Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Any and all discussion about Dark Conspiracy, the RPG of modern conspiracy horror
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Linden
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Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Post by Linden »

Marcus Bone wrote:
Brilliant stuff!
Definitely putting this one on the "to watch" list Marcus. Sounds great.
Last edited by Linden on Sat May 21, 2016 9:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

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Ah yes The Rover, I found it to be a very good movie and thought it could happily co-exist with the first Mad max movie as a sort of precursor to that story.
Still, The Rover is not without some critics but I totally dismiss them because their particular criticism seems to be the end-result of the American movie industry making all lead characters "nice guys" and the audience is too damned stupid at times to realize that just because you don't like the character, it doesn't mean the movie is bad.
The main character in The Rover is not a nice guy but you find out why during the course of the movie, I've seen reviews from some Americans who didn't like the movie because they found the main character to be unlikeable.
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Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

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This may be of only marginal relevance but I watched the Enron documentary The Smartest Guys in the Room a couple of days ago. Struck me as a potentially useful guide to depicting how a Darking influenced corporation might behave in the DC world. A good film in its own right as well.
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Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Post by KeiBu »

I just had to run a search to see if anyone has mentioned this yet and was a little surprised no-one else has. Back in the 90s, Bill Paxton starred in a low budget conspiracy/horror movie called Monolith (also with John Hurt and Louis Gosset Jr). It's pretty obscure now but used to be quite common to pick up ex-rental copies.

It was a current day story, with a pair of cops trying to solve a crime with supernatural overtones that soon expands into a conspiracy with a crashed UFO at it's heart.

I was pretty much able to lift the whole plot and just drop it into DC and the players were carried along well by events. The only major difference I made was to site the recovered UFO under the FBI training facility at Quantico (where I'd headquartered the FBI Echo Squad) so the climax would allow me to overhaul their structure and facilities for ongoing plot purposes.

Not an amazing film, but good use of Paxton and Hurt and a decent threat to keep everyone focussed.
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Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

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KeiBu wrote:I just had to run a search to see if anyone has mentioned this yet and was a little surprised no-one else has. Back in the 90s, Bill Paxton starred in a low budget conspiracy/horror movie called Monolith (also with John Hurt and Louis Gosset Jr). It's pretty obscure now but used to be quite common to pick up ex-rental copies.
Well, I had never even heard of this one until now. I shall be keeping an eye out for it - might be one for this year's Halloween Movie Marathon (I need a better name - I suppose Schlocktoberfest is already taken?) :D
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Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

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I've heard of Monolith - it turned up in a documentary here in the UK back in the late 1990s about the film's director and writer, a couple of Welsh chancers who'd blagged their way out of the valleys and into a career making exploitation movies in Hollywood. Fair play to them I thought, and was mildly interested in seeking out their films but somehow never got around to it. The pair do seem to have a talent for getting hold of some notable actors so they must be doing something right. I remember an interview with Paxton where he said he did Monolith for the money though :(

The Taff Twosome are also responsible for the Project Shadowchaser series and may have had some involvement in Xtro II (not seen the latter either but I understand it's an Aliens rip off).
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Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

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This weekend watched Monsters: Dark Continent, sequel to the 2010 done-on-a-shoestring creature feature. The eponymous monsters have spread across the world with a major infected zone being located in the Middle East. Western powers try to exterminate the aliens with heavy bombing of the infected zone, which doesn't go down too well with the people living there. Ground troops are deployed to keep order and win hearts and minds. This proves none too popular with the locals either.

I really enjoyed the first film but found this heavy going. Much of the dialogue consists of incoherent shouting and screaming, and the pace is often leaden. The message that war-is-hell-cos-humans-are-the-real-monsters is hammered home without any great wit or subtlety. On the plus side there are some good action sequences and effects work, together with some arresting images in the film's quieter second half. The score is moody and evocative and really belongs to a much better film.

In DC terms might serve as a model for how the authorities respond to the appearance of Demongrounds and/or could be inspiration for a T2000/Dark Conspiracy cross over adventure with military PCs.
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Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

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Other than that convoy adventure in Challenge, there really hasn't been much like that. An adventure in or near a Demonground might be interesting. There are some possibilities there, hmmmm.....
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Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

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Phulish wrote:Other than that convoy adventure in Challenge, there really hasn't been much like that. An adventure in or near a Demonground might be interesting. There are some possibilities there, hmmmm.....
I remember the convoy adventure in Challenge. I thought about using it in my campaign but it seemed unplayable as written. I don't think the GDW House system is really conducive to running large scale vehicular battles. Also the two infiltrator NPCs seemed more than a little obvious. Any half-smart PC's going to say to themselves, "Hmmm...there's something strange about those two..."
Last edited by Linden on Wed Aug 31, 2016 6:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

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Something stalking the non igors at evening camps would be better.
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Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

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KeiBu wrote: Not an amazing film, but good use of Paxton and Hurt and a decent threat to keep everyone focussed.
I thought Bill Paxton and Lindsay Frost made a good double act. John Hurt was terrible - full on Stella Street mode, especially in the later scenes.

