I'm Frezno, and I write about whatever tickles my fancy. That usually involves such things as video games, science fiction, anime, horror, and anything/everything in between.
Shit, I forgot the title screen was a film strip!
INVOCATION!!!
This isn't even where I came in. No, that honor goes to 1994's scouring of a flea market which led to a used copy of Castlevania 2. You know. The one everyone dislikes. That was my first one, and I can't help but love it now. I accept that parts of it don't hold up and are uncool. Most of my love for it comes from the fact that my sister got me an NES hint book that had tips for the game, so I was actually able to make some progress in it. The book had nothing about that infamous bit with the cliff, though. It was my brother who ended up first beating the game, which is notable because he didn't even play video games really. Now, something like Zelda 2 getting a lot of hate, on the other hand? Unacceptable to me. That game's a treasure and it's the Castlevania 2 concept done right. Enough about that, though. Let's talk about the original for a bit. What's striking is that we're not that far out from the release of Ghosts n Goblins, when you really look at it. The arcade game was out in September 1985, and Castlevania dropped onto the Famicom Disk System in late September the following year. Even the NES port of Ghosts n Goblins was only a few months old... and here's this game that's a strange measured response and half-inversion of it. It is, at its core, a six-stage action platformer with rigid jumping and a horror theme to it. Castlevania offers an interesting evolution to the Ghosts n Goblins formula though, one that's impressive given the one year difference between them.
For a start, the weapons. I'm cribbing from a 30th anniversary retrospective I read here, but it's incredible that I didn't realize it until now. In Castlevania, Simon Belmont has a handful of weapons he can obtain, a la Arthur, each with their own arcs and abilities. The knife shoots forward, axes and holy water arc, the cross boomerangs, the stopwatch freezes shit for a bit. Unlike Arthur, though, these are not your primary weapons; they're subweapons. Special items to collect to give you an edge. The real weapon is your whip, but there's still a bit of delay in pulling it out. The rigidness of Order strikes back, and all that. It's also interesting how the knife is the superior weapon in Ghosts n Goblins, and in Castlevania it's far and away the least effective subweapon of the lot. Things are also a lot less... erratic in Castlevania. Sure, you have some infamous things swooping in at you. Bats, birds, disembodied Medusa heads that sway in a sine wave. You know. The fun stuff. It is an element of randomness, but not especially in an edgeguarding OOPS sort of way where you just get rolled. Not especially, but it's there. On the monsters themselves? It's a revelry not unlike Stephen King and his shapeshifting clown. Skeletons, bats, fishmen, medusas, skeleton dragons, hunchbacks, mummies, Frankenstein monsters, THE LITERAL EMBODIMENT OF DEATH, THE GRIM REAPER, and of course the main antagonist Dracula. Like Rocky Horror, Castlevania is having fun with the iconography. You only need to look at the credits to see how silly they're being, with names like Belo Lugosi and Boris Karloffice. Portmanteauing the name of the guy who played Frankenstein's monster with an office isn't all that different from maa fucking hot dog, after all.
king Dr. Frankenstein an omnisexual transvestite alien named after
Oh yeah, and it's good. Like, really good. A classic on the NES good. The control's rigid but that's the point of it, and if you're clever you can use the damage knockback to sequence break. It's a legitimate good game, which is more than I can say for the NES port of Ghosts n Goblins; it's kind of bad. In fact, Ghosts n Goblins is my least favorite in that series. Whoops. Even if Castlevania is invoking it, it manages to be superior to it. Like that bit in the final stage where you run across a broken bridge while multiple copies of the first level boss fly at you. A hell of a better sequence than just putting the first level boss at the start of stage 6 of GnG "just because". Castlevania was also the horror series that got a billion sequels, and unlike GnG they changed radically over time! They evolved their action platforming up until about 1994 or so, and then took a new approach by copying Super Metroid. That one was also wildly successful and got a bunch of games similar to that! Then they copied God of War, and... well, Jim Sterling said it best. #FucKonami. Nevertheless, the original game is really good! You can play it any time of year, but its just plain fun nature (and the difficulty being just the tiniest bit spicier than "just right") manage to make it replayable and something you want to keep plugging at. Turn down those lights, get a pumpkin spice anything from anywhere, and fire the thing up and have a ball.
