MUSICAL MONDAY: Lulu (Ying & Legendav)

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

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

"We Are Gathered Here Today To Geek Out!"

Me with The Real Kent Ghostbusters at Geek Mania in Tonbridge

Today Rachel and I attended the first Geek Mania show (convention? gathering?) at the Angel Centre, Tonbridge, and it was magnificent.

There were stalls selling books, games, artwork, badges, dice, LARPing gear, and trading cards (so many cards), as well as participation tables for 5e Dungeons & Dragons, various shades of Warhammer, card games (so many cards), Beyblades, figure painting, a lightsaber training academy, and probably other things I missed.

A selection of the amazing props brought along by The Real Kent Ghostbusters

Rachel and I posing with Slimer

I'd really hoped to get Rachel into an "introduction to Dungeons & Dragons" session, but we were there around 11.30 and the tables had proved so popular that the first available slot was 2.30pm... and it was unlikely we'd still be around then (as I have limited reserves of stamina).

The participation tables were packed from the moment we arrived, and just got busier

These were the lightsaber tutors, but they mainly ran classes for younglings through the day

The vibe of the whole show was very welcoming and everyone we spoke to was incredibly friendly, delighted we were there, and happy to talk about whatever geeky niche was their forte.

There were cosplayers - always happy to pose for pictures - and LARPers, with a vast selection of costumes, masks, and boffer weapons for sale. 

I achieved a lifelong ambition and purchased my first pair of elf ears! 

Incredible array of costuming and weaponry from Gem's Trading Company 

"You've made an old man very happy," I told the lady who sold me these ears!!!

I strongly suspect I was one of - if not the - oldest people there (knocking on the door to sixty this year), but it didn't matter. There was a youthful, positive atmosphere that I hope translated into cash in the pockets of the organisers so that this will become a regular event.

Geek Mania was the brainchild of Planet JJs Geekery, which, in very real terms, is close to being at the bottom of our road (although too far for me to walk there and back, sadly).

I really must try and get signed up for regular RPG events at the store, which I have to confess we've only actually been in once. Rachel is supportively offering to be my taxi to and from the store if I join their "club".

I also believe that Geek Mania being organised locally is a massive plus for the future of the show, as there's an automatic community investment here.

Either side of the Pandemic, there were several attempts to make "comic-cons" a thing at the Angel Centre, but they never really took off.

Run by travelling groups who organise such events around the country, there was no great incentive to come back if they didn't rake in the cash they had been hoping for at the first attempt.

That said, Geek Mania was definitely busier than any of the "comic-cons" I've attended at the Angel Centre over the years.

Overall, Rachel and I stayed for about an hour-and-a-half, which wasn't too bad by my usual variable health standards, only having to have a single sit down and cookie break.

Even though Pokémon is an alien language to me and seemed to dominate every other stall, I still managed to pick up some mighty treasures (as well as my ears) from the traders:

My Geek Mania haul

My first purchase of the day was a He-Man Funko Pop (because, like dice, you can never have too many Pops). Sadly, they were all out of Frieren-related Pops.

I was excited to find a couple of boxes of old 60s/70s pulp sci-fi anthology magazines on the floor of a bookseller's stall.

She very kindly picked them up and put them on the table so I could sort through them properly.

My main guiding principle here was looking for authors that Michael K Vaughan had mentioned on his Booktube channel, so that it appeared as though I knew what I was doing.

And finally I bought a cute little pocket zine from local artist Katherine Burgess, whose style and obvious talent made me wish I was producing a game - or a supplement - so I could hire her to illustrate it.

"Tonbridge. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."

A Tale of Two Tales of An Ancient Empire

TALE ONE: It took director Albert Pyun almost 30 years to bring us a sequel to the much-loved, pulpy magnificence of The Sword And The Sorcerer - but sadly 2010's Tales Of An Ancient Empire wasn't worth the wait.

I'll confess that I feel slightly guilty about this upcoming savaging of a movie I should have loved.

However, the first thing you should know about Tales Of An Ancient Empire is that it isn't even a complete movie - it only lasts about 65 minutes then there's a trailer for the sequel Red Moon (which, sadly, never saw the light of day as far as I am aware).

Rather bizarrely scenes from this trailer have been used in the artwork on the back of the DVD case... even though technically they don't occur in this movie!

