Games of the Abstract: Gals Panic 3 (1995)

 

Developer: Kaneko Co., Ltd.

Publisher: Kaneko Co., Ltd.

One to Two Players

Arcade

 

Gals Panic, the first 1990 game, is questionable softcore, an erotic take on Qix (1981), where uncovering pictures will reward players very tame digitized images of models, but Kaneko’s first game this franchise of theirs, with the passage of time and its sense of humour, has far more charm to the material than actual sleaze. It was a very silly game, to which as well now, I can reflect that any concerns of sleaze over quality can be felt with Gals Panic 3, which made that game look like a fun saucy jaunt. Unfortunately the sequels changed tact, as Gals Panic 2 (1993) switched to real images of models, inevitable considering that even with the first game, rotoscoped drawings of real female models were being used. We come to number three here, and somehow what we got here feels instead like a bootleg version of this franchise, despite the fact it is an official entry. It feels both like an acid trip and also however a stomach turner to play. The gameplay is still there, solid for the franchise, but how it goes with its own quirks was frankly nightmarish.

The premise is the same as before if modified – select a model, with three levels per each to go through, with key differences here that you select through them per completing a level, able to go with whatever choice midway through completing others. There is also two choices which are not models, but for Japanese erotic art, which makes this far more explicit in their content and able to get away with more than would actually be allowed before, least for the European ROM. This game, right from the bat, looks garish. The games does, as mention, feel like a bootleg from hell, a strange game in look that, when I get to the bonus mini games, feels like a cheap and perverted version of Bishi Bashi, referencing a surreal franchise from Konami of mini game collections that, released in Europe for the Playstation 1 as a collection, I learnt of through Bishi Bashi Special (1998), the one we got here for the console which played to a low budget style in a way that was tonally appropriate and cool.

The basics of Gals Panic is still here, a pain as much as one with a challenge I find compelling as I realize Qix as a game now interests me in all forms. This is both a legitimate joy, with the challenge of Qix, and a fascination for ephemeral genres of video games, those that can easily be churned out and are dismissed over each console generation. You have to stray out the safe lines into space to draw barriers and claim more space, avoiding enemies and hazards which can not only take a life if they have direct contact, but also if they touch the line behind you drawing the barrier. In this case, an Egyptian pharaoh who can drop two halves of a spiked sarcophagus like a boss move, but also a notable shift from the cute critters from the first game to character where the tone for the game is all over the place. One, a strange flower monstrosity who has eyeball drones on nerve ends and screams, feels likes the developers wanted to kill titillation by making this a horror game. The game feels sleazy, weird in a grim and off-putting way, which says a lot as someone who, even if I can find virtues here, usually likes his weird games even when it is unintentional. To unlock some nude images you have to button bash, to open doors or de-blur images, which feels more sordid and spiteful. Any sense of eroticism is not there as the models, in the nude photos, are still quaint, and the Japanese erotic prints are re-appropriated in a way which undercuts their transgressive, artistically crafted eroticism. The solace is the mini-games, digitized photos used for a bizarre trio of games: a hand you control to catch women, avoiding men or sea creatures that can hurt your hand; whack-a-mole with Chinese dragons popping out the holes to smack before they disappear; and breaking the ice, literally, to free a female model before the timer runs out.

It is a playable game, as Kaneko still make this a solid Qix, but it has a mood which is hostile, and it says so much that Gals Panic 4 (1996) was the one where Kaneko first use animated and hand drawn “anime” female characters, eventually even removing the nudity. Even in terms of the gameplay, Gals Panic 3 contrasts its eroticism, trying to be trying to be more pornographic despite being mostly cheesecake topless images, whilst yet having enemies which are more relentless than before. There is a cool touch, to this one's credit, that you need to cover over thirty percent of the screen before you are allowed to scroll over the full image, but this becomes less a game for eroticism but survival whose aesthetic is tonally out of place, with the main enemy per level can teleport if you want off, hunting you down, and one even sends electric bullets which can destroy you on the safe space if you are on the same line with them. This style was wisely jettisoned onwards as, whilst full motion video and proper images would be a choice for these types of game to go, it does feel like with a Gal Panic SS, a Sega Saturn follow on where I first came to this series, there was a clearly a huge creative choice made. Someone clearly consider a move to a more “cuter” and playful tone even if with some questionable aspects, even ditching overt eroticism entirely.

And it is worth baring in mind too, there were erotic games for the Saturn, which allowed some in a form in its Japanese only titles due to looser restrictions, but it is telling Gals Panic went with not only a wiser choice of aesthetic but forgoed this initial concept for the series. Whilst I found Gals Panic 3 a fun weird game at times, it did become a rare case of one whose weirdness however for the most part was actually off-putting for me, not as an erotic game, but as a game to play as a challenge only to get stained in scuzz.

Zombiez (2005)

 

Director: Zachary Snygg

Screenplay: Zachary Snygg

Cast: Jenicia Garcia as Josephine; Jackeem Sellers as The Dr.; Randy Clarke as Steve; Raymond Spencer as Terry

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

I don’t want to hurt you…I just want to cut your fucking heart out!

Director “ZWS” begins Zombiez with the history of the undead explained over hip hop bears and white text on a black screen. The irony is that, with full spoilers ahead of time, these are not really zombies, eventually getting confused or suggesting that these members of the undead are the smartest in existence, when it reality they look like a horde of cannibals with a few with a severe case of decayed acne. I am not going to undermine Zachary Snygg for this – who has gone under multiple pseudonyms including John Bacchus, where he was a prolific director in the early DVD era of softcore that starred figures like Misty Mundane – though this will prove your tradition straight to DVD zombie movie that does not eventually stay a zombie movie.

Twenty miles away from the opening zombie attack, working for Purgatory Demolition Crew, is our lead Josephine (Jenicia Garcia), who already had to put up with being the one woman around male arseholes, but will eventually have to worry about cannibalistic figures chasing anyone in sight and playing with their severed organs, especially as these ones can run and use tools, somehow even in the middle of an industrial era finding sickles of all things, less likely to be found in brown land industrial environments unless an antique store was broken into than the woodland environment Josephine will eventually enter to find her beau, kidnapped by these evil hordes.

