The German Chainsaw Massacre - The First Hour of the Reunification (1990)

 

Director: Christoph Schlingensief

Screenplay: Christoph Schlingensief

Cast: Alfred Edel as Alfred; Karina Fallenstein as Klara; Artur Albrecht as Ihr Liebhaber; Susanne Bredehöft as Ihr Mann / Margit; Brigitte Kausch as Brigitte; Volker Spengler as Henk; Dietrich Kuhlbrodt as Dietrich; Reinald Schnell as Kurti; Udo Kier as Jonny

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #266 / An Abstract Candidate

 

Kebab on the road!

That title is not a cash-in for Tobe Hooper's legendary The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). This is aware of that film, alongside the irony of West German/German laws that kept that film banned from the country, as with its sequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986). Its director Christoph Schlingensief became aware of them, likely through bootlegged versions due to their lack of availability, and wrote this film in mind of them only after watching the official celebrations at the Brandenburg Gate in 1990 when the Berlin Wall came down.

It is not an insult to the late Christoph Schlingensief, as much as a reinterpretation of Tobe Hooper's films as a provocateur looking at his homeland in this time of reunification, that he was as much being a shit-stirrer who suggests that, just after the reunification of West and East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that unification would not lead to the country instantly becoming a better place. This is not an empty concern to make either in context, as set during and shot after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this imagines the GDR (East Germans), when they are able to leave through the opened borders, being picked off by a family of West German cannibals within a wasteland of general chaos left from the mechanics of the country having been separated into two, or even as one in the early 20th Century.

This is emphasised by real footage of the celebration of the unification, with the TV coverage of the state ceremony for the re-unification of Germany at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and a speech by the then German president, Richard von Weizsäcker. His speech of reconnection is contrasted by the awkward pauses, apt in mind to a country that, for at least the 20th Century alone, has been a nation thrown into turbulence, and Christoph Schlingensief through his career both for cinema and controversial public performances has never escaped its own problems.

In this world, an East German woman Klara (Karina Fallenstein) kills her boyfriend and flees by car across the border to West German. Said border is a phantom world, shot in rundown industrial wasteland, of unemployed custom officers who have lost their minds, and many figures in the phantom zone including the cannibalistic family, picking off stray drivers to make into sausages, a more perverse choice rather than just meat knowing sausages are a cultural stereotype (and cultural product) for Germany. At first, The German Chainsaw Massacre as an explicit horror film in tone feels unique for Schlingensief. Set around a woman, who in her really violent and unexplained decision, moves for a new life, the limbo she enters is atmospheric. The rundown industrial environments and wasteland is contrasted with a tone creepy just from the soundtrack, and it is set up that the film is going to be extremely violent, such as foreshadowing a character being alive despite having no bottom half. His satirical tone, a grotesque one, I have become acclimatised to seeing his films for the first time looks like it is going to be filtered through this different mood.

The German Chainsaw Massacre however shifts quickly to his trademark, a hyper extreme and exaggerated tone which is in bad taste and very broad, meant to be very sickly humorous but in itself really serrated and confrontational as a result. His cinema, in hindsight, was always going to have an issue to sell to outside Germany because it is so ingrained in concerns about Germany's cultural and political aspects, with so many nuisances for all his chaotic mass of screaming caricature I myself would have no idea about¹. It is cinema, for a cult audience, that you can "sell" for how extreme and weird he can be, but his cinema really requires some context to get the most from its satire. He also, in deliberately being offensive to middlebrow ideals in his homeland, as was the case in United Trash (1996), has moments which have not aged well at all here one of the cannibalistic family a predatory lesbian.

It is however also more closer to the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre than you would presume, no way near as precise and menacing, but with Tobe Hooper's film having a lot of strangely twisted humour, a lot of bizarre characters, and with Christoph Schlingensief's movie riffing on the set-up and, in an escape through a vehicle at the end, even visual motifs. Hopper's sequel, much to the bemusement of his financers Cannon Group who wanted a straight-laced horror film, is especially a clear influence here, as alongside being such an underrated film in itself, Hooper was arguably playing to this same twisted and grotesque humour in his own country's context, of  his cannibal family becoming businessmen in eighties America, and Bill Moseley being a mad Vietnam War veteran screaming about setting up "Nam Land" as a public attraction.

The German Chainsaw Massacre is a film where most of the cast, even the female lead, are not defendable. Artur the boyfriend, who somehow manages to stay alive despite looking like grounded mince eventually with his guts only kept inside by a sliver of skin, is introduced being a near rapist, whilst our cannibal family, with a tendency of putting old man masks on their victims to kill them ritually, are a strange assortment of oddballs and even products of incest. The grandfather from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre here replaced by one clearly dead, revealed to be a skeleton in a German war outfit, the male head is doing bad ventriloquism from which everyone believes whilst one of the other members explicitly wears a winged German helmet evoking the country's warring past. And then there is Udo Kier, who sadly is not as prevalent here as in other Schlingensief films, playing a strange mad younger man on the side posing as a police officer just to grope a female friend. In terms of commitment to the performance, he at one point whilst wearing a wig sets it on fire for real, which is a something different to say the least and just evokes, with the exception of his Lars von Trier and Guy Maddin roles, how little I truly got to see from him as an actor just from the more well known genre films he made.

It is a film that, like the other Christoph Schlingensief films I have seen, if much more difficult to digest as it continues, his films of the nineties period at least being openly broad. His style is fascinating and memorable - the most obvious mannequin stunt possible, when one is thrown at a car, feels on purpose - but it is also a very acquired taste especially as in terms of the genre he is working in, horror, it becomes intentionally derailed by his provocative broadness. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre never had someone's testicles ripped off, and considering what he did with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, Tobe Hooper himself realised the comedic potential of his own premise and made a film that was broad and over-the-top comedy for the sequel, matching the tone of The German Chainsaw Massacre more even if Schlingensief's film is still, even an hour long, a much more challenging film in terms of his world's exaggerated acting, broad comedy and icky shock value to provoke and annoy his country.

Schlingensief's film is fascinating, rewarding if you appreciate Christoph Schlingensief as a provocateur. It is a film in hindsight I would wonder how a regular horror viewer would react to it, as Schlingensief's films really do have their own idiosyncratic tone which, honestly, is more difficult to chew on in that he has political ideas visually upfront. It is, in truth too, not necessarily provocative in a profound way only what he did, but a really nihilistic equivalent of chewing with your mouth open with his work as much for me as an outsider, the dirty laundry of Germany's complicated historical past and present in his career being scrutinised not through the cold eye of a figure like Austria's Michael Haneke. As a Haneke looked at Europe's failings in his chilling cerebral nature, Christoph Schlingensief instead has a gregarious and deliberately offensive tone, "gregarious" apt as, even if you may never find this film funny at all, and the location choices are actively chosen to be grimy, he plays all of this with a broad farcical tone than takes the horror tropes seriously, something comparable to when The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 transgressed the first film's seriousness by being ridiculous upfront.

