The Phantom of the Opera (1998)

 

Rewatched Monday 10th March 2025

 

Director: Dario Argento

Screenplay: Dario Argento, Gérard Brach (and Giorgina Caspari)

Based on the novel by Gaston Leroux

Cast: Julian Sands as The Phantom of the Opera, Asia Argento as Christine Daaé, Andrea Di Stefano as Raoul, Baron de Chagny, Nadia Rinaldi as Carlotta Altieri, Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni as Honorine, István Bubik as The Rat Catcher, Lucia Guzzardi as Madame Giry

 

Somehow because of Gaston Leroux, I can connect Lon Chaney Sr., Claude Rains, Dario Argento...and Andrew Lloyd Webber together among the many who've adapted or starred as the titular Phantom, Leroux's 1910 work first creating this figure terrorising the Paris. This is in mind I forgot Julian Sands was in this now taking up the role, emphasising alongside being a very idiosyncratic casting choice for Argento that this entire project was more idiosyncratic than I remembered. With the prologue suggesting Batman Returns (1992) in the origin of the Phantom as a baby Sands being floated across the waters of a cave in wicker basket, only with rats replacing the penguins, Argento's take with co-writer Gérard Brach taking its own direction with the source material. More so as I thought that Batman Return reference as a joke to myself as I re-watched the opening, only to forget a rat drags the wicker basket to safety and an animatronic rat puppet head in close-up is depicted as their friendship as human to rodent is shown.

Considering his 1987 film Opera, it makes sense for Argento to tackle this setting again, especially as he was always apparently adamant to Leroux's novel at some point. With the Budapest Opera House in Hungary used for the shooting location, designed as a copy of the Paris Opera House central to Leroux's story, alongside scouting real caves in Italy for the underbelly the Phantom looms in, this feels like a passion project and a really ambitious film even for Argento in terms of production. I'd argue the production value is great as a result, a period horror romance tragedy which is one of the few times in his career he went back in time. This also stands out considering this was made at the same time there was sadly the declining end of the Italian genre industry. Argento, even if also filming in Hungary, clearly had some influence least enough for the production values here to depict everything from the back stage areas full of props (even a huge life-size ship stage in one shot) to the washrooms for the linen to the caves below the Paris Opera.

It focuses on the Phantom fully as a romantic anti-hero, one who brutally kills people but has his own moral code, including one most would understand in dealing with an older male creeper of young girls obsessed beyond wanting to force chocolate on them. He is not physically disfigured, which is a significant change, arguably progressive in its own way, as the scarring is psychologically for good reason in being forced to like with rats. Sands is also really appropriate for a figure that compels Asia Argento's lead Christine Daaé, an aspiring opera singer, with the chemistry that would be found between them. As the film goes, the story finds itself deviating into differences such as explicit psychic powers that force a rat catcher to put his hand into a trap of his own set up, or the sense of humour which is that and deliberate.

A gorier and more sexually explicit take is found, feeling like Argento's full blown Gothic period horror which fully embraces its dramatic weight and doesn't suffer the many issues, particularly budget, that afflicted Dracula 3D (2012). The tonal changes and production style actually move this film in Argento's career closest to a wave of films from the nineties, such as those by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro like Delicatessen (1991), of tonally shifting genre films which embraced their practical production values and weren't above very strange moments of humour. This will put some off, but Argento's cinema was already getting weirder by the eighties, where Saxon randomly blares out in the middle of Opera with their heavy metal riffs, and probably the "weirdest" of his films, Phenomenon (1985), involving Jennifer Connelly being able to psychically communicate with insects and a chimpanzee with a razor blade.

It befits that era of baroque genre films with arguably its more lurid and tonal shifting moments helping the film from becoming too dry, be it the strange early CGI effects like Julian Sands seeing a mouse trap in the full of nude men writhing in pain superimposed in the full moon, or the bombast in style even for humour like a close-up of a singer's tonsils out of artistic creativity. Some of this does feel ridiculous but more often than not it feels like for deliberate humour - like a stint in an all-welcome sex bath house with, the potential second love interest for Christine, where equal opportunity nudity of all ages and sizes is contrasted by clothed men arguing philosophy violently in the pool.

