Inverted Dungeon Updates: 2023

August 15, 2023

Plowing through content today after having watched and played a bunch of stuff, so let's get to it:

We start over in Horror Cinema for a trio of films. First is Night, the second film in the Brutal Bloodsuckers collection, and it's somehow even worse than what we suffered through before. Honestly, I don't have any hopes at this point that anything in this series will be watchable.

We follow this with Dog Soldiers, a 2002 werewolf film with an absolutely game cast. The movie is okay, but it's the lead actors that absolutely sell it. A tighter script, and more money for the werewolf effects, really could have made this movie.

And then the recent Dracula release to hit (and then bomb in) theaters: Last Voyage of the Demeter. I actually really like the production values here. It's a solid little film in the Dracula canon. It just has a few minor flaws that I wish could have been corrected before the film was released.

Moving over to Related Games we have the curious case of Dragon Buster II: Yami no Fuin, a sequel (prequel) to a seminal, early Metroidvania title that basically drops everything that would mark it as part of the genre. It's a transitional game that showed where the exploration genre was headed before it swung back around fully after the release of Super Metroid.

And then we have The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I really am not looking to cover the Zelda series in too much depth on this site as the series very quickly diverges from Metroid and Castlevania, but there's no arguing that this third game had an outsized influence on the Metroidvania genre to come, so it's worth having that conversation as we cover all the influences on our beloved franchise.

July 28, 2023

The big news on the Castlevania front is, of course, the announcement of the release date for Castlevania: Nocturne: Season 1. We've been seeing teases from Netflix up until now, but we got a full slate of details this week. There's a trailer, cast announcements, and details on the story, all provided by the streamer. The first season (at least) will see hero Richter Belmont, joined by magic casters Maria and Annette, fighting against the hordes of vampires unleashed by Olrox and Erzsebet Bathory. No announcement has been made about if Dracula will tie into this story at all, meaning this season could be a prequel to Richter's main story we know, or the show could be going in a very different direction from the games. We'll know more once the season is out on September 28, 2023.

With the release details out, we've taken the liberty of updating info on the various pages of the site. The Series and Horror Cinema pages have been updated with the release year. The Timeline of Releases has been updated with the release date for the first season (among other details; see below). The Anime and Bios pages have been updated with the list of new characters added to the series. And the Anime Voice Cast page has been updated with all current known cast members as well.

Now, if you're a collector of physical media, there's more good news: Limited Run Games has started preorders for the Castlevania Advanced Collection. We aren't shilling for that site, of course (we get no money sending people over to that page), but we are collectors here so this is news that warms our own hearts (and, yes, we did already preorder the set, in the Ultimate Edition, because we're weak).

On to actual new articles for the site: we start over in Related Games with a review of Makaimura for WonderSwan, the fourth mainline entry in the Ghost 'n Goblins franchise. It's a pretty good game, if easier than many other entries in the series, but it was sadly stuck on a portable system that never saw release outside of Japan.

We also have a review of Dragon Buster, an arcade game from 1984 that might be one of the first games to truly marry platforming and exploration to create something akin to the Metroidvania genre to come. It's not perfect, owing to its age and design philosophies of the time, but there's no denying it's influence on all the games that would come after.

Finally, over in Horror Cinema we have a review of a truly terrible vampire film: Vampire Sisters. This movie comes from a direct-to-video cheapie set called "Brutal Bloodsuckers" and, well, the quality of this film (and likely all the rest from that set) is not good at all. It's a bad movie in all ways, but I watched it so you don't have to.

July 10, 2023

Sorry, it's been another month and I was only able to get to this update just now. I want to update more frequently, I've just had stuff going on. Some day I'll get back on the horse properly and really get this flying, but for now as least I can handle once a month. That's better than nothing.

We start over in Related Games with the third and final title in the Gargoyle's Quest sub-series, Demon's Crest. This game is great, although it doesn't seem to get the love now that it deserves. Hard to say why, when it's such a fun, playable title, but some games shine brighter than others, I suppose.

Then we move into Fanworks for the unofficial Simon's Quest sequel Castlevania: The Seal of the Curse X. This is a game with a lot of potential -- playable controls, fine graphics and sound -- but the way the world in constructed makes the experience rather empty and, at times, quite annoying. I want to like the title... I just can't.

