I went ghost hunting on the PS2 one last time

Posted on June 4, 2024 by Daniel

I continue to revisit all the horror games from my old game systems (still chipping away at the PlayStation 2 games), and this time it was Ghosthunter. I don’t even know how I managed to get through it the first time, because it’s much more of an action horror game than a survival horror…although, surviving is a helluva challenge.

You play as a hot early 2000s EMO detective investigating a murder with your female partner. You start in a school and immediately get separated. There are some semi-training missions to get you used to the clumsy controls. You have regular guns, but there isn’t loads of ammo to find, plus you fight ghosts mostly, so it feels like you should use the pulse gun that you soon get, which shoots energy beams. It requires replenishing energy regularly to work, and you do that by killing ghosts and then collecting the blue orbs that are released. But it’s a 2-step system. You shoot the enemies to weaken them, then you throw this boomerang grenade to help finish them off and “capture” them. I honestly was never sure when they were hurt enough to capture, so I would just shoot then toss the boomerang repeatedly until it worked (it gets stuck in them for short periods of time, which is an ideal chance to shoot away). You can also run right up to some enemies (walking monsters, and later, shooting ghost men) and shove the boomerang grenade inside them, plus you can use it after battles to summon energy orbs that are too far away to get yourself.

Replenishing your health is a matter of finding fire orbs that pop up in various locations. It’s not a very comforting health system at all, and you will find yourself aching for fire orbs as the game progresses. You can use the boomerang grenade to fetch these as well when they’re in impossible to reach locations.

Saving is cool. You hit checkpoints, and it says checkpoint on the screen to inform you. When this happens, just go into the menu, select save, and it saves at that checkpoint. Although you can’t save whenever you want like some survival horror games, the checkpoints are fairly frequent.

The game has a very sci-fi ghost plot, so you soon get an astral sidekick. You can summon her at certain hubs, and you then temporarily use her to do tasks your EMO guy can’t. You must be fast, because using her uses up your ghost energy bar. Sigh. She also has clumsy flying controls, which hurt your speed effort, but eventually you get a better grasp on them. She also gains different abilities, which have to be switched using the same type of on-screen menu you use to switch guns when you’re the EMO guy. You’ll need a walkthrough to figure out when and why to use which astral abilities, and it always involves unlocking your next path forward, as does every puzzle you solve in this game. This really is just a run and gun game at heart.

The game starts off basic—find, fetch, backtrack, fight. That changes when you get to a really annoying part where you have to get through a series of gates by waiting for a big fat floating ghost to open them. The challenge is that he gets spooked if he sees you, so you have to hide until he unlocks gates and goes through them, and then follow him. You can crouch and also press X to hug a wall, which is a very annoying ability that tends to get triggered when you’re trying to perform an action…which uses the X button also. Argh.

Next come tedious sections that are basically mazes you have to wind your way through while being shot at by sniper ghosts. You will find health orbs and energy orbs sorely lacking throughout all this (but enemies drop them when killed). At the same time, you have to search for dynamite to blow up new paths to continue forward, you have to follow more of those scaredy-cat ghosts to get through gates, and you have to use your astral girl to turn on switches to open up new areas.

As you get deeper into the game, as is common with these older titles, you won’t really know what you’re supposed to do without a walkthrough. I honestly don’t know how people even figured this shit out to write a walkthrough to begin with back in the day. For instance, there’s this whole mansion segment—fucking infuriating—in which you have to chase down and capture this ghost girl who jumps through green blobs in walls to transport to other rooms. You have to capture her spirit five fucking times, and the thing is, every time you chase her, rooms morph and doorways change their destinations, and the only way to capture her is when she’s vulnerable, which is as she recovers after teleporting. This leaves you with brief windows of opportunity to see her jump into a green glob, chase her to whatever room she ends up in, and then shoot her before she recovers. But there’s more. It’s not actually her you’re capturing. You need to shoot her to turn her into a giant teddy bear and then fight the teddy bear and capture that! Meanwhile, there are times when you can’t even start chasing her until you first fight and capture little boy ghosts that attack you. Argh.

The first boss doesn’t involve you actually killing the boss. There’s this giant alligator, and you have to shoot it in the belly several times so it spits out this giant goon. You then have to lure the goon to three different houses with porches so he’ll knock the porches down. How the fuck would you ever know this? But wait! The fight continues, and now you have to lure the alligator to the goon so they will fight each other! Keep doing this until they have low life bars, and then you can capture their souls.

The next chapter is annoying. You’re in a school, and you have to go into numerous rooms to expose and capture invisible poltergeists, sometimes fighting two at a time as they throw chairs, televisions, and other objects at you. The goal in each room is to figure out how to manipulate objects to create a smokescreen that allows you to see the poltergeists. In the meantime, you also have to battle the usual enemies in hallways. This section ends with a horrible boss battle in a theater. First there are numerous floating, flying ghosts shooting at you as you try to kill and capture them all, then you once again have to expose several poltergeist with smoke grenades and capture them. This is so purely an action fighting segment that it can become very frustrating.

Next segment is on a boat using tanks to shoot out doors and progressing through hordes of ghost military men, some with Gatling guns. That’s followed by a challenge of having to get past huge tentacles that latch onto you if you don’t walk slow, crouch, and remain out of sight. Exhausting. The goal is to trigger detonators to blow up the tentacles, and sometimes you have to first collect dynamite to place near the tentacles before you can trigger the detonator.

After that you have to work your way down platforms, monkey bars, and ladders in a round room. In the middle of that you have to use your astral girl for a super confusing task that involves closing a door and turning on a water pump. It’s a horrible maze to have to deal with when you don’t know what you’re doing and don’t have an unlimited amount of ghost energy to keep her going.

Next there are more tentacles and a task that requires running over various catwalks to release some prisoners.

And finally you get to the nightmarish boat boss battle. It’s this huge monster in a ballroom, and while it swipes at you and shoots at you, you have to shoot little bombs a tank is shooting into him. You can’t see the bombs, so you have to depend on your target reticule turning red. When you do shoot a bomb, the monster releases a spirit that you have to shoot and capture…all while running around the giant boss that is attacking you and blocking your target. You need to do this three damn times to defeat the boss.

Then it’s on to a prison complete with ghost prison guards carrying guns. Ugh. The astral girl has now gained a possession ability, which you will put to use several times, having her possess ghosts (huh?) to perform actions to open the way forward for you. She will also once again get into a ridiculously maze-like section that is sure to see you running out of ghost energy if you don’t follow a walkthrough to get through it quickly.

You also have new obstacles to carefully time your way past…steam pipes and fan blades. You’re crouched while you’re going through this little death trap, and the camera angles are horrendous.

You then have to jump through prison cells using certain items to bring you to a virtual house where you have to find new items to open portals in other prison cells to reach other areas of the house to complete your objective. Again…walkthrough!

Next you fight an electrified boss. TWICE. First time isn’t so bad, but the second time he’s surrounded by generators, and wouldn’t you know they let him regenerate. The goal is to blow out the switch boxes on the sides of the generators…while he’s kicking your ass and getting in the way of your target…so that he becomes vulnerable and you can finally kill him.

