Double Team (1997)

 

Director: Tsui Hark

Screenplay: Don Jakoby and Paul Mones

Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme as Jack Paul Quinn, Dennis Rodman as Yaz, Mickey Rourke as Stavros, Natacha Lindinger as Kathryn "Kath" Quinn

Ephemeral Waves

 

With this, I can shoot the dick off a hummingbird.

Double Team is one of those "guilty pleasure" films from the past, a phrase which does not work for me because I feel no guilt for this enjoyment of Double Team, but is sadly the only one I know of in the English language to best describe a film which is not successful in terms of portraying a fully immersive world to engage with, whether for the action genre or not, but wins me over for the fact the film even inexplicably exists. There was a time this was deemed a bankable prospect, teaming Belgium action actor Jean-Claude Van Damme with then basketball bad boy Dennis Rodman in a film that takes its entire premise serious without irony, as nineties as you can get.

Double Team is late in Van Damme's blockbuster era, nearing the end, which stands out for how this is a big budget film in context with its production value, even with shots at a real architectural location, a real place of historical value, to represent the Roman Colosseum, alongside stunt work and some budget for something whose scene by scene synopsis is ridiculous. Van Damme is Jack Paul Quinn, a retired "hunter" for spies, with wife and an expected child, brought back in the game by the promise to finally catch the terrorist Stavros, played by Mickey Rourke in his wilderness years. Rodman, whilst it is only halfway through when he fully joins into the plot, is Yaz the arms dealer and inventor, living up to Rodman's reputation for unconventional dress sense on court and off it whilst living in Antwerp, Belgium in the district where everyone wears rubber, divers in fish tanks replace erotic dancers, and drum n bass music scores the streets if you stop to listen. The actual film beyond this is as mad as a box of frogs, but you can also see the talent of director Tsui Hark, who is the third noticeable figure here. This was when he briefly went to American, as a lot of Hong Kong filmmakers and actors did, due to the 1997 Hong Kong transfer to China, bringing his stylistic touches even when paying tribute to John Woo's Hard Boiled (1992) in a hospital shootout with babies when Stravos loses his own son and wife during a botched attempt to catch him alive at a carnival.

The tone takes everything seriously, but from Don Jakoby and Paul Mones' script, it gets increasingly more absurd as events escalate for Quinn, and the best comparison is actually a certain type of Japanese manga, and the anime adaptations you were more likely to get in the West at the time Double Team was released, which takes its story entirely seriously but has plot escalation serves which when scrutinised individually, or shown in a live action film as here, are ridiculous. In terms of structure, this is as basic a film as you can get, where the lead is merely a name for Van Damme, and that the stakes is the generic ideal of the beautiful wife, a cipher for a fully fleshed out person rather than the person, played Natacha Lindinger. Next to a film like The Blade (1995), one of Tsui Hark's last films before he left for this brief two part Van Damme period in the United States, which is a fully fleshed out remake of The One-Armed Swordsman (1967) that emphasises telling the story in its visual style, Double Team is paltry in comparison. Instead what we get here is a heightened fever dream, as over-the-top as you can get where my pleasure comes from what it was stringing together in its content, something which starts fully when Quinn is made officially "dead" after the botched Stravos mission, ending up in what feels like a tribute to The Prisoner (1967).

Evoking the legendary British TV series about actor Patrick McGoohan being stuck in a secret colony, here Van Damme ends up in a colony for covert operatives deemed too important to let back into society, Quinn stuck imprisoned on an island with other spies and agents who were too valuable to kill. It is a premise for a high concept film by itself, as they have to act as inspectors on high tech computers, analysing terror incidents around the world with timed watches to punish those who try to escape, but like those manga, this will casually have an elaborate set piece to ditch it, including a real stunt of someone hanging off a cargo plane. This has a surreal randomness like some of the best of the action genre, excepting their artificiality, and that eventually we will get more inexplicably details like the cyber team of Italian Catholic monks, in a gothic location with the skulls of their ancestors on display underground, who are a surveillance ring of Rome with advanced computer knowledge. For a film that is surprisingly marked for eighteen year olds only to see in Britain, despite being tame for the age rating, this is the broad stereotypical cartoon of the era, which gets more delirious as it goes along despite the structure and pace being conventional next to its peers.

Van Damme found himself in this world of films, as Hark's Knock Off (1998), where things always had an absurdity, some intentionally humoured and some not, with the likes of the 1994 adaption of the Street Fighter video game franchise, which became G.I.  Joe with one liners. Van Damme is being steered along in a film like this, even when he ends up wearing a wig and shades at a point, at a no-nonsense hero in a time which was incredibly chaotic for him and would eventually drift away from the mainstream. Rodman does feel stiff in performance including all the jarring basketball references in his conversations, which is a shame as I can see the charisma is struggling to get onscreen. He is not helped by the moments where he is the butt of jokes, including having a really tall man in a very tiny Italian car, details which can be raised as problematic as you have made the star of the show, specially an African American sports star, into a comedic side character despite the fact he would have been a huge selling point, his notoriety even leading to himself in World Championship Wrestling in 1997 at the same time. When this is not the case, you can see where the charisma is, even if he would have never been a huge film star unless he drastically became more comfortable with line readings. When he is allowed to be a living manga character, his stuff gets to be interesting in terms of a celebrity becoming a cinematic one. Insanely tall, towering over everyone else with his suits and face piercings, and with disregard for logic for the better as Yaz not only has constant costume changes per scene but different hair dye jobs too, Rodman was the selling point to the film even if times the movie wants to make him entirely a side kick, even appearing in vocal cameo for the end credit song, Just a Freak by Crystal Waters to emphasis this fact.

