Orrin Grey

A stoic cop in a suit and sunglasses is walking stoically through some stoic traffic

Lunatic Meets Lunatic: Two Good-Natured Caper Films from Hong Kong Director Johnnie To

By Orrin Grey • August 17th, 2022

A pair of surprisingly lightweight and amiable caper flicks in the vein of more recent thriller confections such as 2013’s Now You See Me.

I Played It, Like, Twice...

The eponymous leaders in the game Hidden Leaders: Axe Guy, Bowl Cut, Mace and Braids, Requisite Grizzled Soldier, Ponytail Thief, and Tired Druid

I Guess No One’s Coming: The Art and Arithmetic of Hidden Leaders

By Orrin Grey • August 15th, 2022

Hidden Leaders is one of those games that is deceptively basic but can grow strangely complex as you play.

Keifer Sutherland is sidding criss-cross-apple-sauce in a room with high arched windows and afternoon yellow light with a lone lamp for company

Today’s a Good Day to Die: Reliving the Past with Flatliners (1990)

By Orrin Grey • August 9th, 2022

It’s no surprise that Schumacher made the campiest of Batman movies, because there’s an extravagance to the production design here that would have been right at home in Burton’s Gotham City.

I Played It, Like, Twice...

The tite from the Doom board game (2004) cover of the rules with the mid-era cyber Doom font and the spooky Diablo font

Fragged!: Translating DOOM to the Tabletop via a Somewhat Unlikely Route

By Orrin Grey • July 26th, 2022

Despite the box art and the demonic miniatures, DOOM is fundamentally an action game that isn’t particularly interested in horror.

I Played It Like Twice...

Five miniatures from Tiny Epic Dungeons stand at the ready, featuring skeleton, ghost, knight, spider in web, and fire elemental

Burning the Torch at Both Ends: Peril Comes in Small Packages in Tiny Epic Dungeons

By Orrin Grey • June 6th, 2022

These are minuscule board games that come in boxes about the size of the ones you used to get checkbooks in, back when anybody had checkbooks.

A still from the trailer of The 8-Diagram Pole Fighter, featuring the lead monk standing with a bloodied lip next to his praying companion and a fellow fighter

Carnage and Blood: Two Kung Fu Movies from Opposite Ends of the Genre’s Heyday, Both with Numbers in the Titles

By Orrin Grey • June 2nd, 2022

One is a bloody Saturday morning cartoon that barely bothers to connect its interminable fight scenes with any kind of story, the other an elegiac lament about the inadequacy of heroism in the face of death.

Four portraits of the lead characters from the cover of the 4K version of the film Wild Things

Something Bad Might Happen: Wild Things (1998) on Unrated 4K

By Orrin Grey • May 26th, 2022

Wild Things is a product of its time in so many ways.

The title screen for La Llorona, with the name of the movie opaquely set over a glowering sculpture of a skull

Strange Things Happen There: Two Early Mexican Horrors

By Orrin Grey • May 17th, 2022

A piece of history – not merely Mexican cinematic history, not merely horror history, but a broader snapshot of a period in time, and the changes that were happening around it.

I Played It, Like, Twice...

A cropped selection of the box art for Horrified: American Monsters, featuring the head of a Sasquatch and a spectral figure.

We Did Warn You: Playing Horrified 2 During [checks notes] Still a Pandemic

By Orrin Grey • May 5th, 2022

The good news is, most of the winning formula that made its predecessor tick is reproduced nicely here.

A still from the trailer for Red Angel, where a spooked and unclothed nurse has a tense conversation with a doctor in a warzone

Hell Couldn’t Be Much Worse: The Grim Anti-War Message of Red Angel (1966)

By Orrin Grey • April 28th, 2022

“If people at home saw me, they’d realize how terrible war was and hate it.”

Good Kung Fu Part Three: Shawscope Volume One from Arrow Video

By Orrin Grey • April 14th, 2022

After this, though, there are two more discs…

I Played It, Like, Twice...

Versus Mode: Batman: The Animated Series – Rogues Gallery x Sinister Six

By Orrin Grey • April 5th, 2022

To be honest, at the time I played Rogues Gallery, I had never so much as heard of Sinister Six. Once I had played them both, though, the startling similarity of their concepts was enough to make me briefly wonder if they shared a designer.

Still from the movie Challenge of the Masters showing a bunch of martial arts fighters with bo staffs.

Good Kung Fu Part Two: Shawscope Volume One from Arrow Video

By Orrin Grey • March 9th, 2022

More films from the Shawscope Volume 1 box set of Shaw Brothers kung fu films.

A still from the movie 5 Shaolin Masters showing a bare chested man foisting off a man in a martial arts pose.

Good Kung Fu Part One: Shawscope Volume One from Arrow Video

By Orrin Grey • March 2nd, 2022

Monsters are better than kung fu, kung fu is a whole lot better than nothing.

I Played It, Like, Twice...

figures from the game Space Hulk, blue and red, moving across a tabletop.

They’re Coming Out of the Goddamn Walls: Reliving a Moment with Space Hulk

By Orrin Grey • February 28th, 2022

It is difficult, for me at least, to separate the game itself from that dream, solidified by glossy magazine photos of massive Space Hulk boards set up.

Kim Basinger in a white shift with her hair blown back sexily

Don’t Have to Be Cool to Rule My World: My Stepmother is an Alien (1988) on Blu

By Orrin Grey • February 24th, 2022

My Stepmother is an Alien seems like the kind of movie I would have seen as a kid.

Beware of Falling Blocks: The Many Attempts to Translate Tetris to the Tabletop

By Orrin Grey • February 10th, 2022

Tetris…board games?