More so now having seen the film, I wished to have seen this on a cinema screen with an audience presuming it was a horror film with just political content than what you get with a Christoph Schlingensief film. I know this film was screened at the Showroom in Sheffield², an independent cinema in England which has been in the past the closest for me to see, in a blue moon, non-mainstream Hollywood films on a cinema screen. Baring one I have seen onscreen there, Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers (2009), which is for another review for another day, it would have been fascinating to see how people would have reacted to a film like The German Chainsaw Massacre, especially a British audience not having grown up in a country that went through unification, like this. Knowing in 2021, renamed Blackest Heart, a terrible title, this has ended up on Amazon Prime in the United Kingdom, is fittingly hilarious with my own sick sense of humour. The one film from Christoph Schlingensief not made available on MUBI, their streaming platform allowing me to see his cinema and in a context, this in itself is a perverse yet perfect way to sell this film as many baffle people, expecting a generic horror film like others on that site, will find Christoph Schlingensief's offensive production mocking the change of a united Germany there facing them. Even when it is taken off, as always happens with streaming sites with interesting films, it may appear in another unexpected place, waving with its twisted series of gore scenes and broad acting performances, to baffle more people, and I pray that continues so forth.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque

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

 

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1) This one article, by Dr Sarah Pogoda, a Senior Lecturer in German Studies and German Literature for various organisations such as the University of Sheffield, has helped me considerably gain more from The German Chainsaw Massacre and admire the film greatly.

2) Screened in 2014, as is documented here, I saw this on the marquee outside and now more than ever wished I could have gone to the screening.

The Violent Years (1956)

 

Director: William Morgan

Screenplay: Ed Wood Jr.

Cast: Jean Moorhead as Paula Parkins; Barbara Weeks as Jane Parkins; Arthur Millan as Carl Parkins; Theresa Hancock as Georgia; Glen Corbett as Barney Stetson; Joanne Cangi as Geraldine; Gloria Farr as Phyllis; Lee Constant as Sheila; I. Stanford Jolley as Judge Clara; Timothy Farrell as Lt. Holmes

Ephemeral Waves

 

Something from a different era - when teenagers were a new concept, drive-in films exploited trends like this, and or an entire sub-genre based on juvenile delinquency existed. In this particular example, from this point, you have Ed Wood Jr., the notorious director/writer of Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957), with his own take on the JD genre, but he is not the director. That would be William Morgan, a veteran of the likes of westerns and crime films though predominantly an editor in his career. As a result, whilst the resulting film is a lot of dialogue in static shots, not only are the flourishes of its screenwriter still there, but this is instead a pulpy story told by a director which strips away some of the touches Wood was notorious for as a director, his improvisations and on-screen mistakes, providing an interesting result. Its lack of Wood's more over-the-top flourishes is not to be complained about when the film is still this entertaining combining Wood and Morgan, with the added touch your lead Jean Moorhead was an early era Playboy centerfold.

More so as this is interesting is that, not tackling male teen delinquency as was common in this genre, even by Hollywood itself as an influence with Marlon Brando and The Wild One (1953), this is about young hoodlum women. Their stylish hairdos and skirts belay how dangerous they are as, led by thrill seeker Paula Parkins (Moorhead), the girl gang will gladly dress as men to rob a petrol (gas) station and nearly kill the gas attendant with a harsh thump to the head with a pistol barrel. Whilst the film does not have a lot of time to work with, it is rewarding in how, as a film recovered by Something Weird Video, this is as entertainment but a short, sharp shock to take in, as very much an artefact of its era, but an interesting one as a Ed Wood film not quite an Ed Wood film.

It is obvious, but well addressing, that this is from the type of exploitation film which sold themselves as moral tales to inform the audience, but was sell the lurid content at the same time. Here, the film in a book end structure in a court room in the aftermath of the narrative, you get a long monologue for a need for more family values, returning to the Church in belief, and taking kids to the woodshed more often, i.e. the punishments banned over the decades after as child cruelty. This is ironic knowing who the screenwriter was, Ed Wood Jr. an outsider let alone in mind to his pleasure in dressing in women's clothing contrasting the fifties values this film ends on a sermon of. Exploitation films themselves as a premise, especially this older type, were as much with morals to avoid getting into trouble for their salacious content, which this could be the case of too.

Here especially, there is something subversive about three female teens being degenerates, even with their perfect fashion and cars of the era, more so as whilst the film condemns teenage hedonism, it really hates bad and neglectful parenting. Lead Paula is frankly sympathetic, despite the film and her behaviour, the daughter of a male newspaper man and a socialite mother whose parents will not even clear their schedules for her birthday. The weird thing with Ed Wood is that, goofy as he was with his dialogue, he did try to be serious, and sometimes it hit in poignant ways as here. With one scene at a "sleepover" with men, he gets one of his best pulpy moments just with Paula admitting she is a person with everything, always a new car on her birthday, but lonely and attention seeking in a destructive way as a result.

At unless an hour, it cuts the fat off everything, but it is in itself full of idiosyncrasies, such as the plan for cash that leads to the gang's downfall, to trash their school, being hinted at as being anti-Americans or likely communists having contrasted them through another. And even today, there is the guttural shock, in spite of admitting sympathy for the lead gang leader, that this has a scene explicitly hinting at them deciding to rape a man off-camera. As they hold up a heterosexual couple, and tie the girlfriend in the car, stealing her fleece whilst they are at it, it is unexpectedly dark for this type of film to have that implied, as it a lot of the content still being about delinquents nearly killing gas station attendants or them even getting into a shoot out near the end with cops. More so as women as, even decades later, perceived gender biases of this era make this image of these women being aggressive and armed more striking. It is both the sort of film John Waters should have remade in terms of its inherently transgressive camp, but also, even in terms of moments like Paula getting intelligence on the police from a father all too willing to dish out confidential info, is the kind of film of its era of pulp, exploitation and Woodian curiosities. It is a movie which even as an okay film in terms of a narrative movie, but with unexpected levels of contextual baggage to consider.

Even how bleak the ending is, where life and death are literally exchanged but with no one redeemed in the eyes of the law, is something easy to forget for a film from this era. This is in mind of being one of many exploitation films like this, based on old tropes like the crime genre, likely made by people such as director William Morgan who worked in these genres decades before, which continued into the fifties in spite of there being other genres like sci-fi films, and still adding their fingerprints in the newer types of films which had new types of content and tones within them. Certainly, in terms of Ed Wood, this is honestly a minor work from his canon, in terms of not being the full experience of his idiosyncrasies as a director too, being restrained for him even as a script writer. In terms of being Wood being more straightforward as a result, this is however with its content something fascinating to see for a nice contrast.

