Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky

You think you have seen it all regarding martial arts and gore combined? You think that you have seen plenty of crazy manga/animes? How about Hong Kong/Chinese prison flicks? Look no further than Riki-Oh then for good times.

Also known as the precursor towards the present famous One Punch Man, Riki-Oh is about Ricky who killed a man and leads the prisoners against the corrupt prison system with the wardens and the Gang of Four terrorizing all.

The Story of Ricky is actually one of the goriest flicks ever made, easily coming close towards the king of gore, which is Braindead(1992), directed by Peter Jackson. It's so over the top at times that it became an effective martial arts horror comedy.

Infamous scenes include literally punching through guts, meat and bones, falling on a board of spikes, an imploding body, and facing of against a grotesque transformed warden who eventually is meat grinded massively, and his head is left.

Definitely do not take this movie seriously, and I guarantee that you will have a good time, IF you have a heart for B-rated, nonsense adaptations. Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is ridiculously easy to make fun of.

Rating: 6.5

Dr. Chaos

An NES game so average, and yet so abstract, that you can't help but try it out for curiosity sake.

Dr. Chaos is an action platformer with a horror theme playing around a mad scientist who went too far with creating quantum based warp zones, and unleashing horrific monsters for his brother to the rescue Michael Chaos to battle.

The game is split up into three segments; first are the hallways, which are the shortest ones experienced. They serve as hubs and checkpoints towards the other two segments, and feature nuisance enemies and a main theme that desperately tries to kick in, before you enter one of the many doors.

Now is where the most interesting segment plays out. A pseudo 3D interface appears where you are able to click on anything sticking out using the four commands of "OPEN", "GET", "GO" and "HIT". The first three have obvious results, while "HIT" implies interacting with walls and other areas in order to hit secret achievements.

Serving both as item collection phases, but most of all as mazes, the rooms segment are the most memorable in otherwise an average adventure, as they can also have unexpected visitors popping up, where you will have to kill them in order to proceed.

The last segment are the warp zones themselves, or long corridors as I would like to call them. These are more traditional based levels filled with enemies and a boss at the end. Upon defeating them, you obtain laser pieces which will ultimately be used against the final boss awaiting.

Unfortunately, backtracking is prominent, and when that's combined with the confusing aspect of the rooms segment as to "where the fuck do I go" kind of feelings come and go, you too will understand why the game simply isn't fondly remembered unlike the classics.

Dr. Chaos is a horrible night to have a curse. It has redundant songs playing, an unbalanced part of game design with the overpowered jump boots, and it will frustrate the shit out of you. And yet it's a perfect night to play it right now, with Halloween approaching.

Rating: 6.3

Phantasm

I'm gonna do something unconventional. I will review the first and the last parts of this series only. The other 3 are basically more of the same, and should be watched if you like either of these. I recently also saw the remastered edition of the first.

Phantasm is about a group of friends dealing with the bizarre and supernatural acts of The Tall Man, played by the late Angus Scrimm,  who is a grave robber and has an arsenal of weapons, nightmares and weapons .

With a recognizable main theme playing out, this late 70's horror has creative scary scenes, including hooded dwarf midgets, an alter woman ego of The Tall Man, and tiny metal flying spheres which can attach onto victims and drill their blood out in gruesome manner.

The film feels asymmetrical and disoriented in a good way, because it has nightmare esque scenes happening which confuse the protagonists. It's both a cheesy and a conventional horror which remains underrated, and it has one of the best endings of the 70's.

EHEHEHEHE, BOOOOOOYYY!

Rating: 6.5

Reggie, Mike and Jody must co-operate and battle The Tall Man one more time in Angus Scrimm's final acting role in part V named Ravager. Focusing on Reggie this time, he goes through various illogical scenes happening which depict fragments of previous entries, and nightmares.

The mortician undertaker unleashes his zombie henchmen and weapons again which all return, and the mood of the film felt like a parodic horror comedy, and yet it still remains faithful and conscious of what makes Phantasm work.

If you happen to be a die hard fan, unlike me, you must be quite sad to hear that after a whopping 37 years, the franchise finally ends, but atleast with satisfaction, because the main cast returns one more time to invite you to the nightmare world of Phantasm, even with a low budget.

And thus another one bites the dust. Rest in pieces.

Rating: 6.0

Mortal Kombat

Forget about Mortal Kombat XL, X or even the 2011 reboot. Let's go back to the past and go all the way back to the very first title in this long running franchise, which became infamous for being so bloody and brutal.

Created by Ed Boon and John Tobias, Mortal Kombat stormed the arcade audience because of the trademark Fatalities and the realistic digitized graphics, portraying the characters as frightfully authentic, but the real joy comes from the gameplay.

The story is about Liu Kang entering a Mortal Kombat tournament in order to stop an evil sorcerer named Shang Tsung from getting ahold of too many souls in order to feed himself further, and by subsequently saving Earth.

The fighting is 2D based with punch, kick and throw options to input, but all of the fighters have special abilities as well, such as Liu Kang performing a flying bicycle kick and Scorpion throwing a hook to keep the combat interesting.

