Creatures from the Abyss (1994)

 

Director: Alvaro Passeri

Screenplay: Richard Baumann and John Blush

Cast: Clay Rogers as Mike; Michael Bon as Bobby; Sharon Marino a Margareth; Laura di Palma as Dorothy; Ann Wolf as Julie; Deran Sarafian as Prof. Clark Dewison

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Whilst the name is frankly generic - the alternative Plankton whilst silly feels more fitting and is important to the plot - the whiff of Italian cinema is immediately there when five young adults (three women, one man, one horn dog) board a raft on the beach. This is late era Italian genre cinema, though it feels of the eighties, in the nether regions of the genre industry slowly fading away after its golden decades. Within this, in his directorial debut (and as producer), you have Alvaro Passeri, whose CV in a variety of positions, alongside being a legitimate one-man band between visual effects to animatronics, scales the drastically different sides of Italy's rich filmmaking history. Somehow Passeri can go from being an unaccredited sculptor on Tinto Brass' infamous Caligula (1979) to working on animation for Cinema Paradiso (1988), and here after two decades or so of work between anything from special effects to even the makeup department for Atlantis Interceptors (1983), Passeri decided to make a film.

His later films, finishing in 2003 with Psychovision, come in the early 2000s era of low budget straight-to-DVD cinema, which of green screen and digital effects being embraced more. Plankton, which it will be referred to, is a toe in the old lurid era of weirdo Italian genre films, feeling like a nautical cousin to the oddity Alien 2: On Earth (1980), cheese for the cave crowd, which is apt as Passeri is credited as an assistant production designer for that older film too. Plankton is definitely as mad as a box of frogs; even if it cannot qualify as truly abstract or surreal due to how grounded by an attempt at a conventional plot, in its own excesses it feels strange, where stranded on the middle of the ocean at night, a logic gap where the group shake off finding a corpse floating pass them to hang out on an abandoned ship is actually a sign of how over-the-top this will get.

This film lives in its own logic, and it lacks of logic through an honestly enjoyable way, where the problems with its structure if any for is entirely one character, having to put up with one very obnoxious character, a combination of two slasher/horror film tropes of the joker, who plays pranks on the other cast, and of the sex obsessed one trying to sleep with all the women. Thankfully, even the film finds a way to use him, as a film which manages to come up with some truly strange images, alongside a sense of self awareness which is even found in the English dub version for how broad it is. Set on an abandoned ship for nautical science, researching prehistoric fish, even the ship itself is bizarre for how it is inexplicably an Italian love hotel from a strange psychotronic genre film. White fur; a polar bear on a platform; a clock on the corridor wall, a one-eyed creature, who talks; and not least a shower which is connected to the rest of the bathroom appliances (with an actress filmed as the onscreen figure) which qualifies as the horniest I have ever witnessed in a film for how lustily it talks of even using toilet paper.

The variety of ways Plankton gets weirder as it goes is actually surprising, more so as this a) an Italian genre film which is sleazy but managed to be suitable for fifteen year olds in Britain for a lack of overt gore or incredibly explicit sexual content, and b) is ultimate about sentient floating fish and fish-people mutations, which adds to the silliness. Yes, someone punches a flying fish at some point. Yes, there is first person from a fish stalking the cast. Yes, there are flying fish depicted through dated effects, but compensates by memorable practical work. Yes, as the plot references prehistoric fish being mutated by radioactive waste being dumped in the ocean, you can make a joke this is effectively a film about irradiated sea bass, despite being a different species, and even feels like an escalation of the plot of Airplane! (1980), the famous disaster film parody where a passenger plane is in trouble due to fish related food poisoning, as eating still living mutated fish from the fridge does cause body transformation after a period of time. There is more of a self awareness throughout too as, in the middle of the final where fish mutants terrorise the ship and everything is going to blow up, I found myself laughing as the warning system is self conscious and warning people to shift.

Even in terms of sleaze, it feels drenched in it just from the love hotel decor. That is even before a sex scene involving mutation which, despite being in a film certificated as being suitable for fifteen year olds, feels like something from a Frank Henenlotter film, with proper body horror practical effects, and a legitimately gross twist on becoming pregnant very quickly in an interspecies relationship. (Or that the one surviving scientist onboard, a catatonic mess, is a male one who went mad and whose diary, when read, feels like a Freudian-William S. Burroughs smash-up of madness and sexual kink mingling with ichthyology). Italian genre cinema can be legitimately great - superbly made, haunting or/and transgressive and politically minded - but fans are made too for how strange they can be, and the sense of this being aware of this without being ironic is special for those with the acquired taste for it. When a fish man exists by way of a stop motion Ray Harryhausen tribute, you find a film by Alvaro Passeri who clearly loves making inventive images even if the film is as capable of being dumb as a brick and ridiculous. Even the later comes with a sense Passeri intended the later, and having never even heard of him before this film, only that Plankton was a film which existed, makes him a fascinating new discovery for me to appreciate now. 

Games of the Abstract: WHAT THE GOLF? (2019)

 

Developer: Triband

Publisher: Triband / The Label

One or Two Player

Microsoft Windows / Apple Arcade / Nintendo Switch

 

[Warning: Huge Spoilers]

There are those games which, with a little personality, which can make even an already solid gaming mechanic able to soar. There are genres in video games in particular which have been replicated over and over the decades which however are forgotten in terms of ephemera, titles which can be taken and pushed to its extreme and/or aesthetically in a form for something memorable. Whilst WHAT THE GOLF's story is set around golf being boring, golf as a video game concept is an enticing one. Nothing is inherently wrong with golf as replicated in video game form, different from the real game as anyone can play it without resources. Like fishing games however, you could just recreate the real game over multiple platforms over decades and they all bleed into other, finding their way into second hand bins and charity stores even if the mechanics are perfection. The image of golf, only a player of miniature golf myself, is frankly a middle to upper class pastime of artificially made planes of green grass with middle aged men in vests and slacks. Golf's basic mechanic in most games - a drive bar you have to wait to hit at a certain strength, maybe worry about different types of putting/driving golf clubs too to choose from - is not the issue in the slightest, but what would fascinate me more is to see all the weird and colourful attempts to make golf more vibrant in pixels and polygons.

