Jacker (1993) - Thriller Film Review

Last month in October, I got to review indie crime thriller Jacker 3: Road to Hell. What had interested me about that movie was it was made roughly 30 years after the second in the trilogy, with some of the original cast members returning to reprise their roles. I hadn't expected I would get to see the first two films due to their age, but was given the chance to check them out to. Jacker was co-directed by Phil Herman (I Slay on Christmas, Doomsday Stories) and Benjamin Stanski, the former of which also wrote this, as well as starred as the titular antagonist, and the later humorously playing three different characters within the movie.

A criminal that has become to be known as 'the jacker' has already been on a crime spree prior to the start of the movie. This mystery assailant, true to his name, carries out car jackings, murdering the victims of these attacks. Meanwhile, Mike (Herman) has fallen under the eyes of the police after his girlfriend commits suicide. Known to the viewer is the fact that not only did Mike murder his girlfriend and then made it look like she had taken her own life, but he is also the notorious jacker! His suspicious behaviour alerts detective Jackson (Patric Jackson in his sole film acting role), who soon finds his own woe when his younger sister is murdered. Jackson and his sister's former boyfriend; James (Barry Gaines - Jacker 3: Road to Hell) start to investigate Mike, while the police also start to have suspicion after a second woman he was intimate with is found dead in his flat.

Truth be told, I figured the sheer fact of Jacker being an indie film in the early 90s would make it a tough film to watch. Of course, this was before the advent of better technology made it easier for indie films to be made, so the sound design and camera work will be rougher than what you may be used to. There is lots of background interference, even with my bad hearing, at the worst of these times I was still able to understand the lines being spoken by the actors. The footage isn't the greatest quality, with a real VHS home movie look to scenes. Panning around locations has a noticeable shake to the footage, and occasionally lighting looks a bit blurred. Unexpectedly, this didn't detract from Jacker but instead added to the atmosphere of it. Never coming across as found footage, this nonetheless occasionally achieved an almost voyeuristic quality to the scenes, ignoring the often rough acting of some of the more minor characters, and with a squint in your eyes, it has a very vague feeling of a snuff film in some scenes, lovely stuff.
The plot actually felt more involved than with the third movie. There is a constant feeling of Mike barely getting away with his crimes, and welcoming the police suspecting him, where in the third film he seemed more like a force of nature, killing much more randomly while the police are utterly powerless to catch him. I did know how the film was going to end, having read a synopsis prior to watching the third film, but even so, it was nice seeing how events led up to what I knew was going to happen.

Herman is great as the nihilistic antagonist, more so than in Jacker 3. This killer delights from causing pain (or so he says), and there is even a little dive into his backstory. Much like with that third film, Mike is often amused when carrying out his crimes, and still features the iconic hat, and typical method of death by a single gunshot to the head. Special effects are minimal here, guns are fired in an exaggerated manner without any sort of effect other than the sound of a gunshot. It was neat to see Debbie D (I Slay on Christmas, Doomsday Stories) in a role here, as her character became an integral part of the third movie, though it does turn out her death was retconned, as here it seems not only did she definitely die, but the police had taken her body from Mike's flat, whereas in the third movie she states she had been assumed to be dead by him and dumped in woodland. Jackson was a good contrast to the killer, and his journey of revenge was fun to watch. With secondary characters it had to be co-directer Stanski who stood out. He not only plays three almost identical looking characters, but they always appear together in the same scenes, with the camera awkwardly cutting to make it look like they are interacting with each other. The humour here is intentional, maybe due to knowing that some of the actors really were not the best at delivering their lines, but it blends in well with the horror. When in the thrilling finale the jacker ends up being chased by a man on a child's skateboard, you know this isn't trying to take itself super seriously!

I came to Jacker expecting that I would be in for a terrible 90 minutes, that the time this was made would prevent it from being entertaining. I was surprised then at just how competent this was. Sure, it is very rough around the edges, but it tells a complete feeling story, fits the length of the movie without feeling drawn out, and even with some dodgy delivery of lines, has a cast of characters who were for the most part fun to see on screen.

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Doom (1993-1995) - Horror Video Game Review (Xbox Series X)

A brand new release of the classic Doom games has recently been released under the title Doom + Doom II. This remastered collection includes both the original two games as well as all the additional extra content released. The bow on the present is that the games are now able to be played at 120fps at 4K. This review is going to be just of original Doom, while originally released on 1993, this version also includes a fourth chapter that was added as part of Ultimate Doom in 1995. I own this game in so many different formats, everything from Playstation to XBox to even owning a copy on the Game Boy Advance, but realised that I have never actually reviewed it. Spoilers for the plot to follow, though the game is over thirty years old at this point!

