Orrin Grey's Blog: Shovel Murders & Monologues, page 2

“Is that what I was afraid of?” – Psycho and the Changing Face of Horror

“Before Ed and Psycho,” Eric Powell and Harold Schechter write in their 2021 true crime graphic novel Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done, “every movie monster tended to be from somewhere else: Transylvania, Germany, England… or outer space. In his incarnation as Norman Bates, Ed Gein introduced something new and revolutionary to the big screen: the all-American monster. The terror next door.”

I was reminded of that panel because Tyler, my co-host at the Stray Cat Film Center, was talking to me about a horror film discussion he had just listened to in which the “agreement seems to be that Psycho marks a moment in filmic history where the genre went from the monster to the monstrous. The monster from without becomes the monster within.”

It’s an argument that comes up a lot, and one that is usually treated less like an argument than a trusim. “Psycho changed everything.” Except, of course, that it just isn’t the case.

Don’t get me wrong, Psycho was an important film, a genuine phenomenon at the time of its release, and a true masterpiece. But it’s absurd to claim that we didn’t have “monsters from within” movies before it came along, and equally preposterous to think that “monsters from without” movies tailed off after its release. Hell, Psycho owes its very existence to the runaway success of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique from 1955.

Nor is there no truth to the idea that Psycho was a key text (if not the first one) in bringing horror home to everyday America. What’s more accurate than any of these assertions, though, is that Psycho is a hinge point for a larger sea change that was taking place in horror film. I have argued elsewhere that this change had less to do with the nature of the monster, however, than with the nature of its victims.

Gone are the professionals, “men of courage,” and people who have some connection (familial or otherwise) with the monster or killer. In their place are hapless victims, who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is a dynamic that is explicitly explored in Peter Bogdanovich’s 1968 film Targets, probably the best text to study, if you want to understand the change that was taking place in the horror film during this period.

But that’s only the change in content. That shift (as is so often the case) was also accompanied by a parallel change in the context in which these movies were made. The 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of a “New Hollywood,” one in which auteur directors had greater creative control over their films, and independent productions flourished, turning out blockbusters on miniscule budgets.

Hitchcock’s classic is an early example of this changing dynamic in Hollywood. The studios had already rejected the idea of making Psycho, and initially refused even Hitchcock’s cost-cutting measures to do so. It was only after he volunteered to finance the film himself and shoot it using his Shamley Productions crew (assembled for the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents), while also foregoing his usual director’s salary in exchange for a higher stake in the film, that Paramount agreed to distribute the finished product.

The changing face of horror has as much to do with this changing power structure in Hollywood as it does with anything that was going on within the films themselves, or anything going on in the cultural zeitgeist around them.

So, did Psycho change everything? Sure. But it didn’t do it alone. All the arts, and horror maybe especially, are always in conversation with what came before, and Psycho was part of a change that was already underway, one that was happening both on screen and behind the scenes. There were plenty of monsters next door – and even in the mirror – before Psycho, and plenty of big, weird aliens and gloppy its afterward.

But horror was changing by the time Norman Bates picked up that knife, for better or worse, and it will continue to change for as long as people are telling scary stories.

“I’m an actress, not a human sacrifice!” – Ghost Chase (1987)

A decade before Independence Day and nearly as long before even Universal Soldier or Stargate, Roland Emmerich made a pair of odd family/comedy/horror hybrids. The first of these (and Emmerich’s second feature-length production, after his film school thesis project, The Noah’s Ark Principle, which showed at the 34th Berlin International Film Festival in 1981) was a movie called Joey, released in the States as Making Contact.

We’ll be showing Making Contact at the Stray Cat Film Center next month, representing the Class of 1985 in our ongoing Yearbook series. And I can’t wait. Because Making Contact might be the most bizarre movie we have shown yet.