Mario held a putter many times, Sega Saturn has Valora Valley Golf (1995), which in its real Japanese title The Hyper Golf ~Devil's Course~ emphasises playing on lovely putting green surrounded by hellfire, with the additional surrealism of digitised graphics with real people animated, and then there is Ribbit King (2003) is a game of " Frolf", hitting catapults to launch living frogs to hop into the holes. WHAT THE GOLF initially starts off taking itself seriously, where you pull the mouse (or the touch pad on a mobile phone) back to charge your shot and direct the ball into the hole...then suddenly it is the golfer who is flung at the hole, the flag the real target, in the next challenge, before you put the golf ball and the beginning credits start properly. Here the review needs to emphasise spoilers as just explaining WHAT THE GOLF any further, from Danish developers Triband, will reveal so much of how weird this gets. Those who want to play this blind, this review will have the following little review-within-a-within, that it is an exceptional hybrid of golf with a puzzle game structure, alongside some very weird moments where this is not a golf game. Inexplicably the golfing shot mechanic for hitting golf balls can be used in other mechanics, even shooting, and those who want to play the game blind, go do so and enjoy yourself in its silliness. Those who want to read on, be prepared that the experience is not the same as reading it, and is delightfully strange regardless of how much you know going in.

For starters, the main story mission, as yes this has a story mode, has you hitting the golf ball around an abandoned science lab to reach each challenge, unlocking the chance to clear through the sentient computers guarding the next section and so forth. This becomes grimmer in a bleakly humoured way, when eventually you learn scientists trying to reinvent golf in the lab lost their minds, and led to the lab being taken over by the computers and their experiments. For all the cute turtles and critters, you find yourself going through a variety of golf puzzles that lead to something monstrous, and even before you get there each challenge in front of you has three different versions each. The first is the one you need to complete to move on, whilst the other two are for completion, the second usually getting by or below the par of limited shots, the third for a crown the most esoteric version of the challenge. This obviously leaves the lure for a player to want to beat them all, and originally designed for Apple Arcade, this game's mobile origins are there in the pick-up-and-play mentality of a little game here, get addicted into playing as much as possible without realising how many hours have passed. WHAT THE GOLF also happens to be an aesthetic beauty with legitimate eccentricity.

Set around themes, you will find yourself having to negotiate around footballers, exploding barrels and cars among other obstacles, and this is before taking in how the game mechanics can be altered let alone the object you are meant to hit. There is a first person shooting range game or two, as there is a platforming level or two, or as least likely a Metal Gear Solid parody to have transpired, where the swing mechanic somehow works for stealth sneaking around searchlights, among one or two times where you have completely wandered off the course of this being "golf". The developers themselves choose golf to parody on purpose¹, but they use the mechanics as fully as you can get them without the game being unplayable. The parodies themselves are the only jokes which tie this to a time period, and even then, they are fascinating in bending the golf mechanics. As someone who has not played Superhot (2016), an experimental first person shooter where time stops when you do not move, allowing you to plan ahead, the parody here "Super Putt" was both funny and inventive. Having a taster, where you avoid indicated bullet trajectory from burning red figures in pure white areas, also showed the virtues of the source game's innovations through a parody. Even before these parodies, which appear in a batch midway through, this is already the game you will putt a TV to hitting cats as targets, with nothing off the table, including packing furniture into a moving van and putting the house itself after it.

Even when the game map itself abruptly changes on you, ending up in a row boat at one point, WHAT THE GOLF keeps you on your toes, more so even the encounters with the computers are boss fights, little challenges where you malfunction them and blow a hole literally in them to move on. Yes, this is still golf (most times) which is funny in itself. Originally, for a mobile phone, it has that pick-up-and-play presentation to chip away at challenges, but this also thankfully happened to be an aesthetically charming creation with a lot of love to it. Including the bonus modes, there is a great deal, such as story modes where you get to help at a disco for dogs, its iconography (dogs, black cats, an obsession with hotdog carts) winning me over in its bright toy set appearance. The music by Sune Køter Kølster is as bright and silly as the visual content. With the title sung in a cappella, there is even a level to play involving this as the obstacle, as there are levels parodying Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and the Guitar Hero parody where, yes, the golf mechanics inexplicably is used to play cords, which even awkwardly bolted together never outstays its welcome and works for humour.

Just sticking to the original story - not the bonus stories fixated on the putting holes (and holes in general), the Christmas campaign about acquiring pizza for turtles, the sports one or the challenges/multiple player options, even the create a course option - you get the least expected and awesome final boss in the least likely of contexts too, which finishes a strong game in a perfect way. As mentioned early, the story is surprisingly grim; the result of scientists going insane is eventually turning a story map into something mutated. Their obsession to implement golf in any form, even finding meaninglessness in the world if golf is boring, is what is the context behind the many weird challenges you have, but also that the experiments are so bad that alongside all the broken debris, you find mutant living rooms and the final act has pink goo everywhere. You find yourself in a final battle against a toad creature which is in multiple acts, each a stage, be it escaping past little grey aliens to literally putting down a beast's throat. It is ridiculous, memorable and insane, and WHAT THE GOLF even has its thank you and credits as a bonus challenge for easy points afterwards, which is the cherry on top of this bizarre and lovely golfing cake. The aforementioned bonuses add to the game as well, but the original game itself was special, and truthfully, WHAT THE GOLF managed to even surpass my great interest in the game originally into something more spectacular and surreal.

 

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1) Triband, in an interview with Game Developer for a November 1st 2019 web article, expressed that choosing golf was as choice for the developers, since it is a game stereotypically for rich people, that "seemed like a safe target to ridicule", creating ideas in mind how one creates jokes. Considering the interview inexplicably leads to a recipe for a banana cake midway through, and it is a short interview which only lasts seven minutes long to read, emphasises Triband's desire to embrace the silly.

