Halloween (1978)

 

Director: John Carpenter

Screenplay: John Carpenter and Debra Hill

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis (as Laurie Strode); Nick Castle (as Michael Myers); Donald Pleasence (as Dr. Sam Loomis); Charles Cyphers (as Sheriff Leigh Brackett); Nancy Kyes (as Annie Brackett); P. J. Soles (as Lynda Van Der Klok)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

It would be impossible to add anything else to the view of Halloween analytically or in aesthetic. In fact the most interesting thing from my perspective I can add is that it was an immensely slow period of rewatches before I held Halloween as beyond an okay film to one of the best horror films I had seen from the seventies. By this point, I can now watch the film and soak in its virtues with ease, and whilst this review is inevitably going to just going to praise it to the hilt, the most surprising thing for me to revisit here is how for what innovated the slasher as a fully formed genre, it feels an outlier for the tropes it created. For all the films which came after, as frankly it can be said Friday the 13^th (1980) kicked the door open and let the eighties in general be the decade we usually think of tied to the genre. Halloween became its own work in the sub-genre standing proud by its reputation.

This also comes with the fact I used to have a divided attitude to slashers, growing to accept them more and more over the years as I have seen plenty of fun ones, and always willing to give a chance to one I have not seen. Even slasher fans will have to admit, the diehard fan base for that genre, that the level of quality in terms of how well made and beautiful Halloween is a high bar here for others to reach. Even if it deals with exceptionally grim subject matter, it is an entire mountain that John Carpenter with his collaborators has managed to achieve when this film was first released. In the context of said slasher films, and their constant repetition of plot lines, their tropes followed over decades even when they became self-aware, Halloween is simplistic in plot to others and next to its sequels, as while later films including Friday the 13 (1980) would have more complicated back stories, all there is about the first Halloween is a boy named Michael Myers who killed his older sister in the past. After escaping a mental asylum years later, he targets three young woman, Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, Nancy Kyes as Annie Brackett and P. J. Soles as Lynda Van Der Klok, and that is all we have in terms of the plot

None of the Thorn mythos of later sequels and no folktale mythology is found here, and there is little in terms of an actual body count is even found. This is minimal next to the extremely threadbare slashers of later years is found here, only Donald Pleasance as Myers' psychologist Dr. Sam Loomis giving chase qualifying as a subplot. It was a deceptively simple, explaining why my younger self was not interested in the film at first, and there is little to Myers barring being a figure who stalks a couple of suburbia houses, its economy more frightening in this especially when you view it as a cinematic mirror of the serial killings starting to take their place in urban folklore in the late fifties onwards in the USA. This reality, of a kid who kills for no reason, taps directly into then-modern idea in horror films of remorselessness, as Loomis says there is nothing behind Myers' eyes, crossed with the supernatural by making him a literal bogeyman for Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews), the young boy Laurie is babysitting, to see outside his window at night and be terrified of. Because of Dean Cundey's awe-inspiring cinematography there are times it feels like Myers literally disappears and re-materialises from the shadows like a spectre.

It of course helps that the people he terrorises are written and acted like real people. It is a problem with horror cinema in general, where even in fun and ridiculous movies, unless you are a great writer of esoteric or funny dialogue, I have to admit that they are never necessarily "real" people. Now as a more open minded figure to slashers too, there are also those films still where they have characters who merely speak in quips and generic exposition could annoy me even at my most patient. The combination of John Carpenter openly admitting his influence from classic Hollywood and the unsung quality of the late Debra Hill as a writer means that, alongside great performances, you have characters you care completely for in the context of a minimalistic chiller. Jamie Lee Curtis in particular stood out this time and it is baffling that people created the virginal Final Girl stereotype from the Laurie Strode character when its completely alien, feeling like a puritanical bastardisation of a more complicated and interesting figure. She is a sarcastic but thoughtful figure, who smokes pot but is utterly reliable as a person, merely shy around boys and has other peoples' work begrudgingly dumped on her lap including by her friends. For her first performance in a film, it is great acting by Lee Curtis even when she has to play the moments of screaming and cowering from Myers before she starts to retaliate back. It says a lot that, for the attempts to continue the film without her, by the return of the franchise in the late 2010s, Jamie Lee Curtis is as integral to the legacy as its villain.

As a horror film, the languid pace is perfect. Cundey's cinematography adds a realistic, Americana look in the daytime scenes but at night gives a story almost grounded in reality a phantasmagoric edge in how Michael Myers blends into the shadows. The music by Carpenter himself is iconic, tapping into similar unease from the use of electronic music. What is also worth motioning, whilst a film about death and terror, is that it lavishes a love to Halloween the holiday itself. Old horror films playing on the televisions, including The Thing from Another World (1951) as a premonition of Carpenter's career, to the various appearances of pumpkins beyond the ominous opening credits emphasise the aesthetic of the setting. Barring Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), none of the later films' references to ancient ritual and Samhain had any sense of real mythos to it, more a proudly cheesier pulpy story telling with its own sense of fun but not the same as what this establishes. Here everything is as simple as a very American phantom of a killer who murders indiscriminately, but also treats Halloween as a festival as a homespun and warm holiday, of trick and treating to dressing up in costumes. Not a lot of the slashers I have seen have ever had the sense of a community, merely setting with stock types, to make the terror more disturbing, so the sense of frivolity and childhood innocence found in Haddonfield's suburbia is more startling in hindsight to what horrible things will happen in the narrative. It is a line where, when Annie's father Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers) scares Laurie and says everyone deserves a scare on Halloween, that is the core of the namesake film over it, less the gore and big hair of the eighties slashers, but a creepy ghost ride which is yet so close to the places its original audience would be living it that it has grounded, real chill to it. Watching it many Halloweens like many others, it is both a comfort film but, especially with its almost surreal ending where Carpenter shows shots of empty rooms after the tragedy has taken place, also a film that efficiently scrapes a primal nerve of discomfort every single time I view it now.

