Tokyo: The Last War (1989)

 

Director: Takashige Ichise

Screenplay: Kaizo Hayashi

Based on Teito Monogatari by Hiroshi Aramata

Cast: Masaya Katô as Yuko Nakamura, Takeshi Kusaka as Fumimaro Konoe, Brian Matt-Uhl as Wagner, Kaho Minami as Yukiko Tasumiya, Kyûsaku Shimada as Yasunori Kato, Tetsurô Tanba as Kanaami Kohou, Yoshio Tsuchiya as Dr. Mizuno

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

1945 Japan - after the 1988 adaptation Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis, adapting Hiroshi Aramata's multi-volume novel Teito Monogatari, we return to a later period, following after the main antagonist Yasunori Kato (Kyûsaku Shimada) having attempted to destroy Tokyo in the Meiji and Taishō era the final curtains for the Pacific War and Japan's defeat. In the final years in this story, Japan has a secret governmental group combining Buddhism and science by way of black magic to defeat the Allied forces. Contrasting this, there is the thousand years of accumulating dead, angry and vengeful, which resurrect Kato.

It is a fascinating production which strangely never came to the West, with Ngai Chai Lam as assistant director, the Hong Kong director of Riki-Oh (1991) and The Seventh Curse (1986), and Screaming Mad George on practical effects duty, all for a story which is more overtly horrific in content but is tackling a really difficult historical period. This has to find a balance between the issue that the deaths that happened in Japan for their populous was horrifying, but contrasted by the fact Japan's military did align themselves with the Nazis, the existential contrast even making Kato, despite wishing to just destroy here, almost a true anti-hero finally. A transmission tower is what the plan is, able to channel legendary actor Tetsurô Tanba's will to kill Churchill and Roosevelt with black magic, which General Hideki Tojo thinks is embarrassing and also leads to the question whether it would be enough to actually win a war Japan is in the sliding loss of. The last heir of the previous family who fought Kato, Yukiko (Kaho Minami), is a nurse we follow, and fully emphasises this film dealing with what is still a controversial part of Japanese history, as she is an innocent bystander, there trying to help those maimed in the combat of war, and it is befitting when, traumatised by the history of Kato, he looks like one of the Japanese military on the streets in the uniform as he begins to stalk her and stalks the plan to use the transmission tower.

There is also Yuko Nakamura (Masaya Katô), an assistant to Tanba's Kanaami Kohou who was experimented on as a child to fully cultivate his psychic powers, finding himself in the midst of a plan with the transmitter tower even other Buddhist monks find against their faith, and woefully underpowered against Kato, who could likely twist him like a towel as one unfortunate soldier endures. This is significantly more violent than the previous film - including the soldier unable to throw a grenade due to magic - and Screaming Mad George earns his pay check with skin peeling of the cheek, or a chest mid-operation opening the stitches by their own, or the nightmarish experiences Yukiko has of Miyo, a girl who lost her eyes and mother due to US fire bombings, having a bug body and a human head, or Kato headed children. In contrast however you have the film taking its subject seriously, in that whilst its leads are important, Yukiko the last member of the family who stopped Kato last time, and Nakamura risking his life to stop Kato, ultimately this entire story is about the acceptance of Japan losing the Pacific War.  It balances carefully between its more explicitly horror tone with the severity of its subject.

Yukiko for the most part is a nurse trying to help ordinary people harmed in fire bombed Japan, with Nakamura the result of a child being experimented on by the military against his will, a film really emphasising that it is not looking at Japan with a pro-military stance but stuck in its doomed outcome of the Pacific War, even nodding to the atomic bombs in reference. It says a lot that the comic relief squeaky voice nurse dies, and not in a cheap way but credible to the real conflict this is set in, so The Last War does manage to deal with history carefully. Hitler does make an appearance - which is apt as he was an occultist in real life, approving the killing of Allied leaders with black magic - and it is potent how the outcome even if it drastically changes history before Inglourious Basterds (2009) deals with him. [Major Spoiler] That, realising the doomed nature of the war, figures decide to try to end it quickly, force the curse on Hitler instead and kill him instead, even if real history sadly lead to Japan feeling the effect of two atomic bombs. [Spoilers End] With the hope that Japan, as it did into the fifties and sixties onwards, could rebuild itself from its past and destruction, the film does leave on a bitter sweet finale as a result.

In terms of Teito Monogatari, it does strip back a lot of the historical and occultist content, which may make it a disappointment, where Kato is literally a super powered juggernaut rather than a figure with a symbolic complexity to him. Nods thankfully still exist, such as an entire scene evoking Kwaidan (1964) of monks with text painted on their bodies and face to protect the main temple,  and by its end, the tonal change for Tokyo: The Last War allows it to deal with its subject matter well and stand out by itself. How this never found its way to the West, as it came under the guide of its producer Takashige Ichise directing the film, I cannot say barring pure bad luck, as next to Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis this would have been the more readily accessible of the pair you could get with greater ease. It is, together with its prequel, worthy of critical reassessment.

Games of the Abstract: Armored Warriors (1994)

 

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

One to Three Players

Arcade

 

Capcom, among its many genres of interest, have gone with the beat-em-up from post apocalypse licensed games where dinosaurs co-exist with Cadillac cars to Battle Circuit (1997), about space bounty hunters where among the playable cast you can be a pink female ostrich with a small child on their back. Among this series of imaginative and rich games in the genre, set in a future of 2281, with an intergalactic confict between Earth and Raia, is Armored Warriors, a mech based scrolling beat-em-up. With four characters to choose from, pilots of combat robots, and up to three players possible, what was known as Powered Gear - Strategic Variant Armor Equipment in Japan and Armored Warriors in the West is also an idiosyncratic take on the genre.