The story is minimal, with it only being presented in the game at the end of each chapter where you are treated to a wall of text. You are an unnamed marine in the far future who has been sent to a remote posting after assaulting a superior officer. You are stationed with the Union Aerospace Corporation on Mars, the company had recently been investigating teleportation technology, but their success also brings with it disaster as they unknowingly open a gateway to Hell through which demonic horrors pour out. With the rest of the marines wiped out, it is up to you to defeat the invading hordes.
'Knee-Deep in the Dead' is the first chapter and has you battling through the UAC base on Phobos (one of the moons of Mars). Your battle leads you to a teleporter which transports you to Deimos - a second moon of Mars that had mysteriously vanished. This makes up the second chapter - 'The Shores of Hell', where you discover the moon had vanished as it is now floating above Hell itself! Deciding to take the battle to the enemy, you descend into chapter 3 - 'Inferno', which is literally Hell. Finally is the additional fourth chapter 'Thy Flesh Consumed' that has you on Earth fighting the initial invading force, supposedly bridging the gaps between Doom and Doom II.

Doom remains a timeless game that is so much fun to play. While not the first 'first person shooter', it is widely considered to be the father of the genre as it inspired countless games all the way up to present day. Each level puts you in a maze-like environment where you must battle monsters, as well as locate key cards that open up new areas, with the goal in each level to reach the exit. Fighting enemies is a lot of fun, with you collecting an assortment of weapons from pistols and shotguns to miniguns and plasma guns. The enemies are mainly made up of zombified guards and fireball throwing imps, other types also make an appearance such as the beastly demons (who also come in an invisible form) and floating fleshy orbs known as cacodemons. Each chapter ends in a fun boss fight against a larger enemy in a bug arena. Along the way you can discover secret areas, and find plenty of health packs and armour packs to give you an edge.

The first three chapters are as fun as ever, and even better for this latest remaster - you have the option to use a brand new soundtrack that changes up the low quality midi sound for a proper sounding one, I loved this. The gradual change from facilities to Hell is done well, and despite the changes in location this always feels just as fun. I don't believe I had ever played the fourth chapter before, and this was where my experience was brought down a bit. I did complete 'Thy Flesh Consumed' but it felt far more game-like, seeming to be made up of random environments that didn't make cohesive sense. These last levels were also absolutely rammed with enemies and often devious map design, making them much more of a slog to get through.

Despite the dip in quality and increase in hardness for the final chapter, I found returning to Doom a real blast, smoother gameplay and a better sounding soundtrack made this return a load of fun. I would put Doom in my top ten gams of all time, it really remains that good! Doom + Doom II is currently on XBox Gamepass.

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Jack in the Dark (1993) - Horror Video Game Review (PC)

Jack in the Dark is a weird beast of a game in that it is a very short experience that was created during development of Alone in the Dark 2 as a promotional tool. The game takes place in two different rooms and can be finished in under ten minutes.

It is Halloween and the child Grace Saunders finds herself trapped inside a haunted toy shop. There she discovers Santa locked up in a cage, and toys which have come to life, seemingly with a creepy jack-in-the-box as the cause of all the evil.

The tone here is kind of weird, it is very Christmas focussed despite taking place during Halloween. The puzzles you encounter all revolve around distracting the various toys blocking your way. One example is playing a toy drum to make some toys march into a toy box. The music is jolly, and aside from the evil jack-in-the-box there isn't much of a horror vibe. Also, judging by  how this one ends it really isn't canonical. Apparently the girl you play as is the girl who has been kidnapped in Alone in the Dark 2. To cement the fact this is a promotional game it ends with a series of screenshots from that second game.

This was a fun little experience, however it really isn't essential to play, as a curio it does its job. Even better is that it doesn't cost anything, it was an extra with Alone in the Dark. So if you are after a bite size bit of horror gaming then check it out.

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The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) - Children's Horror Film Review

Much as I was surprised that I didn't own the Disney stop-motion musical classic The Nightmare Before Christmas on DVD or Blu-Ray earlier last week when I went to watch it I was also surprised that I had never reviewed it before on my blog. This is a film I'm sure virtually everyone is familiar with, one which weathered the love affair emo kids had with it in the early noughties and has once again returned to just being a great classic. I saw this when it was showing at the cinema originally, and have always been a big fan of this. It is a film that straddles the line between being a Christmas film and a Halloween one, this year I chose it as the first Christmas film I viewed for 2019.

Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon - Fright Night for the speaking voice, and Danny Elfman - Forbidden Zone for the singing voice) is the ruler of Halloween Town, and each Halloween in the real world he and his people 'invade' in order to make the event occur. Jack has grown tired of doing the same thing year after year though and yearns for something different. His prayers are answered when wandering one day he stumbles across a clearing in a forest which contains gateways into each of the other yearly special events. The Christmas door in particular draws his attention and so he enters, finding himself in Christmas Town. After his experience there he returns home, determined that the next years Christmas will be one done by him and his horrific subjects...

