Fungicide (2002)

 

Director: Dave Wascavage

Screenplay: Dave Wascavage and Mary Wascavage

Cast: Wes Miller as Major Wang; David Weldon as Silas Purcell; Mary Wascavage as Jade Moon; Loretta Wascavage as Mother Purcell; Edward Wascavage as Father Purcell; Dave Bonavita as  "Titus" Ignitus; Antoinette Cancelliere as Lenny; Dave Wascavage as Jackson P. Jackson

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Fungicide is a ridiculous film, my introduction to the micro-budget world of Dave Wascavage, a Pennsylvania based figure who has been chugging away with his own independently made genre films since Fungicide itself, founding his own company Troubled Moon Films, and with this production the cinematographer and editor as much as the director and co-writer. Fungicide, about homicidal giant fungus, came as a surprise for how woozy and unapologetically its own weird thing, where the opening is intense, all harsh noise and a man in his family, in almost a trance, experimenting on a chemical composition which will have unfortunate consequences he will be happy about when it brings forth the nightmares of the title.

It is scored like a Playstation One game, atmospheric drum and bass, which knowing this is about killer sentient mushrooms, with the limited special effects at hand and CGI valley shots like a late nineties game, makes this almost befitting like you have wandered into an obscure American role playing game as a result, one set at a mountain hideaway, a resort to rest at which is doomed to fungus related terror. Ran by a nice hippy woman who however has a bad tendency to use the wrong choice of words, and turns into a Sarah Connor Terminator killer when enough is enough, it also sets up very early on in the film the eccentricities on display here. Fungicide is really peculiar, an automatic writing of a genre film at times, which is not going to be for everyone. You get this with the characters placed into the scenario: our female lead even in the face of regular grocery store mushrooms attaching themselves to people like leeches reacting to them with a blissful tranquillity, a real estate agent who is there to try to get her to sell the house, and eventually just becomes a third wheel, the scientist who starts speaking like he is actually an alien, and a random army man who appears, having wandered off a reality TV show he was a contestant of, named Major Wang. Then there is the professional wrestler, who is written like a stereotype of one and needs to unwind from his temper at the hideaway. He also has to take pills prescribed to him by a medically cleared doctor to prevent spontaneous combustion, which is now a sentence I can write and does become a major plot point eventually.

Simply tripping up a wooden step unleashes a serum capable of inhuman biological growth, and between the scientist speaking like the aforementioned alien, the music choices and stock scream effects, and the homemade psychedelic visuals, and this film became far weirder in tone than I had presumed of it even before the homemade mushroom puppets with giant teeth appear. In-between the leads just hanging out in the house in the woods, for prolonged periods which would-be frowned upon in most horror films for padding, this becomes a cavalcade of peculiar sights, where briefly a puppet literally plays a mushroom victim and is so obvious it becomes surreal. Obvious computer effects are layered onto the film in place of what Dave Wascavage could not practically pull off, be it the breaking of a glass door, to the panning shots of the valley, or the larger mushrooms, who drift around using spores to grow more, seen spawning out the graveyard at one point. The regular ones, not either the baby mushrooms as played by real store bought ones, are the puppets, which are cool and quite cute, and the actors in white sheets with a homemade toothy mouth and mushroom cap, armed with silly string projectile with acidic properties, using regular silly string, and able to grow arms.

The film knows its absurdity and guns for silly, as Wascavage filmed a scene of a mushroom attempting to eat a garden gnome, or as they learn human abilities as they eat people, one being able to drive a car and pick up a female sex worker to eat her. There is an entire dream sequence, as the scientist is delighted by the possibilities of being King of Mushroom Men, where he images himself playing video games and Go Fish with one of the puppets, which is hilarious. Mantango (1963) by Ishirō Honda this is not and you have to accept the logic is its own, alongside the padding that leads to an extended cast versus mushroom fight scene involving extensive obvious CGI and no one with clear combat technique. It does not detract from its charms, if you have basked in this region of micro-budget cinema, a film where balsamic vinegar is the solution, and is apparently more volatile and explosive than nitro-glycerine. You need to come with expectations that Wascavage's work, created visibly with his own times and resources, as his first attempt in his career is a film you could see having to be shot on weekend where the cast could get together, with members of the cast including the female lead (and co-writer) related to him. It is its own work to befuddle, admire and get a few belly laughs from, and as of yet, the threat of a sequel involving killer apples as the film ends on has yet to happen.