Inferno (1980)

 

Director: Dario Argento

Screenplay: Dario Argento

Cast: Irene Miracle as Rose Elliott; Leigh McCloskey as Mark Elliott; Eleonora Giorgi as Sara; Daria Nicolodi as Elise Stallone Van Adler; Sacha Pitoëff as Kazanian

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

 

Continuing on from Suspiria (1977), Inferno builds up the mythology of the Three Mothers, three powerful witches who control the world: Mater Lachrymarum (The Lady of Tears), Mater Suspiriorum (The Lady of Sighs) and Mater Tenebrarum (The Lady of Darkness). Mater Suspiriorum, who occupied Germany, was central to Suspiria, whilst Mater Lachrymarum, who appears briefly in this film, occupies Rome and is central to the 2007 Argento film Mother of Tears. Mater Tenebrarum, who rules New York, is central to Inferno, which follows a very simple plot mechanic that a diary from an architect and occultist about the mothers is being suppressed violently through bloody murders to acquire all the published copies of it. One such case in this film leads to music student Mark Elliot (McCloskey) travelling to the USA after learning of the distress of his sister Rose Elliot (Miracle) upon discovering the knowledge of the Three Mothers herself, and finds himself on route to meeting Mater Tenebrarum herself.

Inferno overcomes probably one of the biggest issues with a genre film in structure. A narratively driven film can fall foul of being merely dragged along by the plot exposition and having to cover the narrative beats far too much, and as much as I have come to love many for this flaw, their desire to explain everything rather than let you drift through the film by your own intuition is a scourge for a lot of horror films if you want to appreciate them not for a humoured charm. Inferno's solution could be bluntly described as dream logic, but it is different from this. A very simple, concise plot unfolds but both enough is explained to the viewer whilst plenty is not, letting in moments which do not make sense in logic but do in the nightmarish form transpire, and leaving one to travel through the events with enough knowledge to grasp it but a lot more being discovered alongside the characters. Splitting the film up into situations following different characters has a pronounced effect. Everything connects together but the segments unfold as their own narratives, usually leading to gruesome death. While Mark becomes the lynchpin to keep it all together, events can unfold without him, having a drastic effect on how the film is watched. Every character introduced not only stands out but many get central focus for many minutes, and as a result, you get plenty of incredibly memorable sequences but also an unpredictable tone, all whilst they find themselves interconnecting into each other's lives or uncovering strange pockets into their world.

There are plenty of moments in Inferno that stand out, all of which interconnect under this loose plot completely seamlessly. You begin the film with a standout and elaborate underwater sequence in a submerged room and it gets better from there, beginning the movie with an appropriate sense of anything being possible. Since this is a Dario Argento film the murder sequences are extremely stylish and heightened, but since Suspiria was a supernatural horror film, its sequel follows in the unconventional and fantastical mixed with symbolism from his down-to-earth giallo thrillers. Not only do you have the Grand Guignol of the more conventional murder sequences, brutal and unsettling, but also you have sequences like people being savaged by cats or eaten to death by rats, all of which manages to be both beautiful but utterly foul and horrific, only with the issue that, whilst not showing actual animal cruelty, these scenes especially with the cats need to be warned about for certain viewers. Unlike other Italian genre films which come off as cheesy, even if adored by myself, Argento's from this era still sting when it comes to depicting the deaths, and the morbid nature around his films in general has retained potency from this.

With Inferno, you have the same heightened tone that is shared with Suspiria, very artificial set around an elaborate apartment complex where the evil is centred yet fully immersive at the same time. Genre filmmaking should effortlessly flow. It should use its narrative to lead the viewer through a journey, especially if the film is entertainment first, having the virtue of effecting a viewer's emotions directly if done well. I have changed my mind and contradicted this only because this statement can be challenged as subjective, and because the films that fail I have grown to appreciate and find their own logic with, but with those striving for the best of genre tropes, this is an ideal worth trying to achieve even if you fail. One of the best virtues of the Italian genre films in their heyday was their dreamy tones which allowed one to accept the irrational, thus avoiding distractions of logic in semblance to the real world that break the visage. Cinema is inherently an unrealistic medium, and unless one attempts to be as realistic as possible, it should negate the stumbles and falters as much as possible that take place when exposition and plotting block the steady flow of time. Inferno does not attempt to fully explain what is going on but this is for the better, as a quick witted viewer can build up enough from what they see onscreen and instead worry about the labyrinth of turns and abrupt ends that takes place for the characters, as much a film about travelling through various layers as one finds out the apartment complex has secret pipes and entrances within itself. Various strands from petty greed to the Three Mothers mythos interlink tentatively, and as various memorable casting choices like Nicolodi and Alida Valli pass onscreen, the film is able to work as a tense, eerily aired horror movie whilst ditching anything that would drag the film down into a mere plod.

Suspiria itself was an exceptional film just for how its use of colour and lighting took the viewer into a supernatural world, which left a huge task in attempting to match it, but Inferno's aesthetic manages to go even further in some ways by becoming even more coloured and bold in its look. This would one of the last things the great director Mario Bava worked on before his death, behind the optical and visual effects, and in many ways, as a tip of the hat from Argento to the innovator who helped build the Italian genre industry, this film reflects the bold colours of his work like Blood and Black Lace (1964) incredibly. Like Suspiria, terror is not just to be found in the darkness but in colour itself, at their brightest and lurid during the most unsettling incidents. With Argento's work during his golden period, the colour saturation (or lack of colour as in Tenebrae (1981) fully envelops and becomes one with the haunted moods of his films.

Instead of Goblin, the music changed for this film, with Keith Emerson from the prog band Emerson, Lake and Palmer as composer. That band is an acquired taste, but Emerson's film scoring career is a cult following still waiting to happen - alongside Inferno you have the notorious anime blockbuster Harmagedon (1983), Nighthawks (1981) with Sylvester Stallone and Rutger Hauer, and Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) amongst other films. While many of these films are not available in the UK, it is not surprising that prog rock fans can buy a compilation of Emerson's scores, the one for Inferno a great addition to Argento's musical canon by itself. Far more hysterical and on the cusp of absurdity with its choral chanting than the Goblin score for Suspiria, it helps push the irrationality of the film further with its alarmed, drastic tone, whilst allowing this to have its own personality in contrast to its predecessor.