As for me, I'm firing up a movie and having a ball.
Ah, that's far less terrifying. But our terror has been replaced with confusion and bafflement. Attempting to unpack this is going to be difficult as all hell, but by God am I going to attempt it. This is the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and it begins quite unlike any film released by 20th Century Fox. We all know the orchestral fanfare that accompanies the studio logo, but right from the start something is up. Instead of those drums, we hear... slightly different drums. The horns are replaced with a jaunty little piano ditty. After some more logos, and the ominous rush of howling wind... more music kicks in. Ruby red lips rush at the screen, and they begin to sing.
I see you shiver, with antici... ... ...
Here we are, invoking nostalgia of movies past. This is a 50's B-movie, in the form of some kind of musical. As that disembodied mouth sings about Michael Rennie and Claude Reins, it eventually goes dark and the credits come, oozing and dripping with blood. Okay, so the lips were a bit weird but we know what we're getting into here. It's a celebration of horror... with songs? I guess? Admittedly, few people go into the Rocky Horror Picture Show blind, but I did in 2004 in a dorm room. The movie's first great trick is letting you settle in and take a nice seat under this fancy rug. Hey, a wedding! That's cute! Although "WAIT TILL TONITE SHE GOT HERS NOW HE'LL GET HIS" on the car as the newlywed couple drive off is a bit... risque, isn't it? Ah, forget that, look at these happy young ordinary healthy kids! Brad and Janet, you're so nice and wholesome and oh there's another song that I won't link because if we link every song in this movie this post will be bloated. Now they're engaged, but our narrator promises doom and gloom. In just about every sense, this feels like a loving tribute to a cheesy horror film from the 50's. The only thing firmly anchoring the film to the 70's is Richard goddamned Nixon on the radio, and even that's one of the so-called biggest movie mistakes in film history. It's 20 minutes or so in when we hit our fourth song, with a hunchbacked Igor-lookin dude and a pale maid singing about time or something. The music builds, a door bursts open, and-- LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN
Alright, just WHAT THE FUCK is going on here? Even that serious narrator from before is getting in on this shit, narrating the moves! And a pelvic thrust! Boy, that's really risque! Even poor Janet has fainted! With a bit of a mind flip, we're into a time slip, and nothing will ever be the same. The fancy rug has been pulled out from under us, and after that madness is over with we may think we've got a reprieve. YOU'D BE WRONG! YOU'D BE WRONG BECAUSE HERE'S TIM CURRY IN MAKEUP SINGING A SONG! And wearing pearls, a corset, panties, and fishnets because he's a sweet transvestite from transsexual Translyvania! It's an absolute left turn for the movie to take, and I don't want to say anything more in-depth than that about the portrayal because I know my own goddamned lane. It turns out, though, that Tim Curry is indeed playing an omnisexual transvestite Dr. Frankenstein-like named after a fucking hot dog who, it's revealed, is doing the whole Dr. Frankenstein thing of creating life and becoming God. His creation is not an affront to God or a monster or anything like that. No, no. Dr. Frank N. Furter creates an oiled-up blonde muscleman named Rocky to have sex with. We're still kind of in the realm of the 50's B-movie parody, but we really have taken one hell of a turn. It attempts to invade after a few more songs when Meat Loaf literally busts down a door and starts singing about rock and roll and motorcycles before Frank beats him to death with an ice pick. So yeah, watching Tim Curry in this movie definitely took a lot of the edge off of him as the portrayer of a dread beast who could transcend reality to come and kill me, but he's still got fangs. Metaphorical ones this time, though.
Okay, let's get to it. There's a new beast lurking 'round these parts. We dealt with the fun of Halloween during these past few years, and yesterday we tackled the sheer fear of it. Our new beast is that of Sexuality. Not one you run in terror from, not usually, but Sexuality will be ingrained into the later bits of media we'll be tackling. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is dripping with Sexuality, clashing against the wholesome 50's values naturally instilled in it by this being a homage to spooky movies of that era. More to the point, it wins. Frank is successful in seducing both Brad and Janet separately, at first trying to trick them by disguising himself as the other. Not cool, but eventually they do surrender to the pleasure. Janet sees Brad and Frank in the bedroom together via security camera, and realizes what's gone down. It's unclear if she had sex with Frank, but it's highly implied I suppose. Brad and Frank almost certainly did it, though. Janet finds a wounded Rocky and then we get to a song that basically sums up why the movie was so effective for me on this viewing.
