Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Robots With A Cause: Class of 1999 (1990, directed by Mark L. Lester)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The year is 1999 and John F. Kennedy High School sits in the middle of Seattle’s most dangerous neighborhood.  Teenage gangs have taken over all of the major American cities and just going to school means putting your life in danger.  However, Dr. Bob Forest (Stacy Keach!), the founder of MegaTech, has a solution.  He has taken former military androids and reprogrammed them to serve as educators.  JFK’s principal, Miles Langford (Malcolm McDowell!!), agrees to allow his school to be used a testing ground.  Soon, Miss Conners (Pam Grier!!!) is teaching chemistry.  Mr. Byles (Patrick Kilpatrick) is teaching gym.  Mr. Hardin (John P. Ryan) is teaching history.  When they’re not teaching, these robots are killing truant students and manipulating two rival street gangs into going to war.

Imagine mixing Rebel With A Cause with The Terminator and you get an idea of what Class of 1999 is like.  Two of the only good teenagers (played by Bradley Gregg and Traci Lind) figure out that the teachers are killing their classmates but they already know that they won’t be able to get anyone to listen to them because they’re just kids who go to school in a bad neighborhood.  Meanwhile, the teachers have been programmed to do whatever has to be done to keep the peace in the school.  Why suspend a disruptive student when you can just slam his head into a locker until he’s dead?  Director Mark L. Lester (who previously directed Class of 1984) is an old pro when it comes to movies like this and he’s helped by a better-than-average cast.  Any movie that features not only Stacy Keach and Malcolm McDowell but also Pam Grier is automatically going to be cooler than any movie that doesn’t.

When Class of 1999 was made, 1999 was considered to be the future and, in many ways, the movie did prove to be prophetic.  We may not have robot teachers (yet) but the idea of arming teachers and expecting them to double as cops has become a very popular one over the past few years.  Personally, I wouldn’t want to send my children to a school where the teachers all have to carry a gun while teaching but that may just be me.

Game Review: Don’t Fire Until You See The Yellow Of Their Niblets (1999, Dan Shiovitz)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

“There is a sharp hiss, as if millions of kernels cried out in pain and then were suddenly silenced. And then it arises — dear god, it arises. Something like Venus arising from the waters, or your fat Uncle Albert arising from his arm-chair, the Yellow Beast of Corn draws itself up from the pile of stalks. The broom drops from your nerveless fingers as you contemplate the apparition that has appeared before you. “Why me, why now, why here?” you can’t help but ask yourself, even knowing that the question is futile. To kill, to kill, that is the purpose of the Nibleted One, and anyone in its path will perish.”

— Don’t Fire Until You See The Yellow Of Their Niblets by Dan Shiovtiz

In this text adventure game, you are working the night shift at Big Foods Super Market.  You have just finished sweeping up the produce aisle and you are looking forward to finally getting off work when suddenly, the Yellow Beast of Corn rises up, looking to destroy you.  This may be because Big Foods has started receiving it’s corn from The Dark Brotherhood instead of Pete’s Produce Wholesalers.

You have three directions in which to run and two aisles in which to hide.  Each aisle features a different way to kill the Yellow Beast of Corn but you’ll have to figure it out quick.  Take too long and the day crew will only find a few pieces of you left in the morning.

Don’t Fire Until You See The Yellow Of Their Niblets is a game that was specifically designed to be played in less than a minute.  Figuring out how to destroy the corn monster is not difficult.  Instead, the challenge is making sure that you get to the aisle with enough time left to put a plan into action.  It’s a fun game and you may have already guessed that it’s not meant to be taken too seriously.

Don’t Fire Until You See The Yellow Of Their Niblets can be downloaded from here.  You’ll also need a TADs interpreter to play the game, which can be downloaded, for free, from TADS.org.