Though made in Germany, Making Contact was filmed in English. In a July 1986 issue of Cinefantastique, Emmerich was quoted as saying, “I want to make entertaining movies for a broad audience. Germany needs a film industry again. Making ‘artsy’ movies may be nice for the ego, but it will not feed an industry. Enertaining the masses is the foundation, and that has been neglected here for a long time. People like Spielberg and Lucas are showing the way. Why shouldn’t we go in the same direction? We can do it too, and we can do it cheaper.”

That’s… a pretty succinct summary of Making Contact, which is basically like if you took all the movies Spielberg had released up to that point and put them in a blender along with a soupcon of Stephen King and my favorite evil ventriloquist dummy from all of cinema.

I’m not really here to talk about Making Contact, though, which is bizarre and wonderful and which we’ll be talking about plenty at Stray Cat in a few weeks.

In preparation for screening Making Contact, I finally got around to watching Emmerich’s next film, the zany 1987 comedy Ghost Chase, originally filmed and released in Germany (but also in English) as Hollywood Monster.

As weird as Making Contact is, Ghost Chase is almost impossible to summarize. We open with the youngest film crew in the world working on a slasher movie, where we are introduced to our three leads. These include two alumni from Night of the Creeps the year before, reuniting Jason Lively and Jill Whitlow, once again playing lead and love interest. Joining them is Fred, played by Tim McDaniel, who only has two other credits on Letterboxd, one of which is just listed as “Ice Cream Fight” in the movie Terminal Exposure.

The aspiring filmmakers are summoned to the reading of a will, where Lively’s character discovers that he has inherited from his grandfather a pawn shop ticket which, in turn, leads him to a suitcase containing, among other things, an old clock. Said clock also happens to be home to the spirit of his grandfather’s butler, who is, for no good reason, a weird little British Muppet named Louis.

After the ghostly presence causes Fred to have a prophetic dream, he builds an animatronic version of the Muppet butler, which the ghost occupies for the balance of the film. (It’s easy to see why the Letterboxd summary calls it an “alien.”) The ghost needs to get the kids to their inheritance, which his master had walled up with him in the basement of his old house. However, the house is now on the lot of a studio, which is owned by a scheming rich guy (naturally), played by veteran character actor and principal from The Breakfast Club Paul Gleason.

There are several other detours and cul-de-sacs, but that’s the gist. What follows it is mostly the kind of puerile comedy that you might expect – think the humor of Night of the Creeps but reduced by several notches.

It’s both more and less weird than Making Contact, and not quite as much fun, but it leaves one wondering… given how much Louis in this movie and the puppet Fletcher in Making Contact look like one another, where are all the pop-eyed, round-headed weirdo puppets in subsequent Roland Emmerich movies? Maybe he had gotten it out of his system after this…

Make Your Voices Heard

Nominations are now open for The Pitch‘s Best of KC 2025 and I’m throwing my hat (and, frankly, several other hats, for good measure) into the ring.

You can nominate me, Orrin Grey, for Best Local Author (under People & Places) and, while you’re at it, nominate the Horror Pod Class (which I co-host) for Best Local Podcast and the Stray Cat Film Center for Best Movie Theater (both under Arts & Entertainment). And hey, why not nominate Analog Sunday for Best Local Event? (You could also toss the Stray Cat Film Center a nod for Best Business That Could Only Exist in KC, if you felt so inclined.)

That’s everything that I’m directly involved in, but wait… there’s more! There are so many great folks and cool establishments in KC, many of whom have helped me to get where I am, and enrich my life on the regular. So, I figured I should suggest a few of them.

Naturally, vote for whoever you want, and I am something of a homebody, who has sampled only the smallest fragment of what the metro area has to offer, so don’t take my word for anything. That said, however, if you’re not inclined to vote for the Horror Pod Class, I’d recommend Nightmare Junkhead as a (probably stronger, let’s be honest) contender for Best Local Podcast.