This was the first of the stop-motion films of Disney in the 90's and was also the best. This is helped by the typical Tim Burton Gothic aesthetic (Burton created the story and characters for this), and the typical playfully dramatic music of Danny Elfman. Throughout there are many songs and nearly all of them are great. From the introduction piece 'This is Halloween' to the festive feeling 'What's This?', and the usual villainous song in the form of 'Ooogie Boogie's Song'. There really isn't a bad song to be found here, from the sang numbers to instrumentals all work so well, unlike something such as The Corpse Bride which had mostly average songs. I guess here 'Making Christmas' is the worst one, visually appealing, showing as it does the contrast between Santa's Elves making presents, and the twisted Halloween Town version of this, but the song suffered due to not having a catchy chorus.

Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (1993) - Horror Video Game Review (PS4)

The Castlevania series of video games are one of my all time favourites, nearly each and everyone I have played I have really enjoyed, especially the Metroidvania styled ones. Castlevania: Rondo of Blood originally released on the PC Engine CD exclusively in Japan, it found a Western release on the PSP in 2008 as a re-make. I own that version but I stopped playing about halfway through for whatever reason. Then in 2018 it got another re-release, this time on the PS4. Being a lifelong fan with unlikely hopes of a new Castlevania game getting made I again brought this, but this time I actually played it through to completion.

Rondo of Blood takes place in 1792 where vampire hunter Richter Belmont's love Annette has been kidnapped by the dark priest Shaft who has taken her to Castlevania: the home of legendary immortal vampire Dracula, who he and his followers have recently resurrected.

As always the story is quite brief and small, but that is what I love about these games. Having an immortal vampire as the antagonist is of course a lot of fun, but I also love how the lore affects your view of the game world. Castlevania itself is the physical manifestation of chaos which neatly explains away why it looks different each game. Rather than the latter games Metroidvania style (essentially one gigantic level) this features nine stages that are set in and around the titular castle. Starting off with an exciting cart ride into a nearby village your journey takes you through graveyards, chapels, even a ghostly ship makes an appearance. Each level is divided into various stages that are entered and exited by doors or stairwells.

Sengoku 2 (1993) - Horror Video Game Review (Nintendo Switch)

Discovering the Neo Geo port of Sengoku on the Nintendo Switch store earlier this month was a pleasant surprise, I loved the creepy vibe of ancient Japanese demons attacking a modern day city, it felt different to other scrolling beat-em-ups. I had heard many people complain about it though saying it was only with the release of Sengoku 2 that the series got good. While the graphics and sound effects are a lot better, and the game as a whole is more polished I felt a certain something was missing for me this time around, whether the surprise factor was gone, or if it just isn't as good a game I really am not sure. Much like the first game I bumped my lives right up to the maximum of 99 as I wanted to switch off my brain and relax rather than be stressed about dying.

I played through the game in both the Japanese and English versions, but didn't really see much difference. Annoyingly this time around there wasn't a story told before the game starts, I had to kind of piece it together from the cutscenes in between levels. I couldn't even tell if it was the same evil warlord from Sengoku or not. Playing as the two warriors from that one you have to fight your way to the enemy's stronghold and defeat him, that's about it. Something about him trying to alter time to make it so that he rules the world (possibly?).

There is a bit of a Turtles in Time vibe this time around with the warlord's floating fortress able to travel through time (at least it was nice to see that Technodrome like creation return, this time with added dragons!). Each of the four levels takes place in a different time zone, starting with the modern day characters in the 1500's (no explanation for that), you then go to the 1940's during World War II, the 1990's, then finally onto the floating fortress itself. To be honest I expected more levels this time around, not less. Sengoku's final level may have just been a boss battle but it still casts this in a bad light being a visibly game shorter than the previous one. The levels all have you just scrolling from left to right but they do go to some memorable places, the third level for instance takes place in a busy shopping district, so it is full of onlookers and civilians running around, level two features a section where you are fighting along the back of a huge bomber as planes fly around in the distance. The demon levels go more abstract, such as one background featuring gigantic ghostly warriors in mid fight, and another with a huge drum that a crazed drummer works at. There were three or four sections here that took place with you on horseback as well, helped to break up the relentless fighting a bit.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1993) - Megadrive/Genesis Horror Videogame Review

I have quite the backlog of games to be playing, today I chose Bram Stoker's Dracula based on the film of the same name from 1992. You play as Keanu Reeves' character Jonathan Harker, not surprisingly the bland depiction of this character injects 100% more emotion and pathos into the character than the cardboard cutout character Reeves played in the movie could ever do!

