Racketyboy Month of Horror 9: The Axis of Sorta Evil

[noiseredux]

of course the car accident was reused. Bless Jim Wynorski's little heart.

[noiseredux]

Rampage
1986, Midway


For the second week of our annual Spooky Tuesday series of date nights, my wife and I did an arcade theme. Burgers and fries seemed like a totally fitting meal for dinner, and we ate them while watching the X-Files episode called "First Person Shooter." Let me take a minute to sidetrack on this episode which was written by William Gibson. Okay, so it originally aired back in 2000 and it is VERY 2000. Which is to say that it has a heavy post-Matrix feel to it and involves a virtual reality video game company called FPS who make a game where - you guessed it - the game starts killing people for real.

It does have some interesting discussion regarding violence as well as gender, but the episode will more than likely stand out for being absolutely bonkers. The game gets infiltrated by an AI whose body was scanned by an erotic performer and she dresses as some kind of leather thong ninja and uses a medieval sword to chop off a pro gamer's hands and then when they get to Level 2 (the old West!) she switches to chaps, multiplies herself and then rides a friggin' tank! I'm just saying, this episode is crazy and you should watch it if you haven't.

We put on some arcade ambience (circa 1992) via a Youtube channel and then fired up Rampage off the Midway Arcade Origins collection on Xbox One. I had actually played my fair share of Rampage as a kid, although it was always the NES game. I'm really not sure if I had ever encountered a cab in the wild. My wife had never played the game at all as far as I know. But like most old arcade games, the objective was easy to explain. I simply told her "okay, the goal is to just destroy everything."

My wife chose Lizzy - probably because that's the name of our female cat. I went with Ralph because frankly werewolves are much cooler than giant monkeys. Which reminds me: Rampage is a movie now, right? With The Rock? Oh my goodness that must be terrible. But I like The Rock. Maybe I'll see it. But it's probably so bad.

I must say that for a 1986 game, Rampage still looks terrific. The sprites have plenty of character and there's some truly funny stuff like when your kaiju shrinks into a little naked person and sneaks offscreen in embarrassment. The controls are certainly easy enough to pick up on, although I do think that the game has a bit of clunky feel to it. There's so many little bullets being fired at you and there's often not much you can do but take it.

I will say that Rampage will always be a fun dumb quarter-muncher game for me, but I'll never have the motivation to get good at it. I mean you don't even regain your lifebar between levels which is weird. But whatever. We threw a buck or so in virtual currency (IE: button presses) and had enough fun laughing at how similar "Boston" looked to "Maine."


Splatterhouse
1988, Namco


I've been a fan of Splatterhouse since I can remember. Heck, I've been a fan of the series since before I even played the first game. Just seeing ads and screenshots of the game in magazines as a kid was mind-blowing. It was so violent and crazy. I knew it was for me. But over the years that original game has been outshined by sequels of varying quality and nowadays I feel like I'm more of a Splatterhouse fan in spirit than in reality. As such I still can't seem to get rid of the cool Splatterhouse mask statue I got with my Gamestop pre-order of the last entry.

Namco recently released yet another of their Namco Museum compilations on the Switch, but this is the first one I know of to feature Splatterhouse. I HAD to get it. And so my wife and I fired it up this past week and gave it a go. The rose tint of nostalgia showed its ugly head with this one, I'm afraid. Splatterhouse as an IP is kind of awesome, but Splatterhouse - the original arcade game - is slightly less awesome.

In fairness I'll say it looks great, though. It has this sickly color pallet that really fits the mood. And the sprites are cool and pay tribute to lots of horror movies of the day. Let's not pretend that Rick wasn't modeled after Jason Voorhees. And I mean look around - there's nods to The Evil Dead and the Alien series and so on. It's fun stuff for horror fans, no doubt.

That said, the game controls pretty poorly. Rick kind of floats and isn't super responsive. And the hitboxes suck! And there's a stupid forcefield thing chasing you through a level so you can't take your time. I don't know, it just doesn't feel great. My memory says that the TurboGrafx-16 version was better... but maybe that's just rose tinted glasses as well? I will say this, though: my FAVORITE Splatterhouse game is probably Wanpaku Graffiti which was a Famicom exclusive remake of the first game that turned everything chibi and fun but also controlled a hell of a lot better than this.


