Cure (1997)

 

Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Screenplay: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Cast: Kôji Yakusho as Kenichi Takabe; Masato Hagiwara as Kunio Mamiya; Tsuyoshi Ujiki as Makoto Sakuma; Anna Nakagawa as Fumie Takabe; Misayo Haruki as Tomoko Hanaoka; Yoriko Dôguchi as Dr. Akiko Miyajima; Denden as Oida

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Disarmingly chirpy music plays over a man beating a female sex worker to death with a pipe, and that is the only unsubtle moment in all of Cure, the one moment which is lurid in its intentional creepiness. The rest of this film is one whose legacy is part of a slow burn which follows seemingly random killings by people oblivious to why they committed them. There is a mystery man in the centre of all this introduced early on, one no one should give a lighter to, a cigarette or even allow access to water for, someone whose vagueness in his motives become as much part of the disquieting core of Cure.

This is considered the breakthrough film for Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who had been before working since the early seventies on shorts, in the early eighties for his first few theatrical films. Pinku erotic films, a 1989 horror film Sweet Home, lost to licensing but whose videogame tie-in is held as a huge innovator for the survival horror genre, even a whole TV movie franchise called Suit Yourself or Shoot Yourself (1995-6) all came before, but Cure was a film who helped paved the direction for a working director into his future legacy. The premise is that you could find in any genre film, something of a huge virtue to Kiyoshi Kurosawa as his films, even his more drama based works, have very easy to grasp premises, but their tones are what stand out. He has even talked about his interest in genre films, so the passion was here, Cure explicitly in tribute to the American horror movies he grew up watching and able to capitalise at that time in the Japanese film industry to tackle such a film¹. In this case, it is a crime thriller with overt horror tones where, with these mysterious killings transpiring, detective Kenichi Takabe (Kôji Yakusho) finds himself trying to figure out these random killings. Cure however becomes a film which perturbs, all in spite but befitting to those films the director-writer grew up with.

Takabe's situation is a tightly winding coil. His wife, due to psychological injury, has a lack of short term memory, lost in a past before with behaviors of someone needing extensive care and therapy, such as repeatedly turning on the tumble dryer with nothing within it. His training as a police officer, as he talks of, is to bury his emotions, which becomes a challenge against a mysterious figure, later learnt to be a medical student named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) who, as the antagonist, is almost a cipher in his existence. Mamiya is a no one who seems oblivious to existence, asking the same questions over and over, until it is clear he lulls people into traps.

It is a spoiler, but early on it is explicit that hypnotic suggestion is the cause of these murders, but Cure’s tone crawls under the skin, its sedateness bristling in an increasing dread. Cure is not an elaborate film in style, exceptionally subdued as was to become Kurosawa’s trademark even with a short film like Beautiful New Bay Area Project (2013), a production which was a tribute to martial arts action fight scenes. All his films even with the supernatural are grounded in reality, even here in Cure when the gruesomeness of this scenario is not held back from. The murders, where a police office can suddenly point blank shoot another, is implicitly shown as people’s darkest emotions being unlocked, their angers or thoughts and grudges taking over as they are unaware of what is happening in their actions. This is more uncomfortable in moments, like the husband who had nothing but seemingly love for his wife he kills, and in little pieces as Kurosawa’s film becomes increasing more disturbing.

Thanks to films like Cure, Kiyoshi Kurosawa became an acclaimed auteur, beyond genre films to the likes of Wife of a Spy (2020), his thoughtful period thriller set in World War II with the same DNA from this film, where he is respected as a director who easily slides into genre and dramas with ease. Pulse (2001) was another legendary film, another breakthrough for him if Cure had not succeeded, as a supernatural ghost film which managed to be even more unsettling in its slow burn released not long afterwards. Cure is a pure horror thriller, but it stands out in how its growing sense of dread escalates. The premise, not overtly loaded in moral themes nonetheless becomes so for subtext in how it deals with neurosis and blocked violence in people if allowed to be let loose. Even the concept becomes virus like for those who get involved in the investigation, so no one is safe. When you see the growing back-story of Mamiya's life, it opens likes layers of an onion and yet will never be fully answered, only with the work of Franz Mesmer the one clear guide, a real German physician who developed the concept of "animal magnetism", an invisible natural force (Lebensmagnetismus) possessed by all living things, including humans, animals, and vegetables, which would later influence the concept of hypnotism in his own "mesmerism" acts to cure patients. It is befitting, considering the disturbing force which holds sway on people, even those who spread its influence, especially as the finale ends on a frankly supernatural centre, a Dr. Mabuse-like voice on an old phonograph cylinder, literally a voice, behind all this as we will never find the true culprit, only those who followed this chain. As was Pulse’s central ghosts, who followed rituals which were unnatural but made sense, this makes Cure scarier and more powerful. That Mamiya acts like he is helping people, when cognisant, unloading their anxieties even if it means killing people, adds to this discomfort.

The sleight of hand Kurosawa has, where his talent was on display, is when the quiet filmmaking style is toyed with; the first time, where there is an abrupt and unseen before jump cut in the editing, to a caged monkey, and Takabe experiences a horrible nightmare scenario, is where you see the mastery of Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Trying to review a film in text is at times a perverse act, and here it is especially the case as, unless I gave up the entire premise and spoilers, I cannot explain more, and yet that in it would miss the point of what Cure managed, able to explain less than what the film wishes to never disclose to the audience. The best thing to do is, simply, to watch Cure, as even with all the plot details explained, this is one of those cases where plot details are meaningless explained out of context, where the tone and what is implicit is where the talent of the film’s craft, and when it buries itself in one’s flesh, is felt as a dread.

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1) Embrace the role of chance in filmmaking, says Qumra Master Kiyoshi Kurosawa, published for the Doha Film Institute on March 29th 2020.

Ghost Talker's Daydream (2004)

 

Director: Osamu Sekita

Screenplay: Katsumasa Kanazawa and Kenichi Kanemaki

Based on the manga by Saki Okuse and illustrated by Sankichi Meguro

(Voice) Cast: Masumi Asano as Misaki Saiki; Tomokazu Sugita as Souichiro Kadotake; Yukari Tamura as Ai Kunugi; Daisuke Kishio as Mitsuru Fujiwara

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) / A 1000 Anime Crossover

 

"This anime adaptation had always been one of interest for me because I was a fan of the source manga. Found discounted in a British bookstore, the source manga by Saki Okuse and illustrated by Sankichi Meguro, whose work was adapted into Twilight of the Dark Master (1997), an obscure Akiyuki Shinbo helmed horror OVA. It is also lurid, about an albino dominatrix named Saiki Misaki who, in-between her sex worker career which also includes writing for a porno magazine, is using her ability to see and communicate with ghosts to help a branch of the local government exorcise buildings and environments. The source manga is violent, sexually explicit and sleazy, and tackles subjects like sexual violence. It was also however a work which looked exceptional, with the illustrations by Meguro, and had managed to be the right side of lurid by being smarter, building a world whose images could be ghoulish as much as it played to sex comedy. Sadly, published by Dark Horse, they only got to volume six before the series was cancelled for English language release, never continued up past through the remaining four volumes, and managing to end on the worse cliff-hanger as well to emphasis this fact involving a haunted apartment complex..."

