Rain Doesn't Stop Play At Annual Medieval Festival

You can't really judge the steepness of the hill from this picture

Having missed last year's event, Rachel, Alice and I returned to King's Grove: England's Medieval & Renaissance Festival this year... only to discover that it had grown considerably since we were last there.

Oh, and after a summer of heatwave after heatwave, the heavens opened yesterday and it rained almost constantly while we were at the festival (there was a break of around five minutes when the sun came out in the afternoon).

The clue to the event's expansion was in the addition of "& Renaissance" to the official title.

It now more closely resembles what I imagine an American "Ren Faire" experience is like, with the overall focus moving away from the purely historical (as it was back in its Herstmonceux Castle days) and now embracing cosplay, LARP, witchy bits, and even tabletop roleplaying games and board games.

Naturally, I wanted to check out the roleplaying (and board) game area first. As well as tables for people to play games on in the tented areas, there was an Aladdin's Cave of funky dice, of all sizes and denominations, all beautifully displayed.

Rachel said I could have a set of posh dice as a birthday present, but there were simply too many to choose from and my poor, little addled brain just shut down because of the input overload.

After a long time blankly staring at the displays, picking some dice up and putting them down, I just couldn't decide and so we moved on... before I had some kind of emotional breakdown.

THE COSPLAY TENT

THE GRAND PARADE

There were a lot of amazing artisans and craftsmen selling their wares at the show, and the constant rain didn't seem to be putting people off moving between the various tents and covered stalls.

Probably my favourite artists were Lucan Thorndyke from Wyrd Bones (who we had a lovely, long chat with and wasn't at all bothered when I said I liked the "roleplaying game prop potential" of his work), the Medieval illuminations of Eric Verkade, and the t-shirts of Hive Mind Games.

As with the dice, there were so many incredible creations to choose from that I was mentally paralysed by the possibilities and ended up not buying anything.

However, I reckon there's a good chance I will eventually (once I can get my finances in order) buy a piece from Wyrd Bones to use in a Tuesday Knights adventure.

To be honest, all the art we saw was top quality and once again I was also (sadly) reminded that we simply don't have any more wall space at home for additional framed pictures. 

Soggy puppy

Quick family portrait during the five-minute break in the rain

Although there were a lot of other floofs at the event, Alice still attracted her fair share of attention, due a combination of her cuteness, her little rain coat, and her rather bedraggled appearance thanks to the weather (Once we got home, Alice had a nice warm bath in the sink).

The only real problem I have with King's Grove is that it takes place on the side of a steep hill.

While the woods are very atmospheric, especially as the festival evolves into something more "magical", it quickly becomes a complication for those of us with mobility issues. Especially when combined with the mud and rain, making the use of mobility scooters totally impractical. 

I couldn't help but wonder if this might actually be the last time I'm physically able to visit this annual event. 

As we headed towards the exit on Saturday we caught a glimpse  of the demonstration (in the Pageant Arena) by animal sanctuary Watermill Wolves. This was, of course, wonderful 'cos wolves are so cool (and one of the wolves was called Alice).

Apart from some "Medieval" treats for Alice, our main purchase at the festival was a copy of The Box of Death: Tales of Castle Rory, Book One. This is a Medieval swords-and-sorcery adventure set in a low-magic fantasy version of 13th Century Norfolk.

Again, we had a good chat with the author, Rory Marsden, who sold me on the book (and signed it for me; you know I'm a sucker for a signed book).

This is the first of a 10-book saga, although I did warn Rory that I was a very slow reader these days so couldn't guarantee how long it would take me to get through this first volume, let alone the rest.

Sorceress (1982)

In a rare break from tradition, the poster (also the DVD cover) for the Roger Corman-produced 1982 sword-and-sorcery flick Sorceress is actually surprisingly accurate.

All the characters pictured there - including the griffon/manticore creature, the ape-man, the snake and the fancy sword - really do appear in the story, to some degree or another.

However, it's been a long time since I've watched a movie that felt so much like its plot was being made up as it went along.

Evil sorcerer, and possible '70s sex cult leader, Traigon (Robert Ballesteros) has pledged to sacrifice his first born to the gods, in exchange for "great power". Only his wife gives birth to twin girls and refuses to reveal which was born first.

The realm's magical martial arts master Krona (Martin LaSalle) spirits the girls away, and leaves them in the care of trusted peasants, who raise them as boys!

Mira and Mara grow up to become Leigh and Lynette Harris, identical twin Playboy Playmates, who clearly weren't hired for their acting chops, but rather their willingness to disrobe when asked.

Honestly, they're young men... with breasts!