Mutation Nation (1992)

 

Developer: SNK

Publisher: SNK

One to Two Players

Originally released on the Neo Geo MVS

Among beat-em-ups, this SNK entry definitely does not reinvent the wheel in terms of the gameplay. What it does thankfully have is an exceptional sense of personality to compensate for how later games in the next few years after this evolved the genre, a body horror dystopian sci-fi brawler which manages to feel like a Saturday morning cartoon that has gone incredible wrong or been partially produced with a Troma film from New Jersey as inspiration. Set in 20XX, you play one of two stereotypical male leads, but with the context that, with a mad scientist creating a mutant army in a slum area of a major metropolis, and thus wrecking havoc on the rest of it outwards, your enemies are a menagerie of idiosyncratic figures. This is pretty standard for the genre, with just an attack button and a jump, which may seem dismissive as a comment but is contextually in mind that, as you get into this genre in the years around and after, up to the likes of Battle Circuit (1997) from Capcom and Guardians: Denjin Makai II (1995) by Winkysoft, you had games going further than even having a block button to combos, move sets with button combinations, and the ability to unlock new abilities per level. Mutation Nation is a game which, if it had any of these, by reliving the difficulty in lack of options, would actually gain virtue in that the challenge would be finding ways around the challenge rather than working with the limitations in controls, the hordes of strange denizens created by the mad doctor a menace for different reason than merely having a punch and kick.

Nonetheless, unless you intend to experiment, the old adage "if it isn’t broke don't fix it" is apt here, with one key difference being Mutation Nation's one gimmick where, alongside power-ups that can vary this and do not deplete the health bar, holding the attack down and charging it allows you to use a super, which can vary per the aforementioned pick-ups and adds a nice risk in using them. "Repetition" is neither a negative comment here too as , like the light gun game, there is no need to really reinvent unless you have something distinct, and this after the initial grunts immediately gives way to their mutated brethren, and what imaginative designs they have before the bosses arrive. Insectoid heads, almost android figures, flower women almost Poison Ivy like, and the absolutely strange lizard creatures with vaguely human forms and rocking denim jeans clinging to ceilings and walls as much as being very low targets on the floor to deal with. They all belong to a vibrant looking game from the 16-bit era of video games, where even if you have unfortunately let yourself be sandwiched between a group of these creatures, or take advantage of manoeuvring around the locations as in this genre in general, you can appreciate this post-apocalypse urban wasteland in its gritty look, the kind of game if not released for SNK’s own machines would have made sense as having a Mega Drive/Genesis conversion. Adding to the grotesquery, in the best of ways, is that most of these enemies barring the robotic ones will explode in pulsating chunks of goo when defeated, not as violent as the original Japanese version of Data East’s Night Slashers (1993), but evoking that idea if Lloyd Kaufman’s Toxic Avenger franchise and Screaming Mad George were combined into a PG-13 horror sci-fi martial arts game.

The bosses emphasis the tone, figures who you wish to have figures of, if just me, as obscure video game plastic statuettes to put on a shelf. It is simple as much, wanting to see creativity in my video games artistically, for just the fact they are quite bizarre, like the sole female boss who, between her jutting dancing with use of her arms, also spits mutant wasps from her stomach through a Cronenbergian orifice, or a pair of psychics in dapper suits whose heads has distorted from the growth of their brains beneath like mutant broccoli. This becomes what Mutation Nation’s best virtue as a beat-em-up becomes, this personality which can make it stand out as a gem from the era. What it does have in terms of restrictions, when the genre was going to develop far more game mechanics on the simple to grasp game play style quite soon, it compensates for with this style, sadly one which did not really get to be seen as much as hoped as this is one of the obscurer SNK games until the modern day on multiple consoles and even mobile phones. This was released for the Neo Geo MVS, which allowed gamers to bring arcade perfect games to the home in console form if it was with the caveat that it was incredibly expensive as a console, because of the cost of buying actual arcade hardware and software. The game neither got a sequel, becoming a one-off, a shame as if this had gotten a Metal Slug-like longevity, we could have seen this overcome the flaws this has and take the advantages that make this worth playing further.