Kansas City is fortunate enough to have a lot of great comic book, tabletop gaming, and toy stores, so you can take your pick from across a wide, wide swath in those categories. A few of my favorites, some of which are a little more off the beaten path, include A to Z Comics, Peculiar Games and Hobbies, 1313 Mockingbird Lane (in Lawrence), and Castaway Toys here in KC, to name just a few.

I’m not here to name comic book and toy shops all day, though. As an author, I should probably put in a word for some of our local bookstores, as well, and we have plenty of them. If you haven’t tried it before, I’d throw in a nod for Afterword Tavern & Shelves. Even if you aren’t a drinker, they offer a really pleasant atmosphere and they’ve done a lot to help build a community here in KC.

Finally, as a film buff, my nod for Best Filmmaker had to go to Austin Snell, whose They Call Her Death was definitely one of the best movies that I saw last year, and just an absolute triumph of local filmmaking. Plus, he hosts a 16mm film series at Liberty Hall in Lawrence that has shown the likes of Paper Moon and Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Whether or not you nominate me (or any of these establishments), though, go put in your nominations for the Best of KC. It helps people find cool places in and around Kansas City, and that’s a win for everybody!

And speaking of cool places, if you want a taste of my writing, you can read about my trip to Cawker City and Eyegore’s Odditorium in the latest issue of The Pitch or on their website right here.

“The World is Hell” – Felidae (1994)

“Animals are good human beings, and human beings are evil animals.”

Not too long ago, I was hired to write a brief and fairly surface-level explainer of German krimi films for a client. Who knew that I would shortly be putting that same knowledge to use while watching an animated feature about housecats complete with an English-language theme song performed by Boy George?

Released in 1994 and adapted from the 1989 novel of the same name, Felidae was, at the time, the most expensive German animated feature ever produced. And for that, it is a… wild choice.

To understand Felidae one has to, I think, understand the German krimi genre, at least a bit, for it is obviously that filmic tradition in which Felidae is operating, more so than any other. For those who aren’t familiar (and didn’t bother to check out that link above), German krimi films were made primarily between 1959 and 1972, and served as precursors of the later Italian giallo.

Usually adapted from stories by British mystery and thriller author Edgar Wallace, krimi films share a number of common motifs, but in general they, like the gialli that would come after, were stylish murder mysteries, often with extremely elaborate plots.

The murder mystery at the heart of Felidae could have been lifted straight from a krimi, and will also seem familiar enough to those who only know the later giallo pictures. (The action has even been shifted to London, as is almost always the case in krimis.) The difference here is that all the main characters (sleuth, antagonist, femme fatale, victims, red herrings) are animated housecats.

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This does not, however, mean that Felidae is any less grisly than a live-action film of its kind. In fact, quite the opposite. While the murders take place mostly offscreen, without the brutal stalking and slashing sequences popularized by the giallo, the aftermath is shown in gory detail. Cats have their entrails ripped out, their heads torn off, and more – including one particularly queasy death of a pregnant cat and her unborn litter.

Nor does it end there. The backstory which provides the frame and motive for the murders involves a laboratory in which illegal experiments were performed on cats stolen from the neighborhood, meaning that we see vivid sequences of torture and vivisection, and Francis, the feline sleuth trying to solve the murder, has a nightmare involving an endless hellscape of gruesome cat corpses made to sit up and dance by a mad puppeteer.

This movie would be essentially impossible to watch for anyone who is squeamish about violence against (even animated) animals, is what I’m saying.

The film also doesn’t shy away from depicting realistic cat sex, and the plot goes to the kinds of bizarre places one might expect in a krimi – there is a weird feline cult that practices voluntary electroshock, and a main aspect of the plot grapples with themes of eugenics echoing Germany’s Nazi history (albeit in ways that seem a bit confusing, given some of the original author’s later stances, as we’ll get into below).

It’s an animated cat movie that would very much be rated R, if it had been made in the States, and it remains a fascinating oddity, whether you like it or not, for how it translates one genre (largely unfamiliar to most modern American audiences) into an entirely new form (that of the animated talking animal movie).