Piloting giant robots, this does fit into a huge trend over multiple mediums of this trope, futuristic wars fought across Earth and even outer space in robots, though in video games it is more commonplace to have them be games where there is a greater emphasis on the fuller scale of mechanized combat, be it turn based or being able to pilot the machines freely, in vehicle simulation games, whether the later is attempting to be realistic or just grander scale combat. The idea of taking giant combat robots into genres like the beat-em-up or fighting games is something distinct. For fighting games, you have the likes of tie-in games for the Gundam animated franchise or Capcom’s own Tech Romancer (1998), but a beat-em-up, which restricts the combat in areas or on stages where you clear through hordes of fellow combat machines, is definitely idiosyncratic for a type of premise which in the nineties was more emphasized in the likes of the MechWarrior franchises, starting in 1989 and having a polygonal sequel come a year after Armored Warriors in 1995.

The pilots themselves, three men and one woman, take the back seats to their machines, which are aesthetically distinct. Depicted as a grimy science fiction tale that takes place on two planets at least, warzones full of space combat, there is still a cartoonish tone, but one less Saturday morning cartoon but legitimately comparable to anime from this period within the science fiction genre about such combat machines. Aptly its director Yoshiki Okamoto was a game developer in the eighties on many Capcom’s shooters with an emphasis on machines, like the air plane combat scrolling shooter 1942 (1984), which explains the tone, where all the robots, even the enemy combatants, stand out between yours in aesthetic against elaborate war zones, a balance between having a realism in terms of the world’s logic of how these machines would work, but being exaggerated so there is a strong sense of style to the proceedings. The female pilot’s machine for example, needing to use speed to make up for low armor, is a yellow domed machine which scuttles around, compared to enemy ones which can have spider legs to literally do so to giant mechanized steam rollers. Bosses are monstrosities of metal and by the last stage, you are fighting in outer space.

This becomes more idiosyncratic as, in one of the coolest touches distinct to this genre in the beat-em-up genre, you can take parts from your fallen enemies in replacement to the requisite weapons or objects other games provide you and replace your body with these tools. Want those spider legs or the hover carrier form? Yes you can, alongside weapons like laser swords, guns and even electric claws, as alongside your special attack of limited amount, you have a melee (or acquired gun) attack and a limited ammo ranged weapon at hand whatever you acquire. It will all be needed as, with many beat-em-ups, it can consume lives (and coins in the original arcades) in how a lot of this is finding oneself thrown into hordes of enemies, in mind this was a game fully meant to be multiplayer as many in the genre, with a limited number of moves to use and having to negotiate the hazards in your way over a series of levels. Like many games in the beat-em-up genre, it becomes a series of dodging a chaotic mass of enemies, with end bosses let alone grunts a game of avoiding them and waltzing in to get your shots in when you have the chance.

It is a cool game, a really distinct and aesthetically pleasing game from a genre which, especially with what Capcom brought to the table, had so much style and creativity to what was an insanely easy genre in structure for anyone to work on. Only with exceptions, like developer Winkysoft’s criminally unknown Denjin Makai II: Guardians (1995), Capcom were the publisher/developer who brought some of the best innovation and artistic creativity to this genre. It is a shame this genre, and Capcom’s interest with their other franchises over the decades like the beat-em-up titles, waned and were affected by a) the decreased power arcades had and b) how the change to three dimensional polygonal games has not been the most reliable way for the genre to transition to it, as you could have seen more idiosyncratic takes on a very simple game genre which could keep going. Even an obscure game like this brings a distinct premise and change of pace with these lumbering machines breaking each other, which gives something inherently different with a solid game within itself you can have fun with. Armored Warriors’ style might not appeal to everyone, hardcore science fiction around machinery, but with its rich sprite designs to the sick humour of squashing human foot soldiers the size of ants for points, the game is clearly built out of love for its central premise, and in the series of beat-em-ups from Capcom, this shows just how good their work was.

The Ghastly Ones (1968)

 

Director: Andy Milligan

Screenplay: Hal Sherwood and Andy Milligan

Cast: Veronica Radburn as Martha; Maggie Rogers as Hattie; Hal Borske as Colin Trask; Anne Linden as Vicky; Fib LaBlaque as Rich; Carol Vogel as Liz; Richard Romanus as Don; Eileen Hayes as Veronica; Don Williams as Bill; Hal Sherwood as Pastor Walter; Neil Flanagan as Dobbs; Ada McAllister as Ada; Robert Adsit as Robert

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Andy Milligan got on the Video Nasties list, and whilst with gore to be found here, you do watch The Ghastly Ones, and I find myself thinking of people who were disappointed by this, hated it, or came to this because of a cult surf-garage band named the Ghastly Ones, and see how much a farce the Video Nasties panic was. Yes, there were some extreme films in that list - the Nazisploitation genre, Cannibal Holocaust (1980) - and people not used to horror films being gory would have been shocked, but with how this is matched by how more extreme Hammer films got by the seventies in their own way to match the trends, it would be like they were living in a cave. I am coming to this too with admiration for the production too, but with prior knowledge of Andy Milligan cinema as being about lengthy monologues and dialogue scenes, usually full of misanthropy, from a producer/writer/director that started in independent theatre and found that horror cinema was the best way to get to make films. Acquired taste is the appropriate word here.

Milligan has been reassessed - it helps as well a cult filmmaker, Nicolas Winding Refn, is obsessed with buying seemingly lost films and helping get them preserved - but Milligan himself is as idiosyncratic as you can get in terms of actually watching the films, low budget dramas with misanthropic views of humanity and low budgets, The Ghastly Ones set in the late 1800s where an inheritance of a deceased father naturally leads to someone picking people off. The tone is set up fully in its presentation - extreme low budget independent cinema, using what period appropriate costumes could be found, sets which masked the real world of the time, in this case filming at a home from the appropriate era on Staten Island in New York City, and a cast mainly of people who, if not prolific in small roles, only have a few usually in exploitation cinema or even in Milligan's own filmography. Milligan would attempt this in a Civil War period, only for the film never to be properly finished if thankfully made available, in House of Seven Belles (1979), and here as there he does manage to create a period horror film which is not going to be as immaculate as a higher budget period film, but let's one enter the time period with suspension of disbelief.