Head to head with Suspiria, Inferno is Argento's most unconventional film, Inferno especially rejecting the plot heavy narratives that his giallos tend to have completely, and even Suspiria had for its phantasmagoric content. It follows a logic of its own that drifts between various characters and never gives priority over any specific one, Mark Elliot merely a grounded figure for the events happening to circle around. It is a filmic world where one can go to a library in Rome and, going downstairs, find oneself in an alchemist's laboratory fully of boiling paste for book binding. It is a film where events such as a total eclipse suddenly happens only to disappear, or the fact that there is a hot dog vendor out near a sewage pipe in the middle of the night, making only any sense in that they are as inclined to kill potential patrons as they are likely not getting many customers in their chosen spot; I do not complain about this sudden inclusion and abrupt end to such sights because the canvas of the film allows the moment to soak in regardless. So much more terrifying in films for me, like in Suspiria, is irrationality, where deaths can happen abruptly or events happen without being signposted, and as this desired template stands, Inferno is one of the strongest examples.

Inferno is one of my favourite films. I accept that it is one where the plot can be seen full of holes, but you have a scene where someone is terrorised as the lights keep going on and off in their apartment, a classic piece on the vinyl player stopping and starting to the power cuts, and the sense of absolute dread it can produce, and you see the skill that came into Argento's work. The mythos built here helps give the film a greater atmosphere, building up a background that fills in what is not dealt with, and also never becomes the main crux of the production, something which has plagued storytelling in various genres when needing to elaborate on it more and more per sequel. There is the contentious issue of Mother of Tears, which is a film I wish to return to as its own creation, part of the completely contentious issue in its own right of Argento's films post 2000s in general. It cannot ruin the two films which came before regardless of what I come view it as, but just emphasises how they both were exceptional productions, Inferno an experience where, unlike a rollercoaster, everything presented onscreen is felt.

Every death is painful, every jolt is startling, but the moments of quietness are just as effective. The scene with the ants crawling in an apartment is a clue but feel like a nod of iconography from surrealist art even if by accident, and absurd scenes like death by rats have a phantasmagoric ickiness to them that is still effecting. Rather than coming away from Inferno as another horror film padded out with attempts to rationalise everything, the completely lack of this adds to its mystique, leaving it at the end with the same level of intensity felt as with Suspiria. Together the duo is an incredible example of Italian horror cinema. Debating for myself which is the better film is a painful thing to consider, especially as Inferno really became a film I adored even beyond Dario Argento as a filmmaker.

Abstract Spectrum: Fantastique/Psychotronic

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

Decap Attack (1991)

 

Developer: Vic Tokai

Publisher: Sega

One Player

Originally for the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis

 

As much as I believe in preferring the original versions of games, Decap Attack presents a really fascinating case where working around a license issue created an enticing result artistically, so much so this review will not cover the original version, Magical Hat no Buttobi Tābo! Daibōken (1990). Despite the pair sharing almost entirely the same structure as games when put together, personally I think Magical Hat deserves its own review, to also factor in its source as a tie-in game to the animated series from 1989 to 1990 by Studio Pierrot. There is also the factor that, from the get-go, I do personally find Decap Attack had least one immediate advantage as a reinterpretation, in that it is one hit to lose a life in Magical Hat, whilst Decap Attack gives you a small life bar, making Magical Hat a game you need to have patience to work with, not try to cram in as an afterthought to Decap Attack, especially as factoring in its source is fascinating. Decap Attack likewise should be seen as its own game, as this is the kind of title you would like to play, as a platformer, for the Halloween season.

For Decap Attack, we see an island shaped like a skeleton with a sword and shield split into pieces in the pre-opening credits. A demon lord Max D. Cap has threatened world domination with his underworld army, and in an inverse of horror tropes, the mad scientist and his Frankenstein's assistant call forth Chuck D. Head to save the world rather than contribute to the problem. Chuck, a bandaged ghoul who has no head, instead his face in his chest, is sent out to put the island back together, able to run fast, briefly float in the air by kicking his legs really fast, and can acquire a sentient skull that, unless hit and lost, is a projectile weapon whose homing radiate when returning means it can attack in two directions. You will need this as, for a platformer, three stages per world, you are going to have continually hassled by the enemies let alone the stages' own challenges, more hazards in their existence than antagonists, the exception being red punk haired fish who are more a problem when they jump out the water at you than when they come for you underwater. The third level per island adds the additional concern that, even if you defeat the boss, you cannot leave unless you find the special item hidden among gargoyle statues, which also allow one to get potions, bonus level coins, health pickups (and the skull if lost), or a lot of ghosts to avoid.

For a game which was converted from another with only some gameplay changes - no roulette wheel bonus game for lives as in Magical Hat, and the health bar for the later game which changes the challenge - the fact that this instead changed the character designs, the aesthetic look and the music does however lead to a game with a consistent aesthetic attitude. Despite being early in the Genesis / Mega Drive era, it still looks really good. This is a kooky take on horror aesthetics where you are as concerned with dodging ducks flying in the air and members of a stray Ice Capades ice skating troupe in top hats as you are actual monsters. The levels are standard in this genre - traditional Halloween for the first level, a desert one, a fire related one and ice, the last the one exception as an eyeball cave. Personality however is to be found throughout the game in its tone, the sound cues for its world, such as spring pads, and especially with the music, which was completely changed from Magical Hat's in favour of a new one from Fumito Tamayama and Hiroto Kanno. They sadly do not have the larger composition score between them, which is a shame as the jaunty haunted house music fills this production with glee, perfect for the tone and a huge virtue alongside the sound design itself and colourful aesthetic.  

As much as I wish Magical Hat was more readily available, Decap Attack itself truthfully is the more appealing of the pair, its goofy nature that of horror tropes where one of the bosses is nonetheless a giant pink mole. Decap Attack is a really idiosyncratic way to have converted a game for Western appeal, looking like toys being played with between Halloween decorations, far from an insult but a huge compliment from me. Decap itself also brings its own idiosyncratic touches from Magical Hat, such as needing to go item hunting in each third level, which forces you across platforms which collapse, over lava pits and spring pads in deliberately annoying places. Other games, like the Shinobi franchise, brought an option of magical abilities you could select from in a separate menu, but that was a hack 'n' slash platformer, whilst here however you have a platformer in the truest sense where you can go into a menu and choose potions collected on a stage to have brief invulnerability or clear a screen of all enemies, in mind leaving screens means they do re-spawn. The bonus stages too, which the bonus coins allow multiple Chucks to participate in if you get enough, offer assault courses which grant numerous lives if you are lucky in its random choice.

