Deadlands Reincarnated!

Thanks to the combination of Deadlands and eBay the whole "no impulse buys in April" deal isn't going too well.

For a very reasonable price, I just picked up a brand new - still sealed - copy of Deadlands: Night Train, a glorious 25th anniversary box set, celebrating the original Night Train "dime novel" adventure for the first (pre-Savage Worlds) iteration of Deadlands.

It also came with Wendigo Tales, a hardback collection of short stories set in the Deadlands universe, these were the text part of the old "dime novel" series of adventures that Pinnacle published for Classic Deadlands back in the day (when I discovered and fell in love with the setting).

These digest-sized booklets were half-fiction and half-adventure module; Night Train by John Goff was number three in the series.

There were 10 published back in the late 90's, of which I still have four or five, including Night Train.

Me with my original copy of Night Train

The 25th anniversary box set, released a year or so ago, is a treasure trove of gamesmaster/player aids, as well as including a rewrite of the old adventure for use with Savage Worlds (and a couple of new, related, adventures).

We have battle mats, cardboard pawns (complete with stands; an economic alternative/addition to 28mm figures), prop toe tags to mark player-character deaths, a themed 'Wild die', cards, and wanted posters.

I haven't even gotten round to opening up these items, but am already excited that as well as the solid card pawns of monsters and non-player characters there's also tiles for the interior of the central locomotive and its cars. That's definitely something that can find a bonus use in Dead Man's Hand skirmish scenarios.

The Shed (2019)

Having been attacked in the woods by a Nosferatu-like vampire (Damian Norfleet), hunter Joe Bane (Frank Whaley) crawls away to a nearby shed to recuperate... and complete his transformation into a bloodsucker.

The shed stands in the garden of Bane's neighbour, 17-year-old orphan Stan (Jay Jay Warren), who lives with his alcoholic and abusive grandfather, Ellis (Timothy Bottoms).

After the vampire kills Ellis and his dog, Stan realises he can't go to the authorities as his grandfather was the only thing standing between him and another spell in a juvenile detention centre.

Thus, he confides instead in his best friend, Dommer (Cody Kostro).

Unfortunately, Dommer immediately sees the "pet monster" as a weapon to strike back at the school bullies, Marble (Chris Petrovski) and his cronies, Pitt (Francisco Burgos) and Ozzy (Uly Schlesinger).

Naturally, things don't really go well for anyone, eventually culminating in Stan and his cute ex-girlfriend Roxy (Sofia Happonen) besieged in his house by a small horde of vampires.

Slightly reminiscent of several classic urban vampire flicks, from the original Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie and Fright Night to Near Dark and Salem's Lot, The Shed is an innovative, tight, well-made, well-acted, low-budget, low-key monster movie that, ultimately, doesn't quite live up to its potential.

Jay Jay Warren has a certain Anton Yelchin-like quality about him and together with Sofia Happonen they make for charming, easy-going leads, while Cody Kostro's Dommer, especially when he finally gets one over on Marble and cracks, is superb.

Spanning a three or four day period, the 98-minute movie is well-paced and a believable slice of small town American life in a community where everybody knows everybody.

However, a couple of things stand in the way of The Shed being a truly great horror flick.

The first is that, for a film that isn't a Nightmare on Elm Street, it spends far too long in Stan's dreamscape, unless this is somehow connected to a previously unknown power of the vampire. Sadly, this is never explained.

Secondly, the abrupt ending feels like writer/director Frank Sabatella just suddenly ran out of ideas (or money?) and called a halt.

Too many questions, many of them practical and grounded in the real world, are left unanswered.

And there's the obvious Chekhov's Gun of Deputy Haiser (Mu-Shaka Benson), introduced early on and clearly having a grudge against Stan, who then never appears again, even after his boss, Sheriff Dorney (Siobhan Fallon Hogan) fails to return from a routine call-out.

It feels as though The Shed could have done with, at least, five or 10 more minutes of run time to wrap up its many dangling plot threats.

Shadow Of The Vampire (2000)

The darkly humourous Shadow Of The Vampire is the perfect companion piece for Nosferatu. Its canny conceit is that the dangerously eccentric and driven director Frederich Wilhelm Murnau (John Malkovich) has made a devilish pact with a real vampire (an almost unrecognisable Willem Dafoe) to play the role of Count Orlok in his film, Nosferatu.