A will is to be confirmed at a late father's mansion, isolated on an island, where his three daughters, who had to be married first before the will could be opened, will have to stay there to complete the requests of the document and claim their rights, within three days of "sexual harmony". A threat with a dead animal left on someone's white linen offers the first warning signs harmony will not last, and for those uninitiated with Andy Milligan, as stated he really liked dialogue and to have it spoken, characters emoting their anxieties and grievances for large passages of the film. Watching said lengthy dialogue scenes, whilst enjoying them myself, does with hindsight make police prosecutors in the period when this got on the Video Nasties list look bad, the sense no one bothered to actually watch the film. It takes a long time from its opening, where a man and a woman are butchered by the titular ones, to when our leads start to be picked off themselves. Slanted camera shots and close-ups make up the look of the film, and neurosis is filtered throughout until it explodes out into actual bloodshed.

The will is how it is because the father, reflecting on his own issues with his wife, felt there was no love in their marriage; this is something which in mind to who turns out the killer, [Huge Spoiler] a daughter from another relationship who was treated like dirt and as a servant [Spoilers End], proves to be his fault as much as his wife's, for creating a literal monster who serves a human head at the dining table on a silver platter. Disabled characters are a subject in his work, whether they are dealt with well or not with hindsight; here the figure with a mind of a child among the servants on the island, Colin (Hal Borske), is definitely a sympathetic figure who is as manipulated, that despite the broadness of his performances is someone who is a real casualty among the figures who probably did deserve their fates in contrast. Among Milligan films, this becomes one of the more focused in terms of genre tropes, as a figure starts bumping people off, wearing black hooded robes and aiming pitchforks into necks, but you have a slower paced proto-slasher in many ways here where the dialogue is its central prerogative. Considering one of Milligan's visual trademarks has been to swing the camera around erratically in a violent scene, as seen here, we are dealing with a director in the fringes, pulled into the light with this film when the British video watchdogs came a knocking.

It is, for those able to pick up its vibes, the slasher/murder mystery of his career which for a pure pulp title is deliciously camp. His career can be summed up well with one of the films he made in his brief stint in my home of Britain, The Body Beneath (1970). For a prominent moment, the low budget vampire story takes a back seat to scenes of the vampires, debating whether to leave the country for bloodier pastures, factor in how drugs has made the blood supply worse and how difficult it is to get anything done due to the police out at night. The Ghastly Ones is a Ten Little Indians scenario in his career, one of his most prominently known due to its Video Nasties credits, which is just as idiosyncratic for where it tangents off into.

Games of the Abstract: Purikura Daisakusen (1996)

 

Developer: Atlus

Publisher: Atlus

One to Two Players

Arcade / Sega Saturn

 

Purikura Daisakusen is a spin-off, in an entirely different genre, of the Power Instinct fighting game franchise. Developed and published by Atlus, who have been around since 1986 and have found themselves in the decades after cementing their organization through the Persona / Megami Tensei franchises, they dabbled in a lot of genres, such as in the nineties when they created an eccentric two dimensional fighter in the wake of Street Fighter 2’s success, 1993’s Power Instinct. Including a character like Otane Gōketsuji, an elderly woman who, accompanied by her twin sister Oume Gōketsuji, was an accomplished fighter able to transform into her youthful self mid-fight through her move set, Poster Instinct lasted for four entires (and an upgrade of Power Instinct 2), though the subject of this spin-off title was introduced into the franchise in Power Instinct 2 (1994) itself, the magical girl character of Clara Hananokouji who would last through most of the games after. “Magical girl” as, for anyone with knowledge of this story telling trope even if Sailor Moon, she is a teen girl able to transform into a super heroine. One slight different here occasionally as in the original fighting game, she had the ability as well to transform briefly into an adult self, looking like a female rollerblader dressed for Venice Beach, California or somewhere very warm of all appearances.

Starting in the arcade before getting a Japanese only Sega Saturn release, Purikura Daisakusen is an isometric shooter where you can play Clara, a female partner named Kirara, rescuing her older sister, a princes who attempted to defeat the villains only to be captured, or a giant cat named Grey, who is actually a cursed prince stuck in his current form. A kingdom known as the Scrap Empire have invaded Clara’s world of Miracle World, effectively taking Dr. Robotnik’s obsession in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise for forcing small animals to pilot homicidal robots, only adding the touch of turning people into animals at first for more resources to work with. From the get-go, this is a frantic shooter and it is cute as hell as much as it is a challenge. Until you get to the later levels, everything is bright and colourful, with the additional factor that when you shoot enemies, despite what the plot suggests, it looks like you are turning death machines into animals you can rescue for points, which befits the aesthetic as well as looks adorable doing it, even when they accidentally fall off the stage before you can collect them.

Aesthetically nothing is amiss with Purikura Daisakusen, with its vibrant visual appearance; from a winter tundra dodging snowmen thrown in the air down onto you by a crustacean boss to blasting enemies on a giant train track, everything to the game is visually and audibly pleasing. Even when it gets to fighting the Scrap Empire and their leader in the final level it sticks when everything becomes bleaker aesthetically. With a robotic monstrosity for a final boss whose minions include globules of slime which you can only remove with the melee attack, the game looks striking and the Saturn port was able to additional flourishes like voice acting and an animated opening to the package. The game play itself however has a love-it-or-hate it trait. Alongside the difficulty curve, which becomes more and more harder with lives scare and limited as happened with a lot of the Saturn ports, without infinite continues, the decision to make it isometric becomes its most idiosyncratic thing you have to worry about.

