It Came From The Archives 2!

I took another trip back into the archives this week and pulled out a bunch of old shit, that will hopefully all make its way on here at some point in the future. Today's little oddity is an old horror trivia board game called Dark Lore.

I can't remember exactly where I acquired it, but I'm pretty sure Elvira was involved somehow. It was produced in Ontario, so it may get some recognition from my local peeps, but blank stares from everyone else.

It played like your average game board based trivia game with dice-- shit, I just realized I'm missing the one that came with it... oh well, I'm pretty sure it was just a standard die and not anything cool like one that had skulls for dots.

Supreme Master Of The Macabre! Now THAT'S a title!

The pits and the full moon cards were a nice touch, spicing things up a bit.


Here below are the six games pieces that were available to the players.


Let's see, we got Dracula, Frankenstein ok, The Mummy, Werew-- Toxic Avenger?! Lloyd would be proud. The trivia questions in the game ranged from super easy to fairly hard, with a lot of them being multiple choice. However, having six different categories made for a good deal of variety.


I blotted out the answers because I thought we could have a little bit of fun. Any takers?

I only played the full game using the board a few times, but I have pulled out the cards on occasion, the most recent being last year's road trip to Montreal for Fantasia. Good times.

That's it for now, but I think you guys are really going to dig what I have in store for you over the coming months. And don't worry, I haven't forgot about the posters. They are coming along, as well. Have a great weekend everyone!

The Lost Boy

I woke up to some sad news this morning. Actor Corey Haim died earlier today of an accidental overdose. He was 38. Regardless of how much of a train wreck his life may have become, back when I was a kid, Corey Haim spent a lot of time on my TV screen. Considering I didn’t see his stint on The Edison Twins until reruns started playing on YTV in the late eighties, I guess I first saw him in the Stephen King adaptation of Silver Bullet, acting alongside fellow Torontonian Megan Follows. A year later came Lucas, where Haim and I apparently looked enough alike to have me called Lucas for a good chunk of my high school years.

Obviously, where Haim really became eighties canon was 1987’s The Lost Boys. I loved this movie for several reasons. It had a great cast, and the music rocked. In fact, the soundtrack was the first CD I ever bought.

Lou Gramm FTW!

As was the case with a lot of eighties vampire movies, like Fright Night and The Hunger, the filmmakers did away with the traditional vampire tropes and modernized them. Capes gave way to leather jackets and castles to houses in suburbia. Like Haim’s character Sam, I was a bored outcast, with an older brother who was way cooler, so the movie resonated thusly.

Outside of horror flicks, like The Lost Boys and Watchers, he was also in License To Drive, the second of many projects he did with Corey Feldman. Being of an age when I saw it, where having my own license was only a few years away; Haim was again playing a character I could root for. An underdog fumbling through his formative years just as I was.


Now, you can scoff at me for all this sentimental bullshit, but for a time Corey Haim was making movies that I wanted to watch and therefore became a sizeable part of my childhood as a result. Given what had been going on in Haim’s personal life the last several years, I guess today’s headline shouldn’t be a complete surprise, but that doesn’t make it any less a damn shame.

WANT!

While checking to see what HalloweenAddict has been up to lately, I found this print by Jason Chan.

Zombie Playground aka Hanging on Jay's Wall Soon.

For more of Chan's work, click here.

Don't Kill The Messenger 52

Hello all. It's been a beautiful sunny weekend here, so how's about a little doom and gloom to spice up your Sunday morning?

Short Shorts.

Here are a couple of shorts that I saw this week while surfing the Web. The first is Andy Muschietti's short Mamá that I discovered courtesy of Twitch. The artistry on display here is pretty remarkable. And apparently, dark maestro Guillermo del Toro agrees, as he is now in the process of helping to expand it into a full length feature.

The second is a short by Drew Daywalt, that earlier this week he threw up on his Twitter feed. This guy just owns the short film format. See what he does in less than two minutes in The Laundromat.



Suddenly Less Excited.

I've mentioned before that I was intrigued Christina Ricci's upcoming project After.Life. Well, the trailer dropped recently.



Hurm. I was kind of hoping for something a little less... generic looking. And what a strange career path Justin Long is on. He goes from being Mac guy to beleaguered boyfriend in horror flicks? Odd.

Oh, The Possibilities.

Again through Twitch, I came across this really interesting interview between My Big Fat Geek Running and Suda 51. Suda 51 is a highly revered game developer who has made such outside-the-box titles as killer 7 and No More Heroes. The meat of this interview is that Suda 51 mentioned that during a recent meeting with Japanese director Sion Sono, Sono said these magic words, "Well actually, if you’re interested you can adapt my next movie into a video game."

