Bangkok Haunted (2001)

Director: Oxide Pang and Pisut Praesangeam

Screenplay: Pisut Praesangeam and Sompop Wetchapipat

Cast: Pimsiree Pimsee as Paga / Jieb, Dawan Singha-Wee as Pan, Kalyanut Sriboonrueng as Kanya, Pete Thongchua as Nop

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

A horror anthology from Thailand, Bangkok Haunted however does something very different in not having the wraparound start the feature, but immediately lunging into the first of three stories, so let us begin as such too. An ancient drum, for the first story, is being transferred in a truck. It is established to have a ghost woman haunting the instrument as the man watching the items in the back is more concerned of leaping out at speed onto the road to get away. The young woman that receives this drum, Jieb (Pimsiree Pimsee), is going to have to deal with the haunted consequences.

We see the drum's origins in 1917, as it is connected to an adopted girl whose parents died of sickness and whose adoptive father is a scholar of music. Raised to become a dancer, Paga (also played Pimsee) befriends another child, a disfigured and ostracised one, who when they become adults is infatuated with her despite Paga only views him as a brother whilst loving another man. This is the most conventional of the three stories in plotting, yet allowed enough space to breathe as Jieb in the modern day with an older male scholar, wandering into flashbacks in the past within her dreams without warning, realise something is amiss with the drum and research its past. It seems like a critique, for a forty four minute segment, that I will not write a lot about this segment beyond this, but it starts with a sound opening for the entire project by co-director Oxide Pang. Oxide Pang with his twin brother Danny came into prominence by the 2000s for films that caught the "Tartan Asian Extreme" wave of interest in the West for Asian genre cinema. Born in Hong Kong, they have juggled genres, action with Bangkok Dangerous (1999) and its 2008 remake with Nicolas Cage, alongside the original 2002 version of The Eye, a horror film about a woman who sees ghosts as a blind woman who was given her sight back through a donor's set of eyes. Their work outside the director's chair deserves credit too as Danny Pang was the editor on the Infernal Affairs trilogy (2002-3), the first one of the many films from the East which caught on fire with interest for Western film fans. They have worked together as brothers but also separately, Oxide Pang making this film instead with Pisut Praesangeam, a Thai filmmaker/producer/screenwriter in the latter's home country, setting this anthology within Bangkok.

The first segment is the pair's most traditional anthology story in tone, one which does provide an appropriately macabre twist - [Spoiler Warning] one of Paga's arms was inside the drum and we learn how it got there [Spoilers End] - and feels the perfect length for its micro-feature tone by itself. After this, Bangkok Haunted's stories are more idiosyncratic in their structures. Probably the biggest virtue, for a film for whatever inexplicable reason I hated when I first saw it, likely due to its slow burn pace, is that all three segments are distinct. Even if the next two as tales entirely set in the modern urban landscape of Bangkok, those two managed to stand out from each other in tone, and since the entire feature is over two hours long and lets them all feel like micro-features, there is no sense of rushing plot points or losing their individual moods either. The wraparound, whilst with a spooky gotcha in the final shot, is not really a story but I still liked it, especially as it feels more like a nice wrapping that does not need to have a dynamic build. It is a curveball when that, only after a forty four minute tale, we have it established three female friends are telling scary stories in a cafe, with them critiquing plot logic or trying to figure out cool titles for each other's stories. It is actually a cool twist on the horror anthology tone to not have a twist, just a trio of interesting story tellers who are friends and engaging with each other.

Story two could be said to be too convoluted and weird for its own good, but it is weird for me as much in a good way. The mature tale of the three, with its explicit nudity and grotesqueness, it is about an essence called Phy Essence. The segment is almost out of order in explaining the plot details, which is why it could be extremely confusing, but as for our female lead, the Phy Essence is a love potion which you can buy hush hush, here in a funny moment in a sex shop where a male customer complains the porn tape he has rented is too damaged at the best parts. The essence is seen once slipped into a man's drink, but is a McGuffin, not really explained but designed to make men fall inescapably in love with the woman who uses it.

The essence, as established in the first scene in a hospital morgue with necrophilia overtones, is collected by one guy who finds recently dead and beautiful female corpses, and is made from the blood collected from their slit open necks. It is a task he secretly gets on with even if he is in danger of being caught, or finds a male colleague getting drunk on the shift and sleeping under a blanket on one of the gurneys among the corpses. That we see the corpses occasionally open their eyes or move their hands suggests that the Phy Essence has ill advised magical aspects too, more so as there is a ghost woman looming about, and that with one of the male suitors, you see the harmful effects of the essence. Not only does he effectively sleep with both a living and dead woman at the same time on a one night stand, but ends up first puking up for the initial symptoms, only to be at death's door with a Buddhist priest trying to help him. Another will be killed by a car and immediately come back as a ghost due to the essence, and it is clear the magic behind it has dangerous properties alongside the gristly nature of the concoction just making the dead angry and come back to haunt those involved in using it.

It is a very idiosyncratic story, probably more vague then it itself realises, very erotic and sexually explicit in a way that it is quite striking with time passing, be it the humour of the lead living next door to a couple in an apartment who are too loud in their passions, or the necrophilia aspects at the morgue. We had some transgressive films from this early 2000s wave that dealt with sexuality - like Takeshi Miike from Japan and the late Kim Ki-duk from South Korea, the later sadly someone we have to put a caveat around due to sexual misconduct allegations - but sexuality was not really as prominent in this era of violence, of action and genre films which did not really tackle those subjects, or the trend for ghost stories influenced from Asian filmmakers modernising them, only to get remade as American films that same decade. You can make the argument this is erotic for the sake of titillation, not for profoundness, but at the same time, you also have a story where despite this women are central to the plot, which is striking within itself. It is effectively a moral tale of women stuck in the position of needing the Phy Essence, because they feel they need to go out into night clubs for men to date, with the essence whose gift is too dangerous. It is a tale when even men who die from its effect become ghosts too, leading to a haunting here where those made to love a woman will do so even if, in one of the best shots of the whole film, they live together in physical embrace after her death in the same grave. With its very electronic, New Age tinged music, it has for all its all-over-the-place plotting a distinct tone that I appreciated, effectively a cousin to a segment for the Three Extremes (2004) anthology, which was expanded into a 2004 feature film by itself, a work directed by Hong Kong director Fruit Chan called Dumplings. Three... Extremes leant into the growing interest in Asian cinema at the time with three directors from three different countries - Fruit Chan from Hong Kong and known for films like Made in Hong Kong (1997), Takashi Miike from Japan, and one of the biggest figures to gain prominent and his career grown from this trend, Park-Chan Wook from South Korea. Dumplings itself in either its versions was explicitly about the theme I feel the Phy Essence is about, the idea of women forced to follow gendered conventions, in that case to stay youthful in a world when men's eyes wander to younger women, through the very twisted concept of Chinese dumplings made with human foetuses. Whilst Bangkok Haunted's own tale of ill advised love charms is stranger, they make a fascinating pair on the cursed love remedies from the perspectives of women if you have a strong stomach for one of the pair mentioned.

