Classic 80's Horror Quick Reviews '26

One of the ways I help get myself into the spooky season mood is with horror movies. I'm still working my way through the list of classic 80s (ish) horror movies that were suggested to me some years back. 

Slumber Party Massacre 3/5

The whole movie I was just thinking about how dumb that big drill was as a weapon. Other than that, it was pretty much exactly what the title suggested it was going to be. Plenty of nudity, plenty of death, and a serial killer suitably demented. 

Nightbreed 4/5

Clive Barker knows how to make a horror movie, and to do it well. The story was a little out there, but the special effects, especially the makeup were PHENOMENAL!! Absolutely worth it just for that. Some of the sets were great to. I think the only big thing that detracted from it was the matte painting of the cemetery. Given how good everything else generally way, that was just jarring. The militia's massive arsenal felt a little excessive for the time, but maybe I'm just projecting that things weren't that bad so many years ago. Today? I'd expect it. Hell, I'd expect the police to have that sort of firepower. 

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 5/5

In most of the horror movies I've watched there's always an element of fantasy that gives my brain a distance from the action, and lets me take it not too seriously. This movie strips that away. The violence is brutal, if remarkably clean. There was a minimum of blood, which looking back is surprising. But it worked. The horror of the violence was enough. They ways it was casual and brutal, and the way it lingered worked so well. 

Maniac Cop 1.5/5

ACAB, and boy does this movie do nothing to dispel that. Aside from the horror of the undead cop going around killing people, it really shows what a bunch of assholes cops are. I wish I could say "oh, it's just for the movie" but no, there was nothing in this that hasn't been an obvious  issue with cops since forever. Other than that, this was a pretty boring movie and I only made it through it because i could distract myself with sewing patches onto my kid's pants. 

Pumpkinhead 4.5/5

I didn't know anything about this going into it, and uff... Yeah, I get it. If someone accidentally killed my kid like that? I'm at that witch's hut asking for a demon to exact some revenge, and feeling guilty about it pretty quickly thereafter.   

 Wishmaster 3.5/5 

It's interesting how visually this one feels so different from the 80's movies. I don't have enough exposure to the genre to say if this is a good example, or if even there was an overall shift, but it feels like there was. Anyway, the story was decent, the visual effects were good, especially the makeup work for the monsters.  

October ‘26 In Review

October is my favorite month of the year, and has my favorite holiday, Halloween. Of course it wasn’t all great… When is it ever? But work has been a little rough transitioning to my new boss’ work style. And then right before Halloween losing both Walter Konig and Patrick Stewart just felt so heartbreaking. Captain Picard was so pivotal for me. I was exactly the right age for TNG to have the impact it did on me, and Patrick Sterwart’s brilliant acting and the embodiment of the character meant so much to me. And losing him so close to the anniversary of my Mum’s death… I just wish Death would pick a few other octogenarians to take out.


Miniatures
Doesn’t really count as a miniature, since it’s 1:1 scale, but I made 6 tombstones!

I also finished the space gits food truck for Orctober.

And because it’s spooky season, I painted up a bunch of ghosts, some vampires, more orcs, and a witch! Honestly given how busy I was this month, it’s amazing I got done as much as I did. On the other hand, it’s been a month with not enough sleep, and both my mini output and all the stuff I watch really show that fact.

Gaming
My Sunday group kicked off our d6 Star Wars game. Thus far, the PCs have completed their initial mission, picking up some intel, and getting it back safely. It’s been a LONG time since I ran a d6 Star Wars game, but the rules are coming back to me. It’s nice to get back to rolling some dice, and even adding a new member to the table helps make the empty chair feel less overwhelming.

I haven't managed to restart the work game yet, but going to work on that in November.


Media
Resident Alien season 4
Letterkenny
Ghosts
Slumber Party Massacre
Nightbreed
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Maniac Cop
Pumpkinhead
Men in Black III
Coco
Wishmaster

Audio
Dracula I love this radio drama version and listen to it almost every October, on top of reading Dracula Daily every year for the last 3 years. 


Loot
October Reaper Order

Etsy orc boss and grot pirates

Goals for November
Play the next Hope Eternal scenario x2

Space Ork Food Trukk

 Much like the Killa Kan I made a bit ago, I got an idea in my head to make an ork food truck based on this comic. 

I have exactly zero need for an ork food truck. Or an ork trukk of any kind... and yet the idea would not let me alone. And so, I got to work. I wanted to keep it simple and relatively small, and so I based the body of the truck on the sprue of an ork tire. I used graph paper to make sure that it would be about the right scale for Warhammer or Space Gits or Stargrave minis (no reason it can't serve as scatter terrain in a game). 