The basic premise isn't actually too bad. Tanis (Melissa Ordway), the daughter of Talon (Lee Horsley), hero of The Sword And The Sorcerer, is charged by her half-sister princess to track down her father and liberate the kingdom from the grip of newly-risen vampire queen Xia (Whitney Able, hilariously incomprehensible due to her over-sized fake fangs).

Along the way Tanis teams up with a string of other rogues who all happen to be children of Talon - including an oddly camp Kevin Sorbo.

Horsley only truly appears on screen for a single scene - but he steals the show in that one performance - while the cloaked figure we see later, wielding the famous three-bladed sword, may - or not - actually be Horsley as we never see his face.

Right from the off, Tales Of An Ancient Empire is victim to a series of strange and misjudged decisions: background information is imparted through on-screen text that disappears too quickly, the story is broken up into pointless, titled chapters (one lasts the length of time it takes two characters to walk down a hall, while another lasts for the entire third act) and there is much mumbled delivery, often in thick accents, by large portions of the cast.

On top of that there are just too many characters, several of whom look very similar, to keep track of and Pyun's heavy reliance on montage and flashback just confuses things further.

Improvements in special effects technology over the last three decades seem to have passed this production by. While the monsters (all vampires) are good and the smaller atmospheric effects work fine, the exterior of the main palace at night and a sailing ship that Tanis heads off on both looked like unfinished previsualization tests and a lot of the basic green-screening is very obvious.

Most of the film's production faults could have been overlooked if there had been a satisfying conclusion to the story (or any sort of conclusion, really) but to just stop when it did and then taunt us with a tease of better looking scenes was just cruel.

I so wanted to love this film, as I do the original, and I really like the idea of a party of adventures composed of half-brothers and half-sisters, but annoyingly this was a half-movie.

TALE TWO: Following my disappointment with Tales Of An Ancient Empire (expressed, pretty much as above, on a different, earlier blog) I was contacted by director Albert Pyun (yeah, I know! The power of the Internet, eh?) who explained that the version I had seen was a "rough early cut" that was released "without [his] okay".

And then, proving what a cool director he was, Albert (emailing from the set of Red Moon, the sequel to/continuation of Tales Of An Ancient Empire) allowed me a sneak peak at the first 18 minutes of the official, final cut and mix of the movie.

The first thing that strikes you is that the expositional text and chapter headings have gone, replaced by an on-screen, talking head narrator - Hekate (Cazzy Golomb).

If nothing else, this adds a degree of "Know, O Prince," Conan-style gravitas to proceedings and, unlike the chapter headings from my DVD, Hekate only pops up a couple of times during this first 18-minutes.

With less exposition, the story is allowed to unfold at its own pace, which cuts out a lot of the narrative repetition of the previous version, diving straight into the first meeting between Princess Tanis (Melissa Ordway) and her roguish half-brother Aedan (Kevin Sorbo) after the initial introduction of the arch villainess, the vampire queen Xia (Whitney Able).

The stunning Victoria Maurette as Kara

Melissa Ordway as Princess Tanis and Lee Horsley as Talon

The attack on the palace is then told in flashback and this helps to make it clear what is going on.

I was even, this time around, able to pick up on the fact that Tanis is the (adopted) daughter of the king that Talon (Lee Horsley) is riding off to save at the end of The Sword And The Sorcerer.

As well as the CGI shortcomings of the original, reviewed, version of Tales Of An Ancient Empire now being fixed, it's subtle differences that make all the difference in the director's cut (well, the 18 minutes I saw anyway). 

These give me hope that the finished product would have more likely been on a par with The Sword and The Sorcerer.

New and Upcoming Western Movies and TV Shows

There's a lot of optimism (wishful thinking?) in Just Westerns':

"...preview of 40 new upcoming Western films and TV shows heading are way in 2026 and beyond, including Young Guns 3, Lonesome Dove remake, Blood Meridian, A Fistful Of Dollars remake, Horizon: Chapter 2, The Dark Tower TV Show, Butch & Sundance, Flint, The Magnificent Seven TV Show, Wind River 2 and many more, as well as new Westerns starring Tim Blake Nelson, Kevin Costner, Scott Eastwood, Kiefer Sutherland, Wes Studi, Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Pine."

For my personal tastes there are a few too many "neo-Westerns" here (although I love Yellowstone... and there's an abundance of Yellowstone-adjacent projects on this list) and, maybe, not enough classic, period Westerns.

REVIEW: The Rocketeer - The Island #1 (IDW)

I'm not going to bury the lede here: this latest comic book adventure for The Rocketeer features a young Tintin and a surly Popeye. The former revelation sold me on the comic without knowing anything more, while the latter was just the cherry on the cake.

