The footage was clear despite the night. A row of streetlamps down the middle of the parking lot threw the concrete plaza into daylight-bright illumination, darkening the shadows beyond it. Even with the back lighting, the figure was clearly visible. And, more importantly as far as Prince Theodosia was concerned, so was its actions.
The digital recording showed a pale form streak across the edge of the parking lot, far faster than any human could run. Its face was a horror show of running sores, mangy patches of hair, and keloid scars. At the end of the lot, it leaped over a parked panel van, clearing it with ease, before vanishing into the shadows.
Prince Theodosia watched as the woman sitting in front of the workstation’s three large monitors rocked the footage backwards and forwards, taking in all the details. She occasionally paused to tap a few keys or move her cursor from one screen to another as she worked one of the apps distributed across them.
“What can you do?” the Prince asked, her eyes not straying from the footage.
“It’s a simple fix. I can run it through so many filters and edits to make the whole thing look like ‘AI slop’ by midnight. By the time I’m done, this will look like something someone cooked up with freeware and too much time on their hands. I’ll post the doctored footage through the normal sock puppet accounts on all the usual socials, and it’ll have 2,000 comments claiming, ‘I could do better f/x on my phone!’ in an hour. It might not fool everyone, but once enough people buy my version as the real one, anyone claiming the original is real will be a laughingstock.”
The Prince nodded. “Excellent. If there’s one thing we can count on the kine for, it’s their predictable tendency to choose their own reality, no matter what the truth is.”
“Archimedes needed a lever. I can move the world with Photoshop,” the woman smiled, tapping a few more keys. “I’ll let you and Kincaid know when it’s live. He should be able to clean up the rest of this Masquerade breach with his usual heavy handed methods.”
The woman paused, still looking at the screens. “I assume the person who recorded this has been silenced?”
“Their new reality is not one they would have chosen. And, barring the Second Coming, permanent”
Prince Theodosia walked out of the room, leaving the woman—one of her more useful ghoul—to finish the job.
[Verse 1] Born under a bad moon Came out with teeth and tail Angry until the tomb Too pissed to ever fail
[Chorus] I’m living rage Relic from a savage age Can’t be calm I can only rage
[Verse 2] My hands tear up the streets Chewing up the city’s bones Blood rain pours down in sheets Night is filled with screams and moans
[Bridge] You say I’m too emotional And I need to play it cool Sounds to me like cowardice Advice spoken by fools Your “future” is bullshit And I’m not going to swallow it I’m going to burn this fucker down So you better fuckin’ deal with it
[Chorus] I’m living rage Relic from a savage age Can’t be calm I can only rage
[Guitar]
[Verse 3] Light my fuse, I’ll explode Shrapnel kisses to the crowd I only know beast mode And mercy’s not allowed
[Chorus] I’m living rage Relic from a savage age Can’t be calm I can only rage
I’m not student of filmmaking. I’ve worked in Hollywood and I’ve seen a lot of movies, many of them bad, but I’ve never taken a course or read a book about the technical aspects of making motion pictures. So when the opening title card on a movie makes me immediately think, “Oh, this is going to be a stinker,” you know it’s bad.
The Tomb (aka La Tomba, if you want to use the original Italian title. Yes folks, this is an Italian cheapie) takes The Mummy and From Dusk Till Dawn and mashes them up with a $1.95 budget. The film concerns a group of American (mostly) archeology students and their professor who head south of the border to embark on a field trip cataloging Mayan sites. When their tour guide goes missing, they’re forced to rely on the local healer to guide them into the jungle. She leads them to a previously undiscovered temple where she secretly hopes to finish a ritual of immortality interrupted centuries ago.
Friends, as I say, I’m not student of move making, but even I know not to use footage from better movies in your stink bomb. Luckily for The Tomb, Italian IP laws being somewhat lax, the films gleefully steals footage from Army of Darkness, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Tomb, plus several more I couldn’t immediately identify but, judging from the competency of how they were shot, were pilfered from superior productions.
