The Seventh Curse (1986)

 

Director: Lam Ngai Kai

Screenplay: Wong Jing and Yuen Gai-chi

Based on the Dr. Yuen novel series of Ni Kuang

Cast: Chow Yun-fat as Wisely; Chin Siu-ho as Dr. Yuen Chen-hsieh; Dick Wei as Black Dragon; Maggie Cheung as Tsui Hung; Sibelle Hu as Su; Chui Sau-lai as Betsy; Elvis Tsui as Sorcrer Aquala

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Picture a Maggie Cheung, Chow Yun-fat film directed by the man who made 1991 live action adaptation of Riki-Oh. That is The Seventh Curse, told in an opening bookend over wine and colourful chatter such as aliens chopping off human toes.  It shows the fascinating world of Hong Kong cinema of the time. You can be in this film and than a few years later a Wong Kar-Wai or John Woo production. All are good, and this one is as unpredictable as you can get as, for what is a horror action work, it begins as a serious action movie where our lead Dr. Yuen Chen-hsieh (Chin Siu-ho) is introduced, brought into a hostage situation to help a person in dire straits, but with Maggie Cheung's reporter Tsui Hung compromising the situation by taking the role of a nurse to get a story on Yuen.

This is all before we get to an abrupt martial arts fight - it will be that unpredictable - where the combatant against Yuen is just a messenger telling him the blood curse he has had for a year since his trip to Thailand is about to burst. This is, in respect to the film despite its laissez faire attitude to some things, very bad as even making love can set it off, with blood vessels swelling and bursting, the seventh at Yuen's heart and fatal. It forces him to take the advice of Chow Yung Fat's Dr. Wisely, an occult specialise, and go back to Thailand to deal with an evil wizard who is so bad he sets a big headed demon creature onto people, called a "Ghost Child", with chest busting crimson showers ensuring. The source for all this is the work of Ni Kuang, a prolific figure who here is having his series of Dr. Yuen novels adapted, but is also a work which crosses over multiple characters of his as, whilst a side figure here, Yung Fat's Dr. Wisely is the protagonist of a series of novels by Kuang started in the sixties and reaching the millennium.  If there is any sense this has been exaggerated from the source, I look to director Lam Ngai Kai who has his own clear obsessions and delirious attitudes. He is however someone who can be incredible faithful to the source - the Riki Oh adaptation is insanely faithful to by Masahiko Takajo and Tetsuya Saruwatari's source work, but it barely covers a work even weirder and unable to be adapted on a sensible budget - so I would not be surprised a bit of this is the source texts transposed as much as possible. Considering this has the back-story, in the blood curse, of Yuen saving a female sacrifice to an old ancestor - a skeleton corpse prop who still gets a fight scene, glowing blue eyes and to ripe a man's head off - we are in a moment of Hong Kong cinema sadly no longer with us but magnificent in how you can never expected the obvious to transpire. The term "this goes up to eleven' is appropriate here.

Like The Boxer's Omen (1983), an infamous Shaw Brothers supernatural tale, this has its own logic with the arcane, like worms who reproduce so fast that, on contact, you rip your own stomach open to death as they pour out, or the blood curse induced by being forced fed bullets from slain people, or the antidote (least for a year) being a magic pellet cut from a maiden's bared breast. All is over the top - even the melodrama - as a rope trap splits a man in two like a wishbone rather than just throws them to their death, and in vast contrast, you have Maggie Cheung playing her perky reporter like a comedy protagonist in an entirely different film, which is awesome to see as, in the logic of this film, she can just acquire enough armaments from her dad's gold credit card to mow people down, or has extensive knowledge of traps from Vietnam War research to avoid that scene's pitfalls and take photos of all the newly acquired corpses. You can see how this is a film, with its eighties gel coloured lighting and absolute enforcement of using practical effects, that in any other context like today will blow people's minds, but it is surprising to know this would be a one-off in Hong Kong cinema at the time, just a vein of creativity and delirium that creators and collaborators, in the midst of the vast connective web of its film industry, worked within.

And it is crafted with care even with the monster costumes, in how a random piece of the arcane, the grotesque Ghost Child, is an elaborate puppet prop here even if in context it is more gruesome;  that it is created from the blood of a hundred crushed children, which is not shied away from in the slightest. Melding action cinema, with enough extras relying on wires when hit with shotgun blasts, and martial arts cinema, and horror, it is a maddening eighty plus minutes to experience for a very simplistic story, and it was crafted to make all the scenes stand out.  And it manages to never peter out either, which makes this even more compelling. When Cheung is possessed, it is not enough to have her cured by regular means, but by being stuck into a bath of seven types of black animal blood, whilst the finale includes a Ghost Child vs. Old Ancestor battle which is as gory as it is ridiculous seeing to puppetry effects thrown at each other. The cast never feels like they are coasting through this either, as whilst Cheung is full of chirpy imagery, Chow Yun-fat as Mr. Wisely gets to be a badass just by knowing how to break cursed like a living textbook, and occasionally having a rocket launcher without context when that does not work.

