31 MORE Days, 31 MORE Screams: Day 12 (Godzilla 1984)

[CRASH BANG] NUKES ARE BAD [SMASH KABOOM]

Thirty years is a hell of a long time. For me, it's literally a lifetime. For the Godzilla series, as it turns out, it was a long period with all sorts of films followed by a decade-long rest. It was a time of Ghidoras and Mechagodzillas and Jet Jaguars and whatnot, a drift away from the unholy nuclear metaphor he was to something more base; a big monster which beat the shit out of other monsters. There's nothing wrong with that, not really! It can be quite satisfying to view... but there's something to the subtle horror that Godzilla once was. The folks at Toho seemed to think so, as well. Here we are then, in 1984. Thirty years on, and the beast has once again risen from the depths. Not to fight a space dragon, not to goof around with its child... but to destroy and terrorize the horrified populace of Japan, like the stomping allegory it once was. Here, then, is Godzilla 1984.

31 MORE Days, 31 MORE Screams: Day 11 (Godzilla)

[roaring intensifies]

Well, that turned out to have some interesting thematic resonance. Yes, we're looking at the granddad of daikaiju today, the original, the king of the monsters. It's Godzilla. Or Gojira, I suppose, in its creators' native tongue. There are like... I dunno, 40 of these movies? It's a pop culture phenomenon and you just get this vision in your head right away when you hear the name. A really big lizard stomping around Tokyo and fucking everything up, sometimes with other giant monsters and robots around also fucking shit up or fighting each other. Yeah, that's the shit! It sounds awesome! Well, that's not how it started. Nightmare On Elm Street began not with a one-liner jokester killing people with ironic themed murders, but a serious-minded menace transcending the boundary of dream and reality and just straight up killing. Friday the 13th began not with a hockey mask zombie stabbing and slicing as some immovable force, but a desperate woman stabbing and slicing to avenge her son and get back at those goddamn fucking teenagers. In this vein, Godzilla began not with a glorious spectacle of smashing buildings and fighting space dragons, but with a film that intertwined one giant monster's random attacks with a very human cost and a very human drama. This, then, is the true beginning of Godzilla.

31 MORE Days, 31 MORE Screams: Day 10 (When They Cry Eps. 1-4)

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!

Every so often you get a work of fiction that just sticks with you. In our little marathon's case, that's usually due to it scaring the almighty piss out of you and leaving a mark on your psyche that lingers. Today's work didn't quite do that to me, but what it ended up being was unsettling as all fuck. We're looking at a small part of a larger whole here this time around. When They Cry, or Higurashi When They Cry, or Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni, or... look, let's just call it When They Cry for simplicity, okay? Anyways, When They Cry started life as a visual novel series by one Ryukishi07. It ballooned out into an anime (which is what we're doing today, specifically) and a bunch of other bullshit. There's a really neat conceit to When They Cry and the way it tells its story, but we're going to ignore most of that and save it for offhand waffling at the end. As far as I was concerned for this, When They Cry is a four-episode serial not unlike classic Doctor Who. I'm doing it this way for two reasons. The first is that I don't have the time to do a deep dive into two 26-episode series of anime to do a great big waffle about the series as a whole. The second is more personal; this is how I originally experienced When They Cry, in August 2006. I did a marathon watch of the first four episodes which make up the first "arc" of the show, so to speak. Eleven years later and having not seen certain parts of it since that summer night, it's remarkable how much of it stayed with me. Marks on the psyche that linger, scratched by the fingernails of looming dread and terror. Delve deep with me.

31 MORE Days, 31 MORE Screams: Day 9 (Little Shop Of Horrors)

Me hungry.

Oh, I've been looking forward to doing this one for a while. Last year, pretty early on, I did The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was quite a good and interesting little horror-themed musical which paid tribute to the golden oldies of the genre. Little Shop Of Horrors has that same sort of idyllic setting (a decade not too far from our own) but beyond that it doesn't really play too much with that. It's still interesting that a lot of big musicals of that time were looking back to the 50's and whatnot; Grease, Rocky Horror, and even Little Shop Of Horrors here. I don't know if I like it as much as Rocky Horror, but Little Shop does its job well. The songs are mostly really good, which is a step in the right direction for a musical. All in all, the sound of this one is very soulful which I like. It's upbeat and peppy and I found myself moving along to the tunes a little as I lay back to watch the film. So, a success there. Let's do our thing again. Get in, talk bits, get out there. Here we go with the rad and fun Little Shop Of Horrors.