The script is no better. We have an honest-to-goodness “Help, I’ve fallen into quicksand!” moment, a “I’ve fallen and dropped my glasses, and I hope nobody steps on them as I flail around looking for them” scene that would make Velma from Scooby Do ashamed, and a trap where if you break the light a sharp implement impales you (minus Alfred Molina).
31 Days of Horror is always about quantity, not quality, but this one was BAD. I’m hoping I’ve hit the nadir early and everything else this month is Citizen Kane in comparison.
Rating: I’m torn. This one really deserves half-a-skull at best, but since I got my laundry done while I watched this one and didn’t entirely waste 97 minutes, I’ll give it a 1 skull out of 5.
After two films that weren’t quite traditional spooky movies, I decided to watch something I was certain would fall into that category. And who doesn’t love a good vengeful ghost story, right? That brings us to Day 3’s film, The Curse of La Llorona.
A CPS case worker in 1973 Los Angeles finds herself and her two children in grave peril when she inadvertently draws the attention of “La Llorona,” the Weeping Woman of Mexican folklore. Can she defeat the spirit before her children pay the final price?
The Curse of Lal Llorona started really strong, immediately showing the audience the events that led to the creation of La Llorona, before leaping forward to the 20th century. We meet our protagonist, Anna (Lind Cardellini), a dedicated Child and Protective Services case worker raising her two children alone after the death of her husband. Anna, trying to be compassionate, unfortunately sets events in motion that lead to the deaths of two of her case’s sons and puts her own family in the sights of La Lorona. Can she undo the curse before it’s too late?
The movie relies heavily on all the haunted house/ghost tropes and cliches you’d expect. Despite this, some still remain effective and a few good jump scares happen early on. Unfortunately, after about 30 minutes, the movie becomes a cookie cutter ghost film, indistinguishable from any other made in the last 20 years.
Of course, with La Llorona as our villain, a spirit who drowns children, there’s no shortage of water throughout the film, be it bathtubs, the Los Angeles River, swimming pools, even puddles. I couldn’t help but think of Lisa Simpson’s critique of the TV show “Kightboat”: “There is always an inlet, canal or fjord!” I couldn’t help but ponder that maybe the way to break La Llorona’s curse is to move to the desert and just take showers from now on.
Given the movies now put their credits at the end of the film, I was halfway through this one before I discovered it was part of the larger “Wan-O-Verse,” movies directed or produced by James Wan, including The Conjuring films, Annabelle, and The Nun, that share a connected setting. Had I known that, I might have gone in with my expectations a little lower.
Rating: Despite a strong beginning, the movie quickly peters out. Not terrible, but not good enough to earn The Curse of La Llorona 2 skulls out of 5.
His hands move with mechanical precision. Each stroke of the blade along the whetstone makes a scraping sound that electrifies his nerves. Scrrch, scrrch, scrrch, the sound sings to him, a duet of steel and stone.
Good boy.
Outside, the last tinges of red on the horizon, barely visible between the glass towers of the downtown, fade to a purple stain heralding the night. It’s almost time.
Time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
He tests his thumb against the knife’s edge, feeling no pain as it slices into his flesh. A thin line of blood follows in the blade’s wake. His mouth moves into a shape that isn’t a smile. He looks like an animal trying to mimic its master’s grin but failing.
Hide the blade and don the garment.
He rises from the easy chair, slides the knife into its sheath at the small of his back, and walks across the near-empty room. A frame of 2x4s stands at the far end, its base affixed to the floor with bent, brutely hammered nails. He reaches out, pulling the leather shawl from the frame’s hooks. Patches of hair—blonde, brunette, silver-gray—decorate the garment, each carefully stitched to the tanned skin. He drapes the shawl over his shoulders, covering his upper body completely.
Look upon your majesty.
He takes three steps to the old mirror hanging askew on the back of the apartment’s front door. He gazes into its fly-spotted glass and sees a predator, a killer, a hunter dressed in the hides of his kills so that his prey will think he’s one of them. He touches the knife’s handle at his back, caressing it like a lover.
