The Gore-Gore Girls (1972)

 

Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Screenplay: Alan J. Dachman

Cast: Frank Kress as Abraham Gentry; Amy Farrell as Nancy Weston; Hedda Lubin as Marlene; Henny Youngman as Marzdone Mobilie; Russ Badger as Lt. Anderson; Ray Sager as Grout; Nora Alexis as Lola Prize

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Lt. Anderson, one of my friends seems to have run into a bit of trouble... and lost her face.

Thinking he was ending on this film in terms of his film directing career, Herschell Gordon Lewis felt he wanted to go out with a bang, with more production value and shock as he was closing the door on his exploitation film career. Starting with the image of a woman, Suzie Cream Puff, "being creamed" by having her face hit through a mirror, he wanted to deliver on that premise. Here I will say, as one of the first Lewis films I had seen, I hated this film once. Hated it to the point it was actually held as one of the worst films I had ever seen. What changed in all the time that passed?

The immediate thing is this film embraces its sense of humour. Introducing our detective lead, Abraham Gentry (Frank Kress), stroking a pet cat in his lounge only to insert it into a cupboard when someone knocks outside, he is lured by a female reporter Nancy Weston (Amy Farrell) to investigate a series of gristly go-go dancer murders. The Gore-Gore Girls is a scuzzy and nasty little production, clearly influenced by the Italian giallo from the period as the unseen killer is even wearing black gloves for the job, but it is also a film so proudly with its tongue in its cheek it has pierced through the flesh. Gentry, as played by Kress, is immediately a stand-out even in terms of characters and acting performances in a Lewis film, playing a sarcastic dick but delightfully so, apt for the tone of the production with his many quips to people who irritate him during his work. He eventually even comes to like Nancy, despite their stand-off nature at first and questionable decisions nowadays; though he does nothing and makes sure she gets safely home, getting her drunk off her face on zombie cocktails repeatedly is not something we would consider heroic nowadays even if the joke back in the early seventies.

The film is a procedural where he investigates who the killer could be. Is it Grout (Ray Sager), the man at the Go-Go club bar who draws faces on vegetables and fruits, crushing them in a mania started on corpses in his Vietnam war service, or the leader of a feminist group, whose group storms a Go-Go club halfway through? Lewis even touching upon the Italian giallo genre by accident is a curious nod to this era Lewis would bow out OF, as horror cinema changed in the seventies and diversified further. This is including the fact he might have not been able to match the gore and splatter becoming more acceptable even in mainstream cinema from the period, such as The Omen (1976) having a full decapitation by way of pane of glass shown at multiple angles. Some of this film has aged and is of the era, as Gentry has no time for any woman, even when he is condescending to everyone, and eventually going to bond and have a romance with Nancy. Coming off as a chauvinist, there are many moments, before that romance too, Gentry feels like he is clearly not interested in women at all and could be read as gay.

Thankfully, a bit has aged well. Even with the feminists involved, the film never takes pot-shots with them even when their leader is a possible suspect, their huge storming scene more of a scuffle between actors then anything that comes off as offensive. It feels like Lewis, and his screenwriter Alan J. Dachman, who has a brief scene as a young male bystander asked where a suspect is, just took notice of the world around them and put in a touch for more interest. Gentry is also inclined to screwing with the male police lieutenant, hiding info and telling him the killer is a religious fanatic stealing the victims' Bibles, which is a legitimately funny running joke especially when the cast playing the fellow officers, who Gentry likes more, play it with their senior looking like an idiot.