Death Nurse 1 & 2 (1987-88)

 

Director: Nick Millard

Screenplay: Nick Millard

Cast: Priscilla Alden as Nurse Edith Mortley; Albert Eskinazi as Doctor Gordon Mortley; Royal Farros as Mr. Powell/Charles Bedowski; Frances Millard as Charity Chandler/Faith Chandler; Irmgard Millard as Louise Kagel/Brownie; Nick Millard as John Davis/Sergeant David Gallagher; Fred Sarra as Lieutenant Cal Bedowski

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

You son of a bitch, you got my bag!

Death Nurse is made by Nick Millard, who was one of many independent genre directors in the sixties and seventies, making films like Criminally Insane (1975) until the two Death Nurse films in the late eighties, where he joined many who saw the advantages of the shot-on-video boom in video recording cameras and making ultra-low budget films as this pair. About a homicidal nurse and her doctor brother, the film does not have to worry about a real hospital set, just the appropriate costumes and set around a rest home named Shady Palms which is clearly shot in someone's own home.

Shady is apt as they openly mistreat the patients, performing operations without anaesthesia to learn how to, smothering tuberculosis patients, which consists of coughing into a cloth, with a pillow, and burying the bodies in the back garden or leaving them in the garage for the rats to feed on. Death Nurse is not going to be for everyone, the understatement of the year even as someone who liked the film, absolutely not a film you would recommend to anyone but those open to the film's limitations or with a taste already there for films like this where you get a prolonged scene of a man getting a snack out the kitchen, where you can hear air conditioners in certain scenes and they use bread knives in place of scalpels. Baring the budget and silly tone, this does get into something uncomfortably real of medical malpractice of medical staff deliberately killing patients, sadly something even a silly movie like this is not making up the existence of, even if this is thankfully a work whose mistakes and quirks soften the reality. Here these siblings, alongside the brother wanting to practice his surgery skills, get money from having patients sent to their home they can quickly dispose of. The only patient seemingly safe is Louise (one of two roles over the two films by the director's wife Irmgard Millard), the patient meant to kick her alcoholism only to get at Edith's bottle of sherry for sexual favours with the brother she is glad to provide.

It is an absurd experience, like a John Waters premise just needing a shove in the right direction and instead just charmingly eccentric, becoming more of a rough job being a doctor who kills, especially when you need to dig out a victim from the back garden as the social worker wants to visit him. The stilted nature of the film, including an almost complete lack of music score, is potentially off-putting, but it is perversely charming, following the banality of being a killer and how boring it really would be even in mind to Death Nurse's obvious limitations, with the closest thing to a score being a brief electronic drone in dream sequences, like it is going to turn into a random number radio broadcast. These dream scenes re-use footage from Criminally Insane, with Priscilla Alden the same lead between them both, always a sign of a no-budget film with a foot into the peculiar. Considering Criminally Insane follows Alden as a woman released from a mental asylum who kills to not be prevented from eating food she wants, it presents an idiosyncratic attempt to build a new film from new footage only James Bryan and Renee Harmon topped by doing it over and over again in the eighties.

Death Nurse 2 continues as before with the issue ending the last film being swiftly resolved with a murder weapon, and keeps the tone up with a prolonged scene of making a cup of tea after murdering someone. It feels like the second half, actually, of one whole film, more so as this does extend the reuse of Millard's Criminally Insane again for an absurd repetition, as alongside new footage from that film you get the same meat cleaver scene in full from that film as used already in the first Death Nurse. It feels fully a piece from a larger work when the pair are combined, as one hour films made into a two horror one, where this escalates the problems of the leads' murder spree by introducing Brownie (also Irmgard Millard), the homeless woman armed with a giant knife in her shopping trolley, and Misha, the self styled philosopher taken off the street for ranting under the mayor's window about abolishing income taxes and the evils of socialism. It feels the same as the previous film, continues the absurdity of the previous film, such as someone being chased in circles around the couch by a homeless woman with a knife, and trying to introduce twin sisters in the plot line to bring back an actress, related to Millard. Throughout both films, the word "bitch" is the most prominent aspect of the film, used in a variety of ways alongside close-ups of as Priscilla Alden scowling. You can even hear the edits of scenes, interconnecting two different actors in conversation in the same scene, due to the traffic outside cutting in and out in time, which adds to the humour of both films.