Hard Evidence (1994)

 

Director: Jan Egleson

Screenplay: Richard Rashke

Cast: Kate Jackson as Sandra Clayton; John Shea as Tommy Marchant; Terry O'Quinn as Wiley; Beth Broderick as Melissa Brewer; Jennifer Guthrie as Beth Tyler; Rand Courtney as Shane Clayton; Megan Gallacher as Shannon; Gustave Johnson as Agent Curtis; Dean Stockwell as Commissioner Sam Caldwell

Ephemeral Waves

 

There is an entire world of made-for-TV cinema, including true crime dramas and melodramas, and this is my tentative toe dip into that out of curiosity. They are something many are probably aware of, but who talks of them? Baring infamous or acclaimed examples, they are something to consider as more people and distributors look back at them with interest, finding the ones of virtue even if during the DVD area, a film like Hard Evidence were being released in the United Kingdom. The American Genre Film Archive (AGFA) toe dipped into this area too, specifically with their licensing of films owned by Multicon, allowing theatrical screenings in the United States to be booked for a film like Death of a Cheerleader (1994)¹, a film based on the real-life murder of Kirsten Costas. Hard Evidence, originally called Justice in a Small Town, would never become a cult film in truth. Starting off explaining itself as based on a real tale, but with the names changed, this is a tale set in Georgia involving corruption in their Labour Department, one which will combine crime, romance, thriller and the struggles of being a single mother together into one film. Whilst sadly not in the film as much as one would hope for, Dean Stockwell is the corrupt commissioner Sam Caldwell, which is great casting.

More surprising is Beth Broderick, who I remember as the wisest of the aunts from Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996-2002), a Melissa Joan Hart sitcom for young teens I used to watch as a kid. There are many potential surprises with this area of cinema, such as surprise appearances from actors outside their usual territory, and whilst Hard Evidence did not live up to what one would hope, the one image I will have is this figure from childhood nostalgia playing a seductive Southern Belle, one who in the office is the figure who helps acquire new female employees for to send to parties and for men to have sex with like a brothel Madame. That was a surprise.

Not a lot can be further elaborated on Hard Evidence, as this is one of those story driven films which are solidly made, but honestly do not stick out in anything. It is fascinating to watch in terms of how, reflecting back, a film tackling political corruption in the 2010s onwards would have people on multiple sides of the political spectrum arguing for it, toeither praise it for its bravery or challenge it for being liberal propaganda, whilst there is a TV film from the nineties here which has its entire set in this subject. It does not even wait to get to this point, set up with single mother Sandra Clayton, played by Kate Jackson, immediately starting work as a secretary where everything is openly rotten. Her immediate boss if a slime ball that has new female staff hired by Melissa Brewer, played by Broderick, just to blackmail into sexual favours to keep their jobs, forces staff to also pay for a new car for Stockwell's birthday, and is even involving in drug smuggling. This film does emphasise a paradox with many media - lifestyle magazines, TV movies - which do not explicitly tackle adult subjects onscreen but still are obsessed with true crime, corruption, or subjects like domestic violence and murder, a vicarious nature to this work even if moralising which this film does admittedly get into when it becomes more genre in its plotting with supposed real life events. There is one scene, I would suspect was not in the TV broadcast, in Hard Evidence which is done entirely seriously, and we will get to, which is incredible strong whilst being tastefully done, but the same applies here. It eventually becomes quaint, in spite of itself, ending on a wedding with a group photo and charming music over the screen as if this had been a melodrama and only that.

That scene, of a prelude to a female employee being raped by a corrupt upper class man she is forced to be with, involving nudity, is a surprise, as it is very explicit in content and context, the catalyst for Sandra to start digging up dirt on her bosses with Tommy Marchant (John Shea), a male member of staff fully involved with the shadier side but sick of it, falling for Sandra at the same time he wants too to whistle blow the corruption.

The film onwards is a pot boiler which is ultimately just average in the sense that it is interesting to watch, but after the experience was ultimately passing time, not feeling the weight of the material. Scored to a surprising southern rock score, this juggles a lot in hindsight, which makes the okay nature actually detraction. Romance is there with the leads, as they gather evidence and both, he more so, are threatened by being found out. There is domestic drama as her teenage son hates his mother being out for work, then eventually learns of her goal to bring down Stockwell and supporting her when the tension and danger grows. And there is thriller in how, when a FBI employee appears, mistaken for an assassin, eventually the lead pair has ominous threats over the phone and trying wire tapping to deal with. This is a lot to work with, not just for entertainment but just a subject, but it skims past it all in the end.

That this is even about political corruption this casually depicted is odd nowadays decades later to revisit. No one bats an eye with a film like this having came out once ago, set in the South, suggesting political corruption at any level, whether it is a good film or not. Probably the one thing to say of this film is that its images of political corrupt are neutered as merely corrupt figures, without addressing the cause of such figures existentially, something which jars when discussing these subjects, especially sexual harassment and violence in real cases of corrupt male figures, in real life. That is likely the reason this film exists and probably no one bats an eye to it. This film still exists in a wholesome moralisation in the end, in spite of the one uncomfortable sequence which shocks in actually showing sexual violence, a character as much allowed to exist herself without the ramifications fully depicted and she, in truth, being fully fleshed out as a human being who can even overcome such a horrible event. Dramatically this is dry and merely okay, one which does not stand out. Instead, this the curious film to witness off the beaten path, effectively of the mainstream even if most have never even heard of it, one whose inertness in itself causes one to ponder like this.

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1) For AGFA, it is definitely in mind to the film Death of a Cheerleader being sold as a cult film, with the description, in their theatrical film catalog, of it being "a mean-girl melodrama with campy charm".

