Jacob's Ladder- Knowing When to Say Goodbye

I couldn't find a more fitting movie to end this project. Jacob's Ladder is a brilliant masterpiece about life and death, about the things the wars do to ordinary people, about family. It is a horror movie, it is a drama movie, it is a war movie, and it is a surrealist movie. It is hard to explain exactly what it is, just that it is one of the greatest movies of the nineties, perhaps even one of the greatest movies of all time.

The movie chronicles the life of Jacob, a divorced man, a Dr. of the arts and philosophy, a war veteran who fought in Vietnam. It chronicles the way that his mind, his world, starts to fragment after 2 years of war. From conspiracy to feelings of loss, from love to hippies, this movie has it all.

And (and from now on I'm gonna spoiler) it is also a movie about the need to accept one's end, one's death. In the end of the movie, Jacob accepts that he's gonna die, and just lets it happen, smiling, peaceful.

Campaigns and one-shots are going to end too. And we'll have to accept that, acknowledge that. Everything oughta end. Nothing good lasts forever. And as such is the case, we need to learn to let go, to know when something should end and to ensure that it will end there. Not all games need to last 200 years. Not all games need to last even a full single year. Some need to end after a single session, others after 3 or four. We need to accept that, understand that, not to stretch it more than we should.

Because it is better to let go of things, when they get to their natural ultimate ending than to stretch it any longer and let it disintegrate into no more than a thing that was once epic and now is… not.

Ending things is hard. It is not easy. But living isn't easy either, and we don't give on life because of that. We make the hard choices, we choose to live, and we choose to end our campaigns. We will end them on a high note, sure, but they will end. And we'll know, deep inside our hearts that the stories of those characters have ended. That now we do something else.

Because every ending is a new beginning. When a campaign ends, a new ones starts, filling the place of the earlier one, of the campaign that ended. I don't know if I succeeded expressing what I had to say, what I had in mind. But I do hope that you'll understand and take from it what you want.

Thanks for reading.

Pulse- In Horror, Nothing Really Happens

So… yeah, Pulse was nice. Or at least, it was nice in the beginning. Somewhere after the first 30 minutes or so it just lost its mark, and what followed was a mediocre film. The acting level went down, the dialogues became clanky, the metaphors became way too much for a normal movie. I left the screen disappointed, way too much disappointed.

In short, though, this movie is a metaphor for the way that the internet changed our society, driving us away from each other due to the internet. It is pretty easy to see that by the time we reach the end, the director practically says that the internet will destroy us all in one way or the other. But the ending just feels a little bit over-the-top, and is a little too happy for the tone of the movie up to this point.

But it doesn't mean that there's nothing to learn from this movie. True, it is located in the first 30 minutes of the movie, but this lesson is there nonetheless. In the first 30 minutes of the film, almost nothing happens. And that's one of the most important secrets in the horror genre- nothing really happens, but it is still scary as hell.

The trick for doing it is to say to us quite early that this is a horror movie or game. After stressing that, we're always on the lookout for those horror moments, because we first of all wanna be scared, and second of all we wanna be brave. This combination makes us far more stressful and jumpy in horror films and games.

A great GM can utilize that. After stressing that his is a horror game, and giving something to chew early on, it is only a matter of raising questions in most of the time left for the session. How to do that is what all those other horror posts are for. But firstly one needs to understand that in horror, being gentle and graceful in the use of the tools is the trick. Nothing really happens, or is it? The room is empty, or is it? There are marks on the floor, but do you really wanna know what thing left those marks? Nothing really happened here, but the feeling went out of my keyboard and (hopefully) entered your minds. Because in horror, just like in real life, nothing really happens. We just think that it does. And hope that we are wrong.

How about you? What have you thought about this movie? And what have you learned from it?

28 Days Later- Changing Just a Little Thing

And that's how a masterpiece looks. I guess that I shouldn't have expected any less from the director who made Trainspotting, but you know, when I should give a compliment I will give a compliment. 28 Days Later is our age's Night of the Living Dead, a movie that is so inventive and amazing that everyone tried to copy it, yet it still tops them all.

In short, a group of animal liberation militants free a virus throughout the entirety of Britain, resulting in a zombie apocalypse. The zombies this time are fast, real fast, and scary like they were never before. To that we add the personal horrors of the last act. Oh, and did I mention that it has the same amazing directing touch that Boyle employed in Trainspotting?

And that leads us to the lesson to learn from this movie. Apart from utilizing lessons of identification and beautiful scenery (which makes this movie a textbook example of how to do a high-level horror movie), it practically invented the concept of the fast-zombie.

And the zombies here are fast. Apart from being fast, they are the normal Romero-type zombies, but their greater speed makes them so different, so refreshing, and so terrifying. And that's a pretty good lesson to learn.