31 MORE Days, 31 MORE Screams: Day 8 (The Tommyknockers)

This is one hella eerie cover.

So we're back on that Stephen King train again. This will be a fun one. I knew, last year, that I had to cover It given my own personal experience with that work. I also knew that I'd have to cover something else by the man this time around. He's written an absolute shitload of things so I'm spoiled for choice... but there are big beloved ones. I could have gone with The Shining, or The Stand, or The Dark Tower, or anything else Big And Important. I could have gone with a second-tier classic like Firestarter or The Dead Zone. No. No, I think on some level, it could only be The Tommyknockers. Which is at once a somewhat-maligned entry of his (even by the man himself) and a compelling personal favorite. King may have executed things a bit long-winded and heavy-handed, but what he's executed here is some sort of compelling social commentary... albeit dressed up in a story about alien ghosts. It's no secret that Stephen King fired off a massive streak of hit novels in the 70's and 80's. It's also no secret that Stephen King had substance abuse problems. The two are intertwined in a deadly dance. The latter fueled the white-hot writing streak which led to the former. He's confessed to literally not being able to remember writing Cujo due to all the booze and drugs and other crap he was putting into his body. By the late 80's there was intervention from his family, and he finally did become clean. The Tommyknockers, written between 1982 and 1987, is in many respects a book about this... but dressed up in spooky metaphor.

31 MORE Days, 31 MORE Screams: Day 7 (Demon's Crest)

I picked a screenshot this time to show how
danged pretty this game is. 

It is time once again, as so often happens this month, to dive headlong into the world of the monstrous. The Demon Realm, even. Those who know me and know of my weird gonzo hard game prowess know that I eventually took some sort of liking to the Ghosts n Goblins series. So much so that the original game was an immediate pick for last year's marathon, and was written about here. Logically, I could have jumped to one of the other core entries for this year... but there isn't much more meat on that bone. Oh, they added in lots of new mechanics and whatnot as the games progressed. New armors, weapons, magic spells, a double jump, all that good shit. The core of its chaotic quarter-munching nature never really left it, and that whole "beat the game twice" bullshit actually stayed around. Hell, the only game to really evolve that chestnut is the Wonderswan one which added in a singular branching path to make you take a different stage 3 on your second loop. Funny how that works, huh? No, I've spilled enough complaining about the random chaos and the horseshit ending requirements for these games... for now, anyway. Let's take a different approach. Let's talk about Ghosts n Goblins games for normal people.

31 MORE Days, 31 MORE Screams: Day 6 (Castlevania II: Simon's Quest)

SURE, I'LL TAKE YOU TO A GOOD PLACE!
HEH! HEH! HEH!

Now this is more my speed. No utter confusion like I had in trying to write about Species. I know this game well. Very well, as it turns out! Actually, now that I think on it, I'm pretty sure our story begins in 1995! On that same family trip where older people watched Species and I watched Free Willy 2! Sometime during it, we went to a flea market and I got three NES games. Gremlins 2, The Adventures Of Bayou Billy... and Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. That's right, my Castlevania experience begins here. Even that's inaccurate to say, though. Me and my sister never called it "Castlevania II". We called it Simon's Quest. Now, this game's much maligned (and we'll get to that haunt in a moment) but there are two reasons why it stuck out in my mind as a gem and classic in my very small NES collection. One, I had no idea of the broader Castlevania series of action platformers and thus had no preconceptions of what Castlevania was "supposed" to be. Two, my sister bought me a Nintendo hint book which had a chapter on Castlevania II. I never beat it because it didn't detail the whole game (notably, the infamous tornado puzzle isn't mention), and yet it's stayed with me all these years later. Let us paint some broad strokes and look at Castlevania II... oh hell, let's just go all the way back to 1995 and call it Simon's Quest, huh?