Reviews – Kathryn L. Ramage

DART Review: The Masks of Nyarlathotep: Part 6

Or, the Grand Finale.

Zeke and Hazel, and Cecil and Victoria are at last reunited, along with any surviving friends they’ve picked up during their respective adventures in Parts 4 and 5.

China

Props: Photo of boats, plan for a nuclear weapon, and some documents

Pieces of the incredibly ancient technology recovered from the equally ancient ruins in Australia were copied and shipped to the Penhew Foundation via Shanghai, a city which happens to be the home of a cult named the Order of the Bloated Woman. Given some of the things that have happened in the last two parts, this name is particularly disturbing.

Shanghai is also where Jack Brady was seen alive after his supposed death 5 years ago. Since he was the one member of the Carlyle Expedition who didn’t enter the Bent Pyramid, there’s a chance that he might not only have crucial information to thwart the cultists’ fiendish plans, but may be willing to help them.

DART Review: The Masks of Nyarlathotep: Part 5

While Hazel and Zeke are occupied in Kenya with the events of Part 4, Victoria and Cecil travel to their next destination aboard the yacht of Victoria’s good friend, Cornelius Vanderbilt III.

“Neily” Vanderbilt sums up this phase of the investigation:

“Victoria’s cousin had a friend… who thought there was a cult in Australia… and apparently he was interested in rumors about a buried city somewhere out in the desert. And someone in Australia ships strange machines from Darwin to that company in England which makes new copies and ships them to China.”

So it’s off to Darwin we go.

Australia

At a dive bar in Darwin, Cecil chats with an aborigine, who tells him something about the Cult of the Sand Bat and the Buddai, who sleeps beneath an ancient city in the Great Sandy Desert “until he’s ready to wake up and devour the world.”

Victoria and Neily meet up with a cheerful young pair of Australians, Penny and Mark O’Brien. All the way back in Part 1, Hazel spoke with an archeologist at Miskatonic University about enormous and incredibly old stone blocks out in the desert; he has arranged for the O’Brien twins–his niece and nephew–to guide Hazel’s friends on a trek out into the desert, once they learn that that’s where the original versions of those “strange machines” that were shipped to the Penhew Foundation in the UK are coming from.

DART Review: The Masks of Nyarlathotep: Part 4

At the beginning of this part, our band of adventurers breaks up into two groups, each following a separate line of investigation from the clues they’ve gathered so far. Time, they feel, is growing short.

Victoria Woodhull and Cecil Watson set sail for Australia on Cornelius Vanderbilt III’s yacht. “Neily” is another old friend of Victoria’s. Hazel Claflin and Zeke Ford head farther south into Africa, along with Dr. Ali Kafour of the Cairo Museum, an Egyptologist who aided them during their adventures in Egypt.

We follow the latter party first.

Kenya

Hazel, Zeke, and Dr. Kafour sail to Mombasa and go to Nairobi. Zeke is still in a stunned and badly shaken state after his experiences at the end of Part 3.

In Nairobi, they locate the guide who led Roger Carlyle’s sister to the site where he and his Expedition were killed, and to bring their bodies back for burial. The guide, Sam Mariga, agrees to lead them to the place where the bodies were found.

They’re also going to a semi-mythical place known as the Mountain of the Black Wind which is said to be an “unclean place… of darkness” where a powerful witch lives.

Before they set out, Dr. Kafour talks to the doctor who examined the bodies–what was left of them. There wasn’t enough for proper, individual identification but, as the doctor concludes, who else could it have been?

Hazel flirts with a drunken former soldier in a bar who claims he met Jack Brady in Shanghai some years after the Carlyle Expedition was supposedly slaughtered, and who believes that the natives executed for the crime were innocent.

Are members of the Expedition still alive? If they are, what really happened to them? Hazel and her friends have heard several different versions of their fate during the story so far, but now it’s time to find the truth.

DART Review: The Masks of Nyarlathotep: Part 3

This part was my overall favorite because of the setting. I went to Egypt last year after listening to another Dark Adventure Radio Theatre, Imprisoned with the Pharoahs, and because I couldn’t resist the opportunity to stand between the paws of the Sphinx. So I was delighted to hear the adventurers of this story play out in some of the same places I’d been to.

Egypt

Insurance agent Cecil Watson is amazed to see camels in Cairo.

After the events at the end of Part 2, Cecil, Hazel, et al are traveling incognito. They’re staying under the name of Rockefeller at Shepheard’s Hotel, since they’re in the Rockefellers’ suite (the family has kindly lent it to Victoria while wintering elsewhere).

The group’s primary goal at this point is to find out what really happened to the missing Carlyle Expedition and how it relates to whatever all these cults around the world are planning. Before they follow their separate lines of investigation around the city, Zeke proposes a rule to his companions, to help them guard themselves against the vengeful Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh:

“Never go anywhere alone.”

It seems like I’ve heard that somewhere before.

