Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Music Video of the Day: Numb by Pet Shop Boys (2006, directed by Julian Gibbs and Chris Sayer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

According to the band, the music video for Numb was meant to be an homage to Russian constructivist cinema and the video does have the look of the old propaganda films that were put into production during the early days of the Soviet Union.  The video also begins with what appears to be the sinking of the Titanic before moving onto all of the other tragedies that occurred around the same time.  It may not be a “Halloween song” but the video does have a horror aesthetic.

Numb, itself, is a song that was often played whenever the UK was dealing with a tragedy, like being eliminated from the World Cup.

Enjoy!

Game Review: Approaching Horde! (2022, Craig Ruddell)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Your nightly routine is interrupted by the zombie apocalypse!  With your wife and most of your neighbors now turned into denizens of the damned, it is up to you to manage a ragtag group of ten survivors and find a way to survive the end of the world.

Approaching Horde! is a resource management game where you assign each of the survivors in your group a specific task.  There’s a lot that need to be done and the more survivors that you assign to each task, the quicker it will be completed.  The problem is that if you assign too many people to one task, the other tasks won’t get done.  If you have too many people working on a zombie cure but not on growing food, the survivors will starve.  If you have too many people growing food but not working on a cure, your people will be well-fed but they’ll be eaten as soon as the zombie horde arrives.  Fortunately, you can send some of your people out to look for other survivors.  The more people you recruit into your camp, the quicker you can get things done.

It’s a challenge but that makes success all the more rewarding.  Fortunately, the game comes with adjustable difficulty settings.  I found the easiest setting to be pretty difficult but then I was played at the hardest setting and realized just how crazy the zombie apocalypse can get!  I enjoyed this game and, due to its format, it’s one that can be played over and over again.  Trying to survive the end of the world is certainly addictive!

Play Approaching Horde!

The Lurking Fear (1994, directed by C. Courtney Joyner)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

For years, the town of Leffert’s Corners has lived in fear of the criminal Martense family.  The family’s youngest son, John (Blake Bailey), has just been released from prison and now he’s returning home.  He knows that, before he died, his father arranged for a thousand dollars to be buried in the cemetery.  After the town mortician (Vincent Schiavelli, in a too brief cameo) tells him where it is, John heads to the cemetery.  Unfortunately, he’s followed by crime boss Bennett (Jon Finch) and his thugs.

Cathryn (Ashley Laurence) and Dr. Haggis (Jeffrey Combs) are already at the cemetery, though not for the money.  It turns out that subterranean monsters (all of whom are descended from one John’s relatives) are living underneath the cemetery grounds and terrorizing the town.  Cathryn and Haggis are planning on blowing up the graveyard but that plan is put on hold when John and Bennett arrive.  Underground monsters or not, Bennett is planning on getting that money and if that means holding everyone hostage in a church while the monsters prepare to attack, that is exactly what he is going to do.

As is evident by the welcome presence of Jeffrey Combs, The Lurking Fear is another Full Moon production that was loosely adapted from a H.P. Lovecraft short story.  The premise has promise and the cast is full of talent but the film’s direction is flat, the script is shallow, and the monsters themselves look good but there’s nothing that set them apart from a dozen other monsters that have appeared in Full Moon productions.  (The monsters resemble the dungeon dweller from Castle Freak but they are never as scary.)  It’s too bad because The Lurking Fear is one of Lovecraft’s best short stories and it seems like one that would make a great movie.  But, as a movie, The Lurking Fear, like so many other Full Moon productions, doesn’t seem to know what to do with itself whenever the monsters aren’t around.  Hopefully, someday, Lovecraft’s The Lurking Fear will get the film adaptation that it deserves.

Game Review: A House On A Hill (2022, Devin Cummings)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

There’s a house on a hill that everyone says in haunted.  Your friends Ingram and Ryan have dared you to enter the house, even though you might get sick from something you find in there or you might even die.  You can try to convince one of them to enter the house with you.  You can enter the house alone.  Or you can go home.

If there’s one thing that every good Interactive Fiction writer understands, it’s that you can get a player to do anything if you suggest that doing otherwise would make them a coward.  Saying “Go Home Coward” is the equivalent of making chicken noises.

Once you enter the house, you can search the rooms and you get a chance to make a few simple decisions about whether or not to do certain things.  Throughout it all, you are given the option to turn around leave.  You’ll get called a coward but considering what does happen if you stay, sometimes it is worth being called a coward.

This is a simple Twine game and it shouldn’t take anyone longer than 10 minutes to play it.  But there are enough different areas of the house to explore and enough possible outcomes that the game itself can be replayed several times.

Play A House On A Hill.

Music Video of the Day: Locked In by Judas Priest (1986, directed by Wayne Isham)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Is it Mad Max or is it Judas Priest?

This video was directed by Wayne Isham, who was another one of directors who did videos for almost everyone.  You weren’t a real rock star unless both Wayne Isham and Nigel Dick directed a video for you.

This song appeared on Judas Priest’s 1986 album, Turbo.  The album was full of songs designed to annoy Tipper Gore.

Enjoy!

The Fear (1995, directed by Vincent Robert)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Psychology student Richard (Eddie Bowz) wants to conduct a study.  After getting permission from the head of his department, Dr. Arnold (Wes Craven!), Richard gathers together a group of students and takes them to his family’s cottage.  He introduces the group to “Morty,” a life-sized wooden dummy who Richard has had ever since he was a child.  Morty, Richard explains, was carved by a Native American shaman and was then stolen by Richard’s grandfather.  Each member of the group is told to confess their greatest fear to “Morty.”  Even Richard takes part, confessing that he was scared of Morty when he was growing up.