Ghosts N Goblins
1985, Capcom


My wife and I have long had a love/hate relationship with Ghosts N Goblins. I don't think that's really unusual either. I think anybody that loves this game does so because they kind of hate the shit that it puts them through. But it can also feel rewarding because of that shit. But here's the thing, I've always heard the NES version was terrible. Well now I know for myself - the NES version is terrible.

A lot of folks seem to be slamming the Nintendo Switch Online service and its selection of on-demand NES games. Not me, though. I think it's been a pretty cool little service so far. And hey, three (or kind of four) new games were added this week. It's fun to see what shows up in the list each month now. And so I had been saving Ghosts N Goblins for this month. I figured how bad could it be? I've played the Commodore 64 version for crying out loud!

Well it's bad. It's infuriatingly bad because there's just a bombardment of stuff trying to kill you immediately. And Arthur doesn't control as well as the arcade version. Just everything feels off on this game. The zombies seem to perpetually spawn and the power-up items blow and the projectiles have too much flicker and that red jerk from Demoncrest is everywhere and it's just bad. We honestly rage-quit before beating the first level... THE FIRST LEVEL!

So yeah, I wish there was some saving grace here. I wish I could say well at least the music is still awesome but I just couldn't have fun with this port. Ugh. I wish I could. Like I said, I've played the Commodore 64 version and I don't remember bailing on it this quickly.

[Nemoide]

I dove back into the world of Hellraiser tonight with Hellraiser IV: Bloodline!

This movie has some nostalgia for me because it was the first movie in the Hellraiser series that I remember seeing ads for! I was 10 at the time and it looked wild. However it has a pretty awful reputation which has kept me away from it until now.

While I'd be lying if I said this movie was good, it's honestly not that bad! I think it's a step up from the third movie. The story starts off in the 22nd century on a space-station with an android being controlled to open the infamous puzzle box. Because what do you do with your fourth movie in a series you've run out of ideas for except put it in outer space? But then the movie snaps back to 18th century France and we see a toymaker hired to build the puzzle box and how it became a demon-tool! I honestly liked both the outer-space stuff and the 18th century stuff! But then the movie spends a good amount of time in the 20th century, picking up at the end of Hellraiser III which has the final-final scene showing an office building in NYC full of puzzle-cube imagery. It turns out the great-great-(et al)-grandson of the puzzle box's designer is an architect that has the original box's design in his blood! Whatever, this part of the movie is pretty bland. The French demon summoned in the 1700s comes to NYC and torments the architect's family. I feel like this doesn't work in the movie because it messes with the rules previously established. What's the significance of the puzzle box is a demon summoned with it can just wander around free on earth forever and kill whoever it wants? "WHO CARES, IT'S A HELLRAISER SEQUEL," is how the movie answers such questions. The movie zips back into outer space with a final confrontation between the great-great-x100-grandson of the original designer of the box and Pinhead & pals. The ending is kind of dumb, but whatever, you see dudes in space getting killed by demons (it seems the term cenobites has definitely been completely dropped) and that's GOOD ENOUGH.

Okay, so the story of this didn't entirely make sense, it's certainly not scary on any level. But it is kind of cool. I like seeing horror franchises go in atypical directions rather than the Friday the 13th route of "what if the same stuff from the first movie happened AGAIN but different people die?" So 17th century France and the distant future in deep space definitely does that. I was expecting something unwatchable, like Xtro 2 or Dead Space (1991), but really it was okay-enough to sit through. I don't think I'd ever want to rewatch it, but I'm glad I can finally cross it off the list and managed to exceed my rock-bottom expectations!

The series has definitely gone off the rails, but I'm still not quite done with the Hellraiser series...