DART Review: The Masks of Nyarlathotep: Part 2

At the end of Part 1 of The Masks of Nyarlathotep, Victoria Woodhull stayed behind in New York to take care of some unfinished business in the city and to keep a promise she made. Her companions Hazel Claflin, Zeke Ford, and Cecil Watson went on ahead to England to continue their investigation.

Props: Letters, translations, and a cocktail napkin

England

When the trio arrives, they make themselves at home in Victoria’s spacious London flat under the care of her loyal Indian man- servant, Gupta.

Hazel’s been reading a book about occult sects in Africa during her ocean voyage, and she’s learned a thing or two about Nyarlathotep since her encounter with the Cult of the Bloody Tongue:

“That name’s Egyptian, but the god itself is older than the Egyptians. It has countless forms and manifestations for worshippers throughout the world, organized into different cults.”

Which gives our heroes some idea of what they’re up against.

DART Review: The Masks of Nyarlathotep: Part 1

This latest episode of Dark Adventure Radio Theatre represents an ambitious undertaking from the HP Lovecraft Historical Society: A 6-disk, 7-hour audio play that spans five continents and includes an international cast of characters based, not on an original Lovecraft story, but on a Chaosium role-playing game.

Each disk in the boxed set breaks the story up into chapters, as the setting moves from one country to the next. I’m going to divide my review into the same sections, and try not to give too much away as the story progresses.

America

It begins in New York City in the 1920s, at an engagement party for Hazel Claflin (Sarah van der Pol) and Marcus Buchannan in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria.

The Claflin family is quite prominent both socially and politically, and includes a state governor and a Speaker of the House.

Oh, and Hazel’s cousin is Victoria Woodhull (Kacey Camp),the pioneer American feminist who ran for President in 1872. Still an active old lady in her 80s, she’s come all the way from England to attend her young cousin’s party and upcoming wedding.

While at the party, Hazel receives a phone call from an old boyfriend, Jackson Elias, a writer and world traveler who researches cults and other arcane mysteries. His most recent investigation has placed him in grave danger and he desperately needs her help. Hazel goes to him–she feels she owes it to him since their relationship ended badly. Marcus insists on coming along with her.

“We’ll be back before you know it,” Marcus says as the young couple exits.

Given this set-up, the listener might anticipate that Jackson will drag both Hazel and Marcus along on a series of exciting and terrifying adventures, and it will be quite some time before they return to their guests at the party.

But that’s not what happens.

Dark Shadows Revival: Episodes 9-10

Carrying on with the 1790s storyline.

Episode 9: How Barnabas Became a Vampire

In 1991, Phyllis Wicke remains dangerously ill with diphtheria, but she retains a connection with the events she was once part of in 1790 before she and Vicky switched places. In her delirious state, she tells the present-day inhabitants of Collinwood that it was such a pity, that handsome young man being killed. She’s referring to Jeremiah Collins, Barnabas’s younger brother.

When we jump to the 1790s story, the Collinses of that era are attending Jeremiah’s funeral. Josette, still under Angelique’s love-spell, is in hysterics over her husband’s coffin and sobs that Barnabas has “killed my only love!”

The pastor performing the service speaks of Jeremiah dying in a “tragic firearms accident” instead of being shot in a duel. The Collinses are already hard at work covering up their family secrets and rewriting the past.

Witchfinder Trask interrupts the funeral, arriving to arrest the witch responsible for this calamity: not Angelique, but Victoria Winters.

The family protests, apart from Aunt Abigail, who literally points an accusatory finger at Vicky. Trask hauls Vicky into a carriage and takes her to the Collinsport Gaol.

Barnabas comes to the jail to stop any interrogation before Trask can lay a hand on her. He seems to think the whole thing is ridiculous even if the old witchcraft laws are still on the books, and tries to reassure Vicky that nothing bad will happen to her; she’ll be acquitted and she certainly will never be hanged as a witch.

But if you remember the original series, you know exactly how this is going to turn out. Vicky has every reason to be worried.

Continue reading “Dark Shadows Revival: Episodes 9-10”

Dark Shadows Revival: Episodes 7-8

The last episode ended with a seance, during which Victoria Winters Seance disappeared abruptly from the table to be replaced by another young woman, who was wearing colonial-era clothes and immediately collapsed. A letter of recommendation she carried with her addressed to Joshua Collins provided her name, Phyllis Wicke*, and a date of April 1790.

The inhabitants of modern-day Collinwood wonder: Is that where Vicky has gone?

Let’s find out.

Episode 7: 1790

Unlike the original series during this same storyline, time does not stand still at Collinwood. Vicky is gone, but life goes on in the 1990s. Before we even find out what happened to her, this episode begins with Dr. Hoffman and Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard looking after the unconscious 1790s governess.

After she’s tended to the young woman, Julia asks Barnabas if he recognized her. He confirms that he does: Phyllis Wicke was indeed governess to the children, and she arrived at Collinwood 200 years ago in pretty much the same state. The mail-coach from Boston overturned on its way to Collinsport and she was injured. She recovered from that, but soon afterward became ill from a fever and died.