Set in 1938, The Rocketeer: The Island #1 sees Cliff Secord hired by a shady government operative to lead a hunt for the lost aviatrix Amelia Earhart, who may - or may not - have been spying on the pre-war Japanese military build-up.

Tintin & Snowy

Cliff, his buddy Goose and mechanic Peevy, end up on a boat heading towards the Caroline Islands in The Pacific, under the stewardship of Captain "Popeye" Segar, along with the team's researcher Justin 'Tintin' Martin, his pet dog Snowy, archaeologist Alexandra Payne, Cliff's estranged former girlfriend Betty and her new beau Marco.

I'll admit, at this stage, I'm not 100 per cent sure how Betty and Marco ended up on Popeye's ship as well, but I'm also not that bothered as the pulp adventure is already in full swing. 

After the set-up and cast introductions, the balance of the comic is the nautical journey.

This eventually guides the ship into a tropical storm that takes out the communications and damages the attached seaplane meant to transport those in the party without ready access to a rocketpack.

Tintin has already confided in Secord a story he's heard of an "uncharted island untouched by time... filled with prehistoric wonders and beasts so bizarre they boggle the imagination." But Cliff isn't buying any of it.

As they approach the area where Earhart is thought to have vanished, Secord dons his iconic flying gear and jets off to scope out what's ahead.

Maybe Tintin's story wasn't that fanciful after all?

"I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam,"

Based on an unused story idea from The Rocketeer's late creator Dave Stevens, The Rocketeer: The Island just oozes pulp sensibilities from every page, with its comic character cameos and very strong suggestion that they're heading to The Skull Island, just ramping up the nostalgic excitement.

Kudos to writer John Layman for his intelligent handling of these characters that he clearly has a lot of affection for, while Jacob Edgars' delightful, cartoonish art style also accentuates the devil-may-care ambience that pervades this comic book.

I don't think we'll be getting anything particularly deep here, instead The Island miniseries looks like it's going to be old school fun, fun, fun for its entire three-issue run.

There's also a strong suggestion that King Kong himself will also appear!

It's almost as though this comic book was being written just for me.

Bloodrayne (2005)

After I was pleasantly surprised by the general enjoyability of In The Name Of The King - A Dungeon Siege Tale, I thought I'd brave another of Uwe Boll's infamous video game adaptations to see if I could scrape up some more morsels for recycling into Dungeons & Dragons inspiration.

I went for BloodRayne as it featured vampires, swords and the mega-hotness of Kristanna 'Terminator 3' Loken in the lead role.

Some films are renowned for being 'so bad' they are 'good' - BloodRayne isn't one of them.

Loken is Rayne, a half-human/half-vampire sired by Ben Kingsley's Kagan, lord of all vampires.

Escaping from the circus that was somehow holding her as a performing freak, she is tracked down by a band of vampire hunters - Vladimir (Michael Madsen), Sebastian (Matt Davis) and Katarin (Michelle Rodriguez).

Despite being members of a vampire hunting order called The Brimstone Society (in fact Vlaidmir might be the leader, it's never really made clear), they team up with Rayne and go looking for some payback against Kagan.

There are some powerful vampire relics thrown in as a scavenger hunt (although why the humans holding them didn't just destroy them is, again, never explained) and a slightly-confusing sub-plot with rebellious vampire Billy Zane, who also happens to be Katarin's father (I think).

Zane only appears in two scenes, but they are certainly the funniest - and not just because of the awful wig he is wearing.

Meanwhile Rayne is training with the Brimstone Society in their top secret island lair and has a random sex moment with Sebastian - who seems as shocked as the audience, as none of us had seen that coming.

All this nonsense is supposedly taking place in 18th Century Romania, but it could be Greyhawk, Ravenloft or countless other pseudo-medieval Dungeons & Dragons realms for all the verisimilitude or attention to detail.

The plot stumbles towards a final confrontation between father and daughter, in which we quickly realise that a lot of the brouhaha around the relics was just a red herring and finally Loken shows us some half-decent fight moves (having looked rather uncomfortable up until this point).

Lifeless fight sequences, uninspired performances and a confusing - possibly incomplete - storyline, can be blamed on the director.

However, Mr Boll can't be blamed for everything: Guinevere Turner's script has more info dumps of exposition than actual dialogue, for instance. When actual dialogue is allowed to sneak in - barring Billy Zane's couple of deadpan comedy zingers - it is of the lowest calibre, not helped by the top-flight stars delivering their lines in varying degrees of mumbling or monotone.

