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The improvements start off in the introduction itself: its opening paragraph notes that "the keeper [GM] should have the notion of film clearly in mind before presenting each adventure," and concludes, "Success comes not in surviving, but in staging a good film." Making it clear from the start that the aim of the adventures is not success in the classic RPG sense (PC survival and progress) was something Blood Brothers sorely lacked. The introduction continues by outlining new features of the game (there's a nifty change in the approach to artwork) and introduces the concept of "continuity breaks"—what are commonly referred to as cutscenes now—and their use for maintaining mood or even giving the GM a moment when player actions may radically change a storyline. It concludes with a discussion of the Sanity mechanic so beloved of Call of Cthulhu, noting that "the point of this is to provoke random reactions from the player-characters and fresh roleplaying from the players, as well as to practice new players in the notion itself" concluding with "For the most part, players who actively want to participate in recreating the feel of such movies will need no prompting—here the play is literally the thing, pure unto itself." Keeping the mechanic more generic in nature feels better than the Cinematic Insanity Table approach in Blood Brothers, as it allows the players (with the GM's help) to tailor the results to the storyline (with the original table, you might end up with somewhat humorous reactions even in decidedly unhumorous adventures).
The next section of the book is titled "Previews," consisting of the written equivalent of trailers for each movie which a GM may act out for his players, either to set the mood or, perhaps, to warn them what they're in for next gaming session. I don't know if I would use the trailers myself, but they are a fun read and certainly don't hurt for helping a GM get into the right frame of mind.
The format for each adventure is roughly the same as in the original Blood Brothers, though this time the chronological order of presentation seems to follow when the movies were made more than the era they're set in (the spaghetti western adventure "The Evil Gun", while set in the Old West, follows adventures whose settings and films were from the 1950s and early 60s). The structure of individual adventures is a bit looser; some have relatively detailed plots while others are relatively unstructured (I'll touch on that more in individual adventure reviews). One interesting change is in the book's artwork (Earl Geier again, with Les Brooks): instead of random scenes from the adventure, each adventure features a movie poster which (in the introduction) the GM is encouraged to show the players to help set the mood. In the tradition of many movie posters, especially for B-movies, the poster's contents don't necessarily match up with anything in the adventure itself (though there's no reason the players couldn't try to reproduce the scene...). The pregenerated characters now also have thumbnail illustrations to suggest what they might look like—a touch which I found rather fun.
There are only nine adventures this time, but I didn't feel cheated: all are pretty well fleshed out.
1) Nightmare in Silence (Der Stille Alp): This adventure is, in a nutshell, "Count Orlock journeys to the PCs' home town of Bremen to recover his magic cabinets from Dr. Caligari and his pet Golem," neatly blending together the three most famous German silent horror films. (The sidebar pretty much sticks to these films, but also mentions a fourth German Expressionist horror, Waxworks.) It's not a bad little adventure, but the part that really caught my eye was the suggestion, in the "Running the Scenario" section, that the adventure could be played as a silent film, with pantomimed actions and dialogue written on title cards! There is even a handy page of blank title cards that can be photocopied for game use. When I first read this, I thought "How would this even work out at the table?!" but the growth in interest of live-action roleplaying since the publishing of Blood Brothers 2 in 1992 suggests that this might make one heck of a LARP with the right group of players.... In keeping with the "play it silent" option, the PC writeups do not give sample lines of dialogue, but rather "visual quotes" such as "Desperate Pleading Tinged with Nobility" or "Wide-Eyed Leer of Triumph."
The adventure also has some fun looking at the quirks of silent-era horror, including "lost scenes" (this adventure's version of the continuity break), damage to the film (action slowing down? Whoops, there was a splice in the print!) and the observation that while events in the story might cause Orlock, er, Vostok and Doctor Calig—I mean Grimoire—and the Golem face to face, monster fights are not a staple of silent-era horror but rather of the 1940s "Monster Mash" films of Universal Studios. I like it when the creators of film tributes know their stuff.
There actually is one bit in the films that doesn't really feel like any silent horror movie I've seen, but I found it appealing: if PCs try entering the doctor's magic cabinets, they find themselves in strange worlds that would best be described as animation that the characters have limited interaction with. The only silent films I can think of that used this device were Walt Disney's "Alice in Cartoonland" short films—and if writer Geoff Gillian was referring to these, I am very impressed indeed!
2) Chateau of Blood: This adventure pays tribute to Hammer Studios (the poster mentions "A Mallet Film," har har), and the sidebar gives a nice list of suggested viewing, though I think the characterization of Hammer's weak points was not entirely fair (some films had quite good direction, particularly those helmed by Terence Fisher, and James Bernard scores are dominated not by "irritating gypsy violin" but by in-your-face brass sections).
