POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #12: SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI IV (2013)

 The theme of ‘Aboveground Urban Area C’ pounds and drives and I feel like the coolest motherfucker of all times striding through the demon-haunted streets of post-nuke Tokyo.

A Bulgarian cyclops bull known as a Stonka whispers in my ear and uses ‘Me’ instead of ‘I.’ Stonka’s adorbs Muppet-talk changes my life, demonic words as spiritual steroids, getting me jacked for this or that gruelling boss battle.

And once I put on that Black Demonica Suit?

I never took it off.

Even if it put me at a disadvantage in the late game.

That was my look.

Usually,

I walk the Neutral path

to express my atheism,

to signal to all angels, deities, devils, and demons

that my ass needs smooches,

and that the line forms on the right, my Dears;

but this time around I was drawn to the Chaos

because the game starts me off in a weirdo Samurai-Christian theocratic dictatorship

and that shit

made Horned Chaos make too much damn sense to me.

I needed to obliterate the Homeland,

because I was double-done-with-its-shit.

And so I fought the Law.

And the Law ceased to be.

Yeah.

It kinda snuck up on me.

And despite my Megatenist Neutral Ideals,

SMT IV reminded me all too well

how often Enemy begins and ends in the Home.

In my mind’s newly mutated cyclops eye

-the demon whispers are working-

I fantasize the movie version as a Tokyo-based version of Escape From New York,

directed by Takashi Miike,

with special EFX by Jim Henson-Meets-Rob Bottin.

The Stonka’s fierce,

and fiercely kawaii.

-February 2021

MOVIE REVIEW: HALLOWEEN II (1981)

Director of Photography Dean Cundey

Music by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth

Edited by Mark Goldblatt and Skip Schoolnik 

Produced and Written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill

Directed by Rick Rosenthal

Starring 

Donald Pleasence

Jamie Lee Curtis

Gloria Gifford

Leo Rossi

Dick Warlock 

Review by William D. Tucker

Here’s a weird one.

Here’s a dilemma. 

In all its particulars, Halloween II is a well-made film.

The cinematography. The editing. The score. The sound design. How it’s directed. How it’s paced. Even the acting. 

All the elements of a good movie are here. Particularly, a well-made low-budget horror movie. You can do those, you know. Horror doesn’t have to suck. Low-budj horror doesn’t have to be shit. You can work within your means. You can have a strong sense of purpose. You can make the most of what you’ve got. Halloween II does all this. 

Looks great.

Sounds great. 

I’m watching a widescreen DVD edition from some years ago, and on a modern screen . . . looks just fine. 

In some respects, it improves upon minute points of craft from the 1978 original. Great use of darkness. Doesn’t rush things. Takes its time. All this despite the fact that it is a little more grisly than the first one. Halloween II does not give in to the urge to become a dumber flick than the first one. The essential creepiness of the Shape and its methods of murder are maintained. 

You could even make the case that this one has a more spectacular climax than the original. 

The actors make the most of what they’re given. Jamie Lee Curtis is convincingly freaked-out. Donald Pleasence is suitably dogged in his pursuit of his quarry. Gloria Gifford is both compassionate and assertive as a head nurse. Leo Rossi is agreeably crude and irreverent as a cynical EMT. Dick Warlock incarnates the Shape with murderous spirit. The whole cast is professional. They all exceed stereotypical expectations of a slasher movie cast. 

I suppose you could knock the script for being derivative, and it is. It also dutifully ties up various plot threads from the first movie, and extends the concept of taking place on Halloween night into a couple more twists and turns. But not much here that’s new in terms of screenplay. 

But it is not sloppy. It’s a professional job on all counts. Perfectly watchable.

But I don’t like it. I fundamentally disapprove of its existence. Even though, on the merits, it is not badly made at all. 

Except the very idea of it. That’s what I find objectionable. 

Halloween ‘78 is a perfect circle. It encompasses and renders redundant all possible sequelization with its exquisite expression of the persistence of unknowable evil in a mundane suburban cosmos. It’s the phoenix that self-immolates only to re-ignite. For a low-budget horror movie, the shit is Zen as fuck. 

Halloween ‘78 created mountains of cash. Therefore, Halloween II exists because money. Everyone knows that’s how movies work. It’s a business. No shocker there. 

