MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers" (1989)

Yeah, I know I'm technically cheating on this one on a multitude of levels. Bite me! It's Halloween and I would be remiss if I didn't pay at least a bit of homage to the franchise that got me into horror to begin with...with an entry that is admittedly not among the more fondly remembered ones. However, this film is honestly one of the better entries in the franchise. Whereas Halloween 4 was very much an actual soft reboot of the original instead of what people think Disney did with The Force Awakens to Star Wars, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers goes for...a bit of a confusing addition in psychic abilities.

A year after the events of the previous film, Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) is now not insane and evil as her uncle was following his attack on a family member, and is instead mute and tormented by psychic visions of all of Michael's killings. And him going about stalking people. And him driving in cars with people who he plans to kill but can't because of plot convenience.

Yeah, for all it's good points, this movie has a few really, really weird ones, too.

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Seattle By Night: The Bad Briefcase, Part 1"

It was a night like any other in Seattle. The air was crisp as the winds blew through the trees of green leaves. While Seattle did not suffer the decay of its foliage that many places did, the chill in the air told that autumn was upon the city. From here, the days would grow shorter, and the nights longer, and the nights were their time. The time of the Kindred. For almost one hundred and seventy years, it had been this way. Ninety of those years had seen the city of Seattle under the guiding hand of Prince Wren Blanchard. Pride of the Ventrue clan, she had ruled the city through those ninety years of nights unopposed and with a swift hand against sedition. This tale, alas, is not hers. She is a part, certainly, but this chronicle does not concern her. At least, not yet.

What it does concern is four of her subjects, members of the Camarilla, and from different clans all. The first, he found himself wandering through the woods beneath the moonlight. A low fog had settled against the ground, wafting about his ankles. His eyes, a solid gray, peered about into the void around him. There was no sign of movement or attack, but he had long since learned to remain ever vigilant.

"Have you found it?"

He gazed around the copse, finding nothing. Just the wind blowing through the trees, and the fog pooling around his feet.

MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "Silver Bullet" (1985)

If there's anything more prevalent in the Halloween roster of monsters going back into the old lore of many ancient cultures than the werewolf is, then it is likely only the vampire. But what is it about werewolves that attracts us to them? Werewolves lack the flair and seduction of the vampire, the pitiable nature of creatures like the Frankenstein's Monster, or the so close to humanity and yet so far away nature of creatures like the Invisible Man. And before I go out of my way to rip-off any more from Centennial Specials' Encyclopedia of Horror (well worth a read if you can get it), let me rip off their explanation of it.

To quote directly from the Encyclopedia, "Perhaps it's because it's something so primal and real, like something dark that we keep squashed down deep within ourselves". From the ancient world to the modern day, the werewolf resonates with audiences because of what it represents - the darker side of ourselves. From the tales of Enkidu in the Epic of Gilgamesh to Daniel "Oz" Osbourne, the werewolf has endured and has had yards spun about them and creatures like them time and time again.

MadCap's Game Reviews - "Castlevania"

No, no. For real this time.

Castlevania is not a game I ever got to play on the original NES. My parents had one that I got to play games like Super Mario Bros., Zelda II, and even the dreaded TMNT game, but Castlevania was one that I hadn't played or even seen all that much ago. You see, dear readers, I was once a big chicken when it came to horror movies and media. Goosebumps used to unnerve me to no end. Yeah, that's right. Goosebumps. Get your jokes out now.

MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Seattle By Night, Part 0: The Introduction"

So, I have mentioned a few times before this that I am a fan of the tabletop game Vampire: The Masquerade. I reviewed Bloodlines some time ago, and I have mentioned a session gone awry in my Tabletop Tales that ended the life of my poor Irish stereotype Ventrue, Sean O'Malley. Much like the Star Wars fanfiction I did for 2017's NaNo, Minos Mayhem (which, yes, I do have plans to finish at some point in the future), I decided that I might take a crack at this as well. I'll just go ahead and get this fanfiction trope out of the way - I am not affiliated with White Wolf or Onyx Path Publishing in any way, shape, or form. That being said, I don't really entirely consider this fanfiction, per se. At least not entirely.

This is, more or less, what a collection of ideas that a friend of mine and I had brought together to start up a game that sadly never quite got off the ground. I'm sure that there is some Masquerade fan out there ready to step up and tell me I'm wrong about certain things I'm about to say, but here I want to lay down a bit of information about the world I'm writing in. Chiefly that this is not Seattle as it has been shown in any product under White Wolf or Onyx Path Publishing. When we were making things, we decided to go for a wholly unique set up. That means the Prince, the Sheriff, the Scourge, all the Primogens down to the very last madcap whacky Malkavian will all be ones that have never been shown in a White Wolf story or product. That doesn't mean that there won't be cameos from folks in the overall meta plot, but Seattle itself will consist of only original vampires (and humans, and potentially other supernatural types as well).

MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "Hollow Man"

So...Kevin Bacon staring in a movie with Josh Brolin.