Interesting that screenwriter Stephen Lister also wrote a couple of episodes of vintage UK thick ear series The Professionals. Monolith has a similar dynamic with the two bickering leads and their put upon superior back in the office, fending off threats from assorted politicos, civil servants etc.
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Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

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G'Day All,
I very recently got a hold of the TV series Children Of The Stones and finished watching it about half an hour ago. Doing some online research into the show I came across the blog ROOKSMOOR'S TABLETS OF LEAD and a post specifically about the notion of Great Britain portrayed as fascist in certain dystopian fiction. Link here

Now while that particular post makes for some interesting reading in regards to dystopian settings, it was posted in 2008 and thus the links provided are a "little cranky". And it's the links that provide the main resource for some game world inspiration although the first two will take some serious searching - as in, you'll have to have an idea of the show's name to search for it :(
http://www.memorabletv.com/uk-tv-drama-guide/
http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/
But the real gem is unfortunately only accessible (for me at least) via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine... the British Telefantasy Timeline for the 1970s as found here https://web.archive.org/web/20130605074 ... 1970s.html
Intro page here, https://web.archive.org/web/20130502122 ... index.html
And yes, it does cover more than just the 1970s, individual pages cover the 1930s through to the early 2000s.

Now I'm sure most of those 1970s shows are know by our British members but there's a lot of them that I, being on the other side of the world and "down under", had never heard of (such as The Donati Conspiracy) even though there's many listed there that I had been able to see on Australian television**. Unfortunately it seems that particular website is no longer maintained but the site author did migrate his interests to some other sites that are relevant to our interests: -
http://mjsimpson-films.blogspot.com.au/
http://british-horror-revival.blogspot.com.au/
The site author is M.J. Simpson, the co-founder of British sci-fi/horror/fantasy genre magazine SFX.


** Obviously Dr Who but also Catweazle, The Goodies, The Tomorrow People, UFO, Tom's Midnight Garden and others that I knew of but never saw at the time such as The Prisoner, The Stone Tape, Survivors and so on.
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Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

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ReHerakhte wrote:G'Day All,
I very recently got a hold of the TV series Children Of The Stones and finished watching it about half an hour ago.
What did you reckon to it? I thought great build up but a cop out conclusion (although I rather liked the "it's happening again" style epilogue). Millbury would make a good protodimension I think.

I've been watching a bit of old school weird British TV lately: Robin Redbreast (a kind of prototype Wicker Man set here in Worcestershire), plus a couple of episodes of Dead of Night, a creepy anthology series of one off plays, only three of which survive unfortunately. Tracking down some of this stuff is sometimes difficult, even here in the UK. A lot of it hasn't been officially released in any form.

In a similar vein recently re-read Robert Westall's Devil on the Road about a biker who spends the summer living in Suffolk, a region once plagued by the infamous Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins. A novel supposedly for young people but which deals with some very adult themes e.g. time and to what extent it might be changeable, the nature of desire, and the often different things that men and women want from life. It really creeped me out when I read it as a kid - didn't have quite the same impact as an adult but still a great read. Would have made a good "weird TV" series back in the 70s/early 80s.
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Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

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I enjoyed it well enough to watch the entire series in one day but to an adult exposed to a decent amount of sci-fi, fantasy and weird fiction over the years, the story did seem a little "unsophisticated" and definitely yes, the ending seemed "too easy".
To be fair though, it was aimed at older children & young teens and it was the teens in the show who were meant to be the heroes as opposed to the adults so I'll happily forgive that and the basic premise was good enough to carry it through.

The strange thing is though, about a year or two back, I was in a discussion with some members of the Supressed Transmissions Google group and we were talking about the notion of a quaint little town or village trapped in time but still existing in the modern world for a game campaign, (initially inspired by some of the posts in the Scarfolk website, which, given the description I now suspect that that site was partially inspired by Children Of the Stones).I don't recall anyone in the discussion having seen Children Of The Stones so this would seem to be one of those interesting little coincidences.
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Re: Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

Post by ReHerakhte »

Narcopolis.
Anyone seen it? IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1957938/
Quite a dark little tale and cyberpunk enough to easily fit into DC, Cyberpunk 2020 or ShadowRun.
After trying to scratch a sci-fi itch that I had and failing miserably with Princess Of Mars (I watched 40 minutes before giving up, even the presence of Traci Lords couldn't save the lousy script and crappy dialogue) and then with Independents' Day (I watched 30 minutes of that before throwing in the towel), I started trawling the net for some decent recent sci-fi and found a trailer for Narcopolis.

The movie follows the investigation of a drug cop in a near future city in the UK who starts out trying to find the identity of someone who has no records on the DNA database. In the movie, the UK has legalized the use of non-prescription drugs and one company, the pharma giant Ambro, has cornered the market on safe, registered recreational drugs. But something is rotten in the state of Denmark (to misappropriate Hamlet) and the cop's investigations seem to indicate that a new, unregistered drug is on the streets with the pharma giant involved in the shady goings on.

Cars with barcodes for numberplates, a few high tech gadgets thrown in with low tech equipment, lots of dark, broken down, grimy landscapes, a scientist allergic to electro-magnetic radiation, a corporation with far too much control, (at one point in the movie Ambro does a funding deal with the police that effectively gives them control of the entire city police force) - there's a lot of fodder for gaming.

There's more to the story than that but it's major plot spoiler material, it's worth watching to find out even if you the viewer do connect the dots before the protagonist does - it's definitely not a movie I wanted to shut off after 30 minutes!
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