Yeah. That song's message can be summed up as "FUCK ME NOW, OILY MUSCLE MAN, I WANT IT" and I love it. Without going into much detail, I'll say that the sex-positive nature of this film oozing with Sexuality resonates particularly well with me given the summer I've had. We're gonna hurry through shit a bit here, but Frank and Brad catch Janet and Rocky after they've done it, and Frank is just furious. Really? Frank is pissed off? The guy who waltzed into Brad and Janet's rooms, knowing full well that they were engaged, to fuck them? He's pissy now because his special muscleman fucked someone else? IT'S NOT SO NICE WHEN THE HIGH HEEL'S ON THE OTHER FOOT, IS IT, FRANK? Anyway, dinner time, Frank serves up Meat Loaf for dinner, half the cast gets turned into statues by a Medusa beam (now there's a kink for you) and de-Medusa beamed just in time to be all wearing the corset and panties and fishnets with clownish looking makeup (Yikes, we're invoking that dread beast a little) and sing about how goddamn sensual they're all feeling. For whatever reason, it's some of Janet's lines that resonate with me again. A sampler:
I feel released Bad times deceased My confidence has increased Reality is here
Again, not too much detail, very specific to my own experience, blah blah. This is basically Frank's show now, and for a good seven and a half minutes it's all his... until that hunchback fellow and the maid burst in to take it over. Frank's mission was a failure, his lifestyle too extreme... and so he and Rocky are killed for it. The 50's B-movie has had enough of this goopy Sexuality shit, and it blasts it away with a laser beam of pure antimatter. It turns out that Transsexual, Transylvania is in space. The planet Transsexual, in the galaxy of Transylvania. The entire goddamned spooky mansion blasts off, and that's basically it. That's The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's a very good musical! In fact, I only just learned before writing this that it's being remade and aired on TV in like two weeks! With Laverne Cox in the Tim Curry role, and Tim Curry as our narrator type! Wow! I wonder if it will be good, but for now this movie can take its place in our little project. The de-fanging of Tim Curry, the invoking of the 50's B-movie mixed with our sultry new Halloween beast's special kisses of Sexuality, and some pretty goddamned catchy songs. One wonders how this new creature's influence will be used? For good, like I and that particular group of friends of mine have been using it these past few months?
We've been spinning our wheels for the past few days, putting off confronting this great fear. All that talk about fun cartoons and colorful arcade games was delaying the inevitable. So, let's get to it. Let's face something that pales in comparison to a hard game, or a cartoon delinquent's attempt to one-up The Amityville Horror. Here, then, is an actual fucking monster dreamt up by the King of horror, a creature without name from beyond our understanding that kills and feeds and corrupts. A creature without name that haunts not only a fictional city in Maine, but haunts my thoughts and nightmares to this day.
It.
This is not a review. It is a confession. Still, I must attempt to be rational and give a plot summary, in case you did not know. It is a novel by Stephen King, released unto the world sometime in 1986. It is a huge book, one of the longer ones King has published. In its pages lurks a creature, a creature which our protagonists have no name for and simply dub "It". It, as stated, is an eldritch horror from beyond the universe or before time or some shit which found Itself flung into our world sometime in prehistoric times, burying Itself deep within the earth. In modern times, the city of Derry, Maine is built over where It crashed... and It soon begins to follow a rigid cycle. Every 27 years, tragedy strikes Derry. Then come the disappearances, mostly small children. Food for It. Another tragedy comes after months of this, and then It returns to its sleep, ready to strike again. What terrifies is It's nature of killing. It reads the fear of Its prey, bending reality in order to transform into something Its prey is terrified of. It kills then, feeding not only on the flesh but the pure and simple emotion of a child's fear. For centuries this goes on, until 1958. Seven outcast children from various lower stations in life befriend each other, are taunted by this nightmare, and band together to delve into the sewer system of Derry and attempt to kill It. They seemingly succeed, but swear that if It ever returns, they will come back to finish the job. In 1985 they are all middle-aged, and the call comes: It has returned. The job must be finished.
