Cold City and Hot War

Handiwork Games bringing new editions of Cold City and Hot War, coming soon.

Mickey And Friends: Trick Or Treats

Mickey And Friends: Trick Or Treats (trailer) is a new twenty-minute Disney special for the season, complete with several short cheesy songs, based on the old turn-into-your-costume plot. The oddest thing about it and the previous Mickey Saves Christmas, which is very nice, is that it’s done in stop motion.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Please to help the guisers and we’ll sing you a bonnie wee song...

Doctor Jekyll (2023)

31 Days Of Horror 13

Doctor Jekyll (2023)

Trailer

Hammer is back! Again.

(If the 2010-2019 run was Hammer Has Risen From The Grave, this must be Taste The Blood Of Hammer.)

And it’s a somewhat more auspicious return than Beyond The Rave, at least.

Classic Hammer tried a direct adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde but The Two Faces Of Dr. Jekyll wasn’t very close - The Ugly Duckling a year earlier was a comedy and the genderfuck Dr. Jekyll And Sister Hyde was played more seriously than the pun title suggests. (Amicus did a pretty close version with I, Monster starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in 1971.)

And this isn’t a close adaptation either, effectively a sequel instead.

Eddie Izzard plays Nina Jekyll, a reclusive big pharma billionaire in need of a home help, with Scott Chambers as Rob Stevenson (yes...) getting a chance, and quickly discovering some major downsides to the opportunity. Izzard plays a very controlled Jekyll and a more “this is why you cast Eddie Izzard” Hyde. Most of the scares come from LOUD NOISES and the score often provides them, but there’s a decent atmosphere and Izzard provides some fun.

Also amusing casting gag: a cameo as Henry Jekyll played by... Jonathan Hyde.

WODtober 2023 30. Heritage

WODtober 2023 30. Heritage

The family crypt seemed like a good place to look for... a connection.

This is the song of my heritage

Iggy Pop, Cold Metal

We Have A Ghost

31 Days of Horror 13

We Have A Ghost (2023)

Trailer

A 12-certificate so almost family-friendly (apart from a gloomy central bit) supernatural comedy where a family moves into a haunted house - and get a video of the ghost and it goes viral.

How much would a truly proven ghost sighting change the world? I’ve wondered that since the Amityville nonsense and this covers some of the likely results.

And the going viral happens half an hour in, in a two hour run time. The opening easing in could have been shorter, and other bits could have been trimmed as well - I for one did not need the car chase. But it’s amiable if highly uneven.

Written and directed by Christopher Landon, director of Happy Death Day and Freaky, showing he can do other things at least.

The medium: Netflix

Gameability: How would regular secret supernatural investigations deal with being on the news?

Escape Room: Tournament Of Champions

31 Days Of Horror 31

A rewatch and a realising I never got round to watching the sequel.

28a: Escape Room (2019)

Trailer which has more prize money than in the film

I watched this back in 31 Horror Films 2019 when it was new to streaming. This PG-13 take on killer escape rooms is pretty goofy fun, with the standout sequence being the upside-down room over a fifteen storey drop.

28b: Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021)

Trailer which answers the first puzzle a lot faster than the film does and a different person says the subtitle than in the version I saw

A direct sequel with the survivors from the original and a recap before the credits, before getting to the stuck-escaping with new characters who also know what’s up. It has the most brutal death of both films (not shown clearly) but none of the rooms are as wild as that first highlight.

Netflix has the theatrical version, while the “extended cut” is only six minutes longer at the beginning and end but that’s included in twenty-five minutes of changed material, eliminating one character and introducing a couple of others. I might take a look sometime, as it sounds like it provides a different kind of closure.

One thing I like about the series overall is that just about everybody does the right thing and helps once they know they’re in real danger.

The medium: Netflix

Gameability: A small group of characters in a series of trap-filled rooms? Hmm... ;)

WODtober 2023 29. Before The Darkness

WODtober 2023 29. Before The Darkness

At Halloween the kids dare each other to run past Old Man Milliner’s house before he gets up at nightfall.

Well if she wants to see me

You can tell her that I’m easily found

Tell her there’s a spot out ’neath Abram's Bridge

And tell her there’s a darkness on the edge of town

Bruce Springsteen, Darkness On The Edge Of Town

Matthew Perry

Damn.

“When I die, as far as my so-called accomplishments go, it would be nice if Friends were listed far behind the things I did to help other people. I know it won’t happen, but it would be nice.”

Matthew Perry on his work with addiction support.

WODtober 2023 28. Unveiled

WODtober 2023 28. Unveiled

It’s a masterpiece. You made the Herald cry. They’ll never forgive you.

Pull back the veil

Let your eyes meet this world

Bloc Party, The Love Within

Lisa Frankenstein

Lisa Frankenstein, out for Valentine’s 2024. Diablo Cody follows Jennifer’s Body with a different teen resurrection, directed by Zelda Willaims, starring Cole Sprouse as the corpse and Kathryn Newton in a very 80s Madonna-Goth hybrid look.

WODtober 2023 27. Midnight Kiss

WODtober 2023 27. Midnight Kiss

“She means it more than he does.”

“Enough to take him?”

One more kiss, dear, one more sigh

Only this dear, is goodbye

Vangelis, One More Kiss, Dear

WODtober 2023 26. Let The Streets Run Red

WODtober 2023 26. Let The Streets Run Red

“We’re all monsters tonight. Will you join the parade?”