The story itself for Double Team is conventional, merely a pretext for the scenarios, which is the ultimate critique for a film like this were it not for the sense I really do not care. Hark's flair is visually here when it can be, such as precise use of slow motion in the baroquely staged carnival shoot out. Even something which is banal and cannot be defended, the prominent Coca Cola placement, is used with such a ridiculous extent it eventually is subverted by accident, one cola vending machine explicitly in the Roman Colosseum used as a defensive shield strong enough to withstand a bomb that decimates a major landmark. There is enough of a severity, with complete late of irony, to help the film along with an earnest nature, where even its goofy humour are less mocking itself but a wackiness from films from the nineties including Van Damme's own. If this had shown any irony whatsoever, rather than be so back accident in have comedic moments, I might have despised this, where if there is an illusion of caring for these archetypes in an absurd film, the film makers not even giving the decency to care for their fate, as sadly happens in others, would have made this unbearable. The sense of serious is found in allowing characters to goof off but not mock the film as flimsy, whilst Mickey Rourke, , in a period before Sin City (2005) brought him back into mainstream attention, helps with this whether he was acting his emotionally scarred terrorist Starvos with sincerity or pure professionalism.

This is film, in mind to this, that would need all the commitment you could get, and it pays off for myself in terms of how it has the most over-the-top ending you could find, ridiculous but what I have hoped others from the likes of Steven Seagal but never got. The finale takes place at the Colosseum, with a newly born baby in peril, landmines planted in the ground, Rodzilla entering on a dirt bike, and a real tiger with animal trainers involved in the production, because landmines and one-on-one combat were not enough to kill Quinn in what is. For a higher budget production, it is in context, a mad experience to witness, more so as this is not a low budget made with CGI production of decades later, where irony sadly becomes a more occuring trend in multiple genres, but with the aforementioned real tiger, a real motorbike stunt and real pyrotechnics alongside nineties era computer effects. And that is why, whilst I realise how cheesy the production is, I love the film in spite of itself because of this sincere batshit logic matched with the production values and cast. Even when they struggle, to make something more than a half arsed production with a sense of deliberately sabotaging itself in irony is appreciated. There is a pleasure, even if irrational, for managing to sincerely play with the strange set of selling points this did even if I admit this is a strange non-sequitur for those involved including Tsui Hark, who continued this with the equally weird Knock Off, before going back to Hong Kong cinema with a sense none of this happened.

Satan Place: A Soap Opera from Hell (1988)

Directors: Scott Aschbrenner and Alfred Ramirez

Screenplay: Scott Aschbrenner, Melanie Johnson, Jeff Stogner and Alfred Ramirez

Cast: Warren Andrews as Edward Dayton / Human Hormoan (segment "Disposable Love"); Nora Miller as Doris Dayton (segment "Disposable Love"), Mark Rackstraw as Gordon Lighthand (segment "Disposable Love") / Dick Slasher / Thug #2 (segment "Too Much TV"), Sonja Etzel as Mother (segment "Too Much TV"), Hollis Wood as Johnnie (segment "Say Goodnight, Sophie"), Marsha Malone as Suzie (segment "Say Goodnight, Sophie"), Lisa Hatter as Sophie (segment "Say Goodnight, Sophie") / Daughter (segment "Too Much TV"), Jme Mestel as Jonathan (segment "Sally Satan")

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Missouri Mop Massacre. He can't stop them, and he doesn't do windows.

A woman with Bonnie Tylor hair, blasting shot-on-video budget rock riffs from her car stereo, asks for directions from a male chauvinist, she the interlinking figure herself between all the segments from this anthology horror film.

The first half focuses on the theme of chauvinist men stuck trying to dispose of corpses, the first story following said guy in the introduction, Eddie, in a grumpy mood and not interested in his wife Doris' lamp chops. She fantasies about shooting him in the head in a cowboy pastiche, and he only cares for watching TV and forcing his wife to get him beers, accidentally killing her with one punch over a warm can of brew. Whilst that may dangerous sound like trivialising domestic abuse, in context the film has him both as a terrible person, and within a film where (even if moments have not aged well) the tone is played with a sick comedic humour, with the moment playing as an abrupt moment of fake blood splatter and he stuck in a predicament which will doom him. Like a few SOV anthologies I have seen, they have minimal stories, here Eddie having to dispose of Doris' body, a farce as he considers placing her piece by piece in the trash, but going the weird direction of cooking her in the stove first beforehand. It is obvious where this goes, as he is able to live comfortably, watching porn in the lounge, only to be haunted by her ghost. Not even taking a bath is safe, for the bathwater turns into blood, nor going to the fridge as she tries to force feed him her own intestines' when he is there. It is also a reminder for me too how the trash disposal unit in kitchen sinks, a concept we never really had in my home country of Britain, was a trope for horror films and made me wonder as a result how they were considered safe.

It is pretty obvious, and we are not even dealing with the more elaborate tales you might get from Amicus in the golden age of horror anthologies of the sixties and seventies. The Bonnie Tylor woman has to deal with another sexist pig, kneeing him, who becomes another folly of these kind of men we follow, driving drunk listening to country music, calling his ex a bitch, and running over an old man whilst desperately calling a Mary-Lou at the steering wheel who is about to leave his life. He gets the old man to hospital, but claims the guy jumped out at his car as the old man dies in the hospital. It is obvious too where this is going, thought it has to be established Satan's Place, alongside really liking abrupt twist endings even if they do not make sense as for this story, is more interesting as an SOV production with the tropes they have. Openly a lot of my enjoyment of this one, as many others, is more the template, the atmosphere, of a homemade horror film even when the plots are abrupt and/or slight.

For a lower budget film, the production tries its best more than others in this field, including extensive use of various locations, and is scored to moody late eighties synth. As the film goes, a lot of its personality, including its humour, comes from the surprising amount of pastiche moments, additional original music, and TV/film parodies shot and shown in televisions in scenes that would have taken a lot of time to accomplish. For the second story, they even when out of their way, for a production with multiple collaborators in multiple roles, to use off-screen sprinkles for a rain effect, as our morally dubious Southern stereotype lead thinks he has ran over the old man again when he has just gotten over it, despite the old man being already dead.