If you a gamer and are at all familiar with Sion Sono's films, this should make you extremely excited. After my recent experience with Heavy Rain, my appetite has been whetted. I need more! For the full interview with Suda 51, click here.

Bring On The Rain.

Last week, after years of growing anticipation, Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain finally got released on the PS3. After a lengthy install process, which included a tutorial on how to make an origami swan while I waited, I was away to the races.

I made this!

Playing Heavy Rain was a remarkable experience. ‘Interactive movie’ is a term that gets thrown around a lot, but there really are no others words that truly describe it. A cinematic story unfolds, and you are right in it, controlling the fate of four different characters. With most games, save points are ubiquitous, some nowadays don’t even let you die – and that’s fine, as most gamers don’t have the time or patience to redo the same parts over and over anymore – but this is not the case here. Heavy Rain is a game of consequence. Every choice you make matters and sometimes you might only have a split second to decide. You die, the game, the world goes on without you and shifts to your next character. I mean, sure, you could go back a chapter and do it over, but doing so would portray the wonderfully unique mechanic Quantic Dream has designed here. Another dimension Heavy Rain brings to the table is how the experience continues even after you have finished it. I can't tell you how much fun it was speaking with other gamers and hearing about how differently things played out for them. The more stories I hear, the more I realize just how many permutations are available. I’ve also spent a lot of time comparing trophy collections, trying to figure out where I might have missed something.


So, how’s the story? Well, pretty good actually. It mixes elements of genre films like Seven, Saw and The Cell to form a tale that would’ve been at home in a giallo. I was quite impressed. If I really looked closely, I’m sure its cracks would start to show, but it’s quite possible they could be filled in by subsequent playthroughs. I know I keep bringing up how cinematic this game is, but let me put it to you like this. When I look back on some of Heavy Rain’s action sequences, my mind recalls them like I was watching a movie and not playing a video game. That is how fluid those bits seemed to me. It is extremely intense in some sections and this is in no small part due to how invested I became in the characters, especially the female journalist Madison Paige (below) and private detective Scott Shelby (above).


Some of the stuff Madison – and therefore I – went through in this game was extremely stressful and will likely stay with me for some time. Scott’s hard-boiled private eye storyline was as film noir as it gets and it was a joy to pad the rain-soaked pavement alongside him. The FBI agent Norman Jayden shines mainly because you get to play with his cool gadgets. His “Added Reality Interface” or ARI is some of the raddest shit I’ve seen in a long time. I must have taken almost a half-hour just choosing which virtual environment to use. I finally decided on the surface of Mars.



The fourth character Ethan Mars (below), the troubled architect, was probably my least favourite, likely because his 'performance' was the weakest of the four. However, it was his sections that were often the most exciting. His first ‘trial’ was where Heavy Rain really made me go ’ok, THIS is awesome and exactly what I was hoping for!’ Perhaps most surprising is it’s not just the action stuff that is engaging. If you’d told me a year ago I would be playing a game where you babysit and change diapers, I’d have laughed in your face. But there I was, burping infants and microwaving pizza for my ten-year-old. In the context of the game, you want to do it because you WANT the character to succeed. I guess this must be what those people who play The Sims must feel like.


That’s not to say the game isn’t flawed. Some of the voice acting was not where it should have been, though the roughest spots were early on in the game. The graphics, though not equal to the impossibly attainable levels of the demos at past E3’s, were still pretty solid, but range in quality from character to character. There were a few problems with continuity, as well. The animations – even though the motion capturing was spot on – were sometimes not completely reflective of the accompanying dialogue and a couple of times instances from one scene did not carry over to the next. There was a scene where I got shot at least twice and then the following scene, I was totally fine. My quibbles with the controls were pretty minor. Every once and a while I would revert back to my learned behaviour of using the analog sticks to move, which could be quite maddening at the tenser parts of the game, but that was more my fault than the game’s. Mostly I just appreciated how closely the controls mimicked the actions in-game, which often led to some diabolical games of Twister with my Dualshock.

After Uncharted 2 last year and now Heavy Rain, the Playstation 3 is really on a roll when it comes to offering cinematic level gaming experiences. I’ve heard a few stories about spouses and non-gamers walking in on Heavy Rain and saying “what is that?” They would then end up spectating and getting as involved as the one with the controller in their hands. It is like we’ve almost come full circle. When Dragon’s Lair – technically the first ‘interactive movie’ – first graced arcades in 1983, it was one of the few games that you could say was almost as fun to watch as it was to play. It was certainly cheaper, that’s for sure. Now, over twenty-five years later, I was at my buddy’s place after the gold medal hockey game and he said, “so, what now?”, to which I replied, “Well, I’d kinda like to watch you play Heavy Rain to be honest.” That tells me that it is not your average video game.

