MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "Friday the 13th Part 2" (1981)

What happens after Mother's gone? Well, if you're Jason Voorhees, you pick up a machete and start chopping away at teenagers.  Thus is the entire set up for Friday the 13th Part 2.  Jason Voorhees actually takes up the machete (no hockey mask yet) after the death of his mother (Betsy Palmer) at the end of the first movie (spoiler alert!) at the hands of Alice (Aridenne King).  To set up what would be the standard treatment for protagonists in the series (with the exception of Tommy Jarvis, but we'll get to him), Alice is unceremoniously killed off in the first twenty minutes by a mysterious man who breaks into her home near Crystal Lake (having come back two months later to try and find some closure after the terrible events) and has some very interesting ideas about what to put in her fridge.

This was done as King's request, as she was stalked by a fan after the first movie had premiered and given her some prominence, and started the long trend in slasher movies of the previous protagonist being killed off so as to allow a new cast to deal with the killer...even though, ironically, most protagonists within the Friday series would never actually appear again after their first film even if played by a different actor.

Nevertheless, it's five years after the first film, putting this firmly in 1984...and beginning an arc that would carry the series through to Part 4, some confusing hiccups in continuity notwithstanding.  A new group of late teenage/early twenties youths are, rather than being counselors, being trained as summer camp counselors not too far from the original Crystal Lake. Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) is still biking around spreading his gospel, and a new arrival to the trainees comes in the form of Ginny Field (Amy Steel).

Yes, she's the Final Girl. Don't be shocked.

She is the first protagonist to realize the untapped potential of the series by pointing out that Jason may have survived his drowning and lived out in the woods in Crystal Lake as some kind of feral man thing, and that he had potentially witnessed the death of his mother...

This movie isn't one of the well-remembered ones in the series, but it's definitely not bad by any means. Nobody's favorite, certainly, but it was the springboard by which the entire rest of the series flows...for good and for ill.

This was also in the era where film makers were still aware that the people in their films were actual people and not just crash test dummies filled with blood that occasionally went topless for the T'n'A quota to be fulfilled, so there is several scenes dedicated to building character so that we actually care when the killing starts.  It's certainly not to the level of Aliens or Predator, but we do get a sense of who these twenty-somethings are, how they interact with one another, and even a bit of their histories.  It's really something I can't praise highly enough, seeing as we almost never see that anymore in movies, and that's a real shame.

It's the reverse of the problem I have with the Godzilla movies I've seen - not enough humanity to make me care.  So, it's honestly nice to see those bits of character development, make some actual investment with the characters before they're thrown into peril.

Apart from that, yes, this is a paint by numbers slasher film.  Killer kills, victims die. Rinse, lather, and repeat.  Though it's important to remember that this is one of the first in the big craze that followed Halloween.  Take it for a nice viewing in a marathon, enjoy some of the cheesier bits, then move on to others that will follow.

...maybe not Part III, though.

Friday the 13th Part 2 is brought to us by Paramount Pictures with the current rights behind help by New Line Cinema.

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MadCap's Game Reviews - "Until Dawn"

Choices...choices are what lie before all of us every day.  Every so often, they can have grand and long-lasting consequences.  But most of the time, they're mundane.  To paraphrase Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation: "the decision to go through a door will result in me being in the next room". And that is, ultimately, what the draw of Until Dawn is not supposed to be.  The choices are supposed to matter and, ultimately, they really don't. That being said, that doesn't make Until Dawn bad, per se. It's just not really a game except in the strictest sense...it's an 'interactive storytelling experience'. And, in that capacity, it actually tells a very good story.

I'm serious, and you - my dear readers - should know by now that I will play through just about anything if the story is any good.  The story here...is admittedly pretty good, though it is riddled with every single horror cliche to be used in the last...forever, really.  To put it in perspective to all of you, let's play the Until Dawn drinking game!

The plot begins with a group of teenagers alone in a cabin in the woods (take a shot!) who play a prank on one of their friends that goes horribly wrong (take a shot) resulting in her and her twin sister going missing.  One year later (take a shot!) the friends regroup to try and honor their memory at the same place they went missing: the cabin in the woods, which is built near an old sanitarium (take a shot) and the entire mountain that both are built on is a cursed Native American burial site (take a shot) and they are stalked by a mysterious masked man with a machete (take a shot).