Games of the Abstract: Sin & Punishment - Star Successor (2009)

 

a.k.a. Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Skies

Developers: Treasure; Nintendo SPD

Publishers: Nintendo

Two Player

Nintendo Wii / Nintendo Wii U

 

In the era of the Nintendo 64, the developer Treasure worked on three titles for the console. Mischief Makers (1997) became a cult hit people such as myself want to be preserved and re-released, but also found itself originally being a 2D platformer finding itself stuck on a console which wished to ditched 2D for polygons, which it fought against by adding polygonal effects to the boss battles but was always going to stick out in terms of selling. Bangai-O (1999), which was released on the N64, was a Japanese only release, will be more likely known for its updated and worldwide release version for the Sega Dreamcast. Sin & Punishment (2000) was the final game they released, and it never even left Japan, at the time when the N64 was winding down in importance. Yet the game became one talked of greatly in admiration, and eventually in 2007 for the Wii's online service the game was finally released in the West. A fascinating one-off, an on-rail shooter on the N64, Sin & Punishment has even been re-released as part of Nintendo's push in 2021 for Nintendo 64 games on an online subscription for the Switch, finding itself among Super Mario 64 (1996) and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) as some of the first games to be included for people with childhood nostalgia for that console, which really says a great deal of that game's legacy in spite of being a game released at the end of the N64's lifespan when it went out to pasture. In the late 2000s, there another incentive to release the prequel on the Wii virtual store, as Treasure was lucky enough to have a sequel commission for the titular console.

The plot is complex - the original game is known, despite only having three and a bit stages, and thus being a short game as a result, for a complex narrative. The sequel's only key note is that the male lead Isa Jois the son of the two original male and female leads, possessing non-human inheritance as well from his father from the prequel game. Aside from this, the plot is honestly one you will only have fully fleshed out from the paper manual, but even in what is onscreen in cut scenes still engages. In a version of the Earth where there is an Outer Space and an Inner Space as a result of multiple dimensions existing, a figure taking on the form of a young woman is sent from Outer Space to our Inner Space, developing amnesia and being taken in by Isa, who is sent to destroy invaders like her from outside of Inner Space but ends up bonding with her, dubbing her Kachi and wishing to protect her despite the fact she is hinted at being a dangerous and destructive entity if she was ever to awaken from her human shell and learn her real self again. This does not impress a group known as the Creators, in the game's lore part of a cycle of destroying and rebuilt multiple Earths, who send the main villains, a group known as the Nebulox in the Western releases, and the less silly sounding G5, or Gathering of 5 Countries, in the Japanese version to take them down or at least have Isa take out Kachi himself.

If this sounds like a stereotypical anime in presentation, it does but this becomes part of the game's aesthetic charms, Treasure's biggest trademark for me getting into their games being that, alongside their huge reputation for incredibly well made and inventive games, being their eccentric charm. With these continuing the trend from the prequel of looking alarmingly childlike in their faces despite being older, Star Successor even in its English dubbing does feel like binging on a hyper dramatic sci-fi action anime series from the era this game was made in. With a large portion of the game in this far flung Earth is getting to what Mt. Fuji in Japan has become, taking anything down in the way, Treasure decided to make as bombastic and hyper-stylised a game as you could get, and it stands out considerably in a great way.

As an on-rail shooter, you are in the curious position where you are entirely restricted in the screen unable to move until you clear the screen of enemies, or on a continuous plane of tracking, through scenarios in each chapter, but have the advantage (barring floating over lava or thin air) of moving anywhere in that restricted space. This is almost cinematic as you can get structurally in the truest sense but with the fact you will have to manoeuvre and strife as much as you would do in a vertical or horizontal shooter. When the original game had a jump button as an important tool, the jump button returns but it is probably useless when you are able to the ability to hover that takes the heavy weight of the game alongside the strafe button, which allows a temporary invincibility and dodge if you carefully use it. Some chapter stages are permanently in the air, others allow you to vary this and take the risk, and the dodge button will become your friend. One boss battle on a railway track even makes hovering too long a risk for a memorable challenge, as you can be blown off if you float for too long, whilst another has you (if you choose Isa) riding a vehicle on a desert highway, whilst Kachi rides a bird creature, as giant sandworms jump out into the open air in the background.

Sin & Punishment's sense of freedom is contrasted by the fact you will be strafing for your life as the screen is covered in many glowing orbs, beans and even rockets of death. It is a game, despite its difficulty opinion having cute monkeys, where the Hard Mode states "you will be punished". Even the Easy Mode will test you, with the option alongside two player mode to use the original Wii Motion Controller, the Classic Controller, or even the GameCube controller when the first version of the Wii console had backwards compatibility. Either control, you have movement independent to the target for shooting, which can be moved separately as an onscreen crosshair away from your character. Even on the Classic Controller as I did, this can be done without being cumbersome. A melee attack is with the tap of the shooting button, whilst a super charge on a separate button is also very useful especially for bosses.

The motion controls, briefly used and vital for me for targeting for the final boss, which is about protecting someone you care for from projectiles coming at a dozen rather than hitting the enemy, are good. Even for someone using the classic controller, a conventional controller stuck into the end of Wii Remote, this game is one in danger of being left abandoned by the technology being obsolete, which alongside the tragedy of such a game being lost, is potentially sad when the game, with its unconventional mechanics, will eventually be grasped and let a player enjoy the game even more so once they experimented with its very unique method of motion and shooting. You will learn to coordinate moving and moving your gun's target separately at the same time, and even with the classic control, organising the target whilst strafing works perfectly with only the potential of hand cramp from requiring the dodge roll so much being a danger. I blame the Nintendo controller's design for that, not the hard work of this game's developers.

It is perfect mechanics for a game either way, and whilst a short game still, for Star Successor you have a very ridiculous plot balanced out in its sincerity, with the adding weight that Treasure, underappreciated for this in their work, are masters of never creating a generic level or boss from the little exposure I have had with them already. Here they created a true action spectacle that, as mentioned, is cinematic, this alien world of a future Earth compelling even in Wii's standard definition appearance. You start in industrial corridors but quite soon into the game, encouraged to shoot even non hostile life forms which fly on mass for points known as "popcorn" enemies in this genre, you witness a fully fleshed world of strange flying creatures in the distance or hordes of mechanised and military opponents. The highway battle, fighting a creature eventually who forms from a giant lion-creature and bird creature, and you eventually befriend after a misunderstanding, is an exceptional level for any game. Treasure were known even for shifting genres or tones for levels as far back as a Mega Drive/Genesis game like Dynamite Headdy (1994), and with Star Successor you have a variety of interesting shifts in pace to work from which look exceptional onscreen as they are imaginative to experience. The highway level for example has such detail, not all to shoot, of the aforementioned giant sand worms, whilst an earlier one takes place in a nightmare fully embracing Japanese yōkai monsters and period aesthetic, from shooting giant toads to an occult female boss for the finale. The level involving not hovering too long on a railway is the strange kind of boss where you find yourself having to knock railway carts at the enemy rather than directly shoot them, followed by the sympathy you have realising you had killed a creature baring child being undercut...when the little bugger forces you to have to shoot a platform upwards to rescue a character from lava by shooting the two cranks on each side to drag it up.