Ni Kuang himself is an insanely prolific writer, prolific in also wuxia and science fiction storytelling, his work adapted to multiple formats over the decades. The Wisely series itself, prolific in number and not even the main novel series here being sourced from, was adapted into the director's last film The Cat (1992), and between comics, radio dramas, television and films, this series captured an audience back in the day which won many over. When there are over 145 in the series from the early sixties, this alone with Ni Kuang is someone whose mark is likely left on more titles, and thus makes The Seventh Curse even in its madness more compelling to consider in context as a result.

Games of the Abstract: Zombie Revenge (1999)

 

Developer: Sega / Data East

Publisher: Sega

One to Two Players

Arcade / Sega Dreamcast

 

Released around the time of The House of the Dead 2 (1998), this is what happens when you take the light gun game franchise to the beat-em-up genre, the results of which, honestly, is not as refined as one would wish, if however with a lot of charm to it which overcomes some game play aspects which could have been revised. Starting as an arcade game, and being ported to the Sega Dreamcast, this is a spin-off to the original franchise, which would continue into the 2010s, in which its central villain, the definition of a stereotypical anime villain (with his hair and brooding alone), wishes to get revenge on his parents being the experiments of the military through setting about the zombie apocalypse, a reoccurring theme of the franchise, with members of the AMS (stalwart protagonists of this series) needing to stop him.

Beyond references, including the last level beginning at the Curien Mansion, the setting of the first 1996 House of the Dead game, this is a side story which could be viewed as its own narrative. The undead have arisen and whilst there is an emphasis on melee attacks, this emphasizes prominent use of firearms in a beat-em-up setting, a novel direction to have taken. With its own separate button, firearms can run out of ammo but with enough around from each slain enemy, their emphasis make them integral and to be lean onto. They lock onto the nearest target until the sight goes red, getting a powerful shot that can cleave a mere zombie down instantly, and you can even juggle enemies in the air with shooting them over and over for a combo.  

Whilst there is a lot to work with – power moves, tactical rolls – the biggest issue with the game is that you could have refined the interesting mechanics for this hybrid, and there are moments which could have been improved more, for the combat and also to be fairer. There are also moments where the game dangle additions that would have made these even more entertaining only to be slighter in their appearances, such as the few novelty weapons you can pick up between standard machine guns and shotguns. Most of them, weirdly, come in one level, where you can get an industrial drill you can impale zombies on, a gasoline can which (with a flamethrower nearby) you can create patterns of fire using a heat source, and a few additional weapons, only to never return and be that over-the-top in content again. The only thing remotely close to this section afterwards is when a certain annoying type of enemy being introduced, like the flea men in the Konami Castlevania series but in dapper suits, allows you to nick their hatchets and throw them like boomerangs that do not come back.

Thankfully there is a lot of proudly over the top content here. It is a cool concept, using a gun as your primary striking move in this genre, with the potential to combo with bullet and fist, or knocking the enemy down and getting a head shot in. The trio of AMS agents you can play emphasizes this fact – your stock male lead that is balanced and the female lead is weaker, but best with firearms, to give an example of this. Then there is the really idiosyncratic character of Rikiya Busujima, making up the trio, speaking entirely in Japanese even in the English dub and based on actor Yusaku Matsuda, by way of a patch of skin on his face that looks like the Osamu Tezuka character Blackjack, who also has no jump but runs in a sprint instead and does a power shove that sends zombies onto the floor.

What keeps the game immensely rewarding is also its goofiness. The game’s sense of camp is found in that you will have only one person here to rescue, a woman, and she becomes a post-credit gag, or how one of the bosses, among a gallery of grotesque monstrosities, is a hulking missile launching goliath whose weak spot detaches and starts running around, a little gremlin trying to saddle your face if you are not playing duck season on it back. House of the Dead as a franchise is fascinating in general here and in the main series games, in terms of horror in any media, as it is legitimately morbid in terms of mood, revealing in fears of mortality and the uncanny in the undead, only to contrast this with an optimistic heroics of its lead and the humour (intentional and unintentional) of its over-the-top set pieces. It can conjure some horrifying enemies here, like the giant head which for its laser attack produces a tiny figure on the tip of its tongue, yet also is ridiculous, such as those flea man like creatures mentioned before or how a set piece involves having to stop a train, by pulling a single giant leaver down enough times, like this is an action blockbuster. The only real shame with the game is moments where the merging of genres does produce flaws, such as how, whilst possible to avoid, that enemies are able to use guns can lead to you losing a life instantly if trapped, especially zombies with shotguns.

This was a one-off, where this melding of genres could have gone further with improvements, but House of the Dead focused on the light gun origins rather than ever trying this again. (Instead, of all things, we got Pinball of the Dead (2002) for the Game Boy Advance, and I would be remised to not mention the Typing of the Dead spin off that encourages superior typing skills). The disappointing thing about this not getting a follow up is that, unlike some polygonal beat-em-ups, this avoided over pitfalls of the transition of the genre into three dimensions, so there was a solid structure this game could have followed up from in a hypothetical sequel. I do come to what we got with some disappointment – mainly that, next to another game like Dynamite Cop (1998) that also got a Dreamcast port from the arcades, this could have been more ridiculous and more fairer than it turned out to be – but there is enough here for those with the patience for it in the rare area of horror themed beat-em-ups.