His payment? The chance to feed on the lead actress, Greta Schroeder (Catherine McCormack) during the climax of the movie.

Unfortunately for Murnau, things don't run smoothly as 'Max Schreck' aka Count Orlok starts killing off his crew.

Having been told that the actor 'Max Shreck' is a deep method actor, who always stays in character as the vampire, the cast and crew of Nosfesatu quickly find their location shoot in Czechoslovakia is anything but routine.

Suspicions arise, and producer Albin Grau (Udo Kier) and cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner (Cary Elwes) conspire to unmask 'Shreck' and end his reign of terror.

Shadow Of The Vampire's (totally bogus) 'secret history' of the making of Nosferatu borders on slapstick with much of its camp delivery.

However, it then manages to slickly change gears for powerful moments such as Orlok's discussion of the inherent sadness of Bram Stoker's portrayal of Dracula (in the novel that Murnau couldn't get permission to officially adapt).

Watching the two films back-to-back allowed me to mentally place the scenes being created for Shadow's movie-within-the-movie in the real movie, but also - especially during the multiple murders in the final scene - to realise where it deviated dramatically from the actual Nosferatu.

As well as an amusing vampire film in its own right, Steven Katz's script - under the guidance of director E. Elias Merhige - gives us a fascinating insight into not only the silent movie making processes of the 1920s but also the lengths an 'inspired' director will go to to craft his masterpiece.

Ultimately Murnau is driven insane by the process and is willing to allow people to literally die, on camera, for his art (even as he is creating the first snuff movie).

Nosferatu - A Symphony Of Horror (1922)

The first, albeit unofficial, cinematic adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu takes the novel's core elements, gives the characters new names, and delivers a chilling and iconic vampire tale.

Told in five delineated acts, the striking images we know so well come, primarily, from the climax of the movie when Count Orlok (Max Schreck) arrives, by boat, in the German city of Wisborg and stalks the maiden Ellen (Greta Schröder).

She's the wife of real-estate agent Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim), who traveled to Transylvania, at the behest of his increasingly insane boss, Knock (Alexander Granach), to negotiate the purchase of a property in the city for the enigmatic Count Orlok... who happens to be a vampire.

Orlok spies a picture of Ellen in a locket of Hutter's and immediately knows where he's dining once he arrives to take up residence in Wisborg.

As a film that's almost a hundred years old, Nosferatu has a very different narrative structure to that which we are used to today. For instance, Hutter - the protagonist - has no involvement in Orlok's eventual demise, this is all down to Ellen, who takes it upon herself to act as bait for the vampire.

Nosferatu is a silent foreign-language film, meaning the intertitles (the cards that appear onscreen, between live-action shots, with dialogue or narrative) are written in German, with English sub-titles.

However, the result of this is that sometimes, when the intertitles contain a lot of text, the sub-titles clash with the text underneath, which is somewhat annoying.

I know the restoration of this movie for the Blu-Ray was striving for authenticity, but perhaps an option to view the film with English intertitles might have been an idea.

The print is tinted, alternating between, mainly, yellow and grey, but as far as I could tell there was no pattern, or meaning, to the changes of colour, it just helped make the film's imagery pop a bit more.

Of course, the main draw of Nosferatu is Max Shreck's incredible portrayal of the vampire count. With a single performance he encapsulated, and created, an entirely new vampire sub-species, with its own mannerisms and abilities that are, at once, similar but markedly different to the traditional (Hammer/Universal era) vampires we generally think of today.

Shreck's Orlok is not charming, suave, or romanticised, but an otherworldly beast that happens to have taken a human form. He is the living embodiment of plague - a theme echoed in The Strain television series (and books and comics), whose vampires bear more than a passing resemblance to Orlok.

Graf Orlok - portrayed by Max Schrek

Child's Play (2019)

Single-mum Karen Barclay (Parks and Recreation's Aubrey Plaza) works on the returns desk of ZedMart in Chicago, and brings home a faulty Buddi doll as an early birthday present for her deaf son Andy (Gabriel Bateman).

