The Spooktacular Eight #2: The Slayer (1982)

I did promise i would cover more Arrow Video releases.

I didn’t specify or pointed out that they also re-released a lot of slasher flicks, so we’re not talking about the works of Park Chan-wook, Miike or Buttgereit, not today.

Today we’re talking about one of the many cult slashers from the 80s (really, what slasher from that era ISN’T a cult sensation today?), The Slayer, the debut feature from genre director J.S. Cardone, and yet another one for the “video nasty” list, which in retrospect helped these movies gain more notoriety than they ever could wish for, so yeah, good one Thatcher and co.

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American McGee’s Alice PS3 [REVIEW] | The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

Oh yes, American Mc Gee’s most well known work, his take on Lewis Carrol’s Alice.

The story is not really that original in retrospect, it’s the usual “let’s give fairy tales an edgy reinterpretation with a grim, depressing tone” applied to Alice In Wonderland, so here Alice is Alice Lindell, a british orphan that by chance survived the house fire that took away her family at the age of 10 (or something), and was basically raised in an asylum, mostly likely treated to a Richard O’ Brian-less brand shock therapy as well.

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[EXPRESSO] Centipede Chaos ARCADE | Voxel Bug Blastin’

Atari in modern times is more garbage than it ever was, i don’t think i need to remind you of the previous incarnation of the company bearing this name actually wanting money for something called Alone In The Dark: Illumination.

Among other egregious crimes.

But what do you know, sometimes they manage to actually use the brands and franchises of old in new ways that aren’t unholy artifacts of shit, like actually making new arcade games of arcade series they own, like this Play Mechanix developed new Centipede game, Centipede Chaos.

Sporting a retro voxel graphics and a cabinet made for max 3 players, Centipede Chaos actually does things right and doesn’t try to reinvent Centipede into something else that’s not Centipede at all, it’s just straight, simple arcade shooter action with a decent soundtrack, fairly good looks and satisfying gameplay that stays true to the core formula, just throwing some limited use power-ups.

It’s a fun time even solo, but sadly it’s limited by own nature as a ticket redemption machine, meaning it’s fairly short even for an arcade Centipede game, as to not require a lot of work to get to the final boss worth the fabled 500/1000 tickets, but since this is arcade gameplay design, they throw in a dickish curveball by giving you one shot to kill the final boss, regardless of lives left or money put into the machine. Yep.

And that’s basically it, there are no extra modes or anything else to see, which it’s a bit disappointing considering the license used, but not too surprising due to the nature of redemption ticket arcade cabinets and the surrounding economy.

It’s just that kind of arcade money beast. Nothing that special overall, but definitely worth a go if you can find it in your neck of the woods.

Ice Spiders (2007) [REVIEW] | Ski Spiders

As promised in the review of Spiders 3D, here’s the review of the spider creature feature TV movie Tibor Takacs directed before the 2013’s Nu Image/Millennium Film one that happened to pretty much be a remake of the 2000’s movie Spiders, produced by the same company.

You might argue i maybe should have done this before Spiders 3D, and you would be correct, but i didn’t even find out Ice Spiders existed before doing research for the other one, so here we are.

I should have guessed that a movie like this would exist, because i do believe this type of genre B-movies (especially if made for TV like this one) will eventually fall victim to what i call the “Pokemon Singularity”, with desperate filmakers mixing and matching animals with a random element/type, and if we can have sharks made of ice, sand (so “earth”), fire (atomic), even ghostly “dark” sharks, sure as shit we can have a movie called Ice Spiders. Possibly about literal spiders made of ice.

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Drive In Massacre (1976) [REVIEW] | Get Out Of The Car

September, perfect time for looking at some slasher movies, even lesser known (but not quite obscure) ones, like today’s Drive In Massacre.

It’s basically Targets, as in both movies have a drive-in as the central scenario of the action, and as a motif. IF Targets was directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis instead of Peter Bogdanovich.

Yeah, this one has a cult status and was quite popular at the time, i’m willing to guess in the drive-in circuits, which i always wondered about, but since that type of cinema experience never took foot here in Italy, i will just have to witness its depiction in american movies. Oh well.

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I Eat Your Skin (1971) [REVIEW] | Burial Grounds – Voodoo Terror

Summer means it’s a perfect time to revisit some black and white “exotic flavored” zombie flick of yore.

Made in 1964 as “Carribean Adventure”, titled this way to hide from investors the fact it was a zombie movie… it never saw the light of day until 1971, when the zombie genre was “properly” born via the unexpected, shocking and – as time would tell – seminal release in theathers of a low budget flick called The Night Of The Living Dead in 1968.

Of course, zombies existed in cinema before, but mostly “voodoo zombies”, as in people put under hypnosis or drugged by a scientist or master of some kind, used as both forced labour and goons to dispose of people, usually made invulnerable by magic to compensate their slow, stiff movements, but even by 1964 the “voodoo zombie genre” had already plateaud… heck, you can argue it basically died in the mid 40’s when zombie comedies like Zombies On Broadway happened, as Universal later would make Abbott and Costello meet its own monster roster.