The anime, as the review gets into, does not sell the manga well. It is lurid, very lurid, and suffers from the fact it scrapes the surface of the material, not the most interesting content, and struggles from its clear lower budget next to the source material's art. It is also, however, an adaptation I had always been curious of, and as a fan of what little of the source material got an English translation, I have to admit there was enough here to appreciate. It is absolutely a manga, not only one I wish had its entire run available, which needed a better adaptation if you could snap your fingers and unleash it.

For the full review, follow the link HERE.

Lurking Fear (1994)

 

Director: C. Courtney Joyner

Screenplay: C. Courtney Joyner

Based on the serialized short story by H.P. Lovecraft

Cast: Jon Finch as Bennett; Blake Adams as John Martense; Ashley Laurence as Cathryn Farrell; Jeffrey Combs as Dr. Haggis; Allison Mackie as Ms. Marlowe; Paul Mantee as Father Poole; Vincent Schiavelli as Knaggs; Joseph Leavengood as Pierce

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

He was nice to goldfish…

Two women, sisters, are locked in a building arming to protect them and the child of one from what is outside. Their concern is well heeded as there is an entity trying to get after the baby with horrible intentions…tragedy strikes when one of the women is pulled through the hole the abomination made, leading to a bloody mess.

This is the prologue; a set up to a Full Moon Production adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s serialized 1922 work of the same name. This is a very loose “adaptation” truthfully, Lovecraft’s tale of a local monster hunter obsessed with the macabre in a 1920s setting finding himself involved in a curious series of gristly massacres with monstrous results. Whilst also showing a hint of Lovecraft’s unfortunate racism, sadly to be expected alongside his very idiosyncratic use of description, it is however a macabre and compelling piece. Like the beautiful ring that is rigged with a fatal trap you can never disarm, most Lovecraft stories come with the issue that, a true one-off in talent, the man himself was as mortally flawed as you could get, which is almost ridiculous in this story’s case as it is casual racism off-the-cuff. The story itself in entirely the basic set up of a perverse family lineage that lead to troglodyte like figures who eat other humans, something timeless regardless of setting, something which has a befitting Americana morbidness to it and could be found as far forward Bone Tomahawk (2015), and is not an issue to see here if for budget reasons to set in the then-modern day.  

His tale is a different animal to Full Moon’s, which is fun but does open up how I have not really come to appreciate Full Moon truthfully. Only getting into their back catalogue long after my adolescence, their films are not opaque or complicated, not necessarily even weird, competent and frankly distancing for me in how they play their stories completely straight. This is a type of film, as I eventually came to enjoy the movie for what it is, entirely for its simple pleasures, not for reinventing the wheel. Lurking Fear is in the same scenario as the source, though this is thankfully a tale, around people trapped in one location, which brought in a few character actors too. A man imprisoned for four years, guided by Vincent Schiavelli for a brief cameo, inherits from his criminal father the other half of a map which takes him to Lefferts Corner, place of the original source material, and a cemetery where his father stashed away money in one of the graves. Criminals, led by Bennett (Jon Finch), are following behind him, but for those living in Lefferts Corner, they are a nuisance as they themselves are dealing with a band of baby eating, flesh devouring monstrosities living under the graves in caverns in the cemetery. It is here where the film is helped as, whilst basic for me, there is fun to be had with a solidly made horror tale with a crew of memorable figures.

Whilst it was only afterwards the film ended I recognized her, it was a delight to encounter Ashley Laurence again, famously the lead of Hellraiser (1987), a working actor as everyone else here who, with the figures Full Moon signed up to these films, had name recognition. Here as well you can also time stamp when the film was made as, playing the surviving sister who took the loss of the other badly, Laurence plays her character of Cathryn as a Sarah Conner. This is marking how Linda Hamilton, reprising the role of Sarah Conner for Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), a huge blockbuster at the time, was playing a character who had transformed into a hardened figure capable in context having prepared for the robot apocalypse in firearms and survival skills, a feminist figure and also one as seen here that other films were happy to evoke. Jeffrey Combs is thankfully here too, playing a doctor helping Cathryn, grizzled from having to treat the wounds of those who managed to surviving lurking fear attacks with only face disfiguring scars from their claws. Whilst a stereotype, the context makes it completely understandable why the doctor who drinks here is an alcoholic from the nightmare he has survived so far.

Add a pregnant young woman and a priest, and Lurking Fear pretty much goes from A to B as a plot. Full Moon are sticklers for telling their plots, and neither are they like horror films from even lower budgets or non-professional groups where “quirks” can accidentally slip in. Lurking Fear was entertaining, undeniably, but the moments which shone here were when there were a few eccentricities allowed to slip in. Jon Finch by himself was one of them, playing the gangster boss, an English actor whose accent stood out among the cast and whose role ended up with some additional camp to the proceedings. His is a fascinating get for the production very later into his career. The lead of Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (1971), a Hammer Horror and Shakespearian alumni who wandered into this, who plays his small role with a glorious amount of ham only Combs is getting into. Combs is eventually breaking out the communion wine and asking God forgiveness for this act, but still manages to be more straight laced than Finch, who thankfully managed to get dialogue, despite being the callous villain of the piece, that allowed him to start throwing out pithy remarks. The premise is far closer to Key Largo (1948), the famous film noir of people trapped in a single location which has likely influenced so many horror films without many realizing, than the original Lovecraft text, but there is a considerable amount to this film where it became entirely as enjoyable as it was because of the actors involved. I am not wishing to forget Allison Mackie, the mirror of Ashley Laurence on the villains’ side of the cast, someone who I swear had a prominent role in something that immediately made her recognizable to me, but sadly seems to have had a career not as prolific as it should have been considering she gives it her all here. Even Blake Adams, sadly the male lead who is cursed, as most do, with being the least interesting figure among character actors and figures like Ashley Laurence getting a lot to chew on being tough, still gets to throw in with the sarcasm and is not bulletproof from the monstrosities onscreen. As a horror film too, this gets suitably macabre when the creatures, a family mutated by inbreeding as the source text had them, are living underground among the corpses in a necropolis hellhole of caverns, with all the fake but appropriately morbid corpse and bone props the production could get their hands on.