What’s bizarre is that Halloween II is not a badly assembled piece of work in and of itself. And yet I reject its existence. 

In some ways, it’s an improvement on the technique of the original-you could even call it an upgrade. Still, I reject its existence. 

It has a terrific climax. The final juxtaposition of a fearful human face and the lingering image of the Shape’s spectacular fate . . . well done. 

And yet . . . I reject Halloween II’s existence.

It’s a weird one.

It’s a dilemma.

MOVIE REVIEW: THE SWORD OF DOOM (1966)

 Directed by Kihachi Okamoto

Cinematography by Hiroshi Murai

Edited by Yoshitami Kuroiwa

Music by Masaru Sato

Starring 

Tatsuya Nakadai as Ryunosuke Tsukue

Toshiro Mifune as Toranosuke Shimada

…

“Power without perception is spiritually useless, and therefore of no true value.”

-dialogue from the film Fist of the North Star (1986)

…

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Japan: 1860s: armed factions fight for and against the military Shogunate and the  divine Emperor. The Shogun wishes to strike a profitable deal with the foreigners from the West. The Emperor demands the expulsion of all foreign devils and total loyalty as a godlike absolute ruler over all. It is a time of violence. Men sharpen their blades and train rigorously in all forms of martial arts to wage wars covert and overt to determine the fate of the nation . . .

Ryunosuke Tsukue is a master swordsman with a strangely passive sword-fighting style: he squares off with an opponent, lowers his blade, lowers his eyes-he is leaving himself open to attack. Ryunosuke’s opponent takes the opportunity. Ryunosuke strikes this opponent-whoever he happens to be-dead with a single stroke of his sword. This master swordsman has perhaps made himself so sensitive to the sounds of his opponent’s body-maybe even to the changes in the currents of the air as a person maneuvers themselves to try to gain advantage in a duel-that he might not even need to look at his attacker to vanquish them. 

Ryunosuke is a wandering swordsman with no master, no loyalty to either Shogun or Emperor. He doesn’t seem to be associated with any criminal gangs. He is rejected as a perverted embodiment of evil by his old-fashioned kendo schoolmaster father. You could say Ryunosuke is his own master. Ryunosuke wanders Japan, getting into fights with other swordsmen, or, if he can find no one to duel, he might just kill a random person-like an elderly pilgrim praying at a Buddhist shrine by the roadside. Ryunosuke will also enter kendo competitions in order to “accidentally” crack open an opponent’s skull with a wooden sword and still be within the bounds of the rules. 

Eventually, Ryunosuke’s prowess and ruthlessness attracts the attention of armed political extremists who wish to use this master swordsman as an assassin. Ryunosuke has no political or moral convictions. He is neither a conformist nor a true believer. He fights fiercely, yet not from fear of death. Ryunosuke doesn’t draw his sword for self-defense or idealism. He enjoys killing as an end unto itself. He is a serial killer wearing the disguise of a mercenary swordsman for hire. Or, maybe he just sees killing for what it is stripped of the empty, self-justifying rhetoric of politics and religion. 

Ryunosuke goes through the motions of being a Japanese man in the 1860s. He ends up with a wife and a child. He drinks sake in the evenings to unwind. He dutifully carries out assassinations for the political faction that claims him . . . but these are not people or actions he loves. 

Well, the sake is okay. The killing is good. But he has no emotional connections to anyone or anything. Ryunosuke doesn’t seem to have emotions save for sadism and cruel, ironic amusement at how he continues to exist in a world of hypocrisy and stupidity. Ryunosuke is married to his sword. His face is a creepy, unblinking mask. He is a collection of gestures trying to pass for human. It’s not even clear if he gets truly drunk off of the sake-he might just be performing drunkenness to enhance the illusion of being human. What he is at heart is a maelstrom of violence disguised as a person. In turbulent times, no one seems to notice. Or care.

Ryunosuke, during one of his assassination gigs, finds himself witness to the spectacle of a sword master slaying many opponents who is possibly his equal: Toranosuke Shimada. Shimada is killing Ryunosuke’s fellow assassins in the extremist political faction. Ryunosuke should be joining his comrades in battle . . . but Ryunosuke has never had comrades. Ryunosuke just lets people think he has a sense of duty so he can have a warrant to kill. But Ryunosuke finds himself frozen before the magnificent technique of Shimada. Shimada is as fearsome as Ryunosuke but he spares the life of a helpless would-be assassin. Shimada has the conscience and sense of mercy that Ryunosuke lacks. 