Story three begins with a scene of a crime, where a woman has hung herself in a warehouse. The police office on the case suspects it was not a suicide but a murder, believing there was no way for her to get up to where she was found alongside evidence of a struggle beforehand. Whilst the police chief refuses to press on with this idea, he investigates on his own terms, and the coroner cements his concerns when there are suspicious clues complicating her death. This is interesting as a crime mystery steeped in the supernatural; when a scene transpires when a random couple following him swear they saw a woman trying to get out of the moving vehicle, it is clear he is now haunted by her too. All three stories involve ghostly women wronged, and that really becomes apparent for this tale of a horrible series of circumstances for its one innocent, the woman herself.

Whilst in dire need of a high definition re-release, it is by this segment I came to appreciate Bangkok Haunted's general washed out and dingy aesthetic with moments of subtle colour. Even though one of the tales is partially set in 1917, with significantly more colour in the forest locations, this film really emphasises the idea of the back alleys and dark night streets of Bangkok throughout itself. With there being a second scene in this segment within a sex shop, as the lead makes enquiries on the woman leading to her husband, it is very atmospheric in imagining these ghosts drifting among the living in these cramped environments, the places not seen as idyllic and grungy but the real world for normal people stuck in crammed apartments trying to find ways to get on in life. They are not disconnected from the living either, which makes this aesthetic more appropriate, as it leads to suspicion of domestic abuse from her husband, seemingly changed and wheelchair bound from a car crash. The key to the segment from here is a series of red herrings, including a male lover of hers who is a boss at a construction site, where the many men in her life are not good people. This includes the lead himself who is revealed to have been part of it too. There is a sick humour as more people are revealed to be innocent when information is learnt when it is too late, including unfortunate deaths of suspects, and one of the best turns when someone's innocence is proven but through his involvement for another crime of political corruption. One twist comes fully from a murder mystery pot boiler - [Huge Spoiler] with the help of ice to be able to reach a hanging spot [Spoilers End] - and ultimately not even our white knight lead is a good man, just finding excuses to purge his own guilt from the things he did to the woman.

The story has many trigger warnings as already brought up and also revealed, including a deliberate miscarriage with a coat hanger that is not comfortable to witness without being tasteless. They lead to this being the saddest tale of the three about a woman who did not deserve her lot, whose affairs were clearly to escape her misery, and whose fate leaves her a ghost watching those involved discover their own complicity and fall off the rails. It is a perfect conclusion to a trio of stories I unfairly dismissed in my youth, and I have absolute respect for the entire project, with three strong entries, being a very good horror anthology which took risks, be it telling a traditional ghost story, being very weird and sexual, and for this one to actually force one to sympathise for its female lead in its uncomfortable nods to how bad human beings can be to each other.

Sweetie, You Won't Believe It (2020)

Director: Yernar Nurgaliyev

Screenplay: Zhandos Aibassov, Yernar Nurgaliyev and Daniyar Soltanbayev

Cast: Daniyar Alshinov as Dastan (Das), Asel Kaliyeva as Zhanna, Azamat Marklenov as Arman, Yerlan Primbetov as Murat, Dulyga Akmolda as Tarzan, Almat Sakatov as Kuka, Rustem Zhanyamanov as Petok, Yerkebulan Daiyrov as Kissyk, Bekaris Akhetov as Buzau

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

A horror film from Kazakhstan, Sweetie… is unconventional in that it prioritises itself as a comedy first for all its ghoulishness, presenting the worst day possible for poor Das (Daniyar Alshinov). With a TV in the background of the first scene, talking about the sex lives of chimpanzees and that, contrary to the belief fishing is about booze and gills, it is actually an important bonding ritual between men, the film already establishes its humour in the first scene, which is juvenile at times but done with a lot more sense of glee than laziness to it. It is apt for the tale itself, where Das is established in that scene as a stressed out guy.

Expecting a child, a credit card overdue, and a wife he loves but is the stronger voice of the pair, Das is just a guy drifting along, who just decides one day to run off with friends to fish to help sooth this issue. Despite two of them not knowing how to fish, and the van they travel in full of old school inflatable sex dolls, it will be a calming experience for him, and credit to the film, whilst this may have played up to the henpecked husband stereotype, when things go south for him, one of the reoccurring points is how Das is concerned for his wife and expected child. Despite his friends mocking him for being married, Das is clearly concerned about being there for his soon-to-give-birth wife even if he needed the brief break. Things just happen to go south beforehand.

With its deadpan humour, this feels like a crime comedy instead, as they accidentally bump into debt collectors, mostly related brothers, who were after a man they found hiding in a well. Despite the ominous gas station, with a Lenin poster in the back, which just gives off bad vibes, the immediate concern would be accidentally floating pass an accidental murder. It is embarrassing to have done so when you have improvised a floating vessel, attached to the main boat, using the sex dolls, but that you could be killed to hush up the mistaken murder just adds to the insult. Where this does become a horror film is that, within this premise, director and co-writer Yernar Nurgaliyev drops a Jason Voorhees-like slasher film killer into the midst of all this. He is a guy, with one entirely white eye and disfigured face, who wanders out of nowhere in the midst of the countryside, and introduces himself by doing some improvised optician work with a spike, and re-adjusting the human jaw to make the mouth wider.