When Bronson Met Perkins: Someone Behind The Door (1971, directed by Nicolas Gessner)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Dr. Laurence Jeffries (Anthony Perkins) is an American-born neurosurgeon living in the UK.  One night, as Dr. Jeffries is preparing to head home, he meets a confused and frightened man who is identified in the credits as being The Stranger and who is played by Charles Bronson.  The Stranger has no memory of who he is or how he came to be where he is.  Dr. Jeffries takes the Stranger back to his house.  Dr. Jeffries says that he often takes patients back home for overnight observation but it turns out that he has more than treatment on his mind.  Dr. Jeffries knows that his wife, Frances (Jill Ireland, who was Bronson’s offscreen wife), has been cheating on him with her French lover.  What if Dr. Jeffries can convince the Stranger that Frances is married to and cheating on him?  Could The Stranger, who may have already attacked another woman on the beach, be manipulated into murdering Frances’s lover?

Before Death Wish made Charles Bronson a box office force in the United States, he was a huge star in Europe.  Someone Behind The Door is one of many films that Bronson made in France before he returned to America.  It’s always interesting to see Bronson’s European films because European directors were willing to cast him as something other than just a vengeance-driven vigliante.  In Someone Behind The Door, Bronson actually gets to play someone who isn’t in control of his fate and who doesn’t always have the perfect tough guy quip on the end of his tongue and Bronson gives a surprisingly good performance.  He brings The Stranger’s inarticulate fear and eventual rage to life.  Indulging in his usual nervous mannerisms, Anthony Perkins matches him every step of the way.

Someone Behind The Door largely takes place in just one location and it’s really too stage-bound to be successful.  Still, fans of Perkins and Bronson should find the pairing of the two to be interesting.  The pair play off each other surprisingly well, with Perkins nervy energy bouncing off of Bronson’s physicality.  It’s too bad that this was the only time that these two actors appeared opposite each other.

Video Game Review: Vacation Gone Away (2002, Milibus)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Vacation Gone Awry is an old-fashioned text adventure where you wake up on the first day of your vacation in Germany and you discover that your family has disappeared!

Searching your three-room cabin doesn’t do much good.  Your wife and your daughters are nowhere to be found.  Even looking under the bearskin rug doesn’t reveal the trap door that I had been led, by years of playing text adventure games, to expect.  Finally, I went outside, got in the car, and decided to just drive away.

Right, it’s not going to happen.  Your family may have abandoned you but you abandoning them is not an option.

If you do go back to the cabin, you will eventually discover what has happened to your family.  Like many of the puzzles in Vacation Gone Awry, the solution to this problem is to specifically look at everything.  That may sound easy but the cabin is do detailed that it can be easy to get distracted.  I wasted ten turns in the cabin’s bedroom, trying to open my wife’s makeup bag before I finally accepted that it wasn’t an important clue.

Once you discover what has happened to your family, you are free to once again get in your car and attempt to drive into town.  However, while driving, this happens:

It seems that aliens have accidentally lost a piece of their spaceship and now a group of research scientists are on the verge of opening it up and killing everyone in the vicinity, including you and your family.  You have no choice but to make your way through a blizzard, find the research station, and stop them!

Your enjoyment of Vacation Gone Awry will depend on how much patience you have for searching locations and solving puzzles.  This is one of those text adventures where no door can simply be opened.  Instead, you have to figure out how to unlock it.  Finding the solution will often depend on not only carefully reading the descriptions of the location but also taking a closer look at things that you may have already examined.  Especially when compared to more recent works of Interactive Fiction, Vacation Gone Awry is puzzle-driven instead of plot-driven.

It’s challenging but, if you’re a puzzle person, there is enjoyment to be found in the game.  Vacation Gone Awry is available for free on several sites.  I played it at the Internet Archive.

Good luck saving your family!

Robotic Vengeance: Steel and Lace (1991, directed by Ernest Farino)

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On trial for raping concert pianist Gally Morton (Clare Wren), evil businessman Daniel Emerson (Michael Cerveris) gets four of his sleazy buddies to provide a fake alibi for him.  After Emerson is acquitted, Gally goes to the roof of the courthouse and leaps to her death.

Five years later, Daniel and his four friends have made a fortune by illegally foreclosing on people’s houses.  They may think that they’ve gotten away with their crimes but what they don’t know is that Gally’s brother, Albert (Bruce Davison), has been building a robot version of his sister.  Soon, Robot Gally is killing off all of Emerson’s friends while a courtroom sketch artist named Alison (Stacy Haiduk) and a detective named Dunn (David Naughton) attempt to figure out what’s going on.

