The First Rule of Monopoly Club Is...

Le Mans-themed Monopoly

What some of you may not realise about me is that my gaming interests aren't limited to just roleplaying games and skirmish wargames. Rachel and I also host a (supposedly) monthly Monopoly Club.

Joining us at the table are Clare and Pete, making this a kind of spin-off from the Tuesday Knights (our roleplaying group).

Pete is an insatiable collector of the many, many themed-Monopoly sets and so every time we get together we play a different iteration of Monopoly.

In the three-and-a-half years we've been going, we've traded property and bankrupted each other in the worlds of Looney Tunes to Stranger Things, Indiana Jones to The Simpsons, and Ghostbusters to Jaws.

This week we were playing on a Le Mans-themed board that Pete had purchased earlier this year at the actual Le Mans endurance racing event in France.

Our little group not only keeps a running league table of our various victories (and defeats) but also a table of our gradings of how well produced and how innovative these reskins of the classic game are. 

If you want to learn more about our adventures in board gaming (or just check out some of the eccentric hacks of the classic original board game), then please visit this blog's little sister site: Don't Talk About Monopoly Club (it's the first rule of Monopoly Club).

BOOK REVIEW: The Case Against Satan (Ray Russell)

Written in 1962 before the term "exorcist" was as ubiquitous as it is today, The Case Against Satan is the story of a Catholic priest tasked with saving a young girl who claims to be possessed by the Devil himself.

In much the same way that Peter Benchley's Jaws (and Steven Spielberg's movie) brought the potential danger of sharks into the paranoid consciousness of the general public, so Ray Russell's The Case Against Satan reopened the door for the almost-forgotten Catholic practice of exorcism to become a media phenomenon.

While Russell's book shares some similarities to William Peter Blatty's 1971 novel and 1973 screenplay of The Exorcist, the parity is largely from the set-up rather than the execution.

Young priest Father Gregory Sargent - who may have a drinking problem, but definitely embraces modern, scientific ideas - is moved to a new parish in the city, where one of his first encounters is with widower Robert Garth and his oddly-behaving teenage daughter, Susan.

After a lifetime as a "clean-talking sweet little girl", she has suddenly developed an aversion to churches, a penchant for foul language, and - on one occasion - stripping in front of a priest and violently sticking her nails into his throat.

Garth refuses to take his daughter to a psychiatrist, and so Fr Sargent, aided by his superior, Bishop Conrad Crimmings, try talking to the girl instead.

Eventually, they are led to believe she may be possessed and so Crimmings instructs Sargent to conduct an exorcism on her.

Clearly The Case Against Satan lays the groundwork for The Exorcist, but unlike that game-changing movie, it is far more cerebral and less cinematic in its approach.

That's not to say there aren't horrific descriptions of the restrained Susan's contortions and pleas as the holy men try to exorcise the "demon" from within her.

But here the dynamics are delivered through dialogue, as the priest and the Bishop discuss their different takes on the situation, while verbally jousting with the "demon" (if that's even what it is).

Along the way we are introduced to a number of side characters, who all have their own input on the scenario, ultimately creating a tone more akin to a hardboiled crime novel than an out-and-out horror story.

Coming in at 140-pages, this is an engaging - and fascinating - read, like discovering a story about an island under siege from a predatory shark before Benchley's bestseller saw print.

Cocaine Bear (2023)

It's 1985 and a drug smuggler's plane is heading for a crash landing, so he dumps his satchels of cocaine over the Chattahoochee National Forest, Georgia, with the idea that his colleagues can retrieve them later.

The only hiccup in this cunning plan is a 500lb black bear that devours way too much of the drug and goes on a murderous rampage, in pursuit of more of the valuable white powder.

An ensemble of oddball characters are drawn to the mountain where the bear is active, some by design and some by accident, including a mum (Rise of Skywalker's Keri Russell) looking for her runaway kid; a couple of drug dealers (Solo's Alden Ehrenreich and Obi-Wan Kenobi's O'Shea Jackson Jr.) sent to retrieve the stash; an aged police officer (The Wire's Isiah Whitlock Jr.) on their trail; a park ranger and a wildlife inspector (Person of Interest's Margo Martindale and Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson); a trio of delinquents who try and mug the wrong guy; and an unfortunate ambulance crew.

Inspired by a true story (and unlike all those ghost stories that claim the same, this actually happened), it soon becomes clear that this hilariously over-the-top affair, masterfully directed by Elizabeth Banks from a script by The Babysitter: Killer Queen's Jimmy Warden, is as much a caper fiasco as it is a gory horror flick.

Banks and Warden have taken the nugget of truth that is the real "cocaine bear" story and pumped it up to eleven, turning the bear into a furry Jason Voorhees, Cujo with a drug habit, stalking - and slaughtering - at random.

As the various parties cross paths with the coked-up bear, plans go to pieces (as do people) as the madcap carnage - and the belly laughs - escalate.

However, unlike that mother of all "when animals attack" movies Jaws, when the true monster of the piece, Ray Liotta's heartless drug boss Syd White, enters the picture, the "cocaine bear" becomes a force for justice and we can't help but find ourselves rooting for her.