Is It Legal To Shoot A Ghost?

In 1803, London’s Hammersmith Ghost sparked terror — and a deadly case of mistaken identity. When Francis Smith shot Thomas Millwood, believing him to be a ghost, he was convicted of murder. The bizarre trial shaped British criminal law for centuries. But who, or what, was the Hammersmith Ghost?

Slender Man (2018)

A quartet of teenage girls decide to freak themselves out by watching an online video about summoning the urban legend known as Slender Man (think meme-age answer to Bloody Mary).

Soon afterwards, they're all having nightmares and then one, Katie (Annalise Basso), disappears on a school trip.

At first, this is thought to be an abduction, but then her friends begin to suspect more supernatural forces are at work as the mythology of Slender Man worms its way into their minds.

Released in 2018 to almost universal negative reviews, and condemnation that it was capitalising on the genuinely disturbing, real-world, "Slender Man" attempted murder case, Slender Man slunk back into the shadows, leaving nary a trace of its passing.

Which is why I hadn't bothered with it, until now.

I watched it on Sky Cinema, as a double feature with Beware The Slenderman, the HBO documentary about the stabbing of a young girl by her two friends, who claimed they were acting as "proxies" for Slender Man.

Except for the central figure of the mythical Slender Man there's no narrative connection between the fictional story and what happened in real life. Surprisingly, it's mentioned briefly in the documentary, and, to my mind, not given enough backstory, such as exactly when the character was invented for an online Photoshop challenge and even who created it.

The seriously-underrated cinematic Slender Man is a mind-bending, Lovecraftian creation (may I hazard a suggestion that it could be an avatar of Nyarlathotep?) that uses the Internet, and modern technology, to spread its insanity like a computer virus, jumping from the world wide web into human beings.

As is often the case in this style of teen-targeted horror, the script stumbles over some unbelievably poor police work, allowing the main girls to conduct their own investigations in a reality somewhere between Scooby-Doo and True Detective.

While Sylvain White's film does employ a handful of jump scares, the film relies on more psychological techniques (taking a leaf from a lot of the Creepypasta online Slender Man lore, there's often something going on behind the characters, in our peripheral vision) and psychedelic imagery as the characters' grip on sanity slips.

Although the archetype of a supernatural character that steals children has roots that go back to Biblical mythology, the Pied Piper etc, Slender Man is very much a modern fiend that works so well as its existence revolves around a relatively new creation (the Internet) that certain generations are still unsure of, because it divides as much as it unites.

The Slender Man film does a good job of twisting those themes into an unusual little horror gem.

HEALTH UPDATE: Germ Season!

Photo by cottonbro studio

It's official. I have Rachel's germs. My poor wife has heroically struggled through a lengthy spell of serious lurgy, whereas I caved on Friday with a bout of 'man flu'.

While Rachel has tried to carry on as normal as much as possible, I pulled on my dressing gown and curled up in front of the television at the first sign of sniffles and a sore throat.

I'd felt achy in my joints all week, but the cold truly manifested itself on Thursday night and into the following day.

My nose was still a bit odd yesterday and my throat scratchy, but generally it all felt as though I was on the mend.

Earlier in the week, I made it to the gym solo (for the first time, Rachel was outside in the car), but wasn't up for a second workout during the subsequent days. 

Also at the start of this week, I had an epic - and very thorough - two-hour eye test at my usual opticians, with the end result being the revelation that my prescription hasn't changed enough to warrant a new pair of glasses. This was a welcome outcome in this time of tightening belts and increasing costs.

However, 'cos of the bug (even though it was quite mild), my reading plans were scuppered (the old concentration issues were magnified) and I ended up watching a lot of Star Trek: Voyager reruns instead.

Last night was spent in the company of the new season of Strictly Come Dancing and I thought I was on the mend, but when I was awoken by Alice this morning - wanting her breakfast and a wee in the garden - I realised the cold wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.

Today, I ache from head from toe, have a bunged up nose, very sore throat and watery eyes. Seems like the germs have arrived in earnest now.

Coulrophobia: Getting Behind The Make-up Of Killer Clowns!

These clowns aren’t here to make balloon animals.

Clown Panic streams October 12 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

Can't help feeling that many of those people reporting sightings of "killer clowns" would otherwise be talking about being abducted by aliens.

READING REPORT: Not Much To Report

Honestly, I don't know where this week has gone. Have I been so under a cloud and distracted that it has slipped by me?