The one thing to note with Zombiez, and this could sound so patronizing to bring up, especially as the writer of this is a white male and realizes just how so it could be, is that this is a film with a predominantly black cast, including a rare case of a black female lead. This was still something that had to be brought up decades later as, even with voices like Jordan Peele directing films as a black genre filmmaker in the 2010s, representation in horror and genre cinema in English language films, from non-white directors/writers or just with non-white leads and largely non-white casts, was still not as common even if improving at the time. It really raises a perturbing thought of how this subject is still with a sense of a minority voice that I even have to bring this up, but credit to Zombiez, it is a film about a largely black cast, with a black female lead in Jenicia Garcia, regardless of how most people view it critically as a zombie film. Garcia, who stars in a trilogy of these films from Snygg – this, Vampiyaz (2004) and Bloodz vs. Wolvez (2006), alongside a crime film called Hood Copz (2004) – was an associate producer on this and Bloodz vs. Wolvez (2006), so there was an investment for her in general to bring these films to be. A director like Zachary Snygg is not brought up in talk in cult cinema, but his is a fascinating career with its pockets, from his late eighties no-budget oddities to his softcore career, with this period of low budget films with prominent black casts. With an obsession with ending titles in “Z”, these are interesting to point to, as much for the cast themselves here, and that this is a film with a predominantly large cast, with all the major roles, but no one has to raise this, entirely for the better that the tone is that of a zombie film where this is not a topic that even has to be raised.

The bigger concern instead is that this is still a low budget zombie film, which you will ever run away from like the plague or appreciate. Realizing Bacchus/Snygg made this, and it comes to mind that a zombie film and a softcore erotic film are not that different in that they have their tropes and narrative beats. There is no malice to these words but a growing appreciation for figures like him from the straight to DVD era of cinema, or his casts, who make their careers working over the decades in these low budget genre films, but there is an irony to how many films in both genres were being made at the time that zombie films, despite being less likely to be placed on the adult shelf in a second hand DVD store, are probably with a greater disadvantage for me now decades later. Softcore, and why it and hardcore is still being made on mass, least has the advantage that there will always be an audience for titillation, but zombie films, even with mind to zombie film obsessives collecting titles like this alongside big titles, have the issue that, from this period on, there was a boom period in zombies in pop culture even in Hollywood, and that also means there is a greater issue of how many tropes, clichés and conventions have been repeated in just a short period for one horror subgenre.

As a result, not a lot even in terms of micro budget zombie cinema is “original” here, more so considering how even more zombie films came long after this one, which was made at a time when it was Land of the Dead (2005), Danny Boyle’s “infected” running hordes in 28 Days Later (2002) and the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, not including straight to video or non-English films. By 2005 onwards when Zombiez would be released, the undead would slowly become a pop cultural phenomenon, one which refused to die over the decades on but with the added danger of malaise. Zombiez feels the weight of this now, even if you could appreciate its low budget schlock, entirely because so much of this films’ stock scenes of fleeing and zombie attacks would be found even in large Hollywood films, which is not something you would have to worry about with an Erotic Witch Project, just to given an example of another film from the director, which could be sold on its softcore scenes even if making a parody of the Blair Witch will leave a lot of confused audiences who are not old enough to have seen that 1999 film nowadays.

Unlike some films, and with credit to this one, this low budget film keeps shots longer than a minute, even with the camera in motion, which is distinct among the requisite dialogue scenes and would have been a potential obstacle to include on a shooting schedule. In fact the sense of hard work here, for a type of film which would have been casually dismissed over the years, can be found in how even the camera operator, let along the cast, have extended scenes of running. There is unintentional humour – accidentally causing a car to crash so bad someone’s already cut stomach slops out a few organs – and there is the curious decision ZWS had in having dictionary level explanations for terms. There is something weird about having a term like “fear” – “A passive emotion or passion excited by the expectation of evil and impending danger.” – which, with the white text over black screen, is could be seen as a weird creative decision from him, but also causes one to realize how many of us viewing the film, maybe even  Zachary Snygg himself, knew what this word we all instinctively “get” meant without opening a dictionary like someone did for these text sequences.

There are also a lot of scenes of actress Jenicia Garcia moving or fleeing onscreen which is likely to put people off this. This is not a hyper lurid film in terms of gore or anything else, even keeping in mind to the director’s background with very explicit nudity, as beyond imagining the one actress here happy to do full nudity but laid on a cold table with fake blood sloshed onto them, this is mostly a tame film. The violence is working around its limitations and barely exists, more fritters of meat and fake blood with the zombie extras having to pretend to chew a person’s stomach out. The fact, for the most part, these come off as ghouls in their nature, with few zombie makeup effects and more extras in regular street clothes, is going to disappoint someone who wished to have zombies. This is more so as, even before the boom that came to be in the 2000s onwards, you could have no-budget films in the period beforehand post-George Romero just thanks to figures like Todd Sheets in his hyper low budget films, made in the late eighties and nineties when zombies were less popular, where they had zombie makeup and more gore even if homemade and usually real butcher store animal guts.  I come to this film having viewed it an obscurity which is not seen as “good”, with thankfully the right frame of mind to appreciate this and enjoy it; just bear in mind that, for any film to actually get made, that is an achievement, but expect a lot of lengthy scenes of fleeing, and not a lot of luridness like an Italian zombie film, or, in mind to the weight now forced onto this film after all the zombie films and television shows made after, all the content even found in big mainstream productions which are surprisingly violent.

That it becomes more of a cannibalistic group who sell human meat as Smiling Daves meat pies will further a disappointment for quite a few people, but thankfully, just right at the end when the film has felt its length, suddenly Zombiez does develop a strange sense of humor, something again to bear in mind with its director. It comes out of nowhere mostly, which will baffle some, but from he who made an erotic Blair Witch Project and over two of the films had a man in a cheap gorilla suit as a reoccurring joke character, it makes sense for me myself. There is a sense of this once beforehand – zombies who throw rocks are unique and funny, as barring concussions and potential lost eyes, something so childish is not what you expect from flesh eaters – but it is as if the film openly shifts to the ridiculous. A person in a chicken suit as target practice, casually walking to and fro flapping their arms as real bullets are fired at them, an emphasis this, whilst this is not auteur theory, Zachary Snygg clearly finds people in cheese costumes funny, as he does bickering, in this case the lackey who demands an operation name and thinks “Operation Gumbo II” is cheesy much to the rage of the main villain. The fact that one musical track is xylophone and brass, as if suddenly turning into a Tom Waits song, makes up for a lot of padding to a film, which is mostly a straight-to-video low budget zombie film, struggling with limitations, who thankfully rewarded someone like me coming in with an open mind with this gleefully shift to quirk.  