It's a sparse summary, but a good one nonetheless. Still, as I said. This is not a review. It is a confession. I didn't know this basic plot summary until... I want to say 2003. I may have picked it up via osmosis somehow, but I can't be sure of that. Finally reading the book in 2003, it was mostly brilliant. Brilliant but also mad, in a creative way. I know it's in bad taste to look at something odd and go "Psh, what were they smoking when they came up with that?", but in this case it might actually be valid. It was written between 1980 and 1985, a period which Stephen King has admitted was one where he was taking a shitload of drugs and drinking a shitload of beer. The man doesn't remember the act of writing Cujo, and his later book The Tommyknockers (which has a callback scene to It, believe it or not) was a big metaphor for substance abuse and creativity. And the folly of nuclear power, but we're drifting off track. The only thing to call him to real task for is the climax ending. I'm not going to go into detail on the "Love And Desire" subchapter, but... look, I called out Neptunia for doing gross shit involving little girls. This makes Neptunia look tame. It is indefensible. Even if Stephen King had the excuse of being high on cocaine when he came up with it, he still committed it to page. The people who read the book pre-release, family or friends or editors or publishers, had no objection to it. It's still in the book and it's ugly and disgusting and indefensible. But, this is not a review. A review would condemn it further. No, this is a confession.
Between 1997 and 2003, this piece of fiction absolutely terrified me. I hadn't read it, and it still terrified me. The reason for this is that it was adapted into a TV movie in 1990... but that still doesn't quite explain it. It is not like I saw pieces of the TV movie in 1990, with Tim Curry's portrayal of It, and was terrified. One thing I failed to mention in that summary is that It's "preferred" form for luring children into a false sense of security and eating them is that of a colorful and jolly clown named Pennywise. This is important information for what is to follow. I never saw this movie between 1997 and 2003. I never read the book. What, then, horrified me so much to make this an abject object of pure terror for me? Here is my confession. It was the VHS box art. This sounds silly on paper, I know. I acknowledge that it is an irrational fear... but it is a fear I hold nonetheless. The word "trigger" would be too strong to use for something like this. I'll instead say that it leaves me feeling highly unpleasant, even at a glance. I don't like looking at it. I don't like seeing it. I'm not even linking it here, but I trust in your ability to find it. Still, I must describe it and explain why it unsettles me so. Right, so we have a plain white cover with the logo near the bottom. The upper half of the box is dedicated to Tim Curry, or Tim Curry as Pennywise. I'm not sure if it's a photo or a drawing of him, but whatever it is they've given him a cruel and horrific expression. His head is poking out of a large "rip" in the cover, and two large spidery appendages that are his "true" hands lean out over the rip. Behind his head, on the VHS cover at least, one can see the corner of a videocassette. The implication is clear; this creature, this nameless Itbeast, is breaking the fourth wall of the video box art and attempting to escape its confines. This must be what scared me so much about it, beyond the scary face and monster hands. The monster is literally coming OUT of the box to get me. For six years, this haunted me. The VHS tape was piled up downstairs with my sister's other King VHS tapes. I couldn't even get away from it while it was stacked on a shelf, because the fuckers put that same horrible image as a tiny insert on the sides of the VHS box! It's bullshit!
I eventually did get into Stephen King, and on a chilly fall day 13 years ago I faced my fear and watched the damn thing. It was scary. Tim Curry with monster fangs was scary and unsettling and still is. Then I read the book, and that had even more fucked up shit in it, good and bad. They're doing a two-part cinematic remake of It next year. Bill Skarsgard's Pennywise is unsettling, but only mildly to me. After all this time, we have a monster clown I can actually look at without feeling intensely unpleasant and unsettled. So, here we are. This is my fear. A monster clown that shapeshifts into what you fear most, Itself the thing I fear most because It transcends the laws of fictionality to try to burst forth into our world. One of the creepiest things about the book are the scenes in which whatever It has become vanishes abruptly. The sound of whoosing air can be heard when it does, replacing the thing that was there a moment ago. The very laws of physics bend to the rules of this thing, and doesn't that just terrify? I needed a release. Something to lessen the edge and power of this beast.
