Inspirational Movies and TV for Dark Conspiracy

[Linden]

The 1972 movie "The Legend of Boggy Creek" is a docudrama about an Arkansas "skunk-ape" like monster .

I remember my grandparents letting me watch that on TV some time in the late 70s - scared the hell out of me. I suspect I wouldn't find it nearly as frightening if I saw it now.

Seems to be quite a few sequels, official and unofficial, inspired by,,, etc etc.

[Phulish]

The 1972 movie "The Legend of Boggy Creek" is a docudrama about an Arkansas "skunk-ape" like monster .

I remember my grandparents letting me watch that on TV some time in the late 70s - scared the hell out of me. I suspect I wouldn't find it nearly as frightening if I saw it now.

Seems to be quite a few sequels, official and unofficial, inspired by,,, etc etc.

And skunk ape seems like a type of ogre or a minion used for labor that escaped.

[Linden]

And skunk ape seems like a type of ogre or a minion used for labor that escaped.

I thought Ogre too, or possibly Bloodkin Troll - stays in the woods to keep out of the sun?

[Linden]

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.

I've recently started watching Orphan Black and during the first episode found myself thinking "Dark Conspiracy". I was wondering if anyone else on the board had seen it.

Series lead Tatiana Maslany who portrays the various clones is plainly a very accomplished actress. She can't do an English accent to save her life though. Her delinquent cockney single mum Sarah Manning sounds like James Coburn in The Great Escape. Conversely Alison Hendrix her pill popping, gun toting suburban housewife is sheer brilliance.

[ReHerakhte]

Don't recall if it's been mentioned before, the Karl Urban TV series "Almost Human"
The search function didn't get any hits for it so...

Never saw it first time around and it was canned after only one season, so there's a good likelihood it wasn't even aired in Australia anyway.
Aside from the lack of the Dark and all that that entails, the show is a good setup for DC, specifically episode 5 (titled "Blood Brothers") - future society, technology has exceeded the government's ability to control or regulate it, police outnumbered and get supplimented with androids, plenty of surveillance (drones, CCTV etc. etc.), a bit of cybertech and some interesting high-tech (such as phones embedded into your body that are accessed by swiping the fingers of one hand across the palm of the other, presenting a holo-screen for you to interact with).

[Marcus Bone]

I've been replaying the 2015 Mad Max computer game (which is very different from the Fury Road movie)... and was thinking the original Mad Max movie is very Outlaw and Greater Depression...

[ReHerakhte]

Absolutely! For my latest "short" guide to Australia for The Dark Times, I imagined the situation in Australia to have created the Outlaw very much (yeah, yeah, pretty much the same...) like you see in the Mad Max movies as well as border areas similar to the depiction in the movie The Rover.
Hopefully my article is not too long for the ezine (it was about eight pages of text) but for those who remember aspects of Mad Max, it will be very obvious were I got some ideas from!

[Marcus Bone]

... similar to the depiction in the movie The Rover.

I love the setting of The Rover... I feel it really does depict how a collapse will occur. My favourite 'throw away' scene is the bit when the two protagonists stop at the train crossing in the middle of nowhere and the mining train rolls past - the mercs on board eyeing up the car ready for a fight. It goes to show that society continues... it is just much harsher than our current one!

[ReHerakhte]

Damn! I had forgotten about that particular scene. I was too focused on the army being used as ersatz police in the new nation of Queensland. While I did make mention of resource collection by the corporations from remote locations in a generalized manner, it was exactly that, generalized and lacking detail.
That specific scene from The Rover would have been spot on for depicting it.
Doesn't matter now, I'll include it somehow in the next installments.

[ugavine]

Don't think it's been mentioned... Dagon.

Yes, it's more Call of Cthulhu being (VERY loosely) based on the Lovecraft story of the same name. But the horror element would perfectly suit Dark Conspiracy. IMO that is.

[ReHerakhte]

As a further note regarding The Rover, I have taken quite a liking to the idea of using that movie as a precursor to the Mad Max series.

[Linden]

I've just finished watching Counterpart, sci-fi/espionage series starring JK Simmons and Olivia Williams. Set in Berlin where a UN funded agency monitors a parallel universe that was accidentally created in the 1980s by East German scientists. Got a touch of Terry Gilliam's Brazil about it with an often retro look and the opening scenes of grey suited clerks performing rote tasks that are banal yet also utterly unfathomable.

I wouldn't borrow the premise wholesale, I think a replica universe is perhaps a bit too big to sit comfortably as a Proto-dimension. However, the set up of contact between the two universes being regulated by two not-quite identical branches of the UN has possibilities. It could provide a viable model for relations between our Earth and a Proto-dimension inhabited by sentient beings e.g Grey. Of course once relations are established maybe something "over there" wants to get "over here"...

[Phulish]

I've just finished watching Counterpart, sci-fi/espionage series starring JK Simmons and Olivia Williams. Set in Berlin where a UN funded agency monitors a parallel universe that was accidentally created in the 1980s by East German scientists. Got a touch of Terry Gilliam's Brazil about it with an often retro look and the opening scenes of grey suited clerks performing rote tasks that are banal yet also utterly unfathomable.

I wouldn't borrow the premise wholesale, I think a replica universe is perhaps a bit too big to sit comfortably as a Proto-dimension. However, the set up of contact between the two universes being regulated by two not-quite identical branches of the UN has possibilities. It could provide a viable model for relations between our Earth and a Proto-dimension inhabited by sentient beings e.g Grey. Of course once relations are established maybe something "over there" wants to get "over here"...

Like a couple of seasons of "Fringe".

[ReHerakhte]

Linden, after reading your post about Counterpart, my first thought was immigrants from one side trying to get to the other and how they would attempt such a thing - illegal aliens indeed.

I hadn't even heard about the show so I know nothing about the gateways between the two universes but I imagine that controlling access to each universe would be paramount. I've been rewatching the Battlestar Galactica remake and the idea of some Cylons being perfect reproductions of humans, coupled with such things as the border wall between the USA and Mexico, I am thinking of all the problems with people from one world trying to access (or escape to) the other - who is a native to this universe, who is from the parallel, are they refugees or criminals escaping justice, are there duplicates of people in one universe in the other onea and how do you tell who came from where?
And then there's the potential for technology disparity and the potential for money making by selling tech between the worlds, let alone the industrial espionage potential.

Lots of "food for thought".
And of course with the premise and also with the city of Counterpart being Berlin, it could slot in easily to the Cold City rpg with some adjustments.

[Linden]

, I am thinking of all the problems with people from one world trying to access (or escape to) the other - who is a native to this universe, who is from the parallel, are they refugees or criminals escaping justice, are there duplicates of people in one universe in the other onea and how do you tell who came from where?
And then there's the potential for technology disparity and the potential for money making by selling tech between the worlds, let alone the industrial espionage potential.

A lot of those themes do get an airing in the series. As time has gone by the two worlds have diverged and there are differences in technology and social conditions. There's a blackly comic scene where some border guards are arrested for trying to sell a new "Prince" CD on this side, their version being still alive and turning out some of his best work in years. Not tech but a novel exploration of the idea of contraband/black market goods.

And of course with the premise and also with the city of Counterpart being Berlin, it could slot in easily to the Cold City rpg with some adjustments.

Great idea. It's just the sort of thing the Nazis' Twisted Technology experiments might produce. I suppose the temptation would be to for a Fatherland/Man in the High Castle parallel universe where Germany won the war. A bit of a cliche now. Thinking off the top of my head I'd consider making the other side "Patton's Dream" i.e. experiencing a war between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union over the spoils of the defeated Germany and the wider war torn Europe.