I know we had games night, I binged the excellent Reacher spin-off Neagley on Prime Video, and Rachel and I have been to the gym a couple of times, but beyond that it's all a bit of a blur.

Somehow I don't think I read a thing this week: no books, no comics... that can't be right, can it?

However, one definite thing I have "achieved" this week is the acquisition - or should I say "reacquisition" - of the Ace edition of the first volume of the epic shared world series Thieves' World, edited by Robert Aspirin.

In recent years I have been able to corral the subsequent four volumes, but this edition (shown above) was a right bugger to track down, especially when operating on a tight budget.

I owned, and read, this edition when it first appeared over here in the UK, almost 50 years ago, and, as much as I enjoyed the roguish, old school Dungeons & Dragons-style adventures within, it was the cover I was besotted with.

It was no surprise that it was also used on the cover of the roleplaying box set based on the book series, and its central city of Sanctuary, that statted up most of the main characters for a multitude of rules systems.

To my simple tastes, this cover painting is - and always will be - the definitive "you begin in a tavern" illustration. If I could start a campaign, or even an adventure, that gave me the same chills as this book cover I'd be a very happy gamesmaster.

Anyway, I came across this well-read but still in magnificent condition, book on eBay the other day and was delighted to see it listed as a "buy it now". You can imagine how quickly I slammed that button when I realised that even with postage this was going to cost me less than a tenner.

It arrived a couple of days later, well packed and ready to be shelved next to my other Thieves' World books (see below).

I'd been holding off trying to read these latter books because I wanted to start at the beginning of the franchise.

Now I can.

A snapshot of one of my sword-and-sorcery shelves

The Colosseum Was A State Propaganda Machine

Photo by Ceyda Çiftci

In this video, geek architect Dami Lee deconstructs the Colosseum of Ancient Rome, explaining how it operated as a propaganda engine to keep the the city's population distracted from the real issues.

And, yes, she concludes with comparisons to today's mass media...

TWILIGHT SWORD UPDATE: Not Long Now

A quick update from Italian game publishers Two Little Mice this week: its video game/anime-inspired fantasy roleplaying game Twilight Sword will be in backers' hands very, very soon.

The publisher stated that the game materials have now reached its distribution hubs around the world and shipping to customers will begin next week.

The update, shared with backers of its crowdfunding campaign to finance the highly-anticipated game, states:

"We still expect all packages to arrive in your hands within the first half of October!"

Arachnophobes Beware! Crawlers Is Not For You!

If spiders decide to eat humans... we'll all be dead in 1 year.

Crawlers is a wild and terrifying thrill ride from the makers of the John Wick franchise. An apartment block in Los Angeles is plunged into lockdown after a catastrophic infestation of venomous and deadly arachnids is triggered by a resident unwittingly harbouring an evil new breed. 

As the fanged creatures multiply by the second, it's up to building manager Serena (Matilda Lutz) to guide a band of misfit neighbours through wall-to-wall dread and do battle with the web-spinning colony as well as the fearful authorities trying to contain the eight-legged plague.

Starring Matilda Lutz (Red Sonja), Gregg Sulkin (Marvel's Runaways), Melina Matthews (Sanctuary), William Miller (Warrior Nun), Elena Sanz (Black Mirror), Chris Rogers (The Running Man) and Andrea Scott Méndez (The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon).

Crawlers is written by Jayson Rothwell (Polar) and directed by Angel Gomez Hernandez (El hombre del saco).

While this won't be one for Rachel, I'm loving Crawlers already. It reminds me of those delightfully trashy "when creatures attack" paperbacks of my youth (in the 1970s) that scandalised my school and led to them being "banned"... which only made us want to read them even more.

NOTIFICATION OF CHANGES AHEAD

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Just a little head's up for the half-a-dozen or so punters that actually read my drivel here (rather than just clicking the thumbs up button on Facebook): there's probably going to be a noticeable change in posting, starting next month.

In October, Rachel is going into hospital for elective knee replacement surgery. This is all for the good. There's even a robot (called ROSA) involved.

However, her post-op recovery could take anywhere from six weeks to six months. 

This means I'm going to have to step up. Be the man of the house. Take charge of things. Do chores.

And, crucially, not spend so much time twiddling away on my jolly laptop, drafting rambling articles, posting film trailers etc

Obviously, I hope I'll still find some time to do the blog, but I sincerely doubt it will be comparable with the amount of time I currently spend on it.

This isn't a bad thing. It's just a fact of life. And priorities. 