Games of the Abstract: Broforce (2015)

 

Publisher: Devolver Digital

Developer: Free Lives

Up to Four Players

Windows (Steam)/ OS X/ Linux/ PlayStation 4/ Nintendo Switch

 

Spoiler Warning for Game Play

Like exactly it says on the tin, and surprisingly managing to cross a line between tribute and copyright, Broforce is almost every action movie hero, almost as many as exist, reinterpreted as a squadron of sprite homages blasting random assortments of goons led by business suit Satan in fully destructible environments. I come to this game with a tinge of nostalgia as, before it became a fully fleshed out game released on Steam, and console and phone systems, Broforce was a game on the site Miniclip, an web site devoted to independent games that I used to play in the twilight zone of my gaming days. That was an era of not playing games at all, but still going onto MiniClip for this and a few Metal Slug tributes that, as indie games became more popular, showed a lot of talent in themselves. The great thing is that, after all this time, Broforce is still a good game in its fully formed, fully buff version.

It is a loving parody, openly and unsubtly parodying American action films, from a South African based developer, with sincere love too from them. Completely expanding from the MiniClip version, this has a choice of unlockable characters to play, beginning with a parody of Rambo, Rambro, based on the Sylvester Stallone character. You acquire more, an entire small squadron, when you rescue hostages that also count as your lives system, as the American flag you erect is your check point mid-level and a larger American flag allows you to restart a level after a game over from that point. Die, least in the non-hard modes, and if you have multiple lives, you spawn again. Lose all lives and, in non-hard modes, you can start the level quickly if you wish to continue. In its standard form, your starting character becomes randomised in when you gain more characters, as if every time you die or get a hostage.

This adds an unpredictability as, the more Bros you get, the more variety you get, as each has different types of basic gun fire, with some having thrown weapons or melee instead, and an unpredictable variety of special attacks, be it Time Bro (Timecop (1994)) having a time stop function, or the Brominator (The Terminator (1984)) turning into his robo-skeleton version for invulnerability. The films referenced are diverse, be it the Predator or even Uma Thurman's the Bride from the Kill Bill films. With the exception of some of the ultra obscure figures of American action cinema, like Don "The Dragon" Wilson, the only real absentee is Steven Seagal, as every key a-level and b-level star of American action cinema of the eighties and nineties, sometimes in multiple forms, are represented. The eclectic nature of the choices is found in that, among the first few who are in the cut-scenes, you have Laurence "Mr. T" Tureaud's B. A. Baracus, of the A-Team TV series, with MacGruber (2010), a figure from the 2010 titular film who, on the television show Saturday Night Live, is a parody of the TV series MacGyver.  However, in spite of this, that figure managed to be one of the best characters for me in his sticky explosives.

It is in the game's favour that, due to some of the most rewarding players to use, this game comes to me also with great interest as a huge cineaste but one who admits never getting into action movies. Alongside the fact I have softened to this, with greater interest, Broforce has managed to get me even interested in MacGruber and The Boondock Saints (1999), a cult film, due to its tributes here, the later duo able to last longer even when one is killed, and acquiring a Billy Connolly sprite as their special, which is surreal as the Scottish comedian is a huge household name in the United Kingdom. More so this game helps raise the interest of these films, even those I may never actually enjoy, as one of the funniest moments comes come the MacGruber parody's special. In a game where, alongside clever A.I., the mask goons react with their variety of noises and grunts, the special involves throwing out a turkey full of explosives; imagine, especially as a secret achievement involves getting ten at once, throwing a roast turkey out, attracting the attention of all goons nearby, making curious noises and moving towards it with question marks over their heads, only to let it explode or press the special off to set it off. It is of a morbid and twisted sense of humour, but it was absolutely entertaining to witness every time

And, as a hazard and a tool, when things blow up, baring the few metal constructs and ladders, every piece of terrain and object can be destroyed. Per cube block, you have so many strategies to work with even if railroaded by levels in one direction, as there are likely multiple ways to reach the end goal, to climb the ladder of the helicopter that swoops in to rescue you, even if it means shooting the terrain underneath if possible to and improvising digging under hazards. You can climb up walls if reachable, blow up nearby objects, or take advantage of rolling explosive barrels to fall down ladders or push over propane tanks which fly in the direction pointed. Even a stray box can crush enemies, as is one having to be aware of falling stone blocks or explosives nearby. Destroying the entirety of the ground beneath as well leaves oblivion for everyone who falls, something which is even necessary for one boss who refuses to stay down.

This is where I love this game, which can be difficult before you even consider the harder mode, where you permanently lose characters if you fail with them until a game over, but this is a rare case where you have a lot to work with regardless of skill level to enjoy the game. Perseverance and learning is possible; strategy is possible; almost avoiding all enemies is actually possible baring boss fights for total strategy; sheer bloody-mindedness is possible and even encouraged at points, and sometimes your enemies, especially with those with dynamite vests on who run at you and explode, destroy everything before you even get to the next land mass. Some things for me were pains, such as any character with a minigun being useless for me to use fully, but even that for another player could be an advantage, as for the fact it takes a long time to fire, you can if firing in reverse make it possible to fly over hazard with these characters, and that the random changes in characters in a level happen a lot. A James Bond stand-in, based on Sean Connery with multiple different specials, has for the first a seemingly useless martini glass you throw over your shoulder, baring the fact you can hit a goon and kill them with a perfect shot. You can risk close combat with melee characters; you can hijack the robot suits you later encounter; even the Predator parody, if killed, refers to the film canon by having a self destruct that is set off as revenge. This game allows so many options you cannot be stuck in a scenario unable to complete it, and this also has up to four players for gameplay, which will add a greater sense of chaos too.

One disappointment with Broforce is the lack of women in the Bro-team - you get The Bride from Kill Bill, Eileen Ripley from the Alien films, Rose McGowan's character from Planet Terror (2007), with a rifle leg, and Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin's comic book character Tank Girl, likely based on the 1995 film adaptation, but that is more an issue of sexism in American cinema with the lack of female action heroines over the years baring a few like Cynthia Rothrock. This is not a slight on developer Free Lives who, with two different Chuck Norris characters, can make them both unique, one found roundhouse kicking people, one taking advantage that grenades if they hit a goon kills them in a perfect throw.

The campaign, rendered in a 3D helicopter travelling to locations, including challenges to gain new specials, does elaborate more on the original Miniclip version, grounded at first in hyper-violent military warzones. Why spoiler warnings have been included, as it caught me off-guard and would be a surprise for a player to encounter, is that, as part of expansions into the full game, the fact you eventually fight Satan in Hell for America turns out not the biggest twist. Instead, it is that, in their non-union equivalents, the xenomorphs from the Alien franchise appear. And in spite of that joke, as these are purple, this game does not disguise how, in this context, these creatures in this tribute really emphasise how scary the concept of them were when created for the original 1979 Alien film, or how in any videogame they are dangerous foes is used properly. They prove some of the toughest or at least challenging additions as, attacking the goons as they will you, there are facehuggers, who if they get you or another enemy will implode from their bodies as purple Xenomorphs, as the Xenomorphs themselves too when killed have acidic blood which destroys the ground. Additions for these versions, including crushing teeth and fang surface traps, and giant worm ones which spew out facehuggers, including a level entirely around avoiding one that devours all it jumps through, and this proves a challenge that, like the action tributes, actually emphasises how special these creations are. This game shows, for a franchise which has had some terrible inclusions, how striking these figures are, more a challenging than even Hell, where only the homing flaming skulls and grotesque bulbous acid spewers prove anything as relentless.