There's the potential discomfort with this film's throw-in-the-kitchen-sink tone, if you connect the dots, with the more sexually frank moments knowing Asia Argento is Dario's daughter, though she has worked with him over the later decades to a film like Dark Glasses (2022), so thankfully theirs has felt more a happier familial relationship. Even if films like The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) before had a really deliberately uncomfortable thriller dealing with sexual violence, there's a feeling of greater trust between them which thankfully makes the pair comfortable in collaborating as they have as family in such films. Also she fits here as Christine - dubbed with another's singer voice, she does to Asia Argento's credit fit the role as a period horror lead who is meant to present the pure hearted singer an outcast like Sands would fall for. Including her conflict, when she starts to question if he is trying to dominate her as much as the reality that theirs is to be as much a tragic love, she thankfully feels like an appropriate casting choice. I like Julian Sands too, someone who befits this more glamorous version of the Phantom as much as someone who would also bite a person's tongue out for trying to steal his underground treasure.

In general, the film is over-the-top in a way that might put purists of the source off. It's not enough to have the famous scene of the huge chandelier being dropped mid-performance as a warning, but shirtless Sands sledge hammering its stone support to justify his warnings, and for it to bloodily maim a baker's dozen of the theatre patrons below. The completely abrupt tangent of a rat killing proto-golf kart would not be included in other adaptations, nor so much other Argento productions, but I can't help but think it feels broad on purpose, becoming a flex in Argento's career which you rarely see and with hindsight is appreciated for the heightened delirium of this particular film. The closest thing to this in Italian genre cinema I've seen in general was the directorial work of former actor Michele Soavi from this era, his tragically short filmography for this period even when it was more explicitly serious horror like The Sect (1991) deliberately cutting to a rabbit being able to operate a television remote for a humour jolt.

The curious mix of romance, horror, style and silliness of The Phantom of the Opera feels like the culmination of Argento's more absurd touches, and one thing that has made me be won over by the film is knowledge that this is still at the time before his most divisive, lower budget films came to be. Everything after The Card Player (2004) up to Dark Glasses are his most maligned works and projects where he was having to work with lower budgets. Here, there is the budget, and its sincerity in shifting between romantic tragedy to gore to absurd comedic shifts is feels less like many compromises have come to play, but are the point. As a result, I feel the film's been unfairly maligned in Dario Argento's career and have come to appreciate it.

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later/Halloween: Resurrection (1998/2002)

 

Director: Steve Miner [Halloween H20]/Rick Rosenthal [Halloween: Resurrection]

Screenplay: Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg [H20]/ Larry Brand and Sean Hood [Resurrection]

Cast:

Halloween H20

Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode / Keri Tate, Josh Hartnett as John Tate, Adam Arkin as Will Brennan, Michelle Williams as Molly Cartwell, Adam Hann-Byrd as Charlie Deveraux, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe as Sarah Wainthrope, Janet Leigh as Norma Watson, LL Cool J as Ronald 'Ronny' Jones, Chris Durand as Michael Myers, Lisa Gay Hamilton as Shirley 'Shirl' Jones (voice)

Halloween: Resurrection

Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, Brad Loree as Michael Myers, Busta Rhymes as Freddie Harris, Bianca Kajlich as Sara Moyer, Sean Patrick Thomas as Rudy Grimes, Daisy McCrackin as Donna Chang, Katee Sackhoff as Jennifer 'Jen' Danzig, Luke Kirby as Jim Morgan, Thomas Ian Nicholas as Bill Woodlake, Ryan Merriman as Myles 'Deckard' Barton, Tyra Banks as Nora Winston, Gus Lynch as Harold Trumble

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movie)

 

Trick or treat...motherfucker!

