Friday's Choice Cuts: Nightmare (aka Atmosfear) (1991: A Couple 'A Cowboys/J.W. Spears & Sons)

image from Bloody-Disgusting.com

Since I mentioned it earlier this week while covering Beyond the Gates I figured today's Choice Cut would be the Nightmare VCR board game (or if you're in other parts of the world it might be known as Atmosfear... which is weird because I definitely remember commercials for both as a kid).

As far as the board game portion goes, your goal is simple:  Collect keys and then make it to the center.  In the center are pieces that each player wrote their own "nightmare" on and you have to pick one and hope it isn't yours.  If you do this, and accomplish it all before the VHS is done, you win.  You'll have cards to play at specific times too which will require you to yell or do something in order to gain an advantage.  The fate cards are like "chance" in Monopoly where it might be good or bad.  Each of your characters are taken from religious, folk, or actual history.  For example, you could play as the blood countess Elizabeth Bathory, or the king of the Ghede in Vodou, Baron Samedi.  Of course they just have their name and list them as "vampire," or "zombie" so it's not getting too in depth there.

Now for the tape part.  This is the golden portion of the board game.  With the first game you get a random guy in shitty lighting and a potato sack hood as the "Gatekeeper."  He will assign you to do things, banish you to the black hole, free you from the black hole, or just make you do weird stuff before continuing.  As you get in the last 10-15 minutes of the game he gets fucking bat shit crazy with making weird noises and saying crazy stuff.  I can see why, if you were a kid, and you played this in the dark with some friends, you might piss your TMNT undies with this guy popping up randomly and screaming at you.  As an adult it's just hilarious but you'd be surprised how quickly people get into it.  You can actually check out the video on YouTube, or just watch some of it now here:

There are supposedly two sequels to it with booster tapes and then a reboot of sorts that came out in 2004.  As I mentioned, I have the second game (or the first booster) but I haven't played it yet.  I have watched some of the tape and it's pretty much the same thing only this time with Baron Samedi as the gatekeeper.

I lucked out and found this for $3 at a thrift store around 10 years ago.  I'm sure it could be in others as well because who really owns a VCR any more?  However, you can play this just via YouTube and there are pictures of the board and rules online so you could basically do your own.  Although if you want you could just put the video on at a party or make it into a drinking game.

Beyond the Gates (2016) 1h 24m

Netflix was broken for some reason and only loaded 27 movies when I looked up the horror section.  This sucks because I rolled 113 as far as what film to watch.  Being the resourceful person I deny being but really am, I chose one that looked the most 80's: Beyond the Gates.

Are you old enough to remember VHS board games?  Ones like Atmosfear/Nightmare?  If you weren't then what it consisted of was a board, pieces, and a VHS movie you interacted with while playing.  I own Nightmare, and thanks to a friend burning the VHS to a DVD for me I've played it dozens of times.  I also have the sequel but haven't played it out of laziness.  A majority of the time is just rolling the dice and moving your piece while collecting things, but every so often you would get screamed at by some old guy in shitty make-up about calling him "Gatekeeper" or being banished to the black hole.  You know, stuff you pay people on the internet to do now.

So why am I bringing up weird nostalgia you don't care about?  Beyond the Gates is a horror film based around a VHS game with the same name.  After their father goes missing for months, two brothers are left with emptying and closing down the family video store.  They end up finding the game in the locked office and the tape in the VCR.  The brothers watch the start of the tape but then bring it home to show one of the brother's girlfriend-wife-person-thing.  The woman on the tape tells them that the only way to save their dad's soul is to play the game.  So the game ensues...

This was a fucking rad movie.  I still had 15 minutes left and I was already on Amazon buying the blu-ray of it.  It has its b-movie moments but I feel like they knew what they were making.  Nods to the 80's, including some sweet synth score work, combined with a well thought out plot and some great gore and kills.... fucking stellar.  Also, I didn't realize this while choosing it, but the cast has some clout (at least to me).  One of the brothers is Chase Williamson who plays Dave in John Dies at the End, David Bruckner who directed V/H/S and Southbound has an appearance, and Jesse Merlin who does the voice of Fang in Street Fighter V (okay, less horror, more geek related) has a small roll.

I give Beyond the Gates 5 mac n' cheese spiral boxes out of 5 (because I ate too much of it while watching this:

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