The only way you could follow on from Broforce, which I wish could have a sequel, and be comparable to fighting Satan would either be Space Nazis on the Moon or more aliens. Until then, there was a bonus free tie-in to The Expendables 3, called The Expendabros (2014) with the main cast reinterpreted and making up for not having Dolph Lundgren in the original version. That is a slight little campaign but alongside the challange, emphasising the traps you encounter more (such as giant rocket launcher turrets and the prescience sensitive traps with fire giant buzz saws one direction), it also has its own set of Bros to play with that have their own skills to learn. In Broforce itself, there are the campaign mode, the Arcade version which cuts out the cut scenes, a multiplayer mode, and a Lever Creator which, alongside being able to play and download levels created by other players, offers an enticing challenge in terms of creating your own levels, such as witnessing someone having recreated a hellish adaptation of Ghouls n Ghosts (1988), Capcom's notoriously difficult game, with a Conan stand-in.

The game's sense of fun for me, and this does not spoil the moment for me at all, is when, parodying its aesthetics when it reveals a boss for that level, it instead focuses on a random goon in a really twisted joke. One where they, when it focused on, has his entirely life story from birth, to marriage and recruitment in the enemy side explained in cut scenes, with he and everyone wearing the balaclavas, only for him to abruptly leave as he was introduced. Action cinema's history including its jingoistic nature has steadily been ebbed away as the older American films are looked back on fondly as their own cartoonish world. Some of this reaction is ironic, but some of it, despite the violence, is something more wholeheartedly fun, something which I have grown to admire in the likes of Wakaliwood, the Ugandan film studio out of a poor community who created the cult hit Who Killed Captain Alex? (2010), and now having returned to it Broforce. As much as it is taking the piss out of the image of the United States' perceived gun-ho militarism in other countries, such as the voice over for the start and game over screens from each mission screaming in the most macho voice possible, undoubtedly the creators love these films. Even without this beautiful aesthetic on top, everything mechanically in this game is also exceptional with is perfect. Returning to this as an adult, I feel in love with Broforce in this version rather than have a nostalgic experience.

Mistress Frankenstein (2000)

 

Director: John Bacchus

Screenplay: John Bacchus, Joe Ned, John Paul Fedele and Michael Raso

Cast: Darian Caine as Helena Frankenstein; Heidi Christine as The Broadway Girl; Jessie Harcourt and Jade Duboir as the Housemaids; John Paul Fedele as Dr. Frankenstein; Bennigan Feeney as Igor; Michael R. Thomas as The Monster / Gypsy / The Burgomaster / Karl The Inspector; John Bacchus as Stable Boy / Hippie Couple / Father Karl; A.J. Khan as The Hooker; John Link as Karl The Jester; Kimbo as Himself

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #265 / Cinema of the Abstract Candidate

 

Frankenstein's Monster: Now the villagers with their torches, it's an incessant pain in the ass, I'm telling you.

Dr Frankenstein: What are you gonna do, it goes with the territory.

Frankensteins Monster: It goes with the territory...

Let us not kid ourselves with Mistress Frankenstein - from Seduction Cinema, creators of The Erotic Witch Project films, this is cinema meant to titillate a heterosexual male target audience, imaging women together in prolonged sex scenes padded out with a semblance of plot. It is crass, as a maid says to another if, "as a lesbian", whether she will be deflowered by the other, and it is not defendable. I am here, reviewing this, however to see what strange ways this New Jersey based company made these films in the late 1990s and early 2000s, structured around horror and genre structures, and by this point improvised to an extreme with an openly goofy tone.

And Mistress Frankenstein is weird. Set in an ill-defined time, clearly in the modern day but with a castle (behind CGI fog) that has the normal room decor of someone's house, the next heir of the Frankenstein lineage is a putz, whose wife Helena (Darian Caine) even before her death and resurrection was puritanical to anything remotely sensual. His tuxedo wearing servant Igor (a very flamboyant Bennigan Feeney) wishes he was more interested in twerking his nipples than the doomed attempt to get Helena's attention even when he brings her back to life, more so as, as a result of a new brain Igor acquired, she develops a greater interest in other women, whilst the locals, mostly all named Karl, will get wind of this and be the angry mob who acquire burning torches on-line on www.torch.com. This sounds far more complex than the film actually is, a film instead where a random fart and poo gag happens before the opening credits, in a very modern bathroom, for the sake of it. From director John Bacchus, who started with films like The Bloody Video Horror That Made Me Puke on My Aunt Gertrude (1989), this is openly silly, very cheaply made from Seduction Cinema, with all the silliest humour, even some Dad humour, you can get. I do not think this is even an insult, as there is something charming within this even as Mistress Frankenstein is not a film I can recommend to many. Those willing to experience it watch a film where everyone on camera helped pitch in on the production, as much as people behind the camera are likely on camera at some point, and this company managed to release a lot of these films at the 2000s and the early DVD market with the mentality of a merry band producing what they fancied.

Very improvised, if you watch the outtakes (included on the old DVD release) you see that this was made by a small group of people, likely the same people off-screen behind the cameras as is onscreen, improvising what makes them laugh as they made erotica scenes only involving women. As a result, here especially, you have a schism. Softcore with the curiosity, whilst I will not suggest feminist ideals with this film, that the women are openly sexual figures, whilst all the men, even when they watch and leer on the nudity and sex, are a bunch of goofballs, inept, get distracted taking a picture of their own erection, or getting their arms ripped off. The modern Dr. Frankenstein is an dorky figure, Igor, whilst a gay stereotype, at least sympathetic as he deserves more attention from a man whose relationship with his wife Helena was doomed even before her transformation, and the stable boy gets distracted by an attractive gypsy whilst her colleagues steal everything including a pair of bongos. Only the Frankenstein's Monster, already present, has some intelligence, liking milk and cookies, and throwing his lot with the gypsies when he catches one with the aforementioned bongos. All of this as I write this, creating sound sentences, does sound completely odd, more so as an ultra low budget production. I attempted to view The Erotic Witch Project as a fascinating, forgotten cultural item, which it is, but this from the future director of Bloodz vs. Wolvez (2006) feels now is part of a vast plain of cinema which, for many, is undefendable, yet is compelling for me as a border of how cinema can be different from what you expect.

And sometimes, this improvised cheaply made film managed something. Helena dies due to an unfortunate horse riding accident, and when I say "horse", the horse named Hilary was two people in a cheap two-person horse costume. The horse is shot by the stable boy upon Dr. Frankenstein's request, who blindfolds Helna and lets her ride on his back, only for her to strike her head barely in a tree, stuck there, and die instantly. That scene with the horse alone is why I have gotten interested in Seduction Cinema as, managing to get into Blockbusters and even British DVD rental stores like Global Video, you get bizarre moments like this. That shot specifically, of the stable boy shooting the horse, was legitimately funny regardless of context for how unexpected it is to witness. Among this reoccurring group of people who are in these films (director John Bacchus himself, who plays the stable boy among other roles, and actresses like Darian Caine to A.J. Khan), they let themselves indulge in their weird sense of humour, a world of its own where even Kimbo, the man in a gorilla suit who appeared in The Erotic Witch Project, is in this film in a cameo alongside a variety of other films by the company from this period with IMDB credit.

