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#david c. sutherland iii
atomic-chronoscaph · 2 years
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Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - art by David C. Sutherland III (1978)
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sandmandaddy69 · 1 year
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David C. Sutherland III
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reyturnofbensolo · 1 year
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😎
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dndhistory · 6 months
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110. David C. Sutherland III and Gary Gygax - Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits (1980)
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If I complained that the last module (Slave Pits of the Undercity) was too light on story and lore and just a bunch of monsters and rooms to fight in, the same cannot be said about Queen of the Demonweb Pits. This is a fantastic module in more ways than one.
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A culmination to the adventures started in G1, this is the seventh module in the series and such a long run demanded an epic conclusion, this certainly is that. It's a strange and unique module as your party goes into Lolth's domain to take the fight to the Spider Goddess. On the way to her you have to go through one of the strangest maps in all of D&D, the art-like Demonweb, an interlacing web of corridors full of overpasses and underpasses as well as doors to other dimensions, teleporting and tough monsters and this is all before you get to Lolth's ship, a spider-shaped steam engine that is also the goddess' keep. 
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One of the coolest modules in the first decade of D&D, full of surreality and danger as well as deep lore and endless possibilities (you have a set of seven doors each leading to a different universe where characters can have independent adventures as well as optional instructions to add even more universes) this is a fitting end to the long GDQ series of modules. 
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shaneplays · 11 months
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There goes Yeenoghu flailing around again… on Thac0 Thursday!! Credit: David C. Sutherland III
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redacted-metallum · 1 year
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Image description: two scans from the 1980 edition of the TSR Advanced Dungeons and Dragons sourcebook Deities and Demigods.  The first is of the text accompanying the entry for Hastur, a full transcript of which is under a readmore link.  The second is a close-up of the illustration and depicts a lizard like creature covered in tentacles behind a castle.  It is considerably larger than the castle and there is a bolt of lightning in the background.  The upper right corner has a stylized signature of the letters E and O, indicating that Erol Otus is the illustrator of this particular image.
End image description.
My dad owns a copy of the Deities and Demigods book from before the copyright strike, and I haven’t seen any scans of Hastur from it around tumblr so.  Here it is!  The whole thing is very influenced by August Derleth’s interpretation of the Cthulhu Mythos, and I have Opinions about that, but this is specifically where the “don’t say Hastur’s name more than four times or he’ll come Get You” thing comes from, which I think is a very neat bit of history and trivia!
One other thing I find interesting is that there is no mention of The King in Yellow (the play) in this section.  There is also no mention of the Yellow Sign, Cassilda, or Camilla, though Lake Hali and Carcosa are mentioned as part of an “alien planet”.
The book is credited to James M. Ward and Robert J. Kuntz, and edited by Lawrence Schick.
The illustrations are credited to the following: Jeff Dee, Erol Otus, Eymoth, Darlene Pekul, Paul Jaquays, Jim Roslof, David S. LaForce, David C. Sutherland III, Jeff Lanners, and D. A. Trampier.
Text transcript is as follows:
HASTUR THE UNSPEAKABLE (He Who Must Not Be Named) “Master of the Air” Greater God
ARMOR CLASS: -2 MOVE: 36″/36″ HIT POINTS: 400 NO. OF ATTACKS: 2 DAMAGE/ATTACK: 20-200/20-200 SPECIAL ATTACKS: See below SPECIAL DEFENSES: See below MAGIC RESISTANCE: 50% SIZE: L (600′ TALL) ALIGNMENT: Chaotic evil WORSHIPER’S ALIGN: Chaotic evil SYMBOL: Image of the god PLANE: Prime Material Plane (distant planet) CLERIC/DRUID: Nil FIGHTER: As 16+ HD monster MAGIC-USER/ILLUSIONIST: 23rd level in each THIEF/ASSASSIN: Nil MONK/BARD: Nil PSIONIC ABILITY: I S: 25 (+7. +14)  I: 22  W: 23  D: 21  C: 23  CH: -4
This god has a scaled, elongated body, a lizard’s head and maw, and taloned lizard claws.  It also has 200 tentacles projecting from its body that give it the ability to sense all things around it.  It is able to strike twice per round and also attack magically.