A method for visually representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions in drawing, in video games before polygons isometric visuals would help a game show space and environment, but it presents issues depending on the genre and specifically certain game mechanics per genre. Platforming is one, as can be attested if you try to put the aforementioned blue hedgehog named Sonic in this setting – Sonic 3D Blast (1996) – and a shooter like Purikura Daisakusen. They should not just be dismissed because of this, but an isometric design adds an additional fiddliness some will despise, especially as this could have benefitted from being a twin stick shooter, a concern found as far back as Robotron: 2084 (1982) in the eighties where you could have assigned a directional trigger to fire and not have to worry about getting your magical girl lead in the direction needed to hit targets. Even a simple strife button, with targeting possible when not facing forwards to the enemy, would completely help the game especially as, by later levels, an insane about of visual hazards will come one’s way, even deathtrap obstacles in the final level which chip the health bar’s orbs. Even if there is enough ease to move between hazards, and even a dodge button, this presentation means you have to factor in what is in the foreground and background, something which was more efficient in two dimensional shooters of this era and became less a concern in focusing on the challenge.

This is the one thing of issue with Purikura Daisakusen, a shame if not one which detracts from the gameplay, but does present an awkwardness which with the difficulty curve was unnecessary to also have to contend with. The game if you can accept this was simple, but in a great accessible way with the vibrancy seen from the 32-bit era of sprite games, which became even more elaborate than the great examples from the era before. Power Instinct as a franchise though would close out, with Matrimelee (2003) the last game, developed by Noise Factory for the Neo Geo and the Playstation 2. Atlus themselves, whilst with other games in their careers such as the idiosyncratic Catherine (2011), would find a crossover success in the West with the Persona franchise, a spin-off from Megami Tensei which with the source franchise has been a predominant focus for them into the 2010s including tie-in games. Whether Clara Hananokouji would ever return in a game is unknown, but with some tweaks, Purikura Daisakusen’s entire cute tone would sell in the current day with ease.

Eaten Alive (1976)

 

Director: Tobe Hooper

Screenplay: Kim Henkel, Alvin L. Fast and Mardi Rustam

Cast: Neville Brand as Judd; Mel Ferrer as Harvey Wood; Carolyn Jones as Miss Hattie; Marilyn Burns as Faye; William Finley as Roy; Stuart Whitman as Sheriff Martin; Roberta Collins as Clara; Kyle Richards as Angie; Robert Englund as Buck; Crystin Sinclaire as Libby Wood; Janus Blythe as Lynette

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

As with many Tobe Hooper films, there is an unhinged air to Eaten Alive, and it's weird and legitimately scary electronic score from the get-go, over a shoot of the moon at the beginning, is Wayne Bell and Tobe Hooper himself composing instant nightmare fuel. It is a very simple story, and honestly, there is not much to Eaten Alive plot wise in general barring a set-up: Neville Brand is Judd, a man out of his mind running a hotel, with an alligator in the nearby water he claims is from the Egyptian Nile. The narrative is supposedly inspired by a real case - of bar-owner Joe Ball, who lived in the small Texan town of Elemendorf in the Thirties, and was convicted of murder and said to have disposed more women then presumed with the help of all the alligators he kept, something which has been challenged as being exaggerated over time from his more simpler crimes of murder¹. For Judd here, any woman (and frankly any man or child) is not safe from him killing them or letting the pet reptile after them. Even family dogs are not safe.

As a Video Nasty, the extremity is entirely felt in the evil intensity in Hooper's films, as much likely the reason it ended up on the list as the problem was when The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) became an enemy of the British censors. Artificially bright coloured lights cover the few locations, an artificial fetid Texas of cat houses and rundown hotels, entirely at night and shot on stages, which presents an unnatural reality to the production. Almost everyone here too is unhinged and wandered out of an entirely different world as well, where your bordello mistress (including her old age makeup) is a strange caricature in suit slacks and shirt, including a money tending cap, to William Finley (Phantom of the Paradise (1974)) and Robert Englund (the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise) adding to the weird aura.

A lot of the film is disturbed in general, the same manic energy of the original Chain Saw Massacre (and some fo the 1986 sequel) felt here. The setting and the character of Judd in the little we get is as vivid as the Leatherface family - that he has a caged monkey, the plot points about his wooden leg (and losing it to the pet), even a Nazi flag in the background in one scene, scarred and marked like an acquired from being a soldier and getting hold of it in combat. Without a lot of dialogue and drama to work with here, as a horror film, these details add to the production, but there is already from the get-go a sense most of the cast in unhinged. Before Judd is chasing a young girl under his hotel's foundations with a giant scythe, she is likely traumatised by her family's complete lack of stability, a returning Marilyn Burns from Chain Saw and William Finley having a scene, after the dog is eaten, which is just as disturbing for how he acts out a mental breakdown between parents. That there is stability, with an adult daughter and a father trying to find her sister, adds the sense of ordinary reality in its brief snippets as a contrast but how thin the veneer is. The bar is still full of guys like Buck (Englund), a stud whose bravado is with being a trouble starter, and even if he is harmless, he just has to drive his girlfriend of the night down the right country road and find himself in Judd's nightmare hotel.

The fact the crocodile is cheesy, a giant floating prop, is not going to detract from how alarmingly effective the rest of the film is. It has, as a result, a more visceral sense of peril even if not that violent, able to work around its slighter plot between legitimately disturbing aspects (such as Burns, again put through the wringer, being tied to a bed for a large portion of the film) against an absurd tone close to a very sick sense of humour. Credibly, Hooper would channel this into later films when the eighties came about, and whilst Crocodile (2000) tragically felt more of a sedate TV movie in tone, when it nodded to this film briefly it was still a nice wink at one of Hooper's underrated films.  

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1) Eaten Alive: the bizarre true story behind Tobe Hooper's alligator horror movie, written by Rebecca Hawkes for The Telegraph, published May 4th 2015.