It ends naturally on the downfall being as banal and gross as human matter being brought out onto the lawn by damn rats, and whether these films are actually watchable, as already stated, is only if you have a taste for such films. It is deeply silly, at times a slog between them, but I have nothing but admiration for the attempt.

Halloween (1978)

 

Director: John Carpenter

Screenplay: John Carpenter and Debra Hill

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis (as Laurie Strode); Nick Castle (as Michael Myers); Donald Pleasence (as Dr. Sam Loomis); Charles Cyphers (as Sheriff Leigh Brackett); Nancy Kyes (as Annie Brackett); P. J. Soles (as Lynda Van Der Klok)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

It would be impossible to add anything else to the view of Halloween analytically or in aesthetic. In fact the most interesting thing from my perspective I can add is that it was an immensely slow period of rewatches before I held Halloween as beyond an okay film to one of the best horror films I had seen from the seventies. By this point, I can now watch the film and soak in its virtues with ease, and whilst this review is inevitably going to just going to praise it to the hilt, the most surprising thing for me to revisit here is how for what innovated the slasher as a fully formed genre, it feels an outlier for the tropes it created. For all the films which came after, as frankly it can be said Friday the 13^th (1980) kicked the door open and let the eighties in general be the decade we usually think of tied to the genre. Halloween became its own work in the sub-genre standing proud by its reputation.

This also comes with the fact I used to have a divided attitude to slashers, growing to accept them more and more over the years as I have seen plenty of fun ones, and always willing to give a chance to one I have not seen. Even slasher fans will have to admit, the diehard fan base for that genre, that the level of quality in terms of how well made and beautiful Halloween is a high bar here for others to reach. Even if it deals with exceptionally grim subject matter, it is an entire mountain that John Carpenter with his collaborators has managed to achieve when this film was first released. In the context of said slasher films, and their constant repetition of plot lines, their tropes followed over decades even when they became self-aware, Halloween is simplistic in plot to others and next to its sequels, as while later films including Friday the 13 (1980) would have more complicated back stories, all there is about the first Halloween is a boy named Michael Myers who killed his older sister in the past. After escaping a mental asylum years later, he targets three young woman, Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, Nancy Kyes as Annie Brackett and P. J. Soles as Lynda Van Der Klok, and that is all we have in terms of the plot

None of the Thorn mythos of later sequels and no folktale mythology is found here, and there is little in terms of an actual body count is even found. This is minimal next to the extremely threadbare slashers of later years is found here, only Donald Pleasance as Myers' psychologist Dr. Sam Loomis giving chase qualifying as a subplot. It was a deceptively simple, explaining why my younger self was not interested in the film at first, and there is little to Myers barring being a figure who stalks a couple of suburbia houses, its economy more frightening in this especially when you view it as a cinematic mirror of the serial killings starting to take their place in urban folklore in the late fifties onwards in the USA. This reality, of a kid who kills for no reason, taps directly into then-modern idea in horror films of remorselessness, as Loomis says there is nothing behind Myers' eyes, crossed with the supernatural by making him a literal bogeyman for Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews), the young boy Laurie is babysitting, to see outside his window at night and be terrified of. Because of Dean Cundey's awe-inspiring cinematography there are times it feels like Myers literally disappears and re-materialises from the shadows like a spectre.

It of course helps that the people he terrorises are written and acted like real people. It is a problem with horror cinema in general, where even in fun and ridiculous movies, unless you are a great writer of esoteric or funny dialogue, I have to admit that they are never necessarily "real" people. Now as a more open minded figure to slashers too, there are also those films still where they have characters who merely speak in quips and generic exposition could annoy me even at my most patient. The combination of John Carpenter openly admitting his influence from classic Hollywood and the unsung quality of the late Debra Hill as a writer means that, alongside great performances, you have characters you care completely for in the context of a minimalistic chiller. Jamie Lee Curtis in particular stood out this time and it is baffling that people created the virginal Final Girl stereotype from the Laurie Strode character when its completely alien, feeling like a puritanical bastardisation of a more complicated and interesting figure. She is a sarcastic but thoughtful figure, who smokes pot but is utterly reliable as a person, merely shy around boys and has other peoples' work begrudgingly dumped on her lap including by her friends. For her first performance in a film, it is great acting by Lee Curtis even when she has to play the moments of screaming and cowering from Myers before she starts to retaliate back. It says a lot that, for the attempts to continue the film without her, by the return of the franchise in the late 2010s, Jamie Lee Curtis is as integral to the legacy as its villain.