The Fatalities ended opponents in gruesome ways, whereby players would had to input a secret combination of buttons in order to trigger them. In fact, the whole franchise basically reeks not only of Fatalities, but secrets, unlockables and hidden fighters as well.

Having been ported to a vast number of different platforms, I fondly remember the SNES and arcade versions most of all, despite the former infamously having no blood available as animation, but sweat animations instead whenever opponents would get hit or die.

Mortal Kombat is a fan favorite as a brand and easily recognized even today and still going strong, but the very first title simply isn't as good as later ones, as it's direct sequel would already improve on it's formula dramatically. And yet, we shouldn't forget about the inceptions, as without them, one could never improve.

The Conjuring 2

 

James Wan is a household name for horror by now, as he has proved with films like Saw(2004), Insidious(2010) and The Conjuring(2013), which are all some of my most favorite titles ever in the whole genre.

This sequel has a few connections, but takes a new direction with it's plot and the tiny setting of a family house where another demonic presence plagues them, and our returning protagonists Ed and Loraine Warren.

The buildup was successful, and the scares have a few unexpected jump scares, a detour in the form of The Crooked Man, mixed up with typical ghost mythos and a wheeze of demonology. It has also spawned another upcoming spin-off movie.

It's not one of Wan's best, but without a doubt does The Conjuring 2 respect it's genre and keeps the quality high. A haunted house has been seen many times by now, but it's all abut the middle part of the story where horror elements can remain flexible and even innovative at times.

Rating: 7.5

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

 

Based on a short novel published in 1967 by Harlan Ellison, this point and click adventure has a grim tone and a dark presentation, and with it's sci-fi horror background, it surely will spook your imagination.

At least, if you had experienced it in 1995. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream has disturbing ethical choices to be made, but nowadays it can be considered an exceptional horror title from the 90's which actually expanded on the overall plot of the short novel.

AM, the supercomputer created after another world war broke loose between the U.S.A., the U.S.S.R. and China, entraps and tortures the last 5 living human characters for over a hundred years, and then finally lets them play a "game" with it. Selecting their scenarios can be done in any order, and they all take place in different time era's.

The adventures are implied to be metaphorical, which reflect back on the character's weaknesses. The chapters portray moral and ethical dilemmas dealing with dark topics like genocide, rape, paranoia and fanaticism.

It has the unique feature(apart from arcade video games) to be unwinnable, because this was a decision made by the creator of the story. It's not entirely unwinnable, but rather, the story can only end badly despite their being different outcomes.

Gameplay wise, it's nothing special, you've got your classic inventory screen, your various choices of interacting with the environment, objects and NPC's, and there are dialogue trees available. The game also employs impressive voice acting for it's time.

One odd feature sticking out is the so called spiritual barometer. It symbolically represents the character's mood and moral status. If you perform good deeds through the journeys, you will increase your chance at destroying AM. If you perform evil deeds, you will fall further down into hell.

Can't say I have a favorite adventure sticking out, as all five of them seemed to do just fine on their own merits. The final adventure afterwards triggers how it will all end, and for the most of us, they all seem to have an annoying afterthought, which is intended.

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream has been on my to do list for years merely because of it's weird title alone, and after beating it, I can say that I did not miss out on much, as there are better point and click adventure games out there.

Still, if you dig psychological sci-fi horrors full of despair, check this out.

Rating: 6.9

The Classic Age of Horror Cinema

Last year, I wrote about the Silent Age and the Golden Age of Horror Cinema. They focused on the earliest films towards the ones released in the 70´s and 80´s. Of course, the way I label them is entirely subjective, and the same goes for the next time period.

The Classic Age of Horror Cinema reaches out in my opinion from the 30´s towards the 60´s, where enough innovative flicks have been directed, produced, edited and shown on the silver screen in order to influence and inspire present films.

King Kong(1933) is a milestone in filmmaking which truly impressed me with it's production values, originality and brave direction and paved the way for Creature Features to come out, which remain highly popular in Japan.

The gothic horror subgenre involves vampires primarily, and they usually have suspenseful settings and plots to immerse into. World famously, Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee in their respective Dracula portrayals(1931 and 1958) dominate the first thing that people think of when speaking of gothic horror.

The Universal Monsters Studios and the Hammer company managed to roughly over 3 decades populate not only Dracula, but his partners in horror as well, including Frankenstein's monster, The Mummy, The Wolf Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon and my personal favorite, The Invisible Man.

The 50's saw the rise of doomsday and monster pandemonium flicks, which usually involved giant versions of animals, and/or silly stories involving nuclear deterrences and radiations. Admittedly, the 50's aren't a favorite of mine when speaking of horror cinema.

The 60's gave rise to prototypes of the slasher subgenre, with Psycho(1960) remaining another remarkable film to have changed the landscape of horror cinema. Other highly influential titles include the birth of the modern zombie in Night of the Living Dead(1968), and fear of the unknown in The Haunting(1963).

The Classic Age of Horror Cinema is a vast space of unsettling features with enough content to provide for anyone interested in digger deeper down the horror hole. Although I only talked about the most popular titles, and modern young audiences most likely won't feel or appreciate them, you should definitely give the ones I mentioned a try if nothing else interests you from this age.