At will, it can teleport anywhere in the Prime Material Plane.  Hastur regenerates 5 hit points per melee round, and can summon 2-20 Byakhee to aid it in battle.  It cannot be magically controlled.  Creatures that are able to fly naturally will never attack Hastur, even if controlled.  Any being trying to attack the god must make a saving throw against fear.
Hastur is half-brother to Cthulhu, and like him Hastur has been imprisoned by the star-shaped Elder Sign.  He lies in a crypt at the bottom of Lake Hali near the alien city of Carcosa.  Hastur exists partly on the Prime Material Plane (and this part is imprisoned in the crypt) and partly on the Elemental Plane of Air (thus he is immune to cold and the vacuum of space).  Hastur is never more than partially on the Prime Material Plane and is therefore not completely solid.  This accounts for much of his great size.
Any time the name “Hastur” is spoken, there is a 25% chance that Hastur will here and send 1-4 Byakhee to slay the speaker.  If the Byakhee are defeated, there is a 25% chance that Hastur himself will appear to destroy the blasphemer.
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open-hearth-rpg · 8 months
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#RPGCovers Week Nine Metamorphosis Alpha (1976) David C Sutherland, III
This is one of those games from my childhood that I have an unreasonable fondness for. It came out in 1976, around the time I first started playing D&D thanks to my sister. We got a local games stone a couple of years later in 1978, carrying all kinds of earlier role-playing releases and wargames. 
But I don’t think I saw this for another couple of years: when my sister brought it home. You have to remember print runs and distribution were wildly spotty in those days. I think she’d bought or borrowed it off of someone else. By that time I was already playing Gamma World 1e, so this felt like a throwback, a weird dead end in sci-fi gaming. 
And that cover– so amateur and wildly 1970s. Even as a kid I knew this was not great art and not great layout. But it had so much going on across it and wild colors. The way the red text of the TSR push text is washed out by the background or the white on black text of the blurb on the screen kind of gets squashed and tilted. 
It’s trying hard…and as a way to grab the imagination of the potential players, it does invite you to wonder: if not about the game’s story, then what was going through the artist’s mind when they  put this together.
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tomeseekers · 3 months
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by David C Sutherland III
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manyworldspress · 2 years
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Game night! David C. Sutherland III, cover illustration for the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (TSR, 1977). Acrylic on board, 24 5/8 x 22 inches. Showcased in the exhibition Enchanted: A History of Fantasy Illustration, Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Mass., summer–fall 2021.
__________________________________________________ Our shop: https://bookshop.org/shop/manyworldspress
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vintagerpg · 4 years
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This, my friends, is the Hong Kong kaiju dinosaur critter that would one day grow up to become the classic Dungeons & Dragons monster, the Owlbear.
These guys, along with what would become the rust monster and the bulette (as well as a bunch of other weirdos that never turned up in D&D), used to fill out packages of plastic toy dinosaurs. For some reason. The sort you would occasionally find at super markets or five and dimes back in the 70s and 80s (and, honestly, I’ve seen rust monsters in similar cheap-o toy packs as recently as a couple years ago in my local Foodtown). Gary Gygax used them as miniatures in his games, and thus they transcended into legend.
I wish I could talk to the person who sculpted this thing and get a sense of what they were thinking. Its so…doofy. But magical. I’ve read that these weirdos were intended to be knock-off Ultraman kaijus and that sort of makes sense – the Owlbear does look a bit like the Kappa from Japanese folklore. Kind of. But whoever made the decision to include them in the States with plastic dinosaurs was some kind of mad genius. I love it.
For whatever reason, of the three, the Owlbear is the hardest to come by. I’ve been looking for one for decades, but boy, was it worth the wait. Oh, and, a little bit of extra D&D history  – this particular Owlbear was one of several owned by no less an august personage than @DiTerlizzi, who offered to sell me one when he was cleaning out his shelves. If you told me 20 years ago that THIS was how I’d finally get my hands on an Owlbear, I’d have spit in your eye and called you a no good dirty liar.
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Iconic AD&D art - Top 5
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Jeff Dee, Paladin and Black Dragon, AD&D 1st edition Rogues Gallery
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Russ Nicholson, Githyank and adventurers, AD&D 1st edition Fiend Folio
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Erol Otus, Lolth, AD&D 1st edition Dungeon Module Q1
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David C Sutherland III, ‘A Paladin in Hell’, AD&D 1st edition Players Handbook
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David Trampier, ‘Emirikol the Chaotic’, AD&D 1st edition Dungeon Masters Guide
Explanation below the cut.
