Thirty-Ninth Session – MORTAL KOMBAT!!!! We go with Ned to an occult island where wizards gather to fight it out one-on-one tournament style.
Ned blows a magic horn and some robots sail us out to the recently risen island-town of Dagon, inhabited largely by giant bug people. There are six other wizards with their retinues in attendance. There’s a lot of rules like “non-wizards can get killed by wizards with impunity” and “the bugs will obey wizards but probably eat you.”
We get to meet an impressive array of freakydeak wizards and their minions. We try to make some allies, as we all immediately suspect the prize for winning this tournament is “being eaten by bug-men.”
We bet on some of the wizard battles and then realize “You know… I bet whoever loses a fight has a bunch of good shit back in their guest tower, as magic items aren’t allowed in the fights.” We skedaddle to the tower of the recently deceased Renox the White Magister and loot it; we have to fight a demon summoned by a demonic sigil but get a spellbook and some sick goodies.
Next day, we discover that Illka the Fey got poisoned by Urzeth the Living Flame Guy’s folks and his minions want to “go get ’em!” We offer to escort them to Urzeth’s so the bug-men don’t eat them, with every intention of siccing the two groups on each other and mopping up the victor. And the plan goes well, though we are horrified by the effectiveness of bug-men in combat (4 attacks, wtf!?!)
We whack Urzeth and his sexy lizard lamia chick Amathies joins us rather than die. And we loot his tower, too! So many spellbooks…
Thirty-Eighth Session – We save some witches from a giant centipede, and try to hook Ned up with the least gruesome of the witches, but we are on a timetable – apparently a timetable to be eaten by moth-bats.
We go to a Secret Cave – I think the goal was for Hemp to get an Aphiel patron bond. Besides the usual weird critters, we find out about some warring long-ago folks from the ghost of a little boy named Tammun.
Uncle Zugun is trapped between life and death in a coffin and Father Boak wants to become a demigod… Anyway, the lads fight off waves of attackers while Hemp does a cool Aphiel ritual! Huzzah.
We end up with Uncle Zugun in a coffin. He claims he’s not a vampire but we’re having none of it. Anyway, we need to cart him far into the Shudder Mountains to the Luhsaal Wheel in the Deep Hollows, where Boak is going to become a god, because he’s an Aphiel apostate and is now into the sorceress goddess Camue, and we hate that.
Thirty-Seventh Session – It’s a tie as to what’s the most dangerous experience this session – tentacle-birthed monstrous servitors of a dark god, or Ned setting our campsite on fire – twice.
We travel through weird random encounters and Ned setting our campsite on fire. At long last we get to the Shrine of the Bethines where Podrick needs to cleanse the Helm of Chistu, which is supposed to be all kinds of help against the evil undead hordes. It’s just full of horrid Servitors of Zeron, though you can knock their teeth out and eat the teeth to get protection from hostile elements.
The experience of swallowing malign chaos magic is deeply unpleasant, about like smoking, eating the contents of the ashtray, and washing it down with Ivanovich vodka. After that, the characters each experience a mild, cold numbness.
He means Ivanabitch vodka, which is the worst thing Chris ever fed to us. He got it on clearance for like $2. It’s a “menthol flavored” vodka. It tastes like a stripper throwing up in your mouth. This was easily a decade ago but it still haunts us.
We delve deep into a weird dungeon, including a room with 30 skeletons in it that we manage to not have to fight. A gaseous demon poses a real problem but luckily my magic flaming bow gives it a good what for.
Finally we emerge with a cleansed helm! And Ned sets our campsite on fire again.
P.S. This appears to be “The Zeron Protocol” from the 2016 Gongfarmer’s Almanac.
Thirty-Sixth Session – We head from Kingspire to Wymoor and meet some bewitched goons we manage not to murder, and then some other goons we do murder.
We take our large retinue on the road. The first night, we meet the artifact hunters on the road that we were sure were going to just waylay us last time we met them. This time they found an artifact, a crown, that has clearly bent them and they insist Hemp is the True King and should put on the crown. We tweak to that immediately but the fight doesn’t go great until Ned managed to magic missile the crown for an insane amount of damage and they all get a grip again.