One of the other aspects of the film was also one of the huge reasons I hated it originally, because I was offended by it, were the gore scenes, not used to the type of films Lewis made and the splatter genre. That they all involve female victims is going to be an issue for many, though Lewis was happy to have violence against men and women; the issue is entirely that, with the plot choice, some will find this uncomfortable whilst for Lewis, wishing to leave his career at this point as the inventor of the splatter genre, he decided to leave as gruesomely as possible. This is as extreme as Lewis could get, even next to Blood Feast 2: All You Can Eat (2002), with openly absurd shock value and violent about it, where one person dies to a wooden meat tenderizer to the buttocks followed by salt and pepper being added the wounds. A lot of handling organ meat is involved, and the one scene that is the most infamous was also the one which really shocked me back in the day, still out-there in Lewis' filmography when a female victim has her nipples cut off, one producing milk and the other producing chocolate milk, among the other things that already happened. These scenes, even if played for the bleakest of humour, are going to shock and make people uncomfortable, especially because the targets are all women, which was the aspect which caught me off-guard when I first saw the film back in the day and also could not see the intentional absurdity in its grossness. Details of the film do feel of their time, like this or Gentry getting Nancy drunk continually, but what is also felt is that Lewis is not taking anything serious and being mischievous at the same time. Particularly with the look of the film, shot in Chicago, The Gore-Gore Girls was a shock for me back in the day for feeling rancid let alone looking it, and that I did not appreciate this type of cinema at all, especially when it came to its very twisted sense of humour.

It has a clear witty, very dark humoured tone, which helps the film so much in the modern day, but in hindsight this film should probably be a later work for a newcomer to watch from Lewis, just in case the content leaves a bad taste in the mouth without seeing Lewis' sense of humour in context. Nonetheless I have changed my tune considerably to the film, and if this had been his last film, it would have been a good one to have closed the curtains of his career on, with all his quirks, all his divisive content, and a fitting final image. One breaking the forth wall, the screen being closed by a character as a literal curtain closer, feeling closer to a touch from a forties screwball comedy than a splatter film conclusion. That was not the end, as he would return to cinema in the 2000s after a very successful career in advertising, but for the original era, this was an apt closure.

When it comes into asking why he even decided to end his career at this point as he did, some of it is the fact he was struggling to make these films and felt he could have less stress in his life, especially as his advertising career for decades after made him a very well off man. Interviewed on The Incredibly Strange Film Show, a 1988-9 Channel 4 series by Jonathan Ross where he tackled "psychotronic" or B movie figures, the episode entirely devoted to Lewis had him absolute at bliss, happy to look back on his career with mirth but also, playing tennis and well off, a man who did well as a lucrative writer and speaker on the subject of advertising, his film career a well kept secret. He came back to cinema, which was a happy thing, but there was in itself a happy end there just as well. Lewis, in spite of his notorious gore films, has something sweet to his life in that he managed to have happy conclusions to his life and career in cinema twice. It is an odd thing to consider, as his career was devoted to make the audience throw up and throwing entrails around, but he would have found that hilarious.

Games of the Abstract: Jack Bros. (1995)

 

Developer: Atlus

Publisher: Atlus

One Player

Originally for: Nintendo Virtual Boy

 

The Virtual Boy was one of Nintendo's biggest failures. Released in July 1995, the attempt to bring three dimensional virtual realities to the home only lasted for a year before the machine was discontinued. There was an attempt three dimensional Tetris, a Mario game, a Wario game, even a licensed title based on the notorious Kevin Costner film Waterworld (1995), but there were only twenty two games released altogether including the Japanese only releases. Among them, one of the games held in high regard, but sadly becoming one of the most expensive in the retro retail market, is one by Atlus. Atlus is famous for the Megami Tensei series, which spun off into the Persona series which became huge in the West, both franchises of the role playing game genre. They are another case of a developer, like FromSoftware, who understandably focused their minds on the ideas and gameplay styles which were the most successful; like FromSoftware though, who are famous for anything spun off from the DNA of Demon's Souls (2009) and the Dark Souls franchise, I find myself more fascinated by the experiments and one-offs that came along in the past, whether it was FromSoftware during the PS1 and PS2 era of Sony game consoles, or in the case of Jack Bros., a game from Atlus to take advantage of a next "pocket" console even if attempting to lug it around with the head visor on a stand would be ridiculous.

