Twilight Sword PDFs Now Available to Purchase

Those of you who've followed my coverage of the Twilight Sword roleplaying game, but didn't back the crowdfunding campaign, may be interested to know that the official PDFs of the anime-inspired ttrpg are now available for purchase on DriveThruRPG.

Italian publishers Two Little Mice are currently offering a bundle deal, which saves you 30 per cent off the RRP, and includes: 

• Twilight Sword: Core Rulebook
• Lands of Radia
• Starter Set 
• Card Chest
• GM Screen

Backers Can Now Explore The World of Twilight Sword

Radiosa Castle by Wild Blue Studios

The Lands of Radia, the default setting for the upcoming Twilight Sword anime-inspired RPG from Two Little Mice, has been released as a BETA PDF to backers of the its crowdfunding campaign.

The already lavishly illustrated game now includes art by Wild Blue Studios and the latest update on the project explains:

"These amazing artists have created dedicated landscape art for every region of Radia, from the Valley of Aramilla to the Fortress of Evil."

This new book details the eight regions of Radia, atmospheric background lore, key NPCs, area-specific random encounters, and more than 20 new, fully-statted out monsters for the player-characters to face.

I remain enamoured by the brevity (and seeming simplicity) with which this whole system has been created and written, although - obviously - I am still unsure of how this will transfer to the table once dice start to be slung.

The team at Two Little Mice currently seem to be deeply engrossed in their latest crowdfunding campaign, for a huge expansion to their wildly popular and pulpy Outgunned action-adventure roleplaying game.

This runs for about another week and a half, and then I'm guessing their thoughts will return to getting Twilight Sword ready to ship by the end of next month (July).

CURSED ARMOUR: The former attire of fallen heroes, now enchanted to serve the Big Bad

More Twilight Sword Material Delivered To Backers

Sasapurr, the Sulcat of Sagratta, is one of many NPCs you will meet in Lands of Radia

In Twilight Sword news, this week has seen the release to backers of the beta PDF of the "starter set".

This introductory package contains four ready-to-play quests on the mysterious, flying Twilight Island, complete with an basic rules set, character sheets for six pre-generated characters, and cards for monsters, equipment, NPCs, locations, feats and spells.

This week's update from publishers' Two Little Mice also added that an updated edition of the core rulebook PDF was also available, which includes new art, rules clarifications and additions, and more balanced monsters.

The next delivery winging its way to the 5,189 backers of the crowdfunding campaign for the anime/video game-inspired tabletop roleplaying game is due to be a beta release of the pdf of Lands of Radia, the example setting for the game.

This is due to arrive by the end of May.

Twilight Sword On Track To Ship End Of July

Today's livestream by theTwilight Sword authors

It sounds as though Twilight Sword is still on track to ship at the end of July.

In the latest email update for backers of the crowdfunding campaign for the anime and video game-inspired fantasy RPG from games' publisher Two Little Mice, it was stated that:

"Currently we're wrapping up the Starter Set, which should be ready in a couple of weeks. Soon after we'll go back to finishing Lands of Radia, which will be released around the end of May.

"Once the books are ready and typo-free, we'll send you all the Cards, Maps, Sheets, and the rest of the digital aids. We'll make another update next month to give you additional information about the soundtrack, the Alchemy Module, the Solo Mode, and the 3rd Party License."

Although there was little to add at this stage, in today's livestream by the games' authors, Riccardo “Rico” Sirignano and Simone Formicola, they stressed how proud they were of this game and how different it was to their other products, both in design and appearance.

As well as reiterating the planned shipping schedule for Twilight Sword, Rico and Simone added that they were still in the last round of playtests, which would allow them to work further on - for instance - balancing the monsters, but emphasised that the game was "mostly" finished.

Kokkoros! Art by Daniela Giubellini

A pleasant surprise in this week's email update was the inclusion of a link for backers to the 202-page beta PDF of the core rulebook for Twilight Sword.

While this is nowhere near a finished product, it is very advanced and eminently readable.

That said, I very much doubt I'll be posting a full review of the game until I have the hard copy in hand.

Not only is this beta release not the final iteration of the game, but also I'm no fan of reading massive PDF files on my laptop.

At first perusal though, the mechanics of Twilight Sword appear delightfully simple, but with a vast amount of applications, specific effects and modifiers.

I suspect it's a system that's easy to grasp initially, but then will take a good length of time - and actual play - to really grasp all its nuances.

There are definitely some idiosyncrasies and foibles of the setting and system that I'm going to have to put my thinking head on for if I'm going to run Twilight Sword for the Tuesday Knights (which is the intention).