I don’t know enough about it to tell you about the circumstances of its production, besides that the book upon which it was based was a bestseller which spawned a string of sequels. (Though the cozy mystery genre in the States is rife with cat-focused books, it’s hard to imagine one where the cats are perpetrators, victims, and sleuths, let alone one so brutal and bloody.)

Unfortunately for anyone who may want to pursue the books, the author, Akif Pirincci, has since been “canceled” – and rightly so. “I don’t give a flying fuck if people call me a Nazi,” he told German newspaper Die Zeit, “I don’t give a damn.”

This was in response to questions about his relationship with the German far-right neo-Nazi party Alternative for Germany, but Pirincci would soon make his position even clearer in a horrifically racist keynote speech at the first anniversary of the “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West” protest in 2015, where he said a bunch of stuff that I’m not going to repeat here, though you can read some of them on his English-language Wikipedia page.

These comments led most booksellers to stop selling his books.

Pirincci also co-wrote the screenplay for the cinematic adaptation of Felidae, but I don’t know whether he gets any money from the Deaf Crocodile release of the movie on Blu-ray. With so many middlemen involved, it seems unlikely that he sees much, but Felidae is also on Tubi, if you’d rather check it out that way.

If you do, just be warned that, as Francis says within the films opening minutes, it isn’t “a pleasant story.”

“I’m a normal person!” – I Saw What You Did (1965)

William Castle is my favorite director, even though he is probably nobody’s nominee for the best director, which – as I said about House on Haunted Hill, which might be his magnum opus, at least for me – frees him up to be so many other things.

Despite this, I have not seen all of Castle’s films, and there’s a chance that I never will. This is in part because his filmography can be neatly divided down the middle. There are the movies he did as a working director, doing contract work for studios and without much creative control over what projects he was attached to.

I’ve seen some of these, and certainly elements of his later pictures are often detectable in them (especially, for example, in the first of his four Whistler films), but there’s also no denying that Castle’s ouevre changes considerably after the success of Macabre in 1958.

Macabre was not only Castle’s first film as both producer and director, it was the first thing he had done that could really be considered a horror picture, and the first time that he was able to flex the gimmick muscles that would become synonymous with much of the rest of his cinematic output.

So, when I say that William Castle is my favorite director, I’m referring to the gimmicky horror flicks that were his specialty starting with the self-funded production of Macabre. Even then, Castle was a prolific filmmaker, and I still haven’t seen quite all of the movies he released after 1958. As of last night, I believe I still have The Busy Body (1967) and Project X (1968) waiting for me. Before last night, that list included I Saw What You Did from 1965.

While I Saw What You Did had been on my list for a while and I already owned a copy, what finally gave me the nudge to get around to watching it is the mostly unrelated fact that we’re showing Dark Intruder (also 1965) at the Stray Cat Film Center next week.

I say “mostly unrelated” because there actually is an unlikely thread connecting Dark Intruder with I Saw What You Did. Though originally filmed as a pilot for a TV show called Black Cloak that never went to series, Dark Intruder actually got a theatrical release – on the bottom half of a double bill with I Saw What You Did.

I love Dark Intruder – and I loved I Saw What You Did – but that would really make kind of a terrible double-bill. Dark Intruder is a probably more literary than it needs to be slice of occult detective nonsense in a fog-shrouded San Francisco of the 1890s, with a surprisingly grim ending. I Saw What You Did is teenybopper Hitchcock as only Castle could do it.

They’re two great tastes, but I’m not convinced that they would taste great together.

Even while I say that William Castle is my favorite director, I have to acknowledge that I don’t love all of even his post-Macabre movies, and his comedies are often where his work falls the flattest for me. Zotz has its problems, despite a screenplay by Ray Russell; 13 Frightened Girls is probably going to be no one’s nomination for one of Castle’s best; and his truly bizarre 1963 remake of The Old Dark House is more interesting as curiousity than anything.