It is a game where even the strange aesthetic choices, such as the characters being adult or older teenagers who yet look like children in the face, fits the eccentric but masterful craft of Treasure themselves. Naturally the boss battles for the developer are unique, where even one of the toughest for me - a sword duel in mid air a cherub faced and flirtatious Miss Psycho with a katana - became rewarding, requiring learning even in Easy mode to dodge her, whilst not going too far away to get a swipe, or a melee attack for parrying at the right time. Infinite continues are here, and for the better, as for me, if you were to go up each of the three difficulties, the point of a game like this is both the spectacle of the narrative whilst learning to improve on each difficulty level. More so as you can unlock the stages to play separately for each difficulty, this is an arcade game with enough life saving features alongside hard craft to make every stage memorable to be a worthy evolutionary follow through for this type of video game in the console era. One of the earliest bosses alone, among the side of the Nebulox, involves him into an evolutionary cycle of aquatic life forms, even a choreography of dolphins who fling explosive balls at you in somersaults, which by himself enforces the level of creativity on display here before you get the later levels with their spectacle, already as magical as it sounds unconventional as a game. Sadly an obscure game, one of the more expansive for the Wii second hand whilst thankfully not among the rarest, it had a re-release for the Wii U, Nintendo's divisive follow up console, and with their habit of archiving their past really scattershot at times, Star Successor is the kind of game in danger of being left abandoned again. That would be a tragedy as this is a game that really is something special, and in mind to how the original Sin & Punishment is kept in relevance still, something this good and idiosyncratic should, with all hope and a little praying, be kept aloft as a gem.

Doom Asylum (1987)

 

Director: Richard Friedman

Screenplay: Rick Marx

Cast: Patty Mullen as Judy LaRue / Kiki LaRue; Ruth Collins as Tina; Kristin Davis as Jane; William Hay as Mike; Kenny L. Price as Dennis; Harrison White as Darnell; Dawn Alvan as Godiva; Farin as Rapunzel; Michael Rogen as Mitch Hansen

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

It's Wade Boggs, he's blown away!

Doom Asylum is one of the more obscure slasher films in existence, and I will preference the following that even very well regarded films in the sub-genre like the Friday the 13th sequels are ridiculous, something as much part of the charm for their fans and where Doom Asylum is as silly as these films can get.

It is full of the clichés and there is a sense, whilst clearly sold on slasher film tropes and the gore, this is aware of being stuck in the later era of this genre as they were declining, with a deliberately comedic tone. There is however also the sense that, when you even have the cliché of the morgue attendant who immediately bites into a sandwich before working on a corpse, a lot of filmmakers were oblivious of repeating these tropes and inexplicably they started being the kind of ideas everyone jumps to when fleshing out filmed sequences. The set up is simple - an attorney is involved in a car crash with his girlfriend, waking up on the morgue slab with his face cut off and having also lost his mind. With his hand girlfriend, the surviving piece of his love, he stays inside an abandoned mental asylum watching old British films starring Tod Slaughter, a British actor who was prolific playing villains during the thirties in British gothic melodramas, whilst maiming anyone who wanders nearby.

This, as slasher films goes, barely hides the pretence of the gore, full of the goofiest main leads as you have a nerdy guy whose only character interest is a pathological interest in baseball cards, a daughter of two psychologists who as the nerdy female character crowbars in psychological insights which are flimsy, and the most psychologically questionable male and female lead, as due to her issues, she eventually starts to call her boyfriend her "mother" out of comfort, which eventually gets as weird sexually as that sounds. Naturally you find yourself more closer to Tina & The Tots, the trio of punk women playing avant-garde drone in the asylum - far more appealing with their leather, fishnets with holes in them, chains and spikes, you have Ruth Collins as Tina cackling and pronouncing her lines as broadly as you can get, and one of the members even being a stereotypical liberal feminist with a faux French accent talking about the patriarchy and overcoming capitalism.  

We are fully in a giant cinema piece of cheese here, with "Spike head" a credible insult and our lead killer fully from the school that, since the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels were doing well, he should make jokes as he kills people. The gore is so strong from special effects artist Vincent J. Guastini, in drastic contrast to the goofy tone, that you can feel cynical that this was just a death spectacle delivery machine, if not for one of the last being the reveal that the asylum has a body processor which turns people into cubes of meat. Then you see this had a sense of humour even if it does really skimp over conventions of setting anyone up as fleshed out.

The film is an acquired taste, let us be honest. The little touches more than the "narrative" is why we are here, with the cheesy lines spoken awkwardly the cherry on top. The Tod Slaughter film footage is really idiosyncratic to have chosen, just by bringing forth with a lot of films used, in having an obscure era of British gothic melodramas being evoked few may even talk about; Tod Slaughter really an early era example of a cult star who in films like Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street  (1936) was the villain who goes maniacal when the polite veneer is peeled off, even (if faked) having his crimes being accused of by a corpse of a victim of his in one of the many tantalising pieces of footage used. That in enough made Doom Asylum worthwhile. The asylum itself is a character for its ridiculous graffiti alone. "Dead Zeppelin!" is there, as is the unholy combination, to show punks and the unruly have taken the place over, of having both Pink Floyd and Metallica spray painted on the walls among other words. It does the heavy lifting for what is a string of deaths, slowly whittling through the cast as disposable figures, by making everything clearly a farce whether intentional or not.