I don't always sketch out these bashes (the killa kan for example, or the first couple of cardboard spaceships) but it does help me to conceptualize the whole thing sometimes, and it's worth doing, even if you don't stick to the plan. I never do, why should you? 

 

The undercarrage was spare sprue, and the truck was built on top of it. One thing I didn't realize with this old credit card is that there's a thin layer of plastic on top of it. This peeled off easily enough once I started cutting the card to fit over the wheel sprue base. 

Building the trukk cab was easy enough, basically just a box for the engine and a bigger open topped box for the driver. The wheel was set in place, and then the wheel cover bent and glued around it. This was all done with cardboard, mostly from a Trader Joe's pumpkin waffle mix box. 
 

The body of the box was a single strip of cardboard measured out and the window cut out of it. I used a second wheel sprue to create the frame for the top of the truck. It conveniently matched the one I used on the bottom for the floor. doing it this way also meant I didn't need any other interior supports to hold it all together and probably more evenly than most orc builds. 

I added a piece of cardboard to serve as a counter for the window, and then some copper wire to make the roll cage for the cab. 

It's hard to see, but the smokestack poking out of the truck hints at the oven/stove inside it. I also added in a set of shelves to the back wall.  On the back I added a door. You can't really see ot get to the door because of the stove and shelves, but that's ok. The boxy thing next to the door is a pair of zip tie locks and some cardboard around them. 

Then it was rivet time. I ordered an obscene amount (30,000) of flat backed beads off of the big river site for the killa kan, and have so many left. I'm still on the first of 60 bags. 

Then it was prime time. A coat of black spray primer and then onto the craft paint base. 

I went with a reddish orange for the truck and a blue for the box, but didn't like either color, and so made the orange-ish red more red, and the blue shifted to grey. Then I got to thinking about what should be on the non-window side of the truck. Clearly it needed a mural. "Grub on da run" with a squig running was the best idea I came up with 

Not a bad start... 

 

Of course I also need a chef and a driver. For the driver I went with a goblin wolf rider and sculpted some goggles onto his face, and then a steering handle into his hands. 

For the ork chef, I took an old warhammer fantasy archer, shaved down the body, re-positioned the arms, and sculpted a cute little chef's hat onto him. 

Also needed were some small squigs and other things to populate the shelves inside the truck. I used greenstuff to attempt to sculpt tiny squigs. I was semi successful. The rest of the stuff in the truck was made from bits of sprue, a teddy bear bead, and a worm monster I was sculpting for something else. I even put together a shoota and a choppa to hang on the wall next to the chef. You can't really see much of any of this inside the truck with the roof on, but I know it's there. Also, I haven't glued on the roof, so people can peek inside... and maybe I can add in a LED? 

 

 The lettering for "Grub on da run" was painted on with paint pens.  The other writing was just done by brush. 

  This was a really fun project and I'm very pleased with how it turned out!  

Crafting Tombstones for the yard

 Every year for halloween I try to make something new for the yard. When I first moved into the house it was some cardboard box tombstones. i made covered them in some homemade monstermud and painted cute sayings on them. For 5 years they've served me well, but after 5 years they're showing their age... There's only so much one can do with a cardboard box that gets left outside for a month at a time every year...

After the tombstones, I made a scarecrow, and then a coffin made from a stack of pallets, and last year I made a giant spider. With each of these projects I've learned something new, and also managed to make something unique. The other neighbors who put out halloween decorations are putting out the things that you can buy at Home Depot, Lowe's, or Spirit Halloween. My stuff is unique. It isn't as polished as theirs but it's mine, and I love it. 

Also, I can't believe I never posted about making any of these before... 

This year, I wanted to replace, or at least add some fancier sturdier tombstones. I had a bunch of scrap pink foam insulation leftover from insulating the attic, and so went to work. I had one big piece of foam in particular, and chopped it into 6 relatively large slabs. These would form the basis of the tombstones. 

 

Then I carved out channels on them for PVC pipe that would be used to secure them in place on the lawn, though not deep enough, and I had to go back to make them deeper.  

 

Of course I didn't want to add a bunch of rectangular slabs to the yard since I already had 8 of the cardboard boxes serving that purpose. Using some scrap cardboard I measured out the slab size onto it and then sketched out some ideas. 

 

A little late into the project I decided that I wanted to scribe the tombstones with... something. I settled on authors and actors important to Halloween. So I figured out who I wanted, and some good quotes from them (or their characters, or about their characters) wrote them all up and printed it out at the library. Of course I also needed a tool to do it. I could have just used my exacto, but time was running short. I really should have started this early in September... so I ordered a rotary tool. 

 

Thankfully the kid has some weekend activities that keep him busy, giving me time to try to knock these out. Not that the weather was super cooperative. It was cold, but at least it wasn't raining. And really it was a wonderful sort of autumn cold. Bracing, invigorating even. 