Robinson in Ruins (2010)

 

Director: Patrick Keiller

Screenplay: Patrick Keiller

Cast: Vanessa Redgrave

An Abstract Candidate

 

As films go, Robinson in Ruins will be very unconventional for many even with a taste for "abstract" films. An essay film, Ruins was my first film from Patrick Keiller, closing out a trilogy he began in the nineties. At the start of the 1990s Patrick Keiller, who is also a lecturer and writer, created a character named "Robinson" for a pair of essay films documenting the sociological state of Britain, first with London (1994), focused on the capital, and Robinson in Space (1997), expanding out into the rest of England. Robinson himself was never heard from, and the unnamed narrator, played by the late Paul Scofield, was our guide into Robinson's excursions. Keiller belongs with a film like Robinson in Ruins in the territory called "psycho-geography", a concept of interpreting a concept of interpreting geography in their history and sociological terms, alongside what has transpired in both in their creation and shaping. I became fascinated by this concept, at the right age in my early twenties, from Ian Sinclair, a filmmaker and author whose London Orbital (2002), chronicling a series of trips he took tracing the M25, London's outer-ring motorway, on foot left a rewarding mark. Despite the inherent weight to that text, dealing with the ramifications of Britain's political elite on the landscape, which Robinson in Ruins also does, there is also something very British in a profound, profane and quaint way in both examples, where there even the most seemingly banal of motorways, as London Orbital was about, allowed one to peel back the historical and sociological influences that marked the landscape, all the tensions also found here, able to be peeled back even in the pipeline markers spotted in land overgrown by nature itself.

Robinson in Ruins, which is made in knowledge Paul Scofield passed away in 2008, was left without the voice from the films before, and in context of Robinson being depicted here now as a literal ghost having left his mark, we are also in the midst of the 2008 economic crisis that happened in real life. A huge event globally that left a lasting effect, this is also when Robinson, before he vanished was assigned to a project on environmental collapse, industrial capitalism becoming his obsession, only to disappear. Film canisters and his diaries are found in his last know living place, a caravan, and those who found it have put the material together, the narrator (as voiced by Vanessa Redgrave) connected to this project as the original narrator's lover. Contextually this is, as with London Orbital, seemingly banal to the extreme, as the brown and green land collides and one of the first locations seen a Lidl, a supermarket chain found where I was growing up and is something you would living in ordinary working class England without batting an eye at its symbol. Then the narration brings up their problematic work practices, and you see the layers being peeled back of how even the banal is marked in tensions.

The metaphor which ties together the film, which could win a person over even if they find Robinson in Ruins too dry in its construction, is the repeated image of lichen, a fungal species here, repeated with the same one, that has survived and adapted to human progress with ease as the rest of nature has; the image in question has lichen growing on the letters of a motorway sign, curling around the letters itself, as we see the struggle between the natural landscape and human development in a severe economic downturn. Having grown up with autism, my own spatial awareness of environments as a result has made a concept like psycho-geography compelling for me, where so my awareness of environments is always with intrigue having to adapt to new stimulus, even old sights gaining new layers and emotions depending on that particular day. This film itself finds layers where political and social tensions have broken out, and been left, in the tranquil shots of natural landscape in agricultural and motorway territories, evoking old Peter Greenaway experimental shorts from early in his career without the critique of the filming structure.

This film, in truth, does feel dry, entirely because whilst London Orbital, as a novel or the Chris Petit adaptation co-directed with Ian Sinclair as a 2002, was a freewheeling and expansive work which could include pithy put-downs and humorous comparisons as it dealt with the seriousness of some of its subject matter. In contrast, Robinson in Ruins, shot in celluloid film, is structured around spatial shots of isolated locations, with only the natural landscape and Redgrave's narration the closest to a soundtrack. This in itself is enough to easily put some off who may find the subject - the death knell of post-liberalism in this economic downturn - still fascinating, because there are lengthy pauses literally examining a field, buildings and plant life among other details, contemplative in a minimalistic form with no human beings ever depicted onscreen baring vehicles. If you can find your way past this, as I did, there is to these images a contemplative and peaceful form matched by a rich narrative text which would have to be picked through over multiple viewings of. It is a project, baring the use of celluloid film, that could have been an ambitious YouTube video, but the moments which strike out in look - the close up of a spider weaving its web over a monologue about the economic collapse itself, to watching farming machinery working in the field - are also contrasted by what the narration reveals about seemingly banal images. The wasteland of derelicts, power stations and even poster covered boards with penises crudely sprayed on them in graffiti would be ignored by most people, but here gain more weight as this fictional narrative with real world essay material adds context to the images. We pass rape seed oil crop fields, and their connection to importation, to nuclear missile silos from the nineties, to 18th century traveller inns turned into banks. The irony of British opium fields we see onscreen, for medicinal purposes, is contrasted by the narration bringing use the opium fields found in Afghanistan, which is later developed as heroine imported into Britain itself.

Even if re-creatable with the modern technology of digital phones, even at this time in 2010, there is a beauty in Keiller's film to contrast its vast text of intersecting worlds, one that would fill a cinema screen with its minimalism. Thematically it is of its era, the economic crisis at the time still having a lasting impact but something that was once such an impactful concept in the news, and this film also name checks Britain Conservative politician Boris Johnson, who here is just the newly elected mayor of London, not the future Prime Minister into the decade after. The environmental concerns have sadly not aged, still severe in the text here as its talk of the dying throes of neo liberalism, contrasted by fears of environmental destruction which are now creeping up to us in mainstream conversation. In contrast, however, it was always surprising how relaxing watching this film actually was, a perverse serenity to an extreme close up of lichen, turned into these bio-alien life forms that Robinson possibly can hear here as is talked of. As much as this rings the dreaded bell of our fault in damaging the Earth itself, it is mirrored against scenes of woodland; whilst there is a legitimate fear still with us of environmental collapse, you however see nature still finds a way to continue. Orchids still grow near motorways, and even in the fingerprints of human interference, creeping in-between the areas once newly built but merely in the background or even abandoned.