[GSZX1337]

For the second week of our annual Spooky Tuesday series of date nights, my wife and I did an arcade theme. Burgers and fries seemed like a totally fitting meal for dinner, and we ate them while watching the X-Files episode called "First Person Shooter." Let me take a minute to sidetrack on this episode which was written by William Gibson. Okay, so it originally aired back in 2000 and it is VERY 2000.

Ah, 2000: A time when Columbine was just one in a few school shootings instead of one of over 35 shootings like today. The plot synopsis sounds like a unique spin on the "violent games causing violence" motif seen throughout the Noughties.

Rampage
1986, Midway

We put on some arcade ambiance (circa 1992) via a Youtube channel and then fired up Rampage off the Midway Arcade Origins collection on Xbox One. I had actually played my fair share of Rampage as a kid, although it was always the NES game. I'm really not sure if I had ever encountered a cab in the wild.

I have a Rampage machine at my local arcade. It really is a fun game, and I have a soft-spot for games, video or board, that are three-players. I really only have two friends that I play anything with, and of course, I have two parents. Two-player games obviously suck for three people, and four player games either don't feel right or just feel like the fourth slot goes to waste.

My wife chose Lizzy - probably because that's the name of our female cat. I went with Ralph because frankly werewolves are much cooler than giant monkeys. Which reminds me: Rampage is a movie now, right? With The Rock? Oh my goodness that must be terrible. But I like The Rock. Maybe I'll see it. But it's probably so bad.

I actually watched it in theaters just because I thought that a movie based on a game series that hasn't seen a new release since 2006 was quite the curio. It's not bad as long as you're not expecting accuracy to the source material. I don't really hold Rampage in any high regard like I do Super Mario or Doom. It just felt like a run-of-the-mill Hollywood film that's only good for killing a couple of hours. That's much higher praise than what I'd give to another video game movie starring The Rock.

Splatterhouse
1988, Namco

My arcade has a Splatterhouse machine too.

[Gunstar Green]

I'm a pretty casual horror fan with a soft spot for the classic 80's slashers as they were the villains and nightmares of my childhood. I've been marathoning my way through The Friday the 13th films this month since I haven't seen most of them since I was a kid. I've made it through the original 8 Paramount owned films and will maybe get to the New Line Cinema ones but I'm not as excited to rewatch those, though I've never seen the reboot.

My super fast breakdown goes like this, there will be spoilers so if you have not seen this movies yet don't scroll down:

Part I: Not my favorite of the series but you've got to start somewhere. It is what it is, a low rent version of Halloween at a summer camp. Tom Savini's effects still work pretty well today for the most part though and Betsy Palmer acts the hell out of her role as a psycho killer. The last fifteen minutes or so are what really make the movie and save it from just being a meandering bore.

Part II: I didn't really like this one as a kid because Jason didn't have his iconic look yet but as an adult I was surprised how tense it was. The characters were all generally likable compared to the first film except for the guy who kept creeping on the short-shorts girl. The whole premise behind Jason surviving and not ever being found by his mother raises a lot of questions the movie isn't interested in answering but that's fine. The wheelchair kill was flipping incredible, probably one of my favorites in the franchise. Ginny was a great final girl, both intelligent and badass. The child psychology angle also helped develop Jason's character. I walked into Part 2 expecting to be as bored as most of Part 1 because of what my memory informed me about the movie but it ended up being one of my favorites. A very solid and capable slasher film.

Part III: Tried to watch in the anaglyphic 3D which was more of a pain than it was worth. Anyway I don't have much to say about this. Part 3 is the movie Jason grows into the Jason everyone knows and fears but the movie itself is just a vehicle for 3D gimmicks and more murders that haven't aged it well. The nerdy Shelly character balances between amusing and annoying but he's memorable at least. My favorite part is the harpoon gun kill when Jason first gets his mask. That is probably the defining shot for the whole series.

Part IV: This one is a fan favorite I've heard and it's easy to see why. Amusing characters and a few recognizable actors like Crispin Glover and Cory Feldman, a Jason who is intense and brutal and Tom Savini returns to bring his special gory touch back to the series. Maybe I'm getting burnt out by this point but I liked Part 2 a little more. The Jason hunter character was an interesting idea but maybe would have been better used later in the series since literally only a few days have passed since Part 2 so it felt weird that there was already this guy showing up to hunt Jason for revenge. I don't know, it was a good distillation of the series and is probably the most technically well-made up to this point. It's definitely one of the better ones and was a good "finale" for the relatively human Jason.