Many reviews of I Saw What You Did, which praise the film’s crackerjack premise but pooh-pooh Castle’s directing chops, made me worry that it would fall into that category. I needn’t have.

Along with my fondness for Castle’s directing, I also have a particular attachment to what I call “babysitter in peril” stories. These are exemplified by the endless array of Fear Street-alikes that were published throughout the ’90s by authors like R. L. Stine, Christopher Pike, Diane Hoh, Richie Tankersley Cusick, and many, many others.

I Saw What You Did is premium “babysitter in peril” stuff. The plot follows two high school friends who are having a sleepover while one of them’s parents are out for the night, who entertain themselves by making crank calls. Unfortunately for them, one of those calls reaches the wrong person – a man (John Ireland) who has just murdered his wife.

Castle is often accused of trying to be a poor man’s Alfred Hitchcock, and there’s certainly not nothing to that. While both Castle and Hitchcock were inspired by the success of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique, Castle actual beat Hitch to the punch of riffing on it, as Macabre hit screens two years before Psycho.

Nonetheless, there’s no question which of the two is the better movie, or which one had the bigger impact on the culture at large, and Castle was never shy about cribbing. Homicidal (1961) is basically Castle’s remake of Psycho, and he’s still borrowing a few years later in I Saw What You Did. There’s a clever inversion of Psycho‘s shower scene here, not to mention some nods to Hitch’s earlier voyeurism thriller Rear Window.

While critics are right to praise the clever conceit of I Saw What You Did, and Castle ekes occasional atmosphere from his setup – the film’s climax takes place on a wonderfully fog-shrouded set – what ironically makes I Saw What You Did work, and what makes it inescapably a Castle film, are the moments when the suspense isn’t operating.

For much of its running time, I Saw What You Did is like a noir adaptation of a Baby-Sitters Club novel, capturing the feel not only of being a teenager, but the vibe of a simple teenage hangout movie. While the audience may shortly be aware of the murder that sets the plot in motion, the protagonists don’t learn about it until near the very end of the film, and the two threads take an awfully long time to connect.

In the meantime, the biggest stakes are that the two girls might get grounded as a result of their mischief spinning out of their control – and yet, those are also the biggest stakes in their whole world. As such, I Saw What You Did becomes a film about being on the cusp of adulthood, especially for young women – a world at once exciting and thrilling and, ultimately, more dangerous and terrifying than it should be.

Early on, when Kit, the girl who lives in an apartment in the city, first arrives at the country home of her friend Libby, she asks if Libby isn’t lonely, living so far from everything. Libby replies that she never used to be, when she was little. Their life in the country was all she knew. Now, though, “It seems like everything I want is someplace else.”

There may have been some part of Castle that wanted to be Alfred Hitchcock. In his memoir, he fantasizes about one day winning an Oscar (the closest he ever got was producing Rosemary’s Baby for Roman Polanski to direct), but even as he does so, he turns the whole event into a sideshow production.

Ultimately, whatever aspirations of fame and critical approval William Castle may have nursed, he obviously loved filmmaking, he loved promotion, and he loved “scaring the pants off audiences.” But perhaps more than anything else, Castle loved the audiences who came to see his movies.

“Shake hands with the customers, sure,” Castle said, in an interview with Lynda May Strawn. “Meet the ticket taker, meet the candy girl, meet the audience. Shake hands with them, talk to them, find out what they’re all about. One cannot make a picture and know what a public wants, sitting in an ivory tower in a projection room, like some people I know. I think you have to go into theatres and see what the audience wants in order to have contact with them.”

And for Castle’s movies, those audiences were usually kids. Ten, twelve, up to the high school age of the protagonists of I Saw What You Did. That’s who a movie like this is for, and whatever you may think of the finished product (I love it), that affection for the audience comes through every step of the way.