Number Seventeen (1932)

 

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock, Alma Reville and Rodney Ackland

Based on the play by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon

Cast: Leon M. Lion as Ben, Anne Grey as Nora, John Stuart as Barton, Donald Calthrop as Brant, Barry Jones as Henry Doyle, Ann Casson as Rose Ackroyd, Henry Caine as Mr. Ackroyd, Garry Marsh as Sheldrake

Canon Fodder

 

Sausage. Hit him over the head with.

Number Seventeen promises a lot as an early Alfred Hitchcock film immediately, of expressionist shadows as a homeless sailor enters a house for sale, only to find another man and also a corpse there. Already you have awesome compositions, almost like a supernatural drama, of looming shadow hands alongside jump cut editing to a train to show shock. It is however, just in its title too, a weird film for Hitchcock, the kind of “weird” in terms of not a positively delirious title but something that is absolutely curious in his career. It is an oddity with virtues but a lot of issues behind its creation.

Hitchcock had to make this film, part of his career with British International Pictures¹. Despite the fact he had already made The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) and Blackmail (1929), and was becoming an acclaimed filmmaker, his career up to sailing to Hollywood and the United States for Rebecca (1940) includes films which stand out in premise (his personal project, the drama Rich and Strange (1931)), only to not become films which stand out the highest in his career, and titles which he made as a studio director whether he wanted to make them or not, such as the operetta film with Jessie Matthews, Waltzes from Vienna (1934). Number Seventeen, based on a thriller play by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, has a suspense plot including one of the earliest McGuffins, if not for the first, for Hitchcock’s career in that it is a piece about jewel thieves swarming around this house alongside a detective, his daughter, a cop in disguise and the homeless man Ben (Leon M. Lion). Hitchcock however, in adapting this, decided to turn it into a farce on purpose tonally, which affects the final result.

The final film because of this is a really broad farce which does not really work. Hitchcock films can be legitimately funny, without becoming comedies but being suspense films which have incredibly dour winks at the banal mixing with the morbid – the cop in Frenzy (1972), one of his grimmest tales, whose wife is trying experimental cooking to his horror, or a key scene of Strangers on a Train (1951), whilst not played for laughs, being based on whether the lead can complete a game of tennis as quickly as he can – or incredible one-liners, such as the many Cary Grant has in North by Northwest (1959). This does eventually have charm, with Leon M. Lion as Ben, once you get past his initial gurning klutz performance, becoming lovable as a genial homeless man caught in the middle of this against his will, but a lot of the humour, being the slapstick to speed up fight scenes, goes over the head in actually landing. A lot of it being a pastiche of the suspense drama completely falls flat when it eventually gives up and becomes a more heightened crime film by the finale. Instead a lot of this feels like a stage play with Hitchcock managing to make it visually vibrant and soaked in shadows, entirely set at night, of a group of people ending up in this house all at once. The sense of this comes when one of its parodies, the female lead on the villains’ side who is so mysterious she is a deaf-mute, being jettisoned. When this character Nora (Anne Grey) just starts speaking, completely kneecapping one of its more idiosyncratic touches as quickly as it is introduced in a film only an hour long, you get the feeling Hitchcock made a legitimate mistake with his collaborators which effects the final quality.

Seventeen, by way of its finale with model trains, gets a really thrilling ending of escaping by train and the commandeering of a public bus to catch up with it, which shows how the film could have been cultivated into an ambitious and grander work by its director. The film had the potential to be a great production, full of McGuffins and plot points for the sake of getting to the next scene – corpses not quite dead, cops posing as lackeys, heroines secretly hiding in the villains’ side – as people fight over an expensive necklace. Even a scene of falling over a broken wooden railing does show how the comedic tone of the film could have mixed with suspense. What this feels like is a germ of a bigger work, and instead it is Hitchcock the master craftsman who sticks out than a successful result, still early in his career showing the mind which planned out his films carefully before they were filmed, compositions even here of the images which stand out incredibly. If it is a failure in Hitchcock’s career, but that does not mean you cannot appreciate the skills he shows here that would grow in his filmography.

 

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1) Alfred Hitchcock Collectors’ Guide: Number Seventeen (1932), written by Brent Reid for Brenton on Film and published on August 16th 2019.

Mindkiller (1987)

 

Director: Michael Krueger

Screenplay: Dave Sipos, Curtis Hannum and Michael Krueger

Cast: Joe McDonald as Warren; Wade Kelley as Larry; Shirley Ross as Sandy; Kevin Hart as Brad; Tom Henry as Vivac Chandra; Diana Calhoun as Mrs. Chandra; George Flynn as Mr. Townsend; Crystel Niedle as Connie

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

The way things are going, I should try to screw a turtle!

Among the many horror films made in the eighties, Mindkiller definitely exists because of the whole issue of how, in society, the concept of falling in love and romance exist, but if you are a socially awkward person, the ways of yore to go about intimacy are far more difficult. This is unfortunately where incels came into being, the negative downward spiral in this position, which Mindkiller shows a prototypical example of in Warren (Joe McDonald). The set-up emphasises the horrific nature under its surface, a strange (i.e. perfect) atmosphere of fog machine, gel lighting over cold purplish-blue lights, jump cuts, and a mother angry about her adult son killing hamsters again. Yes, it is absurd in tone but aesthetically, before you get to the main story and Warren himself, it stands out. The son is non-human in look, but once he was a man who believing psychic ability could be honed and improved, the manuscript from his work finding itself in Warren's hands at his work as a library clerk.