The World YAMIZUKAN (2017)

 

Director: Noboru Iguchi

Screenplay: Noboru Iguchi, Oolongta Yoshida, Takashi Iizuka and Uuronta Yoshida

Voice Cast: Takumi Saitou as the Storyteller

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

 

The really obvious aspect, if surprising thing to learn of, that needs to be brought up is that the director is that Noboru Iguchi behind The Machine Girl (2008), who has been a collaborator with the studio behind this micro-series a few times, studio ILCA. The Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories franchise is one of their longest (and ongoing) works, over multi series adapting short horror stories told in a way based on the kamishibai method of story-telling, street storytellers who used illustrated miniature stages, with YAMIZUKAN being very much the more explicitly inspired by Western (especially American) horror tropes. The best way to approach this series too, for the best experience, is to not try to take it all  seriously, as some of the plot twists in this work are clearly ridiculous on purpose. Still gleefully macabre, there are however times where this feels like a send-up on the genre, and to those who can appreciate even the plot twists that come out of nowhere, this will be a worthwhile experience just in terms of the experimentation in the varying animation and illustration styles brought in too. Even live action to really catch viewers off guard.

 

For the full review, follow the blog link HERE.

Mr. Bones (1996)

 

Developer: Zono

Publisher: Sega

One Player

Sega Saturn

 

In horror, skeletons force one to concede our mortality. Take away the flesh, even if one is spiritual or religious and believe in the immortal soul, and the bones are left on the earth which once kept a person up right when mortally alive. In pop culture however, this sobering thought is constantly undercut by the uncanny and sometimes humorous absurdity of skeletons on t-shirts riding motorcycles on fire or even dancing in synchronized choreography, as made iconic by the 1929 Disney animated short The Skeleton Dance, which was a short produced back in black and white where a group jauntily partake in dance in a cemetery. In scientific medicine, bones cannot move in the human body (or in other species) without the muscles connected to them, muscles to pull and relax to allow one to fold an arm up to the chest and to flex straight again. As a result, skeletons in mythology and pop culture are innately uncanny for their ability to overcome this rational issue and gleefully swing swords in Jason and the Argonauts (1963), through the work of Ray Harryhausen, sing as Jack Skeleton does in A Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) without seemingly a tongue let alone vocal cords, and here rock out blue guitar riffs in Mr. Bones.

Mr. Bones is a damn good representation of the Sega Saturn as a console, one tragically doomed to failure all but in the Japanese market, at the wrong time in trends in the West, not helped by the storm Sony with the Playstation had, and to not be well preserved in retro releases despite the fact that it is full of idiosyncratic games. One of the titles Sega hoped would sell the system and promote a new joy pad was Nights into Dreams (1996), which was as atypical as you could get next to Crash Bandicoot (1996) on the Playstation, a surreal flying game with a non-binary lead in a game openly based on Jungian psychology. That was one of the games that got a release in the West, and between the cult games and those only kept in Japan, you have some curiosities. From Haunted Casino (1996), strip erotic card and gambling games based on Western casinos and horror iconography, to Enemy Zero (1996), Kenji Eno’s take on Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) as a full motion game with invisible enemies you have to detect by sound, horror and games suitable for Halloween alone are really idiosyncratic from the Saturn’s back catalogue even if a small selection, and Mr. Bones among them had enough personality and weirdness just by itself to stand out.

Mr. Bones comes to us from Ed Annunziata and Zono. Annunziata came to Sega by 1990 and the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, the most prominent contribution in his career being the Ecco the Dolphin series, an environmentally conscious franchise which had games after the Mega Drive/Genesis but really had its largest run of entries back for that console and the Sega CD. Mr. Bones was one of two titles Annunziata worked on for the Sega Saturn, but this was developed by Zono, part of a strange era for Sega in the 32-bit console period where iconic licenses of theirs never came to the Saturn despite being popular in the 16 bit one, or came in curious ways. Even for those which did arrive, we got a Shinobi game, Shinobi X/Legions (1995), with digitized actors, and Streets of Rage and Golden Axe were taken from the beat-em-up genres and made into one-on-one fighting games. We, notoriously, never got an official Sonic the Hedgehog game for the Saturn, only tie-ins, and those said to be in production like Eternal Champions were cancelled or never came to be. Some idiosyncratic characters were made for the Saturn sadly left in the dust, from Bug! (1995) to Clockwork Knight (1994), and Ed Annunziata attempted it twice over the Saturn, full of personality just in their leads let alone their curious gameplay styles. Even Three Dirty Dwarves (1996) however, developed by Hungarian developer Appaloosa Interactive seems more “conventional” next to the two as it is still a quirky take on the beat-em-up which briefly gets into a baseball mini-game among other stages, whilst Mr. Bones, based on an original premise by Annunziata, is a mass of various genres.