After that boss you work your way through a junk yard killing more poltergeists. This ends with a giant boss made of junked cars. But you don’t shoot him. No. You have to use special binoculars in first person mode to see four poltergeists on his body, and kill and capture them one at a time. Thing is, you can’t move while in first person mode. Curses! Even worse, one of the poltergeists is attached to his back, and you have to run through his legs, turn around, go into first person mode, turn on the binoculars to see the poltergeist, then aim, shoot it, and capture it before the boss turns around, which he pretty much does immediately. I highly suggest getting yourself a Codebreaker or you will be quitting the game at this point. There are a few built-in button sequence codes available for this game, but they’re pretty useless.

On to the military base, which has you running through endless rooms and corridors following and protecting a guy from numerous ghosts, and you have to kill and capture them all to move forward. Plus, sometimes the guy runs ahead of you and you can’t find him when you’re done fighting!

Suddenly you get to his point where you are shot in a cutscene, and the main menu seems to come up, making you think you’re dead and the game has ended, but it’s not over yet! You’re thrown back into the game, now playing as a MECH! It’s so annoying. You just have to roam around shooting ghosts in first person mode until you reach a cutscene. Then your character suddenly turns astral and you have to fly around, up, and down all the pipes and will have no idea where you’re going unless you use a walkthrough. This eventually leads you to the final boss.

This game takes the lazy final boss route. You have to simply fight hordes of the same enemies you’ve been fighting all along. Sorry, but without a cheat system you would probably never make it past this part. There are loads of different enemies, and they overlap instead of coming in waves. Plus, many of them shoot at you. The only bright side is that although this takes place on platforms, this game doesn’t allow you to fall of the edges. Yay.

After you get through all the old enemies, you have to just shoot the main boss—who has been flying around you the whole time but been untouchable—until you take out his life bar.

Game over…and up for sale on eBay if you want it.

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TUBI TERRORS: a ghost girl, alien zombies, and Bigfoot

Posted on June 3, 2024 by Daniel

It’s another mish-mosh of subgenres as I attempt to chip away at my massive Tubi watchlist (expect several of these). Let’s get right into them.

CAROLTYN (2022)

This one takes possessed girl and Asian ghost girl themes and gives them a fresh take with Black protagonists. Actually, that’s the only fresh take here, because otherwise it’s a fairly typical story.

When kids around town begin dying inexplicably, a mother soon suspects her daughter is next.

After being haunted by a freaky ghost woman, the daughter ends up in what I think is a military hospital. The ghost woman is the highlight in this obviously low budget flick, and she comes across as a total rip-off of The Grudge and The Ring girls. In other words, she’s loads of fun.

Danny Trejo joins in on the silliness as a guy who experienced the entity when he was a kid, so there are flashbacks of how it terrorized his family, and Eric Roberts appears in a flashback about the entity’s background, which involved a mob of white people lynching a Black woman. That makes it kind of bullshit that the entity is terrorizing a young Black girl and her mother instead of some white bitches!

Would you believe Danny Trejo ends up wielding a machete…?

Just be aware that all hell doesn’t break loose until 54 minutes into the movie, and themes of God and faith come into play as the mother is forced to face her demons. Ugh. Not to mention, the final frame is just so cheesy.

NIGHT OF THE FALLING STARS (2021)

When you want to make a cabin in the woods alien movie but you don’t have the budget to create any kind of alien effects, you do something like this…the aliens spread their infection through humans, basically turning them (and this movie) into a zombie outbreak.

There’s literally nothing you haven’t seen before in Night of the Falling Stars, but the familiarity is what makes it watchable, beginning with the comic book style, graphical text intros of each character. I’m so over the use of this device in movies with the intent of being quirky and cool.

Anyway, a group of friends goes to a cabin in the woods, and before long they are being attacked and bitten by other humans, so they hole themselves up in their cabin.

Thanks to the geek in the group, they figure out there are aliens passing parasites to humans and converting them.

It’s not scary, and attempts at camp and excessive pop culture meta humor don’t fully hit the mark, but it has its fun moments. Especially when horror hunk Paul Logan shows up…shirtless in his undies. His deadpan delivery is the highlight of the whole movie, and I feel his character was underutilized.

Other than that, there’s a lot of standing around trying to figure out how they’re going to escape the situation, plus a low budget chase through the woods at the end. Also, Logan gets a disappointingly short action sequence fighting zombies…I mean…aliens.

STRANDED (2023)

I did not expect a Bigfoot movie from the director of the sleazy good creature feature Don’t Fuck in the Woods to turn out like this did, but he does deserve props for trying something different.

We get a fairly impressive and atmospheric intro at night with a full Monty look at the monster, and he’s awesome in an old school, 1970s horror movie Bigfoot way. The movie really needed to live up to the vibe created here, but it doesn’t.

After the first kill, we are drawn into family drama…for almost the rest of the movie. It begins at the funeral of a mother whose kids are at each other’s throats over who was and wasn’t there for her. She left a video message intended to bring them all together. So…

…they head to a family cabin in the woods. At a rest stop there’s a bulletin board covered in missing persons posters. So much ominous promise.

The siblings set off on the rest of their trip, and their car gets stuck in the middle of nowhere. And there they sit for about 40 minutes of this 80-minute movie, arguing endlessly about the same thing. They’re not even trapped in the car because of Bigfoot!

Finally they hear a noise, they exit the car, and there’s a short sequence of events with them finally meeting up with the Bigfoot, which briefly brings back the awesome tone from the beginning.

If you’re a Bigfoot fanatic you might want to watch this for the shots of the menacing beast, but for me, once you’ve seen Exists, no other Bigfoot movie will really do.

 

Posted in Movie Times & Television Schedules - Staying Entertained, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on TUBI TERRORS: a ghost girl, alien zombies, and Bigfoot

I watched 65 episodes of The Ray Bradbury Theater…

Posted on May 30, 2024 by Daniel

…and I’m here with a list of my favorite episodes.

Most people know author Ray Bradbury due to his classic Fahrenheit 451, which many of us were required to read back in high school (but which is probably banned these days, ironically). However, Bradbury was a prolific author of sci-fi/fantasy novels and short stories. There have been movie adaptations of his work, and his stories have been adapted over the years for episodes of The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. So in the 80s, when horror anthology shows were hot, it made sense that HBO would bring us a series based on his tales. It was eventually released on DVD…six seasons, 65 episodes, crammed onto 5 DVDs. since the discs don’t feature the episodes organized in order of original air date, I’m going to break down my favorite episodes by disc number—and it’s pretty safe to say many coincide with my favorite short stories of his on which they are based.

DISC 1

The Crowd

This tale is an absolute classic in which a man gets into a car accident and survives…but then begins to notice all the same people surrounding victims every time there’s a tragic accident. This is possibly his most chilling story ever.

Marionettes, Inc.

This one comes from the director of Humongous and Prom Night (the latter of which explains why Leslie Nielsen has a role in the episode). A man buys a robot clone of himself to fill in for him when he needs a break from his over-attentive wife. What could possibly go wrong?

The Playground

The director of Killer Party and Funeral Home gives us a haunting tale of a man who relives his childhood when his bullies return to torment his son at the playground. William Shatner stars in this creeptastic episode.