It might seem blasphemous to cover both of these films together, as Resurrection is considered a huge drop after H20, what was considered a great sequel/return to the iconic 1978 film, but there was always a sequel planned when H20 was filmed, so this reboot of the Halloween franchise was tragically sealed in having a sequel that undercut whatever H20 accomplished. It is the curse of any film franchise, to always try to sustain it whether it would work or not, as the three part Thorn trilogy beforehand ended as badly as it did, after The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) and its theatrical cut. Also, as much as H20 is rightly viewed as a great way to continue (and supposedly end) the franchise, Resurrection as a result of watching the previous films before, with the Thorn trilogy sadly having some of the least interesting entries, became a guiltless pleasure this time around without the burden that it ruined a great film's conclusion from before. For a film notorious for rap artist Busta Rhymes calling Michael Myers a killer shark, I accepted the absurdity and got (unintentional) joy from the proceedings.

Resetting the world, to the point that parts four to six now became their own alternative dimension, we begin with a prologue that re-establishes that we are following from Halloween II all the way back in 1981, in which Michael Myers one night in a suburb in Haddonfield killed a series of people. That first ever sequel is still canon because one of the survivors from that night, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), was made into his sister as he went for her again in the last moments of that night, and thus H20's prologue follows on from the logical conclusion that, if he cannot be stopped, he will try to find her even under witness protection. There is a sense of glibness from the dialogue provided by Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg, with the screenwriter of Scream (1996) Kevin Williamson in a producer's role on this film. Scream, also helped into existence with its director Wes Craven, was an important film to the slasher genre and its influence here cannot be ignored as for other films from after its release, as this does wink in its plotting of slasher tropes whilst still having an actual story. We can find humour in a young Jason Gordon-Levitt as a teen helping himself to a few beers secretly whilst helping a nurse whose home has been broken into, but notwithstanding someone getting an ice skate blade embedded into their face, there is still a serious story set up.

The calm, almost bloodless tone of the original John Carpenter film was gone by that first ever sequel, but co-producer Williamson, alongside the screenwriters and director Steve Miner, who came from the Friday the 13th franchise, brought back the focus onto a small chamber piece rather than the sprawl out into a higher body count that the films onwards from Carpenter's original did. The Thorn trilogy of three films before is gone, and even the additional cast to off in the 198q sequel are nowhere to be found, instead envisioning Laurie Strode under a new name has a new life, as the headmistress of a school, trying to get on with her life. It is still a brisk horror film in length, focusing on the stalking around the campus by Myers halfway through, but we establish so much characterization with a surprising level of effortlessness. We establish Laurie having nightmares from the attacks of a time before, and all the medication she has even under a new name to cope, with alcoholism to match a teaching career. A loving son played by Josh Hartnett, who is passing his seventeenth birthday, due to her over protectiveness is also starting to be at his tether with her, and only this time viewing the film did I ever consider that we never hear anything about his father. Even if the screenwriters forgot to include details of this by pure accident, the gap of the previous husband as a single mother itself raises so much potential unheard back-story to set up how she has had to deal with so much psychological damage due to her brother trying to murder her decades earlier.

On October 31st, her son rather than at a Yosemite camping trip for the whole school has some friends and his girlfriend together, planning their own secret Halloween at the school, whilst Laurie herself is also there with only a male teacher, one around her age, who she is romantically connected with and starts to opens up about the truth of her life finally to him. LL Cool J, a seminal rap artist known for the likes of Mama Said Knock You Out having started in the early eighties, has a small role too but adds a much needed side character as the school campus' guard, entirely for the detail that he is writing erotic novels in his spare moments even if his beau (Lisa Gay Hamilton, only heard by her voice) criticises his lack of decent metaphors for the female chest let alone getting anything published. Even Will (Adam Arkin), Laurie's fellow teacher and lover, gets as much for a minor character just for the fact he is a likable guy, getting time to become fully aware on this fateful night of Laurie's trauma as much as her concerns with her own protectiveness over her son, all in context of Michael Myers having found her and planning a family reunion.