The game doesn't really explain what's going on, there are titchy level introductions that are quite vague such as 'journey back to civilisation' or something that opened one level, these introductions are shown in a digital book titled 'Vampyres' that is a fun touch. Anyway from what I can gather (and going by the game, not my knowledge of the Dracula tale) Jonny Harker starts off in a pub somewhere, where some bloke with a hat tells him via a dream bubble to retrieve a...tooth? Stick? something or other. So Harker leaves and battles a ten foot tall man with a whip. Later on he finds himself in Dracula's castle, battles a fire breathing dragon, and a ten foot tall Dracula who flings fireballs Castlevania style, and then gets chased by Dracula's brides out into the countryside. Eventually he gets home to a mansion in London...then I died by a low flying bat.

Hey! You may say, you did not complete this! Well no, I didn't but I did complete it on Trainer mode which gives you the first and fourth level to play through only. Like most movie tie ins of the early nineties this is a platformer. Harker is armed with a sword and can pick up limited use guns. Levels are open ended, an arrow kinda points where you need to go. Enemies mostly consist of bats, rats, spiders, and wolves. Every now and again a human opponent will appear, later levels see the appearance of skeletons, ghosts and zombies. 

Six levels make up the game, each broken into two acts. The first act has you exploring an area to locate what I assume is Van Helsing who thinks an item at you, then with this thought you must then locate the exit (not an exit per se, just a hovering arrow titled 'Exit'). The next stage is a more straightforward left to right jobby that ends in a boss battle with a usually unexplained giant boss. My favourite boss was a monstrous 'Flash' style character who zoomed around the screen in a blur before stopping to throw knives at you. The bosses all explode when defeated for some reason, maybe that is explained in the film?

Dracula has the feel of an old Amiga game. It has a nice retro feel to it and the music isn't actually that bad. Graphics wise it is ok, no animation to speak of really, a lot of the levels are grey and brown, not good looking. Hit detection is quite terrible, bats float through solid objects and you take damage if you so much as look at an enemy. Annoyingly enemies respawn if you go off screen. You character is patchy in his attacks, and enemies are patchy in when it will register your hits as affecting them.

I remember at the time Bram Stoker's Dracula got bad reviews, playing it now it does have a nice old school feel to it, it is not terrible, but it is a bad game that could have done with more care and attention done to it. Aside from one level where you are being chased there is no variety and as a side note zombies kinda just sink into the floor when defeated which is funny. Worse than average.

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Chronos (1993) - Horror Film Review

Chronos was released in the early 90's, it's by Guillermo Del Toro (whose later works include Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone)  The film is a vampire tale, but quite different to the traditional vampire story.

An old antiques dealer called Jesus discovers a golden beetle shaped amulet in a statue he has in his store.  While fiddling with it a mechanism inside the amulet activates which results in metal legs clamping onto the antique dealers hand, and a golden stinger piercing his skin. An elderly dying man, and his meat head thuggish son (Ron Perlman) have been looking for the amulet for many years, as the old man believes it grants immortality. Discovering the location of it the man gets his thug to start a process of harassment against Jesus which results in Jesus's apparent murder.  Jesus had been reluctant to give up the amulet as it has been making him feel, and look younger the more he uses it.  But the power of the amulet comes at a cost; the user of the amulet craves blood, and needs blood to stop themselves rotting away.

The film looks dated now, almost 80-ish in it's look, but had interesting aspects to it. The film was made in Mexico, and is all in Spanish with English subtitles. The acting is quite good, Ron Perlman in particular is really good. He is a bumbling almost comedic character, forever cursing his Dad who keeps sending him on what he believes to be fools errands, but scared of him. Despite this his character is quite violent and brutal, having no qualms over killing or causing pain and misery which makes him a bit more chilly than straight out funny. The character of Jesus is ok, kinda puts across the addiction the amulet gives.

The vampire aspect is there in that the amulet bearer burns up in sunlight, and craves human blood, but the bearer resembles a zombie more than a vampire. Not drinking human blood results in Jesus becoming nothing more than a walking corpse with stiff jerky movements. One scene in which he attempts to write a letter to his wife sees him trying hundreds of times as his stiff hands just are not up to the job of writing.

There is a feeling of pity to Jesus's character, he never wanted any of what happened to him, it was all an accident. Constantly with him is his young niece, a small girl who is his only solace. She looks after him, and follows him around not disgusted by the monster he has become. Most the film she is totally silent, but seems full of love towards her grandad.

I don't think I would ever watch this film again. I'm glad I did see it, but it is a product of its time and feels a bit stodgy, and dark (as in a lot of film is set in dark places, not the theme). Chronos was a good film, just not a great film. It is interesting to see where Del Toro came from though.

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