I went with the Famicom box art for this one, because it's so
cute and goofy and I kinda love it.
Well, we have a true monster here today, and something that's more in our wheelhouse. Ghosts n Goblins, that game that nobody can talk about without screaming YOU HAVE TO BEAT THE GAME TWICE! Which, I technically just did so I'm keeping the trope alive. Whoops. What do we make of this beast, then? Released six days after Super Mario Brothers hit the Famicom, and eight days before me. In a lot of ways, it reflects the both of us, a true dark mirror unleashed to the world in the middle of the 80's. I'll refrain from talking about the series at large, although we might have passing mention there at the end. Right now we're going to laser focus on the original game... and I do mean "original". The admittedly kind of terrible NES port isn't what I played just now for this project. I fired up the PSP to play the actual arcade game. Well, I tweaked the difficulty down just a bit because I have beaten that terrible NES port and I've earned such dilution... but I have faced the monster. In fact, I've faced every monster this particular franchise has hurled at players. What's another tussle with a beast when you already are one?
Ghosts n Goblins, in the purest sense of the term, is an Agent of Chaos. You are given a protagonist who is an Agent of Order. Knight Arthur, himself named after the legendary King of the Britons, armed with two simple and basic abilities of video games: Shooting, and jumping. Shooting depends on your weapon, and each one works a different way. The lance shoots straight forward. The torch arcs. The knife is fast. The shield has short range but blocks projectiles. If you have a weapon, you know where it's going to do and what it's going to hit when you fire it. The only way to change things up is by getting a new weapon. The jumping follows this structure as well; rigid and committed. You will always jump the same distance and height every time, and trajectory cannot be altered once you've done it. Mario's fluid motion this is not. Order is strict, and must play out the same way. That's nice and all, but what rockets Ghosts n Goblins into the mythical stratosphere of Hard Motherfuckers In Video Gaming is that every goddamned enemy in the game is an unpredictable agent of Chaos... save for one, somewhat. Everywhere you go in this game, shit can and will spawn indiscriminately. You play and play and you know how your jumps need to go, but then just as you commit a little imp comes in and swoops to get you. It demands quick reflexes and plotting on the fly to complete, but it's still frustrating. All of your careful planning, your memorizing of the route, your choice of the right weapon, can be utterly derailed by the Chaos Code rolling a dice and deciding "yes an imp and two ghosts RIGHT HERE is perfect". The only fellow that offers some sort of predictable pattern is the one people hate; the Red Arremer. He shoots, he swoops, he dodges up if you shoot at him, he lands and marches if you don't. That's his pattern. Even with that in mind he still has chaotic movement, and it's a careful dance to deal with one of these guys alone. Let alone when you've got three other things and something spawning by sheer chance to deal with.
Say you endure, though. If so, you'll find that chaos gets more and more powerful the closer you get to the Chaos Lord's castle. You can't beat level 3 with your starting weapon. You just can't, because the dragon at the end of the stage won't take damage from it. The game is just changing the rules on the fly here. You need to compromise and switch up. This is nothing compared to the later tricks it plays. If you don't use the shield weapon to defeat stage 6, you are sent back to stage 5 and told to get it. Because the game said so. This, paired with the immunity rule, is especially grueling in the NES version. You need to fight the first two bosses at the start of the level, one after the other. The first one is immune to the shield, so if you died while you had it you have to switch to the lance. Then you fight the dragon again and he's immune to the lance, SO GET A SHIELD. There's no reason for this. Well, other than siphoning quarters for the Dread Beast GREED, but still. You get to the top, battle the Chaos Lord Astaroth in an easy final battle, and... Yes. Yes, it's true. It's all true. If you want a happy end, you have to beat the game twice. Nobody can shut up about it, and I can't shut up about it because of it. For this playthrough I just shut it off after I won that first loop. The other is exactly the same. It's blatant padding to siphon quarters that people still yell about 30 years later, and I'm not excluded because here we fucking are. If you dare go back and do it all again, you get a happy ending EXCEPT PEOPLE BITCH ABOUT THAT TOO! For their blood, sweat, and tears, they wanted a better ending than just a happy end! It was 1985, for god's sakes. Super Mario Brothers didn't have a 20 minute ending. We weren't quite at that stage yet, and by the time sequels to these games came around they did have longer endings with text and credits and junk.