One night, vampire magician DaGoulian with his occult drum set summons a skeleton army from the dead, brainwashed to let him take over the world, only to have that one percent issue to compromise his plan transpired, that one skeleton (voiced by Fitz Houston) was resurrected and still has his freewill intact. Before he can process his new un-life, the titular Bones in the first levels has to escape from the skeleton army sent after him, beginning with a pursuit scene running from said red eyed skeletons, jumping over tomb stones and ducking rocks being lobbed his way. You do have to describe the game, with spoilers, to even begin to explain what happens throughout as countless genres and gameplay styles like a mini-game compilation are put together here to tell the tale of this skeleton with a heart of gold and a taste for blue music. This does admittedly present the one aspect too that could put people at arm’s length from Mr. Bones, in that these levels vary in tone and some are frustrating to actually play, even if you unlock them in level select, and can try them again to beat them and progress the story.

It also becomes exceptionally quirkier as it goes alone, making sense at first having escape the skeletons only to be trapped on top of a mausoleum roof, dodging your bony-like, and then a platforming section which enforces one of the key aspects found throughout the levels regardless of gameplay style, that with more damage you take, Mr. Bones loses limbs with greater ease until you are a head on a spine. This can be prevented by increasing your level of “skeletism”, the force that brought him to life and can be acquired as health through various cosmic blue entities of the spirit world, usually butterflies, and be able to reattach limbs with the greater sense of them remaining attached. Things take a curveball when you encounter a blind man in a cabin, evoking the legacy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in how, alongside its iconic central figure, one aspect which thankfully was brought back in the Universal films, Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and continued from the novel in countless films is the blind man in the cabin who can help the monster without their appearance bringing forth a barrier. (Even a non-horror Alfred Hitchcock film, Saboteur (1942), had this trope of all things at one point in its thriller plotline). In this case, Mr. Bones is taught the power of electric blues guitar, providing one of its best virtues of the music.

One of the more idiosyncratic aspects of this era is the amount of people from legendary bands who went into video game composition. Former member of The Police Stewart Copeland, who had already a long score composer career at that point, working on the original Spyro the Dragon games, to the Sega Saturn, where sadly mostly in Japanese only releases this transpired: John Petrucci of Dream Theatre working on Digital Pinball: Necronomicon (1996), a game tragically never released in the West as a pinball game based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft, and Ian McDonald of King Crimson and Foreigner working on Wachenröder (1998), a steampunk based JRPG. One which thankfully came to the West is Mr. Bones, where Ronnie Montrose composed the score. The late Ronnie Montrose, before his solo career where this score came within, is likely to be known for Montrose, also known as the band where Sammy Hager was the lead singer early in his career before his own solo career and the Van Hager era. This is a sumptuous blues rock soundtrack in dire need of re-assessment, spoken as a heavy metal and rock fan that yet, growing his music tastes over the decades even beyond guitar music, came to appreciate blues music early on not as a genre appropriated by dull white vocalists but full of vibrancy. Instead it was legendary figures from John Lee Hooker to Muddy Waters, and when it was appropriated, it was figures like ZZ Top to Stevie Ray Vaughan who made good blues rock music, which Mr. Bones score fully commits to. Here, it is fun seeing a skeleton stop other skeletons from fighting through an admittedly confusing (but thankfully not difficult) rhythm guitar section by the power of electric blues riffs, to the point the audience finds lighters to lift up despite the issue of not having pockets.

Platforming is the basic meat of many levels, following a triptych of levels where, with accursed bats stealing your limbs if given the chance, and giant lumberjacks to avoid, you need to get around and reach goals where you may need just one arm to pass, a button on the Saturn controller allowing you to implode. Yes, there is also the ill-advised ability to connect your arms back on without a rib cage, which looks wrong even if you exist as a skeleton able to still move. The platforming can be awkward, but it is a series of levels which are sufficient enough without taking too much of your time. This also presents, not a negative of the game, but the fascinating circumstances of this being a work you can beat in less than two hours over the two discs it is contained on, effectively a 16 bit game brought into the full motion video era, be it where you see the old tropes of throwing a lot of obstacles over these three levels, or how this culminates in forcing one to run away from rolling timber set to southern banjos. Again you get rhythm gaming with access to the infernal drum kit, not with sticks but hand drums, which is a case of catching up with the right one indicated.

It is after this I will argue, before the disc change, Mr. Bones knocks out the best levels, and where I came to admire this game, when it gets existential, emotional and deliciously weird. The platforming level over broken shards in space may annoy some, but set to a spoken word piece set to blues riffs, about the meaning behind blues music as an expression of emotion, is a beautiful moment in a game that is entirely for the most part over the top, before it gets to the cherry on top, a legitimately great level in the history of gaming, where you play a game of bouncing yourself off your own skull. The reason the game is two discs long is that gameplay scenes do use FMV for them, as well as in the cut scenes, and this is an example where this is used to a great advantage, where having to bounce yourself using yourself (and not knock your “ball”, curled up, off-screen) to collect parts back, when you collect the item for that section, you having a stacking doll-like scenario, truly surreal, where the giant skull you have bounced off becomes what you have to bounce off another giant skull of yourself on and on until the section is entirely complete. It is the best moment of the game, though the first disc itself ends having to travel into the screen through a vortex collecting your limbs back again, Mr. Bones as a character constantly haunted by the fact his bones, whilst brought together by skeleticism, seemingly wander off on their own accord.