Our Bonnie Tylor lead returns in a segment called Too Much TV, about the titular channel hosted by Dick Slasher, and changing the pace as it is about the landlady who Bonnie Tylor crosses who becomes the lead, angry her adult daughter spends all her time watching too much TV and not dating men to her ideal of Elvis Presley. This is the segment more explicitly about the pastiches and side jokes even if aspects of Satan's Palace's tone and humour have not aged well. It is not just that even between women the frequent use of the term "bitch" is used, but some of the explicit pastiches themselves, such as the questionable gay prison movie pastiche Bathroom Bullies with its dropping the soap moment, even if its depiction in feet shuffling back and forth and mouth popping noises in slapstick is absurd, to the first episode having Eddie watch a wrestling match between a transgender dwarf (not the language used) versus a wrestling with his hand puppet friends on both fists. The latter wrestler though is a funny joke which does show the better side of this film, the more overt sillier side which this does provide in spades. Too Much TV is the most scattershot of the anthology segments, as the daughter is watching horror movies like Don't Go into the Kitchen, or good jokes like the Hard Boy, the advertisement for disposable dildos for women. It is definitely the kind of anthology segment you only get from shot-on-video films which drift off in logic, even when it tries to pull a course ahead as Dick the TV host starts to talk deliberately to the daughter about offing her mother. With clearly a higher production, such as all the TV segments shown on television with the horror parodies, you manage to go from a Psycho parody in a bathtub or the mother being gunned down by random 1920s gangsters with typewriter machine guns in a fantasy, all of which including the segment's own abrupt ending, feeling like something you normally do not get outside this world of cinema.

Sally Satan ends the anthology, Bonnie Tylor finally getting her own story, with a suitor named Jonathan visiting and perturbed by the cobwebs around the wine bottles, what looks like a bloody head being cooked in the microwave for dinner, and newspaper clippings about a murder found in the coffee table book for guests to page through whilst waiting. Clearly, the title Sally Satan is an indicator of something Satanic involved, as he lays on her bed in briefs, shirt and socks, all black, reading poetry at one point oblivious to this whilst the score of a NES fantasy RPG is repeating sweetly in the background. He will make the ill advised decision to be willingly tied up, and not even ask for a condom before Satan is announced to be coming.

Like the others, another abrupt twist ending out of nowhere happens, and as mentioned, Satan's Place: A Soap Opera from Hell is not really scary, more eccentric than humorous, and was yet my jam for this pure dose of homemade filmmaking with its own tangents. It also only goes over sixty seven minutes long, which is a huge help to prevent anything from being a miserable slog. Those few jokes which did not age well neither feel like they are truly cruel either, just reminders of this being an older film from the eighties, a long time ago. It becomes clearly, with its end credits, notwithstanding Hubert the Cat in a cameo of the mog licking a corpse kept in the bathroom, too an absolute collaborate effort which I have to admire, with a female co-writer Melanie Johnson as a producer, and one of the director/co-writers Scott Aschbrenner composing the music with another person named Jon Kay, which means even the brief Elvis Presley pastiche you get just for a single scene mention of him, and would have taken time to record, was a work of love from a figure who also helped direct and write the film around the scene. That again really emphasises the amount of hard work put into this film, the only one for the directors. It is an obscure Shot-on-Video title, and sadly might be a difficult one still to locate a proper release of, but for fans of the genre like myself,  you watch them even if imperfect for that sense of hard work.

Alien 2: On Earth (1980)

 

Director: Ciro Ippolito (and Biagio Proietti)

Screenplay: Ciro Ippolito

Cast: Belinda Mayne as Thelma Joyce; Mark Bodin as Roy; Benedetta Fantoli as Maureen; Michele Soavi as Burt; Valeria Perilli as Jill; Danilo Micheli as Bill

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

It took seven years to get from Alien (1979) to Aliens (1986). Italy got there with an unofficial sequel a year later and likely with mind the Ridley Scott film would still be in cinemas around the world and people would believe this was an actual sequel, they could follow it with this without anything but pure carnival hucksterism. This is funnier as, with the actual Alien franchise, we never got Xenomorphs on Earth until Aliens vs. Predator in 2001 but this got there one year later too.

Set around astronauts on a space mission, we follow a group of cave explorers predating The Descent (2005), exploring a cave to their peril in the midst of an abrupt alien invasion. Immediately you see that the production wanted to make caving the exciting new thing, helped by the fact as the predominant set location for this lower budget film, actual caves, are impressive locations regardless of price of filming, legitimately beautiful locations and perfect for a horror film. More idiosyncratic is the obsession with bowling, which is Italian producers trying to figure out what is hip to American audiences and that they had access to a bowling alley too. Joking aside, it's a simple monster film, where Thelma (Belinda Mayne) as our lead is among this caving group, who also just happens to be psychic and has grim concerns about what is happening in general around her. That is a plot detail which is abrupt but means she is the one person with a bad feeling as, likely due to the astronauts' mission, there are festering alien blobs on the beach among the sand castles let alone in the caves.

Obviously, like Luigi Cozzi's Contamination (1980), these Italian films wanted to have the face huggers from Alien, one of its most iconic images from the pulsating eggs let alone the horrifying critters inside, but could not for copyright reasons. The iconic eggs even if their biology is weird, meant to be the selling point for both but having to figure out something new even if unconventional, here blue rocks which pulsate and become face eating entities. They do one better than the face huggers, whose children burst out of chests, by gestating and bursting directly out the face of their victims, but it is one of the touches you see where this was made to follow a major film globally. Like Contamination's, which were more biological bombs which made everyone explode, there is no logic like the Xenomorphs to how these alien "eggs" work, only the fear of unknown objects being played to in a film like this which, in content, cause gory results or leads here to mostly vague rubber entities which have red Twiglet tendrils.