Part V: Hmm... well... uh... yeah. Part V is a step back from the relatively slick Part IV. It ratchets the sleaziness up to 11 with lingering nude shots that probably affected the MPAA judgement when they rated this one. Unfortunately they decided to keep the boobs and tone down the gore. The film doesn't have Jason which is fine to me, the copycat killer angle was interesting though they failed to develop it in any interesting or meaningful way. Tommy's mental distress from childhood and setting him up as a red herring worked well, but I'm left wondering if people would have accepted it if he had been the killer instead of the nobody Roy Burns. Would both Jason and Tommy have become horror movie villain icons? Anyway some of the moments cross the "so bad its good" territory like the character Demon. I didn't really like this one, but it's worth seeing for how silly it is at times.

Part VI: I'll just come out and say it, this is my personal favorite. Tommy is back as both the hero and the reason for the plot and as a result, we're actually given a plot to speak of. This film moves away from slasher and towards Gothic Horror and 80's action and unbelievably it works really well. Sprinkle in some meta-humor and you've got the most fun Friday the 13th film. Zombie Jason transitions the character from psycho killer to movie monster and his kills this time are over the top and occasionally comical. When I picture Jason Voorhees, the one from this movie is usually the one that comes to mind. The Alice Cooper soundtrack puts it over the top and really fits in with the kind of movie it is. If you want something more like the first four films you might come away disappointed, but I think most people can watch this and have a good time, even if they're not horror fans.

Part VII: I'm not a big gore hound, so the fact that most of the kills in this are toned down doesn't bother me. This movie has probably the best developed story and characters out of all of them. Yes Tina is very much a rip-off of Carrie but she does a solid job. Her psychiatrist who's actually just trying to study her telekinetic powers is a great "love to hate" type of guy. Jason himself, now played by the popular Kane Hodder, looks absolutely fantastic and monstrous. He looks like he's been through hell and back and acts like he's really, really pissed off about it. The fights where Jason is just getting the crap knocked out of him by a telekinetic opponent are great and just a blast to watch. Even some of the supporting characters, as cliche and 80's as they are, are amusing to watch and likable or hateable enough that you get something out of them being bumped off one by one. Again this one is probably not the best as a horror movie, but I enjoyed it simply as a movie.

Part VIII: I hard a had time with this one despite its fantastic tease of what Jason Voorhees could do let loose in the Big Apple. It's boring. Jason looks terrible compared to his previous two appearances. He goes around killing people on a boat which sounds cool in theory but the kills are even more censored than the previous movie and I absolutely do not care about anyone on that boat. They put zero thought into the premise or continuity which isn't a big deal for a movie like this but it had me rolling my eyes more than once. When they finally get to New York it's still boring since Jason is only really interested in the main characters and just T-1000's after them. The "New York" sets that aren't actually New York, which is 99% of them, range from, "not even pretending this isn't Vancouver," to, "I've never seen New York in my life, I guess it's filled with toxic waste and exactly like it was represented in Escape from New York?" The ending is just... what? I almost fell asleep so this one is easily near the bottom of the list.

I'll be back for the New Line movies... maybe.

[Ziggy]

Tales of Halloween (2015)



https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4163020/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

I didn't know what to watch last night, so I decided to put this on when I stumbled across it on NetFlix. It's an hour and a half, and there's 10 shorts. Sometimes I'm not in the mood for a 1 1/2 hour or 2 hour commitment for a movie, which was the case last night, so this was perfect. Anyway, think Tick 'r Treat, only way more comedy and way less seriousness. I laughed out loud quite a few times, and I laughed really hard at least once or twice. Every, or almost every short has a twist, so I don't even wanna describe any of them. If you wanna watch some Halloween gore and laugh a little, just check it out!