 

Not bad, but too small... 

 

After scribing the first one, I decided that I needed to reprint the papers with a bigger font. So I biked back to the library and took care of that, and then came back to finish them.  

 
I didn't expect the foam to melt and make the paper stick to them, but it did. Not a big problem, as the paper came off easily enough with a wet wash cloth. 

 At this point it was time to glue in the pipes and back supports, and for the 2 author stones, the frames. Something I didn't know was that different calk guns are rated for different materials, and the one I had was NOT rated for adhesive. Turns out you can break a calk gun squeezing it too hard.. So I had to make an emergency trip to Lowe's... Which actually worked out for the best. The craft gods blessed me with a gallon of weather seal premixed dark grey paint which normally goes for about $63... for $15!!

Originally I was planning on using scrap foam to make the backing to help hold the pipes in place, but I decided that the old scrap pallet wood  could do the job, and help add some needed extra weight to the stones. 

 Then of course it was time to paint! 

I find myself wondering if someone else asked for this, didn't pick it up, and was hoping to get it discounted in a day or 3? Whatever the cause, this was a fantastic find for me. 

 Please ignore the messy garage... The final step was to paint the inscriptions with black paint to make them more readable. 

I would love to get these more weathered, more decorated, but for this year, with less than 2 weeks to Halloween, I felt it was more important to get them out into the yard. There's always next year to add to the pile, and then weather them all together. Also I still have a LOT of the paint left over which will be great for more yard decorations, or regular gaming terrain. 

 And here they are all set up in the yard with the old ones. 

 

Mini Thoughts: When the sculpt starts to bug you

Have you ever found yourself working on a mini, and there’s something about it that just… isn’t right? Some aspect of the sculpt that just feels wrong? Last fall I had 2 minis that I felt that way about, both from Reaper’s Brinewind box. The first was the squeezebox player. Something about the head felt off. The forehead was too far back, or the face protruded too far out. It reminded me of a howler monkey. It looked better once the mini was painted, but as I was working on it, it bugged me the whole time.

The other mini that recently had this issue was the Powder Monkey pirate. The left arm holding the barrel is notably shorter than the right arm with the pistol. I measured. Her elbow should be closer to where her wrist is. The more I work on her, the more I see it, the more it bugs me. I was strongly debating trying to sculpt the arm longer, but decided the cheap plastic mini wasn't worth it. 

Sometimes you've just got to press on, especially when you know no one else will ever notice it. 

Warriors of the Dead Games Workshop Minis

 I got a box of the old metal warriors of the dead for more than I'd have paid for the plastic kit... but it came with the king of the dead. I haven't painted him yet because he was the only mini in the set that was already painted, so he spent a few days having his original paint stripped off. He will however be painted basically the same way these fine fellows were painted. 

These minis from Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game are perhaps some of the easiest minis to paint. After giving each my customary hot soapy water toothbrush scrub, they were cleaned up to remove any flashing, and then glued to their slotta bases and added my ground up used coffee grounds for basing. I primed them white, and used one of the few bottles of Games Workshop paints I have, Aethermatic Blue contrast paint to base coat them with. 

I then dry brushed them with a few shades of cream colors, and a final highlight with a very pale greenish white Ghostly White. 

I picked out their weapons and mail to paint with gunmetal and highlight with shaded steel. 

Their bases were base coated with Walnut brown, with dry brushed Desert Stone and Desert Sand, and the rims painted with Pure Black. All in all, one of the fastest set of minis I've ever painted.

Stonehell: A Prisim... a pause

 Session 332 was played on 8/16/26

Morgana, wizard 10 (Rob)
Borumar, Triton Thief 11 (Josh)
Blotto, Goblin Fighter 8 (Lanse)
Nick, Fighter 8 (Me)
Koltic, Cleric 9 (Cindy)
Aroon, Fighter 8 (NPC)
Jameth, Fighter 8 (NPC)
Lor’Koth, Dwarf 8 (NPC)

The crystal chamber seems to require the doubling of something, but Morgana’s understanding of the runes is iffy at best, and so Morgana and a couple of the meatsticks head back up to talk to Rocky, leaving the rest of the party within the Crucible to keep the doors from closing on them. 

Because it’s been less than a day since they last visited Rocky, they just chat, and camp out with him until the clock resets and he can answer questions again. Inquiring about the Crucible, Rocky tells them that they must mirror image someone within the crystal chamber, and that future rooms within the crucible will require more magics to unlock, and that Morgana will need to do something with the power from the crown.

Thanking Rocky, they head back down to the Crucible and see about unlocking the crystal chamber. 

---

This was our final session of Stonehell before the passing of Rob... the story will continue.

 Someday.