I Played It Like Twice... 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 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... 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.”
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?
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.
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.
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... 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.
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 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,
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... Shelf Stability: Good Design Gets Out of the Way in Ex Libris By Orrin Grey • July 29th, 2021 Ex Libris looks complicated, but all the moving parts click together pretty seamlessly, and there are rarely any of those awkward moments where you’re left scratching your head over how one card mechanic interacts with another.
Unholy Blood: Santa Sangre (1989) on 4K Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • June 1st, 2021 Whatever really happened on the set of El Topo, Jodorowsky is, at best, a guy who bragged about raping someone for publicity, and this is what I knew about the director of Santa Sangre.
Black-Hearted Women: Switchblade Sisters (1975) on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • May 27th, 2021 Does it always work? Naturally not, this is Switchblade Sisters, after all, not whatever venerated classic movie title you want to put here that, in your mind, always works.
Evil Washes Out Evil: A Daiei Invisible Man Double-Feature By Orrin Grey • May 20th, 2021 It’s something of a homecoming to be tackling The Invisible Man Appears and The Invisible Man vs. the Human Fly on Arrow Video Blu here
I Played It, Like, Twice... 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.
Days of Beasts and Cocaine: An Alex de la Iglesia Double-Feature By Orrin Grey • April 15th, 2021 That’s what I did; two-fisting this particular double-feature with a shot of Day of the Beast and a chaser of Perdita Durango.
No Bright Side: Crimewave (1985) on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • April 7th, 2021 In many ways, Crimewave is the kind of movie I live for: a bonkers, underseen, early-career flick from legendary filmmakers who went on to much bigger things.
I Played It Like Twice Fearful Symmetry: Building the Best of All Possible Overworlds in Overboss By Orrin Grey • April 1st, 2021 In a world where plenty of board games at least claim to be playable with only one person it is, in my experience, rare to find one that actually plays well in solitaire mode.
I Played It, Like, Twice... Versus Mode – Arcadia Quest x Super Dungeon Explore By Orrin Grey • March 2nd, 2021 For the first installment of this periodic feature, we’ll be looking at Arcadia Quest and Super Dungeon Explore.
I Played It, Like, Twice… The Moorcock Connection: Sailors on the Seas of Warhammer Quest By Orrin Grey • February 2nd, 2021 I realized what Age of Sigmar really was: Games Workshop leaning hard into that Moorcockian strain of cosmic fantasy that had always been there.
I Got Myself a Plan: Tremors (1990) on a Very Fancy New Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • January 22nd, 2021 When I was a kid, I had a short list of favorite monster movies that had come out during my lifetime, and Tremors was right at the top.
I Played It, Like, Twice... Only Trust Your Fists: The Side-Scrolling Beat-‘em-Up Vibes of Streets of Steel By Orrin Grey • January 6th, 2021 When Streets of Steel is at its best, it is tapping into my fondness for these types of games in a way that makes for innovative tabletop play, rather than just nostalgia.
Things Change: the Last Starfighter on Blu-Ray By Orrin Grey • December 23rd, 2020 Add The Last Starfighter to the list of movies I was positive I had seen but actually hadn’t.
Tasha’s Cauldron of Too Little, Too Late By Orrin Grey • December 17th, 2020 Dungeons & Dragons should be leading the way instead of lagging behind.
I Played It, Like, Twice... The Agony of Adaptation: Hellboy and the Perils of Fandom (and Kickstarter) By Orrin Grey • December 9th, 2020 For a while there, writing about Hellboy: The Board Game, about being a Hellboy fan, and what the franchise means to me as a creator, all felt too fraught.
I Played It, Like, Twice... Darkness of Unusual Size: The Sword-and-Sorcery Answer to Descent By Orrin Grey • November 27th, 2020 If Descent is what we’ve all come to expect from a modern high fantasy D&D-alike, then Massive Darkness is its lo-fi sword-and-sorcery equivalent.
Nearing the End of the World: Warning from Space (1956) By Orrin Grey • November 19th, 2020 Warning from Space spends 90% of its running time watching people waiting for things.
Feature Excerpt Dungeons & Dollhouses By Orrin Grey • October 20th, 2020 I’m not going to claim that society didn’t yet have those concepts, but I hadn’t been exposed to them. I came up in small towns in the Midwest; gender norms were pretty rigid.
I Played It, Like, Twice… Shadows on the Cave Wall: Finding Clues in Scooby-Doo: Betrayal at Mystery Mansion By Orrin Grey • October 9th, 2020 Scooby-Doo and Betrayal at House on the Hill are a match made in some kind of spooky heaven.
I Played It, Like, Twice… Lost in the Dark: Finding My Way to Descent During the Plague Times By Orrin Grey • September 3rd, 2020 “In a fit of COVID-induced mania and an effort to scratch that at-home D&D itch, I picked up not just Descent but several of the expansions.”
Your Future is Metal: The Industrial Nightmares of Shinya Tsukamoto By Orrin Grey • August 25th, 2020 It’s all happening at ten thousand miles per hour.
Open Up Shop: Finding a Killer Deal in Bargain Quest By Orrin Grey • August 20th, 2020 “Don’t be surprised if you get a little choked up when you can’t equip the young hero well enough for them to survive their run-in with the vampire queen.”
Awkward Brotherly Love: White Fire (1984) on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • July 30th, 2020 What’s a little radioactive diamond between siblings?
Confusion Unto Madness: The Mad Fox (1962) on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • July 28th, 2020 “Being the ugly American that I am, the film reminded me of the plays of Shakespeare.”
I Played It, Like, Twice… All Souls Bound Just Contrariwise: Yo Ho Ho and a Game of Rum & Bones By Orrin Grey • July 23rd, 2020 Raid the high sea and manage a ton of miniatures!