This film has a style, even if it is as much an Italian production shooting in America trying to be American, even if it unfortunately leads to a dubbing of one black cast member, a bowling alley staff member, which director Eli Roth once bluntly called "Amos & Andy" dubbing, clearly an Italian man in a voice over he openly admits crosses a line into being racist¹. It is a languid film in fact, taking half an hour to get to the caves themselves, soaking in the American locations, and as a monster film pacing itself quietly with its cast, it is a distinct change of pace even from other genre films from Italy at the time even if might put some off expecting the purely over-the-top and lurid nature of others from this era. The music is one of the strongest aspects, composer Oliver Onions, alongside the memorable name, also happens to be a pseudonym for Guido De Angelis and Maurizio De Angelis, the legendary composers behind films like Street Law (1974), acclaimed in the Italian genre field and earning their pay check for a great score here.

For the moments you can pick holes in this film, I have seen it enough times now they even have a charm. It makes no sense to see future director Michele Soavi, before directing Cemetery Man (1994), writing on a typewriter in a cave using lit candles, a habit his character has despite the newly elected Pope in Italy meaning the candles have become more expensive to buy, but it is a cool (and funny) image) alongside moments which work intentionally. One, in a prolonged camera pan after a victim against complete black, exemplifying the moment their face explodes from a recent host, is actually good enough to have become an iconic moment in a more acclaimed film. In terms of whether this is actually scary or good horror, that is entirely subjective. Honestly the more interesting thing about this era of Alien rip offs, which are different to even the ones for Aliens  which took a different tone as an official sequel, is how they reflect tropes from a popular film in their own way for better and for worse, like Peter Walker's Inseminoid (1981) for one closer to this Englishman's home. They are reflections of the industry of cinema, where everyone is eyeing everyone's success and sometimes blatantly cashing in on what worked, which can be ironic for entertainment for some viewers, but still counts as entertaining. This one at least, to the film's credit, has the creepy idea of being inspired by tape worms in terms of the alien tendrils, even if I made a joke about them earlier in the review, taking inspiration from something which is real and can be found in a human being's guts, which is creepy. The egg symbology from Alien as mentioned is scrambled, a pretence to sell the film, but when this is about cavern walls with tendrils coming out of them, and the aliens themselves being vague entities we never truly see the full sight of, even if to cover the practicalities of the effects, it is still effective.

Also this commits to an appropriately nihilistic ending, taking advantage of when you can shoot at the right time, and you can depict a metropolis in carefully chosen shots completely without people, offering a gut punch that makes up for this lower budget with an obsession for bowling. Ciro Ippolito, the credited director, is an outlier as none of his other films fit the template of genre cinema at the time, more of a producer/writer for titles like the romantic film Vanilla and Chocolate (2004). This is the same for the un-credited co-director Biagio Proietti, though he has a co-writer credit on Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat (1981). A lot of the history of Italian genre cinema factors in key figures, not just directors but also screenwriters and producers, who continued even if into other genres within this now-cult sphere of genre filmmaking. This makes these two fascinating alongside the film as a one-and-done in that said history. Literally they came to take advantage of the popularity of Alien, did not get sued or have their films pulled as infamously others did, like Enzo G. Castellari for the Jaws inspired Great White (1981). Whilst Alien 2: On Earth was once an obscure title, likely because it did not have a known or infamous name in the director's chair, it was salvaged and rediscovered, allowing its mischief with a known franchise, and that it managed to get away with it, to sparkle with ghoulishness.  

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1) Taken from the featurette Franchised Terrorist: An Interview with Eli Roth, as was available on the British Blu Ray release by 88 Films.

Debbie Does Damnation (1999)

Director: Slain Wayne

Screenplay: Slain Wayne

Cast: Ernest Brummer, Jeanin Lake, Tony Nittoli, Lisa Pete, Charles Pinion, William Smith, Michael Sonye and Slain Wayne

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Now I’ve got your horn motherfucker.

We are in for something out of the ordinary, and not for the widest of audiences, when in stark black and white a cannibalistic demon is munching through corpses in a room with a nude woman tied up on her stomach on a nearby table, ready to be his next meal. A stop motion skull spider with a British accent named Tregor comes to the rescue, on condition to kill the cannibal and go on a quest on his behalf for the Devil’s horns. Unfortunately she gets eaten by a stop motion Hell Dragon and Tregor is forced to find another woman for the quest, one named Debbie who has fallen into Hell recently, despite her guardian angel attempting to save her, and will be centre to multiple sides taking note of her.

A labor of love that looks like it took years to even complete, there will be many stop motion monstrosities onscreen, as there will be a lot of full frontal nudity, as initially Debbie finds herself is Hell without clothes, and a lot of content which will be off-putting for many. There will be content which has not aged well, content that will be random and abrupt, or just perverse, and there will be moments I still have to admire the fact the forty plus minute production even got made. Debbie finds herself in a war over the Devil’s horns, Satan himself reduced to a hornless head who wishes her to get them back, betrayed by two men who have the horns and are now about to start warning with each other in the film to get both for themselves. One of these two men, introduced briefly with two mouse traps on his cheeks, is the MVP for all the profane dialogue with eloquent choices of wording he has as a torture loving figure in the midst of a lo-fi medieval fantasy war with the other betrayer with soldiers and stop motion figures.

Debbie Does Damnation is only corpse paint away from a black metal video at times, scored to ambient music with guitar noodling, full of evil deviants from the Morph plasticine family tree and built from sets varying from Forbidden Zone (1980) to a bizarre avant-garde theatre production primarily using cardboard. Within such sets is stuff that is definitely not-PC nowadays, moments where this is a very unconventional fetish video, and stuff that is unintentionally ridiculous as other moments are pure bravado in getting them onto the screen with clear hard work and visible duck tape. It is unconventional to say the least, all which has to be ingested as really rough material, yet made with love by a porn director with a taste for kink. It was made before he fully went into the video porn director’s chair with titles which do not hide their content, some sounding a tad extreme for comfort, and others involving Kung Fu Girls 3 (2003) which do however ask interesting questions of what they are about even as porn films from the straight-to-DVD era. More so as I learnt of this film from Annie Choi of Bleeding Skull, this is a bizarre experience to get to, strange but undoubtedly a labor of love, hard earned in getting finished and crafted in a way I have to admire even if its own stream-of-consciousness will throw a lot of people off.