Elizabeth falls asleep while sitting at Phyllis’s bedside. When Phyllis wakes up, she dashes out of the room and out of the house wearing only her colonial underwear.

Continue reading “Dark Shadows Revival: Episodes 7-8”

The Unnamable

H.P. Lovecraft’s 1925 short story The Unnamable, about something too horrible to be named that dwells in an ancient and abandoned house, provides a basis for this 1988 low-budget horror film.

The original story is very short. You can read it in about 5 minutes online at: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/u.aspx.

The Face in the Window So brief a story naturally needs some filling out to become a feature-length movie. In this case, I’m sorry to say they took the unimaginative route of making another standard-template slasher movie–which came thick and fast throughout the ’80s following the success of Halloween and Friday the 13th; I watched more of them in those days than I can remember now. But it does have one really good feature that shows some creativity.

We start off well enough, with an historical flashback. Going by the costumes and later dialog (as well as the dates given in the original story), it’s the 17th century. An old man has locked some unseen creature that breathes with a loud, purring noise like a lion into a room in his attic. The heavy door features a huge padlock and chains, and a small perforated peephole (recalling the red door from The Shuttered Room).

While he’s downstairs in his study–or perhaps a laboratory given the jars of colored liquid and powders–attempting to read from his collection of quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore, the thing in that room continues to thump on the door and make howling noises.

Wizard Winthrop Finally, he goes upstairs to speak to it, addressing it as a “denizen of Hell” and promising that someday he will find the means to enable it to walk in the daylight. Then he unwisely unlocks and opens the door, and gets his heart torn out of his chest.

The next day, a group of men including a clergyman of unspecified denomination gather the mutilated body up into a sheet. They call the old man a wizard, and the clergyman places some kind of religious invocation on the house, declaring that the evil within it will never be able to pass its walls. The men carry the wrapped-up body out to the adjacent cemetery, quickly lower it down inside an above-ground tomb that’s ready and waiting, and place the stone slab over the top. After the others scurry away, the clergyman remains to complete a short funeral service; he glances repeatedly and nervously up at the attic window of the house behind him, then hastens away as well.

From there, we jump to the same churchyard about 300 years later–that is, modern times. This is the part of the film that sticks most closely to Lovecraft’s story, except there are three young men sitting against the tombstones instead of two.

In addition to our Lovecraft stand-in, Randolph Carter, and his friend Joel Manton, the third boy is named Howard. They’re all students at good old Miskatonic U, the campus of which is just a short walk away.

Continue reading “The Unnamable”

The Legacy

The Legacy is one of those sophisticated devil-worshipper films that were popular during the 1970s following Rosemary’s Baby. While it has some narrative Bestowing the ring flaws, it was one of the staples of my late-night TV viewing as a teenager and I still have a fondness for it. The story plays out as if it were an old-fashioned, country-house murder mystery and features a number of grisly, magically induced baroque deaths. But there’s really little doubt about who’s responsible in the end.

Los Angeles architect Maggie Walsh (Katharine Ross) receives a job offer in England. The work itself isn’t clearly defined, but the letter encloses a check for $50,000 as a retainer–a massive amount of money in the 1970s–and asks that Maggie be in the UK by a specific date a couple of weeks away. Her business partner and lover Pete Danner (Sam Elliott)* is dubious about taking a job they know nothing about, but the check is certainly real.

Maggie decides to accept. In fact, she wants to go right away to spend a few days as a tourist and to look up “where her English blood came from” before meeting with her client.

During the opening credits, accompanied by the movie theme song sung by Kiki Dee, we see Pete and Maggie in London, then zipping around the countryside on a motorcycle. They pass through a charming little village, stop to have a picnic lunch beside a stream, then ride down a narrow lane where they swerve off suddenly into the trees to avoid a crash with a Rolls Royce coming up the other way.

Motorcycle crash The owner of the Rolls (John Standing) is extremely apologetic as he checks the couple for injuries. They aren’t hurt, but the motorcycle is a bit banged up.

The gentleman offers to take them to his house for a spot of tea while the local mechanic comes for the bike and repairs it. Only when they’re actually in the back of the limo does he introduce himself as Jason Mountolive.

After a brief stop in that village for Harry the chauffeur to speak to the garage mechanic, they drive on to Jason’s house, Ravenshurst, which is a lovely old mansion on a grand estate.

Jason sends his guests in through the front door, telling them that “Adams” will take care of them. He stays in the car as it goes around to the back. While he seemed perfectly fine while talking to Maggie and Pete after the accident, something is seriously wrong with him; he’s very weak, and the chauffeur has to help him out of the car and up the back stairs to his room.

Maggie and Pete, meanwhile, are impressed by the gorgeous interior of the house. They see no sign of Adams or anyone else, apart from a white cat with mismatched eyes like David Bowie–one green and one blue.

The drawing room

Continue reading “The Legacy”