Disc two, whilst with highlights and weird tangents, does however show the issues of how finickety some of the levels were and that Mr. Bones could have done with some revisions in places. This has some of the most frustrating moments of the entirely set of levels, beginning from the get-go with our lead trying to navigate an underwater tunnel without hitting rocks in-screen. Moments like this do show, honestly, that some fine-tuning to the difficulty were needed, and there are a few examples here. Having to release a skeletal dragon for example, by bouncing off the giant screws of its chains, and more so when, having apologized for their temper, they help fly you to DaGoulian‘s castle, where there is mandatory damage to go through all the stain glass windows showing his life, a cool visual touch but having to maneuver Mr. Bones, swaying like a drunken sailor on a boat in the claws of the dragon, past hazards and collecting the health to be prepared for the next stain glass window is a frustrating challenge in itself. The most egregious is an ice lake stage where, having to navigate the thin ice, it is precarious to an extreme and only needs you to fall in the water twice before the extreme cold suck you into the currents below. Thankfully, in contrast to this, you have some of the strangest moments of this entire game, like recreating the civilians Lilliput of Guillver's Travels, the iconic extra tiny people of the Jonathan Swift novel only touched upon once, with these characters never appearing again baring the level where you protect them from spiders. Weirder still, worthy of historical record in videogame lore, is thwarting a boss by way of telling jokes, which is up there next to Alex Kidd and the Enchanted Castle (1989) with beating bosses through Paper, Rock, Scissors, only with less concerns of irritating random chance, and more Dad jokes.

It is night and day why this would have not been a hit, too weird to live to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, if thankfully existing, but this has to also be factored in with the fact that, despite all the fascinating games I have nodded to just from 1996, that was already seen as a time when the Sega Saturn was failing in the West, meaning even the cult games would have been effected.  Mr. Bones on a preview demo on a disc called Sega Flash Vol. 3 (1996), released with issue #15 of Sega Saturn Magazine in the United Kingdom, was where I first learn of this game as a kid, part of a holy collection of Saturn games mostly never gotten to and rare - Keio Flying Squadron 2 (1996), Die Hard Arcade (1996), Dark Savior (1996), Dragon Force (1996), Enemy Zero - which showed that, whilst the reality was Sony were winning, it did not diminish how many idiosyncratic games they had regardless of the flagging virtues of the Saturn. All those alongside Mr. Bones had European releases in PAL and are now mostly rare, a murder's row of games, even if they all had flaws, one would argue for their preservation and re-release on a Saturn mini console, Mr. Bones a really odd game outmatched in terms of the virtues for all its flaws. Mr. Bones comes with me better with its good moments and the aesthetic really standing out, less morbid as the final boss battle is bouncing back attacks with one's guitar solos and a villain forgetting they are a vampire, more broadly spooky. [Spoilers] It has the tone where, for a slight ending, it is still a good happy one, glad to see, where a character like Mr. Bones gets to enter a dimensional portal and be with a female banshee he wooed with his music earlier in disc one. [Spoilers End] A potentially one-dimensional figure, a literal skeleton, he is given enough life literally by voice actor Fitz Houston and the game, memorable since childhood for images welding that guitar like a king, and I can only wishing this was preserved and re-released. Zono as a studio sadly did not last long into the 2000s, whilst Ed Annunziata was able to continue on, even moving on into mobile phone gaming and its possibilities. It did lead to him having direct involvement with the Nokia N-Gage as a game producer, which did not go well at all for that handheld console/phone hybrid, but there was at least an attempt.

Sorority Babes in the Dance-A-Thon of Death (1991)

 

Director: Todd Sheets

Screenplay: Todd Sheets and Misty Wolfe

Cast: Kelly Hodges as Tiffany; Lisa Krueger as Beverly; Holly Starr as Liz; Laura Fuhrman as Kelly; Craig Wilcox as Jimmy; Jenny Admine as Muffy; Veronica Orr as Sherry; J.T. Taube as Chuck; Matthew Lewis as Tommy; Liz Marchicello as Sandra; Carles Monroe as Mr. Ray; Emmet Brennen as Hank; Carol Barta as Bertha

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Fuzzy VHS print, teased out eighties hair for a female demon exorcist who looks like a member of a female glam metal band, and micro budget gore can only open up an early Todd Sheets film. Sadly however, alongside the fact that character never returns, and is apparently from the early 20th century despite being dressed like an extra in a Mötley Crüe video, this is the one film as a fan of Todd Sheets even I have to admit needs to be approached with caution, even as someone who appreciated films like Goblin (1993) to Nightmare Asylum (1992) in spite of their flaws.

