Abusing the Cutlery: Roman Era Weapons

Eschewing edged weapons is all very well in the late-Victorian era or the Modern Day (one might almost say that it’s the lazy way around things), but there are some canon Call of Cthulhu time periods where melee weapons are de rigueur. In Cthulhu Invictus or Dark Ages, you really need to know your tang from your fuller, so here’s a list of cutlery which should give you some food for thought.

*****

Axes:

The Romans tended to borrow things from the farther reaches of their empire and the axes used by the legions are a clear instance of this type of adoption. In early times, the Romans used a kind of axe that more closely resembled a pickaxe, which they referred to as a “dolabra”. Obviously, in a regimented military setting, this style of weapon was more useful that a straight axe, because it could be turned to a number of different uses as the situation dictated, from chopping wood to digging trenches. Basically, it was the entrenching tool of the Roman era. Although a ‘workhorse-y’ type of implement, some of them became very elaborate, even incorporating specialised scabbards which allowed them to be slung from the owner’s belt.

After incorporating the Celtiberians and the Gauls into the Empire, the legions made room for some of the more effective weapons of the conquered peoples. The great axe, a mainstay of the Germanic peoples, was an instant hit and soon found a home in Rome’s armies (besides, how would you like to be the centurion forced to tell his new Germanic recruits that “no, you can’t bring your barbarian toothpick along with you”? Exactly). These weapons were typically long-hafted and could be either single-bladed, or double-edged (called a ‘bipennis’ axe). They have an advantage in that they can be thrown using the wielder’s Throw Skill, but they do 1D6 less damage, lose the damage bonus due to STR, and are only effective up to Medium range (5 metres, or 15 feet).

Cestus

The Gladiators were the Kardashians of their day, and generally, whatever looked funky and cool in the arena, soon found its way into the armoury of the Empire, especially if it got results. The cesti were basically studded gloves that made a Punch more effective. Think: Jean-Claude van Damme in “Kickboxer”.

Some cesti were simply lengths of studded leather wrapped around the fists of the pugilist; others were more elaborate and expensive, even prefiguring the mailed gauntlets of medieval knights. In essence they were simply flashy knuckledusters, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t incredibly effective.

Daggers

As in most schools of martial training, the dagger is often considered the ‘holdout’ weapon, or the one you turn to if everything else fails. So it was with the Legions and this line of last resistance was often represented by the pugio. This was a short, stubby knife, with a metal scabbard, that could be hitched to the owner’s belt, either alongside their standard side-arm or in the small of their back, where it was less obvious. In a shield wall, when shields get jammed together and swinging a sword or spear becomes problematic, the sharp, pointed testimony of the pugio can well make all the difference to the day’s outcome...

Occasionally though, you don’t want to get that close to the enemy. Sometimes you want to take a leaf out of Crocodile Dundee’s book and say “that’s not a knife – this is a knife” and flash something that will give your opposition pause. The sica is your best friend here. Another import from the conquered Empire, the main benefit of this weapon is that, if your enemy calls your bluff, you can always throw it at them and beat cheeks out of there while they deal with the aftermath.

The boomerang-like profile of the sica means that it cuts most effectively when used with a downwards chopping motion; however, this same shape makes it very good for chucking, too (although, unlike a boomerang, once chucked it stays chucked). When used in this fashion, it adds +5% to the wielder’s Throw skill to use, but loses its damage bonus due to the user’s STR stat. Like the Great Axe above, it has a useful targeting range of 5 metres (15 feet).

Falcata

Those Celtiberians from the Spanish Peninsular were tough buggers to bring to heel and this weapon was the prime reason for that. Consequently, it became an irregular, but nevertheless much used, side-arm in the Roman armies. The falcata is a one-handed chopping sword with a forward-curving single edge that is deadly in the hands of someone who knows what they’re about. In many ways, it’s the forerunner of the Gurkha knife, and just as fearsome. When used on horseback against unmounted opponents, it confers a +5% bonus to the rider and, if you really must, it can be thrown using the Throw Skill, but it loses its damage bonus in this mode. The presence of this weapon in the Legions’ arsenals is directly responsible for the appearance of the next implement...

Falx

When a fellow in a tin-plate tuxedo bears down on you on horseback swinging a shiny cleaver, you really want to be able to respond in kind. That’s what the falx is all about.