The contrast in its peaceful veneer against the chaotic history the film talks of - nuclear protests by wives in the nineteen eighties, protests in the 19th century about claim to land - is something which requires patience with, but if you can find it is compelling. It could be ignored if you struggle with the seemingly ultra minimalistic aesthetic the film has. With the visuals and the narration together however, the film does gain a great deal to it. For a film that was clearly a holdover of the 2000s in culture, it is surprisingly relevant still. The landscape baring a few differences is the same still in Britain, and the environmental concerns are growing every day. Certainly as well, though Patrick Keiller might raise an eyebrow to this, the film even as the most stoic in presentation does have an innate eccentricity to its advantage. There is some deadpan humour still here, and again, the choices of locations, seemingly the less profound choices to talk about the history of, has something innately eccentric to them as choices if with a real significance found. It is not Swandown (2012), director Andrew Kötting's own travel essay film in which he, with guest stars like famous comic book/graphic novel/novel writer Alan Moore and Ian Sinclair himself, pedalled a swan-shaped pedalo from the seaside in Hastings to Hackney in London, via the English inland waterways. There is, however, something still very English let alone British in a film like Robinson in Ruins, where someone made an essay film like this in which lichen on a road sign is the main selling point in the trailer, and actually proves the most symbolically synchronizing point to tie its themes together.

 

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde

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

Nazareno Cruz and the Wolf (1975)

 

Director: Leonardo Favio

Screenplay: Leonardo Favio and Jorge Zuhair Jury

Based on a radio programme by Juan Carlos Chiappe

Cast: Juan José Camero as Nazareno Cruz; Marina Magali as Griselda; Alfredo Alcón as The Powerful/Mandinga; Lautaro Murúa as Julián; Nora Cullen as The Lechiguana; Elcira Olivera Garcés as Damiana; Saul Jarlip as The Old Man Pancho; Juanita Lara as Fidelia; Yolanda Mayorani as The Powerful's Godmother; Marcelo Marcote as The Child

Ephemeral Waves

 

Based on folklore, Nazareno Cruz and the Wolf tells the story of the seventh son, the last surviving son, of a widowed mother who is said to be cursed by the Devil into becoming a werewolf. He managed, with the witch who warned his mother during her pregnancy as his loving godmother, to lead a happy life into his adulthood, to the point he is a popular man in the village despite the constant jokes about full moons. His love for the maiden Griselda (Marina Magali) however brings the Devil, or Mandinga (Alfredo Alcón) to him, warning him that, now with love in his life, Nazareno (Juan José Camero) will turn at the next full moon, even attempting to bribe Nazareno with wealth beyond his means to attempt to sacrifice Griselda's love. Based on the Guarani legend of the Lobizón, where the notion of the seventh son becoming a dog-like creature comes from if different here, Nazareno Cruz... is also, in Argentina, one of its most acclaimed and successful films. Alongside Argentina's official entry for the Foreign Language Oscar at the 48th Academy Awards, but this is held as a high mark from Argentinean cinema within the country,

It is also, however, a film extremely difficult to see outside of nefarious means, which is incredibly annoying. Nazareno Cruz... is not pulpy enough for a traditional genre label, closer to drama even with its fantastical story and a soundtrack by Juan José García Caffi that evokes Italian genre cinema's own, but it is startling and idiosyncratic in beautiful ways. Its director, Leonardo Favio, is a director I was lucky enough to see a few films of through with help, but his work is generally difficult to see. This disappoints as, even going by memories, his was a very diverse series of films as a filmography, many which were just as distinct as this. Also managing to be a well regarded singer-songwriter¹, as much as an acclaimed director in his homeland, Favio could go from a traditional historical film like Juan Moreira (1973), based on the titular folk hero and outlaw, to the very strange and utterly idiosyncratic El Dependiente (1969), to Chronicle of a Boy Alone (1965), a realistic tale of a titular young boy and troublemaker in an entirely different aesthetic style. The only reason his career was shorten at one point at all, just after Nazarene Cross itself, was Argentina's civil-military dictatorship of 1976–1983, where he understandably became an exile and fled the country¹.

A film of its era of the seventies, it however contrasts the obvious aesthetic touches of this time in cinema with its attempt, like many from this period, of retelling a fairy tale in a grounded reality even when it is fantastic, within a rural setting possessing a tone which stands out for such a simplistic tale. One which is a tragedy which will unfold, idiosyncrasies stand out, notably a trip to Hell as represented by caves. It does avoid wearing out its premise, folktales better off as very short length works due to their concise natures unless a filmmaker can elaborate on it carefully, which is to its advantage. The film does not attempt to depict a wolf-like humanoid, but sticks to an actual wolf, something of note as, among all the idiosyncratic side characters who steal scenes, among them include an old female witch (and apparent mother-figure of Satan himself) who is a shape shifter. The tone is enough with the film to shows a clear grasp on a folklore that is lost in a lot of Northern American cinema, unless it can escape internally or set itself in a minority community or the countryside, this film set in a part of some older period but timeless in appearance.

The personality itself, when seen from a script co-written by Favio, really does add so much to an already haunting tale. The witches, seen throughout including a young girl, future heir and student of the arts as a mere child, fascinate as dominant female figures, onlookers to this story where, in terms of any villains, Griselda's father is the closest even near the Devil himself, in his ill-advised decision to keep Nazarene from her despite their love for each other, which will lead to further tragedy in the end. The simpleton, for a lack of the politically correct term, waving in the fields gets his own idiosyncratic moment where, abruptly, suddenly he has a monologue in his ramblings about war being good, clearly going off memories of a past in conflict among soldiers, which raises so much in terms of background for him and this simple tale, a tale outside this one's scope, which feels meaningful. Even Satan himself, in his crisp black hat and erudite voice, gets to be more than the tempter. It says a lot of the film's attitude when, warning Nazareno of the curse of the full moon as is found in many films, he and Satan end up laughing together until it hurts, even if doomed to transpire as the Devil still warns. That is even before, adding an abrupt bow of real emotion to the film, Satan will eventually show humanity, bored and despairing of his lot, even wising for Nazareno, in the fate before him, to ask God Himself to talk to his fallen angel in an act of reconciliation.