It is not a perfect film, which could be seen as the worse discredit one could get, neither super negative or positive, but considering that I have had a cold reservation for Full Moon films I have seen, this one was fun, which in itself was entirely what the company has built itself upon, and why they have such a diehard following as the decades have passed. Certainly with its eye towards crime storytelling as well, this feels different as well from something like Subspecies (1991), and this is where one of the coolest back-story details comes into play in regards to its director-writer C. Courtney Joyner. He is a figure whose career as a regular collaborator with Full Moon Productions shows the positivity the company has, in how Charles Band its figurehead has directors and figures producing films for them over decades in various roles, but he also has this enticing second career in terms of westerns. As a writer of western texts, both actual western stories but also documents on western films, including audio commentaries on westerns like Blue Underground’s 2013 release for Grand Duel (1972). Knowing this adds a nice flourish to Lurking Fear, as whilst this is not an exact adaptation of the original Lovecraft text, he clearly added touches that are crime based but could easily, with its isolated rural location, have explicitly Western frontier vibes in the modern day. Little details like this will make me come to appreciate a film like this, and I had already really enjoyed Lurking Fear as the film it was.

The Demons of Ludlow (1983)

 

Director: Bill Rebane

Screenplay: William Arthur and Alan Ross

Cast: Paul Bentzen as Chris the Preacher; Debra Dulman as Sybil; Stephenie Cushna as Debra; Mary Walden as Elenore; Carol Perry as Ann; Patricia J. Statz as Emily

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

The Demons of Ludlow was Bill Rebane making a supernatural film in the midst of the eighties. The film's existence, from Bill Rebane's own words¹, is as much because he had acquired an old piano in an auction, and wished to use it rather than leave it lugged around his studio unused. I respect anyone wanting to improvise a film just from this, as stranger examples do indeed exist, as those who can attest Tammy and the T-Rex (1994) actually existing can say, a film where Paul Walker has his brain implanted into a cybernetic T-Rex robot, in a romantic comedy with Denise Richards and gore in the uncut version, which exists someone offered director Stewart Raffill to use their animatronic T-Rex. Rebane's film is more sober, and a traditionally macabre film even if one made in the midst of what would have been the slasher boom after the first Friday the 13th movie in 1980.

Set in the small town of Ludlow, a tiny community who population is dwindling, with older people and few younger ones, their two hundredth bicentennial celebration, since the town's founding, is presented with an centuries old piano return from England belonging to the town founder. "Returned" is the right word, as Debra (Stephenie Cushna), a news reporter who grew up in the town and has returned, is aware of stories that this harmonium piano came from Ludlow, and the locals are not admitting this. It is very obvious the town's foundation is cursed, the piano a literal harbinger of revenge as, literally with demonic figures or ghosts of the town's locals brought up upon its arrive, it is devouring the young and, as Debra will learn, is the revenge of its town founder, banished and in gristly circumstances which makes his centuries old anger potent.

Rebane is a man out of time to this decade of the eighties, someone of a slower pace to his films, not remotely making a film of the slasher period even if this bring some gore with it. That said, this suits his films entirely, and as I have been adapting to his style, I am becoming fond of this, as well as being aware that, alongside how extensive dialogue is in his films, this is his idiosyncrasies that make his cinematic character. More hauntings transpire as people are now in danger - the local priest aware something is wrong; the major who wants to hide their past; the dissatisfied priest's wife; or Emily, the mentally disabled adult woman living with her older mother and her dolls that are among those targeted by the ghosts. These visitations are embraced by Rebane in terms of the aesthetic, like red bouncing balls (à la The Changeling (1980)), characters in period costume materialising through doors and mirrors (with extensive use of the fog machine), and clearly an extensive budget for invisible wire for objects to float onscreen.

These productions show their context, where Rebane's family tree is among many working on the credits, and the snow covered Wisconsin territory adding a nice atmosphere for a cheesy but engaging spooky tale. Bill Rebane's work is an acquired taste, as his genre films are beholden to their dialogue, and The Demons of Ludlow is his most conventional film from those I have seen, which is not a bad thing. My appreciation of these films, however, as I have been going through Bill Rebane's filmography has grown significantly as I have also seen how his film making developed over the years in a chronology. Certainly for this genre, this is rewarding to see, and Bill Rebane did make a slasher film, one called Blood Harvest (1987) starring Tiny Tim of all people, so he was happy to move along with the genres he passed in idiosyncratic ways.

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1) From one of the Straight Shooter segments, a multi-part interview with director Bill Rebane about each film included for Weird Wisconsin: The Bill Rebane Collection for Arrow Video.

Games of the Abstract: Night Slashers (1993)

 

Developer: Data East

Publisher: Data East

Three Players

Arcade / Windows / Nintendo Switch

 

I barely caught the golden age of arcade machines. Thankfully, Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire, which I went to with family in my childhood for holidays and days out, used to have an arcade whose machines, before the ticket winning ones took over, which were the old coin guzzlers. That in itself was dubious in hindsight, forcing you to shell out coins to play, but I can proudly say with my older sister we beat an obscure beat em up like Night Slashers, more grounded in its own action film influences, which I hope one day to track down, preferably without having to use as many coins as we did between us to bulldoze through it.

I was able to play Konami's legendary The Simpsons (1991) game and their Bucky O'Hare (1992), different from the NES game as it was also a beat-em-up. Even the push to polygons was felt as, unsure whether I played on it or not, even an obscure place nearest the north of England between Sutton-on-Sea and Mablethorpe had a Tekken 3 (1997) cabinet among the others in their arcade. Sadly these cabinets are gone and whilst luck can be on your side - with Guitar Hero Arcade or a Daytona USA cabinet in its various guises still possible to find in the East Midlands sea sides - there is also the additional factor, honestly, that pushing coins into these machines at a steady pace, rather than finding an arcade which allows free-to-play for set paid hours, makes less sense nowadays as a hardcore gamer when the free-to-play arcades are becoming more prevalent. For an hour of fun at the seaside, yes it is a pleasure especially if you can put your name in the high score tables, but that has to be tempered with this and that the others, which give you tickets you collect to win prizes, are inherently uninteresting especially when you realise the ticket system is rigged to not let you win anything special unless you get really good at cracking certain types of games.