Like the falcata, the falx is a long chopping blade with a single edge; unlike the falcata, the falx is longer and requires two hands to use properly, which makes it perfect for hooking a horse’s rider and dragging him out of the saddle. When used by a foot-soldier against a mounted opponent, the falx adds +5% to the wielder’s chance to hit; an Impaling strike requires that the rider make a DEX Roll (D20 under their DEX) or fall off their horse, with all the excess damage which that implies.

Javelin

Javelins are a lighter version of the hasta and designed only to be thrown unlike the other spear weapons which can serve both as missiles and as melee weapons. They generally show up in bundles of three – any more than this and they become unwieldy on the battlefield.

Plumbata

Remember way back in the dim past when you decided to play a Magic-User in D&D for the first time? Right, you thought: robes, pointy hat, spell book – let see what kind of weapons I can rustle up. What you got was a choice of dagger, staff or – darts. This instantly conjured up images of fat blokes with a beer in one hand chucking tiny pointed missiles at a round board, so inevitably you’d just decide to stick with the knife...

What the rule books didn’t point out was that, by “darts”, they meant these things, which are a whole other kettle of mean. The plumbata were usually carried in bunches of six, and the legionnaires would lob them at onrushing enemy troops, causing confusion and dismay as they rained down out of the sky. They have lead-weighted, barbed heads and leather vanes, which allowed them to be hurled with a fair degree of accuracy and to strike with brutal force. There’s no way that they’d let you wield one of these down at the pub!

Plumbata can also be fired using a bow (arcus) in which case their range increases from 25 metres (75 feet) to 60 metres (180 feet).

Rhomphaia

This weapon is a distant cousin of the falcata, and forms a bridge between that weapon and the falx. This single-edged, two-handed sword was developed in Thrace and was designed to be used against mounted opponents, or from the walls of besieged fortifications, where its hooked profile came in handy in opposing ladders, ropes and climbing combatants. It is lighter than either the falcata or falx and designed for slicing and jabbing rather than chopping. No matter how you slice it though, it’s a scary-looking piece of business!

Spears

The pilum is standard issue for the Roman military. It’s the main ingredient for a shield wall, or similar defensive manoeuvre, because its length helps keep the enemy at bay. Across the legions’ history, the length of the pilum stretched out to stupid dimensions before retracting once more to a reasonable length; but whatever its measurement, in the hands of the legionnaires, it means business.

As a side note, the pilum was constructed so that, after it was thrown, whatever it got stuck in would be weighed down by it. The weight of the spear is in the middle at the base of a thin metal shaft just behind the business end; this metal bar was made to bend once lodged, causing the target to become entangled in the length of the weapon. A charging Celt with a few of these stuck in his shield would soon be forced to ditch it... 

The other main polearm of the Roman troops was the hasta. This is simply a more aerodynamic and trickily-weighted pilum made to be thrown if the situation calls for it. The legionnaires used javelins as well, but the hasta is the halfway house between them and the pilum, able to be used in a shield formation as well as being thrown (using the wielder’s Throw Skill). If you’re the kind of forgetful soldier of Rome who – metaphorically – always “brings a knife to a gun fight”, forego the other pigstickers and keep a bunch of these handy: you’ll never be inappropriately armed again! Also, be wary about how you pronounce the name of this thing. Just sayin’...

Swords

Along with armour, shield and pilum, as a raw recruit of Rome, you were issued with a sword called a gladius. This is a meat-and-potatoes weapon – nothin’ fancy; just the business. Its main virtue is that it can be used one-handed from within a shield formation, without weakening the defence; being a short, straight, two-edged blade with a no-frills handguard, it tends not to get caught on things in its vicinity. Don’t leave Rome without it...

The Egyptians stuck around for thousands of years, before succumbing first to the Ptolemies and then to the yoke of the Roman Empire. Arguably, their best days were well done and dusted before Rome turned its gaze to the “breadbasket of the Mediterranean”, but the artefacts of their culture lingered on well past their ‘use-by’ date. One of those artefacts was the khopesh.

This is a decidedly odd weapon. Made from bronze it doesn’t really stand up to a fight against the typical Roman armaments, but, that being said, it’s easy to underestimate the khopesh in the hands of an expert fighter. The edge of the khopesh runs along the convex arc of the big curve at the business end; this means that a downwards chop has more cutting power than a straight-edged sword. Some of these swords are double-edged, which confers upon them all the benefits that a falx has against a mounted opponent. Generally though, the inside edge of the khopesh is blunt and is used for disarming or entangling the opposition, by “getting all up in their business”. Think of it as simply a big hook, like those used to drag bad comedians off stage in the vaudeville days. In order to avail themselves of this capability, the wielder must announce that they are going to entangle their adversary and then attack with the khopesh but using their Grappling skill rather than their Sword: Khopesh Skill. If the Grapple succeeds the opponent loses their attack that round; if the roll is under both the user’s Grapple and Sword: Khopesh skill, then the opponent needs to make a DEX Roll or lose/break their weapon. Cool beans!

