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!
I Played It, Like, Twice… Clack Clack Clack: Searching for Rules in Vast: The Mysterious Manor By Orrin Grey • June 30th, 2020 If it has animated skeletons, Orrin’s all about it.
I Played It, Like, Twice… Well, We Warned You: Playing Horrified During a Pandemic By Orrin Grey • May 22nd, 2020 Everything about Horrified echoes the Universal films in ways that will make fans of the original monster franchises grin.
No Faith Without Blood: The Passion of Darkly Noon (1995) on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • March 20th, 2020 It’s barely a spoiler to say that this all ends, as it inevitably must, with a literally burning bed and a homicidally crazed Brendan Fraser, painted red and wearing a barbed wire shirt.
The Smell of the Rooms Terrifies Me – and Lures Me On: The House by the Cemetery on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • February 24th, 2020 If you don’t like horror movies, House by the Cemetery isn’t the flick that’s going to change your mind.
The Tide Pulls at My Heart: Night Tide (1961) on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • February 3rd, 2020 Dreamy, desolate and drunk on its particular place in both space and time, Night Tide is a film like no other.
Here Be Dragons: Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters (2005) By Orrin Grey • January 28th, 2020 Fans of people yelling, bad CGI, and characters repeating themselves – and one another – your proverbial ship has come in.
We Drilled Too Deep: Underwater (2020) By Orrin Grey • January 13th, 2020 If Underwater is cosmic horror, it’s from the point of view of someone who gets swept up in the devastation but never really knows the greater implications.
A Very Special Human Being: Man of a Thousand Faces (1957) on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • November 27th, 2019 Despite an elder James Cagney being miscast, latex masks and plenty of melodrama, the Lon Chaney biopic still has some of that old Hollywood magic.
Consumed in the Fire of His Own Making: Apprentice to Murder (1988) on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • November 27th, 2019 “Apprentice to Murder isn’t an undiscovered classic…but it’s better than its two-and-a-half-star average on Letterboxd would suggest.”
Because Bigger is Better: RoboCop (1987) on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • November 26th, 2019 “Our modern morass fits right in with the RoboCop…”
A Beautiful Pattern: Knives Out and What’s Wrong with America By Orrin Grey • November 25th, 2019 “The people who were hitting Rian Johnson with death threats on Twitter over making The Last Jedi “too political” are going to love this one, is what I’m saying.”
I Want to Tell You a Curious Story: The Prey (1984) on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • October 15th, 2019 Despite ample opportunity, The Prey is a slasher that features neither Bigfoot nor Smokey Bear as the villain.
That’s a Recipe for Romance: The Norman J. Warren Collection By Orrin Grey • September 23rd, 2019 Non-existent budgets, full frontal nudity, cash-in plots and five cult movies that are more interesting than they have any right to be.
One Day This City’s Gonna Explode: Friedkin’s Cruising (1980) on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • August 19th, 2019 “I hope this is the wrong kind of crowd.”
Now She’ll Be All Alone: The American Horror Project Volume 2 By Orrin Grey • June 28th, 2019 Arrow is doing the lord’s work by giving such loving, hi-def releases to these kinds of underseen horror films.
Man Against Time: The Big Clock on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • June 10th, 2019 Orrin takes on The Big Clock, an unusual hybrid of noir and screwball comedy.
Humanoid Cockroaches: Terraformars on Blu-Ray By Orrin Grey • May 20th, 2019 If Takashi Miike hadn’t directed it, would we even be talking about this spectacularly silly movie?
Female Problems: The Sister Street Fighter Collection on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • April 25th, 2019 Orrin Grey steeps in the Etsuko Shihomi’s Sister Street Fighter trilogy-plus-one.
No More Mercy: Karate Kid Showdown on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • March 25th, 2019 Just the story of a small town boy who moves to California and learns martial arts.
It’s A Scary World: Audition on Blu-ray By Orrin Grey • February 26th, 2019 Orrin Grey watches Audition and finds it just as horrifying as he did 20 years ago.