This childhood was one of the reasons, as you can tell, beat-em-ups have always been interesting for me, and Night Slashers was one I never encountered in the wild during this period in the mid to late nineties. So many arcade machines were produced at the time, even those which never left Japan, which we only have MAME to thank for preserving, but thankfully, Night Slashers with a selection of Date East titles were preserved, the company Zigguraut Games with 612GAMES bringing them to the likes of the PC in 2021¹ with a Nintendo Switch version available for this game. It was an odd yet delightful change of pace for Zigguraut Games, usually focusing on idiosyncratic PC titles or weird FMV edutainment games about talking dinosaurs (Zombie Dinos From Planet Zeltoid (1995)), but they helped signed a collaboration to bring Data East's titles to various consoles and computer game sites like Steam and GOG. Data East were a prolific company at the time of Night Slashers, whose reputation in the eighties beforehand was as much for pinball machines, something which at that time, when founded in 1985, was created from purchasing the pinball division of Stern Electronics, an America company, but would, ironically a year later from the game I am covering here in 1994, would be sold to Sega². Data East would go bankrupt in 2003, with most of their video game library (with exceptions) acquired in February 2004 by G-Mode, a Japanese mobile game content provider³, another example I have tackled of the period into the Millennium tragically slaying legends of the arcade era of videogames in Japan, such as how SNK went.

Windjammers (1994) is one of their more famous titles, a cult Frisbee based sports game, even managing to get Windjammers 2 (2022), a Dotemu creation off its legacy, and theirs is a fascinating career even in the titles they publish and did not develop, which makes the growing number which are being released more enticing. There are quite a few fascinating titles I wish were released or on a wider amount of platforms - Boogie Wings (1992), a horizontal scrolling shooter whose success was so minimal that, tragically, it has never been re-released; Strahl (1993), a Full Motion Video interactive anime movie in the vein of the Dragon's Lair games; and two of the most infamous arcades titles ever made, Tattoo Assassins (1994), from their American Data East Pinball team, a cancelled riff on Mortal Kombat's success which, having been able to play in an actual arcade cabinet, needs its own piece on its bizarre and misbegotten nature, and Trio the Punch (1990), from the Japanese side and surprisingly released on Nintendo Switch in 2022⁴, which makes the bar for the weirdest beat-em-up ever conceived extremely difficult to top with its existence, something I can attest to in having played and completely it to its bizarre apocalyptic conclusion. 

Night Slashers among these titles is more conventional, more your classic beat-em-up than whatever Trio the Punch conceived, but even if you do not fight Colonel Sanders, (yes the KFC figurehead), Night Slashers makes up for it in its Halloween tone. Beat-em-ups, like scrolling shooters, are a fascination for me knowing full well I do not have as much skill with them as I should have, that as much of their experience for me was the hope you had a lot of coins or infinite continues to bulldoze through them, the pleasure instead the experience of going through their rollercoaster of visual and audio experience as much as the gameplay. Challenge is one thing, but infinite continues and the chance to improve each game feels more meaningful and fun, something the modern day has an advantage over the past even if these types of games no longer appear at seaside arcades. Especially for a game which fully embraces the fact it is the horror based beat-em-up of the era, evoking the nineties fully, Night Slashers thankfully came to the likes of GOG with the ability to have infinite continues, the challenge an incentive to play this over and over, getting better to the possible one credit victory.

Night Slashers evokes that era of the nineties where video games could exist outside of narrative logic, something uniquely their own as mechanics stabilised a reality but what cohered as a game would be incredibly imaginative in perplexing ways without logic being involved, the kitchen sink thrown in for go measure. Here, there has been a zombie apocalypse before that plot point became popular in the Millennium, but with a variety of different monsters and mutants also appearing to make this worse, the ultimate of apocalypses with the dead being experimented on to turn into zombies and portals to demons needed to be sealed. You have three characters to choose from - Jack Hunter, a North American and a heavy hitter due to android arms; Christopher Smith, the balanced figured of the trio, and an English vampire hunter whose martial arts ability has additional elemental powers; and Hong Hua Zhao, sticking to the cliché of the female characters being the faster and light weight ones, but in itself not a bad thing here in the slighted as the figure I played the most in the game, a Chinese exorcist who even has paper charms as an animation in her attacks, and whose speed here is not with her being weaker either.

Mechanics are far less the concern for me to talk about, which might upset some readers but thankfully comes from the knowledge true experts of these games will have hopefully gotten to Night Slashers, whilst for me I am entirely vibing off a game like this like other beat-em-ups for their style and fun playability. For those who have never heard of this genre, these are different from fighting games in that you fight in stages, where you progress in environments you can (almost) fully move in, only able to progress as you clear enemies out the way. Many like this have basic attack buttons, throws and a special, thought this one has the annoying trait that said special drains health which has to be factored in as a huge risk to make, especially if you play in single player, for a game whose enemies swarm on mass eventually with knowledge this could have three players at once, at least two on the arcade cabinets. There is more to the controls, and what you can pull off will improve as you "get" the game as any, including the fun trick of planting enemies into the ground to be able to punt their exposed heads.

The really interesting thing for me coming to this is as a Japanese game tackled Western horror tropes. It is not the only one and has been a constant - say hello to Castlevania as a franchise where they have likely covered every major type of monster in global mythology and folklore - but Night Slashers as a beat em up feels like it is fetishising this in its own distinct way. Data East was like many who, in the era when arcades were huge, were making countless games but were proficient in them. This, like Konami with Castlevania and Capcom putting together the Darkstalkers franchise - a cult one-on-one fighting game where a succubus became the iconic figure among its variety of monstrous figures - feel like the creations of game designers who, not only fed on the likes of Universal horror movies from the United States, but also started cribbing from pop culture on a variety of folklore creatures and entities, even if out of their original context in peculiar ways.

It is strange, admittedly, Dracula despite being the figure we see in the mid-game cut scenes, is beaten halfway through. Even the Grim Reaper is not the final boss, despite the pleasure of grappling him and kneeing him over and over, leading to a giant demon robot with an unfair habit of putting up a personal electrified field as effectively the mastermind of this apocalyptic scenario. So many beat-em-ups were made at this time, so Night Slashers at least has the memorability to embrace this ghoulish tone, be it the large and rotund ghouls in suits who do leaping dives and rolls, or the bosses themselves, such as a golem to fighting a mummy in a cargo plane, made more memorable as the Pharaoh learnt martial arts and pro wrestling suplex moves in his era, and proves a solid challenge.

