Week of Gore - Deadgirl

I've been busy lately, so I had no time to work up my week of horror movies.

After a really disappointing start things got better fast...

Deadgirl
Wow, this sounds disgusting! One part Nekromantik, one part The Stink of Flesh, one part "teenage drama/comedy" - let me tell you, the sum is better than the parts of it.

Two friends skip school, get drunk, go on a demolition spree in a near-by abandoned asylum, find a beautiful dead girl in the basement... which turns out to be not so dead at all. One of them is quite fascinated but more of a voyeur, the other one is quite "active" in his fascination and uses the zombie-girl for his own carnal desires. It doesn't take long and things go south...

Let me get this clear: This movie is not a new instant horror-classic. It is not the best in gory effects or splatter. It is not the socially critical movie it could be. It is just a deviant idea presented cineastically appealing. The main cast is solid/good, the make-up is good, the story is simple but interesting enough. The characters are mostly believable (aside from Eric Podner/Wheeler, which is just a bit too whiny and dumb) - they are your average over-sexed, stoned, lewd and scrupulous (male) teenagers; of course, Deadgirl takes this cliché ad absurdum  - it is a horror movie, after all. The end is a bit meh and there are moments you really, really now what's going to happen, but that didn't lessen my fun.

I'll give this movie a 6/10. If you like horror movies or zombie movies in particular and are not totally disgusted by the gist of the film go watch it!

F

I DMed DCC on saturday!

Well, my wife and son are on vacation, so it's time for action! Not only I declare the next days as "Week of Gore" (as I bought a bunch of uncut horror flicks which I'm going to watch the next five days), I had loads of fun DMing a one-shot for my good old friends!

I chose The One Who Watches from Below after reading a good review from +Bryce Lynch. It IS indeed a good adventure. A bit too long for a one-shot, so we cut it off at the end. There were problems (mostly caused by my very analytic players, who would've liked more logical explanations for various gonzo-elements - which there are a lot of in this adventure) but there were minor.

The thing is - it didn't matter how the adventure was. DCC is one of those systems where one only needs to sit and wait for coolness to happen. It started when characters were rolled (we started with a modified funnel - two 0 and two 1st level characters). We used Alternate Occupations. My good old rpg-friend +Christian Lonsing rolled a dwarfen outcast (with a bottle of elven wine), an elven herbalist, an elven vintner, and a dwarfen brewer... Team Alcohol! The others' teams were less distinctive but cool nonetheless. Only non-combat spells were rolled for the elves and wizards (like Detect Magic or Comprehend Language) which all proved useful during various stages of the adventure. Not a single character died (perhaps I did something wrong) - there would've probably some deaths at the end but we cut off at 3/4th of the adventure.

Despite the tons of tables (fumble, crit, spells, spell failure, deity disapproval to name a few) combat and rules-heavy situations went fast - and we only had one rule book (+ some spells copied by a fried).

DCC stays one of the best incarnations of the OSR and I hope I'll be able to play it again soon.

F

Week of Gore - Savaged

So. Wife and kid on vacation. I'm alone at home and tons of movies are waiting to be looked...

Savaged
This sounded interesting... it is advertised as "The Crow" meets "I Spit on Your Grave". No, I'm not into rape and revenge movies, actually I think they are most often dumb; but if there are twists, I'll have a look and decide again.

What do we have? A deaf girl gets kidnapped by sadist-racist morons which brutalize her for days. Then they kill her and dispose her body. So far so disgusting.
But then she is - surprise - found by a native american shaman. He tries to get her back to life with some yadda-yadda around a campfire but things go south - not only her soul but also the soul of a long dead native-american warrior uses the oppurtunity and uses her body as co-driver. So far... so dumb. Then starts the killing-spree. More or less uninspired gut-ripping, throat-slitthing, arrow-shooting. Nothing spectacular, if you're not totally squeamish. Ah, yes, while she finishes the bastards off, she slowly rots (why did the shaman want to bring her back to life when she returns as a zombie? No one knows.)

This could still be good... script, actors, screenplay, effects. But it isn't. The dialogues are more or less stupid, the actors (safe for some scenes) act clunky, the screenplay is mediocre, at best. The effects are bad. The whole movie has some kind of "300" or "Sin City"-filter which seems displaced. The gore-scenes are sometimes unbelievable, sometimes OK, nothing mind-shattering.

Conclusion: Watch it if you have a lot of spare time, spare money, like Amanda Adrienne and are a big fan of occult r&r-movies. Otherwise: Hands-off, I'll give this film a 2/10.

F