The sex scenes are long - trying to watch this not for titillation is ridiculous in itself. Scored to porn elevator vaporwave music with a lot of saxophone, the film has a lot of sex, with some scenes in-between, and where the interest lies for me is what ties them together in a format, before the internet became fully usable by many and porn clips could just be downloaded that excised this. There are very time dated references to being "2k complaint", prop nipple clamps are two wooden laundry pegs connected with tinfoil, and a brain is acquired from Clive's Body Shop, where you learn a politician's brain is cheap and difficult to sell off. Possibly indebted a little to Frankenhooker (1990), Frank Henenlotter's cult film from New York City, Darian Crane's Helena post resurrection shuffles along, in a mini skirt and tube top, to be with as many women as she can, the hotel room always used clearly informing the viewer most of this film is shot in one person's house.

In context, all of this is peculiar, where most will be frustrated with its randomness or the length of the sex scenes. It barely attempts a plot, one which never leads to anywhere as a jester, a random very hairy man is costume, appears at Dr. Frankenstein's window, in his very modern garden, spying at his resurrection of his wife and lets the Burgomaster be aware of this. I think it says a lot of this film where, as erotica meant to sell, the end credits sequence is Kimbo the gorilla playing at a keyboard in a hall as the Jester goes into a long monologue, involving his seed, as Frankenstein's Monster ballroom dances with a woman. This is bizarre, and this would have been on a rental stand in Global Video in my country, as it got a release in the British DVD market, all because there was a time where an audience wanting titillation existed for the new DVD format. A group such as Seduction Cinema could fill that market whilst doing whatever they thought would be funny.

This is more so the case as, not trying to parody the template of a film such as The Blair Witch Project (1999), this feels less inhibited, with a scene or two with a sitcom laugh track, to eco hippy parodies appearing for a scene, complaining of Dr. Frankenstein's environment harm let alone playing God, for a joke. Including the scene transitions, of peoples' heads spinning against a super imposed rainbow, this clearly knows it is eccentric and working with very little. Again, caution is advised against something like this being watched by anyone even if you do not factor in that erotic content, as that is a subjective thing dependent on the viewer. More an issue in this case is that Mistress Frankenstein would put people off for how cheap and how openly ridiculous it is, barely strung together and aware of this. It does not feel ironic either, but made as much in pleasing itself as it does to fit a market.

Even for that market, which exists into the modern day even with hardcore pornography available, this had the creative decision for one of its last scenes to have an epilepsy inducing threesome, set to black with the image flashing in and out, with moans repeated almost a cappella in rhythm to the music, which does raise questions of films like this even fitting the softcore market as suitable licenses. Especially as the early 2000s is a territory still open to consider, this, like any other outsider cinema, is going to be more interesting to view as a snapshot of the era. Less because they are good films but to imagine what they represent of the era, shot within weeks with the fashions and items at hand. That, and how, like an old Something Weird Video release for a decade before, I have found myself with Seduction Video films getting increasingly stranger the few I have seen, and this is bonkers to say the least when I did not expect this level of eccentricity.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Haphazard/Psychotronic/Weird

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

Gaming of the Abstract: Cinderella Escape 2 Revenge (2017)

 

Publisher: Hajime Doujin Circle

Developer: Hajime Doujin Circle

Single Player

PC (Steam)

 

This review contains plot spoilers for this game and Cinderella Escape R12 (2015).

I will preference this review admitting what this is, that it is as much a very low budget, independently made 3D beat 'em up made as much as a game with fetishes as its genre of choice. Created by Hajime Doujin Circle, a one person company by a Taiwanese figure Hajime who began this series with the prequel as a 3D puzzle game, imagining a world where Cinderella from the ancient wells of fairy tales is in fact imprisoned under false accusations of murdering a king. Dying as a result of the prequel's true ending, the sequel jumped genres into being a scrolling beat 'em up, resurrected by her (2D) fairy godmother and trying to prove her innocence.

It is a fetish game as, in mind to the fact Valve's Steam service allows porn games for sale on there, this had a free R18 patch from the developer you had to download from their Patreon account, which allowed topless nudity. You can literally kick people so hard in the pre-existing, non-patched version that their clothes explode down to their underwear and alongside the explicit BDSM slant with the clothes worn by enemies, and the costumes you acquire for Cinderella, you have in the outfit changing/buying menu a bar to toggle her breast size. What led to me wanting to play the game however was when, learning of this through video content by a videogame commentator Matt "McMuscles", a Canadian videogame enthusiast with an interest in documenting fighting games especially. I was enticed by the premise beyond the fetish content. That, even on a low budget, this is an adult fairy tale with an interesting central mechanic in the centre - that Cinderella, still stuck in a cursed arm restraint even after death and resurrection, has to rely entirely on kicks and flipping in the air to get through opponents. You can turn this aesthetic detail off, with the animation changed, but it ruins the littlest of things which could have the potential to be rewarding, even be expanded. That, whilst it would be a niche title to sell, is a beat 'em up entirely with a distinct fighting style of aerial flips and kicks, without punches, matched by an aesthetic style that is also of interest. I will go ahead and say despite the issues with the game, I would not mind a Cinderella Escape game where, toning some things down, would be an adult fairy tale beat em up with this mechanic explored further.

Here I also admit the fact, as a PlayStation One and Two player growing up, I have a thing for even the cheapest of beat em ups. Not one-on-one fighting games, but a genre which was coming back into popularity in the 2010s of levels you traverse with a fighting game arsenal of moves, with Matt McMuscles himself contributing to a throwback game called The TakeOver (2016)¹, and in the midst of the first two Playstations was an era of smaller video game companies from Japan, and other regions, churning out lower budget games. The beat 'em up is one genre that came up a lot in that era, even if many did not get a Western release or I never got to from those released. One thing this genre has the potential to provide is that, alongside the fact you produce a few open levels, a character with a range of moves, and a few enemies, even if the time and resources are still needed, the efficiency of the mechanics means that you can add a variety of creative looks and styles to said genre mechanics. Cinderella Escape 2 Revenge is a low budget child of theirs from the era of Unity, the game engine which this was produced on. Even if these games have a potential of being repetitive, which will have to be addressed with Cinderella, they had an addictive quality for me and this was the same.

I say this not to insult Cinderella Escape 2 but warn that, due to its limited resources as a production self produced by Hajime Doujin Circle, and crowd funded, this game exists as a solidly made work in context but also very minimal in content due to the restrictions at hand. This could only expand beyond what we have here - more locations, more enemies, more moves beyond the few and the one special Cinderella has - if you had more resources, funding and time. Hajime Doujin Circle still tried with what they had here, which is the great note, as for a game which brazenly has a thing for dominatrix underwear on the female enemies, it invests in a tone and a narrative which is idiosyncratic for this type of production.