The Screaming Woman

Directed by the director of Prom Night 2, this one stars young Drew Barrymore who reads Tales from the Crypt magazine! She becomes convinced she hears a woman’s screams coming from underground in the woods, but no one believes her.

Gotcha!

A man and woman meet at a costume party. They hit it off immediately and have a perfection relationship, but he begins to wonder if it’s real or a dream. She brings him to a sleazy hotel to test his boundaries and see if he still thinks she’s the perfect woman for him. That’s when things get very witchy.

The Emissary

Bradbury manages to throw a creepy twist into an otherwise heartfelt tale. A young boy with an illness has a dog that always brings him things to make him feel better. Horrifically, on Halloween night the dog once again brings the boy something it thinks will make him feel better. Eek!

The Man Upstairs

A young boy living with his grandmother begins to believe a new tenant upstairs is a vampire. The boy’s risky attempts at investigating on his own are so perfectly 80s horror-lite, but it gets horror heavy when the twist hits.

The Small Assassin

It’s the tried and true plot line of a mother believing her newborn is evil and trying to kill her. There’s even creepy baby POV. However, the ending kind of leaves us hanging…

On the Orient, North

This is a morbid little tale of a nurse on a train who offers to help a dying man travel to a place that still believes in the supernatural, because she believes he is already a ghost. This one has a very Twilight Zone ending.

The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl

This tale plays out of sequence and is carried along by the manic performance of icon Michael Ironside as an enraged author. It’s pretty obvious from the start why he feels the need to target his literary agent, but as the tale unfolds somewhat backwards, this becomes a take on Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” concept.

DISC 2

Skeleton

This is a darkly comic tale starring American Pie daddy Eugene Levy as a hypochondriac who goes to a creepy bone expert and receives a treatment that leads to bone problems being a thing of the past. Eek! The final moments deliver the money shot.

Punishment Without Crime

This is classic Bradbury sci-fi and stars Donald Pleasence as a man who purchases a robot clone of his adulterous wife thinking she’ll be a better “person”. However, things go horribly wrong instead.

The Dwarf

The sister from Silver Bullet plays a young woman that befriends a small man who visits the carnival house of mirrors to see himself as tall. She delves into his world to get a better understanding of life from his perspective. This one has a perfect 80s horror anthology series vibe, and the carnival setting and its sleazy owner add a great creep factor.

The Veldt

This story is a reminder that Bradbury always seemed to have a view into the future. Parents keep their children occupied in a sort of virtual reality playroom. Things go horribly wrong when the children somehow lock the playroom in man-eating jungle animal mode. Eek!

Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!

This is a classic story that has been adapted or ripped off in variations. A boy orders one of those kits from a magazine that allows you to grow plant life, in this case, mushrooms. His dad begins to think the mushrooms are alien invaders…especially when his son begins acting weird.

DISC 3

The Wind

A meteorologist determines that the wind isn’t a natural occurrence, but actually a demonic force…and now it’s after him because he knows. Quite cool taking the idea of howling winds, which are usually a byproduct of horror atmosphere, and making them the actual monster.

A Sound of Thunder

This is a classic Bradbury story in which rich people pay to go back in time to kill dinosaurs, demonstrating how the slightest alteration in the eco-system during prehistoric times could have massive implications on our present day society.

The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone

John Saxon stars as a famous writer at a book signing who is threatened by a failed novelist that plans to kill him. Taking the “fan” completely off guard, Saxon actually invites him to his house to do it! They both have interesting definitions of death as it pertains to themselves.

Hail and Farewell

Bradbury has a beautiful ability to write stories filled with haunting nostalgia, longing for youth, and the fear of aging. In this tale, a young boy who doesn’t age moves from family to family, becoming their new child to fill the holes left by loss of their own children. But each time he doesn’t outgrow his family he has to move on, leaving them to mourn all over again.

Here There Be Tygers

Astronauts land on an unpopulated planet and discover it is alive and can grant wishes…but it can also harm those who intend to hurt it, which doesn’t bode well for the humans when they pull out the big drill. Talk about a commentary on the way we live on earth!

Touch of Petulance

Eddie Albert stars in this goodie about a young man who encounters his older self, who is there to convince him that he is planning to—but shouldn’t—kill his wife in the future.

The Black Ferris

After the fantastic movie adaptation of Something Wicked This Way Comes in the early 80s, I don’t know why they felt the need to create this shortened version of it, but that’s what we get here, and it works. Two boys sneak off to the carnival and discover the owner uses his magic Ferris wheel for a nefarious purpose (in the movie and novel it was a carousel).

Exorcism

Sally Kellerman plays the leader of her town’s lady lodge. Her rival believes she’s using witchcraft to stay in the position and plans to exorcise her at the next election. It’s such a good setup, but don’t expect an exorcism…

Mars is Heaven

Another of Bradbury’s poignant stories given away by the title of the episode. Astronauts land on Mars only to discover anyone they know that dies is still alive and living in the same small town they grew up in. If only it could stay that sweet and touching…

The Murderer

A man goes on a murder spree…killing all forms of technology that create noise pollution. Bradbury really could see into the future. Keep an eye out for Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste playing on a television.

Usher II

A more horror themed take on Fahrenheit 451, this time Bradbury brings us a future world where fantasy novels have been banned. A man builds a castle based on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and uses it to get revenge on the government.

DISC 4

The Earthmen

There are numerous Mars-themed stories in this series thanks to material drawn from Bradbury’s book The Martian Chronicles, but this is definitely one of the eeriest ones. Men land on Mars and end up in a Martian insane asylum. Eek!

Zero Hour

Horror queen Katharine Isabelle plays the young lead in this tale about kids playing an odd game with household items that leads them to communicate with another form of life. As usual, Bradbury makes a commentary on society with a message about households in which both parents work and kids are left to their own devices.

The Jar

80s horror king Paul Le Mat stars as a man who buys a weird specimen in a jar from a carnival and brings it home to his slutty wife hoping it will gain him her attention. Instead, it has a mesmerizing effect on strangers that come to get a look at it.

The Martian

Obviously another Mars story, this one is about a couple from Earth living on Mars after the loss of their son. Their grief is so powerful that it is absorbed by a Martian, which then shape-shifts into the form of their son… and the situation escalates fast.

Let’s Play Poison

A reminder that childhood cruelty is a never-ending epidemic, this tale has a teacher plan revenge on the evil children that bully one of his students to death. But the evil children have plans for him, too. Eek!

DISC 5

The Lonely One

A serial killer is on the loose in a small town, but that doesn’t stop a woman from going to the movies…until it’s time to walk home alone at night. Eek! This is a perfectly chilling episode.

The Long Rain

Several astronauts land on a planet where it never stops raining. The plant life has plenty of water…what it needs is food…. 80s sci-fi/fantasy/horror king Marc Singer stars, and gets shirtless. Just the way we like him.

Fee Fie Foe Fum

Edith Bunker plays a rich elderly woman with lots of pets, and everyone wants her money, especially her granddaughter’s husband, who threatens to feed the pets to a garbage disposal. Jean Stapleton is delicious in a very different role from her iconic All in the Family persona.

By The Numbers

This one has such a great “even accidental revenge is sweet” vibe. A militant father teaches his young son discipline and it ends up biting him in the ass. This episode also happens to have a couple of pretty boys who seem very queer coded.