I am, however, convinced that once the physical game has arrived - along with all the extras I invested in through Backerkit - and I've been able to study it all carefully and see how the various elements interact, it'll all fall into place (fingers crossed).

Casting spells, art by Daniela Giubellini

TWILIGHT SWORD: My First Champion

As promised in my last news update on the upcoming Twilight Sword RPG, using the recently released (to backers) character creation document, I have made my first Champion: Elean Starlight, daughter of former Champion Staghind Starlight.

I've long thought that Twilight Sword sounds like the perfect way to pool all my memorable characters - and previous adventures - from a lifetime of gaming into one place. And this is my first attempt to do that.

I'd originally thought I'd opt for someone with an isekai-style origin, but this seemed too good an opportunity to tie my old D&D character Staghind into this new world.

Now to go through the character creation steps:

NAME & ORIGIN: Elean Starlight, Heir.

"You are the heir of an ancient Champion or a hero of legend. You had no choice in your own destiny, and you always felt different."

KIN: Huma - the predominant humanoid lifeform in Radia, the huma are superficially elves.
KIN FEAT: Reroll a single failed Ability roll. This Feat can only be used again after a Rest or a Quick Rest.
DISTRIBUTE ABILITY SCORES: Either through points allocation or use of a standard array. I opted for the latter as this was my first run-through of the system.* 

• STRENGTH: 7 
• AGILITY: 9
• VITALITY: 7
• PERCEPTION: 8
• WILL: 8
• KNOWLEDGE: 6
• CHARISMA: 5
• STEALTH: 6

HEARTS & STAMINA: 17 ❤️ and 3 🔷
WAY: Way of The Wild

FEAT: Aim (Can use her reaction to aim. Gains Advantage to the next attack she makes this Turn using a ranged or thrown weapon).
STARTING GEAR: An old bow, an old short sword, padded armor, 12 arrows, and a torch. 3D6 (I rolled 9) Green gems (?).

Obviously, there are still bits and bobs that need to be clarified, such as the damage weapons cause, what difference do "old" weapons make, how much damage armour absorbs, what form does the currency take, how does Advantage/Disadvantage work in this game and so on.

But this introductory, early look at Twilight Sword has filled me with a great deal of optimism. I may have spotted three or four typos in the text, but these looked like they were probably down to translation issues and will hopefully be picked up in future edits.

And, personally, I felt there needed to be some consistency in the breaks between paragraphs (although that might just be the old sub-editor in me), but otherwise - at first look - it appears as though Twilight Sword will be a thing of great beauty.

The character creation process was quick and simple. In fact, it would have been even quicker with a print copy of the rules to hand, as then I wouldn't have had to keep switching - like a bumbling, technology-challenged old man - between the PDF and the document I was writing in.

Even with my own incompetence, it only took, maybe, 10 or 15 minutes... as I already had my mini-backstory in mind. 

I'm eagerly looking forward to the full beta PDF release at the end of this month. 

* As I understand it most tests - including combat - involve rolling a d12 and scoring under (or equal?) the relevant statistic. 

Elean Starlight

Early Thoughts on Personalising The Twilight Sword Setting

As a youngling I had this Pauline Baynes map of Narnia on my bedroom wall

With the impending release of the beta PDF of Twilight Sword, I have begun to noodle around ideas for "personalising" the lands of Radia - the game's default setting. 

World building from scratch is one of my weaknesses as a gamesmaster: all my worlds created whole cloth tend to end up as simply reskinned versions of real lands from Medieval(ish) Earth... and not in a clever, Robert E Howard Age of Hyboria way.

I also have a tendency to "Game of Thrones" things up before the first die is slung, by which I mean I overcomplicate and hyperdetail the setting way beyond anything the players will probably ever have any interaction with.

This is because I tend to fall in love with my settings and then mistakenly believe I'm the next JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis or George RR Martin! When all I'm really doing is creating a backdrop for some wonderfully silly elfgames.

Aware of this fault in my planning process, I'm approaching Radia - which we know is inspired by video games and anime - with broader strokes.

At the moment, clearly, I know almost nothing about the actual, 'official' setting, so am just scraping together notes and bullet points of ideas, locations, names (for places and people) etc that - hopefully - veer away from the usual Western/Tolkien norm of fantasy settings.

For the anime influences for Radia, I shall be looking to pick up cues from my beloved Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Record of Lodoss War, and Delicious in Dungeon.

My knowledge of anime is limited (although greater than my knowledge of video games), but I remain firm in my belief that these three serials have the best resources in the pure fantasy (Dungeons & Dragons-inspired) genre.