Even in terms of having a fairytale magic, and some surrealism such as fishermen in the caves of Hell among other background details, within this much grounded aesthetic tone the presentation really stands out and adds to the haunting nature of Leonardo Favio's film. This, if you look into it, is legitimately to Argentina like another box office smash like Titanic (1997) was to the rest of the world in what high regard it was as a popular film as much as for their cultural cinema, which does emphasise a deeply troubling amnesia to how much individual countries, and their cinema, do not get attention and need to be taken into consideration. For obvious reasons, not doing so means you cannot see films like this, something which looks and acts very different from a film decades later in tone, even in terms of its contrast in grounded nature with a cinematic style almost the equivalent of Romanticism in context. It does come from an era, especially with the Eastern European and Czechoslovakian fantasy films from this decade or earlier, where attempting to depict these worlds in practical methods lead to tones like this Argentinean film's, with its own tonal choices in its use of close ups, of its lush score including an emphasis on vocal chants which does evoke the Italian films, and its melodrama story in its centre. A romantic scene even gets strangely more erotic in what is not seen through Nazareno and Griselda, with a female friend by them talking about how she will look after their child as she overlooks the pair, kissing in an exaggerated tone on a river with water splashing over them which implies much more happened in the scene than shown.

My knowledge of the late Leonardo Favio, who passed in 2012, only with the films I was lucky enough to see had enough effect for me to keep him close to the heart with great interest, likeminded figures like me able to get these films briefly available online and leaving their impressions on me and for those across the world too. His style could alter per just memories, pure ghosts, of those viewing experiences of the films mentioned, but they stick out, and with this one, you see someone here with this kind of honesty and reverence for traditions, one that does not extend well to a mainstream mindset that has to be assessable for everyone, and has the current and the future in its mind only, but is instead something which has to be digested with contemplation, which can also be gregarious and even profane. Satan here can be human, and there is even humour of the old men related to the witch godmother who thinks he is dying but for her, (in mind to the translation I had), is being a "fucking bum" and just lazy for many years watching on. It is a folktale that is told well in less than ninety minutes or so, and is better for it, and again this has to be a review which is designed to bring more attention to a film which should have been wider reaching beyond its homeland, long before I was writing this, but I am glad to bang a drum for.

 

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1) Obituary for Leonardo Favio, written for The Telegraph and published on November 18th 2012.

Games of the Abstract: 64th Street - A Detective Story (1991)

 

Developer: C.P. Brain

Publisher: Jaleco

One to Two Players

Arcade / Nintendo Switch / Sony Playstation 4

 

Once an obscurity, suddenly in 2020 64^th Street escaped obscurity, of word of mouth from M.A.M.E preservation, to appear on the Nintendo Switch and the Playstation 4 through Hamster's Arcade Archive series¹. This is cool, if I wish this was available on the likes of Windows too, but it is a good thing to have transpired, allowing people to take a gander at this obscure Jaleco beat-em-up. This one, set in 1939 USA, follows private detective Rick, and his younger partner Allen, who are on the hunt for the kidnapped daughter of a wealthy man, finding them embroiled in a criminal cabal whose nefarious ideas include robots whilst trying to find the daughter. The only real exposition in the pre-credits is that, Sherlock Holmes-like, Rick spots their secret codes in newspaper advertisements before they spend the rest of the game in a completely different genre, punching thugs or using the old reliable metal pipe to get on their way. Even if the idea of a Holmes-like puzzle game crossed with this game’s beat-em-up stages is a tantalizingly weird premise I would play, what you still get is a pretty solid beat-em-up from this time period too.

There is a sense of 64^th Street sadly not fully fleshing out its premise as much as one would wish, not following the faithfulness to the era chosen, like Boogie Wings (1992) in the scrolling shooter genre, of this early Americana. You would presume, knee deep past the depression and reaching World War II, fighting Mafioso, but there is a surprising number of Mohawk punks in Hooverville era America, more befitting a later era of New York City exploitation films. I exclude the inclusion of cyborgs in this, and this is an alternative reality and befits the sci-fi pulp written at the time, and that does not stop the virtues on hand here, only that there is a sense of a game which could have been rushed, not technical quality, but not having as many additions as you would presume to the gameplay. 64^th Street is an example of a good game which could have been greater if it had more touches, even in the story not having enough of its period influencing the story. (This is a shame if you consider, from this era, a game like El Viento (1991) for the Sega Mega Drive, which is effectively the tale of Al Capone trying to summon a Cthulian entity, specifically one from an Ambrose Bierce short story reinterpreted and referenced even by H.P. Lovecraft among others later). There is still a lot of personality here to admire, including the surprising amount of kittens you can rescue for bonus points, but there is a lot to the time period this could have taken advantage of. More so as the engine is a solid beat-em-up, one which already had a better advantage than some in that the leads are actually interesting, an older suave detective who with Allen, his slightly dimwitted younger assistant in a paperboy cap, judo throw goons into shop windows and off trains.

The game follows many others of the time, with an attack and jump button that have some variety, whilst most of the strategy is to avoid being hit. Throws here are commodity to spam as, not only are they effective and emphasis how exploiting the quasi-three dimensional areas is a huge advantage in this genre, but where you get more collectables and even health throwing people into the destructible backgrounds. Strangely there are not a lot of secondary weapons only two here which are frequently accessible. One is the wrench, the other a metal pipe, an enlarged version of that used to brain Dr. Black in the conservatory in a game of Cluedo/Clue, the later so useful in its reach it should have gotten a third protagonist credit even if as a “Pipe” onscreen. This is of use as, with other beat-em-ups, 64^th Street throws enemies at you, and if one aspect of the game has not aged, it is that a couple of the bosses are unfair in their tendency to stun lock the players, spamming special moves you would normally presume the player would in spamming jump kicks back at them to survive.