This was why I appreciated the film the first time, and in context of the films that came before which struggled, this is such a breath of fresh air still to this day. Slasher films are usually fun and over-the-top as a horror subgenre, so there is less chances for moments of introspection, which this however still allows and provides an efficient slasher flick to enjoy. It was also made with clear love, Jamie Lee Curtis clearly making this with interest of the character dynamic, but also in how her real life mother Janet Leigh, of Psycho (1960), is a minor character as one of the minor school staff in a beautiful nod to Alfred Hitchcock's film and its legacy on the slasher genre, as much as one woman who defined horror herself being there in a nice interplay with her daughter, who defined horror as well as cinema in her own career. Even the self aware humour has aged well; one joke, whilst actually subversive because it is the female cast who say it, is very edgy and would not exist in a future slasher film, but the snark does not invade the tension, so actually counts as proper character layering. It is seen in how, whilst he has a tiny role, LL Cool J comes off as one of the highlights due to his easy going charisma. It is noted that, a year later in the shark film Deep Blue Sea (1999), his character with more scenes also became a huge highlight. He has a prolific career in cinema and television, beginning long before the Halloween franchise, but it is a shame we did not get any really prominent horror films beyond these two from him, as he could have been a wonderful shot in the arm for a few from the period I was getting into the genre at that time into the modern day.

H20 even when it become fully of its genre, because of all its build, really succeeds and it is noticeable too, after the film before had more gruesome deaths added in the theatrical release, this has only a tiny cast, only a few deaths, and a lot of its pace as a slow burn entirely based around Laurie Strode being forced to face her past. Barring some post-grunge yarling in the diegetic song, this does not feel as dated next to the film before (or after) even with the fashion and lack of mobile phones. The real issue, not the film's fault, is that there was always going to be a sequel. The ending is extreme, Laurie Strode breaking the law to end the horror once and for all, and there are hints that all is not as it seems where a sequel can happen, but if Halloween ended here, [Spoilers] Laurie decapitating her brother [Spoilers End], it would have ended on a high. However, they had intended the sequel from the get-go, even if it took four years to get to, and had to reverse the ending. Whilst I hinted that it could be done, the result as the back-story is explained in a convoluted way, with a newly created medical staff member involved, which gets things off to a bad start.

The huge spoiler, which cannot be dodged with a [Spoiler Warning] is that Halloween: Resurrection kills off Laurie Strode in the prologue, which is a very controversial thing to do, with her in a mental asylum for a few years waiting for Michael Myers. It feels however like a necessary curtain call to allow the series to continue, as she is allowed to be clever and only caught by her hesitance to not make the same mistakes again, if with the conundrum of how the story continues if a huge catalyst for Michael Myers' motives has vanished. It would have been fascinating to see the aimless epilogue of a horror film killer, Myers feeling emptiness, but realising that sounds like it is full of snark as a comment, what made Resurrection infamous was arguably what happened after the prologue as a whole film. Including the muffled noises Busta Rhymes makes in a pale William Shatner mask, I suspect what most people think about with this film was how the attempt to create a new chapter in a franchise, a new beginning from the grave, accidentally shut the doors so much a reboot was required.

Resurrection is trying itself with the bludgeoning trends of horror films, dealing with the new fad called the internet and also reality TV, the era of Yahoo! Chat and the first examples of Big Brother to Survivor breaking trends in television. The Blair Witch Project (1999) as the abrupt micro budget horror film which came out of nowhere, not as a Hollywood production, has to be mentioned too in having prod people and help cement the found footage genre; the idea as Resurrection has of horror as depicted in cameras found on people recording the world around them definitely feels under the shadow of that film even if not a direct influence. Three friends, including lead Sara Moyer (Bianca Kajlich), and three others are invited to an internet company named DangerTainment to star in their new reality special screening online on All Hallow's Eve, filming at Michael Myers' family home with the intention by Busta Rhymes and Tyra Banks, who run the group, to get the six to investigate his origins over one night. With credit to the film, even explicitly referencing Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) even if by accident, with a death involving a film camera with a spike on the tripod, there is an interesting idea here of Michael Myers in the reality television world. A metatextual prod at how these type of figures are fascinating to culture for their gristly crimes is inherently compelling, even in just imagining a Halloween film where the events transpire over the net including the real deaths, with a person who met Sara watching from afar at a costumed party and there to help her when the DangerTainment broadcast collapses into a real bloodbath.