Beyond anime, I'm looking at established settings such as Narnia, Wonderland, Oz, Neverland, Eternia, and Arduin, and films like Labyrinth, The NeverEnding Story, The Dark Crystal, and so on, rather than my usual inspirations, for example Hawk The Slayer and Lord of The Rings. 

Don't get me wrong Hawk The Slayer remains the definitive old school Dungeons & Dragons movie in my book and Peter Jackson's Lord of The Rings trilogy is simply the greatest movie of all time, which I ensure I watch at least once a year from start to finish.

But, in my experience, the thing I find about such intricate settings as Middle-Earth and Westeros is that they are 'fragile'. If you mess around with them too much they break and are no longer the setting you fell in love with in the first place.

Now, I know you can say: but it's your game, you can do what you like with the setting, who's going to know?

But, besides the fact that I would know, it's my belief that these settings are so intricately interwoven that if you mess with, or change, one bit it will have a cascade effect further down the line so that something else isn't going to make sense (just look at George RR Martin's anger with The House of The Dragon tv show because characters were cut out who actually have an important role to play in the story at a later date).

Hence, why I'm shifting my focus to loosey-goosey, weird and surreal settings that are governed by more fairy tale aesthetics. I believe these will gel more with my vision - and understanding - of how Radia (and Twilight Sword) is supposed to operate.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. But I hope not.

I'd really like to run a setting that was, at once, familiar to the Tuesday Knights but also fresh and original, and not just another Middle-Earth/Forgotten Realms/Medieval Europe retread. 

And has talking animals.

Ator The Fighting Eagle (1982)

"During the childhood of mankind, while some colonies have only just discovered fire, others are already using technology, Inventor Akron discovers the 'radiating matter' which can be used to make earth a paradise or a hell. Soran, a strayed former pupil of Akron, steals his invention. Akron sends out his daughter to fetch the invincible Ator to fight Soran..."

-- so reads the descriptive blurb on the back of my DVD of Ator The Fighting Eagle. Only that's not the plot of Ator at all! But then the poster shown above is also rather misleading as Ator never uses a three-headed flail and his animal companion is a cute bear cub - not a sabretooth tiger!

This (unintentionally?) hilarious, cheesetastic film has Ator (Miles O'Keefe) on a mission to rescue his new bride, Sunya (Ritza Brown) - who he had believed was his sister until the moment his 'parents' gave their blessing to his wedding plans - from the Temple Of The Spider.

A mockbuster years before The Asylum made it an artform and released to cash in on the original Conan movie, Ator has a by-the-numbers, Joseph Campbell "hero's journey"/Star Wars storyline.

The titular protagonist even picks up an Obi-Wan-style mentor, Griba (Edmund Purdom), and a money-driven Han Solo-ish female rogue Roon (Sabrina Siani) along the way to help him blow up the Death Star... er... destroy The Temple Of The Spider.

It's all tied-in to a very long - and highly detailed - prophecy about how Ator's true father, the legendary Tauren, was doomed in his quest to defeat the Spider Cult and so the destiny has passed to his son, Ator.

The main problem is Ator is rather a rubbish hero - frequently bested in combat, gullible and, frankly, not the sharpest tool in the box - he is constantly being rescued by Roon and the cute bear cub.

The fights are joyously lacklustre, which only adds to the humour, and a couple of times Ator simply abandons Roon during a fight when his attention is distracted by something else.

He only appears to be able to beat people if he catches them by surprise - or has an incredibly powerful magic shield of zapping to hand!

Couple this with stilted and corny dialogue, some wonderfully WTF "monsters" (the walking dead that simply disappear, the blind warriors, the shadow demon, the shapechanging sorceress, the giant spider etc) and all the elements combine to make Ator The Fighting Eagle an incredibly entertaining - and amusing -  way to waste 90 minutes of your life.

That said, as Italian swords-and-sorcery films go, it's head and shoulders above Conquest, the scenery is surprisingly interesting - with strange statues dotted around the landscape - and some of the 'encounter' ideas aren't half-bad.

The Twilight Sword Will Be Drawn on April 7

Way of The Blade, art by Daniela Giubellini

A beta PDF of the Twilight Sword roleplaying game, along with the starter set, will be released - to those of us who backed the crowdfunding campaign last year - on April 7, according to a recent update from publisher Two Little Mice.

The update added that the:

"...BETA will be pretty advanced, with maybe some typos left to find, and some artwork missing. But you can expect the full Twilight Sword experience, including an introductory mini-campaign ready to play."

Work is also proceeding at a pace on the Lands of Radia supplement, detailing the default setting for the game, so that is also expected to be finished soon.

The company - which is also responsible for the ever-expanding OUTGUNNED catalogue of action movie-themed games, Household, Memento Mori etc - calls Twilight Sword its "most ambitious project to date", which has me even more excited than ever for the game's arrival.