It does raise the point whether Doom Asylum should be appreciated as entertainment when there is, honestly, laziness to this. I think personally the weird tone would salvage the film for me even if I was not a figure who feels no film should have its existence questioned; unless we are really going after a AAA blockbuster of nowadays to question, films like this from the straight-to-video era are more interesting in just that, when they succeed or are very weird, they are interesting even if material is really threadbare. Doom Asylum, a low budget production, is deeply silly, too silly to have any cynicism of. Far more criticism comes from just the stereotypes - if we are to get serious here, the two African-American characters are as broad as you can get, and with little to work with, the film just manages to stay the right side of gauche to not need to have to be taken to aside for dubious characterisation, all because neither has anything really to do and thus we can avoid even worse characterisation. The film itself is one of those that, if you like slashers or have a fascination for really peculiar genre movies from the past, will win you over. This is more of a case for me that, fun and deeply silly, Doom Asylum is acquired taste even for me if appreciated.

There is definitely a case of this being not quite in my usual wheelhouse. Patty Mullen, the lead, was in Frank Henenlotter's Frankenhooker (1990) as the titular figure, and that is definitely my kind of bizarre and inventive genre film from this era. The touches we get here are strange and fascinating - referencing an obscure cult figure from Britain is one, having a version of House of the Rising Sun on the soundtrack being another - only that in the scheme of slashers, as someone who has an ambivalent view of them sometimes, it is legitimately out of preference that there are others I find more interesting. My mind wanders to the sincere silliness of The Mutilator (1984), a regional production its director and crew pushed from little, the outright cheese spectacle of Nail Gun Massacre (1985), or the downright tonally skewered Satan's Blade (1985). This is, well, the deeply goofy one which will be remembered for the female lead calling her boyfriend "Mom" and saying that it would be incest if they hooked up. It is a deeply curious film as a result, but with other films in this ballpark I would hold to higher esteem.

Games of the Abstract: Super Mario Galaxy (2007)

 

Developer: Nintendo EAD Tokyo

Publisher: Nintendo

One Player

Nintendo Wii / Nintendo Switch

 

Reviewing a Mario game seems ridiculous - by this point, one character, an Italian plumber in blue and red, was already a mascot for a legendary videogame company, Nintendo, so any attempt to paint anything new in opinion is comical. That is before you consider this is a big game, highly well regarded, with a budget visibly onscreen and a games console (the Wii) to sell by making the 3D platformer stretch its prowess and game play technology fully. You could argue that one, amateur or professional, should question a game's legacy especially if the franchise is one that is considered a sacred cow, with a lot of money behind it, but honestly that feels less an issue with a company like Nintendo, when the issue has always been when the publisher and hardware manufacturer refuses to make games available, even bad ones or from consoles like the Virtual Boy, and get angry people pirate them.

If there is anything new to this review, it is entirely from someone who never grew up with Nintendo's catalogue and consoles. If I am to be blasphemous, to be a man who buys a Wii second hand when some games now second hand cost more than the actual console, I will say right now my admiration for Super Mario Galaxy in its style and game play will not mean I will suddenly start playing Nintendo games now over obscurer work, and any I do take a fancy to will be whims more than the passionate interest I have even for the misbegotten doomed to perish for lack of sales. As much of this is a contrarian nature, to want to root for the underdogs and the miscreants of art, even if that can lead to questionable ideas and more questionable game mechanics, but as much of is innately that usually, for me, something that is widely popular can arguably be more conventional to appeal to the masses. A console like the Wii is more fascinating now, whilst only some of the games of ridiculously prized on the resell market, for the curiosities than Mario or Zelda, and if I take interest in Nintendo games, they are the curiosities and the strange experiments. As much of this is that, like many sacred cows like the Star Wars franchise or arguing with people on Twitter, I never submerged myself in these institutions, never growing up with Nintendo work in my childhood because I had a Sega Saturn and Playstations one to two in my house. The only time I have played a Mario game before this one is the Gameboy game Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (1992) as a child, and we have come a long way from that title to Super Mario Galaxy.

With the Switch in 2022 became even more a huge seller than even the Wii, which shows just how exceptional Nintendo have been in getting two generation defying gaming platforms released, these characters and their newest innovations are still going to compel people to their work and hardware. In this case, like if I was to buy a Switch eventually, it seems as if it was at least mandatory to have a Nintendo game if I was to acquire an old black cased Wii for my collection, like a passport you have to acquire. Admittedly, despite the popularity of the Wii, it is surprising that, when acquiring it from a second hand store, there were very few games there of personal interest, almost enforcing that I would be playing Super Mario Galaxy as fate even if I ignored the others. Thankfully you see here why Nintendo, when they get things right, are a behemoth as they are, and even a contrarian like myself admires the hard work they bother to put into their mascot's work.

By this point, the franchise had been a long one existing since the eighties.  The reference to Mario being their mascot, and to push the hardware's capabilities, was emphasised when Super Mario 64 (1996) opened the door for 3D platformers on the Nintendo 64, a console made for the game down to its controller. Three dimensional platformers came before and just after, and I played a few, the Jumping Flash! (1995) to the infamous Bubsy 3D (1996), but Mario 64 became the game everyone wanted to hitch a trailer onto after its breakout success. By this point to, this presents the obvious problem, when franchises are institutions, of constant sequels. Not because of their existence, but that by this point, a character like Mario and his Nintendo band mates are ageless cartoon characters and you can either a) alienate the fan base with a drastic change, or b) continue the same story and tropes and figure out how to keep things fresh. This is not an insult at all, especially as Super Mario Galaxy managed the second successfully, but in mind that, at this point with Princess Peach being kidnapped by the turtle-like giant Bowser again, attempting to bring a continuity to the games is going to either involve Stockholm Syndrome, or the kind of not-safe-for-work fan theories (and art) Nintendo are never pleased with existing. Even in game, whilst kidnapped with her castle taken into the galaxy far away, she managed to get letters still to Mario with five bonus lives continually, suggesting this is not as much as a struggle as before but a constructed fantasy between the three characters of Peach, Mario and Bowser to entertain themselves. Only the actual peril the plumber has, and Bowser's decision to harness the power of the cosmos and black holes adds severity. The later is a really dumb thing to do, especially as with full spoilers, if not many, the ending literally suggests the Mario world was destroyed and rebuilt in a new dimensional plane.