Obviously a list like this is highly subjective, and I should probably make it clear that by “iconic” I mean “iconic to me”, as these were a handful of the AD&D 1st edition illustrations that had a big impact on my experience with the game, and by extension, how I design characters and write adventures (for Dungeons & Dragons and beyond) to this day.
Some of my admittedly arbitrary criteria:
I made my picks from the books, modules and supplements that were on my shelves back in the day. Which isn’t a comprehensive list by any means. To me, the canon is the core three hardbacks (to this day, I think of Unearthed Arcana as new-fangled and the Survival Guides as niche products we didn’t use) plus Fiend Folio and Deities & Demigods; that run of modules that included the A, B, D, G, and S-series, plus a few others like C1 and Q1; and accessories including Rogues Gallery and the booklet of character sheets. That list is as arbitrary as it is inexhaustive.
I limited myself to black & white interior illustrations, meaning David Trampier’s superb cover for the Players Handbook was disqualified. I did it this way mostly because I felt it would be unfair to compare color paintings to ink drawings. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but that’s how I did it. That said, had I allowed Tramp’s PH I’m actually thinking it might be the only color piece in there… The original Dungeon Masters Guide and Monster Manual covers never resonated with me to the same degree. Of the modules I included, there are three covers I really like, and they’re all by Erol Otus: A4, ‘In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords’; C1, ‘Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan’; and S3, ‘Expedition to the Barrier Peaks’. But they’re not quite iconic, somehow, in the sense that they’re too specific to the adventures they illustrate. In contract, the Players Handbook cover doesn’t tell you about someone else’s adventure, it inspires yours.
In the interest of a varied selection, I decided no one artist could be chosen more than once. This was basically to make sure Trampier and Jeff Dee didn’t crowd out other worthy illustrators.
My choices, in alphabetical order by last name:
Jeff Dee, Paladin and Black Dragon, Rogues Gallery, page 22. Paladins were always cool, and this drawing made them double extra cool. A lot of my peers complained that Dee’s characters all looked like super-heroes, and that they belonged in the pages of his Villains & Vigilantes. And that’s arguably true. But as a life-long reader of comics and V&V gamemaster, I didn’t mind at all. And that style is on display here: skintight plate and chain mail, aerodynamic helmet, and floppy fold-over Musketeer boots. But the pose is perfect, the dragon is superb, and the emotion of the paladin’s triumph shines. Jeff Dee did other illustrations that vied for his spot here: the “sci-fi Mind Flayer” and the Intellect Devourer stalking the party (both from ‘Expedition to the Barrier Peaks’), Icar holding flaming grease (frontispiece from Dungeon Module A2), and assorted entries in Deities & Demigods too numerous to mention.
Russ Nicholson, Githyanki fighting adventurers, Fiend Folio, page 45. Compared to the Monster Manual, which included so many creatures recognizable from myth and folklore, the Fiend Folio was weird. But the monsters that were cool immediately rivaled the classics, and the ones Russ Nicholson drew became my favorites. The Gith races were awesome from the get-go, and this illustration, supplementing the individual entries for the Githyanki and Githzerai, went a long way to inspiring us to put them in our dungeons. (I was so enamored of the Gith that I worked them into the origin story of a player character in the Villains & Vigilantes campaign I ran.) The adventurers here look outmatched, maybe, but they haven’t given up. We wondered what spell the Magic User was casting.
Erol Otus, Lolth frontispiece, Dungeon Module Q1, ‘Queen of the Demonweb Pits’: I love Erol Otus, but compared to Trampier and David Sutherland, his drawings could get wonky. Intentionally, I’m sure, but often his costumes and anatomy and such are a little far-fetched even for Dungeon & Dragons. (He loved horned helmets and loincloths, often on the same character.) This drawing of Lolth is great, in that it sets the stage for the adventure (in a way that Jim Rosloff’s cover doesn’t, honestly) and depicts Lolth as vampy without being overtly “sexy” like all the topless goddesses in Deities & Demigods. The demons here are especially good, with solid anatomy and dramatic lighting. This drawing is “so Erol Otus” without being “too Erol Otus”.