The print edition of the anime and video game-inspired, sword-and-sorcery ttrpg Twilight Sword is still on track to be shipped to backers at the beginning of August.

Lumino Inn, art by Donata Poli

Twilight Sword Update

All the crowdfunded shiny goodness of Twilight Sword is on track to be shipped to backers around the beginning of August, however the PDFs of the two main books and starter set could be sent out as early as the end of March.

These nuggets dropped during the first livestream of the year, yesterday, by two of the founders of the game's Italian production company, Two Little Mice, Riccardo “Rico” Sirignano and Simone Formicola.

The game, the company's biggest project to date, is currently going through extensive playtesting to hone the mechanics.

While the land of Radia remains central to the default campaign included in Twilight Sword, the core book has been rewritten to make the game more setting agnostic, so gamemasters can easily use their own settings with the system.

The bulk of the livestream concerned the production of other current Two Little Mice projects, such as Outgunned Superheroes, the latest variant of their action movie-styled roleplaying game.

Without going into too much detail, it was revealed that the company's next crowdfunding campaign, taking place in May, would be another addition to Outgunned.

The Adventures Of Hercules II (1985)

Lou Ferrigno (aka The Incredible Hulk) returns as Hercules in this kinda-sequel to 1983's Hercules.

In this rather Xena: Warrior Princess-meets-2001: A Space Odyssey rambling affair, the Earth and Universe is given a fresh origin story for no readily apparent reason, then we learn that a quartet of rebellious gods have stolen the Seven Thunderbolts of Zeus, which give the top god dominion over all.

This disruption in the eternal balance causes the Moon to - very slowly - fall out of its orbit and threaten the existence of Earth.

Sonia Viviani

To recover his thunderbolts, Zeus calls Hercules back from the stars, however, to thwart this plan, the rebel gods resurrect mad scientist King Minos (William Berger)... who promptly rushes off to do his own thing.

The thunderbolts, it turns out, have been hidden inside monsters, which Hercules must track down and defeat (or simply bump into as random encounters).

It just so happens that he is also drawn into a side-adventure by the lovely Gabrielle-like Urania (Milly Carlucci) to save her sister, Glaucia (Sonia Viviani), and village from the fire demon Antaeus (which bears more than a passing resemblance to the Id monster from Forbidden Planet).

This entails finding a balm that will protect Hercules from "the fire monster's radiant heat", that's another side-quest, but all, eventually, somehow, ties back into the main plot.

Urania has some kind of prophetic ability, which involves communing "with the Little People" (a pair of identical spirits) at random shrines around the country, who put her in touch with the gods and warn of her fate.

Meanwhile, Minos teams up with his old pal, Dedalos (Eva Robin), who gives him a very unscientific magic sword of ice, with the power to slay gods, before granting him superpowers.

Milly Carlucci

After a series of monster battles, bizarre set-pieces full of psychedelic light shows, gorgeous stage sets and cheesy costumes, events culminate in an astral battle between Hercules and Minos (that doesn't actually feature the actors... but does feature an appearance by Space Kong and Space T Rex!), before moving on to Hercules' mythological method of preventing the Moon destroying the Earth.

On a positive note, at least the rubbish bargain-basement robot monsters from the first film have been replaced by "men in rubber suits" and slightly more mythologically accurate models (although neither are exactly top quality).

The story rambles all over the place, managing to add an intriguing level of surreality and deviousness to events that this low-budget swords-and-sandals fantasy/sci-fi mash-up probably doesn't truly deserve.

Ferrigno is great as Hercules (when he's actually onscreen), but I've read that he didn't even know he was filming this sequel.

Writer/director Luigi Cozzi had actually been tasked by producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus to film extra scenes for Ferrigno's The Seven Magnificent Gladiators, but then they decided to use this material as the basis of a new film (Hercules II) instead... without telling their lead actor!

Which would explain his physical absence from so much of the movie.

And the patchy nature of the bonkers plot.

The Trollenberg Terror (1958)

In a small Swiss village near Trollenberg Mountain, a series of climbers are found decapitated. Alan Brooks, a UN investigator, is sent to the area to look into unusual radiation levels, and he helps with the investigation. While investigating he meets Anne Pilgrim, a psychic who experiences visions of the deaths and is drawn to the mountain.

Thank you to Film Masters
for making The Trollenberg Terror aka The Crawling Eye available online.

Part Quatermass, part The Thing From Another World and based on a 1956 ITV Saturday Serial  television programme, The Trollenberg Terror (or The Crawling Eye) by the legendary Hammer horror writer Jimmy Sangster, is the story of scientist Alan Brooks (Forrest Tucker) summoned to the Swiss Alps to investigate some mysterious goings-on.

