Surviving what has happened to the world requires you to be alone.
But if you want to keep driving down the hallway, you’re going to have to find the closest garage and get some gas. And when the gas pumps turn out to be locked, you’re going to have to figure out how to get them unlocked and you might not be able to do it alone.
Alone is a post-apocalyptic Interactive Fiction game. While you try to solve the puzzle of how to unlock the gas pumps, you also find journals and other notes that reveal what has happened to the world and why it’s so important to stay isolated from other people. It’s not a bad text game. The descriptions are sparse but effective and the puzzles are not that difficult to solve as long as you pay attention. As befits its story, it’s a straight forward game without any unnecessary padding. In the game, you don’t have any time to waste and neither does Alone.
Not surprisingly, Alone is one of many IF games that I’ve played this year that deals with people having to isolate themselves because of an apocalyptic events. This is the year of the quarantine so, of course, it’s going to be reflected in our games, books, and movies. I think that’s one reason why Alone sticks with you. Right now, a lot of people are feeling alone. Depending on the choices you make and how you play the game, Alone can end on a note of either hope or uncertainty. It’s up to you.
Alone is one of the entrants in the 26th annual Interactive Fiction Competition, which is currently ongoing and accepting entries until November 29th. You can play it (and all the other entries) by visiting the Interactive Fiction Comp’s home page.
Today’s horror scene that I love comes not from film but from television. In this episode of The Twilight Zone (entitled “It’s A Good Life”), the citizens of a rural community have to go out of their not to upset a rather unpredictable six year-old.
What happens when you upset little Anthony Fremont?
Take a look:
Written by Rod Serling and directed by James Sheldon, this episode originally aired on November 3, 1961.
First published in 1978, Amok tells the story of a gigantic Japanese soldier who, during the final days of World War II, was ordered to stay in The Philippines and not stop fighting until he got word that the war had ended. Unfortunately, the soldier never found out about Hiroshima and Nagasaki so, decades after Japan’s surrender, he’s still living in the jungle, sneaking around at night with his sword and killing anyone who he comes across.
When he kills the brother of Mike Braden, Braden returns to his estranged family’s tobacco plantation, determined to get revenge. Braden’s a Vietnam vet, a soldier much like the predator who killed his brother. Mike is obsessed with ending the soldier’s reign of terror but no one else believes him when he claims that there’s a rampaging monster — The Amok, as the local villagers call it — in the jungle. To the other Americans in The Philippines, the Amok is just a legend. To Mike and its victims, the Amok is all too real.
Amok is one of those paperback that I always used to see in my aunt’s collection. (She had a huge stack of paperbacks in her bedroom closet and I used to go through them whenever we were visiting, mostly so I could “borrow” the racier ones.) I always found myself fascinated by the cover of Amok, which featured an unseen figure holding up a bloody sword. It looked really scary!
Having now finally read the novel, I can say that it is effectively scary. Amok is a relentlessly-paced story, one that doesn’t take its time getting to the blood and the guts and which does a great job of leaving you to wonder when the Amok is going to strike next. It touches on a lot of important themes — colonialism, war, racism — but it doesn’t really explore any of them in depth. And that’s fine! Ultimately, the job of a book like Amok is to generate suspense and to frighten the reader and Amok does a very good job of doing that!
It’s interesting to note that, when the book was first published, the cover announced that it was the scariest thing since Jaws. To be honest, Amok has a lot in common with Jaws. Like the giant shark, the Amok is a force of nature and one that many people refuse to believe exists despite the fact that he obviously does. It’s easy to imagine Amok being adapted into a Jaws-like film but, strangely enough, it doesn’t appear that it ever happened. Somehow, with the hundreds of slasher films that were made in the late 70s and 80s, no one ever got around to making a movie out of Amok, a book that seems like it was practically written so that someone would pick up the film rights.
Even if it never was turned into a movie, it’s still an effective page turner. Those of you looking for a mix of blood, guts, sex, and manly man talk will enjoy it.