As Debbie finds herself with clothes, a sword and a quest between a civil war, as female warriors fight male ones, we see a film shot on Super 8, the director’s last bang (according to the making of including with this) before his full porn career began. In context, it makes sense how its attitude is with zero fucks given in wanting to do whatever it wants. Said to exist with the “R Rated version” I saw and an x-rated version, director Slain Wayne literally built the sets to what feels like being in someone’s skull for a near hour. Made from the gut of what was cool or sexy or deliberately edgy, I openly think aspects of this production are juvenile, some of it is tasteless and an issue, like a monster dubbed “a fucking spud monkey” said to be possibly on crack, but also has moments I have to admire. Even if you have to get into the gruel, weird improvised dialogue in the post-synched dialogue, or the fetishistic moments, like the random scene of Debbie being spanked by a warrior, or a scene of women being threatened with torture that show its hand for wanting to be kinky too, there are others where you did not need to take the time to have all the extensive homemade stop motion monsters which would have been painstaking to animate on any budget, but this nonetheless decided to have. Its extensive use of Barbie dolls in cutaway scenes or mannequin body parts to depict decapitations, sword stabbings and being eaten by plasticine hell hounds makes this considerably a higher bar in terms of a film trying to make a memorable micro budget film, even if it is a very nihilistic take on Hell where no one survives or is safe, even a flying skull finding itself forced into being a flesh light against its will. Its aspects of kink and very rough dialogue will put people off, and I will not defend it whatsoever; the virtues of the film come from the moments away from these which are ridiculous in tone and in actually being realized.

Even its sense of perversity at times has to be admired for its complete disregard for the expected, as you have a sex scene with a Mistress of Darkness involving a man bobbing for tentacles between her thighs, and if that is off-putting to hear, obviously Debbie Does Damnation is not recommended. But with that scene actually a highlight for intentional bad taste and funny lines, there is someone to admire of a film which is completely gunning to be memorable, and never is a lazy ironic way either. It is one which truly lives up to the notion of putting your heart and soul into a project, even if said project is as profane as this. 

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Grotesque

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

Games of the Abstract: Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (1996)

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

One to Two Players

Originally for: Arcade

 

Whilst the Street Fighter franchise has had a strong lineage in Capcom's history as a games developer, there have been once or twice deviations from the template for characters from the franchise, and not just cameos. The crossovers, whilst in the fighting genre, between the likes of the Marvel comic franchises, games developer SNK and even Tatsunoko, the legendary animation studio, have been some I grow fonder of, despite being terrible at fighting games, because they allow some of the obscurest figures of everyone's history a chance to appear in the games. Even the infamous hiccup that was Street Fighter: The Movie (1995), the original arcade version by Incredible Technologies, stands out as very different not only from the home console versions by Capcom themselves, but also as a weird case of bringing in these Western developers, and chasing the digitized character bandwagon Mortal Kombat created, allowing singer/Neighbours soap opera alumni Kylie Minogue to stand toe-to-toe with the late actor Raul Julia in the least expected battle possible.

Note so far these are still fighting games, though we have had one or two deviations even outside of the fighting genre over the years like the RPG and card battle crossovers, like Namco x Capcom games, or a game like Cannon Spike (2000), a Psikyo developed Capcom game where they used Cammy from the franchise as a playable character in a three dimensional area shooter. We have yet to see Ryu play tennis or Zangief in a go kart, as even with Nintendo crossovers, Ryu is performing hadouken on a Pikachu in the Smash Brothers franchise. Puzzle Fighter, even in 2017 with a free-to-play mobile phone remake being released from Capcom Vancouver, is another exception, which crosses over into the Darkstalkers franchise, one tragically lost to never getting a modern day follow up, but was in full swing at this point, the pair of them being mashed together here to give us a puzzle game.

The character roster is eclectic, from only eight to say the least from just the main roster. There is a notable emphasis, which is cool with hindsight and very clearly done, on the female cast, which has five characters over the three males. Whether this was targeting a male audience or not as a game, or was as much focused on potential female arcade players back in its initial release, it is great either way, and it does suggest, even before we get to the "super deformed" chibi art style, how these Capcom had an incredible set of character designers for this era. It also really emphasises how, in general even if they did sexualise a few of these characters, female characters that you could also play, or stood out as side characters, or even antagonists, became something which you can applaud Capcom for as you can literally go through the rosters of their fighting games, and then other genres, from the nineties into the 2000s and find so many that stand out and/or became beloved as much as the male ones. From their costume designs to personalities which made them figures who gained fans, some of the strongest female characters in gaming, even if they were initially side characters or were occasionally made sexualised, came from Capcom and you can find enough to fill an entire crossover fighting game with just a female cast. It is actually disappointing that the discontinued 2017 Puzzle Fighter, with twenty three characters to choose from until the mobile game was taken from circulation, had only six women in the cast despite that fact. Even if the crossover fighting games usually had more men, you had a murder's row of distinct figures from the women let alone men or actual monsters to choose from over the decades, altogether just making Capcom bad asses in their artists and designers for making everyone, male or female or beast, stand out even in obscure games just from how they wore a coat let alone their characterisation.

Even the stoic male martial artist template created with Ryu, visually iconic, stands out far more than so many games trying to reach the success of Street Fighter II (1991), and forcing really bland male protagonists based on him on us the players. Ken, his player two from the games, is here too as the pair makes sense to include, but in terms of a game which is playing to cuteness and comedy, they come off as a chibi straight men in a more eclectic cast. A personal favourite from Darkstalkers, Felicia the catgirl, is here and whilst she was explicitly designed in the original game for some blatant sex appeal, with her fur hiding little, she is played here as a cute sentient cat girl with goofy mannerisms which is why I fell in love with the character. Likewise Morrigan from the same Darkstalkers franchise, a literal succubus and also deliberately provocative in her design, not only got to be the poster girl and protagonist for the final game, even if she is the only one of the franchise's cast seemingly referenced in the modern day, but she gets to be more goofier here. The pair really emphasised how strong the cast of the Darkstalkers franchise was, where the closest to a conventional martial artist also happened to be a werewolf, fitting as the third female member from the games was one introduced at this period in the first sequel, Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge (1995), a Chinese "hopping corpse" (jiangshi) named Hsien-Ko who stood out as distinct even among one of the most distinct fighting game rosters for all the franchise.