A mix of The Terminator and I Spit On Your Grave, Steel and Lace is a classic of its kind.  While the deaths are inventive and, considering who Robot Gally is killing, deserved, what really sets the film apart is the strong cast and the inventive direction.  Director Ernest Farino wastes no time getting down to business and he inventively opens the film by cutting back and forth between Emerson assaulting Gally and the jury acquitting him of the crime that we just saw him commit.  Davison is not in the film as much as you might expect but he still makes an impression as the fanatical Albert and Naughton and Haiduk are likable even if their scenes sometimes feel like padding.  Best of all is Clare Wren, an actress who deserved to be a bigger star and who is convincing both as the fragile Gally and as the vengeance-driven robot.  Robot Gally eventually comes to question whether justice is truly be served by all of the killings and Wren sells it.  Also be sure to keep an eye out for David L. Lander, playing the prerequisite eccentric coronor.  (Has there ever been a movie coroner who wasn’t an eccentric?)  Finally, Brian Backer — who will be forever known for playing nice guy Mark Ratner in Fast Times At Ridgemont High — is effectively cast against type as one of Emerson’s stooges.

Steel and Lace is one of the best low-budget films to come out of the early 90s, a deeply satisfying tale of robotics and vengeance.

Video Game Review: Hamburger Hell (1986, J.P. Jansen)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In this game, you are working in a fast food restaurant.  Your goal is to make as many hamburgers as possible.  The more hamburgers you make, the more money the restaurant makes and the more your boss likes you.

Sounds simple, right?

Think again!

In this restaurant, it’s not just about knowing when to flip the burger.  Instead, you have to climb to the top of a ladder and push each ingredient down a level, one-by-one.  (That’s you, at the bottom of the third ladder.)  Making things extra difficult is that there’s a ghost running up and down the ladders.  The more hamburgers you make, the faster the ghost becomes.  If the ghost touches you, you die.  You come right back to life the first four times.  But after the fourth time, this happens:

This is an intentionally dumb but very addictive game.  You can play it at the Internet Archive.

Eat well and watch out for that ghost!

Everything You Know About Vampires Is Wrong: Night Hunter (1996, directed by Rick Jacobson)

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Forget everything you know about vampires!

Did you think that vampires could only go out at night?  Wrong.  They can run around in broad daylight.

Did you think that you needed a cross or a stake to kill a vampire?  Wrong.  You can break their necks or use a shotgun.

Did you think that we get new vampires by vampires biting their victims late at night?  Wrong.  Vampires can only breed during a solar eclipse.

Did you think that there’s thousands of vampires hiding out across the world?  Wrong.  There’s only seven left.

That’s the idea behind Night Hunter, which stars Don “The Dragon” Wilson as Jack Cutter.  Cutter’s grandparents were vampire hunters.  His parents were vampire hunters.  Cutter was destined to be a vampire hunter.  And now that he’s the only member of his family left alive, he is determined to wipe out the last few remaining vampires.  Jack has two problems.  The first is that the police don’t believe in vampires so they just think that Jack is going around Los Angeles and killing random people.  The second is that a solar eclipse is rapidly approaching and, if the vampires breed, all of Jack’s work will be for nothing.  Accompanied by a plucky tabloid reporter named Raimy (Melanie Smith), Jack searches for the king of the vampires.  Not coincidentally, Raimy looks just like the woman that the king once loved over a hundred years ago.

For a direct-to-video vampire film, Night Hunter’s not bad.  Wilson may not have been a great actor but he was one of the best kick boxers in the world and this brings a verisimilitude to Night Hunter‘s action scenes that most direct-to-video action films couldn’t hope to duplicate.  Rick Jacobson directed the majority of Wilson’s films and, in Night Hunter, he keeps things moving along at a steady pace.  Night Hunter doesn’t waste any time getting to the vampire action and it never pretends to be anything more than what it is.  Best of all, the film’s got Maria Ford as a French vampire named Tourneur who says things like, “I will not await vengeance, the hunter will die!”

When I first watched Night Hunter, I thought that it was a rip-off of Blade but Blade actually came out two years after Night Hunter.  Unless Don “The Dragon” Wilson (who co-produced) was a fan of Tomb of Dracula, the similarities between the two films are probably coincidental.  While Night Hunter may not be Blade, it’s still pretty damn cool.