“Really, Lisa Marie? That’s going to be your entire review of this film? Three words?”
Listen, I’ve been wanting to use those three words for a while. Do you think it’s easy to come up with 500 words about every stupid movie that you see, especially when it’s not exactly a movie that really holds your attention? Considering the importance that entertainment plays in our lives and the fact that there actually are good and interesting films being made, dismissing a forgettable film with “Eh, who cares?” is not only justifiable but it’s also perhaps the most honest review that one can give.
“Haven’t you always said that every film deserves a review?”
I may believe that but I’ve never been stupid enough to paint myself into a corner by saying it.
“Well, why don’t you at least tell everyone what the movie is about?”
Goddammit.
“Lisa Marie….”
Okay, okay. It’s a Spanish film about this paramedic named Angel Hernandez (Mario Casas). He’s a jerk, a total believer in all of that machismo bullshit. He spends all of his time talking about how smarter he is than everyone else and he has a girlfriend named Vane (Déborah François). They’re trying to have a baby but Angel has a low sperm count. Angel refuses to tell Vane this because, to him, that would make him less of a man.
“So, it’s a film about toxic masculinity.”
Eh. Kinda. Anyway, as a result of an accident, Angel is confined to a wheelchair. He doesn’t take it well. He expects Vane to wait on him hand-and-foot while he does stuff like spy on her and hack her laptop. Eventually, Vane leaves him for Ricardo (Guillermo Pfening) so Angel starts stalking her and, after he discovers that Ricardo has gotten her pregnant, Angel kidnaps her and holds her prisoner in his apartment. He gives her an engagement ring that he stole from a patient and starts talking about how they’re going to get married and how they’re going to raise the child.
“It sounds like a Lifetime movie.”
It is kind of but …. eh. A Lifetime movie would be more fun. This is just another boring movie where a loser kidnaps a woman and holds her prisoner in his apartment while killing anyone who comes close to discovering her. You would think that the villain being in a wheelchair would at least add some sort of curiosity value to the film but it’s all so predictable that it’s hard to care. Hence, my original review.
“Were the actors at least any good?”
I guess. I’ll give Mario Casas all the credit in the world. He did a good job of bringing a really loathsome character to life. I mean, everyone has had to deal with someone like Angel Hernandez at some point in their life. Anyone who has ever been told that they don’t really understand what they need or what they want will be able to relate to what Vane goes through.
“So, the film wasn’t all bad.”
No, it wasn’t all bad but at the same time, there was nothing particularly surprising about it either. I was never surprised by anything that happened. It’s just kind of there. You watch it and you shrug and you say….
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 directors! Today, we take a look at the brilliant French director, Jean Rollin!
1983’s Twilight Zone: The Movie is meant to be a tribute to the classic original anthology series. It features four “episodes” and two wrap-around segments, with Burgess Meredith providing opening and closing narration. Each segment is directed by a different director, which probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
Unfortunately, Twilight Zone: The Movie is a bit of a mess. One of the episodes is brilliant. Another one is good up until the final few minutes. Another one is forgettable. And then finally, one of them is next too impossible to objectively watch because of a real-life tragedy.
With a film that varies as wildly in tone and quality as Twilight Zone: The Movie, the only way to really review it is to take a segment at a time:
Something Scary (dir by John Landis)
Albert Brooks and Dan Aykroyd drive through the desert and discuss the old Twilight Zone TV series. Brooks claims that the show was scary. Aykoyd asks if Brooks wants to see something really scary. This is short but fun. It’s tone doesn’t really go along with the rest of the movie but …. oh well. It made me jump.
Time Out (dir by John Landis)
Vic Morrow plays a racist named Bill Connor who, upon leaving his local bar, finds himself transported to Nazi-occupied France, the deep South, and eventually Vietnam.