Like many Hammer horrors, this adventure is full of dramatic moments, heaving alabaster bosoms, and sexual tension, though the monster of choice is the werewolf—unusual, as Hammer preferred vampires. About the only thing missing is a bit of titillating lesbianism during the scene where the young female lead and the young female lycanthrope are together alone—a fan-pleasing ploy that was particularly successful in Hammer's "Karnstein trilogy" (The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire, and Twins of Evil, all three of which are mentioned in the recommended viewing). I'm not sure if this was omitted over the concern of having a player participate in a scene they might be uncomfortable with, or a general unease about presenting sexuality in games that was only just starting to be challenged by companies like White Wolf. It may have even simply been to keep the big reveal of the story (lycanthropy in this storyline is triggered by sexual excitement) for a little later in the plot when the young werewolf girl, tempted by the men she has never been allowed to have contact with for her life so far, decides to seduce one of them, with gruesome results.
Funny little aside: one of the player character illustrations is drawn to strongly resemble Vincent Price—who never acted in any Hammer film (though he did work for rival British studios Tigon and Amicus). Drawing the character as Peter Cushing might've been more fitting...
3) An Alien Kicked Sand In My Face! This is a Teen Beach Party film in the tradition of Horror at Party Beach and the Frankie Avalon/Annette Funicello films (which, while not having monsters in the plots, sometimes had cameos by American International Picture's favorite horror stars). The sidebar lists some non-beach-party films that may help set the mood for the "They Want Our Women!" plot, and also mention the original version of The Blob as a great example of teen horror further inland.
The adventure's background takes care to explain just how squeaky-clean these movies were: no interjection stronger than "Gee whiz!" is ever used, bathing suits never expose the navel, teen problems don't have even a whiff of social consciousness, and so on. Comedy is emphasized, with characters more likely to do cartoonish "wild takes" than be genuinely horrified, and attacks by female characters are described as face-slaps and shin-kicks that don't do any damage besides stunning—especially since the attacks are as likely to be used against their fellow male characters as against the monsters! I was particularly amused by a sidebar detailing the effects of the Sinister Alien Plot on Our Heroes: the aliens steal their appearances to masquerade as them, leaving the real teens gruesomely disfigured. To the audience, the actors will just look like they have messy hair and maybe dark circles around their eyes, but the characters are invited to react as if they'd been turned into Basil Wolverton characters! About the only thing this adventure is missing is a musical number, probably because it would tend to stop the plot; the writers made up for this by giving us lyrics to a suitably silly opening credits song.
Special note: the character artwork for this adventure is pretty completely based on the Frankie and Annette films ("Dee-Dee" and "Moon Dog" are Annette and Frankie), though their (non-illustrated, since he's an NPC) version of biker thug Eric von Zipper is rather younger and better-looking than his movie counterpart.
4) Alive and Kicking: This adventure is based on the small but popular genre of Detached Body Part Horror, usually involving hands, but in this case—a leg. The introduction notes discusses the feel of a type of low-budget psychological horror popular in British horror cinema between the 1950s, and 1970s, though sadly the sidebar doesn't give us any example of such films (I suspect, however, that Night of the Eagle, aka Burn Witch Burn, is a good example). The storyline is centered around a soccer—pardon me, football—team in Britain, and how an attempt to bring a mentally troubled and physically weakening player back to form ends in disaster and death.
I found this scenario, while interestingly plotted, rather bizarre: it's written as if it's meant to be taken seriously, and yet we're talking about a disembodied leg that manages to kill a bunch of people in downright goofy ways. It probably doesn't help that as an American, I just don't take the game of soccer (football!) seriously on a professional level the way it is in most of the rest of the world. More problematically, the adventure shares a problem with Blood Brothers' "Nemesis Strikes!" in that many deaths cannot be stopped or prevented by player actions; allowing players to play the NPCs for these scenes, or even staging the attacks on PCs with the understanding between GM and players that PCs can and will die in the game, may help reduce this effect.
5) El Tigre, y la Pirámede de Destrucción: It's Mexican Wrestling Horror! To be honest, I have no idea if this adventure stays close to the feel of the films it's trying to emulate, as I haven't seen any (the recommended viewing sidebar is nice and comprehensive, though). On the other hand, hey, we've got weird rubbery aliens, a vicious all-woman Nazi SS auxiliary, and wrestling—if a group of gamers fails to have fun with this, something's gone terribly wrong.