In terms of game play, originally for three players, you will be swarmed as you go on, which proves a challenge for one credit, as is the fact that, until fighting games could have sidesteps, this is absolutely a case where side stepping or moving around the environment, allowing you three dimensional movement even on an isometric 2D plane, is a requirement, with the added advantage that this was not one of the games in this genre, despite there being a jump button, where you have platforming elements. The combat here can be seen as much slower than a fighting game, and instead the concern is using the movement set to the best you can, dodging/blocking set patterns of attacks, and using the props/health pickups when you can, this from the era where eating a hotdog found on the floor does not cause food poisoning but much needed health. It is of the era, not in being dated, but that alongside beat-em-ups being once a concept big companies like Capcom invested heavily in, it feels of a different time. Nowadays you have re-releases or new games from indie developers, but there are traits to this which are sincerely of the time this was put together, from the 16-bit chiptune rock score, by Tomoyoshi Sato, to the inherent absurdities taken as matter of fact such as a sub-boss being a helicopter you have to punch and kick to death up in the air, or that an earlier one is effectively an evil Geppetto and Pinocchio team up. Some of it is the technical aspects available at the time, and translation, such as voice over sound bites and the cheesy text when facing bosses, adding to the pure gorgonzola on display.

It is not a scary game, merely a ghoulish one, where one aspect which is unutalised, the two bonus stages, shows tongues were firmly in cheek. One is punting zombies stuck in the ground, the other zombie bowling, and the advertisement for zombie fast food for the undead audience visibly shows someone was having a whale of a time with the silliness here. The one factor which did not carry over, in the Zigguraut Games version, is that the original arcade version for Japan was considerably gorier, with red blood rather than zombies decaying into goo, and little cool touches which would have been appreciated, such as the "Go" sign, used in beat-em-ups to tell players to move on, switching "To Hell" written in blood a moment afterwards. That version and the version I played would have been a nice thing to preserve together, but that is more a preservation issue. The game as we get it, and which ever version, is still a morbid campy experience, between facing a mad scientist experimenting on corpses in a morgue, to the fact one of your playable is your stereotypical blonde muscular American who is a "psychic android".

This type of game, even if such eccentricities are thankfully still to be found in the modern day, is nonetheless with its tone distinct, which is interesting as in 2021, an announcement was made that Forever Entertainment, in partnership with the new license owners G-Mode, were going to remake Night Slashers⁵. Forever Entertainment are actually a Polish company, and they have been interesting in how, whilst they have a few titles under their belts, they have come known for work with Sega licenses, the 2020 remake of Panzer Dragoon (1995), and their 2022 remake of House of the Dead (1996). Remakes are something I am wary of if the remakes replace the originals - wishing the original nineties polygons of both those titles and the work of Forever Entertainment co-existed - but it fascinates that Night Slashers, an obscure title for such a long time, has gained enough potential that even came about back in 2021 as a plan. It is, for those interested, a very fun experience just playing the original spite version back in 1993.

 

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1) Ziggurat Interactive Releases Five More Data East Arcade Titles On PC, posted by Gavin Sheehan for Bleeding Cool and published on June 27th 2021.

2) What are STERN, Data East and SEGA Pinball Machines?, taken from Home Leisure Direct and their Pinball Machine Buying Advice articles.

3) Data East goes bankrupt by Gamespot Staff, for GameSpot and published on July 7th 2003.

4) Wacky Beat-Em-Up 'Trio The Punch' Is The Next Arcade Archives Title, by Ollie Reynolds for Nintendo Life, published on May 18th 2022.

5) Forever Entertainment Announces Remake of 1993 Beat ‘Em Up ‘Night Slashers’, written by Mike Wilson and published for Bloody Disgusting on September 14th 2021.

Children of the Stones (1977)

 

Created by Jeremy Burnham and Trevor Ray

Director: Peter Graham Scott

Screenplay: Jeremy Burnham and Trevor Ray

Cast: Gareth Thomas as Adam; Veronica Strong as Margaret; Peter Demin as Matthew; Ruth Dunning as Mrs. Crabtree; Iain Cuthbertson as Hendrick; Katharine Levy as Sandra; Freddie Jones as Dai

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows)

 

Make it a sherbet butty.

The main theme by music composer Sidney Sager - a breathless chorus of voices - is enough in its distinctness and unnerving form to signpost Children of the Stones, this unsettling ethereal theme to be heard as the main motif and the opening credits piece for all seven episodes of this West HTV Production. Sidney Sager - whose filmography is smaller than I would have presumed but does include episodes of The World About Us (1967-1987), a documentary series about geography, anthropology, and natural history subjects, befitting the tone of this series - did have an extensive career as a composer and conductor, so thankfully his work would have been appreciated in other mediums, here making his mark among many people here in Children of the Stones being a very rewarding dip into British supernatural television from the past.

For clarification, HTV Production is tied to ITV which, launched in 1955 as Independent Television, is a cultural landmark for television anyone from the United Kingdom. Everyone has grown up with unless born before 1955. ITV is the oldest commercial network in the UK, and wishing to let any non-British readers of this review have some context, they became for the early years of television the first big rival for the BBC. They were also a network of separate companies which provided regional television services and also shared programmes between each other to be shown on the entire network, which is where West HTV Production comes in. Eventually they became ITV Wales & West, until December 31st 2013, and thus afterwards being separated into ITV Cymru Wales for Wales and ITV West Country covering the both the West of England sub-region and South West England¹.

The broadcasting area was divided into two sub-regions, Wales and the West of England, which is apt as Children of the Stones, whilst set in the made up community of Milbury, is shot in Avebury, Wiltshire, one of the locations covered in their broadcasting at the time. This series would have been broadcast across the country beyond HTV Production, unleashing this unconventional mini-series that, whilst a fantasy story with sci-fi edges, is befittingly dread inducing like a horror story. The "stones" is a stone circle, fifty three, part of the small village of Milbury, where astrophysics professor Adam (Gareth Thomas) and his son Matthew (Peter Demin) are to stay there for three months, part of the father's research on this pagan formation. The stones are the Avebury stone circle, viewed to have been built between 2850 BC and 2200 BC, and seen in this mini-series in aerial shots as a huge circular stone circle which in turn encloses two smaller stone circles². Originally 100 stones², there is an argument it is a worship place, but exists in the same way as Stonehenge, a legendary location further in Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, as an ancient heritage site whose origins and reasons behind it are mysterious, befitting Children of the Stones' esoteric narrative flourishes. Since these incredible ancient monuments exist, why not use them onscreen too?

