On My Soap Box: The Sickness of wrestling or the Sickness of life?

I have been reading In the Pit with Piper, Rowdy Roddy Piper's autobiography. I have to admit that its a very good read I have pretty much finished it with only a few pages left to go. The one thing that was always true about Piper was that he always told it like it was and this book is no exception. This makes it an incredibly interesting and readable book even if he he doesn't go into much detail about his WWF days after Wrestlemania 2 and almost ignores his time in WCW. I am not really here to review the book though, more to talk about some of the things Piper mentions in it. Now you might think that a man who smashed himself in the head with a bottle just to get heat for a match, a man who made his living wrestling and who took risks he didn't need too is not a smart man but I actually think that Piper was very clever. He knew how to sell himself he knew how to keep making himself relevant, how to fight the system and how to make sure that he never got completely swallowed up by all the craziness.

Piper talks in his book about what he calls the ''sickness'' something about the wrestling business which made wrestlers go too far, do too much and take incredible risks and put tremendous strain on both there minds and there bodies just to do a good job, just to put food on there tables to feed there wives and there children, he talks about how many of his fellow wrestlers either committed suicide or died before there time because of this and how certain deaths really hit him hard.Piper argues that wrestling is the only industry he knows in which this kind of thing happens. Now on the one hand I have to agree with Roddy Piper, I believe that the sickness exists, but I don't believe it is limited to wrestling in fact I believe I have felt its pull myself. I used to work for a well known Pub/Bar company, I am sure it wouldn't take many guesses to work out which one but I wont say obviously for legal reasons. I definitely had the sickness while working there, this sickness was an urge to do whatever I had to do to be successful there, to get as high up and prominent as I could while taking all of the shots I had to in order to honour both the pub I worked for and the company name in general.

So what makes me want to talk about this now what made me take a small part of everything that Roddy said in his book and focus on it. Well we sit at a point where the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that tax credit cuts would motivate Britons to work as hard as people in China and that this was a good thing. Add on to this we have people like Alan Sugar from the Apprentice saying that no one in England is poor because we all have mobile phones and microwaves and there is suddenly this image being painted that a large number of us in the UK are lazy and should do more work and earn more money. Now if you look at the statistics around this the UK actually has on average the longest working week in Europe and our productivity is in the middle, this information has been published in several journals and papers including the Guardian. As things stand now about a quarter of the population will experience some kind of mental health problem in the course of a year, with mixed anxiety and depression the most common mental disorder in Britain. So with this true people want us to work more and harder? So this politician is telling us we should as individuals work harder, we should do more and if benefits are lowered basically we should do this for less while Members of Parliament have huge wage rises and expense accounts which cause scandals sounds wonderful doesn't it?

So back to the sickness. I grew up being told that a Man was what he did, that to be a man you had to work hard and try to make the biggest impact on the world as you could, that nothing was more important than this. So I ended up working from 48 to 70 hours a week trying to not only build myself up as something of importance but also to make the branch I worked for come across as the best it could be, and to try and push the brand name of the company I worked for. What did I get for my trouble? I got frequently punched, I had my arm dislocated by a blow from a wooden bar stool when I tried to stop a drunken jerk from hitting an eighty year old man with it, I had someone attempt to glass me, but worst of all I got my head smashed open by a gang of robbers with crowbars and to pour insult on top of this I also got punched in the mouth and had some of my teeth shattered for standing up to one of the robbers who decided he just might mid robbery want to rape one of my female colleagues. During all of this I worked myself up from barman up to basically the deputy manager of this place, I often did the stock for the place, the rota's, disciplinary proceedings, and I gave it my all. I never really got a real thank you for any of it, I just had more and more demanded from me while my boss did less and less and tried to pass her responsibilities off on to other people. The only good thing about any of this was the bond I shared with some of my close co-workers, a bond that was forged in the fire of workload, a bond forged by the fact we all had to face being sworn at and spat at and attacked while those above us tried to get more and more out of us. What can you call putting up with this and actually trying to do more and more than a sickness?

So how did all of this end? Well the beginning of the end was when I ended up in a hospital room, my throat had closed and my body was covered in rashes and welts. I sat there as a Doctor told me and my father that my body was shutting down from stress and that if I didn't change things pronto then I would most likely be dead in six months. You would think this would be the end. You would think I hung up my work shoes and went on sick or got a less demanding job wouldn't you? Well the truth is I tried to ask my boss about less hours or a demotion and I got told do your job or leave. So what I did was continue to do my job. Why you might ask? Well I wanted the best for my daughter I wanted her to have the things I hadn't had and I quiet bluntly didn't really care if I died if that got her what she needed. If I had died the mortgage would have been paid off and as far as I knew at the time she would have been OK and I would have gone out in a blaze of glory at the top of my game. What actually happened was very different though. A few months went by and then I found that I kept seeing, hearing and feeling the robbery again and again, I could feel the crowbars hit my head, I could hear my ears ringing and I could feel the panic that I might die or that something worse might happen. This was too much PTSD (which I was later diagnosed with) and work stressed combined gave me what can best be described as a nervous breakdown. I ended up on sick-pay attending trauma therapy and trying to put my life back together, again I asked about returning to less hours or to a demotion and got told ''Come back and do the job your employed for or don't come back at all'' what is worse is that despite the PTSD was as a direct result of what I suffered while at that job, during the robbery my employer fired me while off sick, this was after a heck of a lot of messing me around I believe in an effort to make me quit. I still for a time wanted to go back, to work hard and to try and get my own Pub, and to go even higher up the chain, wanting that even for an instant despite all of what had happened to me cant be described as anything but a sickness. Add to this the fact I was with someone who didn't support me emotionally, someone who didn't care that I might die only that I had stopped bringing in the money she could enjoy buying things to please herself with.