As a horror film, the languid pace is perfect. Cundey's cinematography adds a realistic, Americana look in the daytime scenes but at night gives a story almost grounded in reality a phantasmagoric edge in how Michael Myers blends into the shadows. The music by Carpenter himself is iconic, tapping into similar unease from the use of electronic music. What is also worth motioning, whilst a film about death and terror, is that it lavishes a love to Halloween the holiday itself. Old horror films playing on the televisions, including The Thing from Another World (1951) as a premonition of Carpenter's career, to the various appearances of pumpkins beyond the ominous opening credits emphasise the aesthetic of the setting. Barring Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), none of the later films' references to ancient ritual and Samhain had any sense of real mythos to it, more a proudly cheesier pulpy story telling with its own sense of fun but not the same as what this establishes. Here everything is as simple as a very American phantom of a killer who murders indiscriminately, but also treats Halloween as a festival as a homespun and warm holiday, of trick and treating to dressing up in costumes. Not a lot of the slashers I have seen have ever had the sense of a community, merely setting with stock types, to make the terror more disturbing, so the sense of frivolity and childhood innocence found in Haddonfield's suburbia is more startling in hindsight to what horrible things will happen in the narrative. It is a line where, when Annie's father Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers) scares Laurie and says everyone deserves a scare on Halloween, that is the core of the namesake film over it, less the gore and big hair of the eighties slashers, but a creepy ghost ride which is yet so close to the places its original audience would be living it that it has grounded, real chill to it. Watching it many Halloweens like many others, it is both a comfort film but, especially with its almost surreal ending where Carpenter shows shots of empty rooms after the tragedy has taken place, also a film that efficiently scrapes a primal nerve of discomfort every single time I view it now.

Inferno (1980)

 

Director: Dario Argento

Screenplay: Dario Argento

Cast: Irene Miracle as Rose Elliott; Leigh McCloskey as Mark Elliott; Eleonora Giorgi as Sara; Daria Nicolodi as Elise Stallone Van Adler; Sacha Pitoëff as Kazanian

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

 

Continuing on from Suspiria (1977), Inferno builds up the mythology of the Three Mothers, three powerful witches who control the world: Mater Lachrymarum (The Lady of Tears), Mater Suspiriorum (The Lady of Sighs) and Mater Tenebrarum (The Lady of Darkness). Mater Suspiriorum, who occupied Germany, was central to Suspiria, whilst Mater Lachrymarum, who appears briefly in this film, occupies Rome and is central to the 2007 Argento film Mother of Tears. Mater Tenebrarum, who rules New York, is central to Inferno, which follows a very simple plot mechanic that a diary from an architect and occultist about the mothers is being suppressed violently through bloody murders to acquire all the published copies of it. One such case in this film leads to music student Mark Elliot (McCloskey) travelling to the USA after learning of the distress of his sister Rose Elliot (Miracle) upon discovering the knowledge of the Three Mothers herself, and finds himself on route to meeting Mater Tenebrarum herself.

Inferno overcomes probably one of the biggest issues with a genre film in structure. A narratively driven film can fall foul of being merely dragged along by the plot exposition and having to cover the narrative beats far too much, and as much as I have come to love many for this flaw, their desire to explain everything rather than let you drift through the film by your own intuition is a scourge for a lot of horror films if you want to appreciate them not for a humoured charm. Inferno's solution could be bluntly described as dream logic, but it is different from this. A very simple, concise plot unfolds but both enough is explained to the viewer whilst plenty is not, letting in moments which do not make sense in logic but do in the nightmarish form transpire, and leaving one to travel through the events with enough knowledge to grasp it but a lot more being discovered alongside the characters. Splitting the film up into situations following different characters has a pronounced effect. Everything connects together but the segments unfold as their own narratives, usually leading to gruesome death. While Mark becomes the lynchpin to keep it all together, events can unfold without him, having a drastic effect on how the film is watched. Every character introduced not only stands out but many get central focus for many minutes, and as a result, you get plenty of incredibly memorable sequences but also an unpredictable tone, all whilst they find themselves interconnecting into each other's lives or uncovering strange pockets into their world.