Go now and teach them. Show them that for all their accomplishments, they’re still prey.
He opens the door and vanishes into the dark corridor outside. The door closes slowly behind him, leaving the apartment empty. Empty but not silent. A whisper, like a breath from the grave, slithered through the air.
I go into every movie during 31 Days of Horror with as little foreknowledge of the film as I can manage. This keeps the surprises coming, but sometimes leads to me choosing a movie that doesn’t 100% meet the criteria of a horror flick. Tonight’s film is an example of one. It’s got plenty of violence, some gore, a decent amount of humor, but is short on scares. It’s not a standard horror film, but it sure is fun.
Day 2’s movie was Mayhem, a 2017 film starring Steven Yeun of The Walking Dead fame and Samara Weaving. When a viral outbreak that destroys the infected’s moral inhibitions runs amok in a corporate office building, an unlikely due fights their way to the CEO’s office to address wrong-doings. Mayhem, predictably, ensues.
I was expecting a 31 Days Later type scenario, but the film put a great twist on that premise. The virus is known by the public at large and even led to a precedent-setting court case when a man wasn’t charged for a brutal murder he committed while infected by the contagion. This legal loophole means that if our two heroes (who do engage in some unheroic violence throughout the film) get to the building’s corporate suite on the 8th floor, they have free rein to perpetrate some bloody mayhem on those who did them wrong. With the quarantine set to be lifted after 8 hours—the duration of the infection—the need to enact their vengeance before they lose their proverbial “Get out of Jail Free” card.
Mayhem isn’t going to appeal to your die-hard zombie outbreak fans, but it is incredibly cathartic for anyone who has ever worked in a corporate environment. I could have used this virus back in 2000 when I was working an office in Manhattan.
The film includes some great dialogue (“You think I like the taste of kale? Come on! I’m fucking dead inside.”) and a tremendous amount of violence via office supplies. And from a filmmaking standpoint, a nice bit of cinematic shorthand quickly sums up Derek Cho’s rise up the corporate ladder from his first day until the day of the events of the film.
Rating: While not 100% horror, Mayhem was still fun enough to earn 3 skulls out of 5. Add another half-skull if you’re stuck in corporate hell.
The handcuffs scraped my wrists as I tried to pull free from the iron railing bolted to the edge of the banquet table. The chain links rattled and the cuff slid from side to side along the railing until it was stopped by the bolts drilled into the table’s thick mahogany. I was trapped, only able to move my arms far enough to reach the plate of grotesqueness set before me. Around the table with me sat five other people, each handcuffed like myself. The looks of nausea and misery that marred their faces was reflected in my own.
“Now, now. No getting up from the table without permission,” a rich bass voice chided me from the head of the table. I tried to glare at my captor, but my eyes held more helplessness than malice.
My dinner host laughed, a childlike giggle that sounded inhuman in his deep voice. His ice-blue eyes met mine, staring me down. His glare extinguished the feeble sparks of rebellion I’d kindled in my heart. His eyes were like the talons of a beast that grabbed my soul and twisted. I shrank in my chair, looking away from his pale face, only for my eyes to fall upon the meal laid out before me.
It was a man’s forearm, broiled in an oven and covered with a thick, red sauce. My dinner companions had similar fare placed before them: a woman foot, a child’s leg, a mismatched pair of hands. The odor of dinner was…enticing, God help me. Six days of nothing but rust-tainted water served through the bars of a makeshift cellar prison had sharpened my appetite to a razor-like edge. Despite what my eyes beheld, my nose betrayed me. I felt the saliva pooling in my mouth.
“Thank you for accepting my dinner invitation. I hate to dine alone.” That obscene giggle followed. “We’re going to play a little game tonight. It’s called ‘Whoever Finishes First Gets to Live.’” Our captor, lean like a hungry wolf, steepled his skeleton-thin fingers in front of him as he reclined his the throne-like chair. A killer’s smile graced his face, his inhumanly long incisors revealed by his arching lips.