David C Sutherland III, ‘A Paladin in Hell’, Players Handbook, page 23. Unlike Trampier, who rarely missed, DCS was uneven: some of his drawings are classics, and many of them were mediocre then and just as mediocre now. ‘A Paladin in Hell’ is a classic, for several reasons. Firstly, it’s just really well drawn. Absent is the scratchy hatching that mars some of Sutherland’s work. Second, the paladin is perfect in the sense that he is believable; then and now I appreciate that fact that his armor is historically accurate and looks like suits I’d seen in museums. And third, the collected devils are all drawn to scale, showing their size the way Monster Manual spot illustrations don’t. Finally, the glow of the paladin, and what is surely a +5 Holy Avenger, is dazzling.
David Trampier, ‘Emirikol the Chaotic’, Dungeon Masters Guide, page 193. It’s difficult to see this drawing and not want to run a campaign set in the bustling capitol city of the Flanaess’ mightiest empire in which a villain Magic User is on a crime spree. (It’s the same feeling you get when you read any of Fritz Leiber’s stories set in Lankhmar. In fact, you want to go get the map they made for the AD&D supplement, including those awesome city geomorphs.) If Emirikol is the errant NPC, maybe the PCs are the adventurers stumbling out of the tavern into the exquisitely rendered (that hatching!) street to protect the innocent townsfolk being Magic Missiled. So who is Emirikol? He looks enough like Trampier that he could be one of many self-portraits sneaked into his AD&D artwork. (I’ve always wondered if he was Tramp’s PC in Gary Gygax’s Greyhawk campaign, though I’ve never gotten any indication that they actually gamed together.) This really cements Trampier’s stature; the Dee and Sutherland illustrations on this list evoke a single character or moment, while ‘Emirikol the Chaotic’ evokes an entire campaign. You don’t get more iconic than that.
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atomic-chronoscaph · 2 years
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Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - art by David C. Sutherland III (1978)
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aion-rsa · 3 years
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Best Serial Killer Movies of the ’90s Ranked
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Someone must have left the freezer door in the morgue open, because grisly reminders of the past are thawing before our eyes. You can see it this weekend with the release of John Lee Hancock’s The Little Things, a throwback to the days when movie stars hung out at crime scenes instead of in spandex, and it’ll be more apparent next month with the launch of Clarice, a television spinoff of 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs. All the evidence points to only one conclusion: the serial killer thrillers of the ‘90s are back!
Not that we’re complaining. For a macabre minute or two, every Hollywood name appeared eager to play either the detective or the killer—the hunter or the obsessed, which often proved interchangeable for both characters. Granted that means there can be something formulaic about many of these movies. Yet they can also be bleak, hard-edged, and ambiguous. From our modern gaze, where the dominant studio conventions prefer reassuring morality tales and sunny lighting, these movies’ preference for shadows and discomfort in the mainstream is kind of startling.
So grab your magnifying glass and fortify your stomach, because we’re about to revisit some of the best (and worst) of ‘90s serial killer thrillers. (Also this list is strictly for the decade when the genre was at its height and it excludes slasher movies like Scream, which may feature serial killers but were not exactly adult-oriented thrillers.)
12. Eye of the Beholder (1999)
Eye of the Beholder is a tonal oddity that only passingly flirts with the conventions of ‘90s serial killer thrillers, all while it tries to pay homage to (read: rip-off) Alfred Hitchcock. But any credit it deserves for deviation—including making Ashley Judd’s central femme fatale the killer—it loses in execution. As a muddied, impenetrable tale about an intelligence officer (Ewan McGregor) who spies on and falls in love with a serial killer, Eye of the Beholder is a scattershot of bad ideas that run the gamut from ludicrous to misogynistic.
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but this movie will close the lids over your pupils inside of 30 minutes.
11. Nightwatch (1997)
It feels a little mean to rag on Ewan McGregor back-to-back, but maybe serial killer movies just aren’t his genre? That could be at least one takeaway from an ill-advised double feature of Eye of the Beholder and Nightwatch, the latter of which is a remake of a 1994 Danish film that I’ve not seen… and probably won’t since both the original film and American remake are directed by the same man.
McGregor plays medical student Martin here, a kid who gets an after school job by becoming the night watch security at the local morgue. But as a series of grisly prostitute murders pile up, Martin realizes he needs to figure out who the killer is—that or continue to be framed by the necrophiliac fiend who keeps coming by the morgue for one last liaison. It’s exactly as skeevy as it sounds. Do yourself a favor and go your whole life without hearing Nick Nolte sing “This Old Man” while climbing onto a corpse.