On the way, he meets up with the Pilgrim Sisters, Sarah (Jennifer Jayne) and Anne (Janet Munro), a theatrical mind-reading act, heading to Geneva. Only Anne is actually truly psychic and feels compelled to disembark at the same train station as Brooks... that is, Trollenberg, where there have been a number of unexplained climbing accidents.

Visiting the mountainside observatory, Brooks is also informed of an unnatural cloud that has been hanging around the mountain and giving off radiation. This reminds him - and the observatory's Professor Crevett (Warren Mitchell) - of a similar mysterious incident they investigated in the Andes and that Crevett had attributed to extraterrestrials.

In the meantime, Anne has received a physic summons to the mountain and after she is prevented from going, a climber - presumed missing - returns from the mountain and attempts to kill her.

The Trollenberg Terror is a pot-boiler, slowly building to its dramatic climax (perhaps too slowly for modern audiences), when the true face of the monster on the mountain shows itself out of the fog.

Before that though we get a couple of decapitations and a surprising "head in a rucksack" shot that I wasn't expecting.

As well as playing out like a high-altitude reworking of The Thing, withholding the big reveal until the final act adds a layer of Lovecraftian paranoia to The Trollenberg Terror as well.

The film doesn't so much create a sense of tension as one of scientific enquiry, a desire to know what's going on and, as long as you love giant monsters, then you're not going to be disappointed by this atmospheric slice of '50s schlock horror.

TWILIGHT SWORD: One Of 2026's Most Anticipated Games

Two Little Mice's Twilight Sword has ranked tenth in EN World's recent annual community vote to find the most eagerly-awaited games of the coming year.

The Italian games company is also responsible for the Outgunned range of action film roleplaying games, of which the Tuesday Knights are currently playing the pulp iteration Outgunned Adventures.

However, Twilight Sword is a game system I have a financial interest in, having backed its crowdsourcing campaign almost entirely on vibes.

To be honest very little has been revealed about the game, besides the fact that the original games engine (the Created at Twilight system) revolves around a central mechanic involving a 1d12 "roll under" check.

During the fundraising campaign, the designers shared glimpses of  monsters, character sheets, and gaming sub-systems - all of which seemed to optimise simplicity and gorgeous design.

There's a gorgeous, free introductory PDF as well, which is primarily about evoking the desired atmosphere of Twilight Sword with a broad overview of the rules mechanics, setting and the role of player-characters (Champions) in overcoming Despair and bringing Hope back to the conquered lands of Radia.

While this alone might not have been enough to lure me in, my experience with Outgunned told me these people know how to design games, so I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt.

At the end of last year I was toying with some ideas for an anime-inspired fantasy setting for my next campaign - having realised that I work best as a gamesmaster when running a fantasy campaign - and was looking at Break!! and Twilight Sword.

Both are beautifully-designed games, but while Break!! feels akin with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (or even Third Edition), Twilight Sword is giving off more BECMI or B/X "vibes" with its seeming simplicity. This better suits where I am at the moment with my approach to gaming and desire to run something where the rules aren't tripping everyone up every other round.

The EN World post points out that Twilight Sword "is inspired by classic video games like The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy", which makes my interest slightly perverse as I've only played Zelda once and have never played Final Fantasy. I'm just not a video gamer, but I find the worlds and mythologies created for these games fascinating.

I also love the fact that Twilight Sword is set on a world - seemingly - without humans, instead elf-like creatures are the dominant species along with anthropomorphic animals (you know I'll be bringing the ducks) and other fantastical races.

This is a million miles away from the human-centric fantasy world I have been pushing in recent years and I'm more than okay with that. I've definitely loosened up my ideas what makes a dynamic roleplaying game setting in the last 12 months or so... thanks, in large, part to watching a lot of Dungeons & Dragons-inspired anime.

Twilight Sword isn't released until the middle of 2026 (at the earliest), so that's when I'll be making my final decision on whether this is the new system I bring to the Tuesday Knights. But I'm very optimistic that this is a shoo-in.

I have a collection of ideas, names, atmospheric suggestions etc stored as notes on my phone for my, as yet undefined, Twilight Sword campaign but I won't know how applicable they are until more information about the game and its setting (the lands of Radia) comes out.

That also means I probably won't be talking much about Twilight Sword - as it is largely a mystery - either here or "in real life" until closer to the actual time it's likely to be in my hands.

Monster From Green Hell (1957)

In those wild and carefree days of the late 1950s, long before America had put a man on the Moon, a scientific project is examining the effects of cosmic radiation on living beings... by sending up rockets loaded with test animals!