The Tombstone

In this quirky tale, Shelley Duvall and her husband stop at a hotel and find a tombstone in their room. She becomes convinced the room is haunted and then things start getting really weird.

The Handler

A mortician in a small town takes revenge on the bodies of those who wronged him in life. It’s a dark and gloomy episode brightened by a hunky corpse. That’s right. I said it. It also serves as the perfect final episode on the DVD collection, because it has a classic horror conclusion.

Posted in Everyday I Read the Book: Literary Thoughts, Living in the 80s - forever, The Evil of the Thriller - Everything Horror | Comments Off on I watched 65 episodes of The Ray Bradbury Theater…

TUBI TERRORS: killers in the woods

Posted on May 28, 2024 by Daniel

If you’re looking for indie horror with body counts, these days your best bet is to turn to Tuuuuuubiiiiiii.Tu!bi! (Love the new jingle when you open the app). Let’s find out how it turned out for me with the latest trio of slashers from my Tubi watchlist.

LOWLIFES (2024)

Backwoods horror gets a social commentary with Lowlifes, which depends heavily on defying expectations to stand out from all the other backwoods horror flicks. However, despite some unexpected plot points and a timely concept based on the fractured country we live in, it still relies on the usual tropes of the subgenre.

A family of four—dad, mom, brooding teenage daughter, and goofy son (he’s the scariest part of the film)—is on a road trip in an RV when they encounter a couple of suspicious rednecks. It’s an unnerving start, and even becomes reminiscent of the hitchhiker scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Before long, the family ends up at a house with a whole redneck family (complete with a big menacing goon). They are welcomed inside and invited to dinner. Uh-oh.

You can easily guess where all this is going. It’s a slow burn that takes quite some time to get to the horror (48 minutes before the first kill), but we do eventually get to the battle of the families in the final act, and the brutality is quite satisfying and pleasantly gnarly.

The fresh part is that it breaks from the norms of backwoods family horror flicks (including a lesbian element).

However, the issue that sort of killed the tension and suspense for me is that we are presented way too early with the truth of what’s really going on, so there are simply no surprises, and we end up just waiting for everyone to get gruesomely killed. You know, like in every other backwoods family movie.

KILLER BODY COUNT (2024)

Religious rehab for teens slashers have become somewhat of a thing in the past few years, and Killer Body Count is one of the better ones in terms of getting the message across about the evils of God nuts while delivering big time on the slasher elements.

Having said that, after a thrilling setup scene of a couple getting killed by someone in a Devil mask and robe, the film runs into a bit of a pacing problem for almost forty minutes…a good sign that the 110-minute running time should have been rethought.

A teenager girl is caught hooking up with a boy in church, so her father sends her to the religious rehab place in the woods.

The fun part of getting to know the characters before the kills kick in is that these kids really are horny, and they spend a lot of time peeping each other in the showers, which gives us a nice naked guys scene, landing this one on the stud stalking page.

It’s like Porky’s with actual pork instead of puss, and it even flirts with homoeroticism. Sadly, no full-fledged gay guy ever comes to fruition.

When the religious extremist counselors finally catch on to the sexual hijinks, humiliation and minor torture are inflicted. The annoying thing about this is that there are literally only two counselors and about ten kids in the program, so the kids could easily have overpowered them at any time and stopped the insanity. Also, the main girl has already witnessed a murder (a bloody murder of a dude with a hot naked bod that brings a whole new meaning to the classic dirty talk trope “I’m going to split you in two”), yet there doesn’t seem to be enough urgency by anyone to take it seriously.

In true slasher tradition, there’s a story of a priest who killed a bunch of sinners 20 years ago, which the church covered up. Therefore, it isn’t all that surprising to the kids when their friends start turning up dead. There are some fantastic death scenes with tension, atmosphere, and even some chasing.

There are, however, also some weak spots. There’s a scene of the kids stealing a key from a counselor that is too whimsical and doesn’t fit the tone of the rest of the film. The kids finally prove what I knew all along (and before half of them were dead); they could have overpowered the counselors at any time. There’s also a gay sex scene at last, but it’s a lesbian coupling, and it goes on way too long and kills the mood. Of course, my gay ass would have said it wasn’t long enough had it been a guy on guy scene.

Worst of all, the finale is just so bombastic. It goes way over the top as it overstates the “religion is evil” theme, and way too many players are suddenly thrown into the mix. It’s kind of like for every one thing the film pulls off perfectly, it’s negated with a total miss.

PILLOW PARTY MASSACRE (2023)

This is sort of an April Fools horror, but it drops the ball. The opening is classic, with kids at a Spring Fling school dance on April 1st. All songs used in the movie come courtesy of now wave band Feeding Fingers, who are definitely going to get played on my Future Flashbacks show. So as the kids are dancing to the strains of a Feeding Fingers song, a bunch of girls play a prank on one of their friends. In 80s slasher throwback fashion, there’s a tragic outcome and someone ends up in a mental institution. Thing is, I immediately knew who the killer was going to be, and most other slasher veterans probably will as well.

Two years later the friends decide to have a reunion at a cabin in the woods. April Fools’ Day is completely forgotten. Bummer. Anyway, word is there’s been an escape from the mental institution, and one girl even calls out that this is like the beginning of a horror movie. That fear falls apart when they have a run-in with a homeless man at a rest stop, but instead of him warning them that they’re all doomed, they give him food and money and he goes on his merry way. WTF?

The film unfolds very slowly with excessive talking, most notably about the guilt they all feel for the prank they played on their friend. There’s even an all-girl pillow fight (there better be considering the title), but instead of a sexy pillow fight, it’s an actual fight! Awesome.

There’s killer POV galore, including the killer sneaking into a bedroom…to steal a pillowcase. This film should have been called Pillowcase Massacre.

Also, other characters show up to raise the body count, which doesn’t kick in until 54 minutes into the movie. The killer costume is serviceable…a mask and a robe.

The death scenes are a combination of gory practical effects and absolutely horrible CGI effects that made us laugh (the hubby and I watched with friend), signifying that this is definitely one that can be better appreciated if you have a watch party, because multiple guffaws enhance the unintentional humor.

Is it a fairly bad movie? Yes. But it has entertaining kills and a great soundtrack, so I wouldn’t deter anyone who loves slashers from checking it out.

 

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Demons, zombies, and killer gophers!

Posted on May 21, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a trio of oddball indie flicks, and two out of three weren’t so bad.

DEATH METAL (2023)

The very first scene of this film features a metal band playing live, and you’ll immediately notice it has a low budget, shot-on-video in the filmmaker’s home town (and local bar) feel.

However, it feels more like an authentic movie after that footage is out of the way. The plot offers a familiar scenario. A metal band that worships Satan is having trouble getting a break. After a bad album review, they go to a secluded farm to create their masterpiece. They also decide to incorporate an unearthed Devil’s concerto into their new sound. Uh-oh.

This sort of turns into an Evil Dead concept, with band and crew members getting possessed one by one and then attacking the others. Sadly, they don’t go all demon face, and it’s generally a choppy experience with not much in the way of character or story development.