So yeah, a lot of them and that's just the plot itself without actually getting into the characters. You have the final girl (take a shot) played by Hayden Paniter...Panita...Panera...the cheerleader from Heroes, the jock (take a shog) played by that guy from Agents of SHIELD who was apparently in HYDRA (spoiler alert!), the bitch (tag a spog), the other bitch (tak a smok), the "nice girl" (gag a frog), the nerd (smoke a shod), and the incredibly creepy kid who is so obviously either going to die first or be the killer (COASTERS!).

Okay, I'm assuming now that you've woken up from the alcohol-induced coma, so let me continue with the fact that I honestly don't mind the cliches being used, as I much as I joke about them.  I'm a horror fan myself (or didn't you know?), so seeing the concepts highlighted and having fun poked at them is a joy of mine (also a fan of irreverent humor, or didn't you know?). What isn't a joy of mine, however, is two things that this game is absolutely filled with - quick time events and jump scares.

Let's go ahead and get the big one out of the way - jump scares are so inappropriately misnamed as to be libelous. The fact is that jump scares are not scares at all, they're startling.  Think back to any Screamer video you've ever seen (and no, you never have to worry about that from me, I'm not that much of a dick).  If someone jumped out at you in real life what would you do? Punch them in the face.  In the misquoted words of The Spoony One, using loud noises to slap someone upside the soul is not remotely fair as a scare.

Jump scares are the cinematic equivalent of the fart joke - rarely done well and, even if they are, it doesn't take away from the fact that there's a terrible brown stain on your underwear now.

As for the second problem, Quick Time Events.  This is where the game gets into barely qualifying as an actual game, because the player does actually have to pick up the controller to interact with the world.  Although interestingly enough, with the Playstation 4's movement technology, there are several times when the player is outright instructed to move as little as possible, so much so that they could just set the controller down on a flat surface and wait it out with no penalty.  That's right, a game that actively tells you to not play it.

But yes, as you move the characters through certain areas, cutscenes will trigger that will force the player to do a quick time event or three that will often determine the fate of the characters in question.  And, for horror fare, they do die if you fail in some very visceral and even some creative ways.  That being said, it is very cheap to have a split-second decision or a wrong-button press mean a character will immediately go down the wrong pathway or open the wrong door to be devoured by a hungry monster. Though, perhaps, I'm just missing the point.

That being said, we come back with the problem with the choices.  Much like life, only a handful of your choices actually have any consequences in the grand scheme of things.  Characters can die, though two of them are off the chopping block until literally the very end of the game when you make the last decision, which - now that you know that - kind of makes any dangerous situation they find themselves in rather pointless and lacking any sort of tension, doesn't it?

It feels like the developers are simply having you along for the ride.  This is their story, and you're just here to watch and occasionally press a button...and, honestly, I'm conflicted because the story is actually really good.  I mean it.  You can pick up items throughout the game - papers, photographs, and items, that will tell the various stories from the asylum, the mines, and even the house the characters are bunking over at.  While its to different degrees, the stories all have their own flavor and complexities and really show that the developers were thinking of the world beyond just the player and the characters that they control.

The problem comes with choices that ultimately are meaningless because certain events must always happen, quick time events that tie into that by unduly stressing a player at the beginning and then pissing them off once they realize they're pointless, and jump scares that serve no real purpose.  Couple all those with a game that you're barely playing as much as you are watching, and it's just...really depressing.  And yet, I still have to recommend this game, because the story is just that good.

I hope, when and if we get a direct sequel (from what I'm given to understand, Rush of Blood is going to be more a spin-off than a sequel, and I have no interest in a rail shooter...) that we see a little bit more of an actual game in the game.  Having big name actors is nice and (sometimes) brings considerable talent to the screen, and making the screen very, very pretty is good, but that doesn't sell me on a game and - even if your story is great - games are an interactive medium.  Put more game in the game, Supermassive, and I'm all aboard!

Until Dawn is now available for Playstation 4 from Supermassive Games and Sony Interactive Entertainment.

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MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "The Thing" (1982)

An outpost far from civilization...

...total and complete isolation...

...unable to trust anyone and having no way to escape.