The only role-playing game moment that is possibly salvageable from all this is the near-Total Party Kill the script delivers quite spectacularly at its climax. 

However, BloodRayne doesn't so much end as just run out of script with a blank-faced Loken slumping down into her father's throne and staring forlornly into the camera.

You Know What Your D&D Games Need? Deathstalker!

Although the Kickstarter-funded reimagining of/sequel to the original - and infamous - swords-and-sleaze classic Deathstalker has yet to materialise on these shores, my old pal Pun (of Halls of the Nephilim) stumbled over a fresh treat on DriveThruRPG.

It's a free, official, 18-page PDF called the Deathstalker D&D 5e Compendium, and describes itself as follows:

Bring the world of Deathstalker into your Dungeons & Dragons 5e games with this guide from Shout! Studios and ProgCore Fantasy. Featuring full D&D5e stats for 12 of Deathstalker's deadly adversaries and two powerful magical artifacts, all straight from the new Deathstalker film by Steven Kostanski.

This compendium is produced by the ProgCore Fantasy team for Shout! Studios, and is offered FREE in conjunction with the February 17 2026 Blu-ray release of Deathstalker.

Fearing spoilers, as is my wont, I've only skimmed the booklet. I was impressed by the variety of creatures on display, but I noticed a couple of things in particular that piqued my interest:

Firstly, Deathstalker seems to have had a real human man name before he was Deathstalker, which, to me, rather demystifies the character and fails to understand the central joke at the heart of the original quartet of low-budget movies.

Secondly, one of the magical items is a multi-bladed sword called Light of Talon. Is this iteration of Deathstalker also the long-awaited sequel to Albert Pyun's The Sword and The Sorcerer? Does this signal the establishment of a Deathstalker'verse???

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Albert Pyun

Back in 2022 we lost the B-movie maven Albert Pyun.

He'd hit the ground running in 1982 with his first movie, The Sword and The Sorcerer - which gave us the legendary blade-firing Tri-Sword.

And it was through this movie, which I wrote about on a previous blog back in 2011, that he achieved a god-like status in my eyes when he made contact with me via the comments section of that post.

My write-up had concluded with a trailer for Tales of An Ancient Empire,  the long-awaited sequel to The Sword and The Sorcerer.

It so happened that I had acquired what I thought was an 'official' DVD of that sequel via eBay, but as Albert would go on to explain that was actually an unsanctioned early cut that he was not best pleased to discover was out in the wild.

He sent me a link that allowed me to view the first 18 minutes of the actual cut of Tale of An Ancient Empire... and it was such an improvement on the first version I had seen.

I've always had a preference for sword-and-sorcery B-movies, so my knowledge of the rest of Albert's vast oeuvre was very limited.

IMDB, which has a lengthy biography of Albert, says this of him:

"He is credited with pioneering the cyborg sub-genre and is considered to be a maverick and renegade in independent genre cinema. With over 50 titles to his name, he has enjoyed a prolific career spanning 30+ years and has earned himself a fevered cult following."

I did enjoy his take on Captain America, from 1990.

From our brief interactions well over a decade ago, Albert came across as a genuinely nice, and enthusiastic, film fan and it was his willingness to reach out to me all those years ago that really made an impression.

That he was keen to engage with a random small-time blogger such as I and ensure that I saw, and reacted to, the film as he had actually envisioned it spoke volumes.

Albert Pyun passed away on November 26, 2022, at the age of 69.

Join The Creepers on Their Most Dangerous Expedition

The Creepers are thrill-seeking urban explorers who love pushing things to the edge, and their latest stunt – livestreaming from New Jersey’s abandoned Paragon Hotel – is their biggest yet.

With its mobster past, supposed ghosts, and rumoured stash of $300 million, the Paragon is catnip to the Creepers, a sure-fire way to increase their fanbase.

But fear has other plans. Daring to enter the Paragon, not heeding the warnings, the Creepers fend off deadly rivals while supernatural creatures stalk them from the shadows, testing their endurance, sanity, and willingness to pay fame’s heavy price.

Based on the 2005 book Creepers by David Morrell (the creator of Rambo in his 1972 novel, First Blood), Do Not Enter is directed by renowned music video director Marc Klasfeld and I have to give him major kudos for NOT shooting this movie as "found footage".

This great-looking exploration horror is getting a limited cinema release in the States from March 20.