“Now when I say, ‘Go,’ you all start eating. And when the first person finishes, then it’s my turn to dine.”
This monster in the form of a man rested his hands on the arms of his chair and leaned forward.
“Ready. Set. Go.”
The fast rattle of handcuffs filled the dark dining room as we all reached for our meals.
Yesterday, I used my annual 31 Days of Horror movie marathon as an excuse to start writing regularly again. Going from a freelance writer to a full-time management role took its toll and I’ve not been stringing words together creatively for far too long. But writing is both a muscle to be exercised and a schedule to follow. Without both, the rust sets in and it gets harder to make the words sing on the page. And like going back to the gym, you’ve got to put in the time and suffer some before you get back into shape.
Coincidentally, yesterday the World of Darkness’ “Month of Darkness” list dropped, featuring 31 prompts to stimulate creativity throughout October. Considering my gaming group has just celebrated the 1 Year Anniversary of our 1st edition Vampire: The Masquerade chronicle and I’m looking for writing exercises, I thought, “Why not do that as well?”
The gears are a little rusty, but I’m trying not to be too self-conscience. I’ll remember the process in time, but not without doing the work. And so, here we go.
Day 1: The World You Left Behind
The flames roared as they devoured my home, consuming 15 years of happy memories with gluttonous hunger. Orange and red reflections danced across the windshield of my car idling at the end of the driveway. Even from where I sat inside it, I could feel the blaze’s heat and faintly smell the black smoke rising into the starless night. My home, now a bonfire I set with my own hands, was outside of town and it would be a while before the fire department arrived—assuming someone had called them. I hadn’t.
No, I needed to be sure. I watched the flames lick the sides of the house, its green paint blackening and peeling in the heat. I stared into the heart of the fire, trying to make out any movement in the blaze. Aside from the ravenous flames whirling like efreeti in the night, I saw nothing. But I couldn’t leave until I was certain Linda was dead. Dead for good this time.
No one would believe me if I told them what really happened. How her eyes glowed green like a cat’s in the dark. The stink of the grave that followed her when she walked into our house, our house, an act she shouldn’t be able to do. Linda was dead and buried, my final goodbye spoken to her at her grave side two days ago. But somehow, she came home. Hungry.
Debrief had turned to fear and fear became violence as she lunged for me, grave dirt shaking from her hair. I screamed, half mad, and hit her with the bedside lamp I don’t know how many times. The crunch of the lamp’s thin metal as it struck her head was echoed by the sound of her skull fracturing. One blow, two blows, a dozen more as I struck what had been my wife over and over, screaming at her that she was dead. As if I could convince her this was all a mistake and she needed to go back to Cedarwood Cemetery and not stir again.
In the end, I pinned her—or what was her—to the bathroom door, the mangled lamp rammed through her stomach and into the cheap wood behind her. She still tried to embrace me, her head looking like a mangled machine part pulled from a junk yard, embalming fluid flowing from her wounds. She continued to struggle as I turned on all the burners on the kitchen stove, piled dishtowels atop them, and pouted liquor on the pile. Then I grabbed my car keys and fled out the front door.
That was 45 minutes ago.
I should leave now. Drive away. Back to the town I was born, back to my old college town, back anywhere. The world no longer makes sense, as if I had gone through a looking glass darkly to a place where horror and madness reign.
Today is the 1st of October, meaning it’s once again time for my annual “31 Days of Horror” movie marathon. I’ve been doing this for more than a decade now, having originally started the yearly tradition as a way to trim down my movie watch list and to get caught up on more recent films I missed in the theater. This year, however, I have another purpose for this banquet of cinematic delights: I need to get back on the writing horse. The day job has me doing far more management than creating and it’s beginning to take its toll. What better way to ensure I’m putting words down daily for my own betterment and enjoyment than to pair it with spooky movies and folklore.
