the other hand there are no dwarves (that's where the elves come in - it being easier to stick pointed ears on an extra than turn them into little people) or poisoned apples (there's a poisoned ring instead) in this tale.

A long time ago a star fell from the skies and where it fell a magical flame sprung up that created the dragons and the elves.

Queen Gwendolyn (Jane March) of Whitevale wants to get her hands on the magical flame - the source of the elves' magic - but it is in the neighbouring land of North Phalia.

So she engineers the death of her husband and then sets about winning the heart of the North Phalian prince, Alexander (Jamie Thomas King).

Unfortunately for the queen, Alexander has fallen for her drippy step-daughter Snow White (Eliza Bennett).

Therefore, the queen arranges for Snow to meet with an unfortunate accident in the woods at the hands of her huntsman... only she is rescued by the elves.

Initially the elves, especially the outspoken Orlando (see what they did there?), played by Alan Burgon, don't want to get involved in the affairs of humans for fear it will bring further oppression down on them.

Eventually, of course, Snow wins them round and everything culminates in a deliriously lacklustre woodland battle between about a dozen elves and a similar number of the queen's troops (this is supposed to be a major battle, by the way).

Some of the acting, especially from the heavily-accented extras, is a bit stilted, the CGI dragons are pretty poor and the queen's CGI hunting dogs have clearly been based on the Garmr from its 2011 Thor-mockbuster Almighty Thor.

Yet there are elements (albeit minuscule) of an inventive story here - even if, ultimately, it comes to nothing.

There are hints of an interesting take on elves and the whole deal with the Veridian Flame is a really nice touch which, hopefully, the Asylum might pick up and run with in another of their fantasy flicks. It seems too good a concept to dismiss as simply a MacGuffin in Grimm's Snow White.

I'm not sure what went wrong with the non-fire-breathing dragon though as I've seen better in Asylum flicks - perhaps they blew the budget on rubber elf ears and costuming, as there's a distinctly well-tailored Georgian feel to many of the outfits worn by the human characters.

Eliza Bennett is rather unimpressive as Snow White and totally overshadowed by Jane March's evil step-mother, clearly loving the chance to devour some scenery in her wonderfully melodramatic role.

A Quick History Of The Captains Marvel

From the Marvel Family to Mar-Vell to Carol Danvers, this is the history of the Captain Marvels, exploring the fascinating historical relationship between 2019's two biggest superhero debuts, Captain Marvel (starring Brie Larson) and Shazam! (starring Zachary Levi).

The Echoes of Shazam! by Alex Ross

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Monster Mag #1

I've finally got round to scanning in the first of my treasured self-made Monster Mag comics, written and drawn by yours truly when I was only nine.

Self-published, with a print run of one, I thought I had lost these treasures from 1976, so when I found them last year after we had moved I couldn't believe my good fortune.

Fragile homemade artefacts, held together with sellotape older than Rachel (honestly, she wasn't even born when I drew these comics), I carefully scanned issue one this week and cast a critical eye over my work.

I was clearly influenced by the oddly-shaped, art-distorting, black-and-white British reprint titles, such as The Titans, which explains the horizontal page orientation of Monster Mag, and quite possibly the prevalence of Marvel characters within its pages (Thor, Hulk, Doctor Strange, Nick Fury to name but a few).

These big hitters were mixed in with characters of my own creation, such as the delightfully cheesy Ray-Kid, who, without his protective helmet, found his entire head transformed into ball of energy.

The presence of several Universal monsters (the Wolf-man, Frankenstein's Monster, The Mummy, and the Invisible Man) also seems quite random, as I have no idea how I glommed on to them.

Perhaps I was watching those movies far earlier than I remember.

Given that I believe it was my gran who took me to see The Amazing Mr Blunden at the cinema around this time, and scarred me for life with a hypersenstive fear of dying in a house fire, it's quite possible that she was letting me watch Universal horror movies on her black-and-white TV as well (along with the Saturday afternoon wrestling that preceded Doctor Who).

I think it was also my gran who wrote the date (February 26, 1976) on a couple of the pages, because that's clearly not my handwriting, and I have a vague recollection that I drew these comics during a couple of my regular Saturday sleepovers at her house.

Please enjoy the dreadful drawing and appalling spelling of Monster Mag #1:

I, now, just have to scan in issue two...