[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.

Camel Spiders (2011) [REVIEW] | Not camels, nor spiders

Spiders: when you can’t afford sharks or giant reptiles for your creature feature.

And because many people do find arachnids in general to be quite disgusting, so it’s no wonder they’re a constant for b-movies since forever, especially if they’re of giant size.

This time we have Camel Spiders, one of the many late 2000s/early 2010s Roger Corman productions (sporting the “Roger Corman Presents” label on DVD releases), this one directed by Jym Wynorski… credited as Jay Andrews as usual.

For consistency’s sake, i guess.

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[EXPRESSO] Freaky (2020) | Stop ‘n’ Swop

It’s my pleasure to say that with Freaky we’re back to Christopher Langdon’s brand of energetic and delightful modern slashers movie “with a twist”.

This time it’s NOT a Groundhound Day time-loop applied to a slasher movie, but another popular twist, as in “body swapping” between the heroine/final girl and the killer (via a mystical sacrifical dagger), an indirect “reversal”, as our troubled teen girl has to go back in her body and do it fast as the spell will be irreversable after 24 hours, with the killer using the advantages of his new body to continue the murder spree at the school prom.

While the main twist is indeed fresh for the slasher subgenre, and Langdon’s script fully utilizes for dramatic and comedic effect (while also obviously giving a spin to the chasing killer trope), Freaky is both style AND substance, able to hit many of the satisfying slasher elements, like the satisfaction of the killer tearing up detestable characters, the fairly graphic and unapologetic gore of the more elaborate kills, keeping most of the traditional elements.

It’s not just a cynically conceived gimmicky twist hurriedly scribbled to akwardly “spice up” an otherwise uncaring crap slasher, it’s clearly crafted and written with a clear understanding of the genre/subgenre, and while it’s very funny, with the same whimsical tone seen in previous Langdon’s film, it’s not a satire or parody, but a proper slasher movie in itself, one with great actors like Vincent Vaughn and Kathryin Newton, giving off great performances.

Even if you weren’t crazy for the director previous films (wasn’t too fond of the second Happy Death Day, myself), it can’t be denied it’s a very confidently written, acted and directed blend of horror and comedy that successfully lays an old fan favourite twist on the slasher formula.

Queen Crab (2015) [REVIEW] | Crab Budget Z

It has been a while since we dabbled into the territory of modern Z-grade movies about killer animals, so it’s time to descend into the muk of the ultra cheap features, so cheap that they are barely discernable from freshman cinema assignments shot during the summer break of the past.

An advice for fellow collectors living in Europe: you don’t need to get the german version, there’s a cheaper UK DVD release under the title “Claws”, it’s the same movie, don’t be fooled by the wrong synopsis on the back of the box (and most likely on the Amazon item page as well), clearly written by people that didn’t actually see the damn movie, there are no “space meteor crabs” in Queen Crab.

It’s obvious from the first minute this is indeed a monster movie shot on a microbudget using cheap digital video equipment, but i was interested in it because it promised the giant crab done in stop-motion animation, indeed a tasty promise and a rare sight regardless of budget to any cinephile.

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[EXPRESSO] Army Of The Dead (2021) | The Uncertain Dead

Zack Snyder has taken a break from superhero movies to come back to the zombie farm for Army Of The Dead, a zombie flick that’s also a heist movie, originally conceived as a spiritual successor of Snyder’s own 2004 Dawn Of The Dead remake, but over time becoming his own distinct thing, while it stewed in development hell until Netflix picked it in 2019.

While Las Vegas is plagued by a zombie epidemic, a group of mercenaries is crazy enough to try pulling the absurd and hugely risky feat of going into the quarantined zone to pulls off the biggest heist ever conceived, and do it before the government drops a nuclear bomb on the area.

This sounds like a great recipe for a bombastic, excessive good time… but it isn’t.

Putting aside that the movie is not so full of action as it marketed and presented, it’s a flawed execution of a good premise, one that’s also very long (2 hours and a half) and totally feels like it, even more as it feels unclear on what exactly it wants to pull off, not helped by the fact there are tonal inconsistencies; figures when it feels so conflicted between almost being Zombieland or a more Romero-style zombie film.

It’s frustrating, because it has some interesting, noteworthy variations and additions to the zombie mythos, it does live up the title in that regard, the actions scenes are quite good, there’s even some decent humour. There’s something to it, but it tries to pack too much stuff in and it never fully “clicks” because of it.

We’ll see more regardless, as Snyder wants to do a sequel, and Netflix already greenlit two prequels, in form of a film and an animated series, so maybe something better could come out of it.

[EXPRESSO] The Unholy (2021) | Cigarettes, Ice Cream, Figurines

Based on the novel “Shrine” by James Herbert, The Unholy is another movie that released just now due to the COVID-19 pandemic effects, and is the first horror movie i’ve seen in theathers before the last lockdown here in Italy (before that i just managed to see The Grudge 2020).

Why i’m talking about my “cinema cronology” instead of the movie itself, and posing fairly obvious retorical questions? You know exactly why, but let’s get to it anyway.