For this indeterminate amount of time there will be a reduction - possibly a drastic reduction - in the number of posts you'll be seeing from me here. 

Stop cheering in the back there! I can hear you!

Holy Habitual Viewing, Batman, He'll Have Square Eyes!

With this morning's screening of Minerva, Mayhem and Millionaires, I have now watched every episode of the classic Batman serial from '60s in the order they were originally transmitted.

Thanks to the great Talking Pictures TV channel here in the UK, this has been my Saturday morning ritual for the last 28 months or so.

While the idea was to simply ensure I saw all the episodes of this magnificently camp crimefighting show, I can't help but pass comment on the third - and last - season, when the show's makers swapped out Aunt Harriet (Madge Blake) for Batgirl/Barbara Gordon (Yvonne Craig).

Clearly, they felt a '60s audience of (mainly) young boys couldn't cope with two lead female characters at once. It's a pity because as much as I welcome Craig's take on Batgirl, I did miss Aunt Harriet's obliviousness to the Bat-centric shenanigans going on under her nose in stately Wayne Manor.

It was also a bit sad - but emblematic of episodic TV at the time - that Dick Grayson/Robin's  (Burt Ward) aunt wasn't even mentioned this season.

Then again, perhaps she left Gotham at just the right time as the storytelling took a massive nosedive, thanks to attempts to mix things up.

The show largely abandoned its winning two-part story formula (thus eliminating the highly entertaining cliffhangers at the end of part one of every tale) as well as bringing in a host of bland new villains instead of relying on the iconic comic book antagonists (Joker, Riddler, Penguin, Catwoman etc).

The many, wildly popular, comic book continuations of the show have shown that with the right writers and characters, Batman '66 could have run and run.

Batman '66 #1 from 2013

This isn't to say, however, that the TV show was ever less than perfect Saturday morning entertainment.

No matter what silliness was unfolding onscreen, you could always guarantee that Adam West's Batman would take their circumstances seriously... and always have exactly the right Bat-doohickey in his utility belt to help him, Robin, Batgirl, and Alfred (Alan Napier) out of any sticky situation.

But Batman isn't the only vintage show I've watched from start-to-finish in the last couple of years.

I started with all the available episodes of Dad's Army, being shown on U&Gold.

This has always been a very special show to me (and warranted its own article here), because of its connections to my dad.

Then, thanks to Legend, showing four episodes each weekend, I saw every episode of the original Twilight Zone.

Most recently, thanks to the BBC, I watched the entirely of the sublime I, Claudius from the 1970s. I remember watching some of the episodes when I was a child and some, much later, when I was in hospital recovering from my aneurysm. But I'd never seen the entire show from start-to-finish before.

The thing is I have Blu-Rays of the complete runs of both Batman and the Twilight Zone, but it felt somehow more 'authentic' to watch them weekly as new episodes were released on standard definition channels.

I'm also a great believer in the concept of "appointment television". I've a ton of shows on Netflix (where all the episodes drop at once) that I've started, but then felt no incentive to push on with.

However, knowing I'll have to wait a week for a new episode keeps the flame of enthusiasm lit.

Of course, I do binge shows. I'm not a luddite. But weekly shows are still my preferred form of delivery. Because I'm that old.

It did strike me that there was possibly something a tad morbid about this particular project of mine: ensuring I'd seen every episode of select great shows before I pop my clogs.

But I can assure you my motives are a lot more positive. There's so much great television being made all the time that it's easy to overlook the classics of old in the rush to embrace the new.

This is especially true for shows that - over the years - I've dipped in and out of, rather than watching religiously.

With my increasingly unreliable memory, I want to make sure I'm not missing great television from earlier decades while consuming the current crop of high calibre entertainment.

I'm now contemplating what show I might tackle next.

The original run of Star Trek is definitely a contender, although that will be a binge rather than appointment viewing as it's on Paramount Plus these days.

It's actually being shown on Legend as well, but that channel is in the middle of the second season and I don't want to have to wait for them to get round to the start of season one again if I'm going to go "where no man has gone before" as soon as possible.

Will I be boldly going from start to finish on the Final Frontier next?

Cult Sci-Fi Movies About Unique and Violent Sports

Another fantastic list from Luminism that speaks to the gamer in me.

For years, in my 20s, I was trying to mentally codify the rules of the game in Salute of The Jugger (a truly awesome movie) with the aim of translating it into some useable gaming format. I never realised - until I saw this video - that it had actually become a real sport!