It has a serious narrative in the midst of itself in fact, in the Story Mode, of artificially made living dolls who, in this fairy tale world, are a lower class with incidents of them going on rampage causing further biases against them. The game is tackling a subject which is heavy  handed, and comes with things in its attempt to be dealt with that could be read in really awkward ways, but it is ambitious even for this game to try this. Even if the game is meant as much for titillation, it is trying to tackle subjects like racism and persecution, as one of the side characters Snow White, here a Goth Lolita, is in love with a doll, which is pretty ambitious. Even the main villain Pinocchio, a doll who has found a way to become human, has a tragic back-story with the witch character that helps Cinderella out. Told in in-game cut scenes, only the knowledge that, as you can buy new clothes for Cinderella, she will be dressed in whatever she has, or can end up in just her underwear because of how the game's fighting works, adds an air of absurdity to a sincerely told tale.

Even the light hearted aspects - the fourth wall breaking joke of the Fairy Godmother being 2D, that Cinderella is a ditz, one who when everyone presumes her to be a mythical fighter whose bound arms allow her to train to become more powerful, and goes along with it - feels like a premise that, on one side selling sex, is however on the other stretching against its restrictions, that contrast actually leading this to be a compelling premise to expand on. This game will still put people off, from the toggle to expand the lead's breasts to BDSM traps you occasionally encounter against the bosses. It is, due to how much was possible, still stuck with repetitious content too. What was created is solid in context, but Cinderella herself only has a few (if very flashy) moves, the one special thankfully insanely elaborate, spinning on one leg in pirouettes which would make a ballerina blanche, whilst the flips in the air with the basic moves are appropriately over-the-top. The limitations mean, alongside the locations per level being only a couple, you have limited enemies too.

Baring the camera, which is potentially fiddly, the game is fluid, Cinderella practically homing on opponents especially with the slide button. Challenge is found in enemies with long range or special attacks, which in a choice I praise the creators for, have visual prompts onscreen to help warn of ahead of time. In one case, when you are beating up the Seven Dwarves in a bar, because Snow White refuses to come back to her Queen mother, I legitimately had something memorable here early on which emphasised why I find this premise has more potential in it, something you could have elaborated on in a larger scale game, in this small tavern room brawl as their do charge rolls and fire projectiles. Even the whole idea of kicking a villain so hard their clothes explode off is a mechanic as, alongside being equal opportunity with males in their tighty whities, it is designed to leave something vulnerable to more damage. It is a mechanic that gets lost as Cinderella gets more powerful, but it is interesting to see even a fetishishtic aspect become part of the game, especially as Cinderella herself is in danger of this too. (Even the clothes and accessories, which you earn coins to buy, increase stats as you buy them in bulk).

Even the kinkiness of the game is less an issue than in terms of interpretation. Even as a heterosexual cis-male wary to not just presume a defence for such content, I have however become more wary of the concept of the "male gaze" because the notion of the gaze is more complex nowadays. More female gamers are recognised, as are more non-heterosexual gamers and more awareness of sexual desires being more complex, which really forces one to re-think the image of Cinderella here in leather fetish gear beyond just presuming it is objectifying, knowing full well that depending on the viewer, they themselves as a non cis-male gamer may be offended, may roll their eyes, may actually enjoy the game, or may even cosplay and/or draw illustrations of this character. Even if this is obscure choice for the later examples, we cannot presume everyone equates the same opinion, and I think more an issue here was the linking of violence is a bigger issue, if only because, whilst still very tame here, this does not have the major aspect of BDSM that you have the pre- and post- interactions with those involved in the role-play.  

If this game got rebooted, than you could find a way to keep its BDSM content, and tone some content down and increase others, especially if you brought in non-heterosexual male voices. This is the kind of game, just imagining if you ran with the kinkiness, you could still have as lewd in a crowd pleasing way, for many, even if you have a limited audience. Here as well some of it is in-game would have to be worked with mechanically, the traps here especially whilst eyebrow raising in the boss battles, from "Spanish horses" to chain jungles, they are, escaped through button mashing, annoying at times when the bosses will just spam them with shields up. If you find tuned everything the potential is rife for a lot of playfulness with fairy tales as a form if the aesthetic can be all inclusive and emphasised the humour more. Be it Three Buff Pigs, to a Snow Queen boss with Snow Bunnies and Frost Gimps, a humour and playful sexuality could be run with if you had more resources.

The story mode is slight, able to be played under two hours, and there are "Quests", challenges to increase your levels and earn coins for coins, though the later raising the potential issue of repetition with the resources the game has. Nonetheless, I found this game entertaining, and whilst it may seem ridiculous, honestly, to come to a game like this which is about the "fan service", the content which is meant to be erotic, and be far more interested in the skeleton of the premise and mechanics, that was what happened and what left a lasting impression. The optimist in me, if this ever got a reboot where anything was possible in ambition, would be interesting as we have had many adult fairy tales in a variety of medium and suitable audiences, including videogames, and one based on the fight mechanics and tone here with some content rearranged could work. Something like this which has some of this erotic content but is also more interested in other content feels like it could become something really memorable.

 

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1) As referred HERE.

Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971)

 

Director: Al Adamson

Screenplay: William Pugsley and Samuel M. Sherman

Cast: Lon Chaney, Jr. as Groton; J. Carrol Naish as Dr. Durea/Dr. Frankenstein; Zandor Vorkov as Count Dracula; John Bloom as the Frankenstein Monster; Jim Davis as Sergeant Martin; Regina Carrol as Judith Fontaine; Russ Tamblyn as Rico; Anthony Eisley as Mike Howard; Anne Morrell as Samantha; Maria Lease as Joanie Fontaine; Angelo Rossitto as Grazbo

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #264

It's like Dial-a-Prayer on the telephone.

You can see Al Adamson as a filmmaker in one film. As documented in Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life and Ghastly Death of Al Adamson (2019), he started off with a thriller with a female singer to promote. This film did not sell, was re-cut as Psycho A-Go-Go (1965) with scintillating go-go dancers. Again, this does not sell, so it is re-cut again into The Fiend with the Electronic Brain (1969), and then again as Blood of Ghastly Horror (1971), becoming a horror film with zombies and John Carradine. This is an apt prologue for Dracula vs. Frankenstein as, before you point out even this was recut too for its final version, Al Adamson was once someone I saw an occasional film by (Jessie's Girl (1975) on an obscure satellite channel, Black Samurai (1977) on Amazon Prime), someone with a notoriety but not a figure I thought of baring he made quite a few films in exploitation cinema. He was someone who worked and worked, trying to keep up with the trends of the era, even if his work had to be re-cut, and even trying to make a children's film, Carnival Magic (1983), even if considered lost for a long time afterwards.