Unfortunately, one vessel goes off course, exposing its subjects to an extended dose of radiation, and causing the rocket to crash somewhere in Africa.

Six months later, square-jawed scientist Dr Quent Brady (Jim Davis, who would go on to star in Dallas) and his associate Dan Morgan (Robert Griffin) read newspaper reports of  supposed monsters wreaking havoc near where they believe their lost rocket might have ended up.

Naturally, they head off to investigate, speculating that there might be some connection with the consignment of wasps sent into space on the doomed ship.

Their journey from the coast to Central Africa is long and arduous, and they find themselves and their bearers plagued by hostile natives, insufferable heat, dehydration, contaminated water, et al before they even get to the missionary station on the edge of the region known as Green Hell, where these "monsters" are said to be.

Unfortunately, their arrival at the missionary station coincides with the death of the 'saintly' Dr Lorentz (Vladimir Sokoloff), who had been investigating the monsters himself.

Our heroes' bearers have had enough and scarper, but Dr Lorentz's daughter, Lorna (Barbara Turner), persuades local villagers to take their place - on the condition that she can accompany Dr Brady's expedition into the Green Hell.

Turner seems a bit lost here but she would later write the screenplay for the killer-dog movie Cujo, so I can forgive her anything.

Monster From Green Hell is a must-watch for aficionados of kitsch, 1950's B-movies that are so awful they're hilarious.

Spliced together with stock wild animal footage and scenes from 1939's Stanley and Livingstone, California stands in for Central Africa... and it's quite obvious.

The narrative structure of Monster From Green Hell is an object lesson in bad storytelling, from giving away the appearance of the kaiju-sized killer wasps within the first 10 minutes (thus destroying any sense of mystery as to what our heroes are tracking) to committing the cardinal sin of cinema: a deus ex machina resolution that the protagonists had absolutely no hand in.

Spoilers for a six decade old movie, but the wasp queen and her drones are all wiped by a volcanic eruption (which, of course, our heroes had nothing to do with) before they can multiple and take over the world.

The way the story unfolds the destruction of the giant wasps would have occurred whether or not Dr Brady had been hunting them. 

Even though Monster From Green Hell only runs for 71 minutes, and starts off very breezily, director Kenneth G Crane's pacing is all over the place, with the extended journey through Africa taking up an inordinate amount of time, for instance. Then, with only 10 minutes or so to go at the climax of the piece, the movie suddenly switches to an almost pointless "explorers lost in maze of underground tunnels" story.

You don't come to a B-movie expecting character development and there's certainly none on display here, with pretty much everyone simply being walking mouthpieces for the lines of Louis Vittes and Endre Bohem's screenplay.

The giant wasp model, though, is a classic of the era, which is probably why Crane decided the audience should get to meet it long before the main characters do. 

However, I'm not sure that wasps have pincers, but I guess that's part of the mutation that caused them to balloon up to Godzilla size.

The size of the giant wasps seems quite flexible, and we rarely see more than one at a time, leading me to think - right up until the final act - that there might only be one giant wasp, despite Dr Brady's insistence that there was a swarm of them.

It also feels rather odd that Brady and his team are able to track the wasps by giant footprints they leave in the dirt. It's never stated outright, but I decided in my headcanon that due to the creatures' enormous size their fragile wings aren't powerful enough now to lift them off the ground.

The restored print of 1957's Monster From Green Hell, for the most part, is striking in its crisp black-and-white, although there are still scenes with the odd scratch down the centre, but then the film is 65 years old and I doubt it's been treated with any particular reverence until it was cleaned up for its physical media release a few years ago.

It has now been officially released online (see above) by Film Masters.

This version of the movie also comes with a slightly random, but nevertheless oddly delightful, colourised final sequence... when the heroes watch as nature does what they couldn't.

The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)

 

A spectral alien entity of pure intellect, the interplanetary supervillain Gor (voiced by Dale Tate) from the planet Arous, comes to Earth and possesses the body of pioneering nuclear research scientist Steve March (John Agar).

Steve and his buddy Dan Murphy (Robert Fuller) investigate anomalous radiation readings from the ominously named Mystery Mountain out in the heart of the New Mexico desert.

There they come across a recently-blasted new cave formation and inside they are attacked by the non-corporeal brain creature Gor, who fries Dan and takes control of Steve,

Steve returns home after a week's absence, but his fiancée Sally Fallon (Joyce Meadows) is immediately suspicious by his increased libido. And the disappearance of Dan, of course.

Steve's story that he has "gone to Las Vegas" seems flimsy at best. But I guess this was the 1950s!