Vic Tokai, as they were originally known as, sadly are a developer who left the video game industry by the late nineties into the fifth generation of video games, a shame as the result here is charming, something which would have been fascinating to have witnessed the tone of enter the polygonal era even if it had been flawed. Ironically for a conversion, whilst Magical Hat is not easily available, neither helped by being a licensed titled, Decap Attack clearly has fans as it continually returns from Sega over the decades in compilations for the Mega Drive and even as a mobile phone conversion. Usually the idea of editing a game for the West has gained ire in the decades past, but there is a humour in a conversion like this which is appreciated and thankfully is worth the continually returns in some form.

Le Portrait de Petit Cossette (2004)

 

Director: Akiyuki Simbo

Screenplay: Mayori Sekijima

Voice Cast: Marina Inoue as Cossette d'Auvergne; Mitsuki Saiga as Eiri Kurahashi; Kumiko Yokote as Hatsumi Mataki; Megumi Toyoguchi as Shouko Mataki; Rei Igarashi as Zenshinni of Shakado; Ikumi Fujiwara as Michiru Yajiri; Isao Yamagishi as Hiroshi Hakuta; Junpei Morita as Yukata Enokido; Mamiko Noto as Yuu Saiga; Masashi Ebara as Marchello Orlando; Shinnosuke Furumoto as Michio Hisamoto; Susumu Chiba as Naoki Katou; Yukari Tamura as Kaori Nishimoto

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

 

As covered in the review linked to below, view Le Portrait de Petit Cossette as an interpretation of a troupe of Gothic horror, of a figure obsessed with a figure they are romantically linked to from beyond the dead, if interpreted through a hyper stylised three-part anime from a director with a career before and especially after with an elaborate eye for stylisation. Think of this as the pulpier, more bombastic take on Rebecca (1940) with genre tropes of Japanese animation and interpreting horror through action beats.

 

For the full review, follow the link HERE.

Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti (1989)

 

Developer: Now Production

Publisher: Namco

One Player

First released on: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

 

Splatterhouse, when Namco released the game for the arcades in 1988, brought a gory horror movie tribute to video game patrons that caught on, getting sequels that came onto the Mega Drive/Genesis back in the day for Sega. The 2010 remake was lamented from fans of the original game as a production that struggled and was compromised trying to bring this franchise to the seventh generation of games consoles. There is, in-between this, the sole Nintendo release, bringing the hockey mask Jason Voorhees tribute to Mario’s world in a game, my first in the franchise, that never got a Western release until the Namco Museum Archive Vol. 1 (2020). It is a parody of its own franchise by its own developers, and the best comparison is Castlevania’s Kid Dracula (1990), bizarrely another NES game, a parody of its franchise which still plays itself serious game play wise, and only available in the West in a decades later compilation worked upon by M2, the acclaimed Japanese developer whose goal to preserve old video games as accurately as possible is to be applauded. Kid Dracula is a hoot for another time, where abruptly a boss battle in New York turns into a quiz about American culture, but Wanpaku Graffiti, where the title translates as Splatterhouse: “Naughty“ Graffiti, has the first boss, a vampire in a cemetery, reenact the Michael Jackson Thriller music video with a few zombies.

The game is very simple, with a jump and an attack, entire intuitive as a game. Barring an annoying section with orange bats which can pick you up and drop you back a few screen backs in the final level, this is difficult with however a sense that it is not unfair about it. The personality is fully here from the get-go, opening with our lead Rick from the original franchise, as his girlfriend Linda cries over his grave at night, resurrected with the cursed (hockey) mask from the first game already on and immediately needing to rescue her from an evil Pumpkin King. Somehow this involves eventually having to jump over pink Jaws clones at a Camp Crystal Lake parody, fending off sentient chainsaws, fighting a parody of the Jeff Goldblum Fly transmogrification mutation, and end up in a Church which seems serene until you reach the Satanic ritual at the alter. It is a chirpy, playful game but you can see this being a headache to release in the West when Castlevania games were censored in details, as it is cute but has a perverse and sick sense of humour. Despite the fact, for example, you have a candy power up for one point of health restoration, and a burger for a large amount of health, the sole other power up is a shotgun for 10 rounds to get rid of pumpkins and other obstacles, which would have not flied in the day in Western cartridge releases, but works in hindsight with its playfully parodical tone.

This is not forgetting the two secret levels, where if you find them you travel to Japan, batting off yokai umbrellas on top of an ancient Japanese castle, and ancient Egypt, where you collect two gems that unlock the proper epilogues and enjoy some prolonged dancing animation from two women who greet you with these gifts, the game for the NES clearly wanting to show how good their animation was. It is not surprising as, even referencing a cult slasher film like The Burning (1981) for a boss, this is a game made by horror fans who created something with a vibrant mood and sumptuous colourful sprites. Even if Level 2 is in a sewer, it involves fighting giant green mouse and fits the tone. The bosses in general are great, who you can figure out with patience, where even the mini-bosses are memorable. There is a sentient oven with its knives flying at you and headless chickens; a creepy doll with chairs after you; a really sick humored parody of Alien (1979) where spiders burst at of a young girl’s stomach only, after the fight, for her to be seemingly okay, rubbing her tummy and heading off; and a menagerie of others where the Pumpkin King near the end is the more conventional of the lot.

The joke is felt fully, with a huge spoiler, as this is one of a few games from this time, from Altered Beast (1988) to the first NES Castlevania games, where it is explicit  that the game you are playing is the premise of a movie being filmed, pulling back the curtain with a punch line and a supernatural addition. Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti is a really fun game, among those I have tried that have begun to open up the 8 bit generation as still relevant and striking in their own visual splendor. This is, as a short game, memorable through every level. With a password system to help back in the day alongside the modern save state system for the first modern Western re-release, it also never feels unfair, matching what is a game which never has a moment which feels generic, and always stands out per its seven levels. That does not factor in how this has a cool little touch I think was ahead of its time, where if you do not die at all, you can reach a number of enemies slain, including the bosses, and increase your health bar when you reach the total; this continues as the number to reach increases when completed to fill again and increase your health, which is significantly to your advantage for some of the more trickier moments, like dodging lightning bolt firing clocks, to the bosses.  This is of course the one-off game in this franchise, which kept in the adult violent area of video games; thanks to this, they are more intriguing than they were already, but with the irony that I wished we also got a sequel to the parody. Just to imagine, in the 16-bit era with this style on the SNES or the Mega Drive, how goofier and funnier this series would have gotten is tantalizing for me, and would have been hilarious alongside the ultra-gory sequels to Splatterhouse still continue as they did back in the early nineties.