And yes, this is meant as a tie-in to David DeCoteau's Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (1988) in name, which is apt as he is an executive producer here, having produced a few of Todd Sheets films from this time. Unlike DeCoteau's film, where a sorority initiation ceremony at a bowling alley conjures up a genie, here a sorority initiation is going to happen, to stay at an abandoned collage all night, and someone made the bad idea to buy an old crystal ball for the pyjama party and hold a séance. The crystal ball smokes before they even get there, knocks the sorority members out and, confused waking up, now have problems other than what to do that night at the party. Two guys trying to get in will be dragged into this scenario, and an elderly heterosexual couple, regretting the crystal ball being sold from their antique store, look at get it safely back.

I think even diehard fans of Todd Sheets would admit this is a difficult film to appreciate if they have watched this, Sheets' career a prolific one from 1984 where, barring from 2005 to 2013, he has been making films for multiple decades with his earliest work the most micro-budget of homemade regional horror films in the VHS medium. Those early films are acquired tastes, but even next to Nightmare Asylum, one of the more difficult films from this era, this is a dry and improvised film at even only an hour long. Charm is found appreciating the director's personality onscreen, including Enochian Key providing the music (barring the public domain classical pieces), but this is a languid film of plot and a lot of dialogue. There is some moments here for me as someone able to appreciate these films, such as the humour in an ordinary older man, who inherited the crystal ball, talking in a banal shooting location about his grandmother accidentally summoning a kandarian demon as if it is a normal conversation piece, or a non-copyright infringing version of the game Twister called "Bimbo Twister", with person shaped pads like Warrior Green or Bimbo Brown.

There is however a lot even I struggled with, not even the randomness (and production and sound issues) of Nightmare Asylum in hindsight as difficult as this could be. There is a lot of talking, even Wayne's World references, heavily improvised and with the sense this film seems not fully formed.  There is even the sense of this with Todd Sheets being compromised, as the premise of a possessed sorority member stalking people in an abandoned collage is far less elaborate than Zombie Rampage (1989), an earlier film from him. I come to this wanting to see this film for years but it is really an odd duck where the one consistent aspect to any of this is being a self mocking micro budget film that teases jokes about micro budget horror films. It is amusing at times, such as the sorority member obsessed with movies about homicidal ice cream men who turns the lights off for a joke at the worst time, but it also has an ominous hindsight to it as if the film is admitting self defeat at its lack of success and is mocking itself.

My youngest self would have despised this film, and in terms of exploitation too, there is not a lot here too. Despite the passing reference to "gazoongas", I would not expect nudity from a film like this from its female cast, trying their hardest, but more surprising is the lack of gore. It is not needed either but with Todd Sheets, who is a proud fan of horror cinema, one of the charms of these early films was the pure throw anything at the wall sense of fun they had, even if it was animal guts from the butchers as improvised human intestines. The closest here is a stake through the mouth shot with it behind the actor's head in the right place with no gore, or the possessed using the primary schoolyard trick of how to show you have taken your eyeballs out to let someone know you have turned. Again, it feels like Todd Sheets' hands were tied behind his back or something was off. People not used to these films would even hate Goblin, full of splatter, but now a production like that has an additional goofiness and charm to appreciate.

What you get here is ultra minimalistic, a lot of improvised talking, and you can even hear someone (likely Sheets himself) say "Cut!" at the end of a scene, which becomes something not to mock but actually a memorable moment by accident. What is on purpose when it occasionally happens can be amusing and why I like these types of films, such as the possessed with a cheese eating grin on her face pogoing herself in a door repeatedly, or accidentally confusing saline water for corns on feet for holy water. Even for those prepared for a film like this thought, I still have to warn them about the sluggishness of the film, as well as anyone with epilepsy as the final exorcism scene will be an issue for anyone with this. I was prepared for years that Sorority Babes in the Dance-A-Thon of Death was a challenge, but I still feel disappointed that this was the case. I hoped it would gain a perverse entertainment against its clear flaws. It is a film worth preserving in Todd Sheets' career in terms of how unpredictable it is as an independent micro-budget filmmaker at the time, as it belongs to the delirium of his earliest work, but I would approach it sadly with the patience of a saint.

Frankenhooker (1990)

 

Director: Frank Henenlotter

Screenplay: Frank Henenlotter and Robert Martin

Cast: James Lorinz as Jeffrey; Patty Mullen as Elizabeth; Joseph Gonzalez as Zorro

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

My enjoyment of Frankenhooker means more knowing this was not a fun film for its director Frank Henenlotter to make, knowing its origins was a hastily improvised pitch at the desk of producer James Glickenhaus, director of exploitation film The Exterminator (1980) who also produced genre films. The premise Henenlotter wanted to pitch was James Glickenhaus, a bizarre insect related piece that was too weird to produce, and not wanting to lose his chance, Henenlotter instead improvised both sequels to Basket Case (1982), the cult film which made his name, and Frankenhooker itself.