10. Natural Born Killers (1994)
The movie that Quentin Tarantino disowned, Natural Born Killers is a seedy mess based on a Tarantino script that was heavily rewritten by Oliver Stone, David Veloz, and Richard Rutowski. The concept itself is a seemingly inevitable escalation of the “bad romance outlaws” archetype that’s been floating around Hollywood since at least 1950’s Gun Crazy, and which was then made iconic by Bonnie & Clyde (1967).
But whereas those films relied on bank robbers living fast, Natural Born Killers descends into a seeming final form with Mickey and Mallory (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) as giddy serial killers who are eventually out for maximum carnage. Technically the pair are supposed to be presented as victims of traumatic child abuse—and who are then wrongfully glorified by the media. But Stone’s sloppy and tanked vision lacks the discipline to achieve anything beyond its maliciousness. Early sequences imagining Mallory’s abusive childhood like it’s a television sitcom, and later psychedelic visions of Robert Downey Jr.’s opportunistic news reporter as the Devil, do little to divorce the film from its shallow self-satisfaction in close-ups of heads being shot.
The movie came under controversy in the years after its release for inspiring alleged copycat killers as well as school shooters. It feels irresponsible to blame media for actual violence, but it’s still quite an indictment that Stone’s attempt to criticize media glorification became a favorite for many a disturbed individual with a gun.
9. Kiss the Girls (1997)
When studying competent, middle of the road Hollywood thrillers, Kiss the Girls is a solid place to start. As a decently made bit of studio convention, the movie is anchored by strong elements like Morgan Freeman as James Paterson’s literary hero, Alex Cross, and Ashley Judd as Kate, the victim who survives a masked killer’s attempt to abduct her into his harem.
Moments like Kate’s escape sequence through the North Carolina wilderness are effectively filled with adrenaline, and Judd particularly gives the salacious piece conviction. However, it is salacious to a fault. Even if the movie toned down the source novel’s even more lurid misogyny, the film studies Kate and the other victims with a lascivious male gaze, blurring sex with violence, real world horror with leering entertainment. Right down to its title, the film can be rightly criticized as Hollywood glamourizing another story about violence against women. Whether that damns the whole movie depends on the viewer, but it certainly keeps it low on our list.
8. The Bone Collector (1999)
Marketed with a hell of a tagline about there being thousands of taxi cabs in New York City that’ll get you home—and one that won’t—The Bone Collector is almost comically slavish to the clichés of ‘90s moviemaking. The wrinkle here is that after a faux cab driver begins abducting his victims off the street, the crime psychologist who must stop him is entirely stuck by his bedside. Due to a tragic accident, Denzel Washington’s Lincoln Rhyme is paralyzed from the neck down. Yet he is still able to catch serial killers by communicating in the earpiece of police officer Amelia Donaghy (an entirely unconvincing Angelina Jolie).
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The Last Book on the Left Takes on the Grim History of Serial Killers
By Alec Bojalad
Together the pair stay one step behind the mystery killer’s tracks as he executes a series of increasingly gruesome and ridiculous murders. It’s preposterous, and in some ways a forerunner for Saw with the satisfaction it takes in absurd death traps, but Washington is effortlessly compelling, even when he never leaves his apartment. As a bit of absurd Hollywood fluff, right down to the ultimately lackluster unmasking of the killer, it can be entertaining, even if you’ll deny it afterward.
7. Copycat (1995)
More potent than I remembered, Copycat is a genuinely well-crafted Hollywood thriller that may not reinvent the wheel but takes it out for a damn good spin. In the driver’s seat is Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Helen Hudson, a criminal psychologist who is an expert on serial killers until one follows her into the bathroom after a guest lecture. He nearly hangs her from the ceiling. Following that white-knuckled opening, the film jumps years ahead and Helen has become agoraphobic and afraid to leave her home.
Yet when a local series of murders reveal the pattern of a predator imitating the methods of his favorite “celebrities”—one crime scene is like the Boston Strangler and another emulates the horrors of Jeffrey Dahmer—Helen is pulled out of retirement by a no-nonsense detective (Holly Hunter). The winning chemistry between Weaver and Hunter—who are refreshingly free from the studio-mandated romantic subplots in some of the other movies on this list—and the blunt force power of their performances aid this sincerely disquieting flick. A needlessly convoluted third act aside, the movie still works as a warning about the danger of fanboys a generation early.