The brilliant John Agar as Steve March

Eventually, the local sheriff, Wiley Pane (Tim Graham), challenges Steve about the whereabouts of Dan... and meets a similar fatal end.

Using a combination of his own nuclear-based superpowers and Steve's contacts at the highest echelons of America's military, Gor has hatched a plan that would not only give him control of planet Earth but allow him to strike back at his homeworld and then take over the universe! Bwahahaha!

Gor

However, hot on Gor's heels is a police officer/bounty hunter from Arous called Vol (also voiced by Dale Tate), who's possibly not the sharpest tool in the box: needing a body of his own to possess, he passes on Steve's hard-done-by, but loyal, fiancée Sally and her dad, John (Thomas Browne Henry), and instead chooses their family dog, George!

The clock is ticking, as Gor - through Steve - demonstrates his incredible powers to the American military at the White Sands Missile Range, before delivering an ultimatum to the major nations of the world.

Luckily, for Earth, Vol has revealed his species' Achilles Heel to Sally, but the window for delivering the death blow is very small, and Sally's plan to save the planet is rather reckless.

Vol

A breathtakingly bizarre piece of retro, Atomic Age sci-fi, 1957's The Brain from Planet Arous was previously available in 2022 as both a special edition Blu-ray and DVD, featuring a crisp 4K transfer, and has now been officially released online (see above) by Film Masters.

First off, major kudos to John Agar - former husband of Shirley Temple and later a stalwart of B-movies such as The Mole People, Revenge of The Creature, and this - for an impressive turn as Steve March, particularly when Gor is driving the meat-suit. 

A truly unnerving villain, Agar demonstrates a subtle mastery of the sly sneer and maniacal grin, and somehow manages to be both the bad guy and the good guy of this pulp adventure.

With a runtime of a mere 70 minutes, The Brain never risks outstaying its welcome, and perhaps deserves to be held up as exemplar of tight pacing in this age of overly-long and unnecessarily padded "epics".

The deft directorial touch of Nathan Juran becomes obvious when you realise he would go on to direct such classics as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad  and Attack of the 50-Foot Woman the following year.

Nevertheless, even with its brief duration, the protagonists of this delightful B-movie still manage to spend an inordinate amount of time eating and saying the name "Mystery Mountain" (seriously, it needs to be a drinking game).

Ray Buffum's script delivers a surprisingly coherent rationale behind Gor's plan, which makes a lot more sense than Vol eschewing a human body for a canine one. 

All I can imagine is that he'd seen how Gor's possession of Steve turned him rather horny (quite shocking, I thought, for a 1950's movie, but then you just have to consider the name of their homeworld to see where this came from) and Vol simply preferred the idea of getting belly-rubs while he was posing as Georgie the doggo. 

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Color Out Of Space (2019)

Nathan Gardner (Nic Cage) and his wife, Theresa (Joely Richardson), have moved, with their three children, out of the big city to a secluded farm in the woods outside Arkham, Massachusetts, for a bit of peace and quiet.

Stockbroker Theresa is recovering from cancer and Nathan is trying his hand at becoming a self-sufficient farmer.

However their lives are disrupted when a strange meteorite crashes on their land, polluting the area with a paranormal alien radiation.

HP Lovecraft's original story of The Colour Out Of Space has been adapted many times, but, beyond a shadow of a doubt the latest iteration, from writer/director Richard Stanely, is the most Lovecraftian.

A gorgeous, mind-bending, blend of the cosmic with the body horror of The Thing and Society,  Color Out Of Space focuses on a trapped - and doomed - family, slowly worn down by an unknowable, extraterrestrial invader.

Certainly not for everyone, Color Out Of Space isn't a trashy teen slasher flick with obvious heroes and villains, but a terrifying encapsulation of the central theme of Lovecraft's oeuvre that "common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large".

There is never really any serious suggestion that the alien entity is even aware of the humans it is transforming by its simple presence.

My Copy - Not Used In Any Rituals!

The film bears obvious similarities with 2018's Annihilation, but Color Out Of Space is the stronger work of art by a country mile.

Across the board, the central performances are superb. Nic Cage channels Nic Cage as only he can, exhibiting the convincing levels of madness and sudden rage that he does so well, while The Magicians' Madeleine Arthur is impressive as teen daughter, Lavinia, whose rebellious nature expresses itself through dabbling in witchcraft.

Beyond the gooey body horror, there's some cringe-inducing - but thankfully brief - self-mutilation that might require some eye-covering by those of us with a particular aversion to such things.