Regardless, this is the terror that Ghosts n Goblins struck in the hearts of players. 30 years later we can't shush about it, and alchemical homages are still being cooked up. Maldita Castila, Battle Princess Madelyn, et cetera. Look up any countdown of hard video games on Youtube or elsewhere, and I guarantee with... 80% certainty that Ghosts n Goblins is on there. People still fear it, and we haven't really topped its chaotic difficulty in 30 years according to them. I cry bullshit, but then again I've topped all of those games. I guess I'm the king of Chaos now. Now, go back and read this entire post over again. Why? Because I said so.
Don't actually do that. I love you all. Maybe enough to share my fear with you.
Oh, The Simpsons. What happened? What in the name of God happened to you? I used to love this show. I adored it and watched every syndicated rerun I could. Even from the later seasons that weren't as good. Then at around... 2003 or so, I just stopped. I grew out of it and have not watched a new episode in years. Of course, a treat in the early years (and presumably the later years for whoever's left watching it) are the Halloween Special episodes. They're just a big excuse for the writers to go all out in making little non-canon spooky themed vignettes, creating a 22 minute anthology episode with three smaller stories. The later ones just make fun of popular horror movies and sci-fi stuff, at least from what I understand. I actually tried to watch and comment on every single one during October 2010. I petered out at the tenth one which is a shocking coincidence since that's about when the show "went off the rails" so to speak. No, a newer one won't do. We have to go back. I could have picked 3, 4, or 5 for this because those are my favorites... but fuck it. All the way back. It's October 25th, 1990, and we're looking at the first Simpsons Halloween Special, aka Treehouse of Horror.
Our opening has Marge Simpson giving a pre-episode warning that the episode might be too scary and gory for kids and that parents should probably tuck them in early instead of getting pissed off. This strikes me as odd, given that the episode itself isn't especially violent or horrifying... but it was 1990, and people were in a goddamn moral panic over the Simpsons. Think on that. A moral panic over the fact that Bart Simpson swore sometimes. Speaking of Bart, he and Lisa are up in his treehouse which is spookily decorated, holding a flashlight up to their faces and telling scary stories. Lisa's we only hear the tail end of and it's a typical "the call is coming from inside the house" deal which Bart scoffs. It's worth noting that the early Halloween Specials used some sort of framing device to introduce the stories, but at around part 5 or 6 or so they dropped that and just led into the stories themselves. Here, the framing device is important; it's Bart who's telling the story, and his entire aim is to create the spookiest scariest story ever. So we're plunged into our first segment, "Bad Dream House". It's a standard riff on The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist, with the Simpsons moving into a new house that is haunted and does all kinds of fucked-up stuff like make the walls bleed or open up portals to other dimensions. Though we're watching a segment, keep in mind that in-universe this is all narrated by Bart. You can just picture him with that flashlight to his face saying "AND THEN THE WALLS START BLEEDING AND IT'S SUPER GROSS AND SCARY" or something to that effect. Nowhere is this quite as apparent as when the haunted house starts describing the horrible ways in which the Simpsons will die. Their eyes will burst and their intestines will boil and... some horrible stuff will happen. The funniest moment in the episode for me comes when they discover the Indian burial ground in their basement, complete with comedic headstones like Pocahontas, Crazy Horse, Not So Crazy Horse, and.... Mahatma Gandhi. In the end, the story isn't all that scary but in-universe you can tell it's trying to be. Obviously this is an animated sitcom so it's not going to actually try and horrify you, but still. It's tame. Think on that.