These do befit the time period more at least, between a sailor from Popeye, who does an airplane spin with his fists out on the peg leg, to wrestlers who, contrasting those regular enemies who look like they have wandered out of the eighties pro wrestling era, look like grey haired strong men whose aerial cannonballs are the reason spamming jump kicks became a common tactic in these games. A kabuki dancer masquerading as a buff elevator attendant, out of place among out figures clearly lost to time, add a dash of eccentricity too, and that the final boss feels abrupt - whose main pieces of note is his obsession with spin kicks and trying to reclaim the pool cue you can use against – it does not detract from the sense of fun this possesses. Out of all the beat-em-ups I have played, this is definitely one of the weaker ones, but it does show the virtues of a game where the little details stand out and shine. Details such as the emphasis on throws, which can be commanded to go forwards and go up the screen, usually into walls or windows, breaking or damaging them, and providing more collectables as much as graphical style in the damage caused, do provide the game its own personality, and it is of note in how, not a game from Capcom and a developer who claimed dominance in this genre, it is from a developer working with Jaleco.  

Jaleco would invest more into the genre with the Rushing Beat trilogy for the SNES, but they are more of a case of a publisher/developer where the term "cult" is truly apt, titles if you recognize them standing out for their peculiar idiosyncrasies. There is, for example, Momoko 120% (1986), an arcade game where the titular lead shoots at strange creatures in burning buildings during various stages of life, from infancy to adulthood, to Game Tengoku – The Game Paradise! (1995), a game which has also been rediscovered and re-released too, a tribute to their own game library in a scrolling vertical shoot-em-up featuring characters like Momoko among other references. Sadly they are another company who do not exist as a working publisher, though thankfully their library is being released in pieces over time on multiple formats; they had games released in the West on numerous consoles up to the 2010s, but they feel another case of a company who were focused on their own homeland, considering one of their biggest series was Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai, a franchise of strip mahjong games.  C.P. Brain's history is sadly shorter, though they again contributed another of Jaleco's curious titles, one which got a release in the West and even a Retro-Bit Publishing Game Boy release for the original hardware, the 1992 curiosity Avenging Spirit, specifically the Game Boy conversation of the arcade game the one that got the limited edition cartridge in 2022². Getting to companies like this, you see these idiosyncratic personalities appear even in the same genres each company touched upon, and whilst not the best of the beat-em-ups at all, with later ones improving on the template greatly, 64th Street: A Detective Story, especially as a rare one which got a re-release, is a worthy title to still play.

 

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1) Old-School Brawler 64th Street: A Detective Story Is Coming To The Switch eShop Tomorrow, written by Damien McFerran, and published for Nintendo Life on October 28th 2020.

2) Retro-Bit Publishing's First Game Boy Release Will Include Glow-In-the-Dark Collectors Cartridge and Restored Endings, published for their site on May 31st 2022.

Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

 

Director: Jeff Burr

Screenplay: David J. Schow

Cast: Kate Hodge as Michelle; Ken Foree as Benny; R.A. Mihailoff as Leatherface 'Junior' Sawyer; William Butler as Ryan; Viggo Mortensen as Eddie 'Tex' Sawyer; Joe Unger as Tinker Sawyer; Tom Everett as Alfredo Sawyer; Miriam Byrd-Nethery as Mama Sawyer

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) Re-Review

 

The relationship I have had with Leatherface has been not a great one. I think finally that is changing, taking this film as its own work, without the baggage of Tobe Hooper's first two, as a huge fan of the second as much as the first, and aware that the films after, not The Next Generation (1995) but those after, were not spectacular and make the original four together far more appreciated in their quirks. Neither did it help that director Jeff Burr's later film Devil's Den (2006) did not win me over as many of a straight to DVD horror film from a time before I softened on them, which in a previous review of Leatherface I wrote wanting to throw a show at him for.

Leatherface is trying, after the satire and eighties new wave music of the second film, to be grim and serious without over-egging it, as came to be with the reboot cycle. Gore ended up being removed infamously, and then added back in for the DVD release, an alternative ending being directed. This also suffers from what all horror films which gained a franchise did, trying to continue when the premise of the first film back in 1974 which makes sense for a one-off film only. Tobe Hooper wisely, miraculously, figured out a sequel by making its of its time and a black comedy, and with mind there was a 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake I had never even heard of until writing this review, the problem with trying to recreate the film first was never its simple premise - that being chased with a cannibal with a chainsaw will always terrify a person - but that it was a nightmare cacophony of images and sound from an independent film production where the director and crew were stuck in the middle of nowhere, in hellish heat with the smell of real rotting animal meat driving them to their limits as they were filming it.

This had the additional problem, proudly riding in with a Lȧȧz Rockit thrash metal song of the title name, of coming into the world on the cusp of the 1990s. It feels stuck as a franchise film at a time when horror cinema was slowly changing, one with great odd one-offs but where many franchises were slowly dying, and without Tobe Hooper in the driver's seat, it was unfortunately a "franchise film", not taking risks. Only now, I appreciate what it is, as a thrill ride of a morbid kind, but this is "conventional" for the genre, even if this is gristly and has a wonderfully morbid sense of humour midway within it. And it is weird to say this is conventional for the franchise, considering Leatherface is caked in grim and unmentionable liquids, one of the most openly provocative of the first four films in tone and dialogue especially. Whilst not as intense as the first or second, it is just deliberately unpleasant in tone as the plot involves sexually perverse and racist cannibals, but there is still a safe film secretly in its heart that, unlike the second film, you do not get into twisted parodies of Ronald Regan politics or the chainsaw literally being suggested as a phallic metaphor. As the 2003 remake will attest to, that for all the gore and nastiness you can put into a movie, you can still have something staying within the confines of a mainstream horror movie.

Thankfully, there was something to appreciate now in its own icky thrill ride way. The story is basic - a heterosexual couple of Michelle (Kate Hodge) and her obnoxious boyfriend Ryan (William Butler) find themselves stuck in a trap with the Sawyer family of chainsaw cannibals, and there is not a lot to say beyond this barring that. This new version of the Sawyer family has new family members, and there is the delightful sight of Ken Foree, as a survivalist named Benny, who adds a factor as the competent guy who, even if he cannot catch a break, least adds someone with combat skills in this scenario.It has a credible, menacing atmosphere of isolated desert highways and swampy woodland that is befitting the material, where everything feels rusted, old or crusty without it coming off as ridiculously glamorous in a sick way. Some of the grimness, admittedly, can be heavy handed but I have come to admire things I had looked down on upon. One great example of this is Tom Everett's misogynistic, peeping tom gas station owner and sociopath, all in mind that he is having to work against the fact Bill Moseley as Chop Top from the second film is the best the franchise ever got for strange Sawyer siblings in humour and as a character.