Ebola Syndrome (1996)

 

Director: Herman Yau

Screenplay: Ting Chau

Cast: Anthony Wong as Kai San; Wan Yeung-ming as Yeung; Wong Tsui-ling (Angel Wong) as Lily; Miu-Ying Chan as Har; Meng Lo as Kei

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

There are some infamous Category III films from Hong Kong, where they used a rating that limited viewers to adults but fed a boom in exploitation, erotic and horror movies, and among them, Ebola Syndrome is one which lives up to the infamy, so much so it is worth having caution in terms of actually watching it. Contextually, when the Category I, II and III ratings were first devised for Hong Kong cinemas in 1988, it was dealing with content, not just gore but films were criminals were shown as heroic, which could have been controversial. The ultra-notorious Men Behind the Sun (1988), an exploitation film dealing with Unit 731, the overt research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that performed lethal human experiments during the Second Sino-Japanese War, was the first film to get the Category III rating, and when this rating came in, the films which earned them were not necessarily cheap productions, but films with named stars. Even Wong-Kar Wai has had a Category III film in his career, as unfortunately, depictions of same-sex relations were qualifiable for the rating, leading to Happy Together (1997) being among them, a subject for a more complex dissection of what that says in terms of LGBTQ politics at the time.  

The Category III film however has an infamy for the notorious and bloodier entry among them, alongside the erotic works like Sex and Zen (1991), and Ebola Syndrome near the end of their peak in interest can be labeled with justification as the last blow out, for good and bad in offensive ways.  I would have to call myself out a hypocrite for labeling some of the content in this offensive and distasteful, as someone who has been intrigued by this film over a decade and went out of his way to see it, so moral high ground is a ridiculous notion to get into. Just be aware that, whilst it actually calms down in tone, this is pretty extreme as a film can get, starting off with an explicit sex scene introducing “Chicken” Kai San (Anthony Wong), a completely irredeemable villain who we follow as for a large portion of the film, which leads to him being caught with a mob boss’ wife. Threatened with castration, and urinated on beforehand, he kills everyone, including the wife, and nearly torches her young daughter, dowsing her with gasoline, only to have to leg it before the act is done. Already this film before it becomes truly extreme has already set up the tone of taking no prisoners in good taste and gruesomeness, with a streak of deliberately crass dark humour intermingled within it too whether appropriate or not.

It is feasibly big budget film shot in two countries, as Chicken hides after this in Johannesburg in South Africa, which is a disarming thing as usually a production value like this in a horror film would not get into some of the content here. Even if you can stomach when it gets into taboos like rape and cannibalism, it is extremely nihilistic about global connections, even without the moment, to be frank about it, the story properly begins when Chicken sexually assaults a female carrier of Ebola and starts to spread it over two countries. No one until the last half, where it somewhat tones down and the heroic Hong Kong police have to try to stop Ebola being spread by Chicken, is defendable expect as transgressive, sick humored or just purposely nasty to make the viewer squirm. The owners of the Chinese restaurant Chicken has been working in at Johannesburg are unlikable, a bickering husband and wife; the husband himself, among others with the Taiwanese and Chinese figures living there, is racist to the white and black Africans, exploiting cheaper meat from the local Zulu tribe of black Africans, who are suffering through the Ebola outbreak; and the white Africans can be racist to the Asian immigrants in a country where one cannot help but look at through the view of Apartheid ending only in 1994. No one in this half of the film is likable, and it is here where some of the most uncomfortable and transgressive details come in.

There is the obvious concern, shot in real locations, that this is an exotic exploitation of South Africa, finding to way to have real decapitations of chickens brought in watching a tribal Sharman try to cure the Ebola plague in the Zula village, viewing the community as a “foreign” other in their dress and appearance to our distasteful lead from Hong Kong. There is some sense of this, alongside exploiting a couple of 1995 Ebola outbreaks in the African continent, such as in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of the Congo, as it was called at the time,  which would have been clear influences, alongside the fact that, as a virus which has tragically had a lot of outbreaks in various African countries in general, Ebola is exaggerated here beyond just being a horrifying disease which can cause internal and external bleeding to literally causing the organs to melt and eat themselves in some of the more legitimately disgusting details, such as an autopsy sequence. There is however, to contrast this, a sense of general misanthropy all round, the idea of transcontinental travel and cultural exchange being a doomed affair, and it becomes less a problematic film in the tone of what “mondo” documentaries from Italy were accused of but its own twisted and transgressive film with some uncomfortable scenes in a variety of taboos, which says a lot when Category III became stereotyped for some extreme films in both gore and sexual violence when these films were being learned of in the West. Some goofy humour, more common in Hong Kong’s cinema, does appear but it is more thankfully to emphasis a sick sense of humour to this, that this film is deliberately emphasizing the transgression whether justifiable or not, in the inventive cursing or the ill advised decision to take a pee in the underbrush only to encounter a leopard, which involved actually placing Anthony Wong, already an acclaimed actor by this point in his career, near an actual leopard.

There are scenes which will be uncomfortable and un-defendable for many, such as the rape scenes, especially as they all involve murder, and it is completely understandable if that is enough to caution a viewer off ever watching this film. In general, the entire passage of the film when Chicken gains Ebola is going to shock even hardened viewers nowadays if just in amazement of a higher budget Hong Kong film managing to “go” where this does. This is a film where Anthony Wong uses raw meat as a masturbatory aid and puts it back in the kitchen to later cook, so there is a deliberate shock value to the film, whether justifiable or not, which was trying to go further than other films. Herman Yau, whose career started with late eighties and kept going into the 2020s, clearly wanted to make a film with some depraved scenes on purpose, as eventually you will get into cannibalism and, in deposing and feeding a body to patrons to the restaurant, Chicken unwillingly beginning to spread the Ebola virus in Johannesburg. Eventually, fleeing to back to Hong Kong, this will continue, if with less emphasis on these more shocking scenes and, with an exception of an explicit threesome scene with two female sex workers played both with horror and goofy humour, on the threat of this virus in a metropolis. Some of the post-contagion and even autopsy scenes are going to be shocking for some viewers in their extremity too, but it starts even playing like a more “tamer” contagion film in how, with slow motion scenes to emphasis whenever Chicken can or does spread his illness, as the ultra-rare case of someone immune to it, the tone becomes less grotesque horror but a virus thriller.