Exploits Feature

What We Never Saw

By Orrin Grey • January 31st, 2022

Where the Saw franchise didn’t go, but maybe should have.

A woman in a yellow dress holding a red rose.

A Dangerous Dream: Revisiting Mill of the Stone Women (1960) on Blu-ray

By Orrin Grey • December 23rd, 2021

“Trouble began with a woman…”

I Played It, Like, Twice...

The board game Marvel United showing a chibi Captain America.

Heroic Action: Defeating Evil with a Little Help from Your Friends in Marvel United

By Orrin Grey • December 16th, 2021

The feeling of teamwork is what really makes Marvel United special.

I Played It Like Twice...

A series of cards from the deck building game Ascension laid out on a deck mat.

For Honor and Small Plastic Rocks: Ascension’s Place in the Pantheon of Deck-Building Games

By Orrin Grey • November 18th, 2021

With so many deck-building games on the market, the aesthetic is going to be a big part of what draws a player to one over another.

A Japanese woman with her head in her hands and two miscolored eyes sitting at a table in front of a wall of sculptural eyes.

A Dark, Dank Death: Blind Beast (1969) on Blu-ray at Last

By Orrin Grey • October 28th, 2021

Blind Beast is a film that I had been meaning to watch for decades, ever since I worked in a video store.

Feature Excerpt

A World Beyond: The Inadvertent Sci-Fi of Universal’s Original Mummy Sequels

By Orrin Grey • October 27th, 2021

If you think about it, mummies are the original time travelers.

I Played It, Like, Twice...

On a playmat with characters are the playing cards and tokens for Campy Monsters, brightly colored and showing creatures.

Of Monsters and Mortals: Playing Campy Creatures On a Dark and Spooky Night

By Orrin Grey • October 21st, 2021

Campy Creatures is, as the box declares, a “Ghoulish Game of Deduction & Bluffing.”

Performers from the David Lynch Dune movie, specifically Sting and Patrick Stewart are visible.

The Sleeper Has Awakened: Watching the David Lynch Dune for the First Time in this, the Second Year of the Plague

By Orrin Grey • October 14th, 2021

So, nearly forty years later, in a world with a very different cinematic landscape, on the cusp of a new, much bigger-budget adaptation, did I come out knowing that I’ve seen Dune?

Goldie Hawn in Overboard, laying on a deck chair in a red swim suit with one foot up in the lap of a man who is doing her toenails.

A Distinctive Experience: Overboard (1987) on Blu-ray in 2021

By Orrin Grey • October 7th, 2021

Overboard must be saved from itself.

Exploits Feature

“The Call of Cthulhu”

By Orrin Grey • October 1st, 2021

There are a million ways to read “The Call of Cthulhu,” but this one sure is the prettiest.

I Played It, Like, Twice...

Dead Ends: Learning Something About Myself with Cursed City

By Orrin Grey • September 30th, 2021

I dove into Cursed City in the hopes that the familiarity of its similarities to Silver Tower would help to ease some of that intimidation fact, but Cursed City has more in common with Blackstone Fortress.

in a griny shot, a woman sits in fear across from a white man holding a knife.

New Order, Same As the Old Order: Siege (1983) on Blu-ray

By Orrin Grey • September 23rd, 2021

Siege is a 1983 Canadian exploitation flick that is one of a long line of movies aping John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13.

An asian woman with her arms outstretched and her mouth open as if in a cry.

Tough Business: Giants and Toys (1958) and the Tragedy of Modernization

By Orrin Grey • September 16th, 2021

Every figure in Giants and Toys is ultimately a tragic one, caught up in a web that is eating them all alive.

I Played It, Like, Twice...

two character pieces with colored based standing on a board game surface.

Candles Against the Dark: Surviving the Night (and Each Other) in Deranged

By Orrin Grey • August 26th, 2021

A character who is Deranged is normal by day but becomes a monster by night.

in a painted box art fashion, a man (a commando even) holds a large gun and shouts into a Vietnam-ish jungle.

They Were Heroes: A Strike Commando Double-Feature

By Orrin Grey • August 19th, 2021

I’ve seen a couple of the Italian schlockmeister’s other films, so I had some inkling of what to expect when it came time to watch Strike Commando and Strike Commando 2.

A Japanese woman with an extensive back tattoo, her shoulder exposed so that a man can look at it.

A Born Man-Eater: Irezumi (1966) on Blu-ray

By Orrin Grey • August 12th, 2021

One of the things that makes Irezumi work as brilliantly as it does is the way these moments of violence are handled,

In grainy black and white, the top half of a very tall man with his arms outstretched and his mouth open.

I Created It as I Went Along: Bill Rebane’s Weird Wisconsin Box Set from Arrow Video

By Orrin Grey • August 5th, 2021

Prior to sitting down with this substantial Bill Rebane Blu-ray set the full and complete extent of my knowledge of his filmography came from Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Exploits Feature

The Shadow of the Cat

By Orrin Grey • August 1st, 2021

An old lady gets knocked off by her husband and servants in a relatively brutal opening, and the only witness is the cat. So far so good.

I Played It, Like, Twice...

On top of a board game (Ex Libris) lays an orange cat.

I Played It, Like, Twice...

On a wooden tabletop sits a bunch of cardboard playing tiles. On these tiles are three plastic zombie figures.

Rising Tension: The Odd and Appropriate Specificity of Resident Evil 2: The Board Game

By Orrin Grey • May 13th, 2021

I decided it was high time for me to crack open my copy of Resident Evil 2: The Board Game and see how it stacked up against my memories of the real thing.