The sense of danger is appropriate everywhere else for a film which is to entertain primarily, even over its plot, but made with a desire to not pull its punches. Jeff Burr is someone I wish to return to with a greater openness to the career of a director, as with many in this region of genre cinema, whose career is fascinating just for the tangents - between having a late era Vincent Price in one of his earlier films, From a Whisper to a Scream (1987), to being involved with American Hero (1995), a full motion video game originally meant for the Jaguar CD, a now-rare add-on to the doomed Atari Jaguar videogame console, which never got a release until 2021 as a fully finished curiosity for gamers and people like me. He clearly came to this realising, in mind to the legacy of the first Chainsaw film, he wanted to keep the intensity of the film's reputation, as a film which paradoxically has little onscreen gore but was a cacophonous nightmare, by upping to the intensity in what we get in Leatherface. It blurs the line between entertainment, a New Line Cinema production, and an extreme horror film right down to recreating the ran over armadillo from the first film, replacing the immaculate (but somewhat absurd) taxidermy creation to a realistic animatronics one that, in a really curious touch, is played with pathos as Michelle and Ryan accidentally run over and have to put out of its misery.  

At first, it can make the strange mix of different types of film work. The sense of horror and underground culture is starting to bubble up to the surface, the gore loving horror film fan and music genres like death metal having grown up at the time of the second film or so, found here even if with thrash metal and still having a censored theatrical version as a compromise. The gore is still strong, even when there is cutaways, alongside its intensity in general mood. Helping this is that again, the Leatherface family is still as interesting as before, one of the best points of this franchise. Tobe Hooper realised with the sequel's curious tone to humour how they are centre to the tale, both as credible threats but that their personalities are over-the-top and sickly funny. By this point, like marking out the timeline for Highlander sequels, the family tree for this clan is not worth trying to map out, whilst Leatherface was thankfully at a time before Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) where the timeline was entirely mauled trying to reboot the franchise. Each version in each of the first four films as different entities that the scripts all wisely allow to stretch their legs and express themselves as different groups. Particularly as the leads, excluding the great presence of Ken Foree, are really one dimensional, this is a film where its expectations of stalk-and-chase scenes and the horror moments meant to sell it are far less interesting than the dark humour and the eccentricities when we get to be with the family.

This is a matriarchal clan, a squabbling yet close one who's nicely decorated home comes from an older Americana only with more dead animal parts and a homemade skull crushing machine in the kitchen, a disturbing concept at play too with a little girl amongst them as a born sociopath with a knife hidden in her dolly. Some would have found scenes in this still, if they hated Texas Chainsaw Massacre II's broad comedy, "betrayed" the original, such as Leatherface trying to learn from a speak and spell machine only to always type "FOOD" on the screen, one of those bizarre and fun character pieces this franchise early into itself found only to sadly lose in the films after the Millennium. Then of course you have Viggo Mortensen as Tex, first the handsome cowboy who you would understand completely wooing Michelle from an obnoxiously written boyfriend, but is also as great as a gangly, weird loon later on. The same year as Philip Ridley's The Reflection Skin (1990) where he had a main role, these offer a picture that he would become a hugely reliable and talented figure, with less of the potential embarrassment with Matthew McConaughey in the fourth one by vividly showing how good and varied an actor he is just from this simple horror role.

All of my issues with Leatherface before were that it was a fool's errand after the first two sequels that three and four could be able to recreate their structures and scenes from the first film without the comparisons being made. Here when Leatherface chases a woman through the woods with a chainsaw it becomes one of the scenes where the film does feel its weaknesses, merely the fate outside its own hands that it cannot match the first. Moments appear throughout the film, like the subplot of a previous female survivor still rooming the area in a near catatonic state, trying to add more to the same plot remade here from before, but its plotting as a horror film, as much as its action beats of fighting and setting people on fire, are far less interesting than being allowed to spend time with the Sawyer family at the dinner table. This is one of the issues with these films where the protagonists we are meant to be in the shoes off are bland ciphers, when here the Sawyers are more interesting being perversely wholesome for a bunch of homicidal psychopaths. Yes, there are parts of them which are still deliberately evil, such as the violence or the marks of racism in their dialogue, which does further another flaw of the film that, with these figures more interesting to watch, the attempt to be extreme at the same time does jar considerably.

The clash between being a greasy, cruel movie - where the heroine has to have her hands nailed to chair arms rather than tied on and dialogue at one point with gruesome implications of sexual violence - and a mainstream horror sequel is still there, a film which was lucky enough to be able to have its tone because this franchise could be sold, but it comes with all the compromises of being a film for the mainstream in that it cannot take the risks the second film did. This film had a trailer parodying Excalibur (1981) and Arthurian legend by having the Lady of the Lake of Arthurian legend, who gave King Arthur the legendary Excalibur sword, thrust out the lake a chainsaw for Leatherface, and for all the good things I now appreciate about this third film now, that trailer does connect to its clear flaws as well. The film that would have been the best from this time, but would not have been allowed to be made, would have continued the sick sense of humour of before fully, pure gorgonzola in a good way rather than just a film I just appreciate with a fondness for how far a lurid film can be appreciated.

Games of the Abstract: Gals Panic (1990)

 

Developer: Kaneko Co., Ltd.

Publisher: Kaneko Co., Ltd.

One to Two Player

Arcade

 

Having played Gals Panic SS (1996), the Sega Saturn game, going back to the first of the Gals Panic franchise is interesting for many reasons. Whilst this, among others, did get western arcade releases, Gals Panic became for developer/publisher Kaneko its staple of what title to make a sequel for over a decade until their closure. For context, this originates from Qix (1981), from Japanese publisher/developer Taito's American division, a game where you draw and claim space on screen whilst avoiding hazards, which can also take a life if they touch the line behind you out of your safe zone. A sequel was published by Taito and developed by Kaneko called Super QIX (1987), but Kaneko would take the template and make the first Gals Panic game, with Taito publishing it too. To be blunt, Qix became a game type good to use for erotic videogames, not necessarily only for simplicity, but because you could uncover the screen and see images as a reward, which Kaneko began with this game. Unlike Gals Panic SS, which was cute, this is back when Gals Panic was an erotic arcade game played for digitized nudity, and even then, context makes it quaint with hindsight.