We decide to put a curse on one of the artifacts they’re selling up the river to the evil lackey of the wizard king, Lady Skian. Turns out she and her undead army have taken over Fythorp, which we figured was coming eventually.
Then we come across some friars fighting some prisoners. For whatever reason, most of the PCs decide to murder the majority of the friars until Hemp finally gets everyone to calm down. The friars insist the prisoners are guilty of random crimes so we have Podrick judge them, which he does fairly but sternly.
Grond, Barka, and Skarn are three berserkers who decide they have nothing better to go back to and are grateful, so swear to serve Hemp as his personal bodyguards! Nice.
We settle most of our otherworldly followers in Wymoor where we buy them a house. Logistics and carousing takes us through the rest of the session!
Thirty-Fifth Session – It’s back into the caves below the Magnusson crypt to best the Silver Skull!
This is made more complicated by the characters still being body-swapped – but the dice are on our side and the Silver Skull generally loses his spells. With a final acrobatic flourish we dump the skull into Hell and the place tumbles down. Huzzah!
The way back to Kingspire is full of weird random encounters. First some odd cultists we disregard, but then Podrick demands we tamper with “a giant creature whose chains merge with its rotting body. It clutches a book inscribed with arcane symbols. It’s empty eye sockets glow with sickly green light. It moves towards the characters, exuding a horrible stench.” It’s more or less just a troll though so we put paid to it.
Finally we get the swamp-witch’s daughter back to her – she got killed by the devil in the dungeon but the GM lets us “turn them over” and otherwise do heroic spell-casting to save dying NPCs because he’s not fully on board the DCC murder train :-). The witch swaps everyone’s bodies back. Then she suggests Ned goes and enters a wizard Mortal Kombat tournament, which tickles all of our fancies.
Then we screw around in Kingspire for a while, mostly soliciting the local bootmaker. (No, that’s not a James Bond style condom joke.) Also my shadow demon gives us another adventure lead, and gambling gives both another and a cool book called The Sassy Wizard Kid. It is a book of well-known poems, each next to an illustration of a magical device.
Thirty-Fourth Session – Adventurers, slugs, and undead, oh my! We go to rescue a kidnapped woman from the clutches of demons! And do, kinda sorta.
The party is well and truly jacked up, besides being soul-swapped folks are poisoned, injured… Luckily I missed last session, so Hemp shows up hale and hearty and looks after his twisted brood as we try to heal up for a couple days. Luckily the depredations of camping checks don’t injure us any more. Plus Hemp uses the giant manta ray skin we found to make a tight weatherproof pavilion tent for the group.
We are approached by a party of adventurers looking for “cursed relics.” We assume they just want to rob us, because every magic item we have could be described as a cursed relic. They leave but we prepare a counter-ambush as we’re sure they’ll come back.
They don’t but a shitload of giant slugs do. (I think that’s the official group term for slugs, like a flock or herd or murder.) We have a big bag of salt, which is not as helpful as we’d hoped. We kill them, but are a bit the worse for wear again afterwards.
The next day we find our target dungeon, and enter through a crypt whose skeletons at least have the good grace to have valuables on them! Plus a shadow curse. Well, that beats most of our encounters that have something hideously dangerous but no money, so we are pleased.
After some dungeoning we find the witch’s daughter strapped down getting set to be sacrificed by a barbed devil. We try to intervene but the barbed devil pops a barb burst and kills her. We fight him and Old Man Fish pours healing into the woman, who manages to survive.
We come away with a super evil magic dagger called Abathon, the witch’s daughter, and clear intent to find Duke Magnusson the undead wizard and put paid to him.
Thirty-Third Session – We continue to spelunk a somewhat-aquatic tower full of lamprey men and sharks and suchlike.
We find some weird jellyfish suits that promise to let us enter the water, but there’s clearly a big hammerhead shark in there. We start putting together a plan to bait and kill the shark when Gallfred Weasel goes bananas and just jumps in and starts stabbing the shark. Given that he is known for his cowardice only slightly less than his greed, this is concerning.