File this one under “it seemed like a good idea at the time,” because the weekend quickly heads south.  Richard’s uncle (Vince Edwards) shows up unannounced with his new girlfriend, Tanya (Anna Karin).  Members of the group start to disappear and one of them is assaulted at a Christmas carnival, leading the group to suspect that one of them might be the rapist who has been attacking women on campus.  Morty starts to show up in an unexpected rooms in cottage and it appears that everyone’s fears are starting to come true!

The Fear is one of those films that used to show up on late Cinemax but I mostly remember it because it was one of those movies that always seemed to be on display at our local Blockbuster.  The VHS cover featured Morty giving someone the side-eye and looking dangerous.  Morty is the best thing about the movie.  Just looking at him is unsettling.  Why would Richard be stupid enough to tell people to confess their fears to Morty?

Morty is creepy but the movie doesn’t seem to know what to do with him.  Sometimes, Morty is evil and can move on his own and even seems to be capable of possessing someone.  Other times, the movie seems to suggests that everything that’s happening is just in Richard’s head and Morty is just a wooden dummy.  The story becomes impossible to follow as every member of the group is revealed to have a secret and Richard is finally forced to admit that there is something that he’s even more scared of than Morty.  (If, as the film suggests, Morty is mostly after Richard, why does Morty first waste so much time on the other members of the group?)  The Fear is not without ambition.  It takes the therapy scenes seriously and Eddie Bowz does seem like he’s trying to give a believable performance as Richard.  It seems like the people involved wanted to make a good movie.  But once everyone’s fears start to come true and the movie moves into a ridiculous subplot about Richard and his stepsister, the movie is too disjointed to work.  It doesn’t help that most of the fears are too mundane to really translate into an imaginative death scene.  By the end of it all, not even Morty’s that scary anymore.

Game Review: Chase The Sun (2022, Frankie Kavakich)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Something has gone wrong with the world.  For six days straight, the sun has not set and there are reports of a storm circling the globe and flooding everywhere that it hits.  Europe and Asia are gone.  You are driving down a road in Pennsylvania.  You’ve been driving for three days and, during the entire time, the sun has been right ahead of you.

Your choices are simple.  Do you keep chasing the sun?  Do you listen to the radio?  Do you think about your family and the situation that you fled when it became obvious that something had gone wrong with the world?  Do you stop for gas or do you ignore the warning light?  Simple the choices may be but they will determine how you spend your last few days on Earth.

Chase The Sun is one of the many recent games to deal with the end of the world.  One thing that almost all of these games have in common is a fatalistic view of the end.  In almost all of them, the end is inevitable and it’s just a question of whether you can go out on your own terms or not.  Chase the Sun is no different but what sets this game apart from so many other games is that your choices actually do make a difference.  This is not one of those games where all of your choices all circle back until each game reaches the same conclusion.  Instead, there are multiple endings, depending on what you choose to focus on.  You have the chance to find some happiness before the world ends but it’s going to require making some smart decisions.  Make the wrong decision and your ending will be far less pleasant.  

The game’s descriptions are vivid and, most importantly, it’s not a game that wastes any time.  It’s a game that can be played and finished within 15 minutes but, because it has so many possible endings and branching storylines, it’s also a game that reward replaying.

Play Chase The Sun.

Music Video of The Day: The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg by Iron Maiden (2006, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When Iron Maiden released this song, they knew that their fans would try to find out who Benjamin Breeg was so they created a website about Breeg.  According to the site, Breeg was a painter of disturbing images who later found work in a cemetery and then as a paranormal investigator.  He disappeared in 1978.  Of course, this was all fictional.  There was no Benjamin Breeg.  The “Breeg” painting that was displayed on the site was actually a painting of Eddie, the band’s mascot.

The video features footage of Iron Maiden performing mixed in with a montage of early band pictures.

Enjoy!

Shrieker (1998, directed by David DeCoteau)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Six college students decide to stick it to the man by avoiding pricey dorm living and instead squatting in an abandoned hospital.  That makes sense because we all know that college is too damn expensive and that student housing is rip-off.  The students may have made a mistake picking the hospital, though.  Guess what?  That hospital was abandoned for a reason!  Years ago, a “shrieking” murderer killed all of the doctors and the nurses.  Some say the murderer was a crazed patient while others say it was a monster summoned by Satanists.  No sooner has mathematics major Clark (Tanya Dempey) moved into the hospital than everyone starts to hear the sound of shrieks coming from the basement.  Not only is there someone else already living in the basement but, somehow, the Shrieker has also been summoned!  Once people start dying, the suspicion is directed at Clark because she’s the newest resident.  But Clark thinks that, thanks to her skill with numbers and computers, she’s figured out who is actually responsible and how the Shrieker selects its victims.  She may have even figured out how to defeat the Shrieker but will she be able to get anyone to listen to her?

From Charles Band’s Full Moon Entertainment, this is one of those low-budget direct-to-video horror films that used to show up on late night Cinemax.  Unfortunately, it’s pretty tame, with none of the gore or anything else that we typically associate with Full Moon Entertainment.  The Shrieker itself looks good but it’s never around for long and too many of its attacks are just filmed as a sudden close-up of the Shrieker’s face.  The characters are all obnoxious but most of them die so it’s not a problem.  Alison Cuffe plays the role of the token communist with a lot of relish but it’s hard not to wonder what Linnea Quigley could have done with that role.  That would have been something to shriek about.