That revelation has inspired me to revisit my old project  at some point (starting again from scratch and studying the rules used by the 'real players').

I also remember that, as a wee kid, I wrote up a lengthy, and bloody, car racing game inspired by a combination of Death Race 2000 (no idea how I'd seen it at that age) and attending stock car racing on a farm near the village where I grew up.

I seem to recall that when I tried playing this game - as written - it was near impossible to complete a single circuit without flipping your car, driving off the track, or just exploding!

Andrew Garfield Introduces The Uprising

Despite erroneous rumours The Uprising is not an "origin" story for Robin Hood. The star himself, Andrew Garfield, clearly states in the featurette above that it's about the 1381 Peasants' Revolt.

Robin Hood was already an existing myth at this point in history, but - of course - may have been reshaped by the events of the genuine historical Peasants' Revolt.

Neagley's Nearly Here

THROWBACK THURSDAY: FrightFest 2010

Last weekend was this year's FrightFest horror film festival in London, which reminded me that Paul and I had attended the event back in 2010.

Of our day out and the two films we saw, I wrote the following at the time:

On Monday (August 30, 2010) Paul and I met up in Leicester Square, London, to attend our first FrightFest - having booked tickets for a couple of world premiers, namely Jake West's documentary Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship and Videotape and the Ford brothers' The Dead, a zombie film set in contemporary Africa.

The atmosphere at FrightFest was incredible, and so friendly, with celebs, directors, critics and sundry other 'faces' just breezing through the crowds of fans and mingling like they were old drinking buddies (which they quite well could have been).

The venue, The Empire Leicester Square, itself - which I hadn't been to since I blagged tickets for Nick and I to attend the premier of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (back when I was a working stiff) - is about as far from "fleapit" as a cinema can get.

Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship and Videotape was a superb documentary; incisive, balanced and very well researched.

It also made a hero of Professor Martin Barker (who was present for a Q&A after the screening with several other luminaries) to everyone in the auditorium, and no doubt anyone who sees this documentary.

He was the one man brave enough to challenge the right-wing Thatcher government of the 1980's on the fraudulent statistics it was using to drive its draconian censorship measures through parliament - on a tidal wave of Daily Mail-fuelled ignorance and bile.

The film is packed full of fascinating gems such as the figures of authority unable to distinguish between reality and fiction and self-appointed moral campaigner Mary Whitehouse's nonsensical assertions that she didn't need to see films to know whether they should be banned or not.

Then there was the incredible double-standards of certain bodies (e.g. senior police officers, politicians etc) that declared while they were able to watch these films without being corrupted others (by which they usually meant "the lower classes") shouldn't be exposed to this as it would lead to the collapse of British society.

Or the case that when children were interviewed about whether they had actually seen any of these so-called 'video nasties' they were claiming to have seen films that didn't even exist!

Much was made of the lurid publicity that the small video companies used to promote their wares - almost always far exceeding the actual content of the movie concerned - and the psychological impact of the graininess of video tape that does actually add an air of 'sleazy reality' to whatever is on display.

Certainly Jake West's finest work to date, and with just enough clips from the films under discussion for most discerning viewers to realise the majority were pretty awful anyway and that - surprise, surprise - the moral majority didn't have a leg to stand on.

The Dead, on the other hand, was a major disappointment. A "dead loss", one might say.

Beautifully shot on location in the wilds of Africa, The Dead tells of the only white survivor of the last post-zompocalypse evacuation from the continent, after his plane crashes off the coast.

Rob Freeman is Lt Brian Murphy, a military engineer, who finds himself stranded in the wilderness, constantly dodging the slow, ambling, Romero-style zombies.

Eventually he teams up with Sgt Daniel Dembele (Prince David Ose), an AWOL local soldier trying to find his missing son.

Beyond the road movie/journey premise of the story, The Dead brings nothing new to the genre and every time it looks as though something interesting might happen it gets thrown away in the next scene.

Two howling - spoilerific - examples spring to mind: at one point Lt Murphy is handed a baby by a dying woman and you think: "oh my God, how's he going to cope in a world overrun with zombies, with a newborn to care for as well?" The next scene he's meeting some refugees in a lorry and handing the baby off to them.

Then a little later, Murphy's asleep in a tree (a course of action maybe he should have considered earlier in the film, given what happens to him and Dembele at one point when they make camp) and his gun slips out of his hand to the ground. And there's a zombie walking past! Obviously zombies can't climb trees, but what exciting thing is going to happen?