Introduced in the spin-off franchise Street Fighter Alpha 2, in 1996, Sakura is a plucky underdog schoolgirl who admires Ryu and wants to be strong as him, fitting the game as a likable younger selectable character alongside Chun-Li, the first female character of the Street Fighter franchise, so obvious to include in this game as one of the most iconic characters to come from Capcom. There is a few secret characters and ones introduced in the console versions. For the arcade game, there is also Dan Hibiki of the first Street Fighter Alpha game as the instructor onscreen, before you put a coin into the original arcade machine, teaching the game mechanics. He is perfect for this comically minded game as he was literally Capcom taking the piss out of SNK, their biggest rival in 2D fighting games in this time period, a parody of their archetypical leads who was meant to be useless as a playable character. If you can play him even here, his gameplay is deliberately broken to make him useless still, but he managed to be a joke that got a fan base in the main fighting games, and people learning to humiliate opponents by beating them with Dan as he started to be modified to be a credible fighter without losing the gag. [Huge Spoiler] It is funny that Dan is set up as the final boss, only to follow a trademark from Street Fighter and other games from Capcom, the surpirse cameo of Akuma, the legendary and dangerous mirror to Ryu, who beats Dan up easily and challenges you instead. [Spoilers End]. Later console versions also included Hsien-Ko's twin sister, and a secret character you could unlock was an obscure character, but one loved enough to keep appearing in Capcom games, by the name of Princess Devilotte de Deathsatan IX. Gloriously named, she was from Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness (1995), a fighting arcade game which pilots in robots, and is clearly a tribute to the Doronbo Gang, the antagonists from Tatsunoko's Yatterman animated franchise, one which influenced so much Japanese popular culture in having a female villainess aided by two male lackeys, even the Pokémon anime series with Team Rocket, and would appear through their leader Doronjo in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom.

The outlier is Donovan, who time stamps the game to the history of Capcom, as in 1994, the first Darkstalkers did well enough to warrant its sequel Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge, which created new characters like Hsien-Ko who became beloved, but also attempted to creating a new protagonist named Donovan, pushed to become the figurehead of the franchise as a half- dhampir, a half human and half vampire who hunts the Darkstalkers. He does get a fascinating ending to that game, becoming corrupted as he continues his campaigns, and stands out with a distinct style, be it his sword or the psychic girl Anime who followed him, brought here and becoming another new character by herself in console versions of Puzzle Fighter. However, it is damning, unlike boss characters which were removed for Vampire Savior/Darkstalkers 3 (1997) for space for new characters, Donovan feels like he never appeared because no one wanted him. It is a cruelly funny punch line that, whilst nowadays only Morrigan gets to represent the franchise for Capcom for the most part, back here even when it came to a sequel to Puzzle Fighter back in the fighting genre, Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix (1997), Donovan was not even allowed to get into the spin-off cure fighting game, told to leave and close the door behind him.

If the review is going to be short here, it is only because the actual puzzle game mechanics are based on rock solid foundations. You link same coloured gems, in clusters which form together with enough into giant gems, which need the use of a spark gem the same colour (or a rarer multicolour diamond) to clear away. Speed is of importance as, least for the CPU opponents, they will own you as you start to dump "garbage" onto the opponents' grid as you clear gems, timed to not be useable as regular gems which becomes dangerous as they start to climb in height up the grid. It is completely solid gameplay wise, and it is really pointless to extrapolate on a fun game which is this simple is premise. My biggest disappointment is that there is not as much around this gameplay in terms of individual endings. The style of the game is great - particularly the "chibi" character designs, based on an art style of deliberately distorting characters into smaller, squat versions none as a "super deformed" style which appears in manga and anime for the likes of comedic moments. It stands out here, and the entire presentation is bright and wonderful, making me wish there were more cut scenes and humour to what we got.

Barring an intermission and an end credits which adds more humour, this feels like a game which is still great, but could have been expanded further and further in a franchise of its own, something which happened to Taito when they took the Bubble Bobble franchise and made the spin-off Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move one in the puzzle genre, the latter becoming its own beloved concept which embraced its aesthetics and is as loved. Tellingly Capcom would instead make Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix, a return to the fighting game genre, but one which took this entire art style and gave you everything I wanted here in terms of the comedy and wackiness of the proceedings. What you got here in this puzzle game thankfully - with its ports in the day for the likes of the Sony Playstation to Sega Saturn, to a HD remix for the Playstation 3/Xbox 360 era which changes touches - was something Capcom should have still been proud of, and has been available still thankfully, as it is a lot of fun. I only wished we got a franchise from this that became the wackier Capcom crossover puzzle game to their awesome fighting games.

Games of the Abstract: Burning Rangers (1998)

Developer: Sonic Team

Publisher: Sega

One Player

Originally released for: Sega Saturn

 

One of the issues with games being preserved is significant gaps, if allowed to exist, mean entire pieces will be forgotten in the mainstream consciousness because they are not officially available to play. One perfect example of this is with Burning Rangers, now an extremely expensive game to try to own a physical Sega Saturn copy of, because it was one of the last releases for the Saturn in the West, with no way to officially play it on other consoles or PCs. This is in spite of the fact this was a big project from Sonic Team, the team behind Sonic the Hedgehog, and Yuji Naka, co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, in the production head role.

