Movies: Devil Horror Double Feature

I like a little bit of counterprogramming for my Eastertide, so today we are featuring two movies about demonic power - one new, and one old.

Late Night with the Devil

Late Night with the Devil has a killer premise. Most of the movie is presented as a long-lost tape of a '70s late night show with one very unusual guest - a girl possessed by a demon. Is it all an elaborate hoax? Self-hypnosis? Or is all hell about to break loose?

David Dastmalchian plays the smarmy host to perfection, and the period touches are all pitch-perfect (aside from a few controversial AI-generated interstitial graphics). Late Night only falters when it cheats the found footage conceit, leading to a somewhat disappointing finale.  There isn't a ton of good indie horror out there, though, so it's still worth checking out.

Rating: 7/10

Prince of Darkness

Barring the occasional (incredibly profitable) megahit like Halloween, John Carpenter movies flop on initial release. Prince of Darkness follows the pattern - it bombed in the theaters, but has since gained a cult following as the second entry in Carpenter's "Apocalypse Trilogy" - three movies that depict world-ending horrors.

Prince of Darkness has the flavor of a Quatermass story - a harried priest (Donald Pleasance) asks a group of scientists to study a canister of mysterious green liquid. The liquid is locked in the basement of an abandoned church and seems to be not of this world...or this dimension. As you can imagine, things go south quickly, and soon the survivors are fighting for their lives against Lovecraftian cosmic evil. It's not quite as well-made or well-acted as an all-time classic like The Thing, but there's a nice build-up and a chilling, famous recurring dream sequence:

Rating: 8/10

Miscellany: Pop-A-Shot Pop-Up game review

I was looking to entertain people at a "March Madness"-themed convention, and the Pop-A-Shot Pop-Up game fit the bill perfectly. It's a portable, folding version of the arcade-style basketball game you see in man caves and rec rooms across the country, so you can take it to some remote location and set it up in about a minute. It doesn't require power and works outdoors, but it's not built to withstand the elements.

Some other downsides: for about $180 off of Amazon, the Pop-Up is not exactly cheap, yet there is quite a bit of assembly required (took me a couple hours with hand tools and an occasional extra pair of hands):

The Pop-A-Shot was a hit at the convention. Generally, the game was durable, although it was somewhat less stable than anticipated, with the rim moving slightly after each shot. The electronic scoring functioned properly, but the small speaker was difficult to hear against the din of the convention. All in all, it was well worth the money for all the smiles it generated.

Books: The Skean - The Distinctive Fighting Knife of Gaelic Ireland

Military historian Robert Gresh has written the definitive (and perhaps the only) book devoted to the skean (Irish: scian), an Irish knife that fell into disuse after the Tudor conquest:

How did one use a skean? According to Gresh, while the skean had a single cutting edge and could slash when necessary, it was more often used for stabbing in close quarters with a point-down icepick grip, usually through weak points in mail and plate armor. To this end, most skeans were fairly long (big enough to be used as a forearm guard, like a tonfa).  Shorter versions could supposedly be thrown, end over end, like missiles.

Skeans aren't common today. The ones Gresh features in the book were found at the bottom of rivers, or in the dusty closets of collectors and museums, and surviving examples are often mistaken for Scottish dirks. But it's an authentically Irish weapon, from a time when Irishness itself was in danger.

Food: Guinness 0.0

I've been drinking Guinness every St. Patrick's Day (and plenty of other days) for years now, but since I'm in marathon training I thought I'd try subbing the usual pint out for something healthier - Guinness 0.0, a zero-alcohol version of the St. James's Gate classic that took four years to develop:

It's good! I wouldn't say it tastes exactly like a Guinness (even the best vacuum distillation methods unavoidably change the structure and flavor of beer), but it's pretty close.  Regular Guinness doesn't have all that much alcohol to begin with, and the beer's signature roasted malt flavors seem to make the jump to nonalcoholic pretty easily. So, if for whatever reason you are trying to reduce the alcohol in your life, a Guinness 0.0 is one of the better choices out there.