6. Fallen (1998)
Denzel Washington appears again thanks to this clever supernatural spin on the serial killer genre. At the beginning of Fallen, Washington’s John Hobbes appears on top of the world. The serial killer he chased for years (Elias Koteas) is about to breathe deeply in the gas chamber. Yet after the lever is pulled, and with Koteas singing the Rolling Stones’ “Time is On My Side” until his last breath, a funny thing happens: the murders continue.
In fact, more than just the killings, strangers in the street sing “Time is On My Side” in Hobbes’ ear, and he soon realizes that he faces a devil of a killer whose been operating since the beginning—quite literally since the villain is a demon who was once an angel that fell with Lucifer. It’s a bizarre premise given strutting confidence thanks to Washington’s performance, as well as good supporting work by John Goodman and Donald Sutherland. Twenty years later and its ending still sticks with me.
5. The Exorcist III (1990)
If you haven’t seen The Exorcist III, we know what you’re thinking: “Really?!” Yes. In fact, this isn’t even an exorcist movie; it should’ve been titled Legion like the 1983 novel it’s based on. Alas writer-director William Peter Blatty was forced to use the title and do reshoots that added an exorcism in the climax. Still, this supernatural thriller which involves a serial killer back from the dead is far better than it has any right to be.
Following the character of Lt. Kinderman from the 1973 masterpiece, the middle-aged gumshoe is now played by George C. Scott instead of the late Lee J. Cobb, and he possesses Scott’s usual love for contrasts between the restrained whisper and a bombastic howl. He also makes a sympathetic, secular detective forced to face the horrors of Hell when a series of murders committed against Catholic priests appear to be the work of the Gemini Killer (Brad Dourif), a serial killer whom Kinderman sent to the chair more than 10 years ago.
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The Exorcist III is a Classic and Better Than You Remember
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The Exorcist Is Still the Scariest Movie Ever Made
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Somehow the fiend—plus Kinderman’s long dead pal Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller)—appear to now be living in the same body of a John Doe kept in a mental asylum. With an unrelenting atmosphere of dread, palpable tension, and more of Blatty’s intellectual struggle with concepts of faith and evil, the film is more high-minded than its hacky title suggests. It also features one of the best jump scares in movie history.
4. Summer of Sam (1999)
The only movie on this list directly based on an actual serial killer’s crimes, Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam is a serious-minded joint. However, it’s only partially about the murders perpetrated by David Berkowitz, aka the “.44 Caliber Killer,” aka the Son of Sam. Rather the film focuses on the effects a serial killer has on the culture of New York City during the sweltering summer of 1977, and how it affects young lives trying to make it in the big city.
Influenced by Lee and his co-writers Michael Imperioli and Victor Colicchio’s memories of growing up in 1970s New York, the pic is a love letter to a grim moment in history when the city was about to explode with murders, blackouts, crime, and disco. All of this is digested from the vantages of Vinny (John Leguizamo), a philandering hairdresser guilt-ridden for cheating on his wife (Mira Sorvino), and his childhood pal Ritchie (Adrien Brody), who’s left the old neighborhood behind to join the fledgling punk rock scene.
With a greater interest in how a serial killer affects the culture and institutions of a city on edge than being a traditional crime drama, Summer of Sam is a bit of a forerunner to David Fincher’s far more polished Zodiac from a few years later. With heavy-handed dialogue and a plot too big for Lee to fully get his arms around, even at 142 minutes, Summer of Sam can be uneven and messy. But it has the sweaty incorrigibility of a long night out, and of revelries half remembered like from a fever dream.
3. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
The rare serial killer movie told entirely from the perspective of the killer, Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley is disarmingly creepy. Despite its glossy awards bait sheen, there is a cold-blooded streak that runs deep to the heart of the piece, likely due to Patricia Highsmith’s source 1955 novel. Starring Matt Damon fresh off his Good Will Hunting golden boy sheen, the film uses its casting to disorient and ultimately disturb.
