Blood and Blades: The Profiler's Guide to Slashers includes:
NOTICE
The official PRU Ten Most Wanted Slashers list is maintained on the PRU World Wide Web Site. This information may be copied and distributed, however, any unauthorized alteration of any portion of the PRU's Ten Most Wanted Slashers posters is a violation of federal law (18 U.S.C., Section 709). Persons who make or reproduce these alterations are subject to prosecution and, if convicted, shall be fined or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.
Our PRU chief can be contacted here.
Review of Terror Train
I have no idea why I rented Terror Train. I suspect it was because it's considered a horror classic. And in that regard viewing the film has been quite educational. Labels: Slasher Reviews
Having already established Jamie Lee Curtis' reputation as a Scream Queen in Halloween, Curtis took the cinema by storm in no less than three horror movies in 1980: The Fog, Prom Night, and Terror Train.
Terror Train's premise is interesting: college frat boys and sorority girls foist a cruel prank on a freshman (Kenny), snapping his fragile mind. Kenny, you see, actually killed someone else once before attending college, although "they couldn't prove he did it." How do you know someone killed someone if you can't prove he did it? Shh! Suffice it to say that Kenny is an unbalanced killer who has it out for the students who pulled that cruel prank. Fortunately, the students help Kenny in his revenge by all throwing a costume party on an old train three years after the incident.
So there we have it. We know who the killer is and where the killing is going to take place. Like all good horror films, Terror Train already has its villains' motivation and the audience's sympathy. There's no need to show each student being a jerk; they are all guilty simply by participating in the original prank. The train hasn't been modernized, so it has no radio, isolating the victims. And of course, the costume party allows Kenny to walk amongst his prey with ease.
Thing is, Terror Train isn't interested in playing by the rules it creates. There's a possible foil in the guise of Ken, the stage magician (David Copperfield failing to act…God help us all). Surely the master of stage acts is the killer, right? Right?!
Poor Kenny. He has so many challenges to overcome: physical barriers, train doors, blood stains, dead bodies, logic, and the laws of physics, to name a few. Fortunately, Kenny has some help from the director, who allows him to teleport from car to car, quick-change into any costume at will, silently murder people with his bare hands, and clean up a bloody bathroom in record time. Move over Dexter, Kenny can change into his crime fighting costume AND clean up his mess – give that man his own show!
But alas, it is not to be. Kenny has to contend with dark scenes of people running on a train, boring scenes of Copperfield's magic tricks, more boring scenes of students getting drunk or high, a random piercing whistle of a train, and a nosy conductor who likes to perform magic tricks of his own.
The surprise twist at the end is notable only in that Terror Train probably did it first. But by that point you won't care. And oh yeah…
SPOILER ALERT
Kenny dies at the end.
Between you and me, I think he jumped.
talien 2:24 PM
FBI database links long-haul truckers, serial killings
The growing database includes more than 500 female victims, most of whom were killed and their bodies dumped at truck stops, motels and other spots along popular trucking routes crisscrossing the U.S. more Labels: Slasher News
talien 6:58 PM
Hunter: Horror Recognition Guide
The Horror Recognition Guide, besides having a neat alliterative name, isn't much of a guide—it certainly won't help you with recognition of said horrors. Labels: Slasher Games
I purchased this book for its use as a potential prop in my existing conspiracy game. Although I'm familiar with the World of Darkness and the Hunter setting, I'm not running a Hunter game. I took the marketing text describing the book at face value: "Can be used as a prop in any Hunter: The Vigil game, or can be used by Storytellers and players as a resource from which to draw new encounter and story ideas."
The book contains a series of faux documents: hand-written diary pages, pictures, typed case files, and printouts of email correspondence. Collectively they each tell a tale of a Philadelphia Hunter cell and their encounters with the supernatural. These horrors range from your bog-standard bloodsucker to creepy cats that possess old ladies to alien doctors to something that may or may not be an ogre. In other words, standard World of Darkness stuff: werewolves, vampires, Frankenstein's monsters, dark faeries, mages, and some other weirdness.
As fiction, the stories range from entertaining to tedious. Although the Guide is supposed to be a series of documents collected to tell a story, the various pieces often read as if they were verbatim fiction—which they are. The journals are a little too coherent and verbose. Still, this is all about crafting a story from multiple sources and the premise holds up across the stories.