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Putty Squad PS4 [REVIEW] | Blob In Time

Ah, yes, the lost Amiga platformer that wasn’t really lost at all, and even released on Super Nintendo in 1994 (not be confused with the SNES port of the first game, Putty, retitled “Super Putty” because Super Nintendo naming conventions), but was tauted as “reborn” for the PS4.

Yeah, this was a launch title, not that surprising, this is System 3 we’re talking about, i remember distincly them putting Super Fruit Fall on the Wii at launch, at full price, because why not?

Does it merit full MSRP? No. Doesn’t matter, since we’re putting it out when there’s bugger all to even play for the console. System 3 have been one of the cheapest UK publisher around for decades, and they’re still around, even if they mostly put out videogame pinball collections, some “HD” port for modern consoles of their old internal-developed MS DOS titles like Constructor.

And yes, they tried selling this one again on Switch, with the “Super” monicker slapped on, though, if you want a retail copy you might have to import it from the EU region.

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[EXPRESSO] Spanky’s Quest SNES | Darling please

As Nintendo’s own Nintendo Switch Online retrogaming offering continues to baffle and disappoint everyone, i decided to pick from this pathetically tiny new serving of small, back catalogues titles most people don’t really care about… well, Spanky’s Quest, from Natsume.

Don’t be fooled by the cheeky title, because a very Kirby-esque (albeit shitty, as it doesn’t actually explain even the basic premise) cutscene will introduce the titular simian, Spanky, trapped in a tower by a witch and now in a quest has to escape while watching out for enemy fruit homunculi.

It’s the kind of game that if i played back when i was a kid, i would have most likely dropped after the first few levels, not in frustration more as not being that interested. Doesn’t help that there’s no tutorial of sorts, since the way you attack isn’t obvious, nor the game tells you can bounce the bubble you launch to power it up multiple times, and then use the bubble button again to pop it for a bigger, more powerful projectile attack.

Once you figure this out, you realize this is a fairly straighforward puzzle platformer, where in each level you need all the keys (hold by the enemies) to open the door leading to the next stage, albeit made a bit more challenging by the fairly unique method of indirect attack by throwing – and juggling – bubbles like actual spherical objects, and NOT the way Bubble Bobble does it.

To my surprise, it’s actually a decent little title, and while it’s not too long (just 50 short stages, even without the save states and rewind features it’s not that hard or time consuming), it has some charm and depth to it. Just a decent, but cute little puzzle platformer from the era. Nice music, too.

Frankenstein VS Baragon / Frankenstein Conquers The World (1965) [REVIEW] | Atom Heart Monster

Strange as it may sound, you really can’t talk about King Kong and Godzilla beating each other up without talking about the Frankenstein’s monster, but we already talked about the backstory of the original “Monkey VS Nuclear Dinosaur” kaiju flick in its review, so let’s just say that this movie is actually Toho bringing back the partially scrapped idea of having Kong fight a monster created by Frankenstein for King Kong VS Godzilla, which would itself spawn a follow up a year later, with War Of The Gargantuas. And of course, tasking yet again Ishiro Honda to direct it.

Also, this one introduces a monster that would eventually cross into the Godzilla franchise, Baragon, not be confused with another, completely different but – for pure coincidence – very similar looking (at a glance) monster from the Gamera franchise, Barugon, with a “u”. A minor monster, brought back just for the giant monster brawls installments of the Godzilla series (where pretty much every frigging Toho kaiju was invited for a quick cameo), but here the main antagonist to the “Frankenstein” monster, as the original japanese title makes it abudantly clear.

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[EXPRESSO] Fox n Forests NNSWDDL | Wink Wink Nudge Nudge E.T. Atari Cartridges

One of the older “good children of Kickstarter”, a retro-styled 2D platformer made by nostalgic gaming enthusiast for the nostalgia crowd that loves 16-bit style platformers for the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis.

And before you ask, yes, there are “Metroidvania” elements, Kinda. As in you’ll have to revisit levels when you get an upgrade allowing you to reach new paths and collect more of the items necessary to unlock the other batch of levels. The music does remind one of Castlevania, though, like a lot.

You play as Rick the Fox, tasked by the ancient talking tree to recover sacred bark and repel the mysterious “Fifth Season”. You’re given a bow with sword for close combat, but the main gimmick of Fox n Forests is the ability to change the season in the level to affect the level design: freezing rivers in winter to walk on the icy surfaces, changing to autumnmakes vines grow, creating extra platforms, and so on.

It’s a good game held back by how on-point it recreates the 16-bit platformer experience, despite otherwise finding good compromises to mesh old and new sensibilities, like retain checkpoints but having you fork over cash to activate them. The main problem is having the fodder (and sometimes stronger) enemies respawning ad infinitum, making exploration more difficult and grating than needed, in a game that wants you to explore (and revisit) the few big levels available as throughly as possible. And it’s pointless since enemies always drop coins, not the more useful health items.

Also, most boss battles are downright obtuse and become piss easy once you realize what you were supposed to do, and the videogame references… the less said the better.

I really wanted to like this more, but it’s still slighly above just being “decent”.