With the closest thing to a resistance is one of the friends being a school enforcement officer, who is more likely to bolt it, Das finds himself in a farce between the likelihood of his wife given birth with him absent, and this Voorhees figure picking off the debt collectors one-by-one, leaving him and his friends last to pick off. With the debt collectors presuming they are responsible for the deeds as they are always there at the gristly murder scenes, there is an increased threat as well. Add to this the creepy gas station playing a part, as it involves someone being forced to become a husband and sire grandchildren to a grandfather who likes to watch his new grandson and granddaughter through the bedroom door, and for a film with some gruesome demises, it is played more with a sick sense of humour.

It is also a horror comedy which takes advantage of its resources, such as its wide screen presentation, where there is the great sense of isolation in the first two thirds in the middle of nowhere, contrasted by Yernar Nurgaliyev using some really cool visual flourishes. One of the best for me is a scene which extensively uses the camera attached to the actors, focused on their faces with the world moving around them whilst their panicked expressions are visually clear. The choice of music is also wildly varied, from rap to regional classic pop music, and it is used many times for perfect soundtrack cuts for jokes, like classical pop for an attempted hit and run that fails, or a beautiful use of a dream solo timed for a comedy moment of cowardice. The best way to describe Sweetie, You Won't Believe It is that this is the one slasher (adjacent) horror film where a fart nearly gets someone caught, and far from a moment of rolling your eyes at the childish humour, even the dick jokes and juvenile aspects work for the film. Especially with the one emotional current through this broad humour, this works, as Das has his friends calling him out for being a henpecked husband, to only at one point burst and proudly defend his marriage. This one emotional point in what is a purely comedic piece allows it to also be about older male friendship that just happens to have a body count.

Its director Yernar Nurgaliyev is someone who is prolific as well, which makes me delight in the film greater knowing this is not someone who was never able to make another film. He is someone whose career mostly is likely not getting picked up in the West sadly, as a figure who can juggle comedies and dramas in a clear willingly to make films for their own sake, but the one here which managed to catch attention did deserve it. It is obvious why, as beyond the nice sense of having a horror film from Kazakhstan which I would gladly revisit for its virtues, to add to the pin board of the genre from around the world, it clearly took distributors' interests for its nice plate spinning act of being as goofy as it is, with a distinct take on horror tropes, which everyone clearly did their best to make as good a film they wished it to be.

Hatching (2022)

 

Director: Hanna Bergholm

Screenplay: Ilja Rautsi

Cast: Siiri Solalinna as Tinja / Alli, Sophia Heikkilä as the Mother, Jani Volanen as the Father, Reino Nordin as Tero, Oiva Ollila as Matias, Ida Määttänen as Reetta

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

A Finnish film, teen female gymnast Tinja (Siiri Solalinna) has a seemingly happy family, but the symbolic incident of the start, a bird hitting their lounge window and then causing damage when it gets into the house, sets up the emotional circumstances within this family. Tinja exists with an idyllic life which is not her own, as alongside the sense of her father and little brother as complete disconnected, to the point of being a joke by the final act, she is being moulded by her mother (Sophia Heikkilä). Even if willingly, her mother is pushing her beyond her limits, a figure who in doing video blogs about their perfect life and wishes for the highest expectations, the perfectly manicured woman and former athlete who wants her daughter to train to be the best even if Tinja is clearly not the best gymnast, but ones who tries and enjoys it if she was allowed to fail without grief. The beginning establishes this tension, traumatising her daughter by snapping the bird's neck and demanding Tinja places it into the organic waste herself.

The bird however refused to die until, having dragged itself all the way back to its nest, Tinja is forced to put it out of its misery by turning its head into mush with a rock. Guilty for her part in this, Tinja takes the egg from the nest to hatch at home. The subtext is blatantly visible, as she feeds it her anxieties and stresses until it grows unnaturally larger, the chaos that will be caused when the egg hatched representing the straw which breaks the camel's back. It is not only having her enjoyment of trying as a gymnast grounded down by her mother which is the issue, but that she is also confronted by learning her mother is having an affair with a younger man with child named Tero (Reino Nordin). Whilst her mother becomes a more complicated figure as the film goes on, the egg grows from Tinja's perception of her mother's dominance and shock of this alternative life, leading to the hatching itself.

Credit to the production, whilst the product of this sadness is only briefly seen, the hatchling is an actual monster chick, as interpreted by director Hanna Bergholm with her collaborators, including the animatronic designer Gustav Hoegen, is rendered with puppetry in the brief time we see of it, part of this fascinating melding of a quasi-folklore story, adolescent fairy tale and gruesome horror. What suggests initially a heart warming tale of Tinja bonding with her giant monster chick, hiding it in her bedroom, even if we have to depict having her regurgitate food to feed the creature, goes out the window when it destroys the neighbour's dog, something the family without realising the cause of will hide the evidence of from the neighbour in probably one of the sickest humoured scenes.

Including even nods to puberty and growing up at least with one of the more broadly comedic scenes, there is significantly more nuisance here from the get-go with the story, with the director's film dealing with a broader folklore tale set in the modern day. There are a lot of nods and themes which become the many parts of its text, becoming far more twisted as the chick grows up to become more and more Tinja's doppelganger. Connected to her psychically, including that Tinja suffers the physical injuries the hatchling does, it is linked to her anger as well, and to the point of horror for Tinja as she cannot control its actions, such as when it will go out and maim a girl in her gymnastics' class fed off this anger.