I wrote, a long time ago, about ways to make one scene characters unique, utilizing a known, common stereotype and building upon it. Boyle gave the same treatment to his zombies. And we can do the same- when using a known monster, keeping it the same, just like we read or watched hundreds of time, but changing something inherent in it, like the speed of the zombies. Or it might be a vampire that lives on computer data, sucking hard-drives and all the personal folders and documents.

Or we might drive a known characteristic to 11. The zombie isn't slow, it can't move, it just lies there waiting to be found and eat. The vampire isn't burned by sunlight- it explodes when the light touches it. And again, much horror ensues.

Or we might add a characteristic. The vampire can change its looks so he can look like your wife or husband. The zombie can now climb on walls. And these monsters won't ever look the same.

How about you? What have you thought about this movie? And what lessons did you take from it?

(Also published as The Bleeding Scroll's addition to the October Blog Carnival)

Black Sabbath- It's All in the Name

It is hard to believe it, but after this movie I have only three movies left. Time moves so quickly, it turns out, way too quickly. Anyway, Black Sabbath. I must say that I wasn't really impressed. Maybe it is because I watched better movies throughout this month, or maybe it is just because after 28 horror movies one starts to feel the dreaded "please no more horror films this month, I had to much" kinda feeling.

Anyway, Black Sabbath is an anthology film. It is made of 3 short films combined together. The first one, The Telephone (this might be the time to say that I've watched the Italian version and not the American one) is a story about a woman, a prostitute, who starts to receive telephone calls from her ex-pimp. Little by little, his threats become deadlier and far more frightening. For me, this short was the highlight of the collection. The next one, The Wurdalak, is a conventional vampire story. The last one, The Drop of Water, is a short film about a nurse who steals a ring and a ghost haunts her.

Now, the lessons from the better shorts, the first and the second, are lying in the posts about other movies in this project. But there is a lesson that is unique to this collection- the lesson of names and their power. You see, The Wurdalak is conventional. Way too conventional, if you ask me. We have a vampire, he kills those close to him, much blood. It even takes place in Eastern Europe, if it wasn't conventional enough.

But he is not called a vampire. He is given a different name. And this gives the movie some sense of originality. Because to a certain extent, it is like discovering and learning about a different, a new, monster. And this can be done in our games too. Give a familiar monster a different name and a description that is only a little different, and you can cut yourself a lot of time creating monsters on the one hand, and on the other the players will feel a certain feel of knowledge and similarity combined with a feeling of freshness. This is good.

As an added bonus, you can go the Troll 2 Way and have a connection between the names (yeah, it is probably the first and the last time that I'll mention something positive about Troll 2, as even this name change is executed terribly). You don’t have to go for the Nilbog kind of name, but you can go the anagram way. When the players will figure it out, they will feel like geniuses, like true investigators. This is even better.

Anyway, that's it for this movie. How about you? Have you watched this movie? What have you thought about it? And what did it teach you?

Dracula (1958)- Adjusting as Needed

It took me quite a while to finally see this version of Dracula. The vampire buff in me stands now in the corner, ashamed of himself. I hope that you'll forgive him… Anyway, this version doesn't disappoints, which is quite amazing to say when considering the bad aging of most of Hammer's Films.

I guess that most of you do know the plot of Dracula, but this version changes the plot of the book on the one hand and of earlier adaptations on the other hand, quite enormously. For once, Van Helsing is young, and for the other Harker is there to kill Dracula and not to sell him anything.

And that's quite interesting. Instead of sticking with the original book, like the opening scene might suggest, the movie quite clearly makes the story its own, changing what it sees as needing a change, a breather, some fresh air.

And that's something that isn't utilized enough. Many of us GMs try to do everything by the book, whether we're talking about the stats of monsters or of the plots of published adventures. We so try to go by the book that we sometimes forget that these things were written as guidance, so we will be able to adjust them according to our needs.

A great GM once said that nobody knows one's group better than this particular one that comes from the group. I know my group better than any other GM in the world, because I GM for them regularly. So do the players in my group. And that's an important truth, because when it comes to this, to GMing for them, or to figuring out what adventure to buy for the next session, or even which parts of the adventure I should stress and which I should eradicate, nobody knows it better than me. And it is true for you and your groups.

So please, when GMing published adventures, or when playing some fight scenes, or whatever else, don't try to play by the book. Instead, adjust it as much as you need to make it fitting with your own group, your real group, and not some theoretical one.

How about you? Have you watched this movie? What have you thought about it? And what have you learned from it?

Phantasm- Meeting the NPCs in Normal Situations

Some movies leave you with a lasting impression, others just don't. Phantasm belongs to the second group. It's not that it is a bad movie, or that I didn't enjoy it, but it just wasn't that good either. For me, it didn't have anything memorable within its 90 minutes, and even The Tall Man himself wasn't anything inspiring. I mean- after knowing The Slender Man, all I can say in benefit of this movie is that it was a nice inspiration for some great artistry. Too bad it's all I can say for this film.