The plot follows a New England hack journalist, Gerry Fenn, once very famous but eventually kicked out as he kept just making shit up all the time, now reduced to do low paying puff pieces about strange phenomena, but he’s as skeptical as cynical, so he keps mostly inventing stories. But when he hears of a young lady named Alice, a deaf-mute miracolously healed after – as she puts it – she saw the Virgin Mary.

Gerry decides to investigate on the matter, leading to discover many dark episodes uncongrously related to Alice’s “miracle”.

It doesn’t sound that interesting, and… it isn’t. But it’s not half bad either, as the spirit/entity isn’t completely generic and the script could be far worse, but it’s also one of those horror movies that almost completely relies on lazy jump scares or noise distractions to keep some attention from the viewers. It’s that kind of mediocre horror film about possessions that at least has a narrative where shit happens at a decent pace, some good actors (it has Cary Elwes, Katie Aselton and Jeffrey Dean “Negan” Morgan in the cast) and quite good production values.

In a way, it’s the perfect blend of mediocre horror flick that’s not annoying, too slow or boring, but it’s also full of cliches, lacking any mystery and immediatly forgettable. Meh.

Arachnoquake (2012) [REVIEW] | Phantom Uses Rollout

In a sense, i’m way overdue for reviewing this, not that i was getting emails about it, but because i realize i should have seen and reviewed this before Lavalantula and the sequel, 2 Lava 2 Lantula, especially the first one, who in hindsight sound a lot like a parody of that one, but featuring the bus driver as lead instead of the washed up celebrity played by Steve Guttenberg (and yes, that movie realized the irony in that casting), just taking place in New Orleans instead of California and this time the spiders are coming out due to an earthquake caused by fracking, instead of being long lost cousins of Phantom incased in magma for millions of years that woke up and started the eruption.

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Fist Of The North Star: Ken’s Rage 2 X360 [REVIEW] | You Should Have Left The Bronx

The first Ken’s Rage sold relatively well, and it’s Koei, so we got a sequel 3 years later.

Which would be fine, until you realize what it actually implies in this case, and i don’t mean it simply being released to coincide with the series 30^th anniversary.

That is something else entirely that ultimately condemns Ken’s Rage 2, but the main issue is that you just can’t do what Dynasty Warriors does with Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, as the source material for that leaves it open to the real historical characters being reinvented or changed, on what of the many events (historical or pure fiction like the many uses of magic) focus more the narrative, while keeping focus on the essential battles and significant achievements of the warring factions, and their part in the path to the unification of China after the fall of the Han dynasty.

You can’t just re-imagine Kenshiro, his friends and foes, as they have all distinct personalities, distinct character designs, signature moves and Fist Of The North Star’s popularity never really waned in 30 and plus years, so people still are quite well aware of it. On the other hand, you could hardly justify making a sequel when the first game stopped at the end of the Raoh’s story arc.

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[EXPRESSO] Another Round (2020) | ALCOHOL!

I’m just gonna pretend that an “american remake” of this isn’t already in the works.

(glorch)

Despite the Oscars feeling less and less relevant and more “old men row selecta”, they still serve the purpose of spotlighting interesting films like today’s Another Round, from danish director Thomas Vinterberg, set in Denmark and starring many danish actors, most prominently Mads Mikkelsen.

Four teachers, all very unappeased with their lives on both a professional and personal level, decide to test on themselves a theory according to which every human has a little percentual of alcohol and trying to achieve a state of constant inebriation would lead to huge benefits in everyday life.

Even the formal and distant history teacher, Martin (Mads Mikkelsen), joins in, and actually get results by becoming a better teacher and husband, but obviously this is the very definition of a slippery slope experiment. You don’t watch a movie like this waiting for Mads to emerge from black ooze with mascara and leading ghost soldiers, you know where it would realistic go from that premise,but still, the execution is masterful, depicting the tentations of alcoholism, its effects both in a very funny way, even wholesome at time, while also depicting its obvious negative effects, but without getting preachy on the matter or using it as easy scapegoat for deeper issues.

It’s a really funny movie that not afraid to tackle the more dramatic and very mature implications rising (even indirectly) from the odd situation, able to perfect balance both, with very likeable characters. But it’s also a surprisingly, utterly optimistic – not naive, mind you – celebration of life seen through the lens/state of light, happy intoxication, making for a very joyful ride.

In short, it’s very, very, VERY good indeed, and i highly recommend it to everyone.

Komodo (1999) [REVIEW] | Dragon Park

Let’s clarify this right away: this has nothing to do with the Jym Wynorski “Komodo duology”, not only because this movie pre-dates both movies, but because this one has actual dignity and quality.

It’s fairly common for special effects artists to also become directors, especially if we’re talking B-movies and creature features about giant monsters or dinosaurs of some kind, but it’s still kinda odd that a movie like this can legit claim on the cover, poster and promotional material “it’s from the FX artist behind the effects of Jurassic Park”… and also the writer of the first Anaconda, Jack Bauer.

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