The Buddi doll is a robotic companion for children, capable of adapting to their owners, syncing with smart technology etc

Only this Buddi, which says it's name is Chucky (voiced by the legend that is Mark Hamill), has issues.

Once it has bonded with Andy, declaring him his new "bets friend", he becomes psychotically protective, taking punitive measures against anyone, or anything, that it feels has slighted Andy.

Written by Tyler Burton Smith and directed by Lars Klevberg, Child's Play is a brilliant, clever, reworking of the original Child's Play from 1988.

Voodoo possession has been replaced by the vengeance of a pissed engineer in a Vietnamese sweat shop/toy factory, and 2019's Child's Play has great fun with the modern penchant for "smart homes", integrated devices etc

Its resemblance to the original is purely superficial, and that's a great thing because this Child's Play is very much its own thing.

Andy even acquires his own, rather Stranger Things-like, gang of amusing and entertaining young friends, who both help and hinder him in his growing troubles with the overly possessive android (perhaps letting Chucky watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 wasn't the best call?).

As bodies start to drop in the neighbourhood, local police detective Mike Norris (Atlanta's Brian Tyree Henry), whose mum, Doreen (Carlease Burke) lives down the hall from Mike and Karen, gets involved.

Matters come to a head at a midnight launch for the Buddi 2 doll at ZedMart, when Mike thinks he has his culprit.

The climax of the movie is a gruesomely over-the-top splash of Grand Guignol, that skirts Saw-sensibilities to lean more into Evil Dead II (but without any supernatural involvement).

A heady blend of suspense, excitement, creative kills, dark humour and a top-notch cast, Child's Play is one of the strongest new mainstream horror flicks I've seen in ages.

While I love the whole voodoo shtick of the original Child's Play franchise, I think rooting the new movie firmly in the realm of modern technology was a stroke of genius.

Not only is there a tongue-in-cheek lesson here about society's rapid embrace of inter-connected technology, but the pathos Mark Hamill brings to Chucky makes the killer doll almost sympathetic.

He's just responding to societal stimuli to do what he thinks is right to look after his "best friend".

But he doesn't know any better. To paraphrase Brian Conley: "It's just a doll!"

Child's Play (1988)

On the run from the police, voodoo-obsessed serial killer Charles Lee Ray (Deadwood's Brad Dourif) ducks into a toy store to hide.

In the ensuing firefight with Detective Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon), Ray is mortally wounded, but before he dies he manages to cast a voodoo spell that transfers his soul into one of the Good Guys' dolls on sale in the store.

The doll eventually ends up in the hands of single mum Karen Barclay (Catherine Hicks) as a present for her six-year-old son, Andy (Alex Vincent).

Little doe Karen realise that the doll is now supernaturally animated, and intent on exacting revenge of those it feels contributed to Charles Lee Ray's death.

When tragedy strikes around Andy no-one believes him that his doll is alive, and he ends up being taken into psychiatric care.

During his campaign of revenge, Chucky - as the doll calls itself - discovers how to transfer his soul back into a human body, which means more trouble for the Barclay household and Detective Norris.

As the first movie in the Child's Play franchise (before the multiple sequels, reboot, TV series etc), the mythology at work here is pretty straight forward, allowing the story room to breathe and develop at a natural pace.

Yet director Tom Holland - who co-wrote the film with John Lafia and Chucky's creator Don Mancini - still keeps things moving at a cracking pace, getting in and out of scenes at just the right moment, without a wasted moment.

Events unfold over a short period of time and in a relatively contained environment (I reckon well over 50 per cent of the movie takes place in the Barclay's Chicago apartment), limiting the number of potential loose ends and plot holes.

As well as the tense horror (home invasion, disbelieving adults etc), there's a definite slice of dark humour (naturally accentuated by the sight of an animated child's toy dropping f-bombs and attacking people) in Child's Play that simultaneously leans into and distracts from the inherent silliness of the premise.

An exciting and engrossing horror flick, Child's Play - unlike some of the '80s horrors I've been revisiting of late, thanks to various streaming services - works as well today as it did when it was first released.

It's clearly a period piece now, but the fashions and lack of mobile devices don't impact the story.

I definitely need to start tracking down the sequels, as I do love a good, rambling, horror franchise (check spoilerific video below for a taste of what's to come).