Yet despite the bumpy presentation, there are some really entertaining horror situations, like one guy’s head popping off his body when he hangs himself…and then floating around on its spine. Eek! However, it’s great aspects like this that are ripe for exploitation but only get a flash of screen time instead.

There’s a nasty eye popping scene, a ghost woman, and even the lead singer of the band sprouting horns and turning all devilish in the final act (awesome).

He looks so damn freaky that it’s a reminder of what a missed opportunity it was to have all those who got possessed to look just as frightful. If the film had really played into its horror strengths, it could have packed more of a punch.

DUG UP (2013)

This one made me nostalgic for cheesy SyFy zombie flicks from the era in which this was released. It takes place in a rural town, and everyone speaks with exaggerated redneck accents.

The plot takes a while to kick in, but basically a redneck dude and two females believe stories that a recently deceased man scored a load of gold and hid it somewhere. When they finally find his buried treasure, it turns out to be some sort of odd dial. Naturally, they turn the dial, and…

…out pop the dead from their graves. The zombies are surprisingly gnarly looking, and the movie takes place during the day, making them extra fun.

There are also some good, raunchy sexual situations, and some of the comedic delivery definitely hits the mark.

Plus, there’s a shirtless guy with an axe! Yay!

The film is a little slow at times, and one of the funniest characters is killed off too early, but it seemed as if this dude was like, “I’m gonna steal the show before they feed me to the zombies”, because he’s a hoot before he gets eaten.

The main guy is funny (and shirtless) as well, and the bearish daddy sheriff is delicious.

Their flesh definitely makes this a more digestible zomcom, and I had fun with it, but I could see it getting on some viewers’ nerves.

CADDY HACK (2023)

I’m always up for a creature feature comedy, but this 75-minute mess tries desperately to deliver 1980-level adolescent comedy, leaving us with nothing but balls and fart humor. It’s mind-numbing.

A rich dude with a ridiculous wig owns a golf course.

Grass chemicals mutate cute gophers into little red-eyed demon gophers. They’re actually not even puppets. They are totally inanimate stuffed animals just being shaken in front of the camera.

We are subjected to a long segment devoted to the caddy employees dealing with the death of the first guy attacked, a slapstick golfing montage of a guy continuously getting hit in the balls, a dance-off montage, and a budding romance complete with a musical duet—which is actually a catchy tune ruined by the male partner, who is clearly not a singer (the female partner’s voice rocks).

The gopher attack silliness with no budget special effects kicks in with only fifteen minutes left, and it doesn’t make them move any faster than the sixty minutes that came before them.

The highlight would have to be an obvious homage to the Gremlins bar and movie theater scenes, and it actually gave me a chuckle, with a gopher waving a rainbow flag, BDSM spanking leather gophers, and more.

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The invasion of the British kiddie character slashers

Posted on May 17, 2024 by Daniel

UK indie horror releases are the place to turn for slashers these days, so it’s time to take on three more of them, with the killers based on familiar kids’ entertainment characters—and some queer content.

FREDDY’S FRIDAYS (2023)

What better way to cash in on the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie than by calling your movie Freddy’s Fridays? However, this film has more in common with movies like The Banana Splits and Willy’s Wonderland in that there’s actually blood and gore and the children’s characters are vicious killers. A few of them also happen to be recycled from the movie The Curse of Humpty Dumpty.

In fact, the kills are all this 79-minute movie has going for it. It’s generally quite boring in between the violent slashing.

The plot involves a detective on a case of missing women. It turns out those women are being hired by a sleazy dude for sex. Instead, he makes them read from a book that summons the creepy characters, who then kill the women.

The detective’s story is melodramatic and dull, so you end up watching just to wait for the next death scene. My personal favorite was when a muscle stud gets a knife in the head.

The final act gives us more of a backstory as to how and why the killers are being summoned, and there’s a fun battle between detective and killers, but other than that there are no scares, suspense, or chase scenes.

RAG DOLL (2023)

As always with these British productions, a couple of the same actresses from Freddy’s Fridays appear in this killer doll movie—playing a lesbian couple! One is the mother of a young girl who is not doing well with the fact that her mom left her dad for a woman. The lesbians are friends with a gay male couple, and there’s a notable exploration of the mother coming to terms with her sexuality by talking it through with one of the gay guys. Considering this is a predominantly queer cast, Rag Doll gets an honorary spot on the homo horror movies page.

So mom, her lesbian lover, and her resentful daughter move into a new house. They find a life-size rag doll, and mom gives it to the daughter. Pretty soon the doll turns against all the queer people in her life. Seriously, this damn homophobic rag doll kills mostly gay people!

While there are some eerie setup shots and the doll is creepy at times, when she comes to life she mostly looks like a model wearing a Raggedy Ann costume for a costume display at Party City.

Also, rather distracting is the fact that the girl playing the daughter doesn’t appear to have any interest in acting. Her expression never changes, and neither does the one-note tone of her voice. It’s quite bizarre and almost scarier than everything else in the movie. Except maybe this…

The film won’t terrify you, but at only 75 minutes long and loaded with queer characters, I’d say it’s worth a watch.

PUNCH (2023)

This odd British film goes for a simple slasher story based on someone dressed as a classic child’s puppet show character. That is until it suddenly goes for a sort of folk horror twist at the end…in a movie that takes place in a city. Even so, the surprise killer reveal and motivation are a highlight here.

As a slasher, it’s rather bland. A girl has an argument with her mother then goes out to party with a friend. They run into a creepy hobo who warns them about “Punch”, the hobo is the first (off-screen) kill, and then things drag for a while as the girls do a lot of talking.

Lindsay Clonehan, as I call a British scream queen who looks and sounds just like Lohan, has a brief role and the best kill of the movie when she’s forced to deep throat Punch’s bat.

Most of the other kills are tame and bland, but there is a fantastic, brutal massacre at the party.

However, Punch reveals himself to be a total homophobe when he kills two guys hooking up, landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page.

Punch also talks and tries to deliver one-liners, which are pretty weak. Not to mention, when he speaks it sounds like one of those voice boxes on a toy, and there’s nothing menacing about it all. Plus, there is not much in the way of scares or suspense, but the main girl does get a substantial chase scenes in the final act.

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TUBI TERRORS: back to the 80s and 90s

Posted on May 14, 2024 by Daniel

I dug up four I’d never seen before from the end of the 20th century, but as much as I love the nostalgia and pride myself on owning pretty much every horror flick that came out in those two decades on disc, I don’t see any reason to add any of these to my collection. Let’s find out why.

CATACLYSM (1980)

I’ve finally stumbled upon the full-length cut of one of the movies that was eventually edited down for the horror anthology film Night Train to Terror. Odd thing is that although I’ve seen that movie numerous times and own it on disc, I barely recognized anything that happens in this feature beyond the freaky looking dude playing the devil. He’s great.

I can imagine the short version made even less sense than the long version sure. I think the general idea is that the Devil, who was previously inhabiting the body of a Nazi during WWII, is back to terrorize a small group of people, including a doctor who has visions of him, her atheist author husband (played by Bull of Night Court), a detective trying to solve a murder case (played by Cameron Mitchell), and a ridiculously stereotypical old Jewish man who is trying to convince the detective that he recognizes the Devil character as a Nazi he encountered firsthand in the 40s.