This is the main draw of a movie like The Thing.  Now, it's time for me to praise the cinematic genius that is John Carpenter. You may recall, last year, me talking about Rob Zombie's unashamed raping of one of his best works, but now you can actually read me ranting about a good movie he's associated with.  He actually didn't write this one, just directed it, but his talent in bringing the printed words of a script to life shines through here beautifully.

The story is one of, as I said in the blurb above, isolation and of paranoia. A group of Americans in the Antarctic come across the remains of a Norwegian research station, finding bodies both burned and twisted by...something, though they really can't say what. And, in the beginning, they think nothing of taking on an adorable little husky that the few remaining Norwegians seemed to be chasing down...

...soon, things take a turn for the worse. The creature begins to assimilate members of the research team and starts to assimilate or otherwise incapacitate them. After the team discovers a flying saucer found by the Norwegians, they discover the titular Thing is trying to escape...whether to leave the Earth or leave the Antarctic is unknown.  After some calculations, however, they do know that if the Thing manages to escape the cold of the Antarctic, that it will assimilate the world in a matter of years.

So it soon becomes the world's deadliest game of ten little Indians as the members of the group find that they cannot trust one another, they have only a few improvised weapons (namely flamethrowers - which explains where "kill it with fire" came from), and they can't count on any outside help due to equipment failures caused by a storm. Will helicopter pilot MacReady (Kurt Russell) be able to discern who is who and save the day? Or will the Thing manage to find a way to escape to the mainland and assimilate humanity?

Nothing in the film ever seems too cheesy, either. It's dated by the technology, but that doesn't take away from it, it's just a product of its time.  That being said, the acting is sublime. Along with Kurt Russell there are several other acting talents, such as Wilford Brimley and Keith David (y'know, the guy who voiced Goliath in Gargoyles). The music is good too, and this is one of the notable instances where John Carpenter did not actually score his own film.

No, they got Ennio Morricone for that.  You know, the composer who scored The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly? Yeah.  That guy.

The special effects are also of note. Practical effects are the name of the game here, and The Thing does that better than many.  What you see of the creature is utterly horrific and gory, and all of it done by practical effects (including the Thing-dog, created by the Stan Winston) which makes it all the more impressive.

The Thing is an utterly magnificent film and, as I said before, its themes of isolation, mistrust, and paranoia. Can you imagine something scarier than a creature wearing the face of a friend and that could, at any moment, transform into a hideous abomination and swallow you whole? Or, worse, could infect you with a single drop of blood, just mixing in a few of its cells with your own and taking over your body entirely to make you a part of its consciousness?

I'll just keep myself tied to the couch until we find out...

The Thing is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Universal Pictures.

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MadCap's Trailer Reactions - "Power Rangers"

...well, that happened.

I said in on Twitter and I'll say it here: to be perfectly frank, it's bad.

First off, and I know this may be a bizarre complaint - but why Walk the Line? Excluding the fact that it's a cover (and not a bad one, in all honesty), why this for Power Rangers? Is its slow, somber tone supposed to illustrate to us that the five teenagers with attitude who get recruited by Zordon...oh, wait, they don't get recruited by Zordon in this version?

...what do you mean "they find their morphers in a quarry"?!

Yes, in a bizarre twist it seems that the rangers (at least Jason, Kimberly, and Billy if the trailer is to be believed) discover their morphers in a quarry...and they aren't even morphers. Gone is the uniqueness of the original belt buckler morphers carried by the team in the original series. Now, they have...I guess a flattened rock that glows their respective Ranger color? They look like something that someone who has no idea what they're doing would put on Etsy. Lame!

From the look of it, as well, the team's uniting actually comes not in the Angel Grove Juice Bar, but in Saturday detention. I wouldn't mind it so much, except it completely and utterly rips off The Breakfast Club in a way that shows no originality whatsoever. While that movie was a deconstruction of the various tropes of the teenager and how breaking free of what your peers or what society thought of you was the most important step in self-realization...Power Rangers took those stereotypes and played them straight in the original show.  If the definition of "dark, realistic reboot" is "make everyone kind of an asshole regardless of their stereotype" then I guess you could swing all of them being in detention, but I personally don't find it believable in the least.