Once it reaches its final, with the police in Hong Kong trying to catch Chicken when they contact an Ebola outbreak, even those who do find the film tasteless will have to concede that this does things with a lot of considerable heft to them even if they themselves understandably do not have the tolerance for the film’s tone, such as having an insane fire stunt in the final scenes with a stunt actor. There is also Anthony Wong himself, who having worked with Herman Yau on The Untold Story (1993) and Taxi Hunter (1993) was not a stranger to extremity. He has been a prolific actor who here brings what is absolutely needed to make this film vaguely defendable – a character who is impossible to connect to as he is a horrifying figure, yet is both fascinating to watch and, when he tries to have a happy ending with an old flame, actually brings in a bleaker shade to the material as you come to realize even a sociopath could have kindness in his heart, despite the chance he will kill that person he cares for even by pure accident as a Typhoid Mary figure. Considering how diverse Wong’s filmography is – John Woo films, Yau’s work, Johnnie To crime films, Ann Hui dramas – like so many Hong Kong actors, it is not a surprise he can add a gravitas even to a sleazy, depraved film like this as being able to act in a variety of genres and tones for films is more commonplace in their cinema. In fact, Wong won an actor’s award, the Hong Kong Film Award, for The Untold Story, which would be like if suddenly a figure like Daniel Day Lewis made a controversial and extreme horror film, and had such a good performance within it he still won an Oscar.

This is the same for Herman Yau too, alongside those in front of and behind the camera here, as with a string of horror films throughout his career, including the long Troublesome Nights series, he has gone from comedies dealing with housing crisis issues (A Home with a View (2019)), action films and entries in the Ip Man martial arts franchise. Yau even co-directed a re-imagination on JB Priestley's An Inspector Calls for a 2015 film set in its own Hong Kong centric context, which makes his notoriety in the West for films like Ebola Syndrome, which does live it to its infamy fully, more fascinating with hindsight. It is a strong film, even in the current day, where time has not made it “quaint” and it is to be approached with caution. Knowing its director went on in a variety of genres, and continues working, places more on respecting him as a director and with a sense that, even if a viewer may find the film utterly irredeemable, it was with hindsight made with the likely hope at least a viewer or two would react like that.

Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (1988)

Director: Akio Jissoji

Screenplay: Kaizo Hayashi

Based on the novel by Hiroshi Aramata

Cast: Kōji Takahashi as Koda Rohan; Shintarô Katsu as Eichi Shibusawa; Kyûsaku Shimada as Yasunori Kato; Mieko Harada as Keiko Tatsumiya; Jun'ichi Ishida as Yoichiro Tatsumiya (as Junichi Ishida); Haruka Sugata as Yukari Tatsumiya; Ken Teraizumi as Torahiko Terada; Bunshi Katsura Vi as Shigemaru Kuroda; Tamasaburô Bandô as Kyoka Izumi; Shirô Sano as Junichi Narumi; Katsuo Nakamura as Ogai Mori; Jô Shishido as Noritsugu Hayakawa; Hisashi Igawa as Ryokichi Tagami; Shôgo Shimada as Arata Mekata

Canon Fodder / A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis came to me, and Britain, through an old Arts Magic DVD release, one of the earlier DVD distributers who brought a lot of cool stuff in the medium’s older days, some returning in Blu Ray (the Bloodthirsty trilogy of Toho Studio vampire films from the seventies like The Vampire Doll (1970)) to those sadly not (their dalliance in early polygonal 3D anime like the bizarre dystopian body horror Malice@Doll (2001)). Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis has a lot of significance as a film just by itself as a release. It is an adaptation of the first novel of Hiroshi Aramata’s series documenting the history of Japan through occultism. Aramata has been described as a polymath and the best way to some up his work with this story, all centering around a villainous magician named Yasunori Kato who attempts to destroy Tokyo over countless decades of the 20^th century, is that he is also alongside his acclaim in fantasy/science fiction literature a natural history specialist, one who brought Western texts to Japan off the back of the success of his literature, translator of fantasy novels, author and expert in a variety of areas from occultism and to iconography, and an honest-to-God candidate to that term "polymath" in his knowledge. His book franchise, which Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis begins adapting the first 1985 novel of, begins here with Kato brought to 1912 Japan, at a significant turn in the country's history to modernization in Kato's quest to resurrect Taira no Masakado, a Heian period provincial magnate and samurai, who died on March 25th 940 and famous as the leader of the first recorded uprising against the central government in Kyōto. Killed and with his head eventually finding its way to the future site of Edo, later to be Tokyo, it was buried there and is of course the central target in this film for Kato to resurrect in his goal to destroy Tokyo itself, even if Masakado himself wishes to not be resurrected and disturbed from his slumber. The legend of Masakado's head, among the details that sadly might be lost to those without knowledge brought to this tale, makes even Kato's goal to ravage Tokyo more connected to real folklore; the 1923 earthquake which is central to the film when it comes to the burning down of the finance ministry building during said earthquake in Tokyo, was blamed on Masakado¹.Alongside the decision, in 1874, of the new government officially proclaimed him an “enemy of the emperor”¹, neither did bulldozing his grave by mistake when building the finance ministry help, and by 1928, a new grave was build with even a priest called in to hold a pacification ceremony¹. Beyond even then, more incidents blamed on a curse followed, only for change to transpire in 1984 when, after public pressure, his deity status was reinstated and great care taken not to antagonize him any further².

Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis, if there is a big issue with the film, tries to cram so much in just over two hours of an ambitious work. As this novel series goes, it continues with Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd president of the United States, as prominent character in one of the stories, a target for occult assassination, as does the controversial novelist Yukio Mishima, so Hiroshi Aramata's has so much content within itself to unpack as ambitious storytelling. For what it is worth, this does an admirable attempt in containing just a prelude to this wider novel series, contained in a worthy way, and the film is important for me too as this was my introduction to its director Akio Jissoji, who presents the fascinating and noble trait of how he could saddle art cinema and genre cinema without contradiction. He worked both with the Art Theatre Guild, a significant film production and distribution company for seminal experimental work, with the titles as deep and experimental like This Transient Life (1970), to pure genre, his legacy also encompassing his work in the tokusatsu genre with television and cinema like his collaboration in the Ultraman franchise. Even the screenwriter Kaizo Hayashi stands out; before this film, he made the truly unique film To Sleep So as to Dream (1986) as his debut, a tribute to Japanese silent cinema by way of a magical realism detective narrative.

Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis is more genre leaning, but you can see a director (with his screenwriter) who fit at ease with the fantastical and the somber with this curious mix of real Japanese history attacked by demons and evil occultists, presenting the Meiji era ending in 1912 and leading to the Taishō era, a period of flourishing Western influence and big events, the construction of the first Tokyo Metro Ginza Line subway beginning in 1925, a year before the end of the Taishō era itself. The Taishō era itself, through pop culture, has become a fascinating era for me in its eventual turmoil, leading to the militarization of Japan, and its aesthetic culture, from Seijun Suzuki’s incredible trilogy of surreal films between 1980 to 1991 set in the decade, authors like Edogawa Ranpo starting their career from the era and anime series like Mononoke (2007) having a narrative arch about a cat-goblin monster terrorizing people on one of the earliest subways in Tokyo opened in the era. Even if you have no knowledge of a lot of the history or the mythology and occultism filtered through Aramata’s work, this film adaptation is rich in presentation and story.

It is visibly a big box office film from the eighties Japanese cinema era, and yet also really idiosyncratic due to its content. It finds itself between horror and supernatural period suspense, even pure body horror, contrasted by a historical drama where its biggest drama when not saving Tokyo from decimation is its growth into the 20^th century. Alongside Taira no Masakado's possible resurrection, there is also the real figure of Eiichi Shibusawa (played by Shintarô Katsu here), the father of "Japanese capitalism" in charge of the head of the Tokyo Improvement Project, bringing together a variety of specialists in different fields trying to transform Tokyo into a major metropolis with global influence. All of this is under threat if Kato, if not through the assistance of a direct descendent of Masakado, Yukari Tatsumiya, uses her daughter instead into the 1920s if need be to get his goal completed.  It does feel with hindsight a prelude to a bigger work, over other novels, but this film does not feel slight, its own fully told tell but a curious juxtaposition between conversations between higher ups about where they will take Tokyo to turn it into an influential city, and deal with the constant risk of earthquakes, contrasted with stop motion monsters and work even involving Swiss artist H. R. Giger among the great practical effects and craft on display.

The film’s escalation is pretty simple – Kato wants to reawaken the buried Masakado in the middle of Tokyo, whether he wants to be resurrected or not - and instead the film becomes a curious juxtaposition of history and occultism, where even if it based on spirits and luck, a prominent detail of the film is the theme of industrialization and indiscriminate expansion of Tokyo destroying stability if not done carefully, notable as this brings in the 1923 earthquake as caused by Kato. This is a film where real author Kōda Rohan is the protagonist, as played by Kōji Takahashi, trying to save Tokyo, and it is fascinating as a film because of these juxtapositions. There is a long scene discussing the way to evoke, even if considered to build underground, going through a tumultuous period in its history, between destruction to economic growth, immediately followed by a stop motion worm creature being forcibly removed out of a female victim from the throat, which pretty much sets up the tone.

This alternative history narrative is an acquired taste, but compelled me as a viewer, not just from all the curious details of real and reel Japanese history onscreen and behind it, including Jô Shishido, of Branded to Kill (1967) fame, playing the real life businessman Noritsugu Hayakawa, here as in real life funding the first subway, Tokyo Metro Ginza Line, that becomes a huge plot point here. How it reimaginings such an important century in world history, let alone Japanese, in all its chaos and modernization, is important even in terms of the Tokyo subway itself, seen as a huge moment for Tokyo if, in this case, its biggest threat being all the little goblin-like stop motion creatures underground. mauling the workers trying to create the tunnels. Alongside how a literal robot is required, it presents a fascinating world where occultism, including figures that specialize in lay lines, is as vital to the plot as the men and women forced to fight Kato, and how they are just among all the figures who influence this world, contrasted with real Japanese sociological history and both viewed with fascination. The occultism itself, in the world of vivid horror cinema aesthetic, is presented as vibrant and even surreal, where the production design is allowed to be as imaginative as the period setting is an attempt to bring accuracy to the time periods. H.R. Giger visibly provided work here, especially on what is effectively his take on the floating orbs of the Phantasm horror franchise, but this is also a film where a multi-limbed behemoth, in stop motion, wandered out of a Ray Harryhausen production, looking magnificent when revealed among other special and practical effects. It a spectacle film as much as with its other content, one which is finding the right foot between its genre beats and a grandeur, where Kato, through Kyusaku Shimada’s performance, is a villain but one given the cadence of a figure with menace and a justification of humanity destroying the world through their growth.

A sequel came, Tokyo: The Last War (1989), which follows in 1945 in the eve of Japan’s lost in the Pacific War with the United States, reflecting a seismic change in the country in real history, but sadly never came to the West. Doomed Megalopolis (1991-2), an animated episodic adaptation from Rintaro, a well regarded anime director who started in the beginning of the industry as we know it in the sixties, came later, readapting The Last Megalopolis in a more overtly horrific and supernatural take, and even Takashi Miike would cross paths with this franchise as, among the many tie-in and spin-offs works in cinema and in literature around Hiroshi Aramata's creations, the last novel Kato was in, Aramata's The Great Yokai War, was adapted by Miike in 2005. It also cannot be denied that the version of Yasunori Katō as shown here, with his militaristic costume including cap and cape, likely influenced the design of M. Bison/Vega, the boss antagonist character from the Street Fighter video game franchise.

