B Movies Inspirations: Outpost (2008)

Rated R

This movie is a rare one, but maybe I am alone in this.  I found it on Netflix, watched it, bought it on Amazon, and watched it again.  It is, in my estimation, a rare gem. But where can you go wrong with Nazi zombies? Like I said, this is one of my new favorite films because it just clicked with me.  I love the premise, the production and the look and feel.  I did end up using it in one campaign as a side adventure.  I even mapped out the entire outpost.

From IMDB.com

“In war-torn Eastern Europe, a world-weary group of mercenaries discover a long-hidden secret in an abandoned WWII bunker.”

Or from Wikipedia.com

“Outpost is a 2008 British horror film, directed by Steve Barker and written by Rae Brunton, about a rough group of experienced mercenaries who are hired to take a mysterious businessman into the woods where a WWII-era military bunker would be found, and soon they find themselves fighting for their lives.”

I am a World War II buff, a horror fan and a fan of anything with zombies, so this was right up my ally.  Another area that I am fascinated by is Nazi Germany’s occult research and secret experiments like Die Glocke and Project Riese.  This movie delves into quite a bit of that in a simple and creepy way.  The mercenaries find an old Nazi outpost where such experiments were apparently done.  They inadvertently cause a situation that resurrects several Nazi super soldiers, and mayhem ensues.

How the movie ends does not matter as much as the general premise, and it is quite useful in any genre of RPG. Going beyond the obvious Nazi Zombie inspiration, these are what I thought of:

• Setting: Any – Secret experiments gone wrong, buried and forgotten.  The outpost was a small underground facility with some horrible secrets. That can easily translate to any setting.
• Setting: Call of Cthulhu – Roping in anything Lovecraftian into a Nazi experiment is very scary on its own but placing it into a claustrophobic setting like this outpost makes it even worse.
• Setting: Any Sci-fi – On a planet or on a lost station, this kind of plot line creates all kinds of possibilities for the GM.

The general plotline of this movie revolves around a device that apparently does two things – reality shifting and re-animation – two concepts I do not always put together.  It is very Lovecraftian in a lot of ways, with similarities to From Beyond, among others.  But the hows and the whys really do not matter.  The experiment can be anything, although I admittedly like Nazi zombies in general.  Every universe has something about its history that is feared.  Every setting has some part of its history it never wants to see return.  Resurrect that in some dark way and run with it!