Finally, I want to point over to the Final Fantasy Randomizer YouTube channel for their Summer Marathon 2023 playlist. I mentioned the marathon in my last update, and now you can go in and see all the great randomizer runs that were hosted. There was a fantastic Castlevania relay run, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Randomizer, Faxanadu Randomizer, plus two great runs of Timespinner, runs of both Ori randomizers, and a whole lot more. It's a great set of runs worth spending a day or two (or three) watching.

I'll try to get another update in before August... but we'll see.

June 9, 2023

I meant to have this update earlier than a month after the last one... but then I took a vacation and it threw off my productivity schedule for the last month. I'm back in the groove now, so let's go over news and updates.

We're now entering a point where "games like Castlevania" also has to encompass "games like Bloodstained" as well. Curse of the Moon (and its sequel) had such a distinctive style, blending 8-bit roots with modern graphical touches, that many games seem to be taking a page and doing their thing. A newly announced "Bloodstained-like" came to my attention, Darkest Abyss, and it's one I'll be keeping an eye on. It raises the point, though, that as Konami sits back and continues to not pout out Castlevania games, other companies are going to not only fill the void but then inspire other other designers with their ideas. We're in that phase now.

Speaking of fans keeping the spirit of Castlevania alive, we have the annual FFR Rando Marathon: Summer 2023 coming up (full disclosure, I'm part of the FFR community and I am helping to put on this charity marathon). The schedule is out and it features a three-game block of Castlevania randomizers. Plus, there are also other great Metroidvania randomizers, like the Ori games and Timespinner that should be fun to watch. Maraton is in support of the Liam Foundation, and donations are currently open.

Now, onto updates, we begin over in the Related Games section with a review of the NES (and later Game Boy) title Gargoyle's Quest II: The Demon Darkness. This game maintains a lot of what worked in the first Gargoyle's Quest game and is a fun enough time on its own. It just didn't really do that much to push the series forward (not like eventual sequel Demon's Crest).

Over in Horror Cinema we have Vampire in Brooklyn, a middling horror-comedy largely powered by two solid lead peformances. I also finally got up a review of Underworld: Endless War, a set of animated shorts that do a better job of building the world of the franchise than the actually films ever managed. And we also have Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed, a sequel that I wanted to enjoy but left me rather letdown, all things considered.

And finally we get the last of the artwork archiving into the Series section. This covers the Lords of Shadow set, including Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (with Limited Edition and Collection added, too), Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate, and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. With that, all the Castlevania games now have artwork included. I don't know if I'll feel the need to add anything additional to the other games we've covered in that area (related titles and various additional Konami games), but we'll see.

May 8, 2023

As your one-stop repository for Castlevania news (that's what we are, right?), I do need to report that Konami's Getsu Fuma Den: Undying Moon has an official, physical release over on Limited Run Games. While we aren't in partnership with LRG and in no way does this site endorse that site, I will always endorse (for free) pysical releases of Konami games. I already ordered my limited edition silver box version from the site, and at some point down the road I'll not only get up a review for Undying Moon, but I'll also put up a review of the special edition as well. Gotta keep the content flowing.

Speaking on reviews, I do still intend to get an article up for Romancelvania. I will not deny that other games (such as Gal Guardians) absorbed my attention and I my play through of Romancelvania because of it. The game didn't hook me in its initial release, and I was dreading finishing it and writing a bad review. However, the v1.1 patch for the game just came out and, supposedly, it fixes many of the issues I had with the title. I do prefer reviewing games once they're in their "more complete" state anyway, so soon enough I'll give the game another chance and see how it plays before providing my final thoughts.

Moving on to Castlevania, the grand archiving of classic artwork continues. We now have artwork stored through the IGA era of the series, and that includes: Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, and Castlevania: Judgment.

Adding to our Castlevania content, we have a Bio for Wallman, and the Ricochet Rock in the Arsenal. We still have a long way to go to finish up the Arsenal, but the Bios section is finally looking pretty full (and will hopefully be completed this year).

Finally, we also have a couple of movie reviews. We start with Army of Thieves, the side story prequel for Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead. This film isn't a horror movie at all, more of a caper story, and it is a lot of fun. But for anyone hoping for zombie thrills, this film does not deliver. Meanwhile, 1985's Silver Bullet is a cheesy werewolf film that has largely been forgotten and, well, there's good reason for that. It's horribly 1980s while also not really being all that thrilling at all.