Two swordsmen. One evil. One moral. Both capable of unleashing maelstroms of slashing carnage. Surely, if they clashed it would be like metaphysical matter and antimatter in collision. All would cease. 

Okay, maybe that’s taking things too far.

But it is certainly likely both Ryunosuke and Shimada would fight each other so ferociously that they would both perish of their wounds. Neither are afraid to die, yet Ryunosuke lives to kill. If Ryunosuke dies, he can’t kill anymore. Weirdly, absurdly . . . Ryunosuke must refuse to engage the worthiest opponent he is likely to ever encounter in his life so that he can keep on killing numerous lesser foemen and experience the one joy he is capable of having. 

Yeah, Ryunosuke is a sick and twisted fuck. 

Because Ryunosuke refuses to draw his sword, Shimada dismisses him with a disdainful glance, and strides away into the night.

Throughout The Sword of Doom, we get subjective camera work that puts us in the frightful perspective of Ryunosuke. We even get some first person shots that come oh-so-close to anticipating the steady-stalking camera work of John Carpenter’s Halloween-the one true slasher film of all time, forget all those superfluous sequels and dumbass remakes. In Halloween we have the Shape-who may once have been a person-a masked engine of murder who has no mercy and no discernible humanity. The Shape is a pure terror invading an anodyne suburban landscape unprepared to ward off a monster of pure malevolence. Ryunosuke is a monster born in a time of violence and paranoia whose ruthlessness and murderous spirit make him valuable to the powers that be. Maybe the Shape, after all, is the reincarnation of Ryunosuke-no, the reincarnation of the maelstrom that once wore the disguise of “Ryunosuke Tsukue.”

Of course, you can draw all kinds of bizarre connections in the realm of cinema, with all its recurring tropes and motifs and what have you. 

It’s weirdly satisfying-comforting,even-to construct patterns to explain the recurrence of senseless violence across time. 

Which is funny in a sicko sort of way.

Because another thing that The Sword of Doom and Halloween’78 have in common?

They both end with their human-disguised murder machines still at large.  

It can be a harsh realm out there, people. 

It really can.

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #11: MEGA MAN X (1993)

 1.

If I were a pro-wrastler, the Sigma Select Screen Theme would be my entrance music. 

It captures the arrogance and the swagger of a conqueror. This music puts across the peculiar charisma of authoritarianism. You get a sense of why people would grovel before such a ruthless character as Sigma. You can see all the other robots cheering and howling at vast hate rallies wherein Sigma would give jokey, long-winded speeches about how he’s the Risen Robo-Christ, and how all robo-journalists are fake news, and anyone that disagrees should be disassembled. 

Maybe I would even shave my head and modify my body with robot parts. My pro-wrastling name could be something like ‘Roid-Bot DX: Death Xtra.’ My backstory could have something to do with being an experimental cyborg entity who was accidentally dropped into a vat of Neo-Steroids, and when I swam back to the surface I was overcome with a desire to become a champion pro-wrastler and I would let nothing stop me from that day forward.  

Pro-wrastling is all about celebrating the Stupid. 

I think I could swing that.

I know about the Stupid.  

2.

Now, when you get to Sigma-the final boss-he sics his robo-hound on you. That’s what an evil bastard Sigma is-he wants to fuck with your revulsion at killing an adorable canine. I mean, there are people that are super-triggered by depictions of dog-death in movies. They won’t even blink if you mow down a bunch of human civilians in a Vietnam flick, or something like that. But kill one dog? Shit, if you even kick a dog, okay, that’ll fuck their shit all the way up into the stratosphere. And, I guess, Sigma knows that, so he tries to psych you out by making you fight a robo-doggo. So you’ve gotta deal with that.

And once you’ve dealt with that, Sigma himself steps out of the shadows, throws off his cape, and comes after you with a lightsaber. In retrospect, Sigma should have also had a glass of fine wine which he could have tossed aside with aristocratic disdain. Or, since he’s a robot, he could’ve had a glass of fine motor lubricant. I would’ve been satisfied by either one. But they didn’t do that. I had to wait a few more years for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. But by then,well, I certainly appreciated the gesture. It was very sweet. But, honestly, I’d kinda moved on.