That's right, this movie promises us Sebastian Shaw versus Thanos. And delivers!

...wait, does anyone actually remember that First Class happened? Never mind.

Hollow Man is a film from the year 2000, brought to us by the director of Showgirls and Robocop (and there's your daily dose of utter mindscrew for the day) Paul Verhoeven. It's a (then-)modernized take on H.G. Wells' novel, The Invisible Man. It honestly doesn't go too much more beyond that, but it doesn't really need to. It's still a good story that touches on themes of hubris, as well as corruption by scientific progress left unchecked.

MadCap's Game Reviews - "Vampyr"

For our first video game stop in Horror Month 2018, let's wind the clocks back to 1918 in merry old England. Unfortunately, in 1918, England was old but certainly not merry. The Great War was dovetailing to an end, and through the streets of London lurked an unseen killer...the Spanish Flu.

And also, vampires. Spoiler alert.

MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "Dracula Untold"

Time to start off Horror Month 2018 right! And who better to start out with than with the Prince of Darkness himself? Dracula! One of the most recurring characters in all of fiction, likely the one to have the most adaptations across films, books, short stories, and television series as well as other forms of media. Why is it that we, as a culture, find him so appealing? This fictional character based at least somewhat upon Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler, a warlord from - you guessed it - Transylvania. Whether he's the antagonist, the protagonist, or something in-between, Dracula continues to fascinate us as a culture to this day.

In this particular instance, Dracula - or, rather, Vlad the Impaler (Luke Evans) - fills the role of the protagonist. Rather than paying any attention to Stoker's original novel, the film attempts to craft an origin story that connects Dracula to his historical influence. Kind of like what Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula had fourteen years beforehand, but I don't think anyone even remembers that beyond Rudolph Martin also showing up as Dracula to kick off the fifth season of Buffy, so never mind that.

Instead, we join Vlad Tepes, the Son of the Dragon and the Prince over Wallachia and Transylvania. One of the most fiercesome warriors in the Ottoman Empire, he became known as Vlad the Impaler for his habit of interior design mastery and light roof repair - just kidding, it's actually bringing a horribly, grizzly death to his enemies by impaling them on spears. Otherwise known as the "Wallachian Hello". Now, though, it's peace time and Vlad is enjoying his time with his wife, Mirena (Sarah Gadon) and his son, Ingeras (Art Parkinson), up until some of his men get slaughtered by a vampire living in a mountain.

...or, rather, that's been trapped a mountain. Vlad seems content to leave him there, but soon the Ottoman Empire comes beating down his door to demand the firstborn sons to serve as soldiers, and Vlad makes a deal with the vampire (Charles Dance). The vampire agrees to give Vlad some of his blood, which will give him the powers of the vampire that he can then use to defeat the Ottomans. If Vlad can avoid the urge to sate his thirst for human blood for three days, then he'll turn back into a human no harm, no foul. If he gives in, however, he will remain a vampire forever and Tywin Lannister will be free to march across the face of the Earth.

And all of us without a Peter Dinklage in sight.

So, the rules are set. Vlad gets a nifty grab bag of abilities from the vampire blood and a terrible, terrible thirst. The rest of the film involves him wrestling with the Beast and contending with the Sultan Mehmed II (Dominic Cooper). So, yes, this film is basically Bard of Lake Town vs. Tony Stark's father.

As I stated above, we're going with Dracula as the protagonist rather than an antagonist, so the film centers around him as he attempts to not permanently become a vampire and save both his family and his nation from the Ottomans. As an origin story goes, it's definitely a good one! This film got a lot of critical reviews, the best of them saying that it was just okay and it really missed the mark. Personally, I don't see how. Luke Evans gives an excellent performance as a former warrior who is trying desperately to hold on to what little he has. Now is the rest of the acting great? Not really, but there's nothing that's too terrible and Evans really carries it.

There's real emotion as he tries to struggle with his inner demons and resist the urge to go just that much further in battling the hordes of the Ottomans.

And given that, well...the movie is called Dracula Untold, you can probably guess how well that went. It's a story of great tragedy, very much in the Gothic tradition. It's definitely a very good one. Not one of my favorite films, certainly, but it is always interesting to see the corruption of a noble figure who did what they had to for the best of reasons become...something far darker. Of course, we don't actually see that part of it due to this film not getting a sequel despite the very clear set up for one.

Or, rather, it's set up for the Dark Universe that Universal is trying to make. Another piggybacking attempt off of the success of Marvel's movies, the Dark Universe was meant as a reinvention of classic Universal monsters into a shared universe of movies. A great idea on paper, until you realize that one of the people behind it at its inception was Robert "Khan's Magical Super Blood" Orci. But yes, Dracula Untold's ending did very clearly set it up for something...which is not followed up on in the least.

And that's really a shame. For a tale of a hero who must become a villain to save everything he loves, you could do a lot, lot worse.

Dracula Untold is brought to us from Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures.

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