Made with director Yoshiaki Koizumi in the seat, having had his trial by fire before as a director on Super Mario Sunshine (2002) as his first directorial work, a heavily promoted game in 2000s game magazines for the Gamecube that became more divisive for fans as time passed, Galaxy is literally my first proper 3D platformer since I was a child. This is insane to consider but in mind, to my exile from videogames, also a huge advantage to seeing how far games in this genre have evolved. The camera here is still a pain at moments, but the mushroom consuming plumber has the advantage that Nintendo have had a lot of time to hone these games, with the legitimately curious touch that this has to sell a console specific controller which is surreal to consider nowadays as mainstream. Wiis were so commonplace that you could even find one gathering dust on a sell in a hospital, as I have seen, managing the rare achievement of even winning over non-gamers to them. It led to a lot of shovelware, and zumba games second-hand in charity stores in Britain, but it comes with the peculiar aspect, in danger of causing interesting games to not be preserved, that Nintendo put their resources entirely onto full motion control play even if a "classic controller" was made available too. Super Mario Galaxy, in its original version, had to be played with that controller and a "nunchuck" attachment, a controller which is full motion control to aim onscreen, the nunchuck providing the movement stick and jump.

The additional aspect, which is a huge virtue aesthetically and in gameplay, is that with its American cartoon plot, with Bowser carrying Princess Peach to the centre of the universe, Mario finds himself interacting with a figure named Rosalina and her space station full of cute Lumas, star-like creatures who became planets and other intergalactic forms, needing to help repower her station to reach his arch nemesis by travelling around tiny weird planets. The game from the get-go has a playfulness that is its biggest virtue, its sense of colour and pop fell in how everything is already pleasing aesthetically, and that the game's modus operandi was clearly for the staff to come up with every idea for a game play mechanic, or level design, that they could. There were enough rejected concepts to fill out a Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010), literally the add-on sequel of all the other ideas after this prequel's incredible success.

The Wii's motion controls, even lucking into a later MotionPlus controller for my black plastic box, and specifically the motion sensor bar is a finicky little creature, with Mario attempting to roll on a giant ball a nightmare for the worse example of how, in attempting to set the console up, it was a machine betrayed by one's living quarters rather than the technology being at fault. That said, there are moments where the game does occasional fail, as whoever came up with the giant spring power up that turns Mario into a perpetual bouncing spring, where the bounce button is unpredictable and a greater problem than Mario hoping about in all-directions, should have had a stern talking to about figuring out ideas first on the drawing board. I am admittedly late to the part for that example, as many gamers who bought this brand new in the day lament that power-up's existence, and aside from little decisions like this, ninety percent of this game is innovation backed by Nintendo forcing everyone to make the game to their best. Even these flaws (and the camera's occasional misposition due to a dynamic shot angle) feel closer to the mistakes made by people trying to create than sloppiness, something that sums up the console as much as the game meant to sell the Wii.

A lot here is stuff which gaming really needed more of from the earlier days, how it is designed for anyone to play, right down to bosses having very obviously designed ways shown to find their weaknesses, for the better, but that this will ramp the difficulty up in the end for a challenge at the right time too. The final boss battle was practically a breeze when, to even get to the fire breathing dino-turtle once played by Dennis Hopper, you have a literal assault course of homing bullets with eyes in a vast nightmarish obstacle course before you. The game finds a right balance between its playfulness with its steadily increasing challenge, more so as (in the moments of grimness to a brightly coloured game) falling off the planets in this game leads to Mario being sucked into black holes or into the molten cores of satellites, let alone any of the challenges if you stay on the platforms. Everything has a playability that, once you grasp the instructions, is precise and well made. You start in a main hub with Rosalina's space station, with its mass of platforms and secrets, with both the stars you need to acquire per level to complete the story mode, including multiple versions of levels for variety of a setting, alongside there being a lot of content here even after the story mode is completed. You have collectables, but the star bits, are practically both as a way to feed Lumas, even mid-level, to create new bonus stages, and also for firepower, as using the Wii remote like a gun allows you to fire them at enemies to stun them. Coins are collectable, but also you use them to replenish life, with the risk that you only get them for stomping on enemies then spinning into them.

This is before you even get into the imagination in the game. You will run upside down in a dome slowly shrinking in space to escape, in one of the most inspired levels I have played, one of the many moments where the intergalactic aspect of the game is used for Mario having to move in various different gravities and even walking sideways or upside down in moments. As someone who always found 3D platformers inherently surreal, with their floating platforms inexplicably in the air since childhood, this really took that further in how you will even wander sideways on a giant robot arm as platforms, or on tiny little planets you can run or ice skate around shaped like holed doughnuts to giant wooden Yoshi heads. Even the swimming mechanics, whilst awkward for me, grew on me especially when you can ride shells underwater and eventually fight a giant skeleton fish later on in a riveting moment.

Moments are also surprisingly adult. Beyond the ways Mario can buy the farm, or that I am curb stomping giant caterpillar creatures, this surprisingly becomes cosmic, as the ending literally has an ode to the cosmos nature of life continually in cycles and regeneration as Bowser is playing with material that can absorb the entirely galaxy if he fell into it. It also leads to the real story of Super Mario Galaxy, an emotional core of Rosalina, introduced in this game and to the franchise. Unlocking chapters of a fairy tale that is her own story, told as pastel drawings, she is a girl who became lost in space with a Lumaand become a mother to them all, a tale with is legitimately sweet and profound. As Bowser and Mario continue their usual combative narrative, Super Mario Galaxy's real story is hers, warmly welcomed into the canon even if, sadly, Galaxy's sequel ditched the hub world for level select, and Rosalina herself joins the team for Smash Brothers games and karting races. The later is not an insult to those as, getting even in the Wii, it is inevitable I will explore them, merely a joke that bares in mind that, at the beginning, her creators created someone in this franchise you cared for this late in its cycle when the gameplay would have been enough.

The game's entire aesthetic won me over, even as the contrarian more inclined to the weirder games now opened on a Wii. Entirely based around replacing floating platforms with full tiny little planets to hop on in most level, its playful nature as a game won me over; even with moments of fiddliness with the game, the carte blanche to try anything leads to a very inventive production where the planets can be anything, from a kingdom of bees fending off moles to toy lands, and even gravity can be toyed with you can open up upon so many enticing ideas. Platformers, especially 3D ones from my childhood memory, had that innate surrealism to them, but here with Mario even having to fly through space to get to levels and new areas, you have a cavalcade of videogame aesthetic and tightly produced gaming that Nintendo deserve praise for.