Bart gets a second go, and his next story is "Hungry Are The Damned." Look, it's just the old Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man" but with a Simpsons twist. The Simpsons writers love The Twilight Zone and this is not the first or last time they will crib from it. It's notable for introducing Kang and Kodos, the aliens who will show up in like every Halloween special from now on? Other than that, I haven't got too much to say about it. The twist that the aliens don't want to eat the Simpsons, and are appalled at the thought of being suspected of such shit, is cute. With our in-universe reading, you have to wonder what Bart is thinking here. Is it a bratty take that towards know-it-all Lisa, who does end up ruining everything here? Looking back at Bad Dream House, that one also ends with the haunted house destroying itself a la Poltergeist rather than living with the Simpsons. It's a bit bleak how both of Bart's stories end with the monsters absolutely rejecting the Simpsons, but it fits in with the general themes of the show at the time. Still, deep shit from our narrator.
The last story is where it's at though, as Lisa just straight up pulls out a book and reads Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven. Or, well, James Earl Jones reads it because it's him reading it as we go into the animated re-enactment. It's perfectly in character for Lisa Simpson to pull out a piece of classic horror fiction, and perfectly in character for Bart to constantly be bitching about how it isn't scary. "You know what would have been scarier than nothing? ANYTHING!" he yells, upon a reveal that nothing is actually at the chamber door. The Raven segment is the best of the lot, in no small part due to fucking James Earl Jones narrating it, but it's here that we find our key. Lisa remarks that people in 1845 must have been more easily scared, and Bart retorts that it's like the original Friday the 13th, which is "tame by today's standards". I reserve judgment, given that I have not SEEN Friday the 13th. I intend to for this project, but two images stick out in my mind, both involving violent throat trauma. I dunno what the hell Bart was talking about from 1990, but as of now I have to disagree. In fact, the thing that's tame by today's standards is this Halloween Special; even by part 4 or 5 they had horrific violent shit like the scene with the fog that turns you inside-out. To say nothing of the later installments which just kill Simpsons characters en masse. Nobody even DIES in this special! We have a piece of recursive media here; it condemns Poe for being tame, while unaware that a mere quarter-century will render it toothless. Still, it's funny and fun and worth a watch because it's the Simpsons, for god's sakes. We may need to delve into some actual horror to see what still remains within the dark deep; something that's kept its fangs intact.
What IS Halloween about, anyway? On some level, it's about fear. Why else do we pick this month and this holiday to indulge ourselves in horrific delights? This is a season of fear, and today's introductory post should have reflected that. Then I changed my mind, because Halloween is also fun. Fun for kids who get to go out trick-or-treating in order to amass loads of free candy. Fun for adults to go out and socialize, working on amazing costumes. It's essentially a giant spooky-themed party, when you think about it. Halloween is fun! You know what else is fun? My favorite anime series, Dirty Pair. Here we have a show that rekindled a liking for an entire animated form, all because it cut out all the bullshit I hated and was just... fun! So here we are, with an episode of the show that combines the natural fun of Halloween with the inherent fun of being Dirty Pair. This is Episode 2 of 1987's 10-episode Dirty Pair OVA series, "No Thanks! No Need For A Halloween Party", and I am here to proclaim how great and fun it is in brisk form.
I freely admit to being nowhere near a Dirty Pair expert when it comes to writing about this show. That honor I'd give to Josh Marsfelder of Eruditorum Press. I'll link his writing about this particular episode so you have a Smart Person perspective on it, but I'm deliberately not re-reading it as I write this so you get my own fresh -ish take on it. Okay. So, the main thing I love about this episode is... you guessed it, how much fun it has being both Dirty Pair and Halloween. A brief bit of context on the premise before we go on: Dirty Pair is set in space in the 22nd century, and focuses on a duo of "Trouble Consultants" who go out into the cosmos and solve problems on commission. Kei and Yuri, the Lovely Angels, often end up causing huge amounts of collateral damage as a result of their exploits, thus earning infamy and the pejorative name of "The Dirty Pair." Got that? Great. So this episode has them patrolling their home city-planet, I suppose, of Eleanor City, on Halloween night. Halloween in the future, light-years away from Earth, has evolved into some sort of city-wide Mardi Gras sort of deal. Everything is lit brightly, Halloween banners and vid-screens are all over, there's costumed people partying in the streets, balloons, airships, parades, fireworks, the whole deal. It's a plausible evolution, and both Kei and Yuri don't quite know how Halloween started; it's just a huge party night with costumes now. I absolutely adore it. This is the kind of place I'd love to visit and party at, running around in some dumb costume. It looks stunning as well, a near-perfect utopia. Of course, then everything goes wrong, as is usual in Dirty Pair.