A few entries stand out. Blood Dolls is about vampires, which at this point have been so thoroughly covered that it's difficult to write anything new and interesting about them. Fortunately, the author gets this and shifts gears from fiction to one of the better pieces in the book—a how-to guide on capturing an inanimate vampire. Unfortunately, the only other place an official document appears dealing with horrors is Gnosopharm, which actually makes mages (if I'm interpreting the story correctly) scary.
Ten Photos, on the other hand, works because it's so utterly unhinged from the tidy hierarchy of horrors in the World of Darkness. The pictures are bizarre and disturbing. Because it's so vague, Storytellers have a lot of leeway to invent the stories behind each photo.
As a role-playing supplement, the Guide is far less successful. Many of the tales are actually resolved by the hunters, leaving a prospective Storyteller without an easy hook to work with. Others are so frustratingly vague as to be of no use – you could just as easily pick up a random weird story from the Internet and use that instead.
Since it's a non-standard size with a wide binding, photocopying the book is problematic. The alternative is to just hand the players the book, which seems a bit overwhelming given that any particular scenario is likely to focus only on one chapter. As an electronic .PDF, the Guide is a much more flexible prop. As a printed book, not so much.
talien 4:08 PM
Blood & Blades in Print!
Download Price:$7.95 The Paranormal Response Unit (PRU). It is like no other career choice you've explored. It's challenging. Compelling. Important. Whatever your background or expertise, you will find a PRU future exceptionally rewarding because the work you perform will have a daily impact on the nation's security and the quality-of-life for all citizens. Our mission is a noble one. It entails protecting everyone from slashers; upholding federal criminal laws against repeat killers; providing leadership and law enforcement assistance to federal, state, local and international agencies in investigating paranormal attacks — and performing these responsibilities in a manner that is responsive to the needs of the public. Blood and Blades: The Profiler's Guide to Slashers. Blood and Blades includes: PRU: Putting the end to horror movie sequels everywhere. Do you have what it takes? Labels: Slasher Games
Print Price: $14.96 $12.72 In Stock
Pages: 64
Size: 8.56 MB
Format: Landscape (screen viewing), Portrait (for printing)
Writer: Mike "Talien" Tresca
Cover:
SKU: RPO3015
ISBN: 978-1-935432-25-8
Game Lines: Modern System
Systems: Modern d20
Product Type: Supplement
Media Type: print, PDF
talien 1:10 PM
Friday the 13th: Resurrection
Jason Voorhees. The quintessential mass murderer for the 20th century, Jason's psychotic, hockey-masked persona has slowly evolved from crazy killer to an unstoppable cyborg. In this universe, Jason is real. And he's out for blood. Jason's racked up more murders than any serial killer in history. His attacks have slowly lost their rhyme or reason, as what little is left of his mind rots to mush. Silent, invincible, unstoppable - Jason has finally garnered enough attention that humanity decides to fight back. But no mere mortal can take Jason on alone. Teenagers, psychics, cops, FBI agents, androids - all have tried and failed to destroy Jason. The PCs have but one goal - stop Jason before he stops them. Friday the 13th: Resurrection is a supplement for D20 Modern that contains 2 new races, 11 new occupations, six new feats, new psionic powers, new EX-Grunt equipment from Jason X, 6 new advanced classes (including bounty hunter, FBI agent, and psychokineticist), madness and space travel rules, and 9 new monsters. Labels: Slasher Games
Download: PRU
Authors: Michael Tresca
Type: Role-Playing Game (D20 Modern Supplement)
Suggested Retail Price: FREE
Format: .pdf
Pages: 63
Description:
talien 1:05 PM
Dexter: The Complete Second Season
I've already mentioned my tenuous link to the Dexter crew in my review of Season One, so I'll just skip to why I love this show so much: because it's fearless. Labels: Slasher Reviews
This season takes many of the established tropes that make Dexter's life (Michael C. Hall) as a vigilante/serial killer plausible and tosses them out the window. Everything that was a minor annoyance in the first season is amped up to 11. Dexter's dumping ground for corpses, a quaint little spot in the ocean that nobody ever noticed, gets noticed. Officer Doakes (Erik King), who was openly hostile to Dexter, becomes a very real threat. Harry's Code, which keeps Dexter on the mostly-straight and somewhat-narrow path, comes into question. LaGuerta (Lauren Velez) stoops to new lows to get her old job back. And Dexter's sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter), who was always annoying to begin with, moves in with him to become even more annoying.
The show doesn't forget its past. Debra is traumatized by the fact that she almost married a serial killer; the characters regularly forget the incident and stumble over apologies as they make insensitive remarks. Dexter greatly misses his serial-killer brother, the only person who understood him. Until he finds a new soul mate: Lila (Jaime Murray).