This is what certain people in the government and idiots like Alan Sugar seem to be wanting from my point of view, people who will push themselves harder and harder till they either make it or fall apart at the seams and they want this even knowing that it will leave people in pieces unable to cope. Still from the conservative point of view if someone ties a noose around there neck and ends it all then they are no longer a burden on the system. This is wrong, there are people out there who cant work, or who cant work as much and as hard as they are pushing for due to illness both physical and mental, this whole system and the pressure it creates makes them feel like less than nothing and that is wrong.

So where do I find myself now? I live a very different life, I work as much as I need to in order to get by, I make sure to concentrate as much on myself, my dreams and my hobbies as much if not more so than the work I do. I might be poorer but I am a lot happier. I have plenty of illnesses, I am an epileptic for one but I no longer have the sickness, I have learned the word ''NO'' and I have learned to be more than just a job, I have learned to be a person. I have also learned to make sure that the people in my life are supportive people who love me for who I am and not for financial reasons or for what I can get them.

What can I say Piper was more than just a wrestler or a motor mouth I think he was a very honest man who said it how he saw it, there are not enough people like this in the world. You are being Missed already Roddy. RIP

The House That Dripped Blood and Using the TARDIS to solve the curtain dying Dilemma.

So I am back talking about another actor who played the role of The Doctor in Doctor Who and the horror movie he took part in. There are more similarities here than just that though because once again it is in a horror anthology film and it is an Amicus Production.

In this case though the Doctor Who actor was Tom Bakers predecessor Jon Pertwee the man who also brought us the awesomeness that was Worzel Gummidge as well as the character of Spotty from Super Ted.

The film I am talking about is the Amicus anthology The House that Dripped Blood. It is an anthology of four horror stories which all revolve around a mysterious rental house in the UK.

Now before I get in to the review I can use this post as an excuse to tell a wonderful family story which I otherwise wouldn't have much reason to tell. It is only really related to this review and this film in the fact that it involves Jon Pertwee. My Father is retired now but he used to be the manager of a large dry cleaning and clothes dying factory. He was more than this though he was essentially an expert in dying clothes, he could do things by hand with a garment, the dye, a large vat and a stick which most people wouldn't attempt now without all manner of equipment. He dyed things for royals, for famous clothes designers, sports teams and sometimes for various actors. He did a lot of work but didn't get much credit for it as it was seen as the businesses work not his own, which I guess is the way of the world really. Still one day he found himself face to face with Jon Pertwee discussing some curtains. Apparently they were beautiful old fashioned intricate curtains but they were really starting to show there age. The short of it is that Mr Pertwee wanted them dying to try and bring some life back to them, to hide any blemishes they had developed from age and wear and his inquiry had led him to my Father. My Dad is actually a big fan of Doctor Who and well all Science fiction in general really but he also has a very dry sense of humour and not only that he likes to talk straight, to not give any one any false hope and to just tell it how it is. After having given the curtains a thorough inspection he had to unfortunately inform Mr Pertwee that it wouldn't be possible to dye the curtains because they were now too old and worn and that the chemicals used to dye this sort of thing wouldn't help they would in fact merely further ruin the item, literally causing the curtains to fall apart. So far this wasn't that different to what my Dad had done a million times before, obviously if someone's coat or trousers or curtains wont survive the dying process then you need to tell them no matter how attached they are to the item or how much you don't wish to be the bearer of bad news. It was usually at this point that the customer would shrug get a bit of a defeated look about them, shake my fathers hand and leave but this is not what Mr Pertwee did, no instead he asked what he could do about it. This might seem like a perfectly normal question and to some degree it is, most people in this position would respond with a line along the lines of ''unfortunately there is nothing you can do, the item is simply not in a dyeable state''. The thing is though my Dad is not most people, he has a strange and dry sense of humour which rears its head in often very amusing ways. My Dad instead began to explain to Jon Pertwee that all he needed to do was step inside the TARDIS and go back in time and fetch the curtains from a point in the past when they would still have been in a dyeable condition. Unfortunately either Mr Pertwee had already met enough wise remarks about him being a time lord or he simply didn't see the funny side but this story always makes me laugh, I think the comment would have gone down better with Tom Baker I think it would fit his sense of humour more.

OK so amusing story out of the way there was a lot of things I liked about Pertwee's Doctor even if he was before my time. I liked how he had a position as UNIT's science advisor, I loved the action martial arts side he showed, the speeding around in Bessie but most of all I loved the theatrical delivery he brought to the part after Patrick Troughton's clownish behaviour (which I also love) Pertwee came and brought a real sense of authority to the part, he sold everything as being life or death and of utmost importance even when the effects and monsters might have seemed rather campy at times and this was something I was certain he could bring to the world of horror.