Even if you the reader only know the games through Raul Julia’s portrait in the 1994 film, with the costume strikingly similar to Kato’s here, so Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis is a big work to consider. It is a novel franchise which sadly seems not to have come over to the West, in mind to how much content within it is of its own country's and Eastern Asian culture, to the point Hiroshi Aramata can be thanked for how much interest he brought to occultist folklore in his homeland, and would need a lot of explanation to Western readers. It is however novel franchise which tantalizes, as with every time I have seen this film, even if it struggles with the loftiness of cramming a huge text into one film, it still has so much to admire. Even those who helped fund the film have a huge significance in Japanese genre cinema as, for an exclamation mark, its executive producer is Takashige Ichise. He early on funded screenwriter Kaizo Hayashi's debut directorial film To Sleep So as to Dream, and worked with Brian Yuzna with American-Japanese co-productions like Crying Freeman (1995). He also produced Hideo Nakata's Ring (1998), Dark Water (2002), Takashi Shimizu's Ju-Oh: The Grudge (2002) and a lot of Japanese horror films during the early to mid-2000s boom in "J-horror" cinema coming to the West. He comes off, with an incredible and idiosyncratic list of productions even into the 2020s, as a king level figure for genre history.

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1) The curse of Masakado: why a malevolent ghost haunts Tokyo, written by Jonathan Clements for the Guardian, published 10th June 2019.

2) Taira no Masakado, written for Yokai.com, written, illustrated, and maintained by Matthew Meyer.

Nude for Satan (1974)

 

Director: Luigi Batzella

Screenplay: Luigi Batzella

Cast: Rita Calderoni as Susan / Evelyn; Stelio Candelli as Dr. William / Peter; James Harris as The Devil; Renato Lupi as the Butler; Iolanda Mascitti as the Servant Girl

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

 

Oh darling, what is a memory?

From that title, and the first shot of the version I saw, of an actress skipping through misty dark woodlands barely wearing a lace see-through dressing gown, we know what to expect...at least we presume to. As an erotic Italian horror film Nude for Satan in its softcore version would be too weird and esoteric for the dirty mack brigade. Even in knowledge a hardcore version exists, there is a prevailing sense here that version, as here, would still be an odd duck with what exactly is on its mind.

With the music over the opening credits by Alberto Baldan Bembo a woozy, compelling series of drones, synths and what are apparently bongos, Nude for Satan is a curious one to actually watch. Let us be frank, it is a lackadaisical film with one foot between its weird esoteric dialogue (least for the English dub), its lack of a cohesive in-depth plot, and still trying to be erotica in what is a story structure whose languid leanings undercut the sensuality. A male doctor named William (Stelio Candelli) is driving his white Beetle bug car in a night storm to a patient, only to drive past a car accident with a woman named Susan (Rita Calderoni) inside unconscious. Going to a nearby location, a gothic castle, looking for help, he is immediately sucked into a phantom world outside time which Susan will join him within separately. The castle the moment you step into it is immediately out of reality, where doppelgangers of the other person, in whimsical sex obsessed forms, dressed in gothic melodrama costumes, try to seduce the other, and with an occult eroticism around the frames.

Truthfully, in respect to the fun of Nude for Satan, in a more cohesive form, with focus or even a more overtly experimental form, this premise would have the tone of avant-garde jazz in playing to scenes out of context, mood scenes for the sake of mood. Using its mix of a really cool gothic manor and being brazenly titillating to win the viewer over, there would have been a film more ambitious than what we got with more careful construction to its form. Nude for Satan is sillier than this, from the director of the infamous Video Nasty The Beast in Heat (1977), and it is none of the above, closer instead to a half sketched out Jess Franco film, which may be seen as a damning comment as, even as a fan of Franco, I am fully aware the cult Spanish film maker made films himself that felt like they were mere fragments of a premise themselves. Instead, for those who can appreciate this film as I did, it feels like a half awake fantasy. Not even an erotic one as the sexuality can be justified as being the kind of eyebrow rolling heterosexual male gaze, prurient and conservative in form, which is the most boring kind, not the kind you would get from a Jess Franco which progresses into something more interesting and subversive. What little you get feels more part of its weird fever dreams than playing to sexual freedom, and even the message would be confusing if you attempted to think about it. It does have Satan involved, and plays to the idea of sexuality being dangerous and evil, despite wanting as much female nudity onscreen as possible, thus becoming something prurient without a subversive edge to it, only with the context of anything remotely erotic here being more appropriate “off” tonally as everything else is.

I have to still credit what is a trashy film, in terms of how really unfocused it feels, for having to courage to be this weird, a phantasmagoric soft/hardcore gothic film with some production value and where the doppelgangers talk like figures in a bizarre philosophical discussion on reality. Let us be honest even further than I have gone, you would not get a film like this even in the eighties, something very of the time in how minimal this is even in terms of an exploitation film which barely has a plot at all on its shoulders. Even if someone had made a film like this later, there is something about this time where the money existed for these European genre films, where the location shooting was affordable and not shot in apartments, and the style still there even in this obscurer work to make what thin premise there is here have a compelling mood.

The plot really is not a great deal, as it is a series of scenes, where our leads find themselves entangled in a prolonged scenario in this world of strange grinning older men, seductive female servants, and male and female doppelgangers who are proudly (gloriously) camp in their proclamations of love to the opposite sex. It is a languid oddity with hindsight before you have to explain, or witness watching the moment, when the giant spider inexplicably appears. It is a very fake but thankfully homemade one which that is a cross between a raisin and a tick in form, appearing in a scene to torment the female lead in its web, never explained nor appearing again in context. The fact there are multiple cuts means that, for the softcore version I saw, it may lack a lot of its more openly lurid for exploitation content, instead becoming a far more heady haze dream. It lacks eroticism in terms of openly being sensual, more an experience between worlds where the final orgiastic scene is less sexual than performance art dancing involving a woman with the most openly revealed ribcage possible in cinema. It is a film that, to anyone not used to the way some cult films can be less about cohesion, would be easy to despise. It absolutely is not a film you could present to someone not used to these films, but to those who are firmly comfortable in exploring these curiosities, Nude for Satan is the ambient music album of gothic erotic Italian cinema, for good and for bad.

Abstract Spectrum: Hazy / Minimalist

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