Anyway, this movie's plot is pretty complicated, and not because of its presentation. You see, the movie twists itself quite a lot, combining gypsies with ice-cream men with heroic sensibilities, aliens and dwarfs, brotherly love and much-much grief over death in the family. Anything beyond that might be a spoiler, and I don't want that to happen.

Our protagonist, Mike, begins as a certain kind of stalker- he follows his brother anywhere, because his afraid of his brother leaving him behind, to leave his life alone. In a scene near the beginning, Mike follows his brother and witnesses his brother doing it, or at least beginning to do it.

And that's a great idea to use in our games. No, not this particular idea, but… one of the greatest GMing tips that can be given about portraying NPCs is that they should be given a sense of life. They should feel alive beyond the scope of their encounters with the PCs. A great way to do that is to have the PCs meet them in normal situations.

Imagine this scene- the PCs are doing their businesses in the city as usual, when suddenly they see the villain in a flower shop. "A-ah, this time we'll get ya!" they'll say to him, for which he'll respond "Can't I just but some flowers for milady?" or something along those lines. Or maybe he collects flowers because this is one of his hobbies? Or maybe because he is lonely and this is his way of escapism?

As an added bonus, try to think about ways to utilize these instances to make the players feel bad. "Look, if I'll try to kill this woman you'll be the first to know about it, and then you'll come and take revenge on me, and then you'll destroy my base (again) and then I'll have to start all over again (again)." Two benefits for the price of one, I'm taking it…

And that's it for today. How about you? Have you watched this movie? What have you thought about it? And what have you learned from it?

Tomorrow I'll cover the last five movies of this project, so I hope you'll enjoy it too.

The Orphanage- Use Sceptics to your Advantage

And here comes the big fix. A film that is so emotional, so intense, and so true to its roots. And it is far more than just a horror film- it is a film about motherhood, a film about childhood, about innocence, about the powers of our imaginations. This film is a masterpiece without a doubt.

It is the story of a mother, called Laura, who returns with her husband and son to her childhood home- an orphanage. As time goes by, her son starts to talk about some imagined friends, friends that Laura and her husband ignore as nonsense. But after her son, Simon, disappears, the real horror begins. Or is it just her imagination?

Short summaries like this one don't do the movie any justice. It is one of those movies that one just has to see for himself/herself. But I wanna talk about one of the things that make this movie so powerful, so full of horror and terror and suspense and dread. The movie has the sceptic character(s).

In this movie, we begin with all of the characters except for Simon as sceptics, but as the movie advances Laura also starts to believe. Yet, the others are sceptics. And those sceptics are important, as they give this movie to edges on movies without sceptics.

Firstly, sceptics leave our protagonist with no choice but to try and figure the truth by herself. She has no one else to ask for help, as after all nobody really believes her. The cops say that it is bullshit; her husband says that she starts to get mad, and the only ones who believe her are the paranormal experts, which doesn't make the situation any better.

But secondly, and far more importantly, is that this sceptic helps us to keep our suspension of disbelief. And why is that? Because through the sceptic(s) the director tells us that "yeah, it is quite strange, it does seem really farfetched". And when the director acknowledges that, it is far easier for us to believe in what we see, or at the very least to stop saying to ourselves- "Oh, this is just too strange to be real".

And when we're dealing with the supernatural, the combination of these two things is a huge edge that we can give to our games. Have in your Cthulhu game a cop who thinks that what the PCs are saying is crap. Have a friend of the PCs, in your World of Darkness games, dispute their theories. And suddenly, they will be inclined to work harder, because there's no one else to do the job, because if it is strange to the world inhabitants it is really strange and thus easier to believe, because of the disputer is close to the PCs the players will want to prove it to say to this friend of them: "A-ah, see? That is real!"

And that's it for today. How about you? What have you thought about this movie? And what did you learn from it?

Salò- Horror through Beautiful Scenery

I want my time back. Like seriously I want my time back. This film is supposed to be a controversial art film, but I don't know. Maybe I'm just not ready for films like this, or maybe it is just a matter of me being close to this subject matter. OK, not this exact subject matter, but I think that you know what I mean.

Anyway, it is a movie about 4 sick fascist libertines, in the North Italian region, and the ways they torture 18 teenagers, 9 boys and 9 girls. It is suffice to say that it is not a movie for those with a light stomach. For 120 days, the fascists torture them in about every dreadful way imaginable and finished with a Waltz and no punishment. Pasolini wanted it to be a social commentary. For me it is a sick flick that shouldn't have been made.

But, being made, and held to such a high regard by some directors and film critics, and being a part of my October Horror Movie Challenge (number 24), I have to pick a lesson from it. And what can I say, it is quite hard to pick one because there aren't many things to pick from this movie. But I picked one anyway.

When the film opens, we quite early get some glimpses of Northern Italy. We see some beautiful houses, some nice skyline and rivers, and we even see some nice small and big trees. The scenery is just beautiful. Way too beautiful. Even the house where the teens will spend their next 120 suffering for no reason whatsoever, even this house is beautiful from the outside, and has some merits in the inside.