This film has more to connect it to Doctor who than just Jon Pertwee though Peter Cushing another star of this film (and nearly all Amicus productions) played Dr. Who in the previous Amicus films Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., film adoptions of early Dr Who stories with some diffrences notably the fact that they feature a human who invented a time travel machine called the Tardis, who is called Dr Who (rather than The Doctor) and which are not considered cannon (I would still advise fans to watch them as they are fun little movies which I feel Cushing excels in), Joanna Lumley, who played a female version of the Doctor in the Comic Relief special  Doctor Who - The Curse of Fatal Death  has an uncredited minor role and finally Geoffrey Bayldon who played  Organon in the Doctor Who story The Creature from the Pit and who later played the Doctor in two audio dramas also appears in this film.

Ok so now I will give a quick rundown of the stories involved in this anthology, the first is "Method For Murder" A horror writer moves into the house with his wife and is haunted by visions of a character from his latest novel, a character who just so happens to be a psychopathic murderer. Then we have "Waxworks" Two friends (one of which is played by the awesome Peter Cushing) become fixated with a waxwork museum that appears to contain a waxwork of a lady that they both knew.The third story is called "Sweets to the Sweet" A private teacher is troubled by the way in which a widowed man (Christopher Lee) treats his young daughter, she finds it surprising that he wont even let her have a doll. The man seems almost scared of her and is very severe and controlling but she cant seem to see why.The last story is called "The Cloak" A horror film actor played by Jon Pertwee (the third Doctor) moves into a house while starring in a vampire film which is being shot nearby. He visits a shop which is run by a strange shop keeper, a black clock takes his eye, he feels that if he buys this it will help to get him in to the part that it will make him feel like a vampire and so he buys it to use as his character's costume. When he tries on the cloak he soon leaned that it seems to give its wearer certain powers.

The funny thing about this film is that for a film called The House That Dripped Blood there is basically no real blood in this film, its a very tame film that relies on its stories rather than cheap gore which makes it a great film for those who are either trying to get in to horror or for those who are trying to introduce there kids to horror at a sensible age (Basically if you can handle the scarier Doctor Who stories then you should be able to handle this film). Both Cushing and Lee give great performances in this film as they pretty much always did. Jon Pertwee is also excellent, he plays the part of a professional actor who is very passionate about his craft and very picky about the things which will be in the movie he is in, the scenery, the costumes, he plays this so well it makes you wonder if he was actually like this, then you remember some of the plastic and baking foil monsters he did battle with on Doctor Who and you know he cant have been that bad.

This film is definitely worth a watch whether you want to see some good little horror stories or if you want to see another Doctor playing a different kind of character. Oh and look out for the picture of the Doctors Car Bessie which can be seen in this film.

PSN store versus Nintendo's Virtual console which is better?

So as I sit here eating chips left over from yesterday which I have microwaved back to a sort of edible state, I think it is safe to say that I am a man who doesn't like to waste money. This might sound strange to some as they would argue that video games, horror movies and comic books are a waste of money but to me they are not they are in some cases an investment and in other cases they are things to occupy me. Quiet often in terms of time spent with them compared to there cost I find video games to be one of the cheapest ways to occupy myself. I have a funny old formula that I will have maybe mentioned in the past most likely its a formula for how much I am willing to spend on a game. This formula is that I want at least one hour of enjoyment for every pound I spend but I am always happiest when I can get the ratio of fun per pound as high as possible.

I prefer to have physical copies of games to digital for lots of reasons but mostly for two reasons. One is that with physical games you have an object you can actually collect, an object which in the case of retro games or games released in a limited capacity will usually increase in value over time, this means that either the game is going to get rarer and rarer and owning it will be more of a pleasure or that if you are ever in desperate need of cash and forced to sell it then your at least likely to see a return on your investment. The other reason is that usually with physical games there is more chance of finding a deal, you can search for old games in pawn stores, on car-boots, sale sites, trade spares with other collectors, you can shop around for the best offer, in comparison digital games usually have a set price if they are available on a consoles virtual console/shop programme.

Sometimes though if a physical release is so rare that its average price is sky high online console shop services can provide a much cheaper way to experience these games and in this case they can actually be in a lot of ways the best way to go. Everyone of the console manufacturers has there own online games buying service (there are also lots of these for PC but I am not going to go into that right now) Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo and on them you will find a mix of full triple A titles, indie developed titles and classic/retro games from older formats. Its the retro stuff I will be focusing on in this case and in particular the retro games available on Nintendo and Sony hardware.