As well as rooting the story squarely in Lovecraft country, Richard Stanley has sown his tale with Lovecraftian Easter Eggs, such as the Miskatonic University sweat shirt worn by visiting surveyor Ward (Elliot Knight, sadly no relation) and the tatty, cheap paperback copy - "by Simon" - of the Necronomicon (which we all own) that Lavina consults.

Quite possibly my favourite film of 2020, Color Out Of Space is breathtaking in the audacity of its vision, a modern rendition of a Lovecraft story that truly captures the horror of its set-up and the terror of those trapped within its incidental and inescapable prison.

Supergirl Continues To Radiate Silver Age Energy

Supergirl has a new 2025 series that sees her returning to Midvale to face off against classic foes. This latest DC All In series contains numerous nods and references to classic silver and bronze age stories, and some villain comebacks. How does Lesla Lar [h]old up in the contemporary era? Is this book fun? We discuss [it] here on Casually Comics!

The new Supergirl book is fast becoming one of my favourite new comics of 2025... largely because of its Silver Age energy. And the super-bunny, of course!

The simple trick to the title's success is that writer/artist Sophie Campbell acknowledges that superhero comics can be fun and a bit silly without destroying a book's verisimilitude: hence the full-throated embrace of Silver Age wackiness and Bronze Age throwbacks. 

Once again, Sasha of Casually Comics (above) deep dives into reviewing the issue for you, so I don't need to.

TALES FROM THE VAULT: Action Comics #499 (1979)

It's the end of the world (again) in Action Comics #499 and I feel fine... because Superman is on the case.

"As The World Turns... For The Last Time!" (written by Cary Bates with pencils by Curt Swan, inks from Vince Colleta, colours by Gene D'Angelo, and letters by Todd Klein) starts out as a typical day in Metropolis but things are soon heading to Hell in a handbasket after a flying figure is spotted in the sky.

It's not actually the Man of Steel, but his newest chum, the bare-chested, moustachioed Vartox, former protector of planet Valeron and latest "getting-over-Superman" love interest for Lana Lang.

Kids these days, don't know the hardships of the 1970s!

The crowd's apathy to another Superman sighting won't last long though.

Vartox, having failed to save his planet from destruction, now believes that the Earth is going to suffer the same fate because of the dread "x-element" (that he brought with him) which will, very soon, cause the oxygen in the atmosphere to explode.

However, Vartox's unfortunate part in our imminent destruction is even larger. His "hyper-abilities"(which generally mirror Superman's superpowers) are psychically-powered, and he is radiating apocalyptic fear around the globe!

It starts with a "mental plague" in Corleyville, a small town in northern Wisconsin, where the townsfolk plead with Superman to take them away (that's the cover picture for the issue), then rapidly spreads until it seems most of the world's population believe they are facing impending doom.

The Last Son of Krypton, however, isn't convinced and his experiments at the Fortress of Solitude back up this belief. However, Vartox is sticking to his guns and stages a bizarre "intervention" after knocking out Superman with a "hyper-brain blast".

When Supes awakens, Vartox is dressed as Jor-El and has constructed a jury of mannikins dressed as Kryptonian Science Council - re-enacting Jor-El's vain attempts to convince the council that Krypton was about to explode!

This misguided attempt at psychological torture backfires as Supes goes a bit crazy and smashes through the wall of the Fortress.

However, once outside, in the fresh Artic air, he senses that the "x-element" is actually starting to take effect, and deduces that there must have been something in the Fortress preventing this chemical reaction.

Of course, it turns out to be the radioactive fragments of the planet Valeron!

So, Superman and Vartox speed off through space to gather more fragments, grind them up and seed Earth's atmosphere... thus saving the day.

Around all this bonkers Bronze Age chaos there's an awkward romantic sub-plot for Lana, who really has the hots for Vartox (since she first met him in the previous issue), even once he reveals his secret identity (she initially believed him to be Vern, a security guard at the Galaxy Building, where Clark Kent is working at this time).

In the end, she has to let him go, though, as he declares that Earth has enough superheroes and he has an obligation to find a planet to protect with his "hyper-powers". Or it's just an excuse to get away from the very clingy Lana.

"It's not you, it's me!" (But it really is you)

If you've ever wondered what Superman would look like if he had been created in the 1970s - or joined The Village People - you have to check out Vartox's Who's Who entry from March, 1987 below.

Created by Cary Bates and Curt Swan in Superman #281, Vartox was actually inspired by Sean Connery's memorable appearance in 1974's Zardoz, in case you hadn't realised.

This "older and more experienced" iteration of the Superman archetype has reappeared post-Crisis (thanks to the multiversal shenanigans of recent DC event storylines) and even cameoed in the pilot episode of the The CW's Supergirl show (played by by Owain Yeoman) as a short-lived villainous escapee from Fort Rozz.