Sure enough, after we manage to kill the shark without it eating Gallfred, he starts trying to saw a giant clam open and gets his hand horribly mangled and is caught underwater. Finally he comes away with the Horn of the Tudines!
He allegedly just needs this to please his assassin cult buddies but for some reason he feels compelled to blow the horn out on the water, which summons the World Turtle, as one might expect. So we climb onto its shell which naturally has a dungeon in it.
We fight giant sea anemones and then people that have been Flying Dutchman’ed in Pirates of the Caribbean style. They spew out eels and crabs and other gross stuff. (I mean, eels and crabs are tasty, but not when they’re coming out of the undead.)
And then the money shot – everyone gets their minds swapped! I missed the session so not Hemp, but Gallfred’s mind goes into Podrick, Old Man Fish’s into Gallfred, and Podrick’s into Old Man Fish. This, mixed with player names, causes infinite amounts of confusion about who does what for several game sessions.
We get the treasure and extract.
The characters sleep through the night unmolested. Gallfred (Old Man Fish) notes, “Getting to sleep unmolested is tight!��
So apparently there’s a whole nother part of the Sea Queen Escapes where we free a sea queen, but we don’t do that for whatever reason. Instead it’s back to Kingspire to try to get one of our favorite witches to switch everyone’s souls back. Naturally she sends us on a new quest to get that done.
Her daughter Eris has been kidnapped by a pterodactyl-riding wizard, so we’re off to go get her. Nature intervenes.
Thirty-Second Session – The seas beckon as we leave Kingspire for the Isle of Lone Ait, which looks foreboding even on the map. Foes await!
First, we have a quite lively fight with some seafaring skeletons. “Eight skeletons on a boat? No problem, let’s get them. AIIIIEEEEEE it hurts” is a good summary of what we said.
And then we start in on some adventure about weirdly named people (Shadankin! Queen Cealheewhalool!) because Gallfred has some horn he needs for a fech quest. As I discover later, this is from the adventure DCC#75, The Sea Queen Escapes.
We find the sea cave dungeon readily enough, and as one might expect – LAMPREY MEN!!! They have harpoons, but I have a fire bow.
Then it turns into a platformer, which is super annoying.
More in the summary, but this one is mostly fighting!
Thirty-first Session – We head back into the Kingspire. The weaselly Vizier tries to get the runeblade off of us, so I shoot him in his face for his trouble. Unfortunately two elder kith knights cut down Ned. We manage to save his life, but at the cost of permanent disability (-1 STA and a scar). We kill them all and heft mithril weapons meaningfully.
When we get back to the Crow King we give him his dead lover’s ring and he calls for the Vizier’s head. We say “Oh we just happen to have a fresh vizier head on us, just two silver pieces.”
Anyway, he tell us to stop the time loop we have to kill an “uppity broad” whose sorcery caused the loop, the Lady Ariarch. The degree to which we trust his pronouncements is very low. But after a dinner party, she agrees that she needs to be killed by the Runeblade to stop the loop. Ned does the deed. Afterwards the blade is like “oh you can use me and I’m super powerful and you just have to make the world burn in return”. Ned’s conflicted, so we deconflict him by drugging him like Mr. T in the A-Team.
We get back to the real world/time/whatever, where our followers have captured some random cultists. After some discussion, Old Man Fish sacrifices one to his fell deity. Are we ze baddies?
Back to the mud-farmer village which is all that remains of Kingpsire in the modern day, where Gallfred hangs out with a swamp witch, which is one of his favorite things to do. Sadly, the Elder Kith cultists infesting it aren’t really affected by the fact that we just cancelled their religion by disintegrating all the elder kith, so we murder and loot.
We then “negotiate” with the locals about how they’re free of the cult and should start behaving like civilized people now. But not like us, we’re monsters.
Thirtieth Session – We go find the other elves out of time that should be against the ones in the castle, but they require slaughter as well, so we oblige.