I’m really excited to see where not only Quantic Dream goes from here, but other game makers, as well. I realize that a production like this requires a good deal of time and money, but I can’t believe at least a few developers haven't wanted to expand and improve on the framework that Heavy Rain has laid down here.

While I can relent that Heavy Rain might not appeal to all, I still urge anyone who’s interested in gaming – and I assume you are if you own a PS3 – to give it a whirl.

Roll Out The Red Carpet.

As you are likely aware, this Sunday is the 82nd Annual Academy Awards. To celebrate, I’ve got an extra special Coverbox Wednesday for you all today that ties in with Hollywood's biggest night.

A thing I've always found interesting about horror films is that they often feature young talents that subsequently went on to become household names. I had no shortage of such titles at my store. Now, we’re all familiar with the appearances (and classic demises) of Johnny Depp and Kevin Bacon in A Nightmare On Elm Street & Friday The 13th respectively, but here are some you might not be aware of – or had at least maybe forgotten about.

Brad Pitt

John Travolta

Jennifer Connelly

Sharon Stone

Leonardo DiCaprio

Patricia Arquette

Drew Barrymore

Jennifer Aniston

Tom Hanks

Hugh Grant

George Clooney

Susan Surandon

John Candy

Holly Hunter & Jason Alexander

Brooke Shields

Horror not only launched the careers of actors, but also directors.

Ivan Reitman

David Cronenberg

Francis Ford Coppola

Sam Raimi

Guillermo del Toro

Peter Jackson

This year’s Oscars are of special note, as two of the duelling directors for Best Picture, are not only ex-spouses, but both cut their teeth on horror projects.

James Cameron

Kathryn Bigelow

So on Oscar night, when you see all those A-listers in the crowd, wearing clothes that likely cost more than your car, just remember that they all started somewhere.

Let's Get WEIRD!

I've likely mentioned before that the Final Girl Film Club is a great way to revisit titles that I may not have otherwise. Stacie's latest pick, Higuchinsky's 2000 film Uzumaki is one such film.


In the early 2000's, after having my mind blown by Japanese staples Ringu and Battle Royale, I started to absorb their cinema like a sponge. It was around this time that Uzumaki fortunately screened at Toronto's Royal Cinema. It was there that I was truly introduced to just how strange those guys behind the sun could really get. Now years later, after a constant diet of Miike, Sono and Tsukamoto, I am aware of how different Japanese creative sensibilities often are, but back then, Uzumaki sent me spinning like James Stewart in Vertigo.


So, what's this movie about? Good question. If I HAD to explain it, I'd say it's about a cursed town where the inhabitants are slowly driven mad by 'uzumaki', or anything with a spiral pattern. The two main characters are high schoolers named Kirie (Eriko Hatsune) and Shuichi (Fhi Fan), who try and escape before falling victim themselves.

Uzumaki is based on the popular Manga by Junji Ito. I haven't read it, but have taken in one of his other works called Gyo, which was equally off-putting, if only that it realized my worst nightmare of sharks walking on land! This guy is clearly not right in the head. Watching Uzumaki was a surreal experience when I first saw it, just because there was so much going on that I just hadn't seen before. I was completely caught up in the crazy imagery that wasn't so much as creepy – though it had its share of that – as it was incredibly weird. Seeing it now, I was more aware of its offbeat camera angles and transitions and how Higuchinsky would often put something outside of your field of vision that you wouldn't pick up until just before he cut to something else.

That this bizarre film is Japanese? Nope.

The ending still threw me for a loop, but when dealing with a movie as erratic as Uzumaki, one almost doesn't expect any sort of clear resolution. After all, the Japanese have always been an ambiguous bunch, haven't they?

I feel I might have to crack out the Thesaurus now, as I can't really further articulate the weirdness within. It's really one of those titles that just has to be experienced. If anything, Uzumaki is a perfect example of the strange fiction that lies out there in Japanese circles. I still find their cinema fascinating to this day, which is probably why I endured an hour-long deathmatch with my dusty all-region player earlier this week, just so I could view my loaned Region 2 copy of Love Exposure.

The Japanese are either scaring the pants off me, or making me grin from ear-to-ear. Sometimes both. And I love them for it.