Unfortunately, the khopesh needs to be sharpened after every encounter; if not, it loses a point of damage for every successive fight in which it is used until it inflicts a mere 1D4+db damage – about the same as beating on someone with a bronze bar. And lastly, in a fight with a steel weapon, a critically failed Roll means that it has snapped. Ouch!

Meanwhile, back in Rome, the infantrymen of the Legions were getting sick and tired of being worked over by jocks on horseback, so they decided to get sneaky. To compensate for the height advantage, the foot-soldiers took their gladii and doubled their length – voila! No more benefits from being mounted in battle! The spatha is simply a longer gladius and has all the advantages of that other useful war-tool, but with the nice benefit of extending further out in front of the shield wall than the shorter gladius.

Of course, the situation returned to normal when the guys on horseback figured out that they could use a spatha too. In fact, when used while riding a horse, the spatha confers an extra +5% to the wielder’s sword skill against un-mounted opponents. Bummer!

Trident

Those flashy gladiators are responsible for this weapon, too. Oftentimes accompanied with a weighted net, the legionnaires generally preferred to use the trident on its own, since they were more interested in despatching foes quickly rather than entertaining onlookers. The purpose of the trident is to keep the opponent at a distance and immobile by pinning limbs or equipment, or deflecting attacks.

The benefit of the trident is that it can attack and parry in the same round, like a Fencing Foil. A parry does no damage to the parried target, however the damage from a successfully parried attack is absorbed by the weapon, possibly causing it to break.

*****

Weapon	Base Chance	Damage	Range	Attacks / Round	HPs	Malfunction
Axe (Dolabra)*	15%	1D6+db	touch	1	15	00%
Axe, Great*	15%	2D6+db	touch	1	25	00%
Cestus	50%	1D6+db	touch	1	n/a	00%
Dagger (Pugio)*	15%	1D6+db	touch	1	20	00%
Dagger (Sica)*	15%	1D6+1+db	touch	1	20	00%
Falcata*	15%	1D8+db	touch	1	20	00%
Falx*	20%	1D8+db	touch	1	20	00%
Javelin*	10%	1D8	long	1	20	00%
Plumbata*	10%	1D6	long	1	10	95%
Rhomphaia*	15%	1D8+db	touch	1	20	00%
Spear (Pilum)*	15%	1D8+db	touch	1	20	00%
Spear (Hasta)*	15%	1D10+db	touch	1	15	00%
Sword (Gladius)*	15%	1D6+1+db	touch	1	20	00%
Sword (Khopesh)*	15%	1D8+db	touch	1	15	95%
Sword (Spatha)*	20%	1D8+db	touch	1	20	00%
Trident*	10%	1D6+db	touch	1	20	00%

*This weapon can Impale

Of course, all of these details are rendered moot when you run up against the forces of the Mythos. You’re unlikely to go about trying to poke Has-, er, “He Who Should Not Be Named”, with your hasta, but any of its human cultists and other followers are fair game. Hopefully, your players will enjoy trying out some of the more unusual weapons, if only for a change of pace!

Review "Ghostbusters" 2016

FEIG, Paul, “Ghostbusters”, Columbia Tristar Pictures, 2016.

I went to see the first Ghostbusters movie in Geneva, which is how I ended up seeing Disney’s “The Black Cauldron”. The session of “Ghostbusters” that we were angling towards – a “VO” or “version originale” session in the original language – had been dumped in favour of the German language print and so we went to the cinema next door to see Uncle Walt’s latest offering instead. If they’d been playing the French dubbed version I would have stuck it out, but my German was pretty woeful so it would have been money wasted. Still, we were back the next night and the VO session was all systems go: it turned out that it was worth waiting for.

As a result, I had high hopes for this re-boot and was looking forward to a good time. Unlike many other fan-boys out there, it bothered me not at all that the new cast was an all-girl affair; my main concern was that the movie stuck to its rationale and dished up the laughs with the scares in equal serves. Sadly, it was not to be.