April 28, 2023

Having put out the new look and feel for the site, I've been going through all the articles and checking their layouts, verifying everything looks good. There have been minor changes here and there (too many to document, but not anything really worth tracking) just to massage everything to have that spit-shine I like, and that included fixing some layout issues on the mobile layout for the site. I'm sure there will be many more weeks of tweaks and adjustments as I get everything just right.

One thing I did find that I had to fix was the review of the Tiger Electronic's Castlevania: Symphony of the Night release. Original we had only a very short blurb about the game, and a note about the Game.com release that never came out. However, after having the Game.com version come out for preservationists, and getting a review up for that, it did seem like I needed to change the Tiger Electronics handheld review. So I completely rewrote it and fleshed it out, making it a proper article in its own right.

We then move to Horror Cinema for a couple of movie reviews. We have Universal's extension of the classic Dracula series (by their own admission), Renfield. I actually thought the movie was fun, if uneven. However it bombed at the Box Office, so we shouldn't expect a sequel. Meanwhile we also cover the pretty excellent (if a little derivative) zombie film, The Girl with All the Gifts. I like this film, but with the recent spate of fungal zombie shows and films, it doesn't quite have the same originality it once managed.

And then we have the best Castlevania-style content for this update: Gal Guardians: Demon Purge. This newest game from Inti Creates feels like a spiritual successor to the work they did on the Bloodstained series, just under an IP Inti Creates controls. It's a fantastic game that any fan of Konami's classic series should play.

Of note, Gal Guardians is technically a spin-off of the Gal Gun series. Currently I have no plan to cover those titles on this site, largely because they play so differently from the content we cover here that it just doesn't make sense. With that said, if more Gal Guardians games do come out I'll likely have to build a whole but Gal section and then cover those titles then. But not before. I have too much other content to work on for this site at this point.

April 10, 2023

So, clearly the big news for today is the new design for the Inverted Dungeon. As I promised last time, I fully planned to redesign the site (because the bug had finally caught me), and I immediately began working on it once I had the last update posted. Since it's here, and likely will be here for a few years to come, let's discuss the look, feel, and features of this new design for the site.

The design itself is loosely based on the classic Konami NES boxes from the era. Those were the old Silver Box style, which I used as an idea of where I wanted to go from this site (I even took to saving it in a "Silver Box" folder as I was working on it, giving it that code name). Naturally the main layout isn't silver in color, but the usual "ICVD Blue" that I've been using for years, but the intent is there. There's the lines on the side, with the footer background coming in under. There's the Konami-style red swoosh for the menu nav. There's the off-center screenshots and other inset boxes that are arranged how screenshots used to appear on the old boxes. I went had trying to emulate that classic "game box style" for this design, and (to absolutely toot my own horn), I think it worked out really well. Clean lines, retro feel.

Naturally, since I changed the main site theme I also had to change all the other skins on the site as well. I kept the same six skins for the site -- Inverted, Dungeon, Bloodstained, Metroid, NES, and Game Boy -- although some have seen some significant changes. Inverted (blue), Dungeon (red), and Bloodstained (magenta) largely stick to the same color themes. Metroid, though, switched from the blue I had been using for it to an orange skin. This was because with Inverted already existing I didn't feel like we needed another blue skin. So I looked at the classic black boxes from Nintendo for their games and pulled some theming from the old Metroid box to give this skin new colors.

The bigger divergences, though, come from the NES and Game Boy skins. Instead of using pixelated sprites for the layouts (as I had been doing) I went with different color themes. The NES scheme is based on the Japanese box for Castlevania III, with an emphasis on black and blue. I took that and used it as inspiration for a "color safe" skin. There are readability studies that state white text on a blue background is one of the easiest color schemes to read, so I felt that made a good basis for this theming. And then there's the Game Boy skin, which is once again the "light mode" for this site (and, as it happens, the closest in style to the old Silver Box design). I don't personally use this light mode (my eyes find white text on black to be much easier and kinder for me), but I know some people like a "light mode", and it's not hard to support this styke. If it makes it easier for one person to read the site, I consider that a win.

So yeah... new look and feel. Hope you all like it.