Obviously having been in the race the longest Nintendo's titles stretch back the furthest in time, they also on there latest console the Wii U give you the ability to look for games on a system by system basis so if you want to see what NES or SNES games they have for example then there are icons in the shop to click so that this is what you get. I do think that Nintendo could be described as a little bit greedy on the retro front though as they charge £3.49 per 8bit NES title and this is mostly regardless of what the game is. So while £3.50 might not seem like much for an all time classic like Super Mario 3 it seems like a fortune for stuff like Donkey Kong Jr Maths or Volleyball. Then there is Earthbound Beginnings a famicom (Japanese NES) title which as it had never been seen on these shores before and required translation Nintendo want £6.29 for. This is not the first time Nintendo have decided that never released on your shores before means mark up the price.  The price of the average SNES game on the Nintendo Wii U virtual console is £5.49 but when Earthbound a game previously not released in Europe was brought to us Nintendo wanted £6.99 for the pleasure, I cant say that its not worth it as a loose cartridge of this game would cost you absolutely loads. N64 games are £8.99, with Wii games being 17.99, GameBoy Advanced games being 6.29 and DS games ranging from £6.29 to £8.99. So really the strength of Nintendo's service is the wide variety of formats represented but the area where they let themselves down is price. Not only are they in my oppinion quiet expensive but there is also most of the time no cross buy, meaning if a game is available on both the Wii U virtual console and the 3DS Virtual console and you want to play it on both your machines then your going to end up paying twice.

I just spent £20 on PSN the playstations online games store. Obviously the playstation brand doesnt have as long a history of games and machines as Nintendo. The original Playstation was released in the same console generation as Nintendo's N64, meaning that you wont find any 8bit or 16bit offerings on Sonys Store well at least not at present (A SNES title is actually going to be released on the PS4 soon, Super Starwars, which may be the start of something new or a one off, this remains to be seen). Ok so the earliest Retro games you can get (ignoring some arcade classics which have appeard in store) are original PlayStation games (or as some people call them PlayStation one or PS1 games). So the first question would be, how much are PS1 Games? Well a few of them such as G Police and Driver start for as little as £1.99 so less than a 8 Bit NES game, the vast majority of them seem to be £3.99 including long RPG's like Suikoden and Suikoden 2, Tekken,Tekken 2, Crash Bandicoot, Crash Banicoot 3 etcetera. Some PS1 games are £7.99 including titles like the PS1 Final Fantasy games and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Now this makes even the most expensive PS1 downloadbale game cheaper than what Nintendo charge for N64 games, but which are better N64 or PS1 games? Well that depends on the game doesn't it, size wise though PS1 games are generally bigger after all discs can carry a lot more information than carts can and some of these games were spread across more than one disc, so if anything it should cost Sony more to keep these games up online as downloadables.  Nintendo do have sales in there store but usually these are just sales on either Triple A or indie titles apart from when the Wii U was released and Nintendo ran a early adopters offer of one certain retro game for 30pence a week for about 6 weeks I have never seen any NES, SNES or N64 titles on sale (Wii games have also been half price for the first week of there release when they first started doing them). Sony however involve PS1 titles on sale quiet frequently.

This gets back to the £20 I spent earlier, so what did I buy? Well I paid £2 for Wild Arms a PS1 RPG which would usually be £3.99 but is on sale. I spent £2 on Twisted Metal a vehicle combat game again usually £3.99. I got Grandia another RPG for £3.25 its usual price being £6.50. I spent £2 on Klona Door to Phantomile which would usually be £4. I wont list everything I got but the thing I think is most worthy of mentioning is that I got Arc The Lad 2, Arc The Lad 3 and Gaia Seed all games which to my knowledge were never released in the UK/Europe and how much did these games cost me £1.85, £2 and £2 and even if they hadn't been in the sale they still would have only cost £3.69, £3.99 and £3.99. What is more all of these games can be played on my PSP, my PS-Vita, My PS3 and a PS-TV if I happend to own one. My only complaint is that as of yet you cant play them on the PS4 which I hope is one day considerd but still one price to be able to play the games on multiple formats is pretty darn impressive, especially when in most cases the games are cheaper in the first place.

Is it just PS1 games though? No there are actually some PS2 games available to download for your PS3 including Virtua Fighter 4, Suikoden 4, GodHand, Capcom Vs SNK 2, Maximo, Red Faction, Sonic Heroes, are all usually £7.99 Some PS2 games are as little as £5.79 though including Conflict Desert storm 2 and Conflict Vietnam not surprisingly these are only playable on the PS3 though and not any of the handhelds. Now its hard to compare these titles to Nintendo's offerings as the PS2's counterpart the Gamecube has so far been ignored by Nintendo but still these are cheaper than Nintendo charges for N64 titles.

I wont mention the PSP titles available on the Sony Store as unfortunately they are only available to play on either a PSP or a PS Vita and I didnt talk about the games that can be gotten on the 3DS.

So which is better? Again it depends exactly what you want and how much you are willing to pay. I feel that both online stores have things they really should do to better themselves.Well lets take this on a brand by brand basis as both companies have there strengths and there weaknesses.

Sony needs to start involving the PS4 in the whole retro downloads arena, its got enough power that with a little work it should be able to play all of these old games the PS3 manages without even using a quarter of its power, also there is no reason why they couldn't make the PS3 and PS4 play PSP games, there are no touch based controls or anything to stand in the way and not everyone likes handheld machines but they would still enjoy some of the great games the PSP had to offer if they were available on the big screen (I know this is answered to some degree by the PS-TV but it could very easily be done by the PS4). Also it should be made far easier to find PS1 and PS2 games, you should easily be able to look at all of the titles available from a certain format with just a click or two like it is on Nintendo's store. I am hopping that with the fact Super StarWars is due to appear on the PS4 this will open the flood gates and sony will look at approaching other companies who released games on older 16 and perhaps 8bit formats to offer something to fans of this period of gaming. Yet I have to admit I have to take my hat of to them when it comes to both the prices and the idea that if you buy a PS1 game you can play it on most of your devices, I also think they handle sales really well, involving the retro games in these is a great idea as it helps draw attention to them.