Video Game Review: The Count (1979, Adventure International)

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You have just woken up in a bed in a Transylvanian castle.  Why are you there?  You’re on a mission.  What type of mission?  It’s Transylvania and the game is called The Count.  You figure it out.  You’ve got three days to figure out how to kill Count Dracula or you’ll suffer a fate worse than death.  Make a mistake and you might become a vampire during the night.  Try to leave the castle early and you’ll get torn apart by the angry villagers.

The Count is a very early text adventure game, one of the many that was created and designed by Scott Adams in the days when having a personal computer was considered to be a luxury instead of a necessity.  The Count has everything that you would usually expect from an Adams game: minimalist descriptions, silly humor (“The signs says ‘POSITIVE NO SMOKING ALLOWED’ signed Count Dracula.”), and puzzles that often take more than one run-through to solve.  It also has a simple two-word parser that, for modern players, might require some getting used to.

Historically, The Count is important because it was one of the first games to have a fixed time limit.  Timed challenges have always been my downfall, as anyone who has ever watched me play any of Spider-Man‘s side missions can tell you.  Solving The Count is not as challenging as catching Howard’s pigeons but it will still probably require a replay or two.

Like all of Scott Adams’s game, The Count has been adapted for other Interactive Fiction interpreters and can be downloaded for free..  The 1982 re-release, which came with graphics, can be played at the Internet Archive.

 

Straight From The Direct-To-Video Film Vault: Laser Moon (1993, directed by Douglas K. Grimm)

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Like so many straight-to-video thrillers from the 90s, Laser Moon opens with a serial killer.  This one stalks women whenever there’s a full moon.  His weapon of choice appears to be a laser pointer but it’s supposed to be a real laser.  When late night DJ Zane Wolf (Harrison le Duke, doing a barely passable Eric Bogosian impersonation) starts getting phone calls from a man claiming to be the killer, Detectives Barbara Fleck (Traci Lords) and Vincent Musso (Bruce R. Carter) get involved.

If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you mashed up Talk Radio with the type of movies that used to play regularly on late night Cinemax, the end result would probably be better than this.  Oh, don’t misunderstand.  Laser Moon tries it’s hardest to be something more than just another low budget, direct-to-video thriller.  Zane Wolf claims to be a cynic and he smokes a cigarette right in front of a “no smoking” sign.  (I have pictures of myself doing the exact same thing in high school.  Take that, evil sign!)  When the killer calls Zane Wolf’s show, the discussion involves all sorts of philosophical issues but the problem is that neither one of them has much to say.  Zane is a cardboard nihilist, the type who can’t come up with anything more profound than telling his listeners to “do what you’re afraid to do.”  “You walk alone,” he tells another caller.  Why are people listening to this guy again?

Traci Lords is miscast as a police detective but she still gives the best performance in the film, showing once again that there was more to her as an actress than just her notoriety as a former underage porn star.  Laser Moon may be one of her worst films but at least it ends with a twist involving the use of holograms.  That’s not something you see every day.

Video Game Review: Vampiric Tower (2000, Mike Behrens)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Vampiric Tower is a simple but addictive puzzle game that I found on the Internet Archive.

In this game, you are a purple haired vampire in a ten-story, fifty-room tower.  Your goal is to go through each room and collect all of the vials of blood.  Only after all of the vials have been collected will the door to the next room open.  At first it’s simple:

Things get more complicated with each room that you enter.

For instance, in the room above, there’s plenty of blood but there’s also objects in the way.  Fortunately, you can turn into a bat and fly over the obstacles but there’s only so many times that you can transform and you always have to return to your “human” form if you want to collect the blood.  You can push the obstacles out of the way but, if you’re not careful, you can very easily ended up locking yourself into a corner.

Each room has more obstacles than the last and you’ll have to be smart about how you use your transformation powers if you’re going to get all of the vials.

You’re also not alone in the tower.

Those jack o’lanterns may not look dangerous but get in their line of sight and they’ll kill you.

Vampric Tower is a simple puzzle-solving game but it’s also very addictive.  No sooner have you managed to figure out how to escape one room than you find yourself in an even more elaborate and dangerous location.  How quickly can you make it through the vampiric tower?  Play the game to find out!