When It Rains

A couple of years ago, we bought a new (to us) house. We love this house, but it has been a trial, in part because it is actually a very old house (more than 100 years) and in part because the people we bought it from flipped it and made some… questionable decisions that they probably should have divulged to us before purchase but that is neither here nor there.

Suffice it to say that we bit off… if not more than we can chew, then definitely more than we expected to.

One thing we planned from the beginning, though, was to turn part of the yard into a rain garden. The house sits on a fairly large lot, and it also drains runoff from several neighboring properties. All of this drains to a low spot in the front yard that is basically a swamp for a very long time anytime it rains. Perfect for a rain garden!

Grace used to work in water quality, and rain gardens have always been a topic that they were passionate about. However, we never really lived anyplace with a yard before now.

Therefore, the rain garden was always on the table, but various factors have forced our hand into undertaking it sooner than we had expected – and with some unforeseen hurdles. So, for the last several weeks, we’ve been hauling compost and mulch (thankfully, we can get it from the city for free), planting an array of native plants, and a whole lot more that I don’t need to get into here.

It has been exhausting and stressful but also sometimes rewarding, and it might have been more pleasant had we not been trying to beat a projected storm front that was on its way.

We also had to have that whole side of the yard re-graded (tangential to the rain garden but directly related to the overall drainage situation which the garden is partially trying to address), which meant it was all bare dirt.

Then, over the last couple of days, that projected storm front arrive and the Kansas City area was hit with a string of powerful thunderstorms which dumped quite a lot of rain on us very, very quickly, turning that side of the yard into a muddy mess. (The storm also dumped a neighbor’s tree through their fence and onto our yard. Their fence is a casualty, but there seem to be no others as yet.)

So far, the whole drainage scheme seems to be working more-or-less as planned, though it was a hell of a stress test on our not-yet-established rain garden. We’ll see how it survives!

There’s not really any payoff to this, save to say that we’ve been very busy with offline things, and they’ll probably keep us very busy for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, though, eventually the rain garden will thrive, and I’ll be able to share pictures that look a little less like a giant mud puddle.

Born to Runner-Up

Glowing in the Dark didn’t win a Rondo Hatton Award.

Is this disappointing? Sure. But it isn’t surprising, and this truly is a case where it’s an honor just to be nominated. During the live chat where the award organizers announced the winners, they said that this was the best slate of books in the award’s 23-year history, and my little book was up against volumes covering everything from queer horror to vampires in silent cinema, Willis O’Brien to Ted Cassidy (the actor who played Lurch on The Addams Family), deep dives into both Bride of Frankenstein and Ghost of Frankenstein, books by the likes of Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Fred Olen Ray, and so many more.

Ultimately, Book of the Year (Nonfiction) went to Roberto Curti’s Midnight Movie Monograph from PS Publishing exploring the 1957 film I, Vampiri. There are much worse things to lose to. (If you want to read my altogether-too-brief thoughts on I, Vampiri, you can do so for free over at my Patreon.)

You can find the full list of winners here, which include a bunch of cool things I’m already familiar with, and a bunch of other cool things that I need to add to my list.

That’s some very impressive company to be in and while my little book didn’t take home a bust in the shape of Rondo Hatton, it’s still very much a culmination of a nearly lifelong dream to have been nominated at all – and you had better believe that “Rondo Award-nominee” is going to feature prominently in all my bios for the foreseeable future.

I still hope to win a Rondo someday – and I hope that, when I do, whatever book actually wins it gets one of those “Such-and-such Award Winner” stickers on the cover, and that it’s shaped like a bust of Rondo Hatton – but even if I never do, it was a genuine pleasure and honor to have been nominated. I met some nice folks among the other nominees and generally had a great time.

Good news for all of you reading along at home, this also means that I’m going to shut up about the Rondo Hatton Awards for at least a little while and focus on other things – like maybe Notes from Underground, my collection of Hollow Earth Cycle stories coming from Word Horde later this year!