Comedy, it seems, has taken a sharp turn into a place that I don’t understand. Movies like “Bridesmaids” and “The Hangover” are based on topics which I find deeply un-funny, and the technique behind them seems to be based largely on improvisational theatre, where a scene is set up and then allowed to lurch its un-scripted way forwards until it collapses to the floor like a spent balloon before moving on. This is okay if you enjoy watching nervy and neurotic people wittering on in a vaguely embarrassed and awkward fashion before running out of steam, but I do not count myself amongst that crowd. Noel Coward-esque it ain’t.

The movie therefore is a series of these un-scripted stagings, each getting set up and then being allowed to completely fizzle out, exhausted of all its potentiality. Kristen Wiig visits her old friend, angry that she has published a book that they both agreed to never let see the light of day; as she bursts into Melissa McCarthy’s laboratory, McCarthy appears wearing a stupid-looking electronic helmet. They bat this around until it dies a death and a scripted exit allows them to finally leave it alone. Cut to the next set up; rinse and repeat. Frankly, it’s dull. It’s one thing to trust that your comedians will find the comedy gold in the situation, but – as a paying customer – I’m here to see that gold, not the mining process.

The flailing around for the funny also has a detrimental effect on the characters. While on the lookout for the right moment, the actors aren’t really inhabiting their roles, and their portrayals suffer from a lack of commitment. Of the four leads, only Kate McKinnon was convincingly wearing her character’s skin; the rest were just wearing funny clothes.

Still, I guess if you enjoy this kind of humour, then you may like this film. Certainly there were no problems with the special effects: the ghosts were very well executed and quite alarming in places – although that irritating “Slimer” ghost was back again, taking up way too much screen time than its presence warranted. These films are also known for their music, and again, this was very enjoyable - I boogied along quite happily in my cinema seat. The only other problem was the cameos.

To my mind, a re-boot should be just that: dust it off and do it again. Put your own mark on it; make it fresh and get it out there once more. Take the core of those original ideas and move the concept onto to another, more startling, place. There is a strong sense in this movie of paying debts to the past and frankly, it could have done without them. As the movie rolls along, all of the original cast members from the first film show up: Bill Murray is an antagonistic parapsychologist; Annie Potts is a hotel receptionist; Ernie Hudson runs a funeral service business; Sigourney Weaver is McKinnon’s character’s mentor. Even the StayPuft Marshmallow man is back. Of these, the only one that is amusing is Dan Ackroyd as a grumpy New York cabbie who “ain’t afraid o’ no ghosts”. Waiting for each of these guys to do their bit and get it over with is just painful; at least Rick Moranis had the good taste to be excused.

I don’t get what all this sacred cow nonsense is about. If Paul Feig wanted to do a Ghostbusters film then why the hell didn’t he just go and do it? The script; the cast; the story – it was all bogged down with other people’s trash and a heavy notion of ‘paying their dues’ to be allowed to play in this sandpit. Basically, they just shot themselves in the foot. And not only that – the post-credit sequence, which sets the new Ghostbusters up for a sequel, references mayhem from the demonic entity Xul, who – as we all remember – was the evil being from the 1984 film. Come on! Do something new already!

J.J. Abrams is the current ‘re-boot queen’ at the moment, reanimating everything that he can get his hands on. His first Star Trek movie managed to involve Leonard Nimoy in a cameo as Spock without bogging-down the proceedings; it was new and fresh. His next ‘Trek offering was less successful, being simply “Wrath of Khan” turned inside out. Even his turn at the helm of “Star Wars” – while better than anything George Lucas could ever do – was still peppered with a wealth of nostalgic dead weight that wasted opportunities for doing something ground-breaking. Is this what we have to live with now? Warm fuzzy feelings brought on by repetitious re-introductions of old elements of franchise films? Do we somehow fool ourselves that, just because we spotted an in-joke when a former mainstay actor pops up, that we are somehow more clever than we suspected? It’s a pretty hollow victory. Maybe such re-introductions are there to comfort us in the face of a brutally uncertain world? If so, who decided that we need such soothing? It’s an opiate people; designed to keep us focussed on the Kardashians and their vapid ilk.

In the final analysis, there’s really nothing new to see here. Maybe in the sequel they’ll feel that they own the property enough to do something with it, but I suspect not. Buy the soundtrack instead.

Two tentacled horrors.