The girls - who think they are boys - are discovered skinny-dipping (of course!) by horny satyr Pando (David Milbern), the travelling companion of pseudo-Viking Baldar (Bruno Rey), who looks like he's stepped off the cover of a Dungeons & Dragons novel and spouts random Norse words as oaths.

Although Pando can only communicate through bleating and mime, he fails to tell Baldar that the girls are actually girls, so that when Baldar comes to them in the wake of their adopted parents' murder by Traigon's wandering warriors, he fails to see through their 'cunning disguise'.

Krona pops up again to dispense some words of wisdom, setting them all on a quest to defeat Traigon, before walking into the parents' pyre.

Arriving in the city, the adventurers meet an old friend of Baldar's, the pun-cracking, permed barbarian rogue, Erlick (Bob Nelson), who tags along to make up the numbers.

Casual nudity aside, there's a definite Dungeons & Dragons vibe to this yarn, as the core "party" expands, then fractures off into smaller units for side-quests, but it's also full of random fantasy names and verbiage that doesn't feel like world-building so much as obfuscation of the fragile main plot thread.

The Harris twins as Mira and Mara

Everything culminates in a grand fight in a crumbling temple - although there's a parallel, sub-surface dungeoncrawl by Baldar and one of the girls - which features explosions, duelling gods in the sky, and some pretty cool-looking zombie-mummy-ghouls that rise out of the ground to serve Traigon.

As the "two who are one", Mira and Mara share a psychic bond that is actually employed in the story, although it's most memorable use is during a 'comedy' sex scene that leads Baldar to initially think one of the women is being tortured.

Possibly because he is cosplaying as Sturm Brightblade from the Dragonlance Chronicles, Baldar, it has to be said, is the best character in the 83-minute movie, not only looking the part but also maintaining a heroic persona throughout.

For all its Corman-inspired cheapness, dodgy special effects, and musical score lifted from Battle Beyond The Stars, Sorceress does have an overall engaging look about it. As well as Baldar's 'authentic' costume, Traigon's forces all wear these (probably totally impractical) neat-looking beaked helmets, for instance.

Ultimately Sorceress (there is no 'sorceress' in this movie) isn't actually that bad, it just lacks a coherent story for its quirky characters to fully engage with, leaving much of what happens to come across as just a bit random.

Draug (2018)

In 11th Century Sweden, a party escorting a missionary goes missing when travelling through the enormous forest of Ödmården, which divides the north from the south.

A rescue party sets out, led by Hakon (Ralf Beck) and his foster daughter, Nanna (Elna Karlsson), on her first real mission and her first visit back to the region where she was born.

Entering the forest, the initial problems the group encounters are all-to-human bandits, but after that things take a darker, more supernatural turn, as they uncover the true fate of the missing Christian emissary and his escorts.

"Ödmården is an ancient forest on Sweden's east coast, traditionally dividing the north from the south.

It used to take several days to pass through. Outlaws formed bands inside the forest where they resorted to pillaging any travellers daring to pass the long dark.

Also beasts and bears and wolves were growling and howling inside the vastness of Ödmården, frightening the people living outside its borders and soon stories of occult and darksome origin arose from the area.

And they still do."

- from the film's official website

A low-budget Swedish film, the trailer and poster for Draughad led me to expect a cocktail of History's Vikings and The Blair Witch Project... and it was that, but more.

There was a definite element of Apocalypse Now/Heart Of Darkness - a theme addressed similarly in 2009's bigger budgeted Valhalla Rising - but also traces of The Descent and a splash of J-horror ghost stories.

The movie's small budget means there are moments when Draug resembles a high-quality LARP or a Nordic cosplay, but the actors and scenery bring a gritty verisimilitude that soon dispels those random thoughts.

Shot on location, the film is tense and atmospheric, and only occasionally confusing when there's a variety of things kicking off in the shadows of the dark trees.

While not overly gruesome, this isn't one for the faint of heart as it dabbles in some taboo subjects (such as casual torture and infanticide) and one character has a nickname that makes Preacher's Arseface seem socially acceptable.

Smartly scripted and dripping with local folklore, Draug dishes up some unexpected moments of deliberate laugh-out-loud humour in early scenes that soon give way to screaming, insanity and dying as the adventuring party plunges deeper in to the legendary forest of Ödmården.

MUSICAL MONDAY: The Story of Us (Ru's Piano)

Incredible Taiwanese pianist RuRu performs her cover of milet's The Story of Us, from Frieren: Beyond Journey's End.

MUSICAL MONDAY: Lulu (Ying & Legendav)

An English-language cover of Mrs Green Apple's Lulu, from the second season of hugely popular anime Frieren: Beyond Journey's End.

