The last few years I've been disappointed with my Halloween season. I think my general lack of horror movie watching contributes to this feeling. To rectify this I plan to watch two horror movies a week throughout what I consider the holiday season. Along the way I will provide some short reviews and thoughts on the movies from a gaming perspective. This week we have House II and Thirteen Ghosts.
Why movies about haunted houses? I'm doing research.
Warning lots of spoilers!!
House II: The Second Story
The center piece of this movie is the house, a creepy stone mansion with a heavy Aztec motif. Which is fitting given that the plot revolves around a magical crystal skull. The skull apparently can be used to gain immortality (after a fashion) and bend space and time (allowing our heroes to fight a caveman, Aztec priests, and some claymation "dinosaurs").
In a lot of ways this reminds me of My Science Experiment (another of my guilty pleasures) though with a weaker plot.
Anyway the movie introduces our villain in the opening sequence, an old west gun fighter (Slim Razor), former partner of the protagonist's (Jesse) great great grandfather, turned zombie who wants the skull. The great great grandfather (who shares the same name as our hero) killed him and stole the skull intending to live forever. The elder Jesse does live on after a fashion, as a 170 year old zombie.
Jesse and his friend Charlie try to keep the elder Jesse a secret and make sure no one steals the skull. In short order, Jesse loses his wife, Charlie his girlfriend, and they barely keep the skull out of the hands and beaks of some "stone age" monsters (like dinosaurs) and Aztecs.
Along the way we encounter Bill the electrician, a seemingly unflappable sort who isn't bothered by encountering dimensional portals or engaging in sword fights.
In the end Jesse has to take down Slim, now a zombie as well, survive the insanely gun happy cops, and escape into the old west. At which point they leave the skull lying around for anyone to grab.
Hope that made any sense.
I actually enjoy the movie and will probably will watch it again. I have to admit however that it is pretty bad.
Gaming Ideas
How could you not use this? The movie reminds me of what often happens when players characters hit an otherwise serious storyline. Great great grandpa had a crystal skull? Let's dig him up and find out. Travel into the stone age? I bring back a pet pterodactyl.For a story idea, just take the central premise. The players inherit a house where doors open out into different times. They must deal with the problems that come from this while trying to exploit the effect for their own benefit. GURPS Time Travel had a less wacky version of this in the Horatio club but I bet TimeWatch would work more smoothly (and with more pulp!).
Alternatively a cursed artifact with powers over time (immortality, time gates) could also spur an entire campaign. Who wants it? Who would kill for it? Who has been killed for it and now wants revenge? If users become zombies, that reminds me of a certain game premise I should revisit soon.
Thirteen Ghosts
Our intro scene shows us the villain's (Cyrus) ghost hunting team in action. A well equipped force led by a psychic misfit (Dennis) head into a maze of wrecked cars swath in police tape. Their quarry is the ghost of a serial killer. Our psychic knows this is bad news and after accidentally reading Cyrus's mind knows it will get even worse.
Despite the efforts of some mystics trying to "save" the ghost from this fate, it gets caught. Of course it murders several ghost hunters, the lead mystic and Cyrus in the process.
I love the world carved out in that scene. Psychics who can read minds and sense ghosts. PETA for ghosts (which I hereby dubbed PETG). Tape recorded spells and exorcisms. Glasses that let you see spirits. Quicksilver flares. And a truck full of blood acting as chum. Then finally we seal the ghost in a glass room covered in mystic writing. As a premise this sounds awesome.
Okay time for a change of gears. The movie gives us a nice rotating montage of our protagonist's (Cyrus's nephew Arthur) recent life: the fire, the death of his wife, and the decline of the family's situation. All nicely done with some nice audio clips and by panning over a scene that morphs from happy home to decaying apartment.
Anyway after that we meet Arthur's cheerfully morbid son Bobby, forgettably bland daughter Kathy, and their nanny Maggie. From Cyrus's lawyer, Ben Moss, they learn they have inherited Cyrus's house. Cyrus even gives a video explanation of his will which hints to the rest of the audience that he will in fact be back.
With that drummed into our heads all the characters including Dennis and the surviving PETG member Kalina make their way into the house.
Again the visuals are stunning. The house is like some sort of magical clockwork punk device with numerous gears, endless glass walls covered in Latin, and lots of nicely displayed artifacts.
The ghosts, all twelve of them, remain sealed in the basement. At least until the lawyer collects his pay, tripping the countdown and dooming everyone. The psychic tries to warn them but of course is too late. After that is just a standard pattern of gory death, ghosts that somehow fail to be scary, and trying to get us to care about characters that are just not very like-able.
The house shifts, closing off hallways and opening up new paths for the ghosts to one by one escape into the house. The mom eventually is revealed to be one of the ghosts (of course). All the while, pressure builds on Arthur to save his family. Kalina eventually reveals he can do it by sacrificing himself to turn off the machine.
Of course this is all a trap by Cyrus. The sacrifice will allow him open the eye of Hell and see the future. He returns, kills Kalina, and then ruins his own plan running into his nephew. The ghosts turn on him and the nanny manages to cause the house to self destruct. The family escapes, sees their mother one last time, and we get a happy ending.
It would be great if I cared about any of the characters. Dennis and Arthur perhaps get the best characterization. Dennis ruins it by being a jerk most of the time and Arthur really doesn't do anything. Despite what should be terrifying ghosts, it doesn't pack many real scares of either the horror or thriller variety. I'm not sure if I'll watch this again.
Gaming Ideas
I think bad movies make good games. I rarely find players able to reach the level of seriousness and skill necessary to match good movies (which are often too well scripted to leave much in the way of good loose ends anyway). But a bad movie? There are often far too many ideas to pick from the wreckage.So here we have something that sounds a team from Hunter: the Vigil (or whatever your low-level action horror game of choice is) aided by a tame psychic and being paid by a rich ghost hunter for the most dangerous ghosts. The fact that he's collecting the "Black Zodiac" of spectral horrors just gives you the perfect end game.
Like I said above, the world describe in the first few scenes sounds far more interesting the action that follows. Even the house and its ultimate goal of allowing one to see all time could power a long story arc (though perhaps you would want to dump the "Eye of Hell" moniker).
For Demon: the Descent imagine the house as a piece of Infrastructure, collecting vengeful ghosts as a power source. In Geist, it might be the construct of a mad Sineater hoping to control a Dead Dominion. A Mage might pursue either of these or even hope to use the power to reach Stygia itself (or the Lower Depths...).
Switch gears (and game systems), the house could be the ploy of cult hoping to summon Yog-Sothoth or one of the other cosmic beings of the Cthulhu Mythos. Or what if you TimeWatch agents need to be deployed because someone has used dark magic to see all time, endangering the course of history itself. Of course he would know you are coming too.
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