Through a bungle of a takedown by the Lovely Angels, a "Tactical Robot Weapon" is unleashed upon the festivities. Nobody pays attention to the horrifying metal exoskeleton running around the streets because it's Halloween night and everyone's dressed up anyways. So, Kei and Yuri have one hour to stop the thing before it goes into its active mode and starts blowing shit up indiscriminately. Thus, the havoc begins. The episode is essentially one big comedic chase with lots of explosions and great music, and what makes shit even funnier are the criminals. See, four gangs of crooks in themed costumes are each planning their own heists and robberies on Halloween night. The chase between the Tactical Robot Weapon and the Lovely Angels ends up accidentally foiling every single one. Hell, in one case, Kei and Yuri actually make things worse, in a sense; the gang of robot-costumed crooks led by a knockoff C3PO are ready to rob a museum. The girls, in trying to blow up the robot weapon, fucking level the museum. Slightly worse than robbing it, yeah. Like I said. Collateral damage. It all culminates in an amazing final sequence when the robot weapon activates in the middle of the annual Halloween fireworks show. It grows guns on every part of it and starts firing missiles with reckless abandon, making huge explosions in the sky and levelling more buildings... which the crowd all takes in as part of the show and "oohs" over. In the end, it's the soul of the Halloween party that takes out the robot weapon. Kei and Yuri, out of explosives, start using the fireworks against the robot... and it works! They get way into it as well, announcing the main event, even shoving each other aside to get hosting duties. They're having fun, and that's what wrecks the chaotic robot of destruction! In the end, they get to enjoy the rest of their Halloween night with a quiet drink together. Not a bad way to spend an evening.
Half of this was just a plot summary, but you get the underlying theme here; Halloween havoc with a healthy dose of having a good time. It's satisfying to go out and wear your costumes and party with friends. It's satisfying to watch shit blow up, be they fireworks in the sky or buildings blasted by a death robot. It's not so satisfying to be a criminal foiled by a death robot bursting into the jewelry store you're blowing up, echoed by the Alice cosplayer's final shouts of "I hate Halloween night!" as she's carried away in the police van. Still, it's an episode that shows the lighter side of Halloween's chaotic nature. It is, in fact, one of my favorite episodes of Dirty Pair; not just the OVA series, but all of it. I do hope you've given it a watch, as I put it up there for that purpose and I've summarized all the good bits. Dirty Pair is an excellent little show that is just plain fun, and so is Halloween, so let's all have a good time.
Hello! Goodness, the summer ended rather quickly this year! Already the sweltering sun rays have receded, leaving only the slow chill of fall. I love fall. It's my favorite season because so many good things happen during it! We have September, which is my birth month (it was actually my birthday yesterday, even, so hooray for entropy there), and then in November there's National Novel Writing Month, which has me writing 50,000 word novels in the space of a month. As for October? Well, October is kind of the fall month. September still has lingering summer warmth, and November has impending winter chill. October is the perfect mixture. October also has Halloween, which is a good excuse for everyone to dust off all sorts of spooky-themed media and indulge themselves in horrors and ghosts. (And goblins.) I like spooky media, and I also like writing shit and need to warm myself up for November. So, that's what this is!
31 Days, 31 Screams is going to (hopefully!) be a daily project throughout the month of October. Every day I will write a small blog post about some piece of spooky media. It could be an episode of a TV show, a horror movie, a video game, a book... Everything is fair game here. I have some things in mind, but I'm going to need to be creative to fill 31 days. That's where I can ask for your help! Please toss me some suggestions for spooky or Halloween themed things to experience. If it's something I was already going to do, you'll get to see it. If it wasn't, then I may just give it a go and have new things to say! Leave a comment here or tweet at me or something, whatever way you like to reach me.
See you in October, and try not to scream too much, now.