Postscript: Can I just say that I was REALLY disappointed that this didn't work? After months of idiot geeks (who should know better) railing about how "only men can be Ghostbusters", the only people that let this vehicle down were the writers and the director. What we have here is a failure to commit. This franchise is its own genre and either you get it or you don't. The end credits for this film are a sad list of those who didn't.

My Top 10 Werewolf Films...

In looking at making a list of werewolf films that appeal to me, I discovered that they are few and far between. Of the standard monster tropes out there, the werewolf is indeed the poor cousin to vampires, re-animated horrors, and spectral bad-guys. The main approach that Hollywood takes with this creature nowadays is to posit it as a symbol of adolescent maturation, the change brought on by puberty and all of its scary and bewildering ramifications. Thus we have a slew of ‘teenaged werewolves’ movies and TV shows which, by-and-large, are fairly poor-quality, inordinately focussed upon sex, and usually comedic.

A problem with werewolves is that they only appear at certain times, ie. whenever it’s a full moon, which makes them rather predictable. This is especially so when it comes to television series based upon them. Conveniently, there’s always a full moon out when things go down on TV, whether it’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Being Human”, “True Blood”, or “Teen Wolf”. This can often get in the way of an audience’s ability to suspend disbelief. Fortunately, everyone seems to agree that silver is bad for werewolves, unlike vampire shows where nobody can seem to make up their minds about how best to get rid of them.

The type of werewolf film which appeals to me are the ones which take as their raison d’etre the notion of the ‘beast within’, moving beyond the simple appearance of secondary sex characteristics and into the realm of uncontainable rage and bestial impulses. Here, things get far more interesting (and way less funny). Given my preference, the list of movies narrows down even more, and, in order to make this exercise worthwhile, I’ve had to move beyond the merely lupine and embrace a wider scope of material which encompasses people turning into all sorts of other creatures. Hopefully, I’ll be able to string this out to a list of ten!

Again, the list is completely chronological, not a ranking by quality.

Waggner, George (1941), “The Wolf-Man”

This is the seminal Universal Horror film that really kickstarted the whole werewolf movie genre. Lon Chaney Jr. arrives at the ancestral British seat of his family, bringing his brash but adorable American ways to a quaint English village. He settles in and begins to woo the daughter of the local antiques dealer. Things are going swimmingly until the gypsies come to town and, after a romantic evening at the gypsy fair, our American hero is bitten by a ‘wolf-like creature’ while defending his potential new girlfriend from its ministrations. Of course we all know what comes next...

Lon Chaney had big shoes to fill, what with his father being the infamous “man of a thousand faces”, and he doesn’t disappoint here in his transformation. As a human being his distress is palpable and the audience is immediately drawn to his plight. On the flipside, Bela Lugosi plays the first werewolf who bites Chaney and is killed by him (with a silver-headed walking stick): this is Dracula ‘phoning it in. Lugosi was alternately good and bad in roles, but this is a stinker; fortunately, he’s not in it for long. They didn’t even bother to give his character a different name!

The plot is twisty and unnerving, leaving the viewer on their seat’s edge until the final, tragic, scene. On top of it all, there’s a nice piece of doggerel which gets drummed into your consciousness and which will stay with you forever:

“Even a man who is pure in heart

And says his prayers by night,

Will become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms

And the Autumn moon is bright.”

Tourneur, Jacques (1942), “Cat People”

Producer Val Lewton and Director Jacques Tourneur were brilliant when it came to making scary movies. They never had a lot to work with, in terms of script, plot, scenery, actors, or special effects, and yet they always came up with the goods. On one occasion, Lewton was thrown a copy of Jane Eyre and told to “do something with this, but call it ‘I Walked With A Zombie’”; even with those crippling limitations he made an excellent film.

Cat People is a text-book example of the sort of magic these two could work together. The premise is crazy – man impulsively marries an Eastern European woman he barely knows, only to regret his decision when it turns out that she’s from a village of people cursed to turn into panthers after dark – and yet, Tourneur and Lewton make it work. In fact, it worked so well that RKO Pictures, the company for which they toiled, was pulled out of an economic nose-dive and back into the black.

The trick they used was to let the imaginations of the audience do all of the heavy lifting. While there is a panther in this film, it’s in a cage at the zoo and doesn’t really cause much mayhem (a little, not a lot). For the rest of the film, we are fed only the suggestion of a stalking night-time menace - shadows and low rumbling growls - and yet the presence of the werecat is palpable. Especially great is the scene at the swimming pool where the cat bails up the hero’s new girlfriend.