The character bits they try to set up are also a bit odd, what with Jason apparently talking about "a big screw up", Kimberly dealing with some of her fellow cheerleading peers, and Billy dealing with a bully of his. Trini also gets a bit where someone scrawls on her locker...but Zack gets...nothing. I don't even think he has a speaking line in the trailer. Not that he was a big part of the team or got a large amount of character development (then again neither did Trini or Jason before they got Peace Conference'd...) but he's still one fifth of the team and honestly I would have hoped he'd get a bit more an appearance.

In what is sure to be a massive bit of controversy within the fanbase, the Rangers also have powers outside of their morphed form - Jason exhibited an enhanced physique in a scene taken right out of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man as well as enhanced strength, and Billy showing off enhanced durability when a bully headbutts him...and is promptly knocked out cold for his trouble. The Rangers never had powers outside of their morphed state in the original series (that came with later seasons), and, to paraphrase Linkara of Atop the Fourth Wall and his History of Power Rangers videos, it really does take away from the special status their powers are given if the Rangers can just crush a sink with a casual swipe or lift a car without so much as an inch of spandex on them.

...though some would argue that THAT IS NOT SPANDEX!!!...but I'm getting off topic.

In the one bit of praise I can give for this, Elizabeth Banks as Rita has a fairly menacing scene where she's telling Kimberly about how she's killed Rangers before. Short, sweet, and setting her up as an actual threat for directly facing the Rangers instead of hiding behind stock footage. The outfit still looks stupid, but at least she doesn't look like Queen Amidala and Madonna's forbidden love child anymore.

And, in what is a consistent problem with movies nowadays, everything looks so dark. Even scenes that are in the daytime look dark. It doesn't make the film look cool or edgy, it makes it harder to see and it makes me pissed off because I can't see anything. If I didn't know what Power Rangers were and knew nothing about the 20+ years that have come before, I'd assume this was some dumb shlock teen action movie. Which, it's sad to say, is probably what this is going to end up being.

And this is by Saban, the same people who had made the original show such a hit. What has happened?! Admittedly, I haven't kept up with the show (my interest in it waned in my youth after In Space, though I did watch Dino Thunder because of nostalgia), but when Saban bought it back I had honestly thought that it meant that they were going back old school with it.  By the look of this, if they knew what they were doing back then, they don't know. It looks like absolute garbage, and is about as far away from the uniqueness of the original as you can get.

That being said, I'm sure it'll make tons of money and get plenty of sequels. After all, it's not like good taste has ever stopped Michael Bay, either.

Saban's Power Rangers is set to be released in theaters on March 24, 2017 by Saban Films, Lionsgate, and the Toei Company.

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MadCap's Game Reviews - "Alice: The Madness Returns"

...this game sucks.

And yes, I know fans of American McGee are going to probably try and hang me for that. I know two of them who will most definitely be reading this who live within driving distance and have access to both actual and improvised weaponry of all sorts, but I stand by my decision.

This is actually a done up version of my review of this that I did way back when the game was first released in 2011 and never published because...well, we all know how Skyrim pretty much took over my life around that time. Nevertheless, I decided to go back and try it out again and - with the benefit of time and experience, I have a much better perspective on it.

...it still sucks.

So, eleven years after the first game (which, no, I haven't played), Alice has been released from the madhouse and is now living at the most Cockney orphanage ever (I'm assuming, in England, that all orphanages are just filled to the brim with lovable Cockney children) where she has occasional forays into Wonderland because...otherwise we'd have a really boring game about running around in a version of London that's just into the Industrial Revolution era (see also, the beginning of Fable III).  Except Wonderland is a little more screwed up than it was before...that is to say, it's empty. Very few people are around, the familiar landmarks have been corrupted or tainted, and Christine's train-based cousin is running around causing problems...sort of.

It's kind of the same problem with Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland - everyone here is crazy, so things being even more crazy really shouldn't be too much of an issue for everyone. Granted, at least here, if no one is here to be crazy, then that is bad...by their logic, anyway.

What did take a page from the Tim Burton school is the weapons. Everything from a kitchen knife to a pepper grinder to an umbrella, all mundane made functional that Tim Burton does...and Steven Moffat does far, far better. It's also a platformer, so better be sure you've got your aim right. Luckily, the controls for it aren't too bad. Alice can jump for days and you'll need that in order to maneuver around to solve puzzles and go digging around for secrets in levels that you've left behind.