Now Nintendo have the wide variety of formats on offer but I do think that there is some real greed there, sure there games are good and you could very easily make an argument for the prices being worth it but I do think when compared to others there prices seem greedy especially when they expect you to buy the game twice if you would like to play it on both your Wii U and 3DS. I think cross-buy is definetly an area they should look into. Yes you'd get less money by letting the person pay once and play on multiple devices but it would encourage people that having a hand held and home console made by your company so you could benefit like this would be the thing to do. Also involve your retro titles in more sales.

The Vault of Horror: A horror film you need to see.

Every now and then I like for all of the dots to line up so that I can talk about a whole bunch of my favourite things in one go, be it talking about a Video game which happens to be about wrestling or a Horror film that happens to be based on a classic line of horror comics. Well today I have a real beauty to talk about because it involves a whole host of things I love a great deal. It is also a chance for me to persuade you that you need to watch this for Halloween this year.

Today I get to talk about a horror film, in fact it is what you would call a horror anthology film, which is one of my favourite types of movie, it is based on a wonderful series of comics which happens to feature a very well loved actor who is probably mostly thought of for his role as The Doctor in Doctor Who and it was made by a company I am also very fond of.

So what am I talking about? Well if you have read the title of this post or even looked at the picture which is across from this text then you will already know that I am referring to The Vault of Horror a horror anthology film made by Amicus Productions a British film production company, based at Shepperton Studios here in England. It was Filmed from August to September in 1972. It is the only Amicus anthology movie which does not feature Peter Cushing (Most likely because he was busy filming another film for Amicus called ''And Now the Screaming Starts!'') I can forgive its lack of the amazing talents of Mr Cushing though largely because it features another marvellous actor the formerly mentioned future Doctor Who, Mr Tom Baker.

So here we have an Amicus produced film based on Stories from EC Comics horror comics staring The Doctor himself Tom Baker what is there not to love here? If you arnt aware what EC Comics are then the easiest way to explain is to say that they were an American publisher of comic books, which specialized in areas such as horror fiction, crime fiction, and science fiction from the 1940s through tothe mid-1950s, with there most well known title being the Tales from the Crypt series which of course would go on to give birth to the Film Version of Tales from the Crypt made by Amicus and the Latter HBO TV series Tales from the Crypt. This film was in fact a sequel to Tales from the Crypt and was referd to in some cases and released sometimes in some markets with names like Further Tales from the Crypt and Tales from the crypt,part II. In honesty these titles probably makes more sense really as none of the stories contained in this film actually come from the EC comic series "The Vault of Horror." The story "The Neat Job" originally appeared in one of EC's other titles "Shock SuspenStories," and the rest of the stories appeared in various issues of "Tales from the Crypt.". I guess they went with the Vault of Horror title for the film to keep the EC connection but to make it stand on its own and not give anyone the idea that they would be at any disadvantage if they hadn't seen Tales from the Crypt, and the truth is this film can stand on its own legs, you can enjoy it and the stories within it regardless of if you have seen the Tales from the Crypt or not.

Ok so the film as I have pointed out is an anthology story but it has a what I would call wrap around story which holds all of the short stories together. In this case the story is that five strangers all get in to a lift togther, a lift in what appears to be an office block. They end up in the sub-basement even though none of them pressed the button for that floor. In the sub-basement they find a fully furnished room. The lifts door closes and they are all stuck down there, so they make the best of it they settle down grab drinks and begin to talk to each other, they end up talking about dreams and it is then that each one of them takes it in turns to tell everyone about a recurring nightmare they think they have been having, these tales form the stories in this anthology.

Ok so despite this film having come from the 1970's my main reason for writing this is to convince you that you need to see this film. So to that end I intend to lay out a rough idea of the stories within the film, to sell it to you but I will also be trying to not give away too much.

First there is a tale called Midnight Mess taken from Tales from the Crypt issue 35. It is about a brother who tracks down his sister with the intention of killing her to claim her share of there inheritance. 

This is followed by The Neat Job from the first issue of Shock SuspenStories. Its the tale of an obsessively clean and tidy man who marries what can best be described as a young trophy wife who unfortunately for him doesn't live up to his ideals of domestic home maker this starts to drive him mad, and his reactions begin to do the same to her.

This Trick’ll Kill You taken from Tales from the Crypt issue 33. A magician on a working holiday in India, is searching for new tricks. Nothing gets his attention until he sees a girl charming a rope out of a basket with a flute. Unable to work out how the trick is done, he persuades her to come to his hotel room, so that he can gain this skill.

Bargain in Death taken from Tales from the Crypt issue 28. A man is buried alive as part of an insurance scam concocted with his friend. His friend double crosses him leaving him to suffocate. He is discovered when Two trainee doctors bribe a gravedigger to dig up a corpse to help with their studies.