This is made by purpose, because through this beauty of the outside world, and its contrast to what lies and happens within, we get a feeling of an evil world that doesn't care for those teens at all. Even the huge amount of statues, all of them religious statues, is there to advance this world. "The world is sick", Pasolini tells us, "and even though such horrible things are happening in this house, no one in the world cares, the world just continues with its usual affairs".

When we GM horror games, especially cosmic and other fifth level horror games, this contrast can add so much to our games. Because the power of this level comes from the realization that the world is an evil, uncaring and cold place, using this contrast can help us so much. The beauty is just a façade, terrible things lie beneath, and the world doesn't care, it continues to be beautiful, it continues to do nothing to prevent it.

Have you watched this move? What have you thought about it? And what lessons did you take from it?

Society- Please don't Break the Contract between us

There are two types of bad movies- those that are bad from the beginning, and thus you can laugh at them, and those that start good and then turn really crappy. This movie belongs to the second, much disappointing group.

In short, this is the story of a young man who thinks that he doesn't belong to his family. Slowly but surely he starts to find the truth, while it seems that the whole world is against him. At the end, when the truth is finally revealed, Yuzna tries to pass some social commentary. While the message gets to us, the execution is a bit… way too much over-the-top, and that's without mentioning the "fart-jokes" of the end. Too bad, it opened way too good to be campy, it is just a disappointment.

But, like always, there's something to learn from this movie. There's something that the movie does right, or otherwise I wouldn't have been this disappointed. And what the movie did right was to question my understanding of the situation- am I really seeing that something isn't right, or is it just the protagonist's imagination.

Throughout most of the film, Billy visits a psychiatrist. This gives us the possibility to ask ourselves: who really is the madman in this movie? Is Billy the madman, or is he the only sane person in the world. He himself questions what he sees, and time after time Yuzna disputes his protagonist's theories.

And it is so powerful. Because not only are we afraid for Billy, who might be sane and thus in real danger, we also fear that he really is mad and thus he might hurt all the other people in his disturbed world, people who only tried to help him. What Yuzna does at the end, though, is to throw all of these possibilities and fears out of the window, picking a lazy (even though much more social-stingy) solution. For an example made right, I'll have to point you to the great Buffy episode Normal Again (season 6 episode 17). But yeah, Society…

What can we learn from this failure? First of all, that sometimes we can't give both social commentary and a satisfying ending. And as we first of all game and only later try to say something, the game is more important (unless stated so from the beginning).

Bu secondly and far more importantly, if we have built something good, please don't let it fall. Because disappointment is a breaching of the contract between us people, players and GM(s). And this contract is far more important than shoving a message into our ears and brains.

With that out of the way, I wanna hear you. What have you thought about this movie? And what have you learned from it?

Dead Ringers- The Importance of Identification

And here comes Cronenberg to the rescue. Dead Ringers is one of those movies that I waited to see for some years, now. And it did not disappoint. I left it amazed and emotionally disturbed, which means that he succeeded with achieving his goal. Unsurprisingly, it is considered to be one of his greatest masterpieces, ranking among the greatest Canadian films ever made.

It is, to say the least, the story of two twin gynecologists, who are far closer than they look (and it's quite hard, being played by the same actor) yet so different from each other. T is the story of their collapse, of them losing all that they've worked for. It is a story about brotherly love. And it is one of those films that one has just to see for himself/herself.

And because of being such a great cinematic masterpiece, it was extremely hard for me to pick a lesson from this movie. Not because there weren't many (or even any), but because there are way too many things one can learn from this movie. But hopefully I picked the right one*.

In the last couple of scenes in the movie, we see Beverly kills his brother Elliot. A few seconds later, we cut to Beverly waking up and he calls and cries. He doesn't look on his brother, he doesn't really see him in this stage. He is vulnerable, he is crying and sobbing, he is human. And even though we remember what he did, that he killed his brother with gynecological tools for mutant women, we can't not feel for him in this scene, we cannot not like him.

And that's a great lesson for the Personal horror GM- always ensure that the players will be able to feel for, to like, to identify the characters, the PCs. As long as they feel for their characters, they will be able to feel the personal horror, because they'll feel that they do it, or at the very least that they can do it given the same circumstances. But without this ability to identify with the characters? They'll just be in shock, they won't feel the true personal horror.

And that's the whole truth, actually. The feeling for and the identification with the characters is the thing that enables the personal horror genre, and if one needs to spend more time before going all horror, or to show vulnerability after a terrible murder, so be it. The identification will give you the reward; the identification will give you the horror.

How 'bout you? Have you watched this movie? What have you learned from it? And what have you thought about it afterwards?

* I did want to talk about how to treat your subject matter, but AveryMcdaldno did it so much better.