There are plenty of moments in Inferno that stand out, all of which interconnect under this loose plot completely seamlessly. You begin the film with a standout and elaborate underwater sequence in a submerged room and it gets better from there, beginning the movie with an appropriate sense of anything being possible. Since this is a Dario Argento film the murder sequences are extremely stylish and heightened, but since Suspiria was a supernatural horror film, its sequel follows in the unconventional and fantastical mixed with symbolism from his down-to-earth giallo thrillers. Not only do you have the Grand Guignol of the more conventional murder sequences, brutal and unsettling, but also you have sequences like people being savaged by cats or eaten to death by rats, all of which manages to be both beautiful but utterly foul and horrific, only with the issue that, whilst not showing actual animal cruelty, these scenes especially with the cats need to be warned about for certain viewers. Unlike other Italian genre films which come off as cheesy, even if adored by myself, Argento's from this era still sting when it comes to depicting the deaths, and the morbid nature around his films in general has retained potency from this.

With Inferno, you have the same heightened tone that is shared with Suspiria, very artificial set around an elaborate apartment complex where the evil is centred yet fully immersive at the same time. Genre filmmaking should effortlessly flow. It should use its narrative to lead the viewer through a journey, especially if the film is entertainment first, having the virtue of effecting a viewer's emotions directly if done well. I have changed my mind and contradicted this only because this statement can be challenged as subjective, and because the films that fail I have grown to appreciate and find their own logic with, but with those striving for the best of genre tropes, this is an ideal worth trying to achieve even if you fail. One of the best virtues of the Italian genre films in their heyday was their dreamy tones which allowed one to accept the irrational, thus avoiding distractions of logic in semblance to the real world that break the visage. Cinema is inherently an unrealistic medium, and unless one attempts to be as realistic as possible, it should negate the stumbles and falters as much as possible that take place when exposition and plotting block the steady flow of time. Inferno does not attempt to fully explain what is going on but this is for the better, as a quick witted viewer can build up enough from what they see onscreen and instead worry about the labyrinth of turns and abrupt ends that takes place for the characters, as much a film about travelling through various layers as one finds out the apartment complex has secret pipes and entrances within itself. Various strands from petty greed to the Three Mothers mythos interlink tentatively, and as various memorable casting choices like Nicolodi and Alida Valli pass onscreen, the film is able to work as a tense, eerily aired horror movie whilst ditching anything that would drag the film down into a mere plod.

Suspiria itself was an exceptional film just for how its use of colour and lighting took the viewer into a supernatural world, which left a huge task in attempting to match it, but Inferno's aesthetic manages to go even further in some ways by becoming even more coloured and bold in its look. This would one of the last things the great director Mario Bava worked on before his death, behind the optical and visual effects, and in many ways, as a tip of the hat from Argento to the innovator who helped build the Italian genre industry, this film reflects the bold colours of his work like Blood and Black Lace (1964) incredibly. Like Suspiria, terror is not just to be found in the darkness but in colour itself, at their brightest and lurid during the most unsettling incidents. With Argento's work during his golden period, the colour saturation (or lack of colour as in Tenebrae (1981) fully envelops and becomes one with the haunted moods of his films.

Instead of Goblin, the music changed for this film, with Keith Emerson from the prog band Emerson, Lake and Palmer as composer. That band is an acquired taste, but Emerson's film scoring career is a cult following still waiting to happen - alongside Inferno you have the notorious anime blockbuster Harmagedon (1983), Nighthawks (1981) with Sylvester Stallone and Rutger Hauer, and Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) amongst other films. While many of these films are not available in the UK, it is not surprising that prog rock fans can buy a compilation of Emerson's scores, the one for Inferno a great addition to Argento's musical canon by itself. Far more hysterical and on the cusp of absurdity with its choral chanting than the Goblin score for Suspiria, it helps push the irrationality of the film further with its alarmed, drastic tone, whilst allowing this to have its own personality in contrast to its predecessor.