6) The Evil Gun: The viewing sidebar notes that there are actually very few horror-themed Westerns, since more often then not, the genres generally did not blend well (Billy the Kid vs. Dracula is cited as a particularly unfortunate example), so it concentrates more on the gritty spaghetti westerns of the 1960s, as well as noting some of their other influences (like Yojimbo). The plot is rather similar to the fine and rather creepy High Plains Drifter, although where the older film tries to keep the nature of the Drifter ambiguous, this adventure's version of the Drifter is unmistakably supernatural, as he has the ability to raise the dead. For a fairly serious adventure, it has the most in-jokes of the adventures in the book: every landmark in town is named for someone important to the development of Westerns (Ford, Peckinpah, Morricone, etc.). This is also one of the most loosely-structured adventures in the book: the adventure details the arrival of The Drifter into town, and what he will do during his one-week reign of terror (which starts gradually and builds in nastiness), leaving it up to the GM and players to decide what to do; this may be a bit intimidating for novice GMs (and to a lesser degree, novice players).
I like this adventure quite a bit (High Plains Drifter is one of a small handful of Westerns I really enjoy), and I think fans of the Deadlands RPG would do well to take a look at it. About the only thing I don't care for is the title, which is sadly bland, especially when spaghetti westerns with titles like If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death exist!
7) Dead On Arrival 2: This is a sequel to Blood Brothers' zombie adventure "Dead On Arrival", though much as with the Romero Dead trilogy, this film is only related to the original through the existence of the cannibal zombie plague. The recommended viewing sidebar is nicely expanded in this book, including not only Romero's films but some of the infamous Italian zombie horrors (like Lucio Fulci's Zombie), and touches lightly on post-apocalyptic films. In an interesting editing glitch, the sidebar mentions an adventure that had been cut from the final version of Blood Brothers 2 called "Metamorph"; judging from the context it's mentioned in, it owed heavily to the John Carpenter version of The Thing, and I'm a little sorry we don't get a chance to read it.
The plot feels most like Day of the Dead, with its small group of military officers and scientists under siege, and even includes some of Day's more interesting plot twists. Like "The Evil Gun", this adventure is also lightly structured, presumably to allow for as many (or as few) zombie fights as the players would enjoy. There are also examples of some speeches the characters are likely to give, though I would encourage players to not follow them exactly (they're not badly written, but it's better when players give characters their own voice). All Flesh Must Be Eaten fans should probably give this one a look as well.
8) Carnival Knowledge: Ah, the ever-popular teen slasher genre, mixed with the ever-popular notion of Killer Clowns (though the sidebar includes a few non-horror nasty clowns, like Shakes the Clown). Given the way most teens in 80s slasher films behave, if the players keep true to genre conventions this could be a very short adventure!
This one's a fun read (I particularly liked the offhand reference to Klaus Nomi), and a little unusual for the slasher genre in that the player characters include a Final Boy along with the usual virtuous and virginal Final Girl. There was one small mistake overlooked in editing, in that an NPC described as mute (and playing a killer mime) has a sample line of dialogue, but ultimately that isn't important; actually, given the silliness of the line (an Indian character babbling about Kali), you might decide to have him be a different type of killer clown (or, if feeling especially bizarre, let him have a musical number).
9) Simply Red: This is straight up splatter horror in the tradition of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and suchlike (I like the poster's company credit of "Thin Line Cinema"), with a suburban family stumbling upon the home of a dangerous (and probably incestuous) brother-sister duo and their unpleasant pet pig. Players will have to get used to the idea that in all likelihood all their characters will die.
While this adventure is more structured than "Dead On Arrival 2" or "The Evil Gun," it also keeps its killers out of scene for most of the plot while the players explore the house they live in, and while the GM can have fun describing the remarkably nauseating contents therein, he might want to throw in a Spring-Loaded Cat or two to prevent players from becoming bored.
This adventure share a weird link with the original Blood Brothers: as in the final adventure of that book ("Horror Planet") one of the player characters isn't human—it's a dog. Playing a character who has even more limited communication than a chimpanzee capable of sign language might entertain some players, but I suspect he'd be better used as an NPC to provide false scares and distractions (barking at odd moments, darting off after strange smells, etc.). At least the writers didn't give him a flashback....
The book concludes with a set of oversized "movie passes" which can be photocopied and filled in with the time and location of a game and the name of the person running it—a fun idea which would lend itself well to convention games and new player nights for gaming clubs or stores.
Overall, this book strongly surpasses the original Blood Brothers in terms of writing and presentation, and if you're looking for either book (like the original, it has also been out of print for years but turns up on eBay), I would grab this one first. About the only thing it doesn't do better than the original is the cover art—while done by the same artist as the original (Lee Gibbons) and definitely executed with the same level of quality, a FrankenCthulhu monster doesn't quite measure up in terms of demented inspiration.
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