[GSZX1337]

Even though I was amped up to play Dark Seed, I ended up playing Phantasmagoria instead.


I was pleasantly surprised by this title as I was expecting it to just be a technical powerhouse with mediocre gameplay. Instead, I got a technical powerhouse with quite good gameplay. It's not my favorite Point and Click, but it's pretty good. Because I'm a negative prick, I'm gonna start with the downsides. First, I didn't care for the soundtrack much. With the exception of the title track, I found it to be pretty forgettable and generic. I also hated the stingers as they didn't have the desired effect. The stinger that played when Don, the game's main villain, taps Adrienne, the game's heroine on the shoulder didn't even cause me to move my half-lidded eyes. I had thought that all of the FMV scenes were shot on-set, but it looks like most of it was green-screened which I find disappointing. I'm guessing it's to keep the film budget down because it looks like shit. It doesn't mesh with the characters at all and is about as aesthetically pleasing as you'd expect 90s low-budget CGI to be. Maybe this looked better on old CRT screens (I have none to try test my hypothesis.), but on my LED-LCD, it's terrible. I suppose it gives the game a campy charm, but I just hate bad CGI. It is kinda funny when I think about how less than a decade later movies like Star Wars Episode II are the same way (The Star prequel trilogy had a much larger budget, obviously.). I don't know too much about FMV games, but it kinda seems like this game is a trailblazer in this regard. Maybe it's the Attack of the Clones of FMV games. I'll admit this last problem is sort of a nitpick, but I got frustrated with how long shots lingered. Do I really need to see Adrienne tear down a wall with a hammer for 1 minute and 22 seconds (Yes, I timed it.), or close a cellar door for 20 seconds? It feels like someone at Sierra said, "We have 7 CDs with 650 MegaBytes each, and goddammit, we're gonna use it!" Admittedly, the lingering shots are funny a lot of the time as they show Adrienne returning back to her standing position she assumes when you control her in a robotic way.

Which brings me to the first thing I liked: I'm so glad this game has a skip button. It makes traversing the giant mansion and town bearable. I also loved the progress bar that appears in the pause screen. It not only displays the chapters but also your progress in the chapter in an accurate manner. It made scheduling playtime incredibly easy. While I didn't use the feature, I liked the fact that you can start the game on any chapter of the game. I still cringe whenever I think about PC game saves that I've lost either to computer problems (This was my case with Half-Life.) or problems with the game itself (KOTOR.) and this feature is something I wish more games, PC games especially, had. With the game being a Sierra title, I expected the same frustration I had with Space Quest VGA and the fan remake of Space Quest II, but I didn't feel much frustration at all. I had a guide handy for the whole game, but I didn't even need to consult it the few times I did. There were no dead ends, and I didn't encounter any deaths or copy protection puzzles. Well, there were deaths, but they're handled much better as they're in the last few scenes and when you die you were just sent back to before you messed up. I was also surprised that the game didn't have the same mouth, move, hand, and eye interactions that Space Quest VGA had. This is probably because that would require more footage that didn't really need to be shot, but I think it's a positive as I've found the Sierra Creative Interpreter to be quite obtuse and clunky when I played the remakes of Police Quest and Space Quest. This and the lack of dead ends and made it feel more like a LucasArts game, which I greatly appreciate as I prefer their interface in games like Sam & Max. Phantasmagoria felt simple and elegant in comparison to the SCI games. The puzzles made sense and the built-in hint system was very good. The downside to the hint system though was that it just straight up tells you what to do during the last two scenes, which partly spoiled it for me.