Drawn and Quartered taken from Tales from the Crypt issue 26. An impoverished painter living on Haiti (Played by Tom Baker). Learns that his work has been sold for large profits by dealers and critics who told him that it was worthless, because of this he goes to a voodoo priest and his painting hand is given a strange power; whatever he paints or draws can be harmed by damaging its image. 

Maybe it is because of Tom Baker and my fondness for the man but Drawn and Quartered is definitely my favourite story and it actually makes me wish that he was involved in more horror films. The man is incredibly eccentric in his acting and this gave us the wonderful Alien 4th Doctor but this same quirk can help him come across as quiet terrifying in a very you have no idea what he could be capable of way. The whole of this film relies on little twists and turns and in all honesty if you are used to the sort of horror movie idea that the sinner must somehow pay for his sins then you will most likely to some extent see everything coming from a mile away yet it still manages to draw you in. It is quiet surprising that the HBO Tales from the Crypt Series never reused any of these stories, the opening story of that series was one of the ones used for the Tales From The Crypt Amicus film years earlier after all.

So I would recommend this film to people who love horror anthology films, people who loved the Tales from the Crypt TV show and want to see more of the EC comics stories on film and to fans of Tom Baker who want to see The Doctor in a less heroic role. This is not the last time I will focus on people from Doctor Who turning up in the world of horror.

SNES Game Review 97: WWF Royal Rumble

Well this is going to be my second WWF based SNES review (WWF the former name of what is now known as the WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment). So WWF Royal Rumble was a multiplatform wrestling video game based on the World Wrestling Federation it was the sequel to Super Wrestlemania which I have already reviewed. It was once again made by Sculptured Software Inc and released by the infamous LJN who other than mentioning just now I won’t really be talking about as it is ground I have touched before, but basically this game is made and developed by the same people who did the last entry in the series.

It was released for both the Super NES and Sega Megadrive. Like its predecessor but in this case the Megadrive version hit about 3 months later, once again despite being pretty much the same game it was decided that they would give the games different roster’s, I am not sure if this was maybe because they thought it might inspire some people to buy both or because of changes in the WWF and in who was important at the time, after all 3 months could be a long time back then with wrestlers moving to WCW or mid-carders moving up in to more main event status. Either way the two versions share seven wrestlers: Bret Hart, The Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon, Randy Savage, Crush, and Lex Luger. Then each version has 5 exclusive wrestlers. On the SNES people got to play with Ric Flair, Mr. Perfect, Ted DiBiase, Yokozuna and Tatanka. Whereas on the Megadrive/Genesis there was Hulk Hogan, IRS, Jim Duggan, The Model and Papa Shango. Who got the better deal kind of depends upon how much you value the individuals involved. I like the fact that the SNES version got Ric Flair, Mr. Perfect, Ted DiBiase as they were all excellent heel characters but I have to admit if they were removed I wouldn’t really miss either Yokozuna or Tatanka. As for the megadrive version well it’s kind of cool to see Hulk Hogan and Jim Duggan as strong hero types from that period, and I also have a lot of respect for The Model so it’s nice to see him in a game. The strange thing is that IRS and Million Dollar man found themselves on oppersit sides of the format.

Yes once again I am here pointing out that old wrestling games didn’t have the large amount of wrestlers we are used to receiving in a modern game so again the same question I asked before about Super Wrestlemania can be asked. If they were going to do the work on all those characters why split them between platforms but this could be due to all sorts of things such as the size of cartridge they were trying to fit it on or again offering unique reasons for people to buy it on more than one format.

So with this only coming out a year later than Super Wrestlemania lets stop worrying about format differences and look at what was done to improve the game over its previous entry, was anything changed or was it just a quick cash grab? Well while WWF Royal Rumble still has the old bang/tap the buttons on your pad like crazy with the faster person winning grappling style this time they added an on screen meter to show how it was going. As small as this sounds I think this was a great little addition, you could now see if you were going to win or lose a grapple and it would make you try that bit harder. Steel chairs could now be found outside the ring and used which as small as it might sound at the time was a cool addition. Also after knocking the referee unconscious, the player can now use illegal tactics such as choking to get the advantage. In the last entry in the series wrestlers could only enter the ring from the left or right side but now you can roll into the from the bottom part of the screen, meaning far less bouts being ended by count out. More moves were added to the basic move makes the game feel a bit less repetitive. It’s not a bad little list of additions even if some of them are quiet subtle.