How you react to this story will probably depend on how much you know about its backstory. If you don’t know anything about the filming of this sequence, you’ll probably just think it’s a bit heavy-handed and, at times, unintentionally offensive. Twilight Zone often explored themes of prejudice but Time Out just seems to be using racism as a gimmick.
If you do know the story of what happened while this segment was being filmed, it’s difficult to watch. Actor Vic Morrow was killed during filming. His death was the result of a preventable accident that occurred during a scene that was to involve Morrow saving two Vietnamese children from a helicopter attack. The helicopter crashed, killing not only Morrow but the children as well. It was later determined that not only were safety protocols ignored but that Landis had hired the children illegally and was paying them under the table so that he could get around the regulations governing how many hours child actors could work. It’s a tragic story and one that will not leave you as a fan of John Landis’s, regardless of how much you like An American Werewolf in London and Animal House.
Nothing about the segment feels as if it was worth anyone dying for and, to be honest, I’m kind of amazed that it was even included in the finished film.
Kick The Can (dir by Steven Spielberg)
An old man named Mr. Bloom (Scatman Crothers) shows up at Sunnyvale Retirement Home and encourages the residents to play a game of kick the can. Everyone except for Mr. Conroy (Bill Quinn) eventually agrees to take part and, just as in the episode of the Twilight Zone that this segment is based on, everyone becomes young.
However, while the television show ended with the newly young residents all running off and leaving behind the one person who refused to play the game, the movie ends with everyone, with the exception of one man who apparently became a teenager istead of a kid, deciding that they would rather be old and just think young. That really doesn’t make any damn sense but okay.
This segment is unabashedly sentimental and clearly calculated to brings tears to the eyes to the viewers. The problem is that it’s so calculated that you end up resenting both Mr. Bloom and all the old people. One gets the feeling that this segment is more about how we wish old people than how they actually are. It’s very earnest and very Spielbergian but it doesn’t feel much like an episode of The Twilight Zone.
It’s A Good Life (dir by Joe Dante)
A teacher (Kathleen Quinlan) meets a young boy (Jeremy Licht) who has tremendous and frightening powers.
This is a remake of the classic Twilight Zone episode, It’s A Good Life, with the difference being that young Anthony is not holding an entire town hostage but instead just his family. This segment was directed by Joe Dante, who turns the segment into a cartoon, both figuratively and, at one point, literally. That’s not necessarily a complaint. It’s certainly improvement over Spielberg’s sentimental approach to the material. Dante also finds roles for genre vets like Kevin McCarthy, William Schallert, and Dick Miller and he provides some memorably over-the-top visuals.
The main problem with this segment is the ending, in which Anthony suddenly reveals that he’s not really that bad and just wants to be treated normally, which doesn’t make much sense. I mean, if you want to be treated normally, maybe don’t zap your sister in a cartoon. The teacher agrees to teach Anthony how to be a normal boy and again, what the Hell? The original It’s A Good Life worked because, like any child, Anthony had no conception of how adults felt about him. In the movie version, he’s suddenly wracked with guilt and it’s far less effective. It feels like a cop out.
Still, up until that ending, It’s A Good Life worked well as a satire of the perfect American family.
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (dir by George Miller)
In this remake of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, John Lithgow steps into the role that was originally played by William Shatner. He plays a man who, while attempting to conquer his fear of flying, sees a gremlin on the wing of his airplane. Unfortunately, he can’t get anyone else on the plane to believe him.
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet is the best of the four main segments. It’s also the one that sticks closest to its source material. Director George Miller (yes, of Mad Max fame) doesn’t try to improve on the material because he seems to understand that it works perfectly the way it is. John Lithgow is also perfectly cast in the lead role, perfectly capturing his increasing desperation. The one change that Miller does make is that, as opposed in the TV show, the gremlin actually seems to be taunting John Lithgow at time and it works wonderfully. Not only is Lithgow trying to save the plane, he’s also trying to defeat a bully.
