horror – Page 11 – PopCult Reviews

Book Update – September/October 2023

Books of Blood Volume 2 by Clive Barker

Because it was October and I enjoyed Books of Blood Volume One so much (I have read it twice), I decided to pick up the following collection by Clive Barker. This one does not have stories as strong as volume one. There are good ones here, but the weaker entries make volume one much more substantial.

“Dread” – This is one of the best and most fully developed stories in the collection. A college student comes under the thrall of a svengali who is fascinated with making people confront what they dread. This has a fantastic conclusion that is vividly rendered by Barker.

PopCult Podcast – The PopCult 2023 Halloween Spooktacular

It’s night of classic tricks & treats as our intrepid hosts dress up and go door to door. It seems like some of what they find is well worth the effort, but other things are getting some houses tp’ed.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Host: Until the Light Takes Us

Host: Until the Light Takes Us (Running from Skeletons)
Written by James Boychuk & Dylan Richardson
You can purchase this game here

Halloween means horror and there is no shortage of scary tabletop RPGs. This one is a very simple story generator centered around the end of the world & visions that predict its coming. I found this very similar to games like Alone Among the Stars where the mechanics simply provide a jumping off point for the player’s own imagination. This is not a game that takes you by the hand and guides your experience. Instead, it demands the player really dig deep and find an interesting story to tell from the inspiration given.

There’s not much more to say about it, so here’s my play through:

Movie Review – [Rec]

[Rec] (2007)
Written by Paco Plaza, Luis A. Berdejo, and Jaume Balagueró
Directed by Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza

If you have read my reviews for a few years, you know I am not a big fan of the found footage subgenre of horror. When Blair Witch came out in 1999, I was a neophyte: a homeschooled little weirdo going into his freshman year at a private Christian college. The Sixth Sense terrified me at the time. However, in the subsequent 20-plus years, I have seen thousands more films and matured in my sensibilities regarding horror. I find films like Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity excruciatingly dull. Part of the found footage concept is that the audience must be convinced of the “reality” of the story, and to do that, you need long periods of boring, mundane scenes. The horror is contained in microchunks or held back until the very end. I’d heard people claim the Spanish language horror film [Rec] was different, that it was good, so I decided to check it out.

Movie Review – Freaks

Freaks (1932)
Written by Willis Goldbeck & Leon Gordon
Directed by Tod Browning

Tod Browning had a solid career as a director in Hollywood during the Silent Era and into the first decade or so of Talkies. He is responsible for a significant first in movies: the first Talkie horror film with Dracula. Based on a popular stage play (which was, in turn, based on Bram Stoker’s novel), Browning kickstarted the age of the Universal Horror Monster with this picture. It also gained him considerable clout and a blank check to make whatever he wanted next. MGM was interested in getting in on the horror game and offered Browning a shot at directing one for them. The filmmaker decided to go with the short story “Spurs” written by Tod Robbins. This film would be considered Browning’s magnum opus & disgusted the studio so thoroughly they cut it down from 90 minutes to 64, and the lost footage was destroyed.

PopCult Podcast – Little Shop of Horrors/The Faculty

We continue our Halloween celebration with two creepy tales of invasions from beyond. In the first, our aliens strike in the form of flesh-eating plants. In the second they take on the role of authority figures in a high school.

Movie Review – The Silence of the Lambs

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Written by Ted Tally
Directed by Jonathan Demme

There are many glaring omissions in my film-viewing life, and this was one of them. I’d seen bits & pieces of The Silence of the Lambs over the years. Channel surfing in my twenties led me to see Clarice & Hannibal’s chats in prison, Mr. Lecter’s fantastic escape, and Clarice’s showdown in the labyrinth of Buffalo Bill. Yet, I had never seen the picture from start to finish while having seen the sequel Hannibal, 1984’s Manhunter, and the second version of that in Red Dragon. I’d also watched the first season of Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal. It seems silly that I’d never managed Lambs in total, so I decided to amend that for the horror season. Was it good? Of course, it was. It was also a reminder of how much this film impacted the crime/thriller genre for the rest of the 1990s and into the 2000s.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Frontier Scum: Lonesome Drifter Part Two

Read Part One of this series.

The story of Hamsor Pang comes to a tragic ending, however we continues things a little further by shifting our perspective to a new protagonist.

(Oracle question: Is the upside-down silver cross worn by the bounty hunter in the cabin? Likely odds. Nat 20. Yes)

Pang takes a breath of the fresh, snowy air outside the mountain cabin. He turns back and looks at the dark mouth of the doorway. He remembers the necklace the bounty hunter wore, the upside cross. Something itches in his brain, that this could be useful to have in his possession. Taking a deep breath, Pang steps back into the abattoir and after a few minutes of searching finds the necklace still hanging from the butchered corpse’s neck. He takes it.

(Luck check DR14 vs. 6, 5. Failure)

Comic Book Review – DC vs. Vampires

DC vs. Vampires Volume One (2022)
Reprints DC vs. Vampires #1-6
Written by James Tynion IV and Matthew Rosenberg
Art by Otto Schmidt, Simone Di Meo, and Daniele Di Meo

DC vs. Vampires Volume Two (2023)
Reprints DC vs. Vampires #7-12
Written by James Tynion IV and Matthew Rosenberg
Art by Otto Schmidt, Francesco Mortarino, and Daniele Di Nuculo

Try as I might, I have never really enjoyed vampires as a horror concept. I’ve watched many vampire films of varying quality; some I have liked, but the vampire aspect isn’t scary. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a wonderfully made film, and Dracula is certainly creepy at moments, but I never felt scared of him. Vampires typically seemed to be used to explore ideas of titillating sexuality, which is fine if you’re into that. I don’t really think most of the classic monsters are all that scary, to be honest. Overexposure has demystified them to the point where they are cartoon characters. So when I picked up this Elseworlds comic series, my expectations were relatively low despite the creative talent behind it.

Movie Review – Psycho II

Psycho II (1983)
Written by Tom Holland
Directed by Richard Franklin

In an era where every mildly successful film is spun out into a franchise, it might not seem strange for there to be a Psycho sequel, let alone three of them plus a shot-by-shot remake, a failed NBC pilot, and a prequel TV series. It should be strange, though. Psycho was such a singular event in American film, one that feels to me that there isn’t more to the story to tell, and I don’t need to know the fate of Norman Bates or how he got the way he is. Alfred Hitchcock is not my favorite director, but I respect the hell out of the boundaries he pushed during the 1960s, inspiring many filmmakers to come. The best way to show appreciation for him would be to make clever films about the human psyche, not regurgitate his established work.