Attempting to reach a new audience off the back of H20 with the new tech being exploited in the story, casting rapper Busta Rhymes in a major role, and playing out the story without the burden of previous films in a claustrophobic, there is still the issue of how you could sustain Halloween as a franchise after, but I see the logic of all this. Even in this story, there is a justification for Myers to be here if sillier - even serial killers care for their family home, and do not want people tampering with it, especially as DangerTainment are planting items in his home to distort the truth, like a baby chair with chains to lock the nipper to the seat. Where the film goes south into comedic territory, and the infamy, is even before Rhymes martial arts kicks Myers, as there are so many absurd moments between intentional humour and unintentional choices undercutting the seriousness. Once not a fan of Halloween: Resurrection, my realisation that I might fall in love with this goofy sequel began when freshly bought fennel in the Myers' spice rack is an early warning which was hilarious, especially as if Michael Myers has a spice rack, I would presume he would prefer thyme.

After the Thorn trilogy, I think I grew a fondness for this after two films as a viewer I found a drag, and with The Curse of Michael Myers in its theatrical cut, and its entire production cycle, a chaotic mess in a way which did not lead to an unintentional gem of surreal but just compromises. There is something more pleasant, with its early 2000s DNA shown even in the drum and bass music in the score, to something which is this consistency ridiculous, directed by Rick Rosenthal, who made the original 1981 Halloween II where Myers boiled a nurse to death in a Jacuzzi which inexplicably was a) in the basement of a hospital, and b) has the temperature reaching up to the "Scalding" with a gauge to show this. As I said in a paragraph before, slashers tend to be more playful and silly, even if unintentional, and this is a great example of the unintentional camp. From dialogue like "Besides, screwing a music major is tantamount to lesbianism", to Myers' family home having an impromptu sex dungeon which requires a giant key from a MS-Dos point and click video game to access it, Resurrection is a goofy movie, and that was the doom sealing for this ever continuing the franchise. An entire section is dealt with Tyra Banks not even seeing something being clearly killed on a CCTV camera due to her being more busy with the portable cappuccino machine in her broadcast room, which emphasises that at times, whilst a lot of this is unintended, there are intentional moments of humour which also fan the fires of camp to all of this. Literally the haunted house version of the franchise, we had reached a time in American horror I remember where ghoulishness met an open sense of silliness even if there was gore - Dark Castle Entertainment's films like the 1999 House on Haunted Hill remake to the Friday the 13th sequel Jason X (2001) which shot Jason Voorhees into outer space - and Resurrection missed the balance for many if you wanted a film to follow H20's more respectable tone.  

Filled with stereotypes and one dimensional figures, from the sex pest who is thankfully the first character in the main crew to die to one whose character dynamic, as a cook, is believing serial killers exist due to lack of protein and bad diets, Resurrection is just as ridiculous as slasher films before that were made independent in the original waves from the eighties. However by the time Rhymes compares Myers to a killer shark in the aftermath, this was not the film to sell to a wider audience without it coming off as unintentionally camp. I found it entertaining with hindsight to previous films, and more so now that Rob Zombie's two films from afterwards, which I soften to once before, are inconsistent noble failures undercut by their attempts at severity. Because I kept finding absurd moments I missed or forgot before, even if in context to Halloween H20 and how this ruined a new chapter in the franchise, there is so much to make it consistently entertainment to find Halloween: Resurrection utterly charming in its variously dumb ways.