Something Scarier (dir by John Landis)
Dan Aykroyd’s back as an ambulance driver, still asking his passenger if he wants to see something really scary. It’s an okay ending but it does kind of lessen the impact of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.
For today’s horror on the lens, we’re very happy to present to you, Dead of Night!
From 1977, this television film is a horror anthology, made up of three stories directed by Dan Curtis and written by Richard Matheson. In the first story, a youngish Ed Begley, Jr. travels through time. In the 2nd story, Patrick Macnee plays a man whose wife is apparently being menaced by a vampire. And in the third story, Joan Hackett plays a mother who brings her dead son back to life, just to discover that sometimes it’s best to just let sleeping corpses lies.
The entire anthology is good, though the third story is clearly the best and the most frightening. Not only is it scary but it’s got a great twist ending.
About 15 minutes into this film from 1960, Donald Pleasence gets mauled to death by a dancing beer.
Pleasence plays a character named Vanet. Vanet is an alcoholic who, circa 1947, owns a circus. He also has a daughter named Nicole (Yvonne Monlaur), whose face is scarred as a result of wounds that she received during Germany’s bombing of London. When a plastic surgeon named Dr. Bernard Schuler (Anton Diffring) operates on Nicole and manages to “take away” her scars, Vanet is so thankful that he signs over ownership of the circus to Schuler. Vanet then promptly tries to dance with a bear and gets killed. Poor Vanet.
It turns out that Schuler is a brilliant plastic surgeon but he’s also kind of insane. He and his associates (played by Kenneth Griffith and Jane Hylton) are on the run from the police. However, even with the cops after him, Schuler has to experiment. His plan is to use the circus as a front. He’ll recruit scarred criminals, operate on them, and then require them to perform in his circus. That plan doesn’t really make much sense but I guess a fugitive plastic surgeon has to do what he has to do. Still, it’s hard not to be amused by Schuler describing his plans for the circus as if he’s just come up with the most brilliant plan ever as opposed to just a bunch of gobbledygook. At no point do any of his assistants point out that his plan makes no sense so I guess he must pay well.
Anyway. the film jumps forward twelve years and what do you know! The plan worked! The circus is a hit! People from all over Europe come to Schuler’s circus. The circus is famous for featuring the most beautiful women in the world. The circus is also famous for several mysterious and fatal accidents. INTERPOL thinks that it’s possible that Schuler is intentionally killing his performers for the free publicity. When Schuler makes plans to take his circus back to the UK, Scotland Yard is given a call and a heads up about what Schuler’s been doing. A nosy reporter investigates while the murders continue unabated….
Circus of Horrors is odd. It’s as if someone reached into a bag and pulled out random cards that read, “Circus,” “plastic surgery,” and “Word War II subtext” and then did what they had to do to construct a plot out of those three elements. Of those three elements, the World War II subtext is probably the most interesting. The majority of Schuler’s patients were scarred as a result of the war (which Europe was still recovering from in 1960) and Schuler is played by German actor Anton Diffring. It’s easy to see Schuler, with his German name and his love for medical experimentation, as a stand-in for Nazi fugitives like Josef Mengele and Klaus Barbie. Schuler and his circus move across Europe and, in the end, it’s going to take Europeans working together to stop him. The shadow of World War II hangs over every scene.
Beyond that, Circus of Horrors is a flamboyant mix of horror and soap opera. The colors are bright, the blood flows freely, and the melodrama is definitely embraced. It’s like a Hammer film, just without a Hammer cast. Unfortunately, Anton Diffring is a bit bland in the role of Schuler. One could imagine an actor like Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing working wonders with the role but Diffring often seems to be bored with the whole thing. As well, the film sometimes get bogged down with footage of the circus performers doing their thing. For instance, do we need to see the clowns and the acrobats when what we really want to see is the murderous knife thrower? Circus of Horrors has its moments but, while watching it, it’s hard not to think about how much more fun it would have been if it had been a Hammer film.
Through the Shattered Lens 