The sequel to this masterpiece is, typically, not as satisfying, but it has its moments; Nastassia Kinski was in a re-make of this flick in 1982: ignore it, and go for the real deal.

Cocteau, Jean (1946), “La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast)”

The classic Perrault tale brought to life by a visionary film-maker. There is a problem about filming this story that always makes it a tricky proposition: at the end of the tale, just when we’ve learned to love the Beast, he turns into some ordinary-looking guy who doesn’t quite live up to the fantasy version of ‘the hero behind the mask’ which we’ve built up in our imaginations. Nevertheless, Belle falls into his arms and everyone lives happily ever after. Very unsatisfying. Cocteau realised this problem early on and deals with it in an effective, interesting and – no doubt – cost-saving manner: Belle’s evil suitor, sworn to kill the Beast, swaps bodies with the creature, thus ensuring that the attractive physical form and the beautiful personality are locked together (and also that hero, villain and creature are all played by the one actor). Belle herself comments upon the transformation that it might take some getting used to. Interestingly, while the body swap doesn’t happen in the Disney version, a similar sentiment is expressed by Belle in that film.

Aside from this issue, the rest of Cocteau’s film is a sumptuous and, in places, scary movie. The Beast’s castle is dreamlike and eerie with statues that come to life and arm-shaped torch holders that move as the guests do. At all times the surreal fairy-tale quality of the story is maintained. The Beast himself is played as if reining himself in from his most bestial impulses, which restraint and adoration are always effectively conveyed, despite layers of makeup. There is a hair-trigger atmosphere about this film that makes it feel like a house of cards, ready to come down at any minute, and it makes watching and re-watching it very worthwhile.

Majewski, Janusz (1970), “Lokis – A Manuscript of Professor Wittembach”

An excellent piece of crazy straight out of Eastern Europe. This time, there are no canines or felines; things take more of an ursine turn and werebears are our monster du jour. Again, most of the horror is implied and the whole story turns on an ‘is he, or isn’t he?’ premise; however, there is a large cast of backwoods characters who do things to each other (and to animals) which will shock you along the way. This is high concept and very clever movie-making with a moodiness and dreaminess that sometimes borders on the Hammer horror, but not enough to break its spell.

I wrote an extended review of this film a couple of years ago; check it out for a fuller overview as to why you should watch it.

Landis, John (1981), “An American Werewolf in London”

When this movie first came out it was widely touted as the next big thing in movie special effects. It was also noteworthy for being part of the new ‘horror-is-funny’ movement that was catching on at the time. No longer could a horror movie be made with serious intent; if there wasn’t a heaping side-order of humour to go with it, the studios wouldn’t even touch it.

What this film has going for it is high production values. The humour nestles within the horror, not displacing or leavening any of the drama, but – like the gate-keeper in “Macbeth” - serving as a release valve for the audience, so that they can de-pressurise before the next onslaught. As the movie theatre slowly fills up with the werewolf’s wisecracking victims and they slowly start to decay around him, we gain a psychological insight into the character, along with the horror that only rotting corpses failing to lie down can offer. The transformation scenes – so quintessential to modern werewolf fare – are excruciating and it’s a relief when they’re over.

This movie rests securely on its debt to the previous Lon Chaney Jr. vehicle, following in the footprints left by that earlier film. There is no happy ending here but there are a lot of laughs and screams before the bitter end.

Jordan, Neil (1984), “The Company of Wolves”

With this movie, we’re back in metaphorical territory. This film is based on a short story from Angela Carter’s collection The Bloody Chamber, a feminist re-working of many fairy-tale tropes. In this tale we encounter Little Red Riding-Hood, but an R-rated version in which the blood flows and keeps on flowing.

There are a number of werewolves in this film and they each transform in unique and interesting ways, primary amongst these is the one featured on all the posters and promotional material, where the wolf emerges from the mouth of its human counterpart. It’s as if the director threw down the gauntlet to his production crew, challenging them to innovate and to keep on innovating until he called time on the whole exercise.

The film is a portmanteau of several stories narrated by characters within the initial set-up: we drift from narrative to narrative, taking the lessons to be learned and moving back to our central players. The focus here is once more on the nature of the change from child to adult, but not in the sophomoric “I Was A Teen-Age Werewolf” sense. Here the purpose is to discuss gender stereotypes and we learn that, while the men in this fairy-tale often turn out to be monsters, the women change also and they can more than meet that challenge.