Medousa (1998)

Director: George Lazopoulos

Screenplay: George Lazopoulos

Cast: Eleni Filini as The Mother, Thanos Amorginos as Perseus, Vana Rambota as Katia, Haris Mihalogiannakis as Spyros, Dimitris Karageorgos as Mitsos, Mitsos Sioris as Archegos, Frosso Litra as Christina

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

The blues guitar licks on the score are unexpected for this film, but Medousa in general, as an obscure Greek film, is openly something out of the expected. This takes ancient Greek mythology in distinct modern direction with the prologue establishing the idiosyncratic tone: it starts with a teen boy named Perseus and his friendship with a professional knife thrower, saying goodbye to each other before the boy leaves with his mother. However, he catches the glimpse of a mysterious woman who wears sunglasses which leads to the disappearance of his mother, and ten years later as an adult, Perseus (Thanos Amorginos) finds himself tracking down this ageless figure. For obvious reasons, with the title of the film, George Lazopoulos' sole film as writer-director does not hide it is portraying a modernised take on the Medusa story.

Medusa, the most famous of the "Gorgons" in Greek myth, has her story told pretty accurately in this version. However, alongside the protagonist not being the Perseus of the past, but a young man who practices knife throwing with replicas of legendary paintings like the Mona Lisa, and with a taste in cool Batman t-shirts, Lazopoulos attempted to bring this mythological figure into nineties Greece and figure out how she would exist within the massive centuries long changes in human society. For a part of its form, rather than overt horror, this plays like a crime drama, only with the police presuming that it is not a petrified victim in a hotel room, but somehow a life sized statue that was managed to be hiked there for inexplicable reasons. The surrealism of Medusa's known aspect, petrifying her victims into stone when they gaze on her, is taken advantage of in how, whilst horrifying, there is a weirdness to the sight of all her male victims petrified in stone. This is a really idiosyncratic story because the horror is not overt gore or threat of mutilation but the fear of this permanence if in a form that can easily be destroyed. There is a sense of humour if a sick one, replicas of men still wearing their clothes which have not been petrified, all due to an older woman in sunglasses the police and eventually Perseus are pursuing. It is a nice way to portray this, with a sense a humour at first, where one case is seen as an art piece to protest environmental damage than a male victim in the park, but there is the sense of disconcertment with this as it goes along, with the missing people who are replicated by the statues. When we find ourselves in "Ms. Meda's" home, when being robbed, it offers an even more gruesome image with a room of statues, some with limbs broken off and placed together.

As people close in on "Ms. Medu", we see this mythological figure be drawn as a distinct take on this myth, a drifter who survives by stealing the money from petrified victims to live on. This is more so because I have explicitly only referred to male victims, the twist of what happens to women who see her without the sunglasses certainly idiosyncratic and a great conclusion for the film. Whilst we have a lick of synthesizer occasionally used in-between all the guitar licks, which feels of the decade before, this is definitely a nineties film slowly encroaching onto the Millennium. It still feels pre-web and pre-dominance of mobile phones, but we are still within modernised European metropolises and towns which this gorgon can still hide covertly inside.

As the plot has Perseus' group robbing her home, an ill advised decision which will be doomed for most of them, naturally this story starts to link to the country's past and culture whilst riffing on horror tropes from the universal language of the genre. It makes sense, for example, the exposition comes from an orthodox Greek priest, one who became involved due to his mistake of ego and wants to learn more of the gorgon from Perseus' upcoming quest. Matched against its central idea, of how if these figures of legends exist they would hide in among humans as wanderers, eking out lives, there is a lot to admire with Medousa especially in how small scale the narrative is. It is sad, as a result, this is George Lazopoulos' only film. I have come across this a few times now as a film viewer especially in horror, the one-offs or creators who did not follow up with a large filmography, and whilst a part of me hopes that this was a case George Lazopoulos at least got to make the one film in him he ever wanted to make, it feels tragic that this fascinating one-off was not followed with this director-writer taking this tone to other subjects.

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.