Weird Vietnam

[Legion1963]

Indeed. Weird 'Nam. While painting both of my longest running projects; Fantasy & Vietnam i have given it much thought and even came up with a scenario. An unknown part of Laos where an old volcano covered by thick jungle and riddled with mysterious tunnels below the steamy junglefloor. A special Forces team is tricked into entering this place by a decoy NVA patrol only to find themselves surrounded by slimy creatures and other strange phenomena. Finally tehy manage to find a hiding place in an old subterranean structure where they stumble upon a strange kind of lab where a gruesome discovery is made. Only a few of them make it out alive. Or are they? ;-)

[Legion1963]

Indeed. That YouTube video is massively inspirational. Excellent. ;-)

[Sir_Theo]

For some more inspiration have you seen the movie R-point? It's a Korean film set in the Vietnam war. It's a horror film so more supernatural than anything but there are some great ideas in it that would definitely fit into this kind of setting.

[robh]

Possible inspiration:  http://www.youtube.com/embed/Tm0V24IEHao?fs=1&start= 

Indeed. That YouTube video is massively inspirational. Excellent. ;-) 

Absolutely, all the Oats Studios stuff is amazing.
I just wish they get get the funding model sorted out so you do not have to go via Steam and that bloody DOS prompt window.....
I would happily pay for HD downloads of these to help fund the next episodes if they had a storefront.

[CPT Shanks]

Never looked at Weird "Nam as a theme. I remember the first House episode that had some inspiration and I think the opening for Ultimate Soldier.  But Firebase sets a new standard in production quality and bizarreness.

[Wyrmalla]

A few years ago I picked up the video game Shellshock 2: Blood Trails in a Steam Sale. It wasn't amazing in terms of game play (too many shooting galleries), but had an interesting theme. A special forces squad is infected with a 28 Days Later style of zombie plague. When they spread it any infected become more traditional zombies.

Most of that game you're fighting the Northern forces at the end of the Vietnam War, getting caught in ambushes, or losing positions. However, that's interspersed with the aftermath of that combat ...as the zombies start to come out of the jungle and infect the survivors. I remember there's one section where you're escaping through the North's tunnels, fighting the Northern forces (who are running away for some reason) as the zombies start to swarm into them.

Never did complete it. It wasn't a good game, but it may be worth pushing through if you want inspiration (or maybe don't, it was really bad).

[Jakar Nilson]

The South Vietnamese mounted a punitive campaign against the Hòa Hảo sect in the Mekong Delta in 1956. They had their claws deep into the previous government, prompting President Diem to bring in Catholics from the North into his government*, as they could be relied on not to be tainted.

The Hòa Hảo retreated further into the Delta and closer to Cambodia, where they felt safer practising their own brand of 'Buddhism'. They can be recognised by most of them having the 'Delta Look' and U.S. personnel are advised to treat them with caution and to never get off their boat!

* One of the things the South Vietnamese people as a whole were opposed to and which led to increased support for the VC, and ultimately the U.S. shoring up Diems regime. Ergo the Cult of Dagon is responsible for the Vietnam War.

 

I've been reading Lucien Bodard's account of the Indochine War, and given that the Hoa Hoa were one of the three sects that the French had allied with to keep the future Vietnam secure, this feels like yet another facepalm moment. To quote Monty Python's Life of Brian "We ARE struggling together!"

[DeltaBlue]

A few years ago I picked up the video game Shellshock 2: Blood Trails in a Steam Sale. It wasn't amazing in terms of game play (too many shooting galleries), but had an interesting theme. A special forces squad is infected with a 28 Days Later style of zombie plague. When they spread it any infected become more traditional zombies.

Most of that game you're fighting the Northern forces at the end of the Vietnam War, getting caught in ambushes, or losing positions. However, that's interspersed with the aftermath of that combat ...as the zombies start to come out of the jungle and infect the survivors. I remember there's one section where you're escaping through the North's tunnels, fighting the Northern forces (who are running away for some reason) as the zombies start to swarm into them.

Never did complete it. It wasn't a good game, but it may be worth pushing through if you want inspiration (or maybe don't, it was really bad).

it was a very very very bad game.... had great hopes for it from the trailer

[Arrigo]

* One of the things the South Vietnamese people as a whole were opposed to and which led to increased support for the VC, and ultimately the U.S. shoring up Diems regime. Ergo the Cult of Dagon is responsible for the Vietnam War.

Okay, sorry to ruin the parade, but even before Diem came to power the Buddhist and the Catholics were more or less roughly on par as number of followers. There is no real data supporting the contention that the Buddhist were the majority religion across the whole Indochina or even across the whole south Vietnam. The percentage quoted by some authors are bogus, for the simple reason that no religious census had been conducted at the time. Hue for example was roughly split in half between Catholics and Buddhist and was an important center for both communities... beside suspisicious claim of extremely suspicious authors there is no hard evidence that religion was a real factor in political allegiances pro or vs Saigon. The mass of interviews conducted on POW and ralliers points to different factors (sometime as basic as... the grandfather of my neighbor stolen my grandad chickens, my neighbor works for the government, I go to the NLF).

According to Moyar possibly, outside the main city the main 'religion' was a mix of ancestor cults with traces of both Buddhism and Cartholicism (and some evangelical and methodist teachings).

As far the sects were concerned... I think the craziest were the Cao Dai, with their leader calling himself the Pope, and claiming to be a direct descendant of Jesus, and then mixing it with polygamy and ritual prostitution... the Bin Xuyen were more on the Fu Manchu/Jon Woo side... they were an organized crime syndicate that had political power. Their boss hat a pet (in the sense he was keeping her as a pet, she was adult) tigress and he used to fed her subordinates who failed their missions...  and then there was mister Durbrow... another cultist... 

[Cherno]

Back to topic! 
                                                                                                                                                               

[Arlequín]

I'm still pretty sure the Cult of Dagon tops 'weird and unusual'. Certainly they were fed up to the gills with government meddling in their affairs.

 

[carlos marighela]

There is significant evidence of the supernatural during the war itself, like the way the sun would set in the East, over the South China Sea. I saw it in ‘The Green Berets’ so it must be true.