Head to head with Suspiria, Inferno is Argento's most unconventional film, Inferno especially rejecting the plot heavy narratives that his giallos tend to have completely, and even Suspiria had for its phantasmagoric content. It follows a logic of its own that drifts between various characters and never gives priority over any specific one, Mark Elliot merely a grounded figure for the events happening to circle around. It is a filmic world where one can go to a library in Rome and, going downstairs, find oneself in an alchemist's laboratory fully of boiling paste for book binding. It is a film where events such as a total eclipse suddenly happens only to disappear, or the fact that there is a hot dog vendor out near a sewage pipe in the middle of the night, making only any sense in that they are as inclined to kill potential patrons as they are likely not getting many customers in their chosen spot; I do not complain about this sudden inclusion and abrupt end to such sights because the canvas of the film allows the moment to soak in regardless. So much more terrifying in films for me, like in Suspiria, is irrationality, where deaths can happen abruptly or events happen without being signposted, and as this desired template stands, Inferno is one of the strongest examples.

Inferno is one of my favourite films. I accept that it is one where the plot can be seen full of holes, but you have a scene where someone is terrorised as the lights keep going on and off in their apartment, a classic piece on the vinyl player stopping and starting to the power cuts, and the sense of absolute dread it can produce, and you see the skill that came into Argento's work. The mythos built here helps give the film a greater atmosphere, building up a background that fills in what is not dealt with, and also never becomes the main crux of the production, something which has plagued storytelling in various genres when needing to elaborate on it more and more per sequel. There is the contentious issue of Mother of Tears, which is a film I wish to return to as its own creation, part of the completely contentious issue in its own right of Argento's films post 2000s in general. It cannot ruin the two films which came before regardless of what I come view it as, but just emphasises how they both were exceptional productions, Inferno an experience where, unlike a rollercoaster, everything presented onscreen is felt.

Every death is painful, every jolt is startling, but the moments of quietness are just as effective. The scene with the ants crawling in an apartment is a clue but feel like a nod of iconography from surrealist art even if by accident, and absurd scenes like death by rats have a phantasmagoric ickiness to them that is still effecting. Rather than coming away from Inferno as another horror film padded out with attempts to rationalise everything, the completely lack of this adds to its mystique, leaving it at the end with the same level of intensity felt as with Suspiria. Together the duo is an incredible example of Italian horror cinema. Debating for myself which is the better film is a painful thing to consider, especially as Inferno really became a film I adored even beyond Dario Argento as a filmmaker.

Abstract Spectrum: Fantastique/Psychotronic

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

Decap Attack (1991)

 

Developer: Vic Tokai

Publisher: Sega

One Player

Originally for the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis

 

As much as I believe in preferring the original versions of games, Decap Attack presents a really fascinating case where working around a license issue created an enticing result artistically, so much so this review will not cover the original version, Magical Hat no Buttobi Tābo! Daibōken (1990). Despite the pair sharing almost entirely the same structure as games when put together, personally I think Magical Hat deserves its own review, to also factor in its source as a tie-in game to the animated series from 1989 to 1990 by Studio Pierrot. There is also the factor that, from the get-go, I do personally find Decap Attack had least one immediate advantage as a reinterpretation, in that it is one hit to lose a life in Magical Hat, whilst Decap Attack gives you a small life bar, making Magical Hat a game you need to have patience to work with, not try to cram in as an afterthought to Decap Attack, especially as factoring in its source is fascinating. Decap Attack likewise should be seen as its own game, as this is the kind of title you would like to play, as a platformer, for the Halloween season.

For Decap Attack, we see an island shaped like a skeleton with a sword and shield split into pieces in the pre-opening credits. A demon lord Max D. Cap has threatened world domination with his underworld army, and in an inverse of horror tropes, the mad scientist and his Frankenstein's assistant call forth Chuck D. Head to save the world rather than contribute to the problem. Chuck, a bandaged ghoul who has no head, instead his face in his chest, is sent out to put the island back together, able to run fast, briefly float in the air by kicking his legs really fast, and can acquire a sentient skull that, unless hit and lost, is a projectile weapon whose homing radiate when returning means it can attack in two directions. You will need this as, for a platformer, three stages per world, you are going to have continually hassled by the enemies let alone the stages' own challenges, more hazards in their existence than antagonists, the exception being red punk haired fish who are more a problem when they jump out the water at you than when they come for you underwater. The third level per island adds the additional concern that, even if you defeat the boss, you cannot leave unless you find the special item hidden among gargoyle statues, which also allow one to get potions, bonus level coins, health pickups (and the skull if lost), or a lot of ghosts to avoid.

