Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

[Linden]

Was wondering if anyone had seen the The Stick, a late 1980s film from S.Africa? It sounds like it might be perfect inspiration for ex-military DC characters.

I first read about it in Samhain magazine many years ago, and then saw a copy in my local video shop – always regret not renting it. I gather it wasn’t very popular with the apartheid era S.African government and it seems to be quite hard to get hold of now.

[Linden]

Empire State, a 1980s crime drama from Film 4. At first sight it seems to be taking up where The Long Good Friday left off with an alliance of young criminals and yuppies trying to convince Martin Landau's American businessman to invest in their London Docklands redevelopment.

The Dark Conspiracy elements are a seeming near future setting with the development site (a putative dreamlands) cordoned off by armed guards, retro-tech and style including the chief hood driving around in a suitably ostentatious American classic car. Empire State itself is a huge night club on a boat ,the sort of place where Gnomes and Corporate types go to be seen and maybe slum it with old style villains and streetwise hustlers.

On the negative side it's a bit of a sprawling mess and some of the performances by non-actors are dreadful. It's also fairly explicit about gay subculture and very violent in places, so if you do decide to give it a try don't watch it when your granny's around eh?

[ReHerakhte]

Final Days Of Planet Earth

Never seen this show myself but I'm wondering if anyone else has? Seems to be very DC.
Rated as starting well but falling below its potential or as one IMDB member wrote "...a somewhat entertaining sci-fi thriller."

Here's the storyline summary

Lloyd Walker is an anti-heroic archaeologist who, after stumbling upon an alien conspiracy, becomes enmeshed in an against-all-odds battle to save the human race. From the enigmatic Room 86 to the doomed Pericles space mission, Walker puzzles together clues to reveal the dark purpose behind strange events occurring around San Francisco. Now, the "keeper of dead civilizations" must rescue mankind from slavery at the hands of some very big, very terrifying insect-aliens... Written by Echo Bridge Home Entertainment

[Linden]

I have some very good news here. Outpost, more or less the official DC movie (a bunch of ex-special forces hunt nazi-monsters in a war zone), is going to have a sequel. "War in Hell"

Watched Outpost: Black Sun last night. Very much more of the same but with an emphasis on action than the creepy vibe of the first one. Incoherent in places, I couldn't keep track of which ranking Nazi was which and the EMP pulse stuff lost me completely. Good looking film on a budget of just £3m pounds.

[Zvezda]

It wasn't really bad. It was like...okayish...it lacked the originality of the first one and it's plotholes...ohh dear...anyways I enjoyed it.

Currently I watch "Orphan Black" and think it has a lot of DC potential. Again nothing very original...clones in the USA discovering that they are clones...though surprisingly enough they don't seem to have any super powers so far. The good thing is, they have a lot of conspiracies running in the background like a a new religion called Neolution which promotes genetically modication as cool. The rich attach themselfs animal parts just because they can.

[Phulish]

Does anyone use other movies for character inspiration? The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a good computer empath. The pair in Way of the Gun for criminal characters.

[Zvezda]

Yes. Excessively. In case that the characters are not too well known I even use the same name and everything. I used Yann Le Pentrec from Dobermann as an NPC simply assuming that the PC (who's players had seen the movie) know his story. Normally however I rename the NPCs and use only some of the aspects of the movie characters. Occasionally I even use NPCs who deliberately have styled themselves after some movie heroes.
Through out the years the character based on George Best in Mean Machine (I have forgotten the name) has appeared as a PC in our group.
I think one of the big advantages of using a movie based NPC is that when it comes to roleplaying it is very easy for me to improvise when the PC ask the NPC about what other adventures happened to him or her.

[Phulish]

I'll need to go through my DVD library again.

[Zvezda]

Strange that every now and than when one uses this forum you have to dig up old stuff. I have been listening to black sabbath all night long because of a remark Linden made earlyer.
I also use characters from songs a lot. Undead Mercenaries based on Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner and stuff like that.

[Morthrai]

I also use characters from songs a lot. Undead Mercenaries based on Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner and stuff like that.

That's a great song

[lucifugerex]

Greetings all!

I have no idea if anybody's already mentioned this (I'm at work and don't have time to go through the 20 pages of posts), but here's the link to Chris Carpenter's movie and tv DC database.

movies - http://web.archive.org/web/200302071912 ... rg/dcimdb/

television - http://web.archive.org/web/200301301054 ... vlists.htm

I hope that helps somebody!

[Morthrai]

Welcome to the forums, and thanks for digging those up!

Norm and I got the original files from Chris and revamped the DCIMDB a while ago but had to take it down due to security and spamming issues

[ReHerakhte]

+1 to what Morthrai said on both counts. I'd been hoping that someone had those files somewhere but I never had the URL to check on the internet archive so yes, welcome to the forum and Thanks! for providing those URLs.

[Zvezda]

Great! Thanks for posting!!!

[Morthrai]

There's always the possibility that the database might return you know

We still have Chris's original files plus some newer reviews that weren't used at the time. I'll get back to you guys on that!