Gals Panic, as mentioned, was released outside Japan by Taito, and with my interest with Sega Saturn games, the link between this, Taito and that console are fascinating in seeing where this franchise changed over time. The original game, mind, is in a modern context tame. This is also a cultural difference as, between 1970 to 2015, you had in a popular British tabloid newspaper The Sun with their Page 3 Girls¹, which as a controversial part of British culture I did grow up with and was copied by other tabloids. The Page 3 had topless models, in newspapers which you could find in supermarkets and could be seen by kids, and Gals Panic, the original in this arcade game, is rewarding the equivalent in that. The politics behind the Page 3 were controversial, but for a game designed for adults, not for children, the game plays with what is very quaint in mind to this, that over over three stages with each model, a digitized representation of real women who are credited in the ending, you get them in their costume, in their underwear, and then a topless page three equivalent and nothing more explicit when you succeed.

It is something you can still accuse as scuzzy, but honestly only one model wearing a schoolgirl outside is questionable nowadays. (And that is in knowledge that, to not throw stones in glass houses at Japanese culture only, the British were as bad; even if the age of consent laws in Britain are at the age of sixteen, knowing how young the Page 3 girls could be for The Sun is just as uncomfortable.) Knowing as well far more sexually explicit, and openly pornographic games, are more readily available decades later, even if animation for the PC, has to be considered when looking at this first game. Instead, this comes off playful and also openly silly. This is a first for me in an arcade game, for example here, where you can get in the mid round random chance section, a roulette wheel where you can get less or more time per round among other pieces, where one of the options is an interval dance from two gnome creatures operating the randomiser. There is a cartoonish nature to the proceedings even in the playfulness of the music, which contrasts the appeal for nudity in the centre of the challenge. Even with this too, there are sight gags in the backgrounds of the images adding jokes to what is meant to be erotic. A gnome toy on a shelf participates in the striptease with a suggestive butt shot, and one model posing as a female office worker has a crude painting of a man, framed in the background, getting a nosebleed when you reach her third stage image, nosebleeds for the unaware a symbol (found in manga and anime too) for sexual arousal.

The gameplay is as much as Gal Panic SS was six years later, having to avoid the big boss and their minions to acquire the stage. You do not need a 100% success for the three stages, but also you do not have the bonus missiles Gal Panic SS used, which were incredibly useful to keep the enemies at bay, be it here a giant spider with an annoying slow down webbing, a Sun who flexes his muscles to scatter molten flame, and a pyramid spitting out shapes. The one mechanic this has the later game does not have, and became a pain at times as much as a new challenge, is a bar where you need to vary your coverage or not just go down with your cursor, to avoid going into the minuses. It proved more of an annoyance, entirely because I had yet to figure out the exact rules of the mechanics, but it is a significant factor as, if you go in the red, your model of choice turns into a gag character. Be it ninja, octopus, female crocodile or a hippo in a bikini, even if you still succeed on the stage, if it is still with this image on the screen, you get laughed at and have to restart the section. Staying in the blue, by acquiring power ups and getting higher in the blue, by acquiring snacks and power ups, and you can continue on in the stages. If you are able to, with these factors or getting the right (and braver) clearances of space, you can get to the top level, and are rewarded with a level clearance regardless of the amount of the image uncovered. It is a way to balance out the challenge, but it’s seemingly unpredictable nature is a curious thing. It is of reward if you do succeed, and the quaintness of the reward, titillation, is succeeded by the six levels with their three stages (and background gags) instead.

This version of Gals Panic evokes the South Korean arcade game Miss World '96 (1996), Comad Industry Co., Ltd.'s game far more explicit and adult in nature (depending on which version of the machine it was). That game clearly took its inspiration from here but with mind to the sequels which brought in real photographs, which says a lot about how globally Gals Panic did create a niche for this franchise, even if for one game to exist from South Korea as an imitator. That game had real (and more sexually explicit) nude photos of models, with far more jarring (and copyright breaking) failure state images if you fell in the red. Truly, as a game that came to me as originally as a strange game, this was the game to complicate one’s masturbatory fantasies by introducing knockoff images of Freddy Krueger and Pinhead into the proceedings. That joke may come off as crass, but with mind that Gals Panic 3 (1995) brought in live action, and is just as tonally jarring and scuzzy, unfortunately it is a title to evoke in tandem to how these Qix-like games changed into the nineties.

And it is less the morbid fascination with these being erotic games, but more how this both eventually got a more sanitised Sega Saturn release, the best in terms of game mechanics which seem fairer, and how this became an obsession with Kaneko. This was not their only franchise or only genre they worked in, but since they since they worked on Super Qix with Taito, from here they started with a game that would spawn multiple sequels and spin-offs, the first game in 1990 ending with a neon light rich city as you are thanked upon for playing the game. Notwithstanding cancelled titles in the franchise, their obsession with this game in itself is curious, and structurally, whilst a difficult games at time in terms of meanness, you can remove the lurid selling point and the gameplay does not change, something to attest to when eventually this did happen for their games. "Ephemeral" genres of games, which anyone can make and are usually forgotten, fascinate me, and this franchise is one, for obvious reasons, which could be dismissed as just junk for the first ones being pure titillation, but Kaneko were also a company who made beat-em-ups (B.Rap Boys  (1992)) and scrolling shooters (Cyvern: The Dragon Weapons (1998)), but came back to this repeatedly as the breadwinning franchise. The tangent to the live action photographs does not help these Qix clones, as Gals Panic 3 proved for me, but considering Kaneko even made a spin-off for the original Playstation One called Silhouette Stories (1998), which was also without the erotic elements but brought in visual novel content, and the company with this tried and tested formula were clearly obsessed with pushing the francise onwards, even to the point in bringing in anime aesthetics and character designs which would have required much more work and care for. As a result, looking at this game, which feels like care and fun was brought into it, this proves an interesting production to scrutanise, and all of this is in mind to my obsession with the Sega Saturn. With how this managed to end up from here to that console alone was enough to fascinating, but seeing the strange progression for a type of game that could be dismissed is interesting in just beating them.

 

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1) Page 3: The Sun calls time on topless models after 44 years, by Lisa O'Carroll, Mark Sweney and Roy Greenslade for The Guardian, published on January 20th 2015.