Hellraiser- How Not to Use Gore

Ok… yeah… emm… I'm trying to think but words fail me. So I'll just say it plainly: "Hellraiser was shit." How shiity was it? Well, Ebert said it best, when paraphrasing King's remark about Clive Barker: "…but I have seen the future of implausible plotting, and his name is Clive Barker." True, Ebert did make a few mistakes recounting the plot, but it doesn't really matter, it doesn't make the plot any better, and the pace is bad no matter how you look at it.

It is a movie about a man who made a deal with a Rubik cube or something, and due to this pact he dies. Then his ex-lover kills people so he'll get his flesh back. Also- some ugly demons who were supposed to look interesting or something, especially the something part. One of them looks campy, with his sunglasses, but that's as close as it gets there.

Truth is, most of the lessons to learn from this movie have already been covered, only here we learn them as things not to do, as common pitfalls or whatever. But there is something that we can learn from this movie that I haven't covered: Appealing to the disgust factor.

 You see, this movie is just disgusting. There's no better way to phrase that, or even to describe it. It ain't scary, ain't anything else. It was a disgusting movie, plain and simple. And one couldn't even say that it was being disgusting with a purpose. It was disgusting for the sake of being disgusting. It had a man that eats insects. Why? God knows. We later see him return and we learn that it was supposed to be some kind of foreshadowing or something, but it was a lazy kind of foreshadowing. It was the kind of foreshadowing that leaves you with a sour taste. And this one was the one with a "purpose".

Stephen King once wrote that if he can't terrify he horrifies, and that if he can't horrify he goes to the revulsion side of the spectrum*. I say something else: If you can't terrify and you can't horrify, please don't do horror, it might be better to all of us.

And I think that I'll leave this movie here, alone and (hopefully) forgotten. Maybe one day I'll find the way to get my time back, or just thee opportunity to ask Barker (or King) what crossed his mind when making this movie (or complimenting Barker).

How about you? Have you watched this movie? What have you taken from it? And what have you learned?

* I can't say that I like King's terminology, but it is a topic for another post, for another day.

Day of the Dead- Have Yourself a Little Bub

I don't think that it will come with any surprise, that I found Day of the Dead amazing.  Truth be told, it is not on the same level of his earlier two zombie flicks, but it is not surprising. The first two films were (and still are) groundbreaking, satirical, amazing, among the best the horror genre ever came to be. Those films weren't just great in their own genre, but among the entire world of cinema. Day of the Dead doesn't have a chance against this, but truth is- it doesn't make it any less good. It is still a treasure trove of the genre, and it still has a lot to teach us.

In short, in this iteration of the series, we follow a group of humans, some of them civilians and some of them soldiers, and we see how humanity collapses due to a lack of real communication. Like with most of Romero's films, though, the zombies are there in the background and not much more, and this sets them apart, shows why they received such high remarks, why they are still being imitated throughout the entire world.

But we're not here for a lesson about the movie industry, and as such is the case I wanna move towards the GMing side of the things. Because, like I said a few days ago, most older horror movies which still hold their charm have something to teach us, positively, or otherwise they wouldn't be as scary as they are. And with this film, we have a great lesson to take.

Somewhat towards the middle of the film, we are first presented with Bub. Those who have watched the film know by now to where I'm going with this, but still… Bub is a thinking zombie. It has a brain, some feelings, a sense of an earlier life; it even enjoys listening to music. And Bub raises the level of the film by so many ranks.

And Bub is an amazing takeaway, because we don't expect to see, to meet, to encounter a thinking zombie. We don't expect to feel something for one of the monsters. And yet, we do. So many blogs and GMing books will talk about giving the goons and mooks a face, maybe even many faces. Most of them don't ask you to give the mindless monsters a face. They're just cannon fodder. But when you will give those mindless monsters a face, and a brain, you get so much more. Because when Bub salutes the "evil" soldier, after shooting him to death, one can't stay calm, uncaring, unfeeling. One only has the ability to look in amazement, to feel. And that's the power of Bub. So have yourself a Bub also.

How about you? Have you watched this movie? What did you take from it? And what have you thought about it?

Re-Animator - Adding Just a Tiny Bit of Humor

I don't like Stuart Gordon's adaptations of Lovecraft. Here, I said it. They are just so bad, so… they're just bad. This time, he does his best, giving us a trashy film done professionally. But that's about all I can say for this bizarre movie, too much for most of us' appetites.

In the movie, Herbert West is transformed into the early eighties, with that time's weird sense of fashion and strange ideals. I might have exaggerated a bit there, but the movie doesn't take itself too seriously either. Herbert messes with the dead, granting them "life" with a strange serum. Then we got much nudity, gore and something that is supposed to be some characters to identify with.

But I guess that I have to say something in its favor, or at least I need to find something to learn from it. After all, if I found something to learn from the terrible Braindead, I must find something to learn from this re-animated dead flick. And what can I say? It got a weird sense of humor.

Humor, from quite an early stage, was associated with the horror genre. When the movie is built around tension-and-release moments, doing the "release" part right is mandatory. And one of the greatest release-mechanisms ever? Why of course, it is the infamous humor.