For me the main draw of this game is in the title, basically it is the fact that there's a Royal Rumble mode. I always loved watching the royal rumble every year when I was young, thirty men enter only one man leaves the winner usually with the promise of a shot at the title at the next Wrestlemania. It wasn’t always the winner who was the coolest though, it was great watching who would eliminate the most people who would last the longest, who would be the quickest person eliminated. I could talk for hours about my favourite moments from Royal Rumbles over the years including the moment when one of the bushwhackers marched to the ring jumped in got immediately knocked out and then marched back to the dressing room without missing a beat. There are of course some amazing things about the rumble this game cannot hope to emulate. You never really knew who would run to the ring next in a royal rumble, sometimes it would even be someone you hadn’t seen wrestle in a long time, or a surprise guest but in this game it is obviously one of the 12 playable characters, and that’s the other thing it’s only a 12 person rumble not a 30. Also there is only ever a maximum of 6 people in the ring at a time. Once you hit that magic number no one else will enter until someone has been eliminated to free up a space. I can see why this happens and to some degree wrestling games still do it now. There are of course a limited number of characters the console can handle at one time without it either causing slow down or just making things far too chaotic to play. For those less versed in the way of the Royal rumble it’s basically a multi competitor event where instead of pinning opponents you eliminate them by throwing them out over the top ropes, the winner being the last man left in the ring. Personally I think this mode alone actually adds buckets more to this game than the past entry in the series. I remember as a kid playing this game again and again with my brother and I honestly think for the time it wasn’t too bad. Sure it has been surpassed now, there was the excellent Royal Rumble game on Sega’s Dreamcast and then of course pretty much every modern wrestling game has a rumble/battle royal mode now but at the time this was a really neat little addition.

The graphics are pretty decent for the time, and the wrestlers although some of them don’t look quite right, Yokozuna for example does not look anywhere near big enough in comparison to other wrestlers. The important thing though is that you can tell people apart and you never get confused about who is who so the graphics are at the least highly functional. The Sound is average, all of the expected wrestler grunting is here with probably the best audio being the wrestler’s theme tunes which are all here in accurate midi style.

Would I recommend this game?  Well I certainly think that there are better efforts on the machine and I would probably try to push you to something like Saturday Night Slam Masters first, but I also recognise this as a big step up from its prequel, I recognise the strength of its royal rumble mode for short bursts of fun, and I recognise the effort they went to in order to improve it. I would give this game a 6 out of 10. Should you actually go out and buy it though? Well with all of the carts of it I can find hugging the £10 to £15 price range and how much this type of game has advanced I would find it hard to recommend a purchase unless you’re dying for a new SNES game. As I said before with Super Wrestlemania you would be much better served going in to a shop and looking for a modern wrestling game with at least 3 times the characters, additions we now have like create a wrestler, and online play. In fact you can walk in to somewhere like CEX and find a copy of something like Smackdown Here comes the pain, Or one of the other early PS2 WWE Wrestlers for under £3 and you would probably get a great deal more fun from them. So really that would be my recommendation in this case, although it’s certainly fun to see how much WWE/WWF games have changed and developed over the many years they have been released.

My Halloween plans

So its October, a month I am very fond of mostly because Halloween is my favourite holiday, if it was up to me it would be treated as a proper holiday with time off and gifts but unfortunately not everyone is as keen on it as I am. In past years I have tried to watch a horror movie a day or celebrate it in some other magnificent fashion like reading nothing but Stephen King stories all month long. This year I don't really have anything planned. I will probably watch some horror films throughout the month, watch some episodes of things like Tales from the Crypt and Monsters, I will certainly keep track of the Angry Video Game Nerd James Rolf's Cinemasacre Monster Madness.

I would usually watch all of the Nightmare on elm street films one after another but I strangely decided to watch them all on blue ray like this, two a night for the first time recently. In fact it was really strange as the night after I finished watching Wes Craven's new nightmare I woke up to the news he had passed (very sad news to wake up to). So I probably wont be watching those again so soon. I do have al of the original Halloween's on dvd but I did all of those the year before, I also watched all of the Friday the 13th's the last time I noticed an actual Friday the 13th was approaching. In the past I have listened to the Original Radio Broadcast of The War of the Worlds from the 30th of October 1938, which was directed and narrated by Orson Welles, (adapted from H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds). I listend to it in a candle lit room and tried to take in how awesome it must have been when originally played over the radio. It became famous for allegedly causing mass panic, although this has been disputed as apparently it actually had relatively few listeners. I have watched the old British reality–horror/mockumentary television movie Ghost Watch several years. It was first broadcast on BBC1 on the 31st of October 1992 and I was watching it then with my older brother when I was only 11 years old. For anyone who hasnt seen it imagine a one off version of Most Haunted done with Parkinson, Craig Charles, Sarah Green and others which at least latter on was admitted to be completely fake. Even with the fact that you will now know it is not real I would strongly recommend you track down a copy and watch it, the BBC seem to not like to admit it exists probably because it caused panics of its own, including incidences of reported self harm in relation to it and other issues including a service man's wife contacting the BBC to inform them that they owed her for dry cleaning as her husband had shit his pants. It is a real shame the BBC have never done anything like this again as they pulled it off really well, it might not have had the biggest budget but it had some very clever ideas in it and is a lot better than many horror films made on a similar or even much higher budget.

I might just end up looking for as many unheard of or less talked about films as possible, maybe with a mix of things I can watch with my Fiancée without scaring her half to death. What I do around actual Halloween itself depends on the rota I get at work, I might check out if any of the local Cinema's are showing anything special either something new I am not yet aware of or an old classic which I would have been to young to see on the big screen at the time. I would love to see the original black and white Night of the Living Dead on the big screen but I have never found anywhere showing it (If I could ever get my hands on a old one screen cinema like if I won the lottery or something then the first thing I would do would be to show it). So I guess my big plan is I have no big plan, hey but I started off the month by trying to convince everyone to watch Hollow Man which is a horror film so I started out on the right foot I guess.