Warren is the kind of guy without self-esteem, who is trying to watch The Art of Seduction starring Rex Hunter to get dating tips, without much luck with women in the same way a blind squirrel attempts to get nuts in a live mind field. Warren unfortunately has a temper, and shows the worse aspects of how people just struggle with the interaction presumed to be needed in human society, and in needing to interact and date, which even a cheesier horror film like this can depict well. This is an issue when a new employee at the library, a woman named Sandy (Shirley Ross), comes into Warren's world and he falls in love with her. Naturally, he finds in the archive this manuscript which involves mind control. A silly concept, but with the insidious nature of the seduction artist, it gets into how, in the struggle with socialising with others, the lure of controlling others for love and sex fantasies becomes the immediate downfall of Warren.

Films dealing with these types of archetypes, the male character who is weak and crawls towards violent power with horrible consequences, does become a metaphor for how many exist in horror cinema of how society makes a mistake of not designing itself to help the lonely and desperate, to prevent real life examples of Warren coming into be or preventing them from being drawn to have control in violent ways, here a research text which offers a key to greatness and mind expansion, that however ends in tears. At first, Warren is actually nice, as it has nothing to do with mind control, but to expand the mind, improving in his work and confidence, cook awesome food, and psychically cause vending machines to spit out candy bars at a whim. When he gets to women as a possession to have, including Sandy, is when absolute power corrupts, fixation and rage corrupting him. More so here if you attempt to brainwash the woman, Sandy, you have a crush on, and if something is going wrong with your newly acquired powers.

Mindkillers is a more silly genre film despite the more serious themes I can reach for in its plot, personality to be found in the film, a goofy streak of humour despite aspects of its content being far more uncomfortable in the future after due to how these themes of men reaching for more extreme ways to be with women have become a subject of greater concern, such as the incel concept itself. It follows the expected plot life of many films like this, as his experiments in mind expansion lead to Warren becoming colder and meaner, mind controlling a paper cutter blade in his friend's hand to go onto his other fingers the first signs he will lash out. The film returns to the tone its prologue has, when molecular manipulation by a machine is the final stage of the manuscript, which has unforeseen body horror consequences. A film like this does not really reinvent the wheel, but without any context for this, Mindkiller was very entertaining, a goofy tone which does not stop these more serious ideas to come into play. Even when it escalates with this plot turn, usually a film plot like this suggests one should not tamper with powers beyond what we should access; instead, truthfully, it is more the morality which fascinates me with this theme from even before cinema came into being for the horror genre. If mental expansion was possible, would we have Warrens brainwashing women to love them and hurting people, which is unfortunately the likely scenario. There are also the unforeseen health risks, such as deformation of the head with the brain trying to adapt to the ability to hear all thoughts.

The turn into body horror and the unnatural helps a slow burn and silly film, where his friend's use of the manuscript just causes him to start baying at imaginary moons between his growing confidence, like he is a pretending to be a werewolf, a film with personality which does bring some practical effects and mind bending content into the finale to escalate the tone. It gets into phantastical layers, as people are terrorized in their dreams, even monster tooth phones being brought in, and Warren's transformation fully embraces the spectacle of this era. By the end, someone looks like a Dick Tracy villain named Big Head, or people can be possessed by giant heart blobs that transfer the original person's mind. It is sad that director/co-writer Michael Krueger did not do a lot more than two films in the directorial role, and a few scripts, but sadly, the reason was that he passed in 1990¹, not long into the beginning of his career in genre cinema. This is an obscure film I tracked down in itself, one which I came to appreciate due to an absolute lack of expectations.

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1) The British Film Institute's page on Michael Krueger.

Games of the Abstract: Klonoa - Door to Phantomile (1997)

 

Developer: Namco

Publisher: Namco

One Player

Sony Playstation

 

Klonoa, in mind of the attempts to revive the series from a 2008 remake to a 2022 remaster with its sequel called the Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series, was clearly a franchise and a titular character that was loved by its creators at Namco. Created by Hideo Yoshizawa, it would have been a real shift from a man who bring to be the original Ninja Gaiden games trilogy between 1988-1991, but alongside helping create Mr. Driller, another Namco cult favorite, his career is full of idiosyncratic games and characters, to which Klonoa the cat person with winged ears he can float with stands out among Namco’s catalogue. Humorously, this was originally meant to be a tie-in game to Spriggan, the manga written by Hiroshi Takashige and illustrated by Ryōji Minagawa¹. The license fell through, and alongside the production deciding to deliberately create a lighter and cuter work in tone in contrast to a large proportion of the Playstation software catalogue¹, they had probably dodged a bullet too; alongside licensed games not being easy to preserve due to the license needing to be renewed, the 1998 animated film adaptation of Spriggan, absolutely distancing the adaptation to the original long running source material, was a mess that would have tied to the game like an albatross even if they were very different takes on the source material.

As the original plan after this was also ditched, to be a grittier science fiction game with a robotic protagonist², we instead got this beautifully lyrical work that, to my utter surprise gets bittersweet and sad as it is also is a truly creative and whimsical 2D.5 platformer depicting the world of dreams. Klonoa with his friend Huepow, a sentient blue orb creative, find themselves accidentally brought into a world threatening story which I came to know the game for from an Official UK Playstation Magazine demo disc, one of the many demos from my childhood which left a mark but I never got to when the full games were not ridiculously expensive on the second hand market. The set up from that demo, the first “Visions” (i.e. the first level), has the pair encountering an evil figure named Ghadius, who has kidnapped the maiden from the moon kingdom who sings the song to reinvigorate the dream world, Klonoa and Huepow the ones to stop him and his minions. Huepow himself is a prominent gameplay mechanic as, set in a linear gameplay route per level which yet exploits three dimensions, Klonoa uses his magical ring containing his friend to inflate and use enemies as weapons to throw at others (or breakable objects) or to double jump with.