Like Highsmith’s book, the film is not structured like a traditional thriller. It instead favors a detached ambivalence about its seemingly nebbish hero as he agrees to become an errand boy for the rich by traveling to 1950s Italy in order to retrieve a silver spoon cad (Jude Law) for his father. But the more time Tom Ripley (Damon) spends with Law’s Dickie Greenleaf, the more he grows envious of Dickie’s lifestyle, his wealth and confidence, and maybe even his affection for socialite Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow). There is a subtle—too subtle due to ‘90s Hollywood conventions—homoerotic undercurrent throughout the film as Ripley slowly works up the courage to take his first life. It won’t be his last.
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Knives Out: When Murder Makes You a Better Person
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Highsmith wound up publishing four subsequent sequels to The Talented Mr. Ripley, but unfortunately no more were made with Damon. Perhaps because this was too unsettling for an ongoing franchise.
2. Seven (1995)
While watching David Fincher’s masterful Seven, the thing that immediately stands out is the oppressive nihilism that permeates throughout. There were decades of neo noir before this detective yarn about the hunt for a serial killer, but none demonstrated such an overbearing sense of despair before the opening credits were even concluded. And perhaps what makes it unshakable is how welcoming the film is toward bleakness; it succumbs long before the gut-punch finale.
Telling the story of an old cop days from retirement (Morgan Freeman) and a hotheaded rookie detective (Brad Pitt), Andrew Kevin Walker’s script has an economy of pace that still impresses despite its cynicism. Very quickly one murder becomes two, then three, and soon four. Yet none of the atrocities are reveled in by Fincher’s blocking; they’re off-screen mutilations which leave psychic damage on his two leads and, eventually, us. The deaths also quickly establish a pattern that their serial killer is targeting seven souls, each intended to embody one of the seven deadly sins.
The movie is a classic now for its climax where the killer “John Doe” (a reptilian Kevin Spacey) turns himself in and leads the cops into the darkest pit, but it’s the entire package that makes this one linger more than 25 years later. At the end of the film, Somerset quotes Hemingway by saying, “‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.” I’m not convinced his film does.
1. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
As the film that kick-started the idea that serial killers could create their own film genre, The Silence of the Lambs still remains the best of its kind. Blessedly unaware that it was creating conventions for countless copycats, the film tells its psychological drama with simplicity and clarity. Whereas other films on this list bask in their bleakness, there is a dogged optimism and even perverse warmth to this Jonathan Demme adaptation of Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs novel. And that’s of course largely attributable to the casting of Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster.
As Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Hopkins is of course monumental. It’s a performance that turned a quinquagenarian into an overnight movie star, and became Hopkins’ calling card as he returned to the not-so-good doctor’s well one too many times. Still, he’s undeniably enthralling as Hannibal, a cannibal psychologist with superhuman powers of observation and mental menace. Even so, Foster is often overlooked by critics for her own contributions as the FBI trainee who’s proverbially fed to the incarcerated Lecter—a pretty face to get the serial killer to consult pro bono on the crimes of another mass murderer. It’s just one more example of casual sexism faced by Clarice that gives Foster as much to play as Hopkins.
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Culture
David Fincher’s Zodiac: The Movie That Never Ended
By Don Kaye
Movies
The Little Things Ending Explained
By David Crow
Surrounded by the slights and prejudices of men—be they in law enforcement or straight jackets—Clarice is constantly underestimated. She finds an intellectual rapport with Hannibal, but she pulls herself out of the darkest night, and the screaming of the lambs, without assistance. Her perseverance matched by Hannibal’s darkly seductive qualities is the juxtaposition that makes Silence of the Lambs one of the finest films of its decade.
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reyturnofbensolo · 1 year
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I need these!
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dndhistory · 5 months
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243. Jeff Easley - Dungeon Masters Guide Cover (1983)
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Another of the three central volumes in AD&D, this is part of the brand revamp for the game by TSR, I've already covered the Players Handbook and there's still the Monster Manual remaining.
As with all of these three volumes, the inside is exactly the same as the previous David C. Sutherland III cover volume, so there's no need to cover that. Sutherland's cover, charming as it was, would really not fit the more painterly brand identity that came with the hiring of artists such as Easley, Clyde Caldwell or Larry Elmore, which really led to a change in the look and feel of AD&D. You can go back to item #71 on this page, from 1979 to read my impressions of the original DMG and see some interior shots as well as look at the Sutherland cover. 
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shaneplays · 9 months
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Who doesn't love a blood-sucking stirge… on Thac0 Thursday!! Credit: David C. Sutherland III from the AD&D Monster Manual (1979)
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