Gans, Christophe (2001), “Le Pacte des Loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf)”

France, probably more than any other country, is the home and source of werewolf legendry. During the Middle Ages and into the Enlightenment, the place ran red from supposed werewolf activity and there are many court records of people being burnt at the stake for being shapeshifters, alongside all of the witches that were being rounded up as well. You’d expect there to be some kind of filmic capitalisation on this source material, but there isn’t much. This film goes a long way towards rectifying that.

This movie kicks off as a moody period piece; however, in short order, the director tears a page out of Luc Besson’s playbook and it morphs into a full-on action adventure. It’s chop-socky meets 18^th Century Europe: fists and feet (and tomahawks) fly, guns roar and swords flash; there’s damsels in distress, suavely evil Counts to bring to justice...oh, and werewolves!

The story revolves around the always-prepared Grégoire de Fronsac, sent by the King of France to get to the bottom of all the rumours about werewolves running amok in the province of Gevaudan. With his Native American manservant, Mani, they ride into town and mayhem ensues. There’s something for everyone with this film – it’s a guaranteed crowd pleaser.

Marshall, Neil (2002), “Dog Soldiers”

A bunch of British SAS troopers head out into the forest for some wilderness survival training. An accident happens, they re-group, a stranger appears and an altercation takes place. Next thing, the soldiers are being taken out one-by-one by something familiar with their training and weapons, and those that don’t die seem to switch sides...

It says something about the impact of a movie when a throwaway line uttered by a second-string character becomes lodged in the pop-cultural consciousness to such a degree that an entire film can be generated using that scrap of dialogue as the punchline. That movie was “The Matrix”; the line was “there is no spoon”; and the film it spawned was this one. Many people hate this movie because it’s seemingly predicated upon this one joking reference; however, I think that they’re missing the irony: isn’t a werewolf flick supposed to be a shaggy-dog story?

With the exception of this one aspect, this movie has a lot going for it. The excitement and tension are visceral; the acting is good; and the transformations are superb. The characters are rounded, they make choices based on their desperate situations, and the narrative flows believably from these choices. Okay, they might be clones of roles from “Aliens” or “Predator” but, for what this film’s trying to do, they work. After all that, for anyone who still objects to the presence of this movie in my list, I have two words for you: “The Howling”.

Isaac, James (2006), “Skinwalkers”

I have an aversion to horror movie franchises and for some reason the werewolf movie seems to lend itself to an endless parade of sequels. It seems as though it’s not enough to make a bad lycanthrope film and quietly walk away from it; no, it’s like there’s an unwritten law that you have to keep hammering away at it in a pathetic attempt to improve upon the concept. Thus we have endless “Underworld” movies, an array of “Ginger Snaps” flicks and the above mentioned slew of “Howling” films that reached a definite nadir with “Howling III – the Marsupials”. It’s reached a stage where my eyes glaze over if there’s even a possibility of a werewolf in a horror film, but fortunately I wasn’t too jaded to catch this one.

What makes this film tick is that it’s about two sets of werewolves – a “good” clan who have settled into town and keep their affliction under wraps, and a travelling pack of “bad” werewolves, who enjoy killing and carnage. The baddies roar into town looking for the youngest member of the good-guys’ pack, because a prophecy has foretold that the kid will seriously affect the way that lycanthrope destiny will unfold in the future (specifically by stopping all the mindless slaughter somehow). Our bad guys are too keen to keep on keeping on, so they decide that the kid must go.

Our two teams collide in the town’s centre and things get wild. There are extended chases, epic fights and gore galore. Both teams are riddled with secrets and unresolved issues and these begin to surface, pushing the action along to a satisfying conclusion. An extra point in this movie’s favour is that it lists Elias Koteas among its actors and – given his penchant for quirky and offbeat productions - this always bodes well, as films such as “Fallen”, “The Prophecy” and even “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (not the recent drek – the very, very first one) would indicate. And so far, no-one’s made a sequel...

Bazalgette, Edward (2009), “Werewolves: The Dark Survivors”

This is a mockumentary which was made by the Animal Planet people as a kind of a joke. It seems kind of weird that they would have gone along with this concept, but nevertheless, it’s out there and it works. Like any documentary tracing the origins and lives of a particular species of creature, it traces the history of the werewolf across the ages, positing reasons as to how the lycanthrope came to be and then watching the animals in their normal environment. It’s a bit like David Attenborough meets Michael Moore.