It all sounds really cool, but this movie looks and sounds like it was made for no budget in 1973 despite being timestamped 1980. The good news about that is that there are a handful of freaky, 1970s acid trip horror sequences focusing on hell and the Devil, and they’re the only moments that stand out in this mess. Not only do they stand out, but they are worthy of a better movie with a stronger script.

THE DEMONS OF LUDLOW (1983)

I was excited to see this one for the first time because it came from the director of the 80s slasher Blood Harvest. However, it is so different and so cheesy. I probably would have been a fan if I’d seen it as a teen, and visually it gives me all the 80s feels, but it’s just so goofy (and yet I’ll probably add this crap to my collection in an instant if it ever hits Blu-ray).

We meet the people in a town right out of 2000 Maniacs. The locals are celebrating the 200th birthday of the founding of the town, which is gifted an old piano, and a reporter and photographer are present to cover the festivities.

There’s a sleazy reverend, his young hot piece of ass, a creepy mayor, an awkward young woman who talks to her dolls, and her mother—the local piano player who unleashes a bunch of colonial age ghosts by playing the piano at the event.

This is sort of like a supernatural slasher, with people getting attacked and killed by a combination of ghosts, a shotgun (do ghosts have guns?), a disembodied hand glowing low budget 80s effects neon green, and levitating objects, including a fireplace poker that misses its mark when swinging for the kill, which made me laugh. In fact, several of the horror scenes made me laugh.

It all culminates in the piano taking its turn trying to kill the reverend, and the colonial ghosts also coming after him for revenge. Basically, it’s The Fog if The Fog was a killer piano…

GHOSTWATCH (1992)

If what they say is true, I guess you had to be there when this mockumentary first aired in Britain on Halloween night and had viewers thinking it was real…and terrifying.

Presented as live television, this movie focuses on a family living in a haunted house, and jumps between a reporter at the house for a sensationalistic experience, another reporter talking to people on the street, and guests being interviewed on the TV show back at the studio.

While there are moments that could easily have inspired Paranormal Activity movies, this film is generally super boring. If I had been watching this on television when it aired, I would have changed the channel after about fifteen minutes. The most interesting thing to me was that the mother of the house kept referencing a glory hole…which apparently means something different in England.

67 minutes in to this 91-minute movie, one of two young girls living in the house gets a rash and it seems like an attempt to flirt with an exorcism theme. Then one daughter goes missing with only fifteen minutes left, and the family, reporter, and cameraman run around the house looking for her, even delving into the…um…glory hole. This movie couldn’t even make a glory hole exciting.

The final moments are such a letdown. Most intriguing to me was a brief conversation with a viewer that calls in and tells a story of a guy who was possessed by a woman and began dressing in female clothing. Now that would have been a movie.

STORMSWEPT (1995)

This could have been a fun erotic horror film…if only it had delivered some actual horror.

It’s a classic setup. A film director, crew, and actresses go to stay in an old plantation mansion to make a movie. Everyone is pretty, making the sex scenes extra delicious, and it’s a rainy, stormy night, creating the perfect atmosphere for a haunted mansion movie.

Little do they know—and we never find out why—but there’s a sadistic dude and his woman living in the basement. Their occasional appearances fail to give any explanation for their presence.

Anyway, all the pretty people spend a majority of the film (which is way too long for what little it has to offer) sitting around talking about their sexual fantasies. They are always together, so there are no chances for anyone to go off and have any scary supernatural experiences. WTF? There are, however, lots of writhing women feeling themselves up, and there’s one sex scene with a guy who has a fantastic butt.


I’ve never been more jealous of an actress’s index finger than this

It seems that the ghost of a sexually charged slave owner is making everyone horny. That’s it. That’s the story, and it’s barely clarified. Do we ever see the ghost? Nope. Is there any explanation for why everyone, including the men, isn’t jumping the bones of the guy with the fantastic butt? Nope.

Eventually the guy in the basement comes into play for a hot minute, abducting some of the girls and chaining them up, but if ever a final scene felt like an afterthought, this is it.

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TUBI TERRORS: slasher time!

Posted on May 2, 2024 by Daniel

It’s a trio of slashers with juicy kill scenes. But is that enough?

HOUSE OF DOLLS (2023)

This slasher has Dee Wallace, a killer in a spiked pink ski mask, vicious slashing, and a great opening scene.

Unfortunately, we have to contend with the rest of the movie in between.

Three estranged sisters reunite to collect an inheritance, get stuck inside a distinctly designed house with some other people, and eventually start getting killed off one by one.

In the meantime, numerous random people are brutally killed in locations other than the house. I can honestly say I am not sure what the connective thread was in all these murders, but when the kills are this satisfying I don’t really care.

However, as a result, I wasn’t engaged in the movie at all when someone wasn’t being slaughtered. The final girl gets a chase scene, but the final battle kind of made me laugh, and I imagine that’s not what they were going for.

HORNY TEENAGERS MUST DIE! (2024)

With a title like this, plenty of raunchy sex and nudity, brutal and bloody kills, and the killer even using dildos and vibrators as weapons, it’s astounding that we end up with a slow, bland movie.

The opening sex and kill scene is just nasty in concept, and includes gore and some boy booty. Awesome.

There’s also a freaky little figure in the shadows that never appears again. Bummer.  Missed opportunity. The whole movie should have been based on this eerie presence.

Next we meet a group of pretty unlikable friends heading to a cabin in the woods. We get the usual infights, teen drama, and sex, including a couple into pegging.

Brace yourself. The first kill isn’t until 38 minutes in. The violent kills pile up as the film progresses, but there is no effort here to deliver scares, suspense, or chase scenes, and the killer is never seen, so there’s no masked killer. 

In the end, the killer motivation speech, which attempts to present something new to the slasher genre, is an eye-roller, especially since the glass ceiling has been shattered on this twist again and again for decades.

MASSACRE ACADEMY (2021)

For me, this is by far the winner of my latest marathon of indie slashers. Oddly, it feels like it’s supposed to be a sequel. The plot revolves around the final girl from a killer clown massacre two years ago. Believed to be dead, the clown is suddenly back for more!

Another odd thing about the film is that despite it taking place in 1987 and there being loads of references to 80s music and movies, the majority of the kids look more like they came out of an early 2000s slasher rather than kids living in the 80s. That makes it weird that there’s one bimbo who is as 80s as it gets, with neon spandex, teased hair, heavy eye shadow, and a cassette tape earring!

Her presence is kind of jarring because it sticks out like a sore thumb. And actually, the 80s aspect doesn’t matter much aside from serving as an excuse for there to be no cell phones.

People start getting gruesomely killed, leading surprisingly early to a total massacre at a college pledge party. It’s super bloody, campy, and funny, with 80s-style horror lighting and practical effects. I was afraid the movie was blowing its load too early and wouldn’t be able to sustain that level of fun for the rest of its run time.

There’s a shift after that, and it becomes all about the main girl and a detective trying to stop the killer. Although the setting tends to meander instead of staying focused on one location, there’s never a dull moment, with tight editing and camerawork. This is a crucial element that many indie directors fail to understand or deliver—they don’t “choreograph” their scenes to add excitement to the footage they film, instead just stringing together the scenes they captured on camera into a lifeless movie experience. Storyboarding is your friend.