And that's the lesson to learn from this movie- use humor, but use it well. The reason that the head-on-a-stick is so funny is that it comes just after so much seriousness and villainy, and suspense and so much more. After being serious for far too long for this movie's level, it just comes with a childish joke, breaking the ice, the statues, and our ability to take this movie seriously.

So, I don't know if I succeeded with explaining what I meant. Truth is, this movie's sense of humor is so hard to explain also. But yeah, use humor, it might be what you're looking for your "tension-and-release" cycle.

How about you? Have you found this movie any good? And what have you learned from it?

The Abominable Dr. Phibes- How Not to Use a Pattern

Another campy movie. Sometimes one has to ask himself (or herself) why camp goes so well with the horror genre. But this is a topic for another day (and maybe even for another blog). The Abominable Dr. Phibes is campy enough for its characters to remark about the stupidity of the characters' names. But, unlike with other works of film and television, here it doesn't help the movie to look any better, too bad for this movie…

To put it shortly, the movie chronicles the revenge that a famous and now supposed to be dead organist on a series of surgeons and others of the medical profession for letting his wife die. For some reason he chooses to take his revenge according to the plagues that hit Egypt in the famous chapters from the book of Exodus.

Now, up until now it is a very descent premise, and the list of actors is quite remarkable and promising. The musical score is wonderful and… you get the idea. So why does this movie fail? Mainly because it chooses such a wonderful premise, such a promising pattern, and destroys what it has to offer.

You see, the actions, the killing ways, they're not in the same order as shown in the bible. The film tries so much to be scientifically accurate that it changes the order of the plagues to something else. More logically correct, far easier to believe in terms of causality, but it has a devastating effect in terms of our building dread.

Most of us remember the order of the plagues, at least in broad strokes, enough to understand when the pattern is changed. And when they change the pattern, we don't know what death scene is gonna come now. So instead of looking forward for the death scene, we're busy trying to remember what the Rabi said will be the next one, and we can't because what comes to mind are the original order and the knowledge that it was changed. So we don't look forward to the next death scene, we don't have the anticipation building the right way, and as such it's far harder to dread the upcoming death.

So please, when creating a villain, or a monster, and trying to think about a pattern for the killing, if you'll ever think about using a common knowledge pattern, don't change it. You'll just make it worse.

How about you? What did you learn from this movie? And have you enjoyed it?

Black Sunday- Use the Scenery to Your Advantage

1960 was an interesting year. It was the dawn of one of the lousiest decades in the history of the American cinema (ok, most of a decade, the salvation came in 1967), but it also had the amazing film Psycho to give us some hope and grandeur for this decade. As it turned out, in Italy things were a little better, as can be shown by the rise of the Giallo movies. One of them, one of the earlier ones, is "Black Sunday", also known as The Mask of Satan. And it is still a very nice movie.

It is a story, a movie, about the consequences of the witch hunting of the 17^th century. It is a film about the way Satan worshipers torment the pure of hearts, and how they fight back. It is a story about love. It is also a movie that stands to its title, to its rank, that time only benefitted it.

And like with all early masterpieces that still hold their charm, this movie has a lot to teach us. I, for once, wanna concentrate on the scenery. Especially the castle, the old dark castle. This castle is based around the gothic tradition- it is old, it is gloomy, it is filled with paintings of important figures from older times. It is also a castle made of narrow corridors and full of rooms and doors, not to mention some secret passages.

And this gives the director a lot to work with. The paintings can be used for foreshadowing; the gloomy and dark looks of the castle for the mod setting. But especially important are the narrow corridors filled with doors and the secret passages. The first one is important mainly because it gives the monsters the ability to attack from wherever they want. Through this we get a larger sense of paranoia and a greater fear of the unknown- after all, we know the monster will attack, but we don't know from where.

The secret passage is important from this reason, but also from a far more important one- it helps the director to control the pace- when the corridor will be revealed, we will enter the last phase. This is an important tool to have in the arsenal, as it helps to move past scenes of dwindling importance, action or dread-building.

And we, as GMs, don't have to limit ourselves to just old castles, we can use asylums, or hunted houses, or so much more. The important lesson from this movie, though, is to think about the scenery, to try to think and understand why do we want such a scenery and how can we utilize it. Hopefully, we'll get far greater benefits from our sceneries if we'll think about those questions.

How about you? What did you think about this movie? And what have you taken from it?

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer- Give Principles for your Killers

Emm… No, I just don't know what to say. I'm just speechless, wordless, amazed, shocked, and horrified, perhaps not in this order. Henry is a strange film, a little gem and at the same time a little piece of trash. I think that in the end, it is only a matter of how one looks at the film. For me, it's mainly in the gem section, but it doesn't mean that I'll watch it again, or that I'm happy for this film to ever been made.