We meet a clan of rootless werewolves, travelling across the country and trying to keep a low profile whilst keeping body and soul together. As we learn more about them, we observe issues of dominance within the pack structure, tearaway youngsters bridling under the command of the Alpha Couple. We watch as they enter town, stock up on supplies and try to earn some cash. Then someone makes a bad mistake...

This film is not for everyone. Certainly, if you check the online reviews, it gets quite a drubbing from folks who watched it thinking they were going to see the standard werewolf fare. Personally though, I quite enjoyed it, but then I am the kind of geek who likes it when others make an attempt at combining reality with fiction. In fact, there are quite a few people out there in the world who think that this documentary is real... It’s free to view on YouTube if you’re interested.

*****

Well, that wasn’t so bad: I managed to make it to ten films after all. It’s interesting that the were-creature movie trope doesn’t have greater representation than it does, at least in the realm of serious film-making. I guess it’s easier to make movies about serial killers, because then the makeup budget accounts for only a fraction of the cost. Sadly, it seems that the lycanthropes are just there to morph, howl, rip faces off, and wait for someone to invent a silver bullet slash dagger and end the rampage. Surely, after years of “Werewolf: the Apocalypse” being played by gamers worldwide, someone could come up with a better script than the usual B-grade dross?

Rip It & Run: Tarot Cards & Roleplaying

Having laboured through the production of a complete deck of Deep One themed tarot cards, I thought it would be of benefit to discuss how these sorts of cards can be useful when running an ongoing roleplaying campaign, especially a “Call of Cthulhu” one.

A major problem that most Keepers have when conducting a session is that things will happen on the spur of the moment for which no preparation has been made. A random NPC – a small child; a postman; a reception clerk – will attract the attention of one of your players and, the next thing you know, they have acquired a sudden and exaggerated importance in the tale which you’re unfolding. On the fly, you have to flesh them out with myriad minor details appropriate to a figure of greater narrative importance, much of which you never intended. This is all part of the fact that plans never survive contact with the enemy (ie, your players) and you can never anticipate what will suddenly attract their attention.

A Keeper in whose game I used to play would meet these situations in a novel and interesting way. When he realised that a mere cipher was now in the spotlight, he would shuffle his tarot deck, draw three cards at random and place them in a row on the tabletop: the central card informed him of the NPCs current disposition; the card to the left told him what circumstances the character had just emerged from, and the right-hand card expressed the NPC’s hopes, goals and aspirations. With a good knowledge of the card interpretations, it meant that he could flesh out the character effectively and also see how the character fitted – or could be fitted - into the ongoing plot. This was especially useful since we mostly played the Steve Jackson game “In Nomine”, a game in which every character, player or otherwise, needs to have a fully-formed interiority that we angels and demons could read.

The three-card method is useful when the character needs a bit of depth, but just drawing one card can be enough to kickstart a character concept, depending on the type of game that you’re playing.

Using this method can add extra spice to a session where little of interest is happening or if the Keeper is just feeling ornery. Are the players buying train tickets? Flip some cards to see if the ticket seller is having a bad day or not. Did one of your players treat a bellhop with casual rudeness? Check the cards to see if he swallows his pride and takes the guests’ bags to their room... or not. When a game is rolling along smoothly towards its logical conclusion and your team seems a little too comfortable with it all, this is a good way to randomly throw a spanner into their cosy little worldview...

*****

Some of you who might have been following the last few tarot card posts will have noticed that they’ve been presented in the form of a set-up for a “Call of Cthulhu” adventure. Along with the cards themselves, there is a bunch of background material outlining the consequences of a naive academic dabbling in things better left alone. If you have players who romp around Arkham and its neighbourhood, you could take the background for this material and turn it into a search for the missing professor and the miscreants who have abducted her.

First of all, statistics would need to be generated, for the Professor, her staff, the interns and the other University personnel. Then there’s the team at the art therapy studio and the print-shop, and the local members of the emergency services. If your taste runs more to the “Delta Green” side of things, shadowy members of Homeland Security and the FBI could have your players getting paranoid in no time. Finally of course, there are the presumed cultists and other Innsmouth denizens to flesh out. Various splat-books and other supplements (Chaosium or otherwise) are out there from which most of this type of information can be pillaged.

As to what’s happening, you can take the situation in a number of directions: is Rhonda Wilmarth actually an unwilling abductee? Are the Innsmouth folk responsible after all? Is this a Government conspiracy to justify another attack upon Devil Reef? Given the simple premise, your story could go in any number of interesting directions...

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