Blood & Flesh, connected to a large scale restoration of his work by Severin Films in 2020, has to try to compact a lot, which is always an issue with cult film documentaries, but it offers a great diving board into Al Adamson as a filmmaker. His tale has sadly become infamous for the tragic ending, a filmmaker who was murdered and buried where the Jacuzzi was in his own home, but Adamson's career is fascinating and bizarre even if this had never happened for how, in the golden era of exploitation cinema in the sixties and seventies, he managed to cross with so many people, so many genres that came about, and even crossed paths with Charles Manson and the Manson family when he shot on Spahn Ranch. He is a text book example where auteurism as a concept does not always work as it should, as his films were made to entertain, and his reputation has been low for many, but he has a trademarks with his reoccurring casts, and his life and how his films came to be really add so much to the material itself onscreen.

Films like Dracula Vs. Frankenstein are divisive - I can think of the text on American regional horror films, Nightmare USA by Stephen Thrower, and how he buries the Al Adamson films (and Adamson himself) in those which exist in the period he covers - and I will be honest in saying, despite being a film where Jim Kelly fights an actual vulture, I thought Black Samurai when I saw it, as a Marc Olden novel adaptation in the Blaxploitation era, as tedious to sit through. Adamson as I get into cinema's outside world however is a curious outlaw, apt for the son of a New Zealand cowboy who, successful as a silent film western star, strove to be entirely independent with his films and, when his son stated making films as an independent, would star in his son's films as the cinematographer could. One thing Blood & Flesh highlights, in terms of an auteurist viewpoint, is that whilst the films were not necessarily of ideas of his, his work with his crews influences them. This can include staff being onscreen as much as in the back, his love and wife Regina Carrol in roles as in Dracula vs. Frankenstein, and a gamut of unexpected figures, those like Lon Chaney Jr. as aging film stars of the past, Russ Tamblyn of West Side Story (1961), who was an outsider soon after that film, and here even the stockbroker Roger Engel under the name Zandor Vorkov as Dracula.

The irony is knowing, according to Blood & Flesh, that Al Adamson's favourite films were musicals, and before I could imagine what an Al Adamson musical looked like, as a man who made films in other genres, he did make a musical and it was called Cinderella 2000 (1977), which even for me would to be something to be seen to be believed. Regardless of what you think of Dracula Vs. Frankenstein too, his career is also affected by the fact, even in the drive-in era where films were churned out, he struggled and was stuck in limbo with films shelves and constantly re-cut to try to sell them. Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, as mentioned, was an example, where those titular titans were not even in the original form, originally a tale of a mad doctor, played by Hollywood actor J. Carrol Naish near the end of his life, who out of a carnival exhibit in a coastal fair is experimenting on the resurrection and rejuvenation of human flesh, even if it means drugging the docile Lon Chaney Jr to a state of being kill-crazy, with an axe ready for decapitating a woman who with be put back together by Naish afterwards.

Unable to be sold, the film was changed with new footage, in this case introducing Dracula as interpreted by "Zandor Vorkov", who having acquired the puffy faced decayed corpse of Frankenstein's Monster, comes to Naish, the last heir of the Frankenstein family, to cut a deal to benefit each other. This all feels disjointed before anyone in the readership asks about this to himself or herself, this titular plot sequence bolted onto a work which would have structurally made more sense in its original form. That original narrative has a singer (Regina Carrol), after a musical number from an era before, searching for her missing sister at the fair Naish is. Dracula and the Frankenstein's monster, until the final act, are barely in the film, to the point that whilst there is an attempt to write Dracula into the narrative, the monster has no point baring one or two rampage sequences.

Considering that the film instead has a tangent into a guy named Mike, an older guy living on the beach with a shark tooth necklace, as a romantic lead and even some snapshot of the early seventies hippy movement, with demonstration footage and even a pair of hippies wanting to go to one in dialogue regardless of what it is for, I can see why Al Adamson gained the notoriety he did. His film here, regardless if it works, tries to be an entertaining film in spite of logical holes, and can wander off into tangents of he would rather be doing, especially anything with the love of his life Regina Carrol can be the centre of. The lengthy musical number in which she is introduced now makes so much sense knowing his tastes, his habit to cram in recognisable stars of the past (and a still young Russ Tamblyn as a sexually violent possessive biker) into the film causes more tangents happen.

With the only connective tissue being Naish's doctor apparently needing "donors" to feel feat to extract what he needs for his resurrection serum, the film as a result of its structure is a facsimile of a narrative, tropes floating between its stunt casting and what Adamson felt was interesting. This is where he gets interesting however, where even if he has a habit of making very slowly paced genre films means Dracula Vs. Frankenstein is frankly a mess, he nonetheless created films vibrant with who crossed his path and how this plays onscreen¹. The figures that appear onscreen bring so much to the material. Lon Chaney Jr., not talking at all and having throat cancer, still is dynamic with his facial features. J. Carrol Naish is clearly reading lines off-screen with cue cards at points, and yet is stil dynamic as a figure of classic Hollywood, and it shows an accidental progressiveness, for all his questionable choices, that Adamson cast him regardless of that fact he was wheelchair bond. The same goes for Angelo Rossitto, famous for films like Tod Browning's Freaks (1932) and Scared to Death (1947), who is cast as a carnival show barker helping Naish. Considering Scared to Death played off Rossitto's dwarfism as a demonising factor, in a film with Bela Lugosi, this also feels more progressive as, even if playing a villain, here he is spry and energetic for a man, feeling younger than his sixty plus years, who gets a lot of time onscreen, even pulling out a trick of eating money.

In mind to this film's convoluted origins, it does require an appreciation of a film like Dracula Vs. Frankenstein beyond its base form, of its creators and a willingness to find amusement, not irony, in when this film does waver. If you cannot, this sis not recommended seeing. If you can, as I am slowly becoming to appreciate in films like this, this was a very entertaining film. As I come to view films less in terms of standard forms of "quality", whilst that is important for some of the best ever made, but as constructs of the people behind them, Al Adamson is going to be of interest. He is going to have one potential barrier in that he wanted to make "entertaining" genre films, which means we are less likely to have the personal obsessions with the likes of a Jesus Franco or an Andy Milligan, but a film this notorious wins me over for the people who appear in it, its context of why everyone is there, and letting the film wander on in its mad world.

 

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1) As well as off-screen influencing onscreen too. Adamson had Vilmos Zsigmond, the legendary cinematographer, on Psycho A-Go-Go, as a Hungarian exile needing to find work early in his American career, and László Kovács on The Fakers, before it became the biker film Hell's Blood Devils (1970). Kovács, alongside the legacy of Easy Rider (1969) which he worked on, and was a film that helped other Adamson biker films be sold on, would cross paths between as eclectic as people as Adamson, Steven Spielberg on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) (which Zsigmond worked on), and Colonel Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, when it was not the mega business, who appeared onscreen in Hell's Bloody Devils as he did in a Herschell Gordon Lewis film from the exploitation film era.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

 

Director: Rachel Talalay

Screenplay: Michael De Luca

Cast: Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger; Lisa Zane as Maggie Burroughs; Shon Greenblatt as John Doe; Lezlie Deane as Tracy; Ricky Dean Logan as Carlos; Breckin Meyer as Spencer; Yaphet Kotto as Doc

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) Re-Review

 

Now I'm playing with power!