The game’s virtue, even when it gets harder among the visions, is how crisp mechanically this all is, using this simple and idiosyncratic mechanic to figure out how to get forwards or access the unlockables, namely a certain number of imprisoned victims of Ghadius who, six per stage, unlock a bonus “Vision” when all found. This review covers the original 1997 videogame, where as much as the emphasis is on polygons being a new factor for the fifth generation of videogame consoles. It was, bluntly, a huge flaw in hindsight as it ostracised sprite and 2D games, regardless of their virtuesw, with the irony those games will have aged better. Klonoa is a delicious irony as it is a polygonal game but is “2D.5” in how this is locked on linear levels where you cannot wander in open space, but there is an inspired use of level layouts in and out of the fore and backgrounds.

Levels literally weave into each other, as alternative routes (to complete levels, like finding four seals, or to find bonuses) can go in the screen over and under the path you are on, whilst certain challenges mean lobbing minions directly at the camera or into it off your platform. It still stands out decades on, especially as the aesthetic is beautiful. It is cute, even to the point this was criticized back in the day for the voice acting being so overtly cute, high pitched noises, it was dubbed too much³, but the entire presentation is a standout. Literally taking the dream logic as its premise, the world has no overt high lights in terms of levels, but the aesthetic nature of them all is spectacular. Barring the level where their evil shadow versions can appear, even the enemies are cute, like a cat creature in a spiked ball contraption zooming about or giant minions you can inflate and use as platforms.

It is then, with surprise, how sad and macabre the game gets as for anyone who only played the demo as I did, you still get this sweet and vibrant story, where the leads are matched by goofy side characters, only with sudden shifts into tragedy. You do not expect a character to tragically die, or the bitter sweet ending of Klonoa and Huepow’s story, but that it pulls these moments off is a testament to Hideo Yoshizawa and Namco for achieving a fun platformer which pulls the heart strings. It is a well made game, which helps so much as even the fiddliness of some of the later challenges thankfully are contrasted by a) there being a save system, b) the chance for many lives to be acquired, and c) the mechanics being so solid the game itself is stretching them in inspired ways without the gameplay itself, enough that you could have had a bonus set of levels which could be about using these techniques. The sequel Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil came, for the Playstation 2 in 2001, and whilst there were spin-off titles over multiple systems at this time, it seemed sadly Klonoa would not be continued after this as a franchise. Clearly it is with love that this character however was brought back, as this first game got the 2008 remake for the Nintendo Wii, then was compiled with the sequel in the 2022 collection, through that version. This is a beautiful epilogue even if the original game, not the remake, is worth preserving by itself.

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1) INTERVIEW: Hideo Yoshizawa and Keiji Yamagishi, written by Heidi Kemps for Gaming Moe on March 27th 2018.

2) "今回のエッセイスト グラフィックデザイナー・荒井 佳彦： OUTER VISION 1：前身を考えよう". written by Yoshihiko Arai for Bandai Namco on March 6th 1998. Archived from the original on September 3, 2018. Retrieved September 3, 2018. [Japanese Only]

3) Klonoa: Nothing a little penicillin won’t fix! Review, written by the GR Staff for Game Revolution on June 4th 2004. A review where the criticism for the cute tone, especially the voices is brought up: "All of the conversation in Klonoa is comprised of annoying-as-hell squeaks and distorted human voices. Huepow’s voice is especially nerve-wrenching: it’s almost exactly like Beaker’s voice from the Muppet Labs (i.e. “Meep-meep-meep! Meep!?”). This is something you definitely want to skip while playing."

The Funhouse (1981)

 

Director: Tobe Hooper

Screenplay: Larry Block

Cast: Elizabeth Berridge as Amy Harper; Cooper Huckabee as Buzz; Largo Woodruff as Liz Duncan; Miles Chapin as Richie; Kevin Conway as Freak Show Barker / Strip Show Barker / Conrad Straker (The Funhouse Barker); Wayne Doba as Gunther Twibunt (The Monster); Sylvia Miles as Madame Zena; William Finley as Marco the Magnificent

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

When you're stoned, Charles Manson is a terrific guy.

Tobe Hooper plus Universal Pictures equals a Video Nasty, and this is a higher budget and prestige title among the Nasties, normally independent productions or non-American studio films, and evidence that no one was particularly safe. In the case of The Funhouse, far from the nastiest of the slasher movies from this era entirely, I entirely suspect the infamy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) filters through this, the film which Tobe Hooper as a director immediately gained a reputation and notoriety for. (There is also another theory that this was mistaken for The Last House on Dead End Street (1977), which was titled The Fun House on British VHS¹, a film which for another day has to be seen to be believed as well as being legitimately gruesome in content). This presents an important part of Tobe Hooper's career, as it was the one made after Salem's Lot (1979), Hooper's seminal and (large scale) TV mini-series/film, his first steps into mainstream filmmaking. This as a result is a change of pace, with Hooper clearly interested with the carnival setting itself, enticed by the chance to film at a real one, an east coast production shot in Miami, Florida in reality¹, and with real rides and numerous extras onscreen to bring out the atmosphere.

I have a bias for carnival/circus films, so naturally I like The Funhouse even without factoring in it being a solid slow burn horror film, where even marginalized titles like Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), which people thought stole the 25th Best Picture Oscar from High Noon (1952), is a favourite for depicting historically this fascinating area of popular entertainment. Carnivals and circuses I realise are very different things, but they form a connection in my mind, as travelling entertainments which feel marginalised in the modern world, of spectacle and the reality of them, alongside the graft and in the case of carnivals, the ways they exist entirely on selling spectacle whilst even only providing the illusion. With their own worlds of aesthetic and figures that have to travel in the shows, they are all enticing, and in terms of the carnival by itself, The Funhouse is the same even if it plays to the stereotypes of them being places of the marginalised and the dangerous. Carnivals, more so than circuses, have had a legacy in cinema which is not just the infamous Tod Browning film Freaks (1932), but even film noir in Nightmare Alley, the 1947 and 2021 versions, of places ran by outsiders and with their own rules. Their posters displaying the now politically incorrect freak shows to their faded colours on the rides have a palpable energy to them which The Funhouse fully succeeds in bringing in.