Though the acting and plot are campy for a large portion of the game, it didn't seem to really affect my enjoyment of the FMV scenes. I was expecting to enjoy this game like I did the movie Pumpkin Head II, in that I think it sucks so good. Instead, I ended up unironically liking it in a similar fashion to the first Halloween film. The best example is the rape scene in the fourth chapter. Adrienne is groped by and eventually seduced by her possessed husband Don, and then was violated when the actual intercourse happens. It was ambiguous as at first, it felt romantic, then disturbing. It got me thinking about the hotly debated topic of sexual consent. When exactly was it rape? Was it when Don first groped his wife, or when the penetration and horror music started? Would it still have been rape if Don wasn't possessed and instead just be make-up sex for the arguing couple? At the end when Don had a horrified expression on his face, was that some of his humanity emerging in defiance of the demon, or could it be that deep down even the evilest monsters feel remorse for their actions? This short scene was a thought-provoking rollercoaster despite me making jokes before the scene and making fun of Don's stamina because of the scene's brevity. Even the scenes shortly after made me feel bad. It felt like the dichotomy of The Last House On the Left's comedy and discomfort merged together.

While I do have more to say, I've already written much more than I thought I would, and need to get back to my tasks.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Awesome posts. I am glad you also expand your October celebration to other mediums.

I, for one, am playing through Costume Quest 2. I adored the first game and it’s expansion, and I thought that they were pretty much the best pure “Halloween” games ever made. I mean, they were just a celebration of everything that’s great about the holiday - costumes! candy! trick or treating! - and if you haven’t beaten them by midnight October 31, you should just put them away until next year. The second game, which involves a time-traveling dentist trying to rid the world of candy is more the essence of Double Fine than the essence of Halloween, and its really just more of the same personality and Paper Mario-inspired RPG gameplay found in the original. It is still really fun, though, and it is a much lengthier quest. I am enjoying it, and I suspect I’ll be through it soon.

I am also doing a lot of reading this month. I finished up William Hope Hosgson’s cosmic horror masterpiece The House on the Borderland last week, and a few days ago, I finished reading Coraline aloud to my children. (The House on the Borderland was OK; Coraline was great.) I am now working, very slowly, through a small collection of creepy short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne and some of the best Edgar Allen Poe short stories that, for whatever reason, I have not read yet. If I finish those up, I may pull out Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, and I have ordered a copy of The House with a Clock in its Walls to read aloud to my children.

[Ziggy]

Grr, that reminds me. I still have to read the second half of IT. I just don't have time to read anything right now. Maybe I'll at least rewatch the 2017 movie, I've only seen it once in the theater.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Double Post!!!!

Last night, my wife and I watched a movie starring Arch Hall, Jr. - the butt of many, many jokes in the MST3K classic Eegah! - and it was good? Really good? Borderline amazing for its time period?

Against all expectations, The Sadist (1963) is a remarkably frightening and tense film that demonstrates how much a good film maker can do with five actors, a junk yard, and a couple of handguns. The basic set up is that three friends, traveling across the desert to a baseball game, have car trouble and stop at a service station/junk yard for help. Unfortunately, the family operating the station have been murdered by a thrill-killer (a really, really creepy Arch Hall, Jr.) and his giggling, equally merciless, underage girlfriend. (The movie is based on the same mid-century crime spree that inspired other films like Kalifornia and Natural Born Killers, but for some reason, it reminded me more of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.) The duo delight in tormenting the three friends, but reluctantly agree to keep them alive until one of them can repair a car. The film kept me glued to the screen and on the edge of my seat, and I found myself constantly empathizing with the characters plotting a means of escape. The movie also defied my expectations, and as the film reaches a crescendo, the deaths come quickly and unexpectedly. One death toward the end is particularly cruel, but not quite as cruel as the occasional radios in the background giving a play-by-play of the happy, sunny day at the ballpark the three friends hoped to enjoy together. Finally, the desert setting accentuates the strength of the black-and-white film - the shadows! - and I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect ending to an Arch Hall, Jr. movie:

“Watch out for snakes!”

This movie was really a surprise, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s also available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video; so, many of you should be able to watch it instantly.

prfsnl_gmr’s Petrifying September Pre-Game of Putresence

1. The Killer Bats (1940) -
2. Under the Skin (2014) -
3. Burn Witch, Burn! (a/k/a Night of the Eagle) (1960) -

prfsnl_gmr’s Horrifyingly Haunted October Horror House

1. Scream 4 (2011) -
2. Dog Soldiers (2002) -
3. Play Misty for Me (1971) -
4. The Sadist (1963) -