And with that, let's actually get to some content. We start over in the Arsenal section with Daggers, Darts, and other Throwables. I really need to get through this whole section soon since not having solid coverage of all the classic sub-weapons in the series does feel like a bit of a failing on my part.

We then move into Fanworks for a revisit of the Castlevania II randomizer, Castlevania II: Blood, Sweat, and Code. The original version of this randomizer was recently forked (due to the previous developer dropping off the face of the planet) but thankfully a new team has come along to continue work on the randomizer, and they're packing it full of great features and fixes.

Plus, we have a couple of entries for the Horror Cinema section. We have 2011's Priest, a goofy vampire hunting film (very loosely) based on a Manga of the same name. And then there's the Wyrmwood sequel Wyrmwood: Apocalypse, which has plenty of solid zombie-fighting action even if it does lack the amusing charms of the first film.

And then finally, we continue our archiving project for box art and instructions, getting materials on the Series pages for: Super Castlevania IV, Castlevania Dracula X: Rondo of Blood (and Castlevania: Dracula X, and Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles), Castlevania: Bloodlines, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (and Castlevania: Nocturne in the Moonlight), Castlevania Chronicles, Castlevania 64 (and Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness), Castlevania: Legends, and Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. That gets us up through the IGA era proper, which we'll get through next time.

March 31, 2023

A little late with this update, at least for my self-imposed schedule. Sadly that just happens sometimes. Regardless, let's get into it.

Firstly, I've started going through the Series section to add in box art and manuals for the various games. When this site was first made I didn't see much need for that as this site was intended as a companion for the main Castlevania Dungeon site, and that site had all the art and manuals you could want to look at. Sadly, that site is now basically dead and many of its links to art and manuals are broken. Since this site has basically picked up the slack in being an all-encompassing Castlevania repository, I felt like (simply for posterity) I needed to start saving some of the ephemera for games. Game history needs to be preserved.

First in the collection, then, are the NES and Game Boy games. I've found all the U.S., Japanese, and at time other international boxes, carts/discs, and manuals as I could (manuals mostly just in English because that's what I could find). This covers: Castlevania (and Vampire Killer), Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, The Castlevania Adventure, Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, and Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge. That also includes arcade artwork for Vs. Castlevania (on the main Castlevania page) and Haunted Castle. I'll go through, era by era, over time until everything I can grab is saved to the site.

Of course, if you have resources you want to donate to the site, things we should save in the name of game preservation, please contact me. I'd love to add it to the ICVD collection.

In other news, we have a pair of Related Games to add to our archive. We have the fourth official game in the Dragon Slayer series, Legacy of the Wizard, which was also the first game in the series to officially make it over stateside as well (a Game Boy port of the original Dragon Slayer would follow later). And then, for good measure, we also have Sorcerian, the fifth game in the series as well. That also caps the Dragon Slayer series at this point on the site. The games diverge too far from Metroidvania to really far under the scope of this site's content. If we go further down that series of games, it'll be for a whole subsection... but we have so much else to cover here there just isn't time for that right now.

Finally, I'm gonna warn ahead of time that I'm starting to get the urge to redesign the layout of the site. I've done a couple of refreshes on the design, but the base layout has remained largely unchanged since 2017. That's a long time for a website. Likely I'll look at merging in some of the design details I like from Asteroid G to make a new refresh for this site. We'll see how long it takes before this happens...

March 13, 2023

We start today, as we must, with the release of Dead Cells: Return To Castlevania. Having taken the opportunity to dip into the game (and die, and dip, and die, and dip again), I can attest that this is a spectacular blend of Dead Cells and Castlevania, exactly what it says on the label. If that alone interests you then go get it because this is great.

There are a couple of other new releases I plan to get to soon. One, Romancelvania, is a Metroidvania mashed into a reality dating show. It's amusing, but my first impressions on the game are mixed. I'll post an official review once I'm further into it. The other game, Gal Guardians: Demon Purge (formerly Grim Guardians) looks like a hybrid Castlevania and rail shooter. Could be fun, and we'll see once I get into it.

Now, for the rest of today's updates we have a trio of horror films. Dead Heat is a buddy-action-comedy with zombies thrown in, released back to relative indifference in 1988, but it's actually a fair bit of fun. Lady Frankenstein is a classic Gothic horror film from Italy that actually plays better than I expected. And Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood is, well, everything you'd expect from a film called "Bordello of Blood", and I enjoyed it.