It is not the most adventurous game I can think of from them - making a first person sword battle game for the Sega Dreamcast, Maken X (1999), is very out-there and enticing to play even if there is potential jank involved. Jack Bros. is however very idiosyncratic as a Halloween appropriate twin stick shooter, one which could have been fleshed out if allowed to continue as its own franchise. It is tied to the Megami Tensei franchise too, which could have lead to some interesting future crossovers, and the Halloween reference is apt. Set in that world, it follows a trio of supernatural brothers who on All Hallows' Eve stay out for too long in the human realm and have a severe time limit before the door back to their world closes. Thankfully, a friendly fairy named Pixie shows them a quick shortcut, if with a warning that the route is very treacherous and full of nasties.

The game itself, on the original machine, uses its two sets of directional buttons for its twin stick mechanics, to be able to shot in all directions (as well as in front of where you are) regardless of which direction you are wandering, a style which was codified as far back as Robotron: 2084 (1982) in the classic era of eighties arcade games. This one has a time limit to complete each stage, split into literal floors you fall between downwards, with simple puzzles later on and each stage having a boss battle to conclude them. The game play is very simple, in which with one of the three brothers to choose from, you are dropped in the mazes where you need to collect keys, whilst shooting/avoiding enemies, to unlock the gate that lets you drop down to the next floor. Sometimes shooting the enemies is encouraged as, alongside the power-ups or time boosts they can provide, sometimes they are carrying the keys as moving targets. Instead of health, your time limit is depleted when you are hit, and when you reach zero, you have to restart the whole stage again. You will need to consider this later on as more traps appear in the stages onwards - tiki heads which spit fire, spike floors, wheeled turrets firing lasers - and you eventually have to deal with the puzzles, like randomised teleporters, before eventually facing the boss battles with what time you still have.

It is a really fun concept. I would say later on, the stages do get long, but it is factoring in that this is a short game, for what was meant to be a potential next stage for the popular Game Boy. That means, thankfully, whilst with no save function, this game has unlimited continues and a password system, meaning with time, getting better is practical to actually do. Honestly, barring the weird couple of moments where I could not drop down to the next floor for some reason, the game has a fairer level of difficult that what could be expected from this era, Atlus providing fairness for a short, challenging game. Due to the circumstances with the hardware, you are playing a game whose aesthetic is entirely in red and black. The Virtual Boy however was a pretty advanced system though, and produced some gorgeous machine in terms of the visuals, seeing as well the potential this could have had if it was not a clearly doomed piece of hardware stuck with its two colour palette. This is something you also see with the only other horror themed game, the Japanese only Innsmouth no Yakata (1995), and whilst the selling point of the machine was its ability to have fully three dimensional images, Jack Bros. is more interesting even with its simple level designs, all simple mazes floating space, for its illustrative design style. It has a morbid cuteness to the proceedings, between cat girls running about, earthquake generating trolls, and angels, who Pixie point out are just hanging about being dicks, swinging spike maces on chains from outside the floor platforms you can thankfully shot back to hoist their petards. The animation and character designs, in vast contrast to the minimal dungeons themselves, are really good.

As a twin stick shooter, it fully works as a really ghoulish and fun arcade game. The bosses ramp up the tension the stages already have, such as Dracula with his floor of moving conveyor belts and bats, the most evil of combinations, but alongside the ability to fire in four directions without needing to face enemies, each of your three choices (and a fourth unlockable character, Pixie herself) have their own special attack you can horde power ups for. One has a room clearing bomb, one freezes everyone and one really likes knives, and alongside hoping to get one of the few power-ups if not more time for your clock, like a four piece shield of floating orbs or the brief invincibility dash, you are given help to accomplish these floors and the mazes before time slips away.

The rarity of the game does cement how, whilst a good title, it was as doomed as the console not long for the world it was released on. Sadly Nintendo, with their questionable moments in terms of preserving video game history, shoved the Virtual Boy in a drawer out of embarrassment, not even revisiting these titles when they released the 3DS in 2011, the hand held which had great advancements in terms of stereoscopic 3D without needing the Virtual Boy's infamous visor on a stand. Sadly, Jack Bros. is among the twenty two releases, all casualties, which were locked in the cupboard with the machine.