One of Hatching's biggest virtues is the sense of all these characters being three dimensional. Tero for example, as a side character who could have been stereotyped in the worst possible light, but he is depicted as a kind man who shows sympathy for Tinja. It is understandable when he becomes violent when the doppelganger, thinking it is Tinja, is found taking an axe to his baby girl. Whilst the burden of the mother onto the daughter does not pull punches in the damndest, the relationship is allowed to connect when the mother realises the horror of what is happening, a figure unaware of her complicit involvement with only closeness coming sharing knives with Tinja to hunt hatchlings. What does add the cherry on the cake of Hatching, which however undermines this heart warming bond, is a pitch perfect and opening ended ending, a bleak one from a spooky ghost tale which perfectly gives you so many imaginary epilogues of what the aftermath of it transpiring would be for the family afterwards. With zero knowledge of the film beforehand, this was a case of a film catching me out of nowhere, and applaudable in its successes.

Games of the Abstract: Darkstalkers - The Night Warriors (1994)

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

One to Two Players

Originally released for: Arcade

 

The history of Capcom's other beloved fighting game is split into two differing origins. One is that, in designing a new fighting game, the team assigned wanted to create a title entirely about monsters, taking advantage of existing ones of folklore and mythology as templates¹. The other original is that Alex Jimenez, a producer at Capcom USA, suggested a licensed game based on the Universal horror movie characters, tied to the iconic creations that began properly with 1931's Dracula with Bela Lugosi². or me personally, I think the truth is within both differing tales, as there is at least detail which suggests Universal horror films were someone's favourite at Capcom, but that the ball was rolling in terms of creating a monster themed game, including knowledge this was explicitly meant to have more yōkai, the Japanese folklore entities, than we got such as a nurikabe, a living wall that would have allowed the developers to create a character which never needed to move and require very little animation¹. Whatever the case was, it feels inevitable with how Capcom started to push for the more fantastique and unnatural in their games, as the technology and the creative teams let their imaginations fly with genres like the fighting or beat-em-up genres in terms of monster and figures that would push their talents throughout the nineties. Also, such a project was part of a huge moment where Capcom, in the fighting game genre, suddenly created the gold standard for the genre and that, with others soon after wishing to create their own successes in its wake, they naturally wanted to follow up with titles to improve on what they did with that game.

That game was Street Fighter II (1991), which was a huge seismic change to video games. Despite the fighting game had existed beforehand as far back as Heavyweight Champ (1976) by Sega, let alone titles which pushed the genre further like Yie Ar Kung-Fu (1985) by Konami in the eighties including the original Street Fighter (1987), the sequel cemented the fighting game genre fully in form, and naturally Capcom wanted to expand on its success not only with that franchise, but with others. Even if the origins are vague, it is not a surprise someone wanted to see a Frankenstein's monster in a fighting game, and thankfully able to be played again 2022 with a Capcom Fighting Collection retro compilation, let alone previous non-arcade releases, the Darkstalkers franchise is also one people wished Capcom brought back, and for good reason. Even non or casual gamers, who are horror fans, would dig even the original 1994 game as, whilst this series would evolve in gameplay style and the beautiful artistic style, we got from the gate already a strong horror fighting game in both aspects.

With new arcade hardware to push, Capcom would also need to capitalise on its advancements in terms of their games too, Street Fighter II changing from its original 1991 version through multiple revisions, until Super Street Fighter II Turbo (1994) looked an entirely different game let alone with new mechanics from the original. That was made for the CP System II arcade board as Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors was, and whilst by its last game it would improve and add to the original template, we were already entering this new territory of a horror themed fighting game with already a strong atmosphere. At a time when the arcade fighting game genre was becoming huge, this even applies to innovations in ideas that seem obvious for the genre decades later, like the ability to block in the air that were introduced in this game. That the aesthetic and presence were already strong helped so much, like Street Fighter in Halloween town but with its personality its own, and it begins and is central to the cast Capcom created for the original game.

A huge factor for me being interested in these games is that Capcom were insanely great for their character designs, and even how they play has made me really start to fall in love with them now I have. From the get-go, one of the really cool touches to the original Darkstalkers game is that each character was designed by their own person, and these designs were figured out with care to work in the final production. Darkstalkers has, even the attempt at a new hero who was quickly rejected after the initial sequel, one of the strongest rosters just in terms of everyone standing out between its three games. How they managed to make characters distinct to each other already in the first game, in terms of gameplay feel and personality, even if later sequels would add more to them including iconic moves and touches, really means a lot. The sense of this still being fleshed out in those sequels, as only the original game follows Street Fighter II in having these figures represent countries, actually makes what was accomplished here more praiseworthy, the choice to follow a horror/mythological/folklore trope, and flourishing each archetype out in really idiosyncratic choices being a masterstroke. The closest to a traditional martial artist in this game is a werewolf, which is where the Universal monsters link feels apt, as he is in the Western localisation named Jon Talbain, clearly after the lead character Lawrence Talbot who Lon Chaney Jr. played in The Wolf Man (1941), and even a character who was not drastically altered from the tropes like Demitri Maximoff, a traditional vampire and original (anti-)hero for the game here, still has a distinct style to him.

The characters mirroring their Universal horror counterparts all have their distinct personalities, both faithful to the icons, whilst having their own clear distinctions. Frankenstein's monster, by way of Victor, is a great example of this for his visual distinctiveness as a natural powerhouse character, the developers pushing for his limbs (even his head) to expand out in his attacks in cartoon stretch-and-pull effect, and that, infamously, this even applies to his ability to use his buttocks to grab and throw enemies. That feels less bizarre for the sake of it but the fascinating mix of grotesque horror, as there is blood and macabre sights in these games, against pure slapstick cartoon touches in the animation. Be it a Sasquatch who is an adorably fluffy and big goofball, to a take on the Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) who is a vain sexy fish man, completely ahead of its time and Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water (2017), everyone has something distinct to them. This even is in terms of their attack styles, whether playing the samurai possessed by cursed armour, Bishamon, which is clearly based around needing to counter and using his blade as one would expect from a samurai, to Anakaris being the representation of an Egyptian mummy, the slowest and potentially most awkward character to use, who literally floats slowly in the air, but has one of the most idiosyncratic move sets even in the original Darkstalkers game before he could be expanded upon. Briefly turning his opponents into cute, tiny versions who cannot attack briefly, dropping sarcophagus from the air, and moves which really emphasis the need to choose the special or regular move depending how far or close an opponent is, he because a really cool figure by himself and just one character like him in a game would have left it having fans, let alone a twelve entity roster for all distinct figures.