To put it shortly, Henry is a film that tells the story of a serial killer, portraying him in a documentary-style fashion, showing his brutality without flinching, protecting us, glorifying it or anything of this fashion. It is a Slasher, but not the typical teenagers-on-the-run kind of Slasher; it is a psychological horror film but not that close to the exemplary ones like The Shining or The Silence of the Lambs. It is a movie that one has to see in order to understand. Telling about it is not enough.

Now, this movie puts a serial killer on the center. True, we have Otis and Becky, but it is Henry who we are after. And Henry is an interesting character. We know that he is bad, and one can't listen to him teaches his modus operandi without suffering from so many chills that it hurts. Yet, we hate Otis more. We hate the drug dealer, we hate the amateur serial killer, we hate all of Otis's character far more than we hate Henry. And that's interesting, and that enables us to survive this movie.

So one has to wonder- how could they achieve that? How could they make us hate Otis far more than we hate Henry? The reason that I've found is located in a very simple scene near the beginning- Otis tries to grab his sister and kiss her, Henry says "no!" and stops him. That's the scene, that's the reason. And why is this so powerful, so important? Because it helps us to identify with this Henry-monster, because it shows that even Henry has principles, or at the very least some feelings regarding other human beings. Things that Otis has far less of, if he has anything of this type at all.

And when we come to present our monsters and villains in our games, it might be better to use something like this. Why? Because it will make the players question the definitions of good and bad, the definitions of what moral and what isn't, it will make them be far more afraid, because a killer that is prone to feelings can be understood, and this means that one can become such a killer. But it has an almost as dark in addition for the earlier one stated- if the killer has feelings, and the killer is prone to those feelings, he can do things that will be totally unexpected, because it will attack the understanding of the killer's psyche and not just the normal expectations. And that's far scarier than anything one could achieve on its own.

How 'bout you? What did you think about this movie? And have you taken something interesting from it?

16 movies up until now, all of them new.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death- The Powers of Clothing

Some movies hold to their title, others do not. Too bad that this movie belongs to the latter group. Let's Scare Jessica to Death is an interesting movie, its soundtrack is creepy like hell, and it knows how to play on the audiences fears. Each and every element works perfectly when looked at separately. But when combined? They overshadow each other. And that's the main problem in this movie for me.

In a nutshell, it is the story of a woman who just got released from a mental asylum and who now tries to readjust to her new life, in a house far from town, nice and cozy and quite morbid. She hears things in her head, many-many things, and she tries to deal with it.

What struck me the most about this movie is its use of clothing to tell us about the characters. Especially when looking at our two leading ladies in this film. Emily is dressed in red, which puts her in the sensual realm, as an adult woman. She knows what powers her sexuality possesses.

Jessica, on the other hand, starts the film dressed in violet, and her clothing grows darker in tone with each passing day. I mean, she "chooses" darker clothes with each passing day. And that's interesting, because we can see through her clothing the naivety being broken, we can see how what she hears makes her older, forces her to grow.

And this can be used in our games too. Clothing is such a powerful tool to convey feelings, to convey characteristics, to shed a light on the inner feelings and workings of the characters, it is useful to show social differences. In other words, we can say that "show me what you wear, and I'll know who you are".

All I can say is that maybe, just maybe, one should try to use it. I know that I do, and it works magic for me, why shouldn't it be the same for you?

How about you? Have you watched this movie? What did you think about it? And what have you taken from it?

Martin- When One Shouldn't Invent the Wheel

I owe you an apology, dear readers. I was to the IICON convention, the Israeli convention for geek culture, kinda like the Israeli Comicon. Unsurprisingly, it took me some days to recuperate, to return to normal. Truth is, I was quite sure that you won't even feel it, having prepared posts for the first two convention days, but personal matters made me unable to cover the following days (the last day of the convention and those days for breath-catching). So I'm in a bit of a delay. For that, I apologize. I do hope that the posts from now on will justify the wait.

And without much farther ado, let's move to the 14^th movie in the project, to the movie Martin.  Martin is an interesting case. It is not a bad movie per se, and even Romero called it "my favorite movie", but for me, it just didn't work.

It is a movie about a person who is sure that he's a vampire, and who challenges through his twisted take on vampirism the myth of the vampire. Parts of these he does through the phone, talking with a radio DJ who understands what great hit he has in his hands.

The movie is very art-housey in its feel, and that's where the problems start to arise. You see, George Romero is a very talented director, and one feels it, and he knows what he's doing. But it just doesn't work. I didn't feel a thing for the character of Martin. I knew that I should have, but I just couldn't. The movie is so filled with art-house tricks that it just loses something in its way to glory.

Romero, and it might be strange to say, is just not Ingmar Bergman or Pedro Almodovar who can make a very art-housey movie and it will still be communicative enough for us to feel something for the characters, for the story. Romero isn't talented enough for the task, although he sometimes can come close to that.