The entire plot stems from Matthew finding a painting of a stone circle involving a Pagan ritual and a light in the centre from the sky. The painting is enough to cause the elder female maid at the home they are living in to faint, but considering the landlord, and head of the village Hendrick (Iain Cuthbertson), is encouraging both to stay longer, Milbury is an immediately suspicious place. When the term "happy one" and "unhappy one" are used by even by the kids, it is a sign this community is strange, clearly a village of aliens or brain washing with regular people the dwindling minority, where even the classrooms are divided into high level mathematics and forcing the "normals" and the farm boys with simpler sums. What it is, where the locals can just disappear on nights leaving the newcomers alone, is knee deep into the esoteric fortean culture popular at the time, alongside what would become "hauntology" decades after in British pop culture from this time having an uneasiness stemming from the combination of the urban and the rural in our island country. The centre of fifty three ley lines, it is a place of astrological connections, a supernova in the time before Christ documented in Milbury, with a black hole where it is and where the rocks are pointed. Here we are in Pagan versus modern cultural territory, a bear cult in the past around this place and psionic powers involved, which Matthew develops after a glancing touch of one of the stones.

Children of the Stones does evoke fear of conformity; specifically the notion of village life, where everyone knows everyone, as a virtue is undercut, instead posing the chilling idea of everyone being without their real selves, with the juxtaposition of the metropolises in the leads being outsiders against this rural place. The thing I have not mentioned until now is that this is a show made for children, whilst makes Children of the Stones even more interesting as, barring some dialogue and exposition which is heavy handed, this never talks down to its target audience and has all this eerie content which is just as distinct for a viewer of any age group. The creators and writers Jeremy Burnham and Trevor Ray deserve their credit as everyone on and off-screen do. Jeremy Burnham was as much a prolific actor in television and film as a writer, whilst Trevor Ray was more of an actor, with only three credits to his writing career - this, another ITV mini-series Raven (1977), another children's show dealing with Arthurian legends which he worked with Jeremy Burnham for, and an unaccredited hand in The Ambassadors of Death: Episode 1, a Doctor Who episode. It is hilarious that Morris dancing, the most innocuous of folk traditions, is held as a sign of being brainwashed, but for a children's show to scrutinise the notion of an idealised rural community life, the "good old days" concept, as being a sign of being docile and without emotion, is a sticking point for the better, knowing this is family entertainment offering the notion, when we learn the secret of the village, that removing all sadness and permanent happiness is itself controlling.

The smartness of the show, working around its style, is really rewarding. Like a lot of British television dramas from this time, there are stage set interior scenes but a lot of on-location exterior ones, having to work around some aged effects but mostly a dialogue driven show with a creepy edge. The cast is full of people who would have been prolific at the time in various mediums, which includes the delightful appearance of Freddie Jones as Dai, a poacher and one of the few "normals" who has stuck around for a long time in the village, Jones' legacy as much for the likes of David Lynch's The Elephant Man (1980) and it is the ITV soap opera Emmerdale.

The music from Sidney Sager, the one main theme, really does enough in itself to being discomforting, and there are plenty of macabre and openly odd touches to the story. People turn into stone and/or die, and you cannot leave Milbury because, not only does it exist within a protective barrier, but is revealed to exist in its own time zone. Some of the content which is of its era, proudly sticking itself into the fascination with esotericism from the time, may be eyebrow raising for some viewers, but alongside the matter-of-factness the show has for it, taking it serious, but this is in mind to the period it was made. That, being between the British and the North Americans, if not anywhere else, the seventies if rife with the occult and the unexplained as pop cultural fascinating, this screening on television at a time Uri Geller would have already been famous for the likes of bending spoons with his mind and already being challenge by the likes of James Randi, alongside a lot of strange films from the era in the occult and horror which helped created the future Hauntology interest. This fully embraces psychometric themes including psychic powers, which as it is told sincerely is more rewarding than cheesy.

It also has a rare example of a father and son relationship with the leads, and with actors Gareth Thomas and Peter Demin, it is a good one. Matthew, barring his eccentric humour in eating bizarre combinations of fillings for sandwiches, transgressing the savoury and sweet food lines, is a teenager who is as smart as his father, who is neither played as a dolt. This is a horror story where they manage to outsmart the villain with something actually clever - using science to manipulate the clocks in their favour - and this intelligence, or least the sense of letting the characters being alert and act sensibly in this increasingly perverse village, is a huge virtue to Children of the Stones. It is a good show, a sci-fi thriller which does touch horror in its own way, telling even its more unconventional aspects straight faced, as serious drama which never drags over its seven episodes less than thirty minutes each, succeeding as a result .

 

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1) ITV Cymru Wales news shake-up under new Ofcom licence, written by Huw Thomas for BBC.co.uk and published on July 23rd 2013

2) A small biography of Avebury for the English Heritage website.

Hell Teacher Nube: Summer Holiday of Fear! Legend of the Sea of Suspicion (1997)

 

Director: Junji Shimizu

Screenplay: Yoshiyuki Suga

Based on the manga by Shō Makura and illustrated by Takeshi Okano

(Voice) Cast: Emi Uwagawa as Shizuka; Kazunari Tanaka as Katsuya; Machiko Toyoshima as Noriko; Masaya Takahashi as Kisaki; Maya Okamoto as Nagisa; Megumi Urawa as Makoto; Michiko Neya as Ritsuko-sensei; Miina Tominaga as Miki Hosokawa; Rumi Kasahara as Kyoko Inaba; Ryotaro Okiayu as Nube; Takayuki Inoue as Kiyoshi Horie; Toshiko Fujita as Hiroshi Tachino; Yoshiyuki Kouno as Kainanhoushi; Yuri Shiratori as Yukime

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) / An 1000 Anime Crossover

 

From a series I had never heard of, this theatrical special comes from a franchise which, if this had been released into the 2000s as more "Shonen" titles were available in the West, could have been jostling with Naruto and the like as this is a Shonen Jump publication work from an earlier period in the nineties. To think this series is from the same publication My Hero Academia is published in, a huge work you may know of even if you do not dabble in anime, is good evidence that anime has had a long time to get more and more pop culture cache in the West, as nowadays Shonen Jump titles get traction in the West as much as in their home land of Japan. From just this special, an occult horror tale of a male school teacher who just happens to have a demon hand and protects his class from spider demons here, it appeals to me to want to track down this franchise however possible. Something about a comedic toned yet also macabre franchise with this premise already won me over just from this later production.

For the full review getting into this in more detail, follow the blog link HERE.

The Alpha Incident (1978)

 

Director: Bill Rebane

Screenplay: Ingrid Neumayer

Cast: Ralph Meeker as Charlie; Stafford Morgan as Dr. Sorensen; John F. Goff as Jack Tiller; Carol Irene Newell as Jenny; George 'Buck' Flower as Hank; Paul Bentzen as Dr. Farrell; John Alderman as Dr. Rogers

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

No, we do not want any tanks, are you nuts?