Tellingly, even the female character of the original game, whilst sexualised, overcame this to be adored, and that shows the real success of Darkstalkers even from the get-go in how its first two female characters became iconic regardless of that initial aspect of the character design. Introducing one of the first prominent cat girls into the West for games, Felicia was not merely marked for her character design, but for her characterisation as a goofy and likable cat-woman entity with blue hair who just wanted to become a huge star in Las Vegas, and by the end of the franchise becomes a nun to help children. And Morrigan Aensland eventually became the true protagonist of this franchise and its most well known character, and likely the one pop culture take on the succubus for many that entirely represents this mythological figure. A frankly problematic and misogynistic figure of lore to some, she completely upturned this with the history that came afterwards, all the cosplayers who have portrayed her over the decades, and becoming a figure of merchandising for Capcom, alongside cameos in other games, that may have even sadly overshadowed other Darkstalker characters, all without any sense that she is a figure that isn't powerful. This is really cool as, as many of us probably don't realise unless you played this original game, she is meant to be Scottish and thus, as one of Capcom's most beloved characters always in the fighting game collection cover art, one of the most well known video game characters from Scotland.

It is a legitimately virtue how none of the initial roster, even if some would not be as popular as others, feels lazy. They all stand out, all with distinct ways in their fighting styles and even in terms of personality, as Capcom embraced both the horror but also overt cartoonish nature of them. Even a character like Morrigan herself, or one meant to be seriously like the final boss, a planet collecting alien named Pyron, will be animated in dumb poses when knocked off their feet, electrocuted or turned into a cute little critter by Anakaris' Royal Judgement attack temporarily. The animation, with its emphasis on these cartoonish flourishes in even how strikes are thrown, is legitimately beautiful with hindsight, and the same is for the character specific locations in both their look and their little pieces of animation. You find yourself fighting at night in the middle of London with Talbain, scenery in the background like wine barrels if you hit the right moves, spotting the iconic "happy" dog that moves about in Bishamon's stage, or ending on a finale in Pyron's unnatural dreamscape made from all the worlds he has destroyed and reassembled into his collection. The music too by Takayuki Iwai and Hideki Okugawa is as distinct, appropriately evocative even when Felicia's stage, set in Las Vegas with all bright lights and cats loping around in the background, is partially set the cat meowing.

The thing that changed over time, when the bar was set this high already, was that Capcom pushed the visuals further, making far more incredibly phantasmagoric stages even if not character or geographically specific. The music would become even more evocative with the time passing, and the characters themselves alongside newcomers would get more personality and even some of their most iconic (and infamous) special moves and animation ticks, like Lord Raptor. Already a cool design of an Australian rock star who sold his soul to Satan, and now is a strange bony zombie with even the ability to move crawling crouching on his bony knees only he can do, future instalments of the games let him be able to literally slam dunk his enemies as basketballs.

And this is all in mind that, as iconic as Street Fighter II, it did come from the original Street Fighter, a game which is not held as a good fighter at all in the modern day, and that Capcom, able to suddenly leap in terms of quality for their iconic blockbuster hit, didn't slouch either from Street Fighter II's success and kept improving themselves, both artistically and in terms of ramping up the mechanics of the fighting game. To even get to the original version of Street Fighter III, Street Fighter III: New Generation (1997), which was seen as a disappointment and even irrelevant when polygonal fighting games were all the rage, it was still a game which would eventually became as acclaimed for the quality of its artistic creativity over its multiple versions, let alone the game play from experts in the genre due to Capcom pushing themselves over and over. By the end of the franchise I am talking of her, you get the magnum opus of this horror fighting franchise Vampire Savior: Darkstalkers 3 (1997), which is an exceptional game, but even if Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors had been tragically just a one-off from Capcom, it would have still been seen as a great game for many including myself for how much it does well let alone how fun it is.

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1) Darkstalkers – 1994 Developer Interview, translated for shmuplations.

2) ‘Darkstalkers’ – The Monster Movie Origins of Capcom’s Fighting Game, written by Luiz H. C., and published for Bloody Disgusting on September 6th 2023.

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (2004)

 

Director: Richard Ayoade

Screenplay: Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness

Cast: Matthew Holness as Garth Marenghi/Dr. Rick Dagless, M.D; Richard Ayoade as Dean Learner/Thornton Reed; Matt Berry as Todd Rivers/Dr. Lucien Sanchez; Alice Lowe as Madeleine Wool/Dr. Liz Asher

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

 

I have never exploded. But I know what it would be like. Don't ask me how. I just know.

Garth Marenghi - author, visionary, dream weaver - is a prolific horror author, and in the eighties, he worked on a TV series which was never broadcast except for in Peru. That was until Channel 4 in 2004, desperate for content, asked him to resurrect the project, with new interviews with cast members who have not disappeared in the decades after. Breaking kayfabe, with the premise even sustained with the DVD released, is that Matthew Holness created Garth Marenghi originally in 2000, as part of a Richard Ayoade co-written horror parody stage show Garth Marenghi's Fright Knight performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Brought to this series, he is a parody of the likes of Stephen King, who had his real Marenghi moment when he directed Maximum Overdrive (1986), and also the likes of Dean Koontz or James Herbert¹, fellow prolific horror authors. Marenghi is an egotist, a sexist, and has an episode of these six where he exposes his racism against the Scottish, the definition of a man with his head up his arse, thinking of himself as the messiah of horror who can even have profound insights to help humanity but is a tawdry author of terrible ideas and dialogue.