Frankenhooker and Basket Cast 2 (1990) were made back to back, and even the film's special effects artist Gabriel Bartalos even admitted that this could have been a terrible and tasteless film if they did it badly¹. Neither helping is that they had to acquire a second director of photography mid-shot - with Robert A. Burns of The Exterminator - which lead to arguments between him and Henenlotter¹. It is a title, instantly standing out, that thankfully did not turn into a mess under this context, tasteless and absurd but, unlike other films, thankfully living up to the premise. The tone is set up with just the introduction of our lead Jeffrey (James Lorinz), our Dr. Frankenstein stand-in who, with his medical and electrician's knowledge, is working on a brain with an eyeball on the kitchen table at the barbecue birthday of his girlfriend's father. An unfortunate lawnmower accident which the flame of his life, Elizabeth Shelley (Patty Mullen), making her into "tossed salad", leaves him grief stricken and wishing to rebuild her.

It is, for a low budget title which Henenlotter was struggling through, still an achievement for a lurid premise which, in another's hand, would have been a cop-out and lack personality, just a catchy premise and a poster, something seen far too much in genre cinema. Frank Henenlotter unlike others, for example, in all his films has premises which go with their ridiculous ideas to their fullest, how into their absurdity they run with idiosyncratic streaks and how you are interested in these characters in these stories even if their stories are insane, or there are quirks like Jeffrey giving himself trepanning with a drill to help his mental faculties. And with credit to him and co-screen writer Robert Martin, Jeffrey is a balancing act in how to make a character who is likable in a very naive way but also with his own folly in his desires, helped considerably by James Lorinz playing him. James Lorinz is an actor who could have had a bigger filmography in terms of roles with a lot of time onscreen, including a small (but memorable) role in Street Trash (1987), making this one of his biggest position in terms of this.  

The joke becomes as much that Jeffrey is a man who thinks he can rebuild his girlfriend into the "perfect" one, not just to resurrect Elizabeth. It does become about commodification even if the film is openly playing to it in a crass way right down to the title, where Jeffrey despite being sympathetic is so because of how much a lovable doofus he is, someone who in vast contrast is yet the butt of the joke for objectifying the sex workers he will need to use as literal body parts, not different from the pump Zorro (Joseph Gonzalez) who deals crack and brands his women with "Z" on their shoulders. It is a sleazy film in idea, reflecting how on the cusp of New York City soon changing into the nineties, Henenlotter was clearly inspired (filming the likes of Basket Cast there) on how many sex workers he said to have seen filming in New York on the streets at night, where also the "Super Crack" idea came from, a subplot reflecting the crack epidemic of the same period¹. It is however poignant, for a film from a proud exploitation film fan who does not skim the luridness, that this even as a horror comedy makes the joke most of the time a guy's terrible desire to turn his girlfriend into his ideal, which will bite him in the butt to comedic and perverse effect as this goes. Considering scenes within the film, like Jeffery measuring women for the perfect parts, and how he is not the dominant person, the sex workers the stronger voices, and by the time Elizabeth becomes the titular figure, and Patty Mullen gets to stretch herself with her gurning and her vocal calls, and it is established that he is the fool in the story, even if a lovable one, rightly to be damned in the eye catching final scene. [Major Spoilers] Henenlotter always ends his films with eye-catching final scenes, and with Jeffrey in a woman's body due to circumstances, and with the dialogue repeated from another's mouth, it becomes a deliciously macabre morality tale for a funny finale [Spoilers End].

With NYC footage stolen without permits, Frankenhooker is a labour of love in spite of its rushed origins and Henenlotter's stresses about the production thankfully led to a good film. It fires with all cylinders in whit and imaginative perversity even before Mullen starts stealing the film in her purple hair piece and giant Karloff boots, even before you get to one of the more ridiculous scenes involving the aforementioned Super Crack. A mere McGuffin to get around Jeffrey being too evil in carving women up, it however leads to one of those real out-there scenes in horror cinema especially as it is set up with a literal guinea pig being blown up first. It would be horrible to see in real life, but the scene of exploding sex workers, with no gore whatsoever and the right side of tastelessness rather than offensive, even with a lot of female nudity, is insane, ridiculous and took months to even create. Consisting of exploding the mannequins made from the actresses involved, from the adult film industry and centrefold models, and a lot of sparklers, it is a one-off scene for any film to have and will stay with you.

Gabriel Bartalos himself deserve his credit for this film, from the rich era of great practical effects designers who put their own voices on the films with their directors and writers. Here Bartalos is able to bring in over-the-top images to life, like Elizabeth's character in her full rebuild appearance, still absurd but looking like she was built from human remains regardless of similarity, or the creations accidentally made from the spare body parts, an estrogen based fluid Jeffrey uses to preserve them and lighting, coming from the storage fridge as hybrids beyond human form. It is an underappreciated art, Bartalos someone, with those who work with him, who has spanned high art and genre work without discrimination. He worked with artist Matthew Barney as a practical effects designer on multiple films like Cremaster 3 (2002) and Drawing Restraint 9 (2009). If Drawing Restraint 9  led Bartalos to work directly from musician Björk, then Barney's wife, than he could on the opposite side of the coin work with the Insane Clown Posse, which shows how diverse and interesting a career of a practical effects artist can be, deserved as figures like him honed their crafts with the likes of Frank Henenlotter.