My 31 Days of Horror festival has two rules:
I must watch 31 movies before 11:59 PM on Halloween.
They can’t be movies I’ve seen before.
I don’t specifically set out with a particular theme or horror subgenre in mind, but often enough, one materializes by the end of the month. It turned out to be “Dead women in water” last year, for example, so we’ll see what manifests this year.
Day 1 begins with The Sudbury Devil, an independent horror film from 2023. The movie is set in 17th century Massachusetts as a pair of magistrates from Boston travel to investigate possible infernal occurrences in the village of Sudbury. Their inquiry takes the duo, along with a witness to these devilish events, into the woods outside the village. The three men soon find themselves in a place where reality is fluid as they confront witchcraft and devil worship.
I knew within the first few minutes that this was going to be a film with an extremely subjective entertainment factor. The dialogue is period, first off. If you winced at The VVitch, you’re going to find The Sudbury Devil equally grating. Those of us weirdos who love a good period horror movie, however, will find themselves right at home.
As an indie horror, the film faces the usual obstacles such movies must overcome: low budget, small cast, and a limited number of shooting locations. The movie doesn’t quite triumph over those difficulties, but does better than many low-budget films do. Regardless, these factors might inhibit the enjoyment of the film to some.
Further complicating things is the movie’s disinterest in telling a straightforward story. Events occur that are left to the audience to interpret and reality, as noted above, becomes malleable the longer our protagonists (and antagonists) remain in the woods. This element was one of the things I enjoyed most about the film. At times, what might be considered a “folk horror” film strays into cosmic horror. This path invited me to ponder if the supernatural events were truly Satanic in nature or are they cosmic horror viewed through the religious framework of 17th century New England? The filmmaker might not have had that in mind, but art often makes us ask questions or derive interpretations that the artist never intended.
If asked to sum up the film, I’d call The Sudbury Devil the American equivalent of A Field in England, perhaps not as well done. Let that comparison be another warning to those of you with little tolerance for the non-lineal narrative. At one point, The Sudbury Devil even laps itself, repeating previous events with different characters assuming new roles.
Overall, The Sudbury Devil is a solid start for this year’s film extravaganza. It’s not perfect, but much like A Field in England, it deserves a future rewatch to further untangle its skein-like plot.
Rating: 2 skulls out of 5 for the average film-goer, but add half a skull if you’re a period horror weirdo like me.
I previously and somewhat cryptically alluded to the fact that I have Vampire: The Masquerade to thank for my current career. While that is true, my road from picking up that marble & rose cover book in 1991 and cashing my first paycheck as a game designer isn’t a direct one. There were lots of turns, temporary rest stops, and more the a few dead ends. Nevertheless, I could have quite easily found myself in another line of work had it not been for Vampire.
I was a TSR fanboy, having come into the role-playing hobby via D&D like so many others. At the time, roughly between 1980 and 1990, TSR games were the easiest to find in local hobby shops and toy stores. I played D&D, Top Secret, Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Marvel Super Heroes, and even the much maligned The Adventures of Indiana Jones. West End Games’ Star Wars and FASA’s Shadowrun both dropped as I entered my final years of high school and were a nice diversion from D&D, but we always drifted back to rolling d20s and killing monsters.
I graduated high school in 1990 and played in an AD&D campaign during my freshman year. It was fun, but not as fun as it had been in the past. Part of it was being an “adult” and on my own for the first time. There wasn’t a lack of opportunity for entertainment on a weekend or even a weekday night in college (and many of those opportunities also included beer and women), so the dew was off the RPG rose then. And doing anything for a decade is bound to get a little tiresome. I found myself seriously considering dropping RPGs as a hobby and doing something else for fun.
My time at the State University of New York came to an abrupt and unexpected ending in June of 1991. As it turns out, despite the fact I was paying the SUNY system, they still expected you to show up to class once in a while. MY GPA was in the toilet and the university suggested that I try something else—anything else—some place other than there. Much to parents’ dismay, I had been kicked out of college, but it was suggested that if I got my grades up, I could apply for readmission. In September of 1991, I enrolled in the local community college with hopes of returning to the SUNY system for the Spring ’92 semester.