Darkplace itself is a disaster in terms of wooden acting, cheesy props and using slow motion to pad out episodes. A meta-textual work, the actual show is Marenghi directing himself and starring in the main role, as the former warlock Dr. Rick Dagless M.D at Darkplace Hospital, who with side characters encounter increasingly weird and horrifying events. Marenghi in the series-within-the-series was allowed to shoot interviews, mainly with his publisher Dean Learner (Richard Ayoade) who starred as Darkplace Hospital's administrator Thornton Reed too, and later on Todd Rivers (Matt Berry), an actor on the show that visibly became the stereotype of the older star reduced to drinking a lot. When I first saw Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, I found it disappointing after all the build up. The episodes came off as slightly amusing but average altogether as I marathoned the entire series. A lot of the humour is the absurdity and ridiculousness of this set up, both Marenghi's ego, and the pastiche of a badly made horror series where he let his ego run wild, where he is shown as always cool and virtuous to the children in the wards, sexier than even Todd Rivers' heartthrob character, and always right. This time, I appreciated the show on its own terms, when the first scene introduces female lead Dr. Liz Asher (as played by Alice Lowe), who when starting at Darkplace Hospital is introduced to a cat, visibly placed on the hospital set by hands, telling her to "just leave!" in a dubbed over voice.

The show's structure could be a paradoxical one to work with; to create a technically awful programme could lead to making a dreadful show because it is too accurate to the dreariest of this type of programming. My initial issues with the show was that it was too deliberately broad, which leads to an ironic tone I found tedious at the time, growing when this became more common as a form of parody and becoming unbareable at the time onwards for a good few decades in cinema and television. With hindsight, I was too harsh on this, now that common trait has not become as prevalent. Though a version of this which fully depicted some of the strange programming coming from the likes of the BBC to ITV from the eighties would have been just as interesting for me, I just have remind myself I have seen some ridiculous special effects and incidents even in that type of programming which has won me over for their sincerely good parts. Then there are things, admittedly not a Dr. Who viewer but aware of this and seeing it with my own eyes, where you can have Bertie Bassett, the mascot of a British confectionary company, terrorised Dr. Who actor Sylvester McCoy in his sci-fi candy lab² and think that is the kind of insane moment you could have had in a hypothetical second series of Darkplace, if on a deliberately lower budget, and not bat an eye in standing out as too weird.

The central joke is established around how Garth Marenghi is clueless to how bad he is, and the six episodes we get are entirely focused on this, the first episode contrasting the madness of a man exploding into tiny pieces but Dagless still asking if he is all right afterwards. There are the scenes hastily put in to show Thornton Reed with a shotgun out-of-nowhere, in an entirely different field, when this man, the result of having tried practicing a demonic ritual with Dagless in the lunch hall, refuses to stay in his casket at the funeral, or how Reed himself is so wooden, to the point they have to shoot his scenes usually by himself even in two person conversations. A lot of my growing warmth to the series came from that initial negative reaction, developing a fondness for the production as time went on to its goofy tone as I thought about the series for a good few years, suddenly growing into a person who got the humour entirely. A lot of this is in mind that this is not trying in the premise to be a pitch-perfect parody of this type of television horror, which was the issue initially, but that this is exaggerated around Garth Marenghi's qualities as a creator being central to the joke. The one exception is where the final episode feels like Nigel Kneale's Quatermass mini-series if someone turned into alien broccoli rather than a blob. Instead, it is a very broad mash-up of medical soap opera and horror story where people being attacked by floating staplers, on noticeable strings, as in the second episode are so bad on purpose. The barebones nature of most of the episodes means you cannot really have a plot trajectory, so the humour has to come from the silliness. Also the interviews as integral to this punch line where the actors we have show their bad or misguided sides, such as how the cat somehow died on set or how two technicians died on the Scottish Mist episode, or how Dean Learner even hit a child for criticising how bad his dialogue is.

Cast wise, it is mainly the core four members who dominate the series barring a few surprise cameos, like Stephen Merchant or Julian Barratt as the hospital priest, emphasising that even before his role in Peter Strickland's bizarre horror film In Fabric (2018) Barratt could add gravitas even to the silliest of material, or add a much needed sense of absurdity to even serious material. Matthew Holness as Garth Marenghi, both the writer and star, is interesting, and there are times he is lovably charming as he is actually indefensible, which makes the comedy work especially when it can lead to the abrupt reveal that they added comical amounts of slow motion to the second episode, where Liz goes on a rampage with her powers, or the Scottish Mist episode being about Dagless learning to overcome his intolerance to the Scottish only to expose, as he dodges the accusations of racism in his interview footage, that Marenghi shoot both feet off with his depictions of said Scottish. Richard Ayoade as his publicist hits the right tone and is a highlight - off the show he is a sleaze but in a subtle way that is funnier, whilst as the administrator of the Darkplace hospital, Ayoade inflects perfectly a man who cannot act. Matt Berry likewise hits to the right one too, as a hammy actor who adds w-e-i-g-h-t to his vocals in a way that's memorable, sounding like it is dubbed.

Sadly Alice Lowe as the sole female character is undercut by one of the major running gags, and is one of the moments where the show has flaws, in a show that does try for some social commentary in its humour, such as the final episode explicitly is a parody of terrible programming trying to metaphor AIDs is tasteless ways. The second episode especially, but throughout in her character's depiction, reflects how its author Marenghi has incredibly sexist dialogue and views of Dr. Liz Asher, playing her off as the simplistic female staff member, or in episode 2 going full-Carrie to the point people are menaced by furniture on string. It presents an issue especially as Lowe's character is later revealed to have disappeared, likely dead and buried in a random place in Eastern Europe. It is to the show's credit, whilst arguably the weakest episode, it was deflecting this sense of biting too hard at a difficult subject, sexism in older horror storytelling, with Marenghi coming off ridiculous from the get-go to get around this, as he is a dolt with very stupid ideas, and that we have Matt Berry in this episode having to fight off a homicidal egg whisk. My views on Darkplace have aged well due to seeing another parody of horror pulp, Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible (2001), which is likely to one Steve Coogan project people may have forgotten even exists, where you had the issue of it parodying problematic issues of pulp fiction like Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, done with earnestness to still point out this was all racist as a joke but still having an actor in yellow face playing a Manchu pastiche to get the joke over. Episode two here is in the same issue of dealing with gender politics by having the sexism be so over-the-top, which may put people off or even just cause them to roll their eyes at the broadness of the pastiche, not actually dealing with the subject with enough to justify the satire and be comedy at the same time, so this does count as one of the weakest episodes if thankfully with a defter hand than Dr. Terrible.