Even without a cover quote from Bill Murray of all people, the result of technical production on this film being done in the same studio as Murray's Quick Change (1990) was, and Murray being intrigued by the rushes he was seeing¹, Frankenhooker comes with numerous virtues as a mad, inventive and sincerely made genre film. In his sadly small but strong filmography, Frank Henenlotter may have been inspired by exploitation cinema, but he thankfully avoiding the part about conning viewers out of their money with just the sizzle of the promotion, something Frankenhooker is an attachment to.

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1) Taken from Your Date's on a Plate: The Making of Frankenhooker (2012), a production directed by Calum Waddell from High Rising Productions.

Two Thousand Maniacs (1964)

 

Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Screenplay: Herschell Gordon Lewis

Cast: Connie Mason as Terry Adams; William Kerwin as Tom White; Jeffrey Allen as Mayor Buckman; Shelby Livingston as Bea Miller; Ben Moore as Lester MacDonald; Jerome Eden as John Miller; Gary Bakeman as Rufus 'Rufe' Tate; Stanley Dyrector as Harper Alexander

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Following on from Blood Feast (1963), the most telling thing about his follow-up in the eventual gore trilogy is that Two Thousand Maniacs is how much of a step up in production this turned out to be. Set up as a group of six Northerners welcomed into a Southern town called Pleasant Valley, four in one car and a hitchhiker played by Blood Feast star William Kerwin with a female driver in another, you can tell from the get-go the budget and production of the film, even if still lower budget, was improved, taking the splatter film template Lewis created a year before and placing it within a full narrative.

The immediate thing to talk about is its theme song. Outside of its original context, it is a difficult song to digest, as its lyrics are from the perspective of Southerners threatening that "the South will rise again", an issue in the same way as a Confederate flag is because of how, to express Southern culture, unfortunately this has involved using the symbolism of the Confederates who practiced slavery. As an earworm, sung by Herschell Gordon Lewis himself as well as written by him, this makes this a guiltier issue to deal with, because it is a damn good song in terms of being stuck in the brain. In context though, it is perfect, as even if this is a splatter film first, the choice of its subject, and looking at both stereotypes of the South, and the uneasy relationship in culture between the Northern states and the South since the Civil War, is prominent and deliberate even as an exploitation film. Set in 1965 at the bicentennial of the end of the Civil War, the film is still meant to be a splatter film for entertainment at heart, but it is distinct touch from Herschell Gordon Lewis to tackle the conflicting emotions of the North and the South post-Civil War even within this film's playful tone, [Plot Spoilers] how the Pleasant Valley town is full of literal ghosts out for revenge for what Northern soldiers did to them when alive during the conflict [Spoilers End].

This is still a very goofy film, openly so with a sense of humour, for how many films has one such murder among its string of them being a game of hitting a tiny target to drop a giant rock onto someone? That or the sequence involving a very dangerous version of a barrel roll, played for sick humour as with Blood Feast and the director's other films? It still presents moments that, in context, are pretty nasty, as this feels like the cousin of Blood Feast with someone getting an arm axed off, but as with that film, it managed to be almost charming in spite of this. Unlike Blood Feast, the humour here is far less unintentional but deliberate, part of many tonal changes which transpire in just a year from the previous production. A considerable change of emphasis onto a plot, with dialogue scenes and more fleshed out characters, is found here even over some later films. The plot too, imaging the ghosts of the Confederate deciding to get their revenge on the Northern Yankees a hundred years after the end of the Civil War, is also tantalising even if this still, as an early Herschell film, a string of gore scenes first as priority. It is a loaded one, and how this bothers to even have an epilogue, where the ghosts leave to where they go to, is definitely something distinct from the director's filmography.

Out of a lot of Lewis' films, this is conventional and well put together, in that it is a narrative with a beginning, a middle and an end which even people likely to be put off by his productions would appreciate. It also establishes many of his best virtues being how, when possible, he could pull resources when needed. It may seem odd not to immediately talk about the gore, but instead the music turns out to be the film's best virtue, where this is indeed a film where the virtues of the soundtrack are to be found. With talented musicians hired in the cast, playing members of the town who play jovial songs even over victims' remains being ritually barbecued, you do not expect a splatter film to be memorable for its traditional folk songs. Two Thousand Maniacs however has a ribald energy just from this music alone.

Arguably this tone could be unintentionally darker due to, unfortunately, a more complex question with depiction the South, entirely because the history of the American South and its idealised past. It is poignant here, in the slow burn ending, where the dead literally came back to haunt the modern day, which cannot be dampened even in the film of over-the-top performances and humour. Most of the cast have the right type of pulpy energy that one would like and, even if the film's structure means some not-surprising predictability in the pace, this is a film that became one of Herschell Gordon Lewis' most well regarded for a good reason. Hell, I think the knowledge of what this inspired says a lot of how well regarded the film is, that this not only inspired a 2005 remake but also the least likely band to take their name from them, 10,000 Maniacs an alternative rock band capable of very poetic songs on the likes of the In My Tribe album but still naming themselves proudly after the two thousand maniacs here. I like other, weirder films from later in the director-producer's filmography, but I see the virtues with Herschell's film here as clear as day even if there is fake blood over the skyline.