Then we find a Conan the Barbarian style dead guy and, like Conan, take his sword and armor.
When we go outside we have a Tremors type problem with a big worm. It would have been fairly easy to escape, but Ned starts to cast invisble companion and rolls super, super high. So high that if he finished the spell he’ll get a permanent invisible stalker as a buddy. That’s DCC magic for you! So he stands there chanting while we try to fend off the worm and extract ourselves and Ned.
We manage to extract him and now we have an addition to the party, Luigiroth, who is stronger than any 2 of us combined. 11 HD, AC23, STR 22, invisible, flying… Holy crap!
We head back with the sword, figuring it will somehow stop the time loop, but we’re kinda hazy on how. On the way we befriend a crazy jailer who controls rat swarms.
The time loop has reset since we left so we fight the formorian torturer again and try to save the Crow King’s secret lover again, to no avail. Then it’s back into the eternal battle that fills the Kingspire!
The last day of the fest. Fatigue has set in. You’ve seen most of the films so you start picking random stuff out of the schedule.
Angel’s Egg – A restored 1984 anime by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) and illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano (Vampire Hunter D). Cryptic, weird, haunting. A little girl (?) tends a large egg in an abandoned world and meets a mysterious soldier (?). Very little dialogue, mostly the sounds of wind and rain and water and footsteps. Cool and surreal. It’s on HBO MAX now but I figured I should see it on the big screen, and that was the right call. Slow and moody alert, but I like that. 4/5 stars.
Lunatic: The Luna Vachon Story – A documentary about female wrestler Luna Vachon and her struggle to get both herself and women’s wrestling taken seriously, with bipolar disorder, lots of drugs, a culture of abuse, and sex trafficking getting in the way (not to mention Vince McMahon). Lots of segments from her adoptive father Paul “The Butcher” Vachon, several wrestlers she had been friends with, and her son, who is all blonde, square-jawed, and smiling as he relates heartwarming tales of not seeing his mom for years, getting involved in gangs, being beaten, not seeing her for a year at a time, and doing lines of coke with her. (He went on to first prison and then a couple seasons of Hell’s Kitchen). A pretty depressing expose (Rowdy Roddy Piper likes to rape 13-year-olds apparently) alongside a tale of someone who spent every bit of her energy trying to achieve her dream and got 98% of the way there despite it all. 3.5/5 stars.
Camp (or, CAMP) – A young woman is upset because she ran over a kid when she was 16 and her best friend OD’ed recently. So she goes to become a camp counselor and makes friends with the other counselors who like to party, take drugs, and engage in light witchcraft. It is… puzzling and unsatisfying and gets real surreal toward the end. But maybe their witchcraft works because I want to hate it, but there were enough flashes of good moviemaking to keep me engaged… It seems like any random cult dreck movie but was slightly better, though for no reason I am able to identify. It was not comedy, or horror, or drama really, just… dreamy? 2/5 stars.
I talked with others after the showing to try to make sense of it. “I’m not sure who that’s for or what it’s trying to say or why” was a common sentiment. But, opinions vary, it won one of the fest awards. I’m trying not to be judgemental about that, though this seems more like a film you’re “supposed” to like (ha ha! down with Christians and up with lesbianism!) than you actually *do* like.
Then the final slot of the fest! They saved a new horror movie for it to go out with a bang.
Whistle– Hot goth lesbian moves to a new high school and she and her friends, a jock, a princess, a The Crow cosplayer, and a hot preppie lesbian, run afoul of an Aztec Death Whistle that kills all who hear it! About what you’d expect, the cool twist is that you die in the way you eventually would if you lived till whenever you were gonna kick the bucket, from “old age” to “fell into a wood chipper.” Oddly none are peaceful, even if it’s old age you get chased around by an old ghoulish monster version of yourself first. The kills are not as epic as you’d hope for though, from a Final Destination kind of thing. 3/5 stars, maybe generous but heck I’m in a generous mood!
And now, the closing night party! I don’t always go to these but this one sounded boss. It was out at Robert Rodriguez’ Troublemaker Studios in a cool outside city set!