Walking like each other’s ghosts around these silent streets

Thursday, Jet Black New Year

Lord Of Tears

31 Days Of Horror 13

Lord Of Tears aka The Owlman (2013)

Trailer

A man inherits a country house from his estranged mother with a letter telling him never to go there. The alternative-titular Owlman appears early on, a threatening presence in long shots and some sudden closeups with a tendency to ominous poetry. But the man stays to investigate anyway, helped by the house’s caretaker.

Making good use of a location and a monster costume, this close to zero budget video feature still runs a bit long and overuses “waking from a nightmare but not really” jumps, and there are a couple of characters who could have been integrated better so I wasn’t waiting for them to show why they were there. But the creepy bits are effectively creepy.

Director Lawrie Brewster and his group Hex Films have done a fair few features since, and they just completed a Kickstarter for an anthology film reviving the UK horror brand Amicus Studios, and I can see a shorter format working and fitting this kind of feel. Seeing this feels quite Amicus-y in its style already.

And he’s revisited the Owlman a couple of times too - and the Owlman also just came out as an action figure which may have cost more to produce than the film did (and which comes with an accessory based on an implied but never shown spoiler).

The medium: streaming free with ads here and there.

WODtober 2023 25. Justice

WODtober 2023 25. Justice

“When you get to Hell, say hi for me.”

But what sense is a census

When they just miss us

But enlist us to fight for their justice

Public Enemy, Truth Decay

Totally Killer (2023)

31 Days Of Horror 13

Totally Killer (2023)

Trailer

As I noted on seeing the trailer for what is as they cheerfully admit Back To The Future crossed with a slasher flick, I checked to find that this isn’t written by the same writer as the previous classic family fantasy comedy crossed with a slasher flick trio Happy Death Day, Freaky and the forthcoming It’s A Wonderful Knife. I hope that now someone else has written one he’ll try a different concept next time instead of something like Honey I Shrunk The Killer.

Anyway, it’s a somewhat goofier comedy take on the type, with the 80s being awful, and the time machine being built by a high schooler as a science project.

It’s a lot of fun if you go in with that kind of expectation. If this was in cinemas now I’d leave pretty happy.

Agency-wise I would have made a small tweak to have Jamie be the one to suggest going back. A small note, would have been changing three lines of dialogue, but.

Also a horrible slander to Max Headroom.

Gameability: science project time machine is a pretty Buffy kind of plot hook.

WODtober 2023 24. Blood-Stained Love

WODtober 2023 24. Blood-Stained Love

Colette and Laurence say they've been together about four years. The truth would add a -ty sound.

Apologies to Carlson Young and Isom Innis

'Til the fearless come and the act is done

A love like blood

A love like blood

Killing Joke, A Love Like Blood

Dark Harvest (2021)

31 Days Of Horror 13

Dark Harvest (2021)

Trailer and some explanation at Tor.com

Not to be confused with Dark Harvest: Legacy Of Frankenstein, or the at least six other films on IMDb called Dark Harvest, this Dark Harvest is based on the 2006 book of the same name, about a small town where every Halloween a monster appears at nightfall and tries to get to the church by midnight to bring a blight that threatens the town. And their solution to this issue is to send the town’s teenage boys out as an angry mob. And not even give them guns, even though guns work.

It’s a big magical ritual, and it worked better in the book (which plays out differently as well) or maybe as a half-hour Twilight Zone episode, whereas the otherwise grounded early 1960s milieu provided by the film just highlights the questions. And some are answered with a reveal, but not nearly all.

That was interesting, I guess. But if it had come out in cinemas as originally planned a couple years ago, I would have left pretty disappointed. Although I would have had an easier time telling the often identically dressed and masked boys in the various cliques apart in the dark.

And if you watch it don’t stop at the credits as it has about twenty seconds of lead credits and then a credits scene in this case with the actual end of the film.

Content notes for racist language and a suicide.

Gameability: Horrible rituals in isolated little towns sounds like Chronicles Of Darkness fodder.

WODtober 2023 23. Things I've Left Behind

WODtober 2023 23. Things I've Left Behind

Daisy misses seeing the sun on her daughter's face more than feeling it on her own.

It doesn't mean much

It doesn't mean anything at all

The life I left behind me

Is a cold room

Sarah McLachlan, Sweet Surrender

Hellraisers

31 Days of Horror 13

A rewatch and a new-to-me on actual physical media!

21: Hellraiser (1987)

Trailer

Author Clive Barker’s directorial debut, about a man coveting his brother’s wife while also in the process of coming back from the dead. Mostly known, as the trailer and art going back to the original poster show, for the Cenobites, the beings responsible for the actual villain being dead but not quite dead enough. I always liked the idea, lost pretty much immediately in the series, that they’re monsters but not necessarily villains.

All the hook and chain violence was always so extreme I couldn’t relate but the bit where Larry cuts his hand makes me wince every time.

The medium: The Arrow DVD comes with a Barker commentary track, a Barker and Ashley Laurence commentary track, an original making-of and a retrospective and a barker interview and a featurette about the unused Coil soundtrack... (and now a 4K option too)

In related news, spamming from an online knockoff store...

Not today, thank you...

22: Hellraiser (2022)

Trailer