Scientists experiment with an alien microorganism originating from Mars – not a good sign – using hamsters and rats as test subjects. It is a strange entity which managed to get to Earth, requiring additional experimentation including sending a shipment of the organism to Colorado by train. Things naturally go wrong as George ‘Buck’ Flower, a veteran character actor, plays Hank, staff on board the train who, suspicious of the new person with him alongside a mysterious shipment carrying a gun, takes a look for himself in one of the crates. Expecting something more of interest, like money going to be burnt, curiosity will kill the cat as Hank sadly infects himself after opening a crate, and spreads the material among the few people at Moose Point, the place the train stops out. Everyone there, including the scientist Dr. Sorensen (Stafford Morgan) who was on board the train, has to be quarantined at the station and considering that the organism, when you fall asleep, causes one’s brains to expand and implode, this is very bad.

In mind to Bill Rebane’s previous work – Monster A-Go Go (1965) is infamously bad for many, but is also an unfinished production Herschell Gordon Lewis acquired and tried to make sense of, and Invasion from the Inner Earth (1974) suffered from its absolute lack of progression as a dialogue heavy work – Rebane learnt from the two previous films and made a theatrical film here which is much more technically and narrative focused¹. The pace is improved, and whilst still as a dialogue heavy chamber piece, it progresses alongside cutting to side characters (usually scientists and the government) to build the narrative and tension with our central group. Even when the film slows down, it makes sense here, when there is an escalation and those stuck in the quarantine cannot even go to sleep or they will die, bad enough that the US military have to send them amphetamines to keep a person awake. The chamber piece with dialogue works here because the drama is interesting, including the characters.

The film was sold on actor Ralph Meeker as one of the cast, the Kiss Me Deadly (1955) star playing the elder station master Charlie, but the cast altogether and their characters are what become more interesting. The scientist Sorensen is facing the quarantine with as much the realization he is as much a victim, an anti-authoritarian streak as the ending is downbeat, and there is also Jenny (Carol Irene Newell), stuck as the only woman among these tense man. She is interested in Sorensen, but it is Jack (John F. Goff), the womanizer who has his eyes on her alongside the fact, skipping forward a few decades to a pandemic or two, is confrontational with Sorensen when told they have to quarantine. Credit has to be given to Bill Rebane’s cousins, as he had admitted he had envisioned a buxom Jayne Mansfield-like figure in the role, only to be convinced away from “sexual excitement” to a downtown normal girl figure², Jenny becoming a really interesting and ultimately tragic figure in how her narrative closes out defeated and scared.

Time, such as the 2019 COVD-19 outbreak, really does mark The Alpha Incident. Barring its source virus being an alien one, and there being one imploding head depicted for the gore crowd, this could be a mutated strain of a virus or a bacterium. Jack not following rules, to the point of being shot in the leg trying to leave, to prevent spreading the infection writes itself in the issue of a person feeling trapped and complete disregard for the safety of others in hubris. Even if this had been more overtly science fiction, it is the paranoia of being stuck in one place with the boredom part of the concern, even if the virus subtext had not been there and any force kept people trapped in the station, part of the issue (and the inherent interest) when writing these types of films in genre cinema. Here it is that one is stuck in a locked place and that, even if something unexpected is found like a secret stash of Playboy magazines, that can lead to worse existential concerns, especially worse for Jenny as the one woman among heterosexual men whose consciousness of their desires (and hers) alongside her fears of the likely demise become her story arch. The fact they cannot sleep does evoke how scary that concept would be; as much as Wes Craven exploited this fear for the Nightmare on Elm Street films, even a fan of the films like me admits they really were not about this for any of them, the sole exception dealing with the consequences biologically of not sleeping, the 2010 Elm Street remake, being a case where that was fascinating, but within a dull film which few would want to write about.

Rebane himself viewed The Alpha Incident as his first “real” film², and he should be proud of this. It was a challenge to see if he could tell a story of people confined in a small place, as has been documented as the reason the film exists², and after the stumbles before, I think he succeeded.

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1) There is also The Giant Spider Invasion (1975) beforehand, famously the giant spider film building the critter around a car to bring it to life, but that would be worth revisiting to see how that film went.

2) Arrow Video’s Straight Shooter extra interview for the 2021 Weird Wisconsin: The Bill Rebane Collection.

Mononoke (2007)

 

Director: Kenji Nakamura

Screenplay: Chiaki J. Konaka, Ikuko Takahashi, Manabu Ishikawa and Michiko Yokote

"Voice" Cast: Takahiro Sakurai as the Medicine Seller

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) / An Abstract Candidate

 

Mononoke originates as a spin-off, from a 2006 animated horror anthology named Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales. Both came from the Noitamina bloc, a syndicated time space on Fuji Television in Japan which, whilst have had more action and genre orientated anime shows over the decades, has however stayed with its origins, designed explicitly to cater to anime for multiple audiences and encouraging experimentation even with the more overtly genre productions. It is where Eden of the East (2009) came from, a conspiracy thriller about a young man possessing the ability to unlimited resources to grant wishes, or, for the perfect example, Masaaki Yuasa's The Tatami Galaxy (2010), an eccentric adaptation of a Tomihiko Morimi novel in which a university student, in a Groundhog Day scenario, finds himself repeating his school life in various clubs in an existential crisis, Masaaki Yuasa before he finally gained his fame in the Western helming series for this block beforehand. Ayakashi, for two of its three tales, adapted ghost tales from classic authors, whilst Mononoke comes from the one tale which was entirely original, contrasted by its absolutely idiosyncratic art style. This third tale was an original story also directed by Mononoke's Kenji Nakamura, which first introduced the world to the Medicine Seller, a figure in his own series here who follows the trope within a lot of anime of occult and supernatural figures, in episodic stories, who investigate and resolve paranormal scenarios, only in this case set in Japan's ancient past.

Mononoke itself is a series of five stories, all taking two or more episodes to tell, set between the Edo and Meiji periods of Japan, the nameless Medicine Seller found wherever there is a mononoke - when a supernatural spirit (an Ayakashi) is corrupted by the worst of humanity and starts to interact with the human world in violent ways. He can only exorcise them with his magical sword when he finds out their shape (form), the cause of their creation (truth) and why this was (reason in the English subtitles). The series, from the first (two episode) tale Zashiki-warashi, immediately stands out as a beautiful production. The tale is very obvious in plot, in which a pregnant woman on the run stays in a hotel with a sinister past, but the way Mononoke presents this is entirely unique in terms of its art style, and in terms of plotting, emphasising the sins of human beings as the cause of the mononoke. Whilst a beautiful story to look at, it is soon revealed this inn was once a brothel whose owner was the woman who did the abortions for the sex workers, hiding the foetuses in the wall of the room the pregnant woman is occupying, and not pulling its punches in this theme.