THROWBACK THURSDAY: En Garde!

That's me on the right, with the white trainers and black trousers

It should surprise no one that I was never a particularly sporty person. Sure I captained one of the football teams at my prep school (but it was like the Fourth XI or something, a sop for those who wanted to play but weren't very good) and I played football and squash at university, but the only sports I truly enjoyed were table tennis and fencing.

Those were my 'thing'. I think, if my aorta hadn't exploded and hospitalised me, I could have been a fairly decent fencer if I'd kept it up.

Although I never competed in any official tournaments, there was this one time when our fencing club traveled to Eastbourne for a friendly match against another club, and that's where these pictures come from.

At one point my coach Maître d’Escrime Christopher Penney said something along the lines of "if you keep practicing you could fence for England one day", but I suspect he was just being polite.

Anyway, it did inspire me to keep going at it regularly until I went off to university. Sadly, although I hoiked my fencing gear all the way to the coast, at that time Bournemouth University didn't have a fencing club.

So my swords gathered dust for three years and by the time I returned to 'real life' I, stupidly, thought I didn't have time for fencing anymore.

PROJECT 60: Work on Dead Man's Hand Has Begun!

Work on my Dead Man's Hand skirmish game has begun.

I have dispatched a number of miniatures to be professionally painted, including a gang of Law Men, some Legends of The West (including The Man with No Name and Jonah Hex), and a selection of appropriate Wargames Illustrated's Giants In Miniature figures (including Django and his coffin, General Custer, and several American Civil War characters).

Oh, and there's a 3D printed figure - from Minijenix - included that's going to be Timmy The Flea, the leader of my homemade outlaw collective, The Hole-in-The-Head Gang.

To that end, I have plans to build six or so other miniatures from the plastic parts that that came in the Dead Man's Hand starter box. I suspect these will take time and a lot of trial and error.

That also means I shall - eventually - be getting round to building and painting the plastic buildings .

It's been years (decades?) since I painted anything, and that was mainly drybrushing scenery pieces (walls, rocks etc).

So, I'll need to invest in some relevant paints and brush up (pun intended) on simple painting techniques for wooden buildings.

Great Escape Games has this introductory video that I shall be watching on repeat until it sinks in.

This later part of the project will come to fruition when the weather gets better and I'm able to spend extended periods of time in our garden room (which has been designated the "craft room") and I can superglue fiddly bits of plastic and my fingers together and splash paint around with merry abandon.

Deadlands Resurrected!

Reminiscing about Deadlands earlier this year reignited my love for this game-changing setting. While I still have a number of my original books (from the pre-Savage Worlds era), I had none of the later Savage Worlds material... until today!

Although April is supposed to be my month of "no impulse purchases" (just a few pre-orders, like yesterday's Al Swearingen book), I couldn't resist this box set when it popped up in one of my eBay saved searches.

Although I've looked at Savage Worlds bits and bobs over the years, I've never really had a handle on the system or even considered presenting it to the Tuesday Knights as an option.

Rather "fortuitously" one of my last 'impulse' purchases, on the final day of March, had been the hardbacked core rule book for the latest iteration of Savage Worlds.

As my superhero campaign with the Tuesday Knights is just taking off, I have no immediate plans to switch horses midstream (let's see how the gang get on fighting villains on the streets of Knight City for a few more 'issues' first), but I'm glad to know I have this hefty Deadlands box set in my collection now.

Fit to bursting with cards, bennies (poker chips that act as "fate tokens"), a new set of dice, a map of the Weird West, ammo counter dials, a hardback setting supplement, and a solid gamesmaster's screen (with an adventure booklet), the Bay trader I purchased this off of hadn't opened any of the contents, so everything was still sealed in plastic.

I love games that go that extra mile and Savage Worlds has always seemed to thrive on its useful, additional widgets (cards, tokens, counters etc) to help gamesmasters and players (gotta love an "ammo counter dial"!).

Honestly, I'm not so into the steampunk of it all at the moment, but Deadlands remains one of the most influential creations in my roleplaying development - even if I've never actually played in the setting or run it - that I'm sure, if nothing else, it can help inform my Dead Man's Hand skirmish gaming plans.