It was obviously the game they had to sell the Wii, if it had not been sold to the public before, and the higher ups let the design decisions be a white board filled in every corner with ideas to accomplish this goal. Once you adapt to the platformer being warped in this game's premise, remembering controls will be different when you are upside down on a round satellite in space, you have so much to work with and that is not even bringing in the powerups and level specific gimmicks, excluding that one spring, which work. Being able to turn into a bee and fly temporarily; turning into a ghost Boo and, in an unintentional adult moment, realising now the other Boos rather than hurting you find you very attractive, and still float towards you; or turning to ice and freezing water under your feet among examples. Nintendo's desire to make sure their mascot has a great game meant bringing in their A-level work, feeling like they had to work here with greater care, even if taking a huge risk with working around a very idiosyncratic gaming controller. From the look of the game to the music by Mahito Yokota and Koji Kondo, orchestral at its sweetest and other times playful depending on the level, I cannot lie and say Super Mario Galaxy does not set a high bar for great game development even in terms of still having a personality and whit to it, even if there are more awkward playing games I will fall in love with and place higher than this inevitably. It says a lot that, barely scraping the barrel's bottom in terms of content, as you have many levels to complete and challenges still to beat, I still got my fair share for a game bought second hand long after its success. It was still, even in the context of choosing this or a piece of shovelware from little choice in the moment, a damn good introduction to the Wii's idiosyncrasies with Nintendo's own altogether.

Stump the Guesser (2020)

Director: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson

Screenplay: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson

Cast: Adam Brooks as The Guesser; Brent Neale as Trofim; Stephanie Berrington as Y / Other Sister; Thaller as Z

An Abstract Candidate

 

A short from Guy Maddin, these films from his career despite their length, this one created with Evan and Galen Johnson, are always as distinct as his longer work even in just twenty minutes here. Certainly you cannot escape the premise's allure, where in this nocturnal world there are carnival guessers, figures played by Adam Brooks, who can almost psychically guess how many fish a man has hidden on his persons or which chambers of a pistol have bullets in them for improvised Russian Roulette, all for prizes of various kinds given out if anyone was to manage to stump the guesser. A registered job requiring a license, with the actual skill tested to be 99% accurate or have the license revoked, even if you use "guessing milk" to assist the power you can loss this work, which is what happens when the Guesser of this ends up losing his. Happening as with so many Guy Maddin male protagonists, it all begins when he lusts over a woman and his libido controls him, a constant narrative touch which is never condemning the women in his work in a misogynistic slant at all, but always condemning men to be driven by his lusts. The woman he loves (Stephanie Berrington) also happens to be his long lost sister, which causes issues as incest is a no-no and gets you red marks of shame on your record.

Befitting a Maddin film, even the sexual desire has a transgressive aspect as, when he loses his job, the carnival guesser is fixated on overcoming this legal law against incest, even if it means taking a role helping a scientist in disproving genetic family trees. By this point, Maddin's ability to create compelling, even perversely witty realities of any length is unparallel. Little things grow beyond this too enriching the work for me as a long time fan, such as the encroaching clarity of how much Socialism and its iconography has influenced his films as an obsession, when one of the prizes in this guessing game for a one shot joke is a Trotsky-bear, which is literally what it sounds like with a plush toy with the face of the noted Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky that includes his trademark beard.

The one trait which became a permanent fixture over time is how Evan and Galen Johnson have been permanent co-directors since The Forbidden Room (2015), and it is clear their involvement come with Maddin's greater use of computer effects. Whilst it may disappoint how a director like Maddin, who once shot a lost film in a garage with sets (Love-Chaunt in the Chimney), has decided to build his worlds now digitally, but it is also clear that, never the purist of cinema in the slightest from the beginning, his tributes to silent cinema also toyed with and re-used in different new aesthetic ways, with this new stage in his career that one where he revels in the artificiality of the digital look. This could be a perverse comparison, as the later is a director who is not screened on streaming sites like MUBI or at art festivals, but I cannot help but think of practical effects creator and low budget horror film director Joe Castro, who suddenly in the 2010s changed to a similar type of filmmaking based around heavy green screen use and deliberately artificial aesthetics. His work, with all its CGI gore, I compliment with this comparison as imagining Hieronymus Bosch if he binged on internet meme aesthetic, original goregrind era Carcass album covers and splatter films with a sense of horror vacui to Castro's work after the 2010s of not wanting to leave the amount of empty space he had in his earlier 2000s films. Maddin is the same in his own way, even close to horror vacui too at times with the look of his newer films, always having the grain and damaged film look even when the films are clearly digitally made, or how from The Forbidden Room on, he eventually depicts mental collapse or tension with a little blitz of the visuals. When the Guesser is forced to make a final guess for happiness, a level of visual barrage greets the viewer which is pushing what he accomplished with acclaim for the short The Heart of the World (2000).

The world here has a heightened mood entirely different to his earlier work but still refining what he did before with new collaborators, such as tiny touches as using colour against monochrome, like having to guess the eye colour of a woman who turns out to be your sister). Far from feeling like a compromise, all I would ever regret with Maddin teaming up with Evan and Galen Johnson is if he entirely jettisoned the stage bound sets of earlier films, and that side to his career as a result. Thankfully, even if it means melding the two more than he has done in the 2010s on for a wonderful hybrid, that is still being felt with films like this.  Stump the Guesser as it stands is another fascinating work and, as just twenty minutes long, is rich enough in what is told in its little narrative even in the little storytelling touches you can miss out on - that the Guesser, as a master when we meet him, even wanders his living quarters with others blindfolded, with a side of his sleeping blanket marked for heads and feet he cannot see and is meant to get the right way up, something which goes amiss when he starts to fail in this work and obsesses over his sister. This has enough richness in narrative, including its final punch line, left with a metal bird toy, to be a worthy part of Guy Maddin's work even among the feature length titles.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Eccentric

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