Mononoke is an exceptional looking show which appears to have been made with cut outs or even with paper used as animation cels, making the fact (as behind the scenes footage on its US DVD shows from Flatiron Film Company) that it is a computer animated production which layered this two dimensional look on top of computer drawn sketch lines a perfect marriage between the two styles. It argues the balance between the old hand drawn era and the digitised era perfectly, having aged without fault from 2007, and that some of the best anime of the 2000s onward made a conscious decision to marry the two sides or embrace the expressionistic. It looks like, as with the original Ayakashi story, that it was drawn using glossy paper, a tactile appearance which is contrasted by the use of colour, significant in how bright and vivid a show with such morbid subject matter becomes, drastically contrasting what is expected from the tropes of horror in what aesthetic palettes are usually used. Even with stories which had intentionally dank, dark looks, the visual and colour palette is significant with many of these stories in terms of aesthetic detail, even when with the absence of colour, used to signify details carefully.

The stories tread on well worn tropes but the unconventional look through the stories, alongside the time given to them over two to three episodes, gives them new personality here. The tone for Mononoke as a result is openly symbolic and surreal both for style and to tackle exceptionally grim subject matter, where the titular beings known as Zashiki-warashi in the first story are connected to the aforementioned unborn children, symbolic imagery blatant in meaning like red cloth being ripped, but allowing material that would be gristly to actually depict to be shown in a heightened, meaningful manner. Sometimes it is useful for the limitations of a TV anime production whilst presenting an utterly artistic flair, such as the final arc of the series replacing moving crowds of bystanders with mannequins in costume, all felt having be practiced with the Ayakashi episodes and perfected here.

A story like Umibōzu, in which there are a group of people on a boat in the midst of a haunted area of the sea, shows how all the stories are effectively chamber pieces, supernatural detective stories where the Medicine Seller is the judge of mortal sins. As he has to figure out the cause of the mononoke to cleanse them away, he becomes the auditor who usually extracts the truth from all the characters with him in each particular story, especially as many have a tendency to lie. Rather than laborious plot twists, its closure is equivalent of peeling away the layers of an onion and using the stories to depict human fallacies, Umibōzu particularly poignant for this as its about guilt, the masks people in any stature wear and how cleansing it actually transforms a person for the better. That story also shows how proudly strange these tales are, openly riffing on folklore from Japanese history whilst improvising around the lines, such as a surreal sight of a ghost biwa player, a fish creature with one leg, who forces mortals to experience their worst fears as if real, even if it makes you puke up your prized giant goldfish.

This could also alienate the viewers in place expecting actual monsters, the next story Noppera-bō about a woman who might have murdered her husband and his family which is instead an existential drama all within her own head. Constantly, however, in these tales they are using conventional plot structure to tackle human drama through these folk creatures. Noppera-bō for me is a great story, within a series of consistently perfect narratives in themselves, as this is an existential drama in which, whilst with an obvious twist, uses its artistry and symbolism perfectly to tell the story of a woman without a real self, helped to free herself, based around very surreal imagery of Noh masks and faceless beings. As with all three stories of Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales, these are tales based on human behaviour and the acts we commit, and it feels more sincere to depict them as such than the (usual) Western model of such creatures being mere monsters outside our species.

Also as a result of this, openly existential and psychological tales using the wild and wonderful yōkai of Japanese folklore, the series openly embraces the strange even if it is by means of rewriting said creatures of Japanese culture for new meanings for the stories too. Nue, the fourth tale, is openly weirder than the others, a literal chamber piece involving two dead bodies, four people including the Medicine Seller and a mystery to solve...only that its surrounded by an incense smelling competition between the individuals where, for one game, the answers have to be named after chapters of Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji (1021), the first ever Japanese novel ever written. The oddest arc of the series, which includes visual clues that on future watches will immediately show the story showing its hand early, naturally it comes from one of the most interesting anime screenwriters I have encountered over the years by the name of Chiaki J. Konaka, who has made a career of this type of distinct writing. Both loved and notorious for his existential and abstract plotting, his work goes from fan favourite Serial Experiments Lain (1998) to frustrating viewers of the second season of The Big 0 (1999-2003), a legitimate candidate for an auteur screenwriter in anime who just happens to be in a production like Mononoke, one where the scripts by all the screenwriters involved are all strong too.

The only issue with Mononoke is that it could have been longer, but in 2022, a feature film was announced in production¹, making this a production which has all the ease in being able to be returned too over and over again. Mononoke for its finale offers a tantalising conclusion by jumping forward abruptly in time to the 1920s and the Taisho period, the story Bakeneko about a group of people trapped on an underground train that may have all been responsible for a death of a young female journalist. This jump offers an obvious realisation - our sardonic Medicine Seller is not human, clear as his real form when he can use the mononoke killing sword transforms into a golden gold-like figure - but it also offers the tantalising fact that, if this had continued, Mononoke whilst getting its personality from its Edo period narratives could have continued in various periods of modern Japanese history too. This three-part narrative does stand out for its bold style in this historical time period as well, with moments of legitimately gruesome horror by way of expressionistic imagery and the nihilistic tone it has for three quarters of its length. Even if it offers a happy ending, as argubly most do, that people can redeem themselves, it still has imagery of people scratching out the limb or organ which sinned, being mauled by cats, or that unlike others, where the mononoke punishes the transgressor, there is in this a macabre conclusion where the one truly guilty person (or two) who compromised does not get to escape their sins.  

It is a great way to have ended the series, with the obvious connotations, with the Medicine Seller ageless on the train, that it does leave one gasping for more episodes about the character existing in modern day Japan, standing out in his appearance but still have a cool, humorous air to him dealing with mononoke still. With Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales the bleakest tale, as a prototype, which is worthy of seeing too, they all together are among one of the best anime horror series in existence. The art style alone, alongside its use of symbolism, is truly a one-off, but the stories themselves are just as exceptional as ghost tales, the aesthetic and storytelling sides fully succeeding..

Abstract Spectrum: Abstract/Avant-Garde/Grotesque/Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High

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1) Mononoke Anime Gets New Film in 2023, Stage Play, written by Crystalyn Hodgkins and published by Anime News Network on June 18th 2022.