Until then, thanks to everyone who voted in the Rondo Hatton Awards this year and congratulations to all the winners and all my fellow nominees! I hope to see you all there again someday soon!

“You have until midnight to find the House on Haunted Hill”

Okay, I lied.

Today is the final day to vote for Glowing in the Dark for Book of the Year (Nonfiction) in the Rondo Hatton Awards.

You can click on that link for more info, but all you have to do to vote is send an email to taraco@aol.com with your name and the words “I vote for Glowing in the Dark for Book of the Year (Nonfiction)” by midnight tonight!

Thanks to everyone who has already voted and, no matter what happens, win or lose, it really is an honor just to have been nominated (and you had better believe I will never let anyone forget about it). I hope it’s been a fun ride for everyone, and I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed until the winners are announced!

Bat Appreciation Day

Today is Bat Appreciation Day and, to mark the occasion, I thought it might be fun to share a player character option I created for use in the 5th edition of the world’s most popular roleplaying game.

I’ve always loved bats and I’ve always loved goblins, so smushing the two together just made sense. The result is batlin, a player character option I cooked up mostly as a practice exercise while I was working on Iron Kingdoms: Requiem.

Maybe someday I’ll get some art done for them and actually release them somewhere but, for now, and in honor of Bat Appreciation Day, enjoy, and feel free to use them in your own games if you see fit.

BATLIN

No one really knows for sure where batlin come from. Some say they were created long ago by a powerful wizard who wished to create minions for his subterranean lair. Others suggest that the batlin are an underground species of goblin, or that they came pouring in from another realm through some kind of planar rift. Even among the batlin communities that dot the underground, the stories of their origins vary, though many of them pay homage to a deity called Leutog who, they claim, carried them here on its wings from a plane of everlasting darkness.

A Life in the Dark

Most batlin live in the endless caverns that honeycomb the world, dwelling in the dark places where their unique senses make them particularly well-adapted to thrive. A few of their number have established colonies on the surface, where they are most commonly found in sub-tropical climes, though batlin have been known to make their way into cities all over the world. When encountered in their own underground communities, batlin tend to survive on a diet consisting almost exclusively of mushrooms and insects, both of which they raise in elaborate farms within the colony. Those batlin who have made their homes on the surface have often adapted to the eating of fruit, though no one has yet encountered a batlin who eats any kind of meat except insects.

Small but Industrious

Capable of vicious attacks to defend their territory – life below the ground can often be harsh, after all, and resources scarce – batlin sometimes accrue an undeservedly bad reputation among adventurers. In fact, they are industrious workers who enjoy a communal existence where everyone in the colony works, contributes, and shares alike. Because of their usually quick thinking and the ready availability of ingredients and compounds to be found below the earth, many batlin have taken to the practice of alchemy, and those that trade with the surface world often sell the fruits of their labors in city markets. Because of their relatively short lifespans and the dangers of their subterranean homes, batlin tend to have large families, and most members of a batlin community view the rest of the colony as their extended clan.

No Roost Like Home.

Most batlin colonies that are established underground make use of small networks of existing caves, with defensible dens that provide enough room for individuals or families to have semi-private living quarters. In some instances, batlin either modify or fortify these caves, while in others they have been known to build domed structures on cave floors or even walls and ceilings. Perhaps most unusual, for those from the surface who have, through whatever happenstance, made themselves companion to a batlin adventurer, batlin – like common bats – sleep by hanging upside down, their clawlike toes gripping branches, cave ceilings, or bars installed in their homes for just that purpose.

Communal Magocracies

Whether because of some underlying truth to the rumor that batlin were created by powerful wizards or simply by dint of the fact that magic helps make life underground a whole lot easier, batlin colonies tend to place a high value on spellcasting abilities. In general, batlin communities tend to be matriarchal, and those with the aptitude for magic often rise to positions of especial prominence and respect. Virtually all batlin colonies act as communal living spaces, however, and anyone who acts against the perceived good of the community – be they mage or matriarch – can be overruled by the rest of the colony at any time.