Named after the blue hedgehog, I am going to make the argument that Sonic Team clearly wanted to distance themselves from him in the Sega Saturn era. As much as Sonic is Sega mascot's and biggest bread winner barring the Yakuza series and a few others, he can be an albatross in terms of trying to create new games for him, which Sonic Team have and had a haphazard history with, and in that for a Sega fan like myself, sadly the company has drowned out interest in taking in so many other of their intellectual properties further in terms of franchises when only a few like Sonic get so much devotion. It is in mind that Sonic the Hedgehog was always an attempt to get a foothold over Nintendo and Mario in the Mega Drive/Genesis era, one which not only succeeded in getting their foothold in the West fully, but eventually became a huge figure loved beyond being an IP. For me, Sonic Team had other desires in the 32-bit era, and whilst they did help on some games, and should have probably helped a lot more on the 3D official Sonic game we never got for that system, I am glad for the games we got from Sonic Team on the Saturn. Even if I half suspect now having played Burning Rangers that they wanted to entirely separate themselves for the blue rodent who a smash hit designed for the West who became big, it was worth it.

It is weird we never got an official Sonic Saturn game, even if it had been terrible, but we did get two very unique games from Sonic Team. One of them has been preserved in Nights into Dreams (1996), a very unique title which clearly was a work of love they created a Nintendo Wii sequel for, and rereleased in a high definition upgrade. Burning Rangers sadly was not given this same treatment, which is tragic as it really is a little gem. It is a fire fighting game, which like Nights… and its unique combination of dream worlds and flying mechanics, means that Sonic Team were at least trying to move away from the mascot platforming of Sonic into two very unique games. Fire fighting has had a couple of games based on the theme – probably the other prominent one is Human Entertainment's The Firemen (1994) for the SNES, from the developer famous for working on the Fire Pro Wrestling franchise alongside very idiosyncratic titles and a Playstation One sequel to The Firemen. Burning Rangers does however have a futuristic slant on the proceedings, feeling like the cool nineties anime series we never got in existence, where fire fighters now do not need the cumbersome fire fighting uniforms, but sleek body suits with the ability to briefly fly and leap large spaces for their job. Instead of water too, or other extinguisher compounds like power for electronic equipment, they effectively use ray guns now. This is especially useful as fire itself has advanced in the future, per colour coding for severity, upgraded to even green flames which seemingly chase fire fighters.  

Structurally, this is a three dimensional game with one foot in what was becoming more dominant in the console era – the longer length games with saving functions, cut scenes and longer levels – but still an arcade game at heart, in that you have a clear route to take, with the virtue of a voice in your character’s ear to tell you where to go, encouraging you to get better when you replay the game. To finish levels quicker, find all the civilians you can rescue, not just those inherently saved in in-game graphic cut scenes, and make sure to get a higher grade. Your main attack, unless you charge it for a room clearing blast which sacrifices them, to literally avoid feeling a little too hot under the collar, are gems produced by the extinguished flames. Collecting these keep you a shield to protect yourself, in the same way having rings prevented Sonic from losing a life in one hit, and are also needed to spend to use the teleport to save civilians. A higher grade is given per level for as many civilians as you can find, as many gems as you can get and retain, and also for getting the levels of fire down to nearly zero percent, as per a meter, if not entirely at zero, alongside your efficiency at dealing with each stage’s boss.

Doors may only be opened with switches, some need key cards occasionally, and beyond the dangers of fire, as it always had since Prometheus scorned the gods to bring it to mortal man, the second stage onwards brings in robots, usually the security for the places hit by the disasters, which does emphasis the dangers of artificial intelligence when they confuse rescue services as hostile threats. Fittingly, there is no true antagonist(s) to the game, no evil cabal behind acts of pyromania, even by the end stages all feeling like the episodic stories in an anime series before a main narrative comes in. The story we get here is where, in a futuristic setting, the threats even if involving a giant monster fish to slay still are accidents and incidents as in real life, where there is less concern for a pyromaniac behind them but to just rescue people caught in the burning environments and try to prevent the fires spreading. The bosses add a three dimensional run-and-gun gameplay, using jumps and air dashes to avoid their attacks, but most of the game is trying to avoid being burnt in the fires, preventing them from getting too high in intensity, and completing the goals to get to the end of each stage.

The thing that needs to be addressed is the graphics. Burning Rangers is one of the last Western releases for a console which was always plagued with the issue of whether it could push polygonal graphics. It was a machine originally designed for sprites, and is acclaimed for its sprite games, but even in spite of the fact Burning Rangers was made on the cusp of the Sega Dreamcast’s Japanese launch on November 1998 in Japan, a console where this was not a problem, this game which came out in the same year still shows the virtues of when the Saturn could be used at its best. There are clear moments when Burning Rangers struggles to put its effects together, but I commend Sonic Team for a game which still looks good enough to show how the Sega Saturn could do polygonal games. The irony is that the game’s one problem is one which befalls games even on the Sony Playstation, which never had concerns about its graphical capabilities, that the camera is not perfect. This is still superior to games from the Saturn, the Playstation and Nintendo 64 which can be awful for their cameras in three dimensional games, in that even if you have moments of precarious platforming and the camera cannot be instantly placed behind the player where they are, they used the shoulder buttons on the Saturn controller to move the camera instantly to your left or right flank, allowing you to position it with ability to check what is ahead. There is also a button to allow you to control said camera more to focus on targets if need be. Having a voice in the ear to tell you if you are going the wrong way, a senior female member of the Burning Rangers named Chris Parton as your eyes, or a later voice who takes over due to plot events, really helps with this even if there were moments, usually the underwater scenes, which can lead to you getting lost. Alongside the fact the latter does not have oxygen depletion as a game function, thank lord, even when there is the issue that you can accidentally be blasted by fire without spotting it, I will forgive it when it is part of the game’s really interesting game mechanic for this.