Other highlights include a budding lesbian relationship with some kick-ass lesbians, suspense, excellent slasher atmosphere and a dark tone balanced by some clever and witty lines, and an action-packed final battle with the killer.

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For the love of Jonathan Bennett

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Daniel

Gay cutie Jonathan Bennett starred as the love interest in Mean Girls, but we most recently saw him in gay horror flick Fire Island, so I figured it was time to dig into some other horror movies he’s done. In each case he’s playing it straight, however there is a very raunchy, gay edge to one of them.

THE SECRET VILLAGE (2013)

You would think a film about two strangers visiting a town with a history of witch trials and residents suffering from fungus poisoning would bring us an eerie story, but this film tries way too hard to create suspenseful atmosphere without offering any actual suspense.

Jonathan Bennett plays a writer looking for inspiration for a story, and his female roommate is a reporter doing a story on the town’s dark side, which no locals want to talk about.

As Bennett lies low and the main girl goes around town trying to dig up information, there are guys in cult robes spying on her, as well as dudes with syringes sneaking around injecting people. It’s all set to ominous music that is a wee bit too hyperbolic to make this feel like scary shit is going to happen, considering it never does.

Other bizarre elements include an androgynous anime looking figure in the woods, as well as a Black guy who wants to clear his slave ancestors of accusations of witchcraft.

None of the details ever come together or ramp up to something thrilling, and it becomes clear why if you make it to the end. There is a twist worthy of a Twilight Zone episode, which would explain why this movie should have been a 30-minute short and not an unsustainable 90-minute movie.

THE DAWN (2019)

Bennett only appears in the first 15 minutes or so of this “possession” movie, and very briefly in a scene at the end. He plays a father suffering from PTSD after World War I. One evening he goes around the house and murders most of his family…by beating them to death. I was totally getting a Ronald DeFeo Amityville murders vibe…with fists instead of a gun, which is important to note for later.

Thing is, this is supposed to be a horror movie, so it would have been more effective if the murders had been visually violent and not just bland shots of Bennett raising his arm repeatedly to beat his off-screen victims. Personally, I would have appreciated him going Lizzy Borden on them and hacking them up with an axe. This movie needed horror visuals really bad.

So just one of his daughters escapes unscathed and is sent to live in a nunnery…with right wing nut Stacey Dash. Ugh. Her small role as a nun makes sense—and is a good reminder of why her career died after Clueless.

The main girl has nightmarish dreams that amount to lame made-for-TV level “horror” as she struggles to find faith to become a nun. She’s afraid that she’s going to become like her father. It is soooooo boring.

Eventually she ends up strapped to a bed possessed with no demon makeup. Yawn. The real shocker is that this dull film suddenly indulges our horror desires by having her rip off a priest’s jaw! Problem is I was too distracted being stunned by the fact that something horrific actually happened to appreciate what I was witnessing.

The movie ends with a bizarre hint of a sequel that seems to be a cash-in on The Conjuring franchise. The main priest is heading to Long Island on a train and looks at a picture of a house in a book…The Amityville House. WTF?

Is this suggesting that Bennett’s demons are going to end up in Ronald DeFeo and push him to slaughter his whole family? And if that is what is being implied, how does this priest from the 1920s know about something that is going to happen in 1974?

SORRY I KILLED YOU (2020)

This is a horror comedy that is essentially a spoof of the cabin in the woods slasher genre…because the killer, enthusiastic about becoming the next infamous serial killer, keeps getting upstaged by his would be victims.

A group of employees comes to a cabin in the woods for a retreat. Bennett is most definitely the lead here, and he arrives first with a friend and a dildo. Although his character isn’t supposed to be gay, he gets a thrill out of making everyone think his friend is gay. He kicks off the shenanigans by convincing his friend to suck his dildo like it’s his dick when the others walk in. It’s kind of a shame neither of these characters actually turns out to be gay, because their homoerotic chemistry together is delicious.

The whole group of employees is kind of horny and sinful, so there’s plenty of fun, raunchy humor here. There’s also plenty of tension and backstabbing, which eventually leads to violence and even murder!

And that is the problem for our killer. He wants to do all the slashing, but a series of unfortunate incidents and accidents sees the employees killing each other off instead (think Tucker & Dale vs. Evil).

The movie is a lot of fun, and there are plenty of kills and a final battle with the actual killer, but the film does run a little long and starts to drag in the middle.

There’s also a whole nasty segment about a guy having a cell phone sewn into his scrotum that is a little too over the top to even be funny. Personally, I could have overlooked that part if there had been a twist in which Bennett and his friend really were gay for each other.

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Fatal Frame III: the 3 is for playing as 3 different characters

Posted on April 26, 2024 by Daniel

As I continue revisiting the ghosts of the Playstation 2, I delve into one of my favorite survival horror franchises. Indicative of the time at which they were released in the early 2000s, the Fatal Frame games make you feel like you’re in an Asian ghost movie—the scariest ghost movies there are in my opinion.

Much like Silent Hill: The Room, Fatal Frame III gives you breaks from the horror mansion madness by bringing you back to your apartment to do some research periodically—developing photos you take, listening to audio tapes you find, reading journals on the occult in your roommate’s bedroom, and speaking with your assistant. Funny thing is, despite this being a safe place, the game manages to make even your own home feel creepy.

It isn’t well lit, different sections of the house are cut off from others by doors, you have a cat you can barely see because it lurks in shadowy corners (I could barely see it even with the brightness on my TV turned all the way up), and as the game progresses, non-violent ghosts start appearing in nooks and crannies. EEK! The good news is you can try to snap photos of them to gain points to upgrade your camera and make it more powerful against ghosts.

If you haven’t played the series and are unaware, your spiritual camera is your only weapon. You “kill” ghosts by photographing them until they cry out in agony and shrink into nothingness. You collect film, which is your ammo, and you have to conserve it as much as you can and not waste it, because it’s limited—like, every time you miss hitting the ghost, you want to cry because you just wasted film. The only bright side is that each time you return to your own home and then go back to the scary mansion, any items you picked up (health, film) respawn in the same exact spots, so you always want to grab them. You simply must.

Upgrading the camera with more power and lenses with special abilities helps you fight harder ghosts (you get points for both taking pictures of non-violent ghosts and for defeating vicious ghosts), and your upgraded camera carries into a new game so you can continue powering it up to the max (yay!). However, there’s a catch. You play mostly as the main character, but several times you play as two other characters, and each character has their own camera with its own upgrade tree. So you have to build up every camera separately, but you don’t play the other two side characters enough to really upgrade their cameras all the much. Sigh.

Not gonna lie. Fatal Frame games are challenging. It’s very possible to end up locked in a room you can’t leave with an attacking ghost you must defeat to get out, only to discover you are too low on film to defeat it. So be prepared to be more than just frustrated. And as I always say with these older survival horror games, a walkthrough is crucial, otherwise you could end up running in circles trying to figure out what to do next—or be totally blindsided by the ghost girl in a crawlspace. Oh yeah There’s a fucking crawlspace ghost battle.