Lila seems to rub a lot of people the wrong way (or the right way, if you like brunettes). She's gorgeous in a goth fashion, completely uninhibited, and madly in love with the Dexter she doesn't see. She's also a complete loon. All these attributes make her a perfect fit for Dexter...except Dexter is very much a family man, a killer who would never harm children, who despite his violent excesses surrounds himself with the trappings of family. Lila throws in sharp relief what vestiges of Dexter's personality are decent, and as such she's a perfect foil for season 2.
The other breakout character is Doakes. Once Doakes unearths Dexter's past, the two come to an understanding. Throughout the season are philosophical arguments that detail each man's past in a game of one-upmanship. Who is worse: the special ops soldier who murders people he's ordered to kill, or the vigilante who uses free will to determine whom he executes? We don't get a clear answer, only more questions.
There are some entertaining nods to the field of serial killer investigation. Don Foster (Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous) gets a shout-out...and is soundly, brutally mocked for his language analysis, sorry Don. So does Bob Ressler (Whoever Fights Monsters) in the form of Special Agent Frank Lundy (Keith Carradine). An awkward but believable subplot develops between Lundy and Debra, just further exemplifying that none of Dexter's heroes are one-dimensional, but fully developed and all too humanly flawed.
We tore through this season on our Netflix list, clearing out our queue to ensure we could watch all the DVDs back to back. The show is that good.
talien 12:45 PM
Darkly Dreaming Dexter
My day job happened to have a connection to the Dexter show - the sister of one of my coworkers worked on the set. My curiosity was already piqued by the premise of a serial killer turned vigilante, and I thought that as a show it would either be a marvelous achievement or a glorious disaster. Since it was on Showtime, and I don't get Showtime, I didn't get the chance to find out. Labels: Slasher Reviews
Eventually, Dexter came out on DVD and much to my relief the show was phenomenal. Dexter is every bit as charming and cold-blooded as you might expect from a sympathetic psychopath, and his occasional narrative aside serves to add both humor and horror to the events on screen. And those events are the political machinations of the Miami Police Department.
Dexter was raised by his foster father and former cop, Harry, to follow a particular code. This code regulates everything Dexter does, from how he dresses to whom he kills. Dexter's bloody murders are further complicated by his beard of a girlfriend, Rita, his half-sister Deborah, and his day job as a blood spatter analyst. Then one day a serial killer starts committing murders with an underlying message, a message meant only for Dexter. And then things get REALLY complicated...
The show is surprisingly true to the book. Every character is there just as I imagined them, except one: the main antagonist. In the television series, Dexter's antithesis is smart, conniving, believable, and capable of far worse than Dexter himself. In the book, he's a one-note ghoul who, in the span of five pages or so, expounds upon his entire background, his reason for killing and tempting Dexter, and their relationship.
And therein lay the problem. Darkly Dreaming Dexter tries to be both an ironic reflection of our fascination with serial killers and a murder mystery, but the mystery is severely lacking. Lindsay can only come up with "maybe Dexter's committing the murders in his sleep." It's telling that the producers of the television series discarded that notion right away, choosing instead to introduce the villain gradually.
The other problem is that the book escalates a conflict in Dexter's personal and professional life to such a level that it's something of a cheat; killing an antagonist off is easy, defeating them is hard. The end of Darkly Dreaming Dexter doesn't even give us closure with the other serial killer. He just gets away, leaving the reader with an unsatisfying conclusion and the creeping feeling that Dexter's personable façade has been completely discredited.
Nevertheless, Dexter is a marvelous read. As narrator, Dexter himself toys with language, using alliteration at it fancies him. As an author, Lindsay's writing skills are above par, and some of his descriptions are almost poetic.
Given the choice between the two though, I'll stick with television Dexter, thanks.
talien 12:44 PM
The Paranormal Response Unit (PRU). It is like no other career choice you've explored. It's challenging. Compelling. Important. Whatever your background or expertise, you will find a PRU future exceptionally rewarding because the work you perform will have a daily impact on the nation's security and the quality-of-life for all citizens.
Our mission is a noble one. It entails protecting everyone from slashers; upholding federal criminal laws against repeat killers; providing leadership and law enforcement assistance to federal, state, local and international agencies in investigating paranormal attacks — and performing these responsibilities in a manner that is responsive to the needs of the public.
PRU: Putting the end to horror movie sequels everywhere. Do you have what it takes?
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