Besides music and drinking there was a big ol fantasy LARP type of scavenger hunt where you had to protect a minotaur by defeating a minotaur hunter, which involved a lot of fetch quests from random NPCs – find runes, deliver a message, find an herb, draw some sketches, you know, adult Dora the Explorer episodes.
In the end it’s rolling dice at a table getting benefits from each thing you gathered. I hooked up with a band of merry folks and we murderized the bad guy!
And that was Fantastic Fest 2025, the 20th anniversary edition! I’m sure to go back next year, I just need to make sure I get a Superfan badge so I don’t have to queue for tickets. I hope some of these movie reviews help and encourage you to check out some unusual films you might otherwise not notice!
My three best of the fest were Sirat, A Woman Called Mother, and Ikatan Darah – a drama, a horror movie, and an action movie, all foreign. Keep an eye out for them.
A week in but we’re still not done! It starts hurting a bit at this point. But, you know, a good hurt.
Let’s dispense with the first two quickly, as they were both forgettable.
V/H/S Halloween – A collection of “found footage” ultra low budget shorts. They can all be summed up as “something to do with a shakycam and all your haunted house props in the off season.” Vaguely amusing, mostly snoozing. 2/5 stars.
Deathstalker– A remake of the 1984 fantasy film. Daniel Bernhardt is our sword-swinging antihero cursed by an amulet he looted off a dying prince. He will have to defeat way too many glistening latex monsters and stop-motion critters to defeat a prophecy or something. What will carry the day? The poorly aimed magic missiles of the lizard-midget Doodad? The cute scrappy but utterly ineffective thief girl? A magical four-bladed sword made by a bored kid in shop class? Lead guitar by Slash on the song “Deathstalker?” Fight choreography straight out of the worst Hercules: The Legend Continues episodes? We’ll see. A fun throwback to bad 1980s fantasy movies, but not, you know… Good. The pacing was leaden. 2/5 stars.
There was a “20 years of the Masters of Horror” panel with Don Coscarelli, Joe Dante, and Ernest Dickerson; I could only catch a couple minutes of it though before running to one of the best movies of the fest.
A Woman Called Mother (Dia Bukan Ibu) – Genuinely terrifying. I watch a lot of horror and can’t remember the last time I got actually scared by a movie but woo doggie this one did it.
An Indonesian movie (the writer/director has been at Fantastic Fest before, in 2021 with martial arts actioner Preman), it’s about a single mom and her two teenage kids, a boy and a girl (the eldest and primary lead) moving out into the sticks where their uncle lives to start a hair salon a couple years after the father left. It has deep and complex character interaction very realistic to a partially-broken family. Does the mom regret being a mother? How does she reclaim her womanhood while also a single mom to two kids? How does the bond between the siblings weather their new life circumstances? How do you balance living a family member with the consequences of their mental health issues? Hey why does mom slaughter chickens every day? Are the kids just being really suggestible because they spend their spare time filming “ghosts are here” content for social media, or did they really see something weird in the mirror? The girl’s subjective observation vs reality can be hazy… Oh but don’t worry it ramps up hard as the movie barrels toward its climax! It almost lags a couple times- there’s twice you think “oh the movie might be over” but that’s just it starting another level up of crazy.
Expertly done, every bit as good as a Hereditary or other modern horror touchstone. This isn’t “good for an Indonesian movie” it’s top tier. It’s the director’s first horror movie and he’s got the touch for sure. 5/5 stars.
Between this and Ikatan Darah the Indonesians are on fire this year! Afterwards I made sure to find the director and actor of the older sister, who had both come to Austin for the premiere, and told them how good it was.
Then there was another secret screening. I waited in the standby line but couldn’t get in, and by that time it was too late to see something else. It was the new Gore Verbinski movie “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” starting Sam Rockwell, apparently. I’d never heard of it but later I heard that folks tended to like it. My late showing of horror comedy Coyotes was like three hours away – I went and got some dinner and killed an hour, and then I just couldn’t take it and went home.
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