And most of us are Romero-level GMs and not Almodovar- or Bergman-level GMs. It is not bad to be Romeros, but it does mean that we should know our places. We don't have to try and challenge the usual narrative or the basic and universal roles and tropes that make our RPGs. We don't have to conjure a meeting between the PCs and the players every other game, or to go to the meta-level game every time that we can. Truth is, most GMs can make wonders of just the usual party going to the usual dungeon to kill the usual dragon. Hell, I who finished a campaign with a meeting between PCs and players don't consider myself able to conjure a meeting like that again. Sometimes, or maybe even all the times, we just have to know our places, to know what we can achieve and what we can't, what we can challenge and what we shouldn't.

We don't have to invent the wheel from scratch every time, or even every other or third time. Usually, striving for a great experience, for a nice evening of dragon-slaying, sometimes it is just enough.

The Mist- Learning When to Stop

13 years after directing The Shawshank Redemption, Darabont directs another King's adaptation. And I can’t say that I was impressed. It is considered to be one of the greatest and most frightening horror movies of the century so far, but I couldn't agree less. It was one of the most disappointing films that I've ever seen.

On the surface, it has all the elements of being a good horror movie, and also a good movie outside of the genre, the same line that for me holds movies like Casablanca (my all-time favorite), Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, The 400 Blows and so many more. It has some very nice acting, and it has a political sting, and it has some interesting and surprisingly deep characters (well, most of them, if you look hard enough). It has a really nice conspiracy, and it tackles religious fanatics and hubris filled scientists. It has everything that a movie could ask for.

And that's the problem, it has way too much. The mist isn't scary, because there are creatures in there. They aren't scary, because we've got big ol fucking Cthulhu in there. Cthulhu isn't scary, because we got a conspiracy, and this conspiracy isn't scary because we also got some religious fanatics, and we're also told about the scientists, and we see the people going mad, becoming beasts like in Night of the Living Dead, and… I think that you've got the idea. We've got way too much.

And that's even before we look at the movie on the genre level. We've got horror, and then we got a love story (only for the woman to get killed 2 seconds or so later). Then we get into a Christian movie, later turned into a post-apocalyptic film, before finally ending on the melodramatic Hamlet side of the spectrum.

Maybe it's just me, I don't know. But for me it was hell too much to really care for what's going on. I watched the movie trying to understand what's going on at the beginning, and then started to guess what strange twist they'll bring this time.

And that's a lesson to keep in mind when designing and writing your stories, your adventures. Think not only about what to put in, but also about what to put out. Remind yourself that too much of a good thing turns everything into something bad, or at the very least tasteless. When every few minutes the story changes completely, and you throw something too different and too big to handle, you'll just end with people who don't care.

They don't care not because they don't want to, but because they can't, because you put too much for their minds to handle. Because, and that' a thing that one should keep in mind, you as GM's know everything and you had much time to absorb it, to analyze it, to understand what goes where and when. But players? They only have a few minutes. So have mercy on them, or don't be surprised when they can't get what you're doing next or don't care for your uber-impressive plot twist.

How about you? What did you think about this movie? And have you learned from it something else, something positive?

The Black Cat- Doing It the Lovecraftian Way

Universal's horror films rarely stand to the effects of time. Most of them look aged, irrelevant, and even quite silly. But there are a few that live to this day. The Black Cat is one of them, even though it doesn't bear any resemblance to the amazingly scary horror masterpiece written by Poe and bearing the same name (or is it the other way around?).

It is a movie about a newly-wed couple (yeah, again) who are honeymooning in Hungary, and are joined in the train by a Hungarian Psychiatrist. A few minutes later and they are already in the house of a mischievous Austrian architect. From then on we slowly get to the weirder realm, although when it does get to this realm it picks a Lovecraftian ending pace

And that's actually, the main reason that the movie works for me. There is a reason that Lovecraft's stories are so frightening. I mean, there are reasons for that. One of them is the levels of horror that he's working with, but another one is the pattern that all of his stories share.

In Lovecraft stories', he starts slowly, really slowly, with only hints and such, and only in the last page or two he picks the pace. From that moment onwards, all hell breaks loose and the weird element is skyrocketing in the speed of light. But he starts slowly. True, we know from the very beginning what we will face, but we don't see it till the end, and we only learn about it gradually.

Anyways, this pattern carries with it 2 main benefits. The first one is that it makes the thing, the monster, more believable. After so many pages of trying to understand it, and seeing the effects of its existence, it is much easier to accept this monstrosity.

But there is also another benefit, and this one is far greater. It creates a build-up, and this build up is way better than the build-up usually utilized in the horror market when pulled right. And Lovecraft knew how to do it.

But truth is, it isn't that much harder to pull right. One only needs to understand that instead of showing an attack in the beginning, one shows a diary. Instead of showing the remains of a victim, one only tells about it behind closed doors.

And then, in the end, when we pick the pace and show the true horror, gaze into the abyss and see the tentacles and eyes, we're much more frightened, much more terrified, much more scared. And that's the whole thing, that's the point, in the end, to frighten.

How about you? Have you watched this movie? What did you think? What have you learned?