That being how, even without the threat of a variety of different fire colours, their colours dictating how more blasts are needed to clear them, fires can explode from anywhere. Sound is important, to the point the game tells you to make sure you can clearly hear your sound system, because not only is Chris'  voice your guide, but you get a sound cue warning when fire is about to explode from under you or the wall. The button, down on the control pad, to do a back flip to avoid it may not always work than just use the air dash to escape, especially on the level in a space station when an outer wall breaks and threatens to suck you into the vastness blackness of the space outside, but the emphasis on keeping your ears and eyes alert for fire is actually a distinct mechanic I commend. There is even, if not exploited as much due to the game's short length, the real concept of the back draft, which is when you open a door in a burning building, and the suddenly combination of air into a room with combustible gases causes an explosion of fire which can harm the person who open the door. This desire to make a fire fighting game, even if exaggerated, which does show the peril of the job is admirable, when it comes to having to briefly carry a child on your back and avoid fire jets, and the basic game mechanics emphsing how the team behind this wished to make a game which was not the same as many where you killed anyone you met rather than rescued them. Yuji Naka is a controversial figure now he was arrested and jailed in 2023 for inside trading, and neither did it help that his game with his own studio Balan Wonderworld (2021), clearly a project of love about dreams like Nights..., of helping people and one which even has actual musical numbers, got tarred and feathered by the public beforehand, but he as a producer and creator is still important. A game like Burning Rangers has to be commended for trying something different, making it clearer they were not interested in just repeating the success of Sonic the Hedgehog again. The game's director Naoto Ohshima, who designed Sonic the Hedgehog and Dr. Eggman from the Sonic franchise, would after 1998 move from Sonic Team and work under a variety of different companies, even if it did mean also working on Balan Wonderworld among other titles.

Even the production design is carefully put together as, for all my jokes about this being an anime, this has cut scenes, when not in-game graphics being used, outsourced to TMS Entertainment, a legendary animation studio behind the likes of Akira (1988) who were collaborating with Sega a lot at this time, including on animated work based on their properties like a 1995 animated series based on Virtua Fighter. Even the voice cast, for the original Japanese version, though the English one we had was not a slouch either, has prominent names, the most notable being Yūko Miyamura as the female lead Tillis, who already by this game had her iconic character of Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) under her belt among other roles. It adds a lot to a game which, whilst a short arcade game at heart, was aiming to be a bigger title from a major arm of Sega. Story wise, you an either choose Tillis herself, or the male lead in Shou Amabane; Shou is your typical lead, whilst Tillis is the youngest member who we learn can communicate with dolphins in a sequence undoubtedly from Sega in its charming goofiness. Sadly we never got a sequel which let us play the other team members, unless you find the secret codes to do so, but at least they are prominent, even having the gruff veteran, in his mid-thirties, who is named Big Landman, which is hilarious he goes under Mr. Landman when greeted. Nonetheless, like the cut scenes, it adds to the game as much as the score by Naofumi Hataya, Fumie Kumatani and Masaru Setsumaru. It adds a lot as between some bombastic rock opera theatrics, they also indulge in dark ambient appropriate for the threat of the main game alongside jazz, which is unconventional if somehow right for the tone.

Stage one, of only five, sets this up at a science lab where after the introductory training piece you quickly learn the ropes. This is a game where, at your best, you will be able to dash through levels quickly, find all the civilians to rescue when you learn the stages, and take in that beating the game once includes an option for randomization in the stages, which adds a nice addition for replay value. Finding survivors, including more available when stages are replayed, leads to the sweet touch of having emails you can access in the main menu thanking you for rescuing them, alongside being the source for secret codes for extras when rescued. For the opening stage, it is pretty conventional and teaches you all the gameplay mechanics minus any robot enemies, with real emphasis throughout that this is the daily life of a fire fighter team even if from an awesome nineties anime series we never got. Based on the episodic stories before the major plot how this game is effectively structured as, the first stage scenario is merely caused by the ill-advised decision to cultivate a giant sentient plant which caused the disaster in the first place and is the boss to dispose of.

Stage Two, probably a favorite even though swimming in maze-like tunnels in the game can get confusion, is the SeaWorld equivalent, if an underwater tourist site which forgot to tell anyone that they had a tour with children there unknown about, and had a giant monster fish which became the issue. The very cheesy and charming details very much of Sega come through here, including befriending a dolphin, if you play Tillis, who guides you along in a funny and sweet moment. Stage Three is definitely where this shows itself as a short game unfortunately releasing itself at a time when, with the Sony Playstation dominating the market, long campaigns in video games were becoming more prominent, as this is already escalating itself with an incident in outer space on a space station which marks close to the end of the story, something you would have to wait for in another game after a few more stages before. Thankfully, whilst a longer game could have been much more ambitious, we got here at least a hybrid of an arcade game which is designed with love and works, not pointlessly long either in this case as we are already dealing with zero gravity movement or the issue of how outer walls of the station collapse and leads to damage if you get nearly sucked through into the void. With huge spoilers ahead, another voice as mentioned is presented after this stage, that of a young woman preserved in stasis on a nearby satellite for a then-incurable disease. Unfortunately her father, when he built the satellite's artificial intelligence, did not code it to not try to collide directly into the Earth, causing unforeseen and apocalyptic damage, when it got the eventual memo a cure was found decades later.

How this leads on includes the one abrupt gameplay change, fun but feeling not as thought-out as the rest, of having to negotiate a space cruiser carefully past hazards to reach Stage Five and the final act, but after that everything is dandy. It leads to a surreal neatherrealm in the satellite with cautious platforming on thin platforms over void, leading you to fight a monster for a final boss before the happy ending. And after that, all that there is to say is the disappointment that this game never was followed upon or ever got a re-release. Nights into Dreams, as mentioned earlier, was clearly a game which was loved to the point it had a Japanese only Playstation 2 release in 2008, a sequel in Nights: Journey of Dreams (2007), and a 2012 high definition re-release. The character themselves also has made appearances in the likes of Sega crossover tennis and kart racing titles, so they have a legacy. Burning Rangers only real legacy is one or two references, such as a race track in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (2012) based on the game, but that is it. It is not great, and again ties into the issues of preserving the past, especially as the game in its original form on aging CDs costs more than rent for some houses nowadays, and is tragically also really good, a highlight of the console lost officially to the past as said past is not kept in the spot light.