Frieren is cosplayed in the music video by meganakamomo aka Momo.

MUSICAL MONDAY: The Story of Us (Ying & David Guthrie Music)

An English-language cover of milet's The Story of Us, from the second season of wildly popular anime Frieren: Beyond Journey's End.

Frieren is cosplayed in the music video by meganakamomo aka Momo.

The Knight Before Christmas (2019)

Don't expect any surprises when you snuggle down to watch this wholesome, Netflix Christmas magic, time travel, rom-com.

Kindly 14th Century knight Sir Cole (Josh Whitehouse, best known from his role in Poldark as Demelza's 'fancy man') is whisked away from snow-blanketed Norwich, England, to a snow-blanketed, proto-Utopian, Bedford Falls-like, small town in Ohio in 2019 and told he has one week - until Christmas Eve - to achieve his "quest".

Upon arrival, he bumps into science teacher Brooke (Vanessa Hudgens) and the two form a fast friendship when she agrees to let him stay in her garden guest house, thinking he is an amnesiac cosplayer whose memory loss was caused by his collision with her car.

Maybe it's meant to be an element of the crone's spell that catapulted him to our time, but Sir Cole adjusts to the 21st Century remarkably - if not ridiculously - quickly.

Neither he, nor Brooke (who soon realises the knight is actually who he says he is) can figure out what his "quest" actually is until the final moments of this 90-minute tale, despite the audience screaming it at the television screen.

While not a film to be thought about too deeply, I would question writer Cara J Russell's choice for the name for the knight. "Sir Cole" too often sounds like "circle", which is really odd and distracting.

Conversely, Cole shares a lot of interesting factoids about his life back in Medieval England, from his youth right through his training, suggesting elements of this movie are subliminally educational.

A formulaic, twee Hallmark Christmas romance, with a script that veers from quirky to cliché, The Knight Before Christmas still manages to be endearingly sweet.

This is thanks largely to its charismatic leads, despite the total absence of any logical sense of "why" or "how" in the ultra-lightweight storytelling.

PULP PICTURE OF THE MONTH: Tarzan And The Leopard Woman (1946)

Growing up in the '70s, Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan reruns were a fixture on television's three channels. My favourite was Tarzan And The Leopard Woman.

Sadly, these days, despite the millions of channels we now have on offer, you rarely - if ever - see the old Tarzan movies, so I had to turn to eBay to pick up a bargain DVD box set of half-a-dozen Tarzan tales, including Tarzan And The Leopard Woman.

I hadn't seen this film for decades and had forgotten what it was that had so appealed to me as a youngster. Turns out it was cosplay.

Within moments I was transported back to my childhood; with my parents' old leopard-print car rug thrown over my shoulders and a handful of cutlery I became a leopard god-worshipping cultist again!

The Leopard Men, wearing their parents' old car rugs...

Tarzan And The Leopard Woman is a very simple, but smart, 75-minute tale, about a tribe of leopard god worshippers, who mask their attacks as the work of real leopards, trying to prevent British colonists from forcing 'civilization' on their home land.

The cultists are aided by Ameer Lazar (Edgar Barrier), a Western-educated native doctor who resents the West's domination of the area, but they foolishly think they're smarter than Tarzan.

Tarzan is joined by stalwart companions Jane (Brenda Joyce), Boy (Johnny Sheffield) and Cheeta the chimpanzee.

But trouble starts brewing on the home-front with the arrival of Kimba (Tommy Cook), who claims to be have gotten lost in the jungle, but is actually the younger brother of the Leopard Men's priestess Queen Lea (Acquanetta).

Young Kimba is torn between his boyish crush on Jane and his desire to prove himself as a warrior and return to the Leopard Men with her heart... literally.

Having tricked the colonials into thinking the attacks on caravans were simply the work of hungry leopards, and that they had now wiped them out, the Leopard Men then launch an attack on a caravan bearing four young women from Zambezi, destined to become teachers in the new British colony.

The women, along with Tarzan, Jane and Boy, are kidnapped - to be sacrificed to the Leopard God.

But luckily Cheeta is on hand to save the day!

The truth is, watched with 21st Century eyes, we have to have a certain amount of sympathy for the "bad guys", but - as is often the case - they simply go too far.

Tarzan And The Leopard Woman is a glorious slice of black-and-white pulp adventure, with the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden doubling nicely as the African jungle.

Queen Lea of The Leopard Men (Acquanetta).

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!

On September 8, 1966, Gene Roddenberry introduced [American] audiences to a world that championed diversity, inclusion, acceptance, and hope.