Not All Wings

Superficially, batlin resemble humanoid bats. They could easily be mistaken for bat-faced goblins were it not for their leathery, batlike wings. Like the more mundane bats that thrive in underground caves, batlin’s wings do not sprout from their backs, as those of many winged humanoids do, but instead act as their arms. When not in motion, a batlin can wrap its wings around itself like a cloak simply by folding its arms in front of its body, and they tend to move with the loping gait of a grounded bat, using their arms as well as their legs for ambulation. Perhaps due to their different size or body shape, most batlin cannot truly fly, unlike common bats, but their wings enable them to glide across short distances.

Batlin Traits

Your batlin character has the following traits in common with most other batlin.

            Suggested Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 2 and your Intelligence score increases by 1.

            Age. Most batlin live difficult lives in the dark places beneath the earth. They mature quickly and seldom live more than 50 years.

            Languages. Batlin do not appear to possess a unique language of their own. You speak Common and one other language of your choice, usually that of a nearby settlement.

            Size. Batlin are usually around 3 feet tall and often appear shorter due to their hunched posture and tendency to walk using their wings. Your size is Small.

            Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

            Echolocation. You have blindsight within 60 feet as long as you aren’t deafened. You also have darkvision, allowing you to see in dim light within 120 feet of yourself as if it were bright light and in darkness as if it were dim light. You discern colors in that darkness only as shades of gray.

            Glide. While most batlin can’t actually fly, your wings allow you to glide short distances. When moving up to your normal speed, you can move over changes in elevation, pits, chasms, traps, or other hazards or obstructions that extend no more than 5 feet above the level of the ground, so long as you move at least 10 feet in a straight line. This movement ignores penalties from rough terrain.

            Shelter of the Dark. Even those batlin who live on the surface are typically nocturnal creatures, at home in the darkness. You have advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks when in dim light or darkness.

Batlin Feats

The following feats are available exclusively to batlin characters:

Improved Foraging

Thanks to their unique diets, batlin are capable of surviving in conditions that many others would find inhospitable, at best. Increase your Wisdom score by 1, to a maximum of 20. When you attempt to forage for food and water, you find twice as much as you normally would. If you are underground, you have advantage on your Wisdom (Survival) check to forage.

Wings that Work

The wings of some batlin are more highly developed than those of most of their kin, allowing them to take to the air. You gain a flying speed equal to your walking speed, but you cannot use this flying speed if you are wearing medium or heavy armor.

You Have Seven Days

I promise that, here at least, this is the last you’ll hear from me about this subject, but you have only seven days left to vote for Glowing in the Dark for Book of the Year (Nonfiction) at the Rondo Hatton Awards!

Voting is easy. All you have to do is click that link and then send an email to the award administrators listing your votes. You can vote in every category, but you don’t have to. If you just want to cast your vote for Glowing in the Dark, you can easily do just that.

As I’ve made abundently clear by now, I would really like to win this award for any number of reasons. The idea of winning awards loses some of its luster once you’ve been active as a writer for a few years, but the Rondos are a special exception for me, simply because I believe so strongly in what the awards are intended to represent – the celebration, preservation, and scholarship of classic horror cinema.

(And, let’s face it, I’d really like to have a bust of Rondo Hatton of my very own.)

There’s no other award that it would mean as much for me to win but, even if Glowing in the Dark doesn’t make the final cut this time around, it will have been an honor to have made it this far, and I hope to have lots more books in the future that might one day be in the running.

Voting closes on April 20, so if you haven’t yet cast your vote, there’s still time. And while I promised that this was the last you’d hear on the subject on this here blog, you can rest assured that there will be an absolutely obnoxious amount of posting about it on social media for the next week. And, should I actually win, the celebrations will be legendary, and I will share the festive spirit with all of you who helped to make it possible!