For a game which was converted from another with only some gameplay changes - no roulette wheel bonus game for lives as in Magical Hat, and the health bar for the later game which changes the challenge - the fact that this instead changed the character designs, the aesthetic look and the music does however lead to a game with a consistent aesthetic attitude. Despite being early in the Genesis / Mega Drive era, it still looks really good. This is a kooky take on horror aesthetics where you are as concerned with dodging ducks flying in the air and members of a stray Ice Capades ice skating troupe in top hats as you are actual monsters. The levels are standard in this genre - traditional Halloween for the first level, a desert one, a fire related one and ice, the last the one exception as an eyeball cave. Personality however is to be found throughout the game in its tone, the sound cues for its world, such as spring pads, and especially with the music, which was completely changed from Magical Hat's in favour of a new one from Fumito Tamayama and Hiroto Kanno. They sadly do not have the larger composition score between them, which is a shame as the jaunty haunted house music fills this production with glee, perfect for the tone and a huge virtue alongside the sound design itself and colourful aesthetic.  

As much as I wish Magical Hat was more readily available, Decap Attack itself truthfully is the more appealing of the pair, its goofy nature that of horror tropes where one of the bosses is nonetheless a giant pink mole. Decap Attack is a really idiosyncratic way to have converted a game for Western appeal, looking like toys being played with between Halloween decorations, far from an insult but a huge compliment from me. Decap itself also brings its own idiosyncratic touches from Magical Hat, such as needing to go item hunting in each third level, which forces you across platforms which collapse, over lava pits and spring pads in deliberately annoying places. Other games, like the Shinobi franchise, brought an option of magical abilities you could select from in a separate menu, but that was a hack 'n' slash platformer, whilst here however you have a platformer in the truest sense where you can go into a menu and choose potions collected on a stage to have brief invulnerability or clear a screen of all enemies, in mind leaving screens means they do re-spawn. The bonus stages too, which the bonus coins allow multiple Chucks to participate in if you get enough, offer assault courses which grant numerous lives if you are lucky in its random choice.

Vic Tokai, as they were originally known as, sadly are a developer who left the video game industry by the late nineties into the fifth generation of video games, a shame as the result here is charming, something which would have been fascinating to have witnessed the tone of enter the polygonal era even if it had been flawed. Ironically for a conversion, whilst Magical Hat is not easily available, neither helped by being a licensed titled, Decap Attack clearly has fans as it continually returns from Sega over the decades in compilations for the Mega Drive and even as a mobile phone conversion. Usually the idea of editing a game for the West has gained ire in the decades past, but there is a humour in a conversion like this which is appreciated and thankfully is worth the continually returns in some form.

Le Portrait de Petit Cossette (2004)

 

Director: Akiyuki Simbo

Screenplay: Mayori Sekijima

Voice Cast: Marina Inoue as Cossette d'Auvergne; Mitsuki Saiga as Eiri Kurahashi; Kumiko Yokote as Hatsumi Mataki; Megumi Toyoguchi as Shouko Mataki; Rei Igarashi as Zenshinni of Shakado; Ikumi Fujiwara as Michiru Yajiri; Isao Yamagishi as Hiroshi Hakuta; Junpei Morita as Yukata Enokido; Mamiko Noto as Yuu Saiga; Masashi Ebara as Marchello Orlando; Shinnosuke Furumoto as Michio Hisamoto; Susumu Chiba as Naoki Katou; Yukari Tamura as Kaori Nishimoto

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

 

As covered in the review linked to below, view Le Portrait de Petit Cossette as an interpretation of a troupe of Gothic horror, of a figure obsessed with a figure they are romantically linked to from beyond the dead, if interpreted through a hyper stylised three-part anime from a director with a career before and especially after with an elaborate eye for stylisation. Think of this as the pulpier, more bombastic take on Rebecca (1940) with genre tropes of Japanese animation and interpreting horror through action beats.

 

For the full review, follow the link HERE.