Opening with a fake out twist combining Psycho (1960) and Halloween (1978) in one, if with the creepiness of a little brother inappropriately terrorising his older sister in the shower, we are also already seeing the time when slashers were prolific for this one to be commissioned, and could also nod to their lineage. The set up is simple. Four people - our female lead Amy (Elizabeth Berridge), on a date with her boyfriend Buzz (Cooper Huckabee), with their male and female friend - are at a carnival haunted with rumours of two kids killed there in another town. The film is methodical, where a large portion of the film is entirely feeding off the mood of the location, a world that makes the film compelling to witness if of another age. No carnival would be allowed to be like this one nowadays - we could probably get the exotic sexy dancing tent for an adult show, but the idea of an erotic female strip show near the rides kids are on reveals the layers of this culture from the past. The same goes to the carnival freak show, where alongside the prop things in jars here involves real animals born with physical deformities brought into the film, sad cows you wish to pet, with twin heads melding together or missing part of their face, immortalised onscreen. Even details you may miss add to this world, such as the fact one of the leads, actor Kevin Conway, is playing all three of the carnival barkers, not just the fun house's who is a central figure, adding layers in whether they are separate people or related.

As a slasher, it barely qualifies due to this lengthy set-up, where the terror comes in very late as, deciding to stay in the funhouse overnight, this ill-advised decision leads to the central quartet to witness a murder. This is not a bad thing as, alongside the fact it allows William Finley to cameo as a drunk Dracula magician, it gives the film so much more emphasis on the characters within pure pulp, not a lot of deaths transpiring for the genre but a lot more atmosphere produced as a result, drawing the viewer in to engage. Sometimes the style and presentation is enough, and being able to soak in a natural fairground environment for a large portion was worth it in sacrifice of the tropes of the slasher genre expected from the time. It helps this is the best funhouse you wish did exist; even if Humpty Dumpty is inexplicably there in the foreground at one point next to stereotypical cannibalistic tribesmen, the production design is exceptional when the film is mostly confined to this location in the finale, a vivid place especially with the creepy but exceptionally made animatronics, made by people who specialised in this in real life. Helping as well is that this is Hooper's first film in widescreen, the unrelenting and unnerving energy he had in his films before transitioning into a new style for him, with the cinematographer for Walter Hill's The Warriors (1979), Andrew Laszlo, and production designer Mort Rabinowitz in tow to give this ill-reputed Video Nasty a credible style.

The intensity of Hooper's films before, when the chaos starts, is still here, and it is apt that by the end, this wonderland of lights and rides ends with traumatised figures of various ages, even if the body count would be considered pitiful for many. How this managed to get on the Video Nasties list is curious, as speculated in the first half, but I am glad with hindsight it did, as this underappreciated film in its director's filmography, about to enter a period of vibrant and even weird films in the eighties, was allowed to grab attention even among the more notorious movies form the list.

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1) Slashback! Something Not Quite Human is Waiting in THE FUNHOUSE (1981), written by Gregory Burkart for Blumhouse.com, published on February 16th 2016 and preserved on web.archive.org.

Psycho Pike (1992)

 

Director: Chris Poschun

Screenplay: Chris Poschun

Cast: Douglas Kidd as Reg; Wayne McNamara as Tim; Sarah Campbell as Dara; Dawn Kelly as Rhonda; Cliff Makinson as Willy T; Red Fisher as Himself; Michael K. Panton as Sheriff of Shippagew; John Alexis as Uncle Slats

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

You want a picture of my shithouse?

Just when you thought it was safe to go fishing, there is a psycho pike in the water. Credit to director-writer Chris Poschun's sole film however, mostly a melodrama about environmental pollution conspiracy, former lovers stuck together on vacation and a rubber pike monster attacking people occasionally, this is the kind of film I can get behind, falling onto plot tropes but with punches of charisma.

Certainly of the nineties, as its now alternative rock than hair metal on the soundtrack, over images of cows baffled as to why they are being filmed, the film takes its time to get more personality, set up as students out on vacation in the countryside, including Rhonda (Dawn Kelly), concerned about her student work, and the uncomfortable relationship she has with one of her male friends who, dating the other people on the vacation, used to be in a relationship themselves but decided to stay friends. There is unintentional humour - do pikes eat ducks as the male lead suggests - but where Psycho Pike gets interesting is when its eccentricities are deliberate and the plot strands are bolstered by the characters. Melodrama is apt, with our leads' conflicted relationship, and the additional issue that his friend/her boyfriend is part of his uncle's local business behind the pollution in the region's water, causing the psycho pike and killing fish, which they will try to cover up. It is hard to make a horror film where your cast (including extras) spend their time sat down fishin', but the resulting movie has a deadpan sense of humour to its advantage.

There are the line of women sat by the one telephone booth in the area after using it for multiple scenes, to two Hong Kong businessmen - one practicing Tai Chi at one point on a pier whilst the other, still in suit, reflects the sun on his head and neck for a suntan - which leads to a martial arts fight between man and fish. Then there is the best character, Willy the one eyed gas station attendant (Cliff Makinson) who, alongside the unexpected and progressive touch for a nineties film of being romantically involved with another man, is played with a wit even when revealing he lost the eye through a pike in his introduction, fitting the tone. Even a broad joke, like the Austrian photographer who takes photos of bathrooms around the world, stays the right side of goofy, that joke funnier as, reflecting on how people keep reading material in the John and wanting to create a coffee table book on Johns themselves, I would not be surprised if it exists.

An obscure film, it is also not micro-budget with some production value behind it, even able to blow up an entire building for a set piece when the evil corporation will kill to hide their pollution track record. Psycho Pike is still a silly film, but as it took its time, it caught me off-guard by its charm. Plus this does live up to actors being threatened, with gore effects, by a rubber pike monster, so everyone wins by watching this.