Episode three clears the palette with probably the most eyebrow raising moment, a male patient being impregnated by an eye creature (with pixelated out genitals to the annoyance of Dean Learner) and immediately dying in childbirth conceiving an eyeball child. Here the humour of both the interviews and the story itself works, as Marenghi's obsession with never having male child but only four daughters, and a eulogy to a dead pet dog, are contrasted by Dagless' past trauma of losing his half-man half-grasshopper son which leaves him trying to protect a potentially dangerous eyeball child. Episode 4 imagines contaminated water turning the hospital into primordial ape people, effectively Planet of the Apes if with a bicycle chase final with an "apeazoid" that briefly turns into an episode of The Krypton Factor, a 1977-2010 game show which emphasises legitimate Mensa-like brain teasers, puzzles, and as the reference became evoked, an obstacle course with rope pulls as here.

By Episode 5, we get to the Scotch Mist, which is John Carpenter's The Fog (1980) if with kilter Scotsmen instead of pirate ghosts, who leave Scottish oats by their victims. Alongside the tangent about using high street bought batteries over cheap ones from markets, it is a story about overcoming prejudice but so prejudiced in the depiction, even subtitling the Scottish ghosts, it undercuts itself, Marenghi thinking Daglass can earn the name of true Scotsman by just apologising and appeasing the ghosts with shortbread. Episode 6 is the other time the series takes a risk in terms of more serious nods, being a tone deaf metaphor for the AIDs scare, which is explicitly talked of and is the one other time Darkplace is in danger of stumbling. Thankfully, it is also the story to contrast this which has the right balance of almost taking itself serious whilst being ridiculous to prevent this undercutting itself with the metatextual commentary taking too broad a scope on this subject. The humour found in Lucien Sanchez falling in love with a female patient slowly turning into alien broccoli due to a highly contagious mutation, that does feel like soap opera, Nigel Kneale and a healthy dose of sex humour in a blender prevents this issue of tackling a risky subject for satire because it is one of the stronger stories in its jokes. It allows Matt Berry more material to work with, which is for the better; it also has the one actual surprise where the episode abruptly turns into a synthpop music video for the character, and does one of the superior metatextual jokes in which a fight scene that breaks out, to save Lucien's life, was lost and had to be reconstructed from photos shot on the film set.

The first time I saw Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, I thought it was a case of acquired taste, because I had always taken an issue to ironic humour at that point. Nowadays, this is not the case, and instead I wished there had been another series to just stretch this premise from that initial set-up, forcing it to have to take risks with the construct. Garth Marenghi never came back barring a cameo in Man to Man with Dean Learner (2006), an in-world talk show hosted by the Learner character which had Marenghi on as the first episode guest, and it would have been interesting to witness how the second series of Darkplace, having established the set-up, could have forced this broad parody into his own discomfort or stranger humour as we could elaborate on the premise of the Darkplace show, or in the interviews. Any more series beyond this might have capsized the premise and become that ironic-for-the-sake of irony I thought this show had, and even with its flaws as is, you would have lost the magic I finally appreciated after time to soak myself in Marenghi's dream weavings.

Abstract Spectrum: Absurd/Ironic

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

 

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1) Not in the slightest a knock against either man, but they are the apt comparison points for authors who commonly appearing second hand book stores in the United Kingdom, least in my neck of the woods, and how Herbert's blunt titles and covers does really evoke the absurd, crasser ones Marenghi's has as seen in the series.

2) Kandyman befittingly comes from the 1988 era of Dr. Who, emphasising how actual eighties television, though Darkplace is meant to be the early eighties, could really be as ridiculous as the parodies of that era.

Darna Mana Hai (2003)

 

Director: Prawaal Raman

Screenplay: Atul Sabharwal, Rajnish Thakur and Abbas Tyrewala

Cast: Nana Patekar as John Rodriguez, Saif Ali Khan as Anil Manchandani, Vivek Oberoi as Amar Vashisht, Sanjay Kapoor as Sanjay Joshi, Sohail Khan as Karan Ahuja, Shilpa Shetty as Gayatri Pandit, Isha Koppikar as Abhilasha Malhotra, Aftab Shivdasani as Purav Khandelwal, Boman Irani as the hotel owner, Sameera Reddy as Shruti Kapoor, Gaurav Kapoor as Romi Yadav, Antara Mali as Anjali Deshmukh, Raghuvir Yadav as Dayashankar Pandey, Anuj Pandit Sharma as Varun Goswami, Rajpal Yadav as the apple vendor, Sushant Singh as the serial killer, Malavika as Neha Bhatia, Rahul Singh as Dev Bohra, Peeya Rai Chowdhary as Mehnaz, Kiku Sharda as Amar Varma, Yusuf Hussain as Mr. Khandelwal

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

A Bollywood horror anthology, there were songs made about the stories within this production and a soundtrack release for this film, but they were left out as bonus features included on the DVD I viewed this through. Whilst I will be very positive about this film in general, thankfully the opening credits by themselves compensated for this and are adore as this film’s own idiosyncratic creative choice for this genre. That being, after a shot of black gore seeping over a blood red apple, a Eurodrance influenced song kicks in. Female dancers in black body suits dance against a red background, with motifs of all the story segments included, whilst the male singer croons the morbid ditty which is the central song. This is not something you would have gotten in a Amicus anthology from the seventies, but here is was a great way to establish its personality, follow the tradition of the subgenre by opening with the wraparound story first that will weave between all the other tales.