I wanted to view Freddy's Dead out of context of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. No original film, no other sequels to compare to, just looking at Freddy's Dead as the infamous film of the original horror franchise. Even Part 2, Freddy's Revenge (1985), has had a re-evaluation of its blatant and credible gay subtext. Here, as well, I wanted to look at the one film from the series helmed by a woman, Rachel Talalay, whose involvement with the franchise and New Line Cinema would have made her a great choice to step in to finish off this franchise in any role. At first, quoting Friedrich Nietzsche, than Freddy Krueger himself in a parody of the franchise's use of opening credit quotations, it was clear that this would be a goofier and irrelevant send off to a figure who, by this point, became a pop cultural star despite being a fictional child killer. In context, Freddy's Dead alongside being the result of this strange cultural cache the films have, despite that icky paradox, was always bolstered by context for me. When binging the franchise beforehand, where I even have a soft spot for Part 5, it could be defended as the necessary evil to heighten the plot of Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994), a fourth wall breaking but serious reinterpretation by series creator Craven, where the sillier sequels are talked of in the film as part of the "real" people becoming involved, with Krueger being a "real" character mythologized in these films to prevent him crossing over into the real world.

It however is established, when Freddy Krueger is introduced parodying the Wicked Witch of the West of The Wizard of Oz (1939), in a witch's hat and riding a broomstick, that this is no longer a scary figure but a comedic antihero. The tone of the comedy in this in its broadness eventually became awful to sit through in its tone. Even with Krueger wearing sunglasses on a beach in part 4, in 1988, you still had some semblance of the horror of the premise, but here there is something really tonally out of place. That this is a bigger budgeted film for horror, for a franchise, has to be factored in. This is worth bringing up here now, as pulling the curtain back, I have reached a point as a horror viewer (and a viewer in general) my tastes have sided to areas like no budget filmmaking and outsider art. Much of this area is cinema many would not defend, but has the virtue that it is regional and of an individual's personal influences, when even their ill thought-out comedy and tonal shifts factor in. Here, even with Talalay involved, I find Freddy's Dead really contrived, and to the point you cannot even argue for personal pleasure, but that it is disjointed and painful.

It also has the awkward factor of trying to sustain this franchise, by having lore newly added that feels overcomplicated. This is set up with a good and morbid idea, as Freddy Krueger has killed every teenager and child in his region baring one, who is sent out into the world, and falling into the presence of Maggie Burroughs (Lisa Zane), a councillor for troubled youths, who Krueger wants to prey on. What happens does nod to Dream Warriors (1987) with its group of young adults trying to fight Kruger, the third film and the one, I will be honest about, that for all its love in the franchise is for me probably the influence for how Elm Street as a franchise transitioned as it did. That could have however been worked around, especially whilst I view it as one of the less interesting sequels, Dream Warriors was good in context, and this in having the potential to go somewhere, with the likes of Yaphet Kotto in the cast, as a therapist with barely enough time to help the kids nor paid enough, and a morbidly exaggerated take on the town Krueger less childless, a place of deranged adults who wander their fairs and classes out of trauma.

What happens instead is how, baring the 2010 remake, this does become the worse of the franchise as even its dream sequences are not great. Elm Street had one huge virtue over other horror franchises from this time as because of its premise, a killer that attacked victims in their dreams, there were no rules in what you could do as long as the special and practical effects teams could conceive it. Even if the later films had shaky moments, like invisible martial artists and a dog peeing fire to resurrect Krueger in Part 4, that film by itself also had a déjà-vu sequence repeating a scene, or the likes of what Screamin' Mad George, a Japanese practical effects artist, brought to that film with the likes of the roach hotel sequence of someone turning into a cockroach. Here there are some creepy and inspired touches, such as the motif of an entire suburban house falling from out the sky in a reoccurring dream, but you get some terrible content.

By Dream Warriors, still a good film Dokken and all, you started getting the change, despite being a fictional child killer, of Freddy Kruger being cooler than the rest of the cast including the heroes. Thankfully, over the sequels, the films were still concerned with their protagonists, and it just meant Krueger started making wisecracks. Eventually however, alongside this being to blame for so many villains in horror films at this point making jokes, this perceived image of this character has completely taken over here, and even if you had levity in the previous films, here the line is blatantly crossed. Not even having cameos by Rosanne Barr and Tom Arnold, a then-married comedic couple from the TV show Roseanne (1988–1997), could be seen as the lower aspect, but how this stops trying to take itself seriously and how this even includes Robert Englund, despite his hardest returning as Krueger, playing a buffoonish version of the character.

Englund does his hundred percent, but for such a good actor in this world of genre cinema, this is beneath him, traumatising a deaf teen by cartoonishly scratching a giant blackboard, or that this film explicitly references the Power Glove, a misguided project by the video game empire Nintendo. The entire video game nightmare really emphasises where Freddy's Dead lost me entirely on this viewing, a reminder that whilst New Line Cinema have done a lot a good in their existence, they are a company whose batting average with the ideas they have can easily split into the cringe worthy. Here it is awful, knowing this was made in a time when the Power Glove, a way to play NES games on a glove, was once a sellable premise, alongside the fact that the sequence emphasises the bad ideas of the whole film, from In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly, even if a good song, feeling out of place or how the animation in the dream sequence is terrible.

This really presents a slippery slope that, at the time they decide to finish the franchise, they make many really self congratulatory decisions which feel misguided. The plot adds content, as happens in longer horror franchises, which neuters the original premise, as these franchises have an unfortunate habit of trying to explain the evil of their leads, in this case dream devil worms being behind Krueger's abilities to enter dreams. That and the huge tonal issues this film has as a result, such as the tragedy of a character dying contrasted by it being causes, out of a cartoon, of falling on a comically large bed of spikes pushes by Krueger in the middle of a road. Tonally as well, one of the hugest leaps comes in mind of the character Tracey (Lezlie Deane); standoffish, uncomfortable being touched, she is explicitly a victim of sexual abuse from her father, but attempting to use that for her nightmare sequence, unlike one of the earlier films, it really out of place here with the comedy.

It does not feel as a film enough of a spectacle, and even that feels at odds when, whilst for practical effects for the sake of them, this lacks most of the imagination of the previous ones in this series too. What it does end on, even if trying to including a back-story about Krueger's life as a married man, is ultimately throwing the kitchen sink of even a 3D glasses gimmick. This is signposted by a pair inexplicitly onscreen just for the moment, when Lisa Zane puts them on, you the viewer have to put them on, and it feels out of place especially when you cannot watch the film as intended. Back when I watched this within binging the original franchise, Freddy's Dead had a symbolic meaning of worth, that here with the bloat of the franchise, New Nightmare was explicitly about Freddy Krueger being a "real" demon that was kept at bay by horror sequels, giving this meaning. Watched by itself, this is bad, really bad, and it hurts to experience it without the softening blow of the accidental virtue it added to the film afterwards. Even with this having end credits going through the films of before, this definitely was not a great send off to this franchise, having needed a send off which thankfully lived up to something more meaningful.