And after a while, lingering for too long spawns more ghosts to battle. You really can’t stand still in this game, because you don’t have enough supplies to fight endless ghosts. I’ll also say that if you get really stuck, Codebreaker is your friend for unlimited health and ammo. Unfortunately, there’s a glitch when you use it with this particular game. If you are playing a chapter in which you need to collect items to unlock a crucial door to another area, using the Codebreaker causes those items to disappear from your inventory as soon as you pick them up. Learned that the hard way.

So, let’s get into the game. For the prologue you begin with just a regular camera in a black and white scenario. Since you can try to photograph fleeting ghosts to gain points, you wouldn’t know without a walkthrough that you can’t fight the first vicious ghost that attacks you—you simply have to run upstairs to get away from him.

The first chapter is in full color (dreary color), and within a few minutes you find the spirit camera next to your first save lantern. Save lanterns offer unlimited saves and are marked clearly on the map, but if you are near a save lamp during a battle, it goes dark and you can’t save until the ghost is defeated.

As you gain points from taking pics of surprise ghost appearances and from fighting ghosts you can begin upgrading the camera and swapping out lenses, but honestly, these level-up designs that give you choices have always been confusing to me. Personally, I attached the lens that seemed most practical and never changed it. I spent all my points on upgrading the basic powers the first time I played through, and worked my way up from there on later plays. You’d think after at least three plays of this game over the decades from the same save my camera would have been maxed out by now, but it wasn’t and the game was still hard.

Enemies vary in difficulty, and some require stronger film, which you should save for bigger battles, because you don’t find much of it at all. This is where you have to think. For simple photos of non-violent ghosts you want to use the weakest film, and for battles you want to go into your inventory menu and switch to stronger film…and then remember to switch back to weak film after the battle so as not to waste the good stuff.

You also get into battles with multiple ghosts at once, which is always fun (not). It’s chilling having these spirits float around you and even right through you, or worse—grab you and throttle you. Fatal Frame makes possibly the best use of the vibration function of any game. It’s like a racing heartbeat during ghosts battles and used as a jump scare tactic at other times.

General game play exploration has you in third person view. Unlike Resident Evil, the controls are not tank style, so you can turn quickly, and there is a convenient run button. However, using the camera switches you into first person camera mode. You move incredibly slow while in camera mode, and it’s smart to get out of camera mode when you don’t see the ghost you’re fighting in your lens, otherwise they will most likely sneak up and attack you, and shaking them off isn’t easy. So there’s a lot of frantic jumping back and forth between third and first person modes while trying to stay alive during these battles.

In between trying to escape ghosts unscathed, you have to start collecting items and solving puzzles to open doors to progress through the game. You also photograph certain spots that glow blue to break spells that block doors you need to get through.

Just when you get into a groove playing as the main character, a return to your home ends with you going back to the scary mansion as a different character. The main character’s assistant is the main girl from the first Fatal Frame game (awesome), but for someone who went through this before, she sure is weak. You discover the mansion is the same house as in the original game, and her first chapter starts off in the very familiar entrance. You even enter that damn rope hall where she jumps every time she runs into a hanging rope. The worst part of this chapter is that despite her having a really weak camera, the first fight is super hard. WTF?

Next you play as a guy, and even though you have a camera, you can’t fight ghosts! You have to “hide” from them like some Clock Tower 3 bullshit, and the hiding spots don’t always work, which means you have to run off course to hide and then find your way back to where you left off in your exploration. You eventually get the camera obscura and can fight some of the ghosts, but there is one invincible ghost you must run away from…which you’ll only know if you take a hit first and then waste all your film trying to fight her. Or, you know, you can do the smart thing and follow a walkthrough. The guy character also has a special, sexist duty—he can push aside larger objects that block doors that the girls were unable to enter.

The game gets progressively harder, and you’ll be aching for more health and film as repetition sets in—run back and forth collecting key items to open new doors while more and more ghost encounters trip you up. And unless you follow a walkthrough, you won’t know when you encounter the first enemy that is invincible…instead you’ll be running in terror, wasting precious film and health as he kicks your ass. And when you do get to fight him at the end of the chapter, he’s hard as fuck. Basically the only time you can get him in your sights is when he swoops down right before he hits you repeatedly. Good luck trying to snap and run before that happens, while actually succeeding in hitting him.

There’s a horrible new addition to gameplay in this third installment. Late in the game when you’re playing the guy character whose camera is less powered up than the main character’s camera, you’re thrown a new challenge. You are informed through a file you pick up that if you don’t regularly pick up “purifying lights” (candles that burn out over time), the display will be monochromatic (it looks like a blurry black and white film negative) until you find another one. First off, the purifying lights aren’t obviously placed like other items you can pick up. You have to really search everything carefully (aka: use a walkthrough that tells you exactly where they are). Secondly, everything is harder to see when you’re stuck in monochromatic mode. And third, there are more ghosts and they’re much harder if you stay in monochromatic mode. Argh! Also during this night you’ll really have no idea where you’re supposed to go or what you’re supposed to do without a walkthrough. Not to mention, if you’re playing the game through a second time from the original save, there’s a branching pathway to get a different ending. And if you roam around with no aim, those tough ghosts are more likely to appear, and you’re wasting time while your purifying candle is burning down.

As you near the end of the game, without a walkthrough you wouldn’t know there’s a moment where you finish a battle and are positioned right in front of a door with a message that seems to direct you to go through that door…yet you actually have an option to follow a ghost that disappeared through a door on the other side of the room for a different outcome presented in cutscenes. You also would never know that when you’re collecting stakes from a doll room and you suddenly get locked in one but nothing happens, you need to go into camera view to trigger a ghost fight so you can defeat it to unlock the door.

The last night can be tedious. The goal is to gather five mirror pieces to put together to open a door to the final boss. However, this part gets into Clock Tower 3 territory again, for you are constantly pursued by an invincible ghost you simply have to run away from. The only time she goes away is when you enter one of the rooms where the mirror pieces are. Another challenge is that those damn purity candles are scarce. Honestly, I just played a majority of the final night in the monochromatic mode. As you work your way through the house this last time, it’s important to gather all the health and film you can, because you’re going to need it. This is one of those games that throws enemies at you on your way to the final boss. Argh!

Something crucial that you need to know which is mentioned early on in the walkthrough is insistence that there is a “stone mirror” in a particular location that you should absolutely not pick up, and I found out why at the end of the game. It is a one-time use auto-healer you’ll need for the last boss…actually you could really use like ten of them. After fighting your way through various ghosts, you meet the final boss. It’s a big arena, but she is not easy to target, so you’re constantly going to need to be on the run. But wait! There’s more! Quite frequently the screen will go monochromatic, at which point you start running in slow motion! The goal is to just dodge and run away from the boss as she pursues you (also in slow motion). If she grabs you it’s game over…except for the first time, when that one stone mirror saves you. After that, you have to make sure she doesn’t touch you every time you’re in black and white mode. It’s disorienting when the screen switches back to full color, but you need to stay on your toes and kill this bitch as fast as possible to avoid having too many monochromatic sessions. Fortunately, there’s one final save right before you cross a bridge to get to her, with no enemies along the way, so it won’t be that bad if you have to try over and over…although, it would’ve been nicer if the last save was after you crossed the damn bridge.

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