A group of college students, alongside one named Vikas with his apple cutting knife looking like he is about to snap at any minute, are driving in the middle of the night until a flat tire leaves them stuck in the jungle. Whilst there are some aged fat shaming at one of the men, who is not even that large physically, thankfully it sets them up stuck at an abandoned old house in the middle of the night whilst trying to find a phone. An improvised game of cricket or a sing-along of Hindi film songs are rejected for telling stories to each other, critiquing them in each cut back to the main cast as a secret figure is picking each one off as each story-within-a-story plays out. The first story is arguably the most conventional, and you need to think of it as more a starter before the main course, about a couple on their honeymoon driving at night. Their car also breaks, and the husband vanishes checking the engine to his wife’s horror. It is the shortest tale, with someone sinking into a bog and a doppelganger, with stab wound sound jump scares. Whilst an obvious one, it is a nice beginning tale to an anthology which gets insanely interesting immediately afterwards and never lost my interest from this point onwards.

The second story is of Anil, another taste of the perils of driving in the middle of nowhere, in this case reaching a hotel. This leads to a fascinating turn as it is about the least expected thing, Anil as a smoker who has ended up at a non-smoking hotel, one ran by a man who loves old Tom & Jerry cartoons and hates smoking, so much so he locks the entrance door and says at gun point he can cure Anil of his bad habit if he stays for six months. Here we have a bleak comedy about a man, forcing Amil to stay, with a seventy per cent success rate in his patients giving up, the other thirty per cent in the basement in plastic body bags. It is such a good, gleefully morbid tale to have, not what you would expect traditionally for a horror story.

The third story is just as good, about a male school teacher, a strict one who punishes the same young girl for forgetting her homework all the time. That is until she finally does, and then the guilt kicks in and spirals out of control. There is more to this, a guilt from pushing a school classmate to his death off a roof, who has seemingly possessed her, but even that plays to that sense of guilt over this poor girl in general. Using very stylish choices of editing and fast forward montage to ramp up this mood, this is a really interesting juggle of its central twist and this theme of the cruelness of a teacher. With “Aum” found on each page of her work, the sigh to him his school friend is involved from the grave, it is as much a psychological tale with a  sick sense of awkward humour as he is the one unraveling, even calling her mother to talk about doing her homework. Or even visiting the home at night to see of how she does the homework, disturbing the mother especially as his least conventional attempt at home intrusion is misinterpreted as nefarious threat on a small child. Even if supernatural as a tale, it is a well told tale with madness as the punishment which also works fully.

The fourth story is about a housewife and a sinister apple merchant, which is the strangest story of them all if the one with arguably the most macabre interpretation, as any who eats his apples, like her cricket loving husband, turns into an apple themselves. There is not a lot more to say than this, barring that this is fun and actually quite disturbing. It brings a new perspective on the Golden Delicious depending on what the merchant does with the new produce. The fifth story is more sobered, another man driving at night who picks up a hitchhiker in a churchyard. As Creedence Clearwater Revival’s version of Good Golly Miss Molly plays on the car radio, the hitchhiker says he has lost his wife ten days earlier, though he is the one who died. There are more twists to this nice little piece, turning between drama and humour, like the preferred term of “spirit” over “ghost” or one twist involving a hidden camera prank, making it a success.

The final main story is also a success, a guy doomed to be on the bottom of life at a college named Purab. That is until he finds a sacred statue in the hills he rants at for his lot in life, and gains the ability to stop time. Power immediately corrupts, and whilst there is a gross hint of what he could do, particularly with a woman he is attracted to at college when he briefly freezes her, but it is thankfully dealt with as wrong as it should be, with most of the story a naïve sense of true evil, thinking he can instead show her how he can stop the world without doing so to her to convince her to love him instead, whilst getting petty revenge on his domineering father and planning the crimes he could get up to. Gaining more and more megalomaniac tendencies, the punch line involves the danger of posing in front of mirrors that cements a strong series of segments. Arguably with the exception of the first, which still works as an introduction, it is one of the strongest anthologies I have seen in terms of consistency.

The wraparound itself is strong as well, as it effectively becomes a slasher film ending involving a killer who hates fear. It even ends on a melancholic note for everyone involved, even for the killer. The result is a very strong anthology altogether, with zero expectations going to this barring optimism. Even the pre-film DVD ads stood out as a fresh remainder, with hindsight, as a complete outsider to Bollywood cinema that I wish to actually dig up more films like this and for more of them to be readily available in terms of the later Blu-Ray era as much as streaming. By the time this film was first release we are already at the point this film’s distributor, Eros International, was celebrating twenty five years of distributing Bollywood films globally. They were still releasing VHS and V-CD releases, but also were also providing online and satellite broadcasting, even providing their own online DVD rental system on their website. It is a tangent, but considering all the very positive things I have said about Darna Mana Hai, and that it is the kind of horror anthology that a lot of people would really dig, the fact that this is a film you do not find on Blu Ray and not licensed from a distributor, when back in the day Eros International were doing their damndest to distribute an entire country’s cinema, speaks a bit from an outsider’s annoyance. That Bollywood is still something, whilst with its own huge audience, felt too separated even if as much my own ignorance is as much to blame too. That is not even taking into consideration this was the debut film for its director Prawaal Raman, which has to be praised for his first film being a really solid horror anthology alongside everyone else on the production.  

Theatre of Darkness: Yamishibai Season 1 (2013)

a.k.a. Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories

Director: Tomoya Takashima

Screenplay: Hiromu Kumamoto

Voice Cast: Kanji Tsuda as the Story teller

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

 

The review linked to below comes with knowledge that, starting in 2013 and with more series being produced up to 2024 itself, Yamishibai may still continue into 2025 onwards. Taking the tradition of kamishibai, a form of paper play storytelling and theatre, and amalgamating it in a "micro-series" with urban legends, ghost tales and moments of general spooky misanthropy, it won me over. tIn mind that future series will even tie into cult cinema, with Noboru Iguchi (The Machine Girl (2008)) and Takashi Shimizu (the Ju-On/the Grudge franchise) getting involved from the second series onwards, and I cannot wait to get to the future series.

 

For the full review, follow the blog link HERE.