Instead of reviewing an IF game today, I decided to instead share what I consider to be one of the greatest video game opening scenes of all time.
I know people who still play Silent Hill just for the opening alone. Though it may look primitive compared to what we’re used to today, this game really blew everyone’s mind when it first came out in 1999. This is the game that showed a generation just how good a game could be. The opening not only set the mood but also let us know that there was more to Silent Hill than just walking down streets and shooting monsters. This was a game that told a comple story. That’s something that we take for granted now but, at the time, Silent Hill was revolutionary.
The score was composed by Akira Yamaoka. He was influenced by Angelo Badalamenti’s work for David Lynch.
Happy Halloween! I’ve really enjoyed participating in this year’s Horrorthon and I look forward to doing it all over again next year!
Before I say anything else, I have a confession to make. I read this book really quickly. I mean, I basically sat down, and skimmed over every page and didn’t write out a single note about the book.
Why was I reading it so quickly? Bad Moonlight is a book that I ordered off of Amazon last month with the intention of reviewing it for October but then I changed my mind. As often happens, I ended up running behind and, with Halloween approaching, I decided to set aside all of the Stine books that I hadn’t yet read and reviewed because I wanted to review a different (and, to be perfectly honest, adult) horror novel for Halloween.
Unfortunately, the book that I was planning on reivewing turned out to be really bad, despite the fact that it was co-written by one of my favorite filmmakers. I didn’t feel like getting all negative on Halloween, especially when it would involve being negative about a filmmaker who I adore and who is no longer with us and whose legacy pretty much defines modern horror. So I decided to put off reviewing that book (I’ll write about it in November). Needing something for today, I grabbed R.L. Stine’s Bad Moonlight and I quickly read it. Fortunately, R.L. Stine wrote books that are pretty much designed to be a quick read.
Bad Moonlight was first published in 1994. It tells the story of Danielle. Danielle is 18 but, in a rather creepy aside, we’re told that she looks like she’s closer to 12 because she’s not as developed as the typical 18 year-old. She’s the lead singer in a band. The band’s struggling but at least they have a totally hot roadie named Kit. Anyway, one night, Danielle is inspired to write a song called Bad Moonlight and then she bites Kit’s lower lip until it bleeds. The band’s fans love the new song and Danielle goes onto write several other songs that all deal with moonlight. She also writes a song that may or may not be about the death of Joey, “the sound guy.” Joey was murdered but who killed him? Everyone thinks it was Danielle, mostly because Danielle is always having these weird hallucinations. Since this is a Stine book, Danielle is also an orphan with a mysterious background. She lives with her Aunt Margaret and she sees a psychiatrist named Dr. Moore. Dr. Moore likes to hypnotize her. That’s never a good sign.
Anyway, you can probably guess, just based on the title, that this book has to do with werewolves and a big conspiracy to make Danielle into a werewolf bride. It’s actually kind of a fun book, because you can tell that Stine actually wanted to focus on all of the band melodrama but, because he’s R. L. Stine, he also had to toss in a bunch of werewolves. The effort to bring the band drama and the werewolf mythos together is a valiant one and it kind of comes out of nowhere and you have to appreciate just how weird Stine allows things to get. It’s an entertainingly silly book.
If nothing else, it shows how strange the world can look when it’s illuminated by …. BAD MOONLIGHT!
Did you know that in 1938, the same year that they horrified America with their production of The War Of The Worlds, Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater did a radio version of Dracula?
Check out this amazing cast list:
Orson Welles – Dracula/Dr. Arthur Seward
George Coulouris- Jonathan Harker
Ray Collins – Russian Captain
Karl Swenson – The Mate
Elizabeth Fuller – Lucy Westenra
Martin Gabel – Professor Van Helsing
Agnes Moorehead – Mina Harker
Coulouris, Collins, and Moorehead would, of course, all go one to appear with Orson Welles in Citizen Kane.
And now, we are proud to present, for your listening pleasure …. DRACULA!
This 1973 film is one of George Romero’s best non-Dead films, though it never seems to get the respect that it really deserves. Even today, the original is often overlooked in favor of the remake. And don’t get me wrong — the remake of The Crazies is good and it features several effective jump scares. But the remake is a slick Hollywood film and, watching it, you always have the safety of knowing that you’re watching a slick Hollywood film. The original, though, is rough and low-budget and it looks and it feels real. As a result, it sticks with you long after the haunting final scenes.
The storyline is simple but effective. People in a small Pennsylvania town are going crazy and murdering each other. Usually, it’s impossible to tell who is infected until they’re already attacking you. The infected are just like the zombies from Night of the Living Dead with one key difference. The crazies may be as relentless as the Dead but they’re also human beings. They think. They plan. They scheme. And when they die, they die like humans and we’re reminded that, just a few short hours ago, they were friendly and, more or less, harmless.
