279: Psychological Horror in Call of Cthulhu (long cut)
Added 2024-01-30 12:57:31 +0000 UTCThis is the longer unedited cut for backers only.
Once again, we’re examining a subgenre of horror, trying to pick out the main tropes and work out how they might influence our games of Call of Cthulhu. In previous episodes, we’ve turned our attention to ghost stories, body horror, survival horror, cosmic horror and Gothic horror. Now it’s the turn of psychological horror to lie on the analyst’s couch and tell us its darkest secrets.
Links
Things we mention in this episode include:
- The Appeal of Horror
- Survival horror
- Dead of Night
- Martin (1977)
- Let the Right One In (2008)
- The Shining (1980)
- The Shining by Stephen King
- Lake of the Dead by Andre Bjerke
- Lake of the Dead (1958)
- Vertigo (1958)
- The Usual Suspects (1995)
- The Sixth Sense (1999)
- Joker (2019)
- I’m Thinking About Ending Things by Iain Reid
- I’m Thinking About Ending Things (2020)
- Before I Go to Sleep (2014)
- Split (2016)
- Dissociative Identity Disorder
- Psycho by Robert Bloch
- Psycho (1960)
- Fight Club (1999)
- Repulsion (1965)
- Deep Red (1975)
- VALIS by Philip K Dick
- “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe
- The Ritual (2017)
- “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James
- High Tension (2003)
- Headhunter by Michael Slade
- Antichrist (2009)
- Angel Heart (1987)
- The Dead Zone (1983)
- The Dead Zone by Stephen King
- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
- The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
- A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
- The Glamour by Christopher Priest
- The Affirmation by Christopher Priest
- Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
News
Blasphemous Tomes Latest Updates:
Blasphemous Tome Fanzines Update for $1 backers (Jan 2024)
Blasphemous Tome Fanzines Update for $3+ backers (Jan 2024)
A Weekend With Good Friends
GM signups are now open for A Weekend With Good Friends and will remain so until the end of day on the 8th of February. There is always plenty of demand, so you should be guaranteed players if you submit any games.
A Weekend With Good Friends is the online gaming convention organised by our lovely listeners, taking place on the Good Friends Discord server between 1-3 March 2024.
Key dates are:
- Thursday 25th January – Thursday 8th February – GM signups
- Thursday 15th February – Thursday 22nd February – Player signups
- Monday 26th February – Lottery results announced
- Friday 1st March – Sunday 3rd March – A Weekend With Good Friends
We hope to see you there!
Scott on Unconventional GMs
Scott recently ran a game of Dead of Night for the Unconventional GMs YouTube channel. As well as channel regulars Guy Milner and Gaz Bowerbank, the players were Tasha from the Idearoll Channel, and Andrew Kenrick, author of Dead of Night. They played a cut-down version of Scott’s convention scenario “Grave Danger”, following the misadventures of a tribe of mild-mannered ghouls whose peaceful graveyard faces redevelopment into a retail park.
Gaz has also just released “Burning Desire”, a brand new scenario for Call of Cthulhu.
