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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8573642" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 94: April 1994part 5/5Into The Dark: Another issue where James just jumps straight into the reviews without any preamble and lets us figure out if there's any theme to them on our own. Those seem to be coming more frequently these days.Godzilla vs Biollante pits the most famous kaiju of all against a giant mutant … rose? Huh, they must really have been running out of ideas. Guess they wanted to get in on that Little Shop of Horrors fanbase, since that was a hit just a few years before, and the original ending had Audrey II grow to kaiju size and take over the world. It still manages to be more scary and less cheesy than the 50's movies, so it's a decent enough addition to the monster roster. From Hell it Came is a cheesy 50's monster movie where a man is killed and comes back as a monstrous tree to get revenge. Like many old suit based monsters, the resulting creature is so lumbering and awkward it's hard to take seriously as a threat and the people look stupid for standing around and letting it catch them. The dialogue is also cheesy and overwrought to the point of parody. One for the MST3K crowd only. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is of course one of the classic old horror movies, speaking to both our personal and political fears about trust and if it's ever possible to truly know anyone else. It's been analysed to death when it comes to symbolism, but James still finds it holds up as a story too, with good casting and tight pacing. If you can, get the version without the executive meddling adding an abrupt happy ending. It does not improve it as a story. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) does not improve on it's predecessor in most ways. While longer, it's also slower, and changing the setting from a small town to a larger city makes the change in people's personalities less personal and emotionally impactful on the lead. Still watchable, but not moving the genre forward in the same way.Seedpeople is one of the many B-movie rip-offs churned out by Full Moon Features, who were apparently the Asylum of the video rental era. James has exceedingly scathing things to say about both it and them. They suck and only survive through sheer cheapness of production. Stick to the real thing. Cruise Con?! The final page decides to plug a particular convention much more strongly than the rest of the listings. I guess cruise ships are expensive to hire, so they have more to lose if no-one shows up than some town hall or rented hotel ballroom. An ok issue overall, but with a particularly large and good set of Forgotten Realms articles, giving us more bits and pieces that never appeared anywhere else. The longer this goes on, the more it becomes apparent how important Polyhedron was in establishing the Realms' supremacy over all the other settings, rewarding the hardcore gamers with as many details as their brain can take in and the sense of satisfaction that they know things about the place non-members can't. Will next issue have even more of that, or will it be dominated by one of their increasingly rare excursions to another system? Tune in tomorrow, and all that jazz.</blockquote>

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