The government, of course, shows up in the town and tries to contain the outbreak. The main image that most people will carry away from The Crazies is of men in white hazmat suits, walking through small-town America and killing almost everyone they see. As is typical for a Romero film, the so-called solution often seems to be worse than the problem. We also get the typical conflict between the scientists and the military. The military wants to destroy the infected. The scientists want to cure them. The film is bleakly cynical as the one man who knows how to cure the disease is ignored and finally killed in a stampede of quarantined citizens.
The film follows six people as they attempt to escape from the town and avoid getting sick themselves. Needless to say, it’s not as easy as it sounds. The characters who everyone seems to remember are Artie (Richard Liberty) and his daughter, Kathy (Lynn Lowry). What happens to them is perhaps the most disturbing moment in a film that’s full of them. The other members of the group can only hope to survive, even as they slowly lose their grip on sanity.
It’s a disturbing film, precisely because it’s not slick. The actors are not movie star handsome and the attacks are not perfectly choreographed. The grainy cinematography gives the entire film a documentary feel and serves as a reminder that Romero made industrial films before he revolutionized the horror genre. The Crazies works because it feel like it could be happening in your community or your back yard. And, ultimately, it offers up no solution. Mankind could save itself, Romero seems to be saying, if only mankind wasn’t so stupid.
Needlessly to say, a film as bleak as The Crazies was not a hit in 1973. But it’s lived on and continued to influence other horror makers. It’s one of Romero’s best.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.
This October, we’ve been using 4 Shots from 4 Films to pay tribute to some of our favorite horror filmmakers! Today, we honor the father of modern horror, George Romero!
4 Shots From 4 George Romero Films
Night of the Living Dead (1968, dir by George Romero)
If you thought Bohemian Rhapsody was overedited, you wait until you see the 1966 British horror flick, Eye of the Devil.
Seriously, I lost track of average number of of cuts that were used in each scene. It was like, “There’s Deborah Kerr! There’s Deborah Kerr from another angle! There’s Donald Pleasence staring at something! There’s David Hemmings in a corner. There’s Deborah Kerr again! There’s an overhead shot of the entire room! Hemmings again, staring off to the left. Now, a different shot of Hemmings staring off to the right. Pleasence! Kerr! Hemmings! There’s Sharon Tate, was she there the whole time? Another overhead shot.” All in five minutes.
Now, I will admit that the frantic editing style was a bit more effective in Eye of the Devil than in Bohemian Rhapsody, if just because Eye of the Devil was meant to be a bit of a filmed dream. The whole movie was set up to be a surreal journey into the heart of French darkness so the disorientating visual style was effective, even if it did kind of give me a headache while I was watching it.
In the film, Deborah Kerr play Catherine, who is the wife of Philippe (David Niven), who owns a vineyard and who is perfectly charming and David Niven-like until he returns to the vineyard. Then he suddenly becomes withdrawn and cold. It turns out that the vineyard is struggling a bit. It’s the dry season, which I guess is a bad thing when you’re making wine. While Philippe tries to keep morale up among the peasants, two siblings — Christian (David Hemmings) and Odile (Sharon Tate) — wander around the castle. Christian carries a bow and arrow and seems to be kind of arrogant. Odile smiles enigmatically and turns frogs into doves. Meanwhile, Donald Pleasence plays the vineyard priest, who appears to believe that something drastic needs to be done to reverse the dry season.
Soon, Catherine is stumbling across strange ceremonies and discovering that no one seems to care about her concerns that Christian and Odile are going to be a bad influence on the children. She’s especially upset when Christian points an arrow at her. Philippe, meanwhile, just laughs off her concerns. Obviously, it was just a joke! he says.
Eye of the Devil is about as enjoyably pretentious as a British film from 1966 can be. It’s not just that the movie is edited to the point of chaos. It’s also that characters have a bad habit of going off on discussions about relationship between magic and reality. And yet, it’s so pretentious and so silly and so overdirected that you can’t help but love it. It’s just such a film of its era that it’s impossible not to get something out of it. Add to that, Sharon Tate and David Hemmings share an otherworldly beauty as the two siblings. Deborah Kerr shows that she could make even the silliest of situations of compelling. David Niven is surprisingly effective as a non-charming character. And then you’ve got Donald Pleasence, making enigmatic statements and showing off the intense stare that would later make Dr. Sam Loomis an icon of horror.
Eye of the Devil may be a mess but it’s a beautiful mess.
Well, as another horrorthon draws to a close, it’s time for another Shattered Lens tradition! Every Halloween, we share one of the greatest and most iconic horror films ever made. For your Halloween enjoyment, here is George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead!
Instead of reviewing an IF game today, I decided to instead share what I consider to be one of the greatest video game opening scenes of all time.
Through the Shattered Lens 