So, on the hole, The Madness Returns is not that great. Even Mr. McGee has said it's unpolished, which I agree with.  Though while he has problems with the filler, I'd say there's really not enough to do in it. You wander around the open, empty landscapes of Wonderland and occasionally run into NPCs to interact with to further the sort of story, broken up by sporadic jaunts through A Christmas Carol.

On the horror end...it doesn't have a lot, though it may just be enough to drive you insane...with boredom.

Alice: The Madness Returns is now available from Spicy Horse and Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3.

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MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge"

Why do so many people not like this movie?

This isn't the set up to a joke, I'm genuinely not sure I understand it. This question actually applies to people before the age where we looked back at movies and yea'd or nay'd them. Apparently, this film was derided even when it originally came out...and I'm honestly not really sure why.

I know people will refer to this as "The Gay One" due to the homosexual overtones that seem to follow the main character, Jesse (Mark Patton)...and that's not unwarranted, given that the screen writer of this one, David Chaskin, admitted in 2010 that he did this because he wanted to make the film that much scarier to teenage boys.

...stay classy, Chaskin.

Worse than that, Mark Patton himself came out within a few years of this film's release, having been closeted before and felt very betrayed when he realized what had happened.

Really, just...absolutely classy.

That bit of egregious homophobia aside, this is actually a very solidly put together film that I'm not going to judge on the merits of its writer being a completely tone-deaf asshole. Indeed, a lot more goes into a film than just the writing and - subtext aside - Freddy's Revenge makes for a really, really scary time.

All the necessary elements are here - namely the teenagers (and others) to be picked off, and Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) to do the picking off.  What's missing? Oh, right, the snarky jokes and puns that Freddy is so known for...starting in the next movie, Dream Warriors.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again - people are too caught up on how Freddy is after this movie.  In the original and this one, Freddy is a very dark and sinister being, even more so in this one than in the original.

That's right, I went there.

Really, what is more frightening? Stalking a bunch of teenagers in their dreams and killing them off one by one or hijacking the body of an unwilling individual, whether they're asleep or awake, and having them do it for you? That to me is significantly more frightening that Freddy cracking one-liners, but then I'm just one of those crazy people I guess.

But, nevertheless, that is the situation that our protagonist Jesse finds himself in as he moves into the house once lived in by Nancy Thompson. Five years after the first movie (with an unclear ending to boot, and no revelations about the fate of Nancy or her friends), Jesse and his family have moved to Springwood and he begins to have dreams where Freddy commands him to kill...

Thus, it is a battle for Jesse's very soul as Freddy pressures him and pressures him until he is finally able to fully take over...or is he? Jesse's love interest Lisa (Kim Myers) must find a way to free Jesse from Freddy's corruptive influence before its too late...

That point alone makes this film rather unique, flipping the trope of the damsel in distress from the slasher film villain, it now being a male in that place.  Uncommon, but not unheard of even today. Mark Patton's Jesse, however, was the first male Scream Queen.  That alone makes this film noteworthy.

However, that doesn't mean that the film is good by that alone.  Yes, the homophobic overtones are there (many who have worked on the film besides Mark Patton and David Chaskin did confirm it was deliberate). Yes, the scenes with the S&M bar don't really serve any purpose besides getting two characters to form a friendship.  But overall, this film is no worse than any other entry into the Nightmare franchise and is, in fact, better than almost all of them.  Mark Patton's acting as Jesse is excellent as he's driven into the depths of insanity, and Robert Englund as Freddy is as menacing as ever when he's allowed to be (the makeup is also, in my opinion, better than in the original and some of the later films).

It's doesn't have Freddy giving off his quips with each kill, and it's legitimately horrifying. You want to see Freddy defeated in this and Jesse saved, perhaps even more here than Nancy's struggle in the original.  To me, it's really what a sequel should be, if they were going to do any at all. Nightmare, sad to say, has not had it great in the sequels department and maybe we'll get to that another time.  For now, however, give this film a try. If you've already done so, give it a second look. It's definitely worth it!

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge is now available from New Line Cinema.

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MadCap's Game Reviews - "Fallout 4: Nuka-World"

What if there was a place with all the zip of Nuka Cola?

MadCap rambles for about five minutes on Nuka-World.

Fallout 4 is now available for PS4, Xbox One, and PC from Bethesda Softworks.

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