The music is driving and frantic. It’s a proper final boss battle theme. 

There’s something cool about Sigma. He lives up to the hype of his Select Screen Theme. Sigma’s lightsaber is cool. It’s always cooler when a guy comes at you with a sword, even in a modern or-as we have here-a futuristic setting. Sigma’s putting himself at an intentional disadvantage against your Buster Shot. That’s how much confidence this Robo-Mussolini-looking motherfucker has in his fighting skill. There’s something cool about that. I wish I were that cool . . .

You and Sigma bounce off the walls. You bust off your shots where you can. 

If you have the patience, and you can keep bouncing off the walls, you’ve got this. 

You blow up Sigma’s body. His head is all that remains. 

But wait, there’s more.

The head flies up to the top of a giant robo-demon body that has a kind of robot wolf’s head. Sigma’s head is a kind of crown upon the wolf’s head of the robo-demon body, which commands both lightning and fire to try to destroy you. Behold, Sigma, Master of the Elements, your Destroyer! Why not grovel and pray to Him . . . for a swift death!

The music is different, now. It’s . . . lugubrious. We are now on a grim march, one that’s losing steam. The wily drive and power of our first round against Sigma are gone. We are smaller than our newly re-bodied enemy, but we are quicker, and we leap onto one of the flailing hands of the robo-demon wolf’s head body, and, if we have patience, we steadily blast Sigma’s faces into robo-hell. 

Sigma overplayed his hand. Sigma thought brute strength would win him the day. Sigma never considered the possibility that we would use his arrogance against him. 

This is Sigma’s downfall. 

This is the fate of the Robo-Asshole who thought he could never lose. 

Adieu, Sigma.

Perhaps, we’ll meet again in Robo-Valhalla, or something. 

3.

I’m still sitting here, thinking about my future as a pro-wrastling cyborg.

Have I been infected with the authoritarian fantasy embodied by the Sigma Select Screen Theme?

Do I desire to trade my humanity to be worthy of that ominous, arrogant music?

I know Enemy when it’s outside of me. Not everybody can see the Enemy of the Exterior. It’s not easy for everyone. And so many people live in the presence of their oppressor-Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, Boss, Deity, Religious Leader, Political Figurehead, Envious Colleague, Jealous Lover, Abusive Partner-because they find confrontation too traumatic. But bridge-burning comes naturally to me. This is a kind of strength.

But strength has its peril-the hubris of Sigma-in the blindness to an Enemy Inside. Festering within my so carefully up-armored body, showing no hint of weakness or sentiment.

Truly . . . if it came down to it . . . do I have the tears to stop ambition? 

No, I’ll not fall into evil.

I’ll stop obsessively exercising and training in lethal forms of mixed martial arts and eating right, and sacrifice my hunky, diamond cut battle body that the world might be spared the evil and oppression of my Supreme Merciless Strength Form unleashed.

I’ll sit so hard, so long, so deep into this cushiony chair until the distinction between Me and Chair ceases to exist-much like the rope of the swing and the tree to which it has been tied. 

I’ll resist the terrible power of the Sigma Select Screen Theme with an endless stream of frozen pepperoni beefsteak cheesy crust pizzas, two-liter bottles of Generic Cherry Cola, family packs of chewy chocolate chip cookies, tub after glorious tub of French Onion Dip, and all of this drizzle-drenched in sour cream, nacho cheese, and roast chicken juice-and just the juice. I find roasted chicken to have a rather vulgar texture. But I let nothing go to waste. I have the actual chicken delivered by courier to an abandoned house adorably squatted by a gang of rambunctious stray cats down the block.

(Sidenote: Did you know that you could dip your cookies in French Onion Dip? You’d be shocked at how good this tastes. And then you add in some pancake syrup-ooo wee! That’s good eatin’.)

For the price of Human Freedom . . . is the loss of my Beauty. 

This loss . . . is the only ward against Global Cyborg Wrastler Dictatorship. 

And so I give up my diamond cut battle body . . . gladly.

You’re welcome, People of Earth.

You’re welcome. 

-February 2021