Cut to next scene, it's morning, the zombie's wandered off long ago and Murphy climbs down and picks up his gun.

The only moment in the film that got any reaction from the audience was, quite early on, when Murphy drives his rusty old car over the head of a zombie causing it to pop like an overripe zit. That was met with much applauding and howls of laughter.

I'm easily satisfied by straight-forward zombie films, I'm not expecting great innovations every time, but The Dead is just dull, with its few shocks well telegraphed ahead of time.

It also suffered from strange jumps in editing that compacted some sequences you thought should have been longer and at other times drew out moments that could have been dismissed in a single beat.

You couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for directors Howard and Jon Ford, who told the audience beforehand how they'd put 20 years into the film and risked life and limb filming in such a dangerous area.

I just can't see this movie attracting even a cult following.

Are You Ready For A Resident Reboot?

From the mind of visionary filmmaker Zach Cregger (Weapons, Barbarian) comes a thrilling — and terrifying — reinvention of the Resident Evil franchise.

In an all-new story, Resident Evil follows Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier who unwittingly finds himself in an action-packed, non-stop race for survival as one fateful, horrifying night collapses around him in chaos.

From Columbia Pictures and Constantin Film, in association with TriStar Pictures, Resident Evil hits theatres September 18.

OUTGUNNED? No! Out Diced!!!

My newly arrived dice pool for Pete's OUTGUNNED Adventures campaign

Any excuse to buy more dice, right?

A contributing factor to my analysis paralysis the other day, when faced with a wall of beautiful new dice, was that I knew I'd already ordered nine "red blood splatter" d6s from the Dice Shop and they were on the way.

These have a specific gaming purpose. 

As I've made clear several times on this blog, one of the major issues I have with "dice pool mechanics" in roleplaying games is that they slow everything down when you're counting or collating or whatever you have to do with them.

Therefore I'm generally a fan of a single or double dice roll where you just look at the resulting number and "wallop" you've got your result.

The Tuesday Knights' current campaign is OUTGUNNED Adventures from Italy's Two Little Mice, which runs purely on dice pools. 

In recent sessions I realised - just after everyone else - that I was having issues with the "pips" on my six-siders and wasn't exactly as quick as I would have liked at picking out dice with identical numbers of spots on their top face.

Thus, it struck me that I needed dice with actual numbers written on them rather than spots. I had odd six-siders with numbers in my collection, but I really wanted a unified set of nine dice (the maximum size for a pool in OUTGUNNED).

Hence, my Dice Shop order.

I felt the blood splatter was appropriate as there does seem to be a lot of violence in our campaign.

Photo Guide To Military Odyssey

Our favourite living history display of the day

On Bank Holiday Monday, Rachel, Alice and I attended Military Odyssey at the Kent County Showground, as we usually do.

Once again I had the benefit of a hired mobility scooter to get around (often with Alice riding in my lap) but poor Rach put in thousands of steps keeping up with us.

As ever, the show was a magnificent blend of historical periods, from the ancients to modern warfare (although with the ever-present bias towards the Second World War), represented by talented and knowledgeable reenactors, all more than happy to talk about their area of expertise.

In our enthusiasm to get there we'd forgotten that Alice absolutely hates the (near-constant) sound of gunfire at the event, so we've assured her that if we come back next year she can spend the day with Rachel's parents - which she would much prefer.

She was only really settled when we popped into covered café area for dinner, where there was old time music and dancing going on.

Our "small" selection of pictures can't do the event justice, and don't even include the many, many stalls selling militaria, action figures, army surplus, antique swords and guns, books, artwork etc

ANCIENTS

JAPANESE DRUMMING & WEAPONS

ALL-IMPORTANT ICE CREAM BREAK

LUNCHBREAK

Sadly, the only time of the day when Alice wasn't stressing out 

OUR FAVOURITE DISPLAY

The display by Hell-and-Back was so impressive, a Second World War medical unit had taken over a crumbling, derelict building. The delightful man - who could have stepped out of the pages of a vintage war comic - that we spoke to, for ages, explained how it was all assembled from flatpack and scavenged items. And we talked about dogs (of course).

OTHER WORLD WAR II DISPLAYS

EMOTIONAL SUPPORT GEESE

Because why wouldn't you? 

Rachel says I can't have an emotional support goose

MISCELLANEOUS

Alice was confused by the tiny people in tanks

THE OLD WEST

PURCHASES

Three sale purchases covering a good spectrum of my interests