And finally, we bounce over to Fanworks for a fun little hack, Mariovania: Dawn of Sorrow. This is a character hack, putting Mario into Dawn of Sorrow, but it also swaps out a lot of the enemies and songs as well. It's pretty solid, even if I wanted to see more changes, and well worth a play through.

March 5, 2023

Went through and made a tiny upgrade for the site. Now, when I link over to Asteroid G you'll see a little asteroid icon next to those links (as with that link right back there). For links to other sites (like, say, CVRPG) an exit icon will now appear. It's very smell, but important, as there's a lot of cross-site linking between here and Asteroid G and I wanted to be able to indicate that without having to write out "Asteroid G" next to every link. Adding the exit icon was just a bonus of the process.

The other reason I did this was because on pages like Horror Cinema I can now put some articles I've written for Asteroid G (like The Batman vs. Dracula and Werewolf By Night) which really do feel suited to that site more than over here, but still acknowledge for readers that the content exists. Good crossover linking. It also means that any time I add something to Asteroid G that should also be here, listing it in both places is a breeze.

That does raise the matter of some content that I haven't brought here, things like all the Resident Evil films, or the film Little Monsters. In those cases I felt like the zombies being covered were far enough away from the zombies that appear in the Castlevania series that they didn't really belong here, not even just listed. Maybe I'll change my mind on that down the road, maybe I won't, but we'll see. I try to curate the content on here and keep it focused to Castlevania and its inspirations, and I'm also a zombie movie purist, so it's hard to get over some of my organizational tendencies.

And while we're discussing business of the day, I do have to mention that the Metroidvania adventure Dead Cells is getting a Castlevania-themed expansion, the appropriately named Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania. As you can see from the trailer, the new DLC will features zones, enemies, equipment, characters, and music from Konami's series, alongside the Dead Cells game play. There will even be a bonus Richter Mode that can be unlocked. The expansion comes out on March 6th and you can expect, sometime after that, I'll get a full write up posted.

Anyway, enough shop talk, let's actually get to the content update for today. We start with a trio of zombie films as I flesh out the Horror Cinema section. We have Return of the Living Dead III (which is actually my favorite of the series), Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (a great Aussie zombie exploitation flick), and Zombieland (a classic zom-com). It's nice to get more undead love on that page of the site.

And since we have a theme going, lets do some other undead related content. We'll move over to Cast Bios and take a look at the creepy and interesting (but littered with QTEs) Lady of the Crypt, and follow that with a more traditional 3D fight in the battle against the Undead Parasite.

February 22, 2023

Today we fill in gaps in the Horror Cinema with movies I really should have watched earlier and only now have gotten around to seeing. We start that list with Dracula: Dead and Loving It. This is an awful film, frankly, tedious and tired in ways similar to so many other failed Dracula adaptations manage, just with the added sting that this comes from Mel Brooks and should have been better. That's sad.

We also get Return of the Living Dead Part II. As a follow up to that first zombie comedy, the sequel doesn't really tread much new ground. But it is an amusing, low-stakes hang out film with some okay zombie effects. There are worse ways to waste a couple of hours.

Finally we finish out the main Underworld series with the fourth (and so far last) film, Underworld: Blood Wars. So far this film seems to have killed off the franchise, and that's good because this is a real dog of a film (no pun intended). Boring, low-stakes, and uninvested, this is a bad follow-up and a bad way to close out the (admittedly quite tired0 series.

February 10, 2023

A new month and a new round of updates. I've been trying to touch this site at least once every ten days and so far it's a schedule I've been able to keep up. No guarantee it will stay this way, but for now it's been nice seeing steady updates to the site.

Which, speaking of, we begin with a fan-game that's gotten a fair bit of attention Online: Castlevania Chronicles II: Simon's Quest. This is a full re-imagining of the original NES sequel, designed and created by WarMachine. It's pretty solid and plays really well... just don't be surprised if the bosses completely stop you in your tracks.

I will note that a Russian fan of the site submitted remakes of Castlevania I & III, and I do intend to get around to them eventually. Since they were directly submitted I have to go through some security checks to make sure they're legit (I mean, I'm sure they are but it pays to be cautious), so assuming they are, I'll get around to reviewing them soon enough.