I didn’t do any gaming while at community college, but I did pick up the occasional RPG book or issue of Dragon magazine. Old habits die hard, after all. One of those issues was the November ’91 issue (the same month as my 19th birthday), Dragon #175. That issue featured a Role-playing Reviews covering three horror RPG products: Dark Conspiracy, “Blood Brothers” (for Call of Cthulhu), and some game called Vampire: The Masquerade from a company I’d never heard of before.
I liked a good horror film or book, but I wasn’t particularly enamored of vampires. I had read Interview with a Vampire by then and had seen The Lost Boys and Fright Night, but was far from a fang fan. I was more of a ghost story guy. But, in the review, author Allen Varney summed up his piece with “If you’re up for a potent and even passionate role-playing experience, look for this game.” That stuck with me. Maybe my problem with RPGs was that my tastes had matured and I needed something more than killing orcs and taking their stuff? I promised myself I’d track down Vampire: The Masquerade and see how it delivered a potent and passionate experience.
The problem was I couldn’t find a copy. My friendly local game shop, Man at Arm Hobbies, did have a copy of Nightlife (co-written by Bradley McDevitt whom I now work with at Goodman Games). I liked Nightlife, especially since it was by default set in New York City (right in my backyard) and you could play a ghost (see previous paragraph), but it wasn’t quite what I’d hoped or was looking for.
Somehow, I eventually tracked down a copy of Vampire. It might have been on another trip to Man at Arms or maybe different store. And while I can’t remember where I bought it, I do remember where I read it for the first time. I was sitting in the dining room at my friend Carl’s house, flipping through the book. The opening in-world fiction written to Mina Murray from Dracula opened the floodgates of my imagination. This was something different. But the real moment that changed my life came on p. 36 in the section entitled “Automatic Success.”
In short, Vampire included the mechanic where if the number of dice in your dice pool equals or exceeds the difficulty of the task you need to perform, you automatically succeed. In other words, if the Difficulty is 5 and I have 6 dice in my dice pool, there’s no need to roll. Other RPGs had suggested you don’t need to roll to accomplish easy tasks anyone can do, but this was the first time I’d seen a mechanism that allowed you to succeed on things that might be challenging for the average person.
It’s been 34 years since I read that section and I still remember how much it blew my mind. That was the moment I stopped thinking of myself as a lapsed DM and as a potential Storyteller.
The rulebook only got better as I read it further. As a confirmed punk with music tastes that included Dead Kennedys, The Misfits, Black Flag, The Damned, The Exploited, etc., I found lyrics to songs I knew and loved leading off sections of the book. Hell, the entire milleu of the game was “Gothic-Punk.” It was almost as if these White Wolf folks were cool like me!
The former DuBois Hall where my ongoing Vampire chronicle began.
When January of ’92 rolled around, I’d gotten my GPA up and was welcomed back to SUNY New Paltz. I left all my D&D books at home when I packed for my trip back to the dorms. However, tucked into my back was my copy of Vampire: The Masquerade and a bag of d10s. I had big plans that semester, ones which ultimately led to a Vampire chronicle that lasted for years in different incarnations with different players, a chronicle that began on regular Sunday nights by candlelight in the now-former DuBois Residence Hall.
Vampire kept me in the hobby for another decade and made me rethink what you could do with a tabletop RPG. And while I did drift out of the hobby again for a time in the mid-2000s, the lessons I’d learned from V:tM stayed with me. I never again considered dropping the hobby for good and when I came back in 2008, I found myself on the path to becoming a freelance game designer and writer. Had it not been for discovering Vampire when I did, I know the odds of me returning to the hobby would have been slim and I might not currently have the job I do in the industry. Let’s just say I owe a boon to Vampire, in all its shapes and forms, and it’s a debt I’m happy to oblige.