While we're talking about things making their rounds on the Internet, there was a dump of the (still in development) Tiger Game.com port of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Yes, it's rough as hell, and more of a curiosity than a truly playable experience. But I worked my way through it, and reviewed the game fairly. Feel free to never play it for yourself.

Meanwhile, over in the Arsenal, I've added a page for Dracula's Body Parts. Also known as "Dracula's Relics", these bits and bobs of the man himself are regularly recurring items that lock progression in various games. Plus, they look cool when you wear them on your person. Everyone is doing it.

Finally, we add Slayers over in the Horror Cinema section. This is a film with real potential, containing a whole lot of good ideas. Sadly they're wasted on a mediocre script and a production team that doesn't really know what they wanted to make. It's the worst kind of film: a missed opportunity.

January 30, 2023

A quick set of Bios for today. First we have a being that actually does appear in a Castlevania game: the Creatures Bat. This beast guards the first stage of Castlevania: Legends and, well, he's a bat. That's about it.

Along with that critter we also have two characters that don't appear in any truly official materials. The first is Drolta Tzuentes, the servant of Elizabeth Bartley, who at least is confirmed in both the Japanese and U.S. instruction booklets for Castlevania: Bloodlines, making her appearance at least somewhat canonical. And then we have Lucy "Gwendolyn" Seward, a character we know had to exist considering the events of Bloodlines (among other reason), but who isn't officially referenced anywhere. The best we have is one random fax, and just the U.S. instruction booklet (which isn't canonical on its own). Still, we list her because we know some version of her had to exist in the continuity.

January 20, 2023

We're getting right into the meat of the Castlevania content this week with a look at a cool new randomizer I just found out about: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: Reprise. This is a Roguelike / Endless Mode for the original Aria, and it's just so cool. Really, this game adds a whole lot of re-playability to original experience and is well worth checking out.

We then cover the Manticore over in the Bios, adding another boss to our ever growing collection. Maybe one day I'll have everything on that page written up...

From there we move over to Horror Cinema for a look at The Invitation. While I appreciated what this film did with it's ambiance and mood, and I liked how it invested in characters from vampire mythology that really don't get explored enough, this film doesn't have enough going on in it to make for a truly compelling horror film. It's good for a watch once, but probably not repeat viewings.

Meanwhile, in wider media coverage, I have a review up for the series premiere of The Last of Us over on Asteroid G. Frankly, I struggled to decide if I should post reviews for it here, where I cover some traditional zombie media, or over on my other site. But I'd already covered the Resident Evil films over there, and once we get outside the traditional slow-zombie format, it doesn't feel like those shows and movies really belong on a Castlevania site.

January 10, 2023

Sadly I only managed one update for the site in December despite really wanting to come back and get more content up before the end of the year. Sadly, my move to a new state used up a whole lot of time, and energy, leaving me with less than I would have liked to work on projects. Still, this site will trudge on and, right now, I have enough of bother resources to at least get a little something up for all you faithful Castlevania fans.

We start over in the Fanworks section with a look at the Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse Randomizer. This was one I've actually wanted to write about for a while but, well, the game is very hard and I don't like reviewing things until I've completed them (or nearly gotten there). In the case of this randomizer, it has a lot of great ideas built onto the solid core of the original game. Sadly it seems to be abandonware, having not been touched in over a year by its creator, so all the big fixes and new features the game is begging for are unlikely to ever happen. Sad, but the randomizer is still worth at least a poke regardless.

Then we move to Horror Cinema for a look at Queen of the Damned. This film is just bad, a years late, terrible follow up to a pretty solid movie. Why Warner Bros. made this film, other than to try and keep the "Vampire Chronicles" license just a little longer, I'll never know. The end result doesn't justify the effort of watching it, that's for sure.

Speaking of terrible films: Ultraviolet. This is a movie so bad I've actively resisted going back and watching it again for this site. I saw it once, soon after it came out, and I hated it. Forcing myself to sit through it again for this site was a chore but, hey, at least I never have to do that again. Hurray!

And we get some of the more meat-and-potatoes updates done for the site, with a Bio for Arachne and Holy Cross (and Other Boomerangs) in the Arsenal section.