My Attempt to convince you Hollow Man is a work of art

OK so it seems to be awhile since I have posted about films and this was always supposed to be a partially horror based blog. So here I am in the first of a new series of posts, a series in which I am going to try to convince you how amazing a film is that many people dont like.

So right now I am here to convince you that a film lots of people hate is in fact a piece of Cinematic gold.  I am here to tell you that Hollow man is a an amazing science fiction horror film which everyone simple has to not only see but has to at least try to appreciate.The film came out in the year 2000 and the first thing about it that most people paid any attention to was the high level of special effects in the story. When I saw the first trailer for it I instantly saw it as a modernization of the 1933 film The Invisible Man and this was enough, this one thing sold it to me and made me know that I had to see it.

Ok well whether you know him for his part in footloose or for the more recent 4G what’s in the shed Kev adverts, I am sure most of you will have some kind of idea of who Kevin Bacon is. Kevin Bacon is the Claude Rains of the piece, the scientist who goes from pushing the frontiers of science to performing criminally insane acts throughout the film. There is a kind of movement which considers everything older to be better and I am sure that some of these people will consider what I am building myself up to say as some kind of blasphemy but I think Kevin Bacon does a better job than Claude Rains. Don’t get me wrong I love the film The Invisible Man it is an all-time movie classic and one of my favourite universal horror movies, I own it on blue ray and watch it frequently, I think Claude Rains performance is great, he is convincingly insane, super intelligent, sure of his own abilities a wonderful mad scientist in every way but I just think Bacon out does him. Kevin Bacons character comes across as cocky, eccentric, driven with a sort of twisted sense of humour and as the serum that is injected in to his body takes a hold of him he doesn't instantly become evil like a comic book character it is far more subtle than that, all of his previous personality traits seem to grow to become extremes, he becomes even more sure of himself, more driven, more twisted. He is dangerous because he seems to believe that he is special that he has the right to use his powers how he sees fit. It makes you stop and think about yourself though about the make-up of your own personality, how you feel about yourself, the needs you have, the wants you have and what would happen if something was to turn some of these up just a notch, if something was to disturb the chemistry of your brain just enough would you become a monster as well?

I do think the special effects are amazing and I can see why people focused so much on them, but I don’t think they out do Kevin Bacon, they merely help to make his performance even more incredible. If Kevin Bacon was just acting Mad and then we were told he was invisible it would take a lot of suspension of disbelief to go along with it, not saying I couldn’t have done it after all I watch enough B movies take accept tinfoil wrapped cardboard boxes as a space ship or a terrible glove puppet as a creature from the beyond. I think the effects the fact that  we actually see him slowly turn invisible layer by layer in all its stomach churning glory certainly adds to the film and makes it an easier watch for those who find it harder to get invested in a story.

Yes I am aware that not everyone likes this film in fact a lot of people have slated it but I think it is largely misunderstood. A lot of people try to take it as if it is a Science Fiction film some kind of attempt at doing something like Blade Runner or the Matrix but this is not how I look at it at all. It is a modern attempt at a universal horror movie with a nice side of Halloween/Friday the 13^th. I think when you look at this film as a horror movie where the villain is not a dumb zombie type slasher villain; he is a scientific genius who has both the fact that he can out think you and the fact that you can’t see him on his side. When you look at it like this it’s like you have a horror movie with a difference, it’s like having a Dr. Hannibal Lecter type (minus the human consumption) who also has a super power which makes him even more terrifying. 

Once you realise the film is basically a horror film you start to think about the way a lot of people view horror in general. Horror films seldom win major awards. They tend to be seen as sick, morally corrupt pieces of filth which will ruin the youth of the world and society in general but would you think of the classic horror novels such as Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein or Bram Stokers Dracula in this way, are they not both classics worthy of the same praise as the works of Dickens or Jane Eyre? So why are people allowed to treat horror films such as Reanimator as if they are rubbish while gushing with emotion about how wonderful Mrs Brown is?  It is about time that people realised books and films have a lot in common. Just as we all have types of books we like and don’t like the same is true of films. Just because I don’t like a particular type of book or music or a certain genre of movie this does not mean that they are not valid and does not give me the right to deny them the respect they deserve.

I think if you give Hollow Man another watch taking on board everything I have said, watching it as a horror movie then you might find that you gain a new acceptance of what it has to offer. I also personally think it shows that Kevin Bacon is an underused and under-appreciated actor. He will go down as being the young man who was Ren McCormic in Footloose and yes he did well in that film, I loved his performance as a young man fighting for what he believed in. I loved how he delivered all of the lines where his character used passages from the bible to intellectually take on those of faith in the town who tried to enforce there own beliefs on others, how he put across both passion and the sense that he was struggling with his words, struggling with standing up to those who viewed themselves as his superiors both in intellect and in righteousness. Yet to boil down Kevin Bacon to this one role is to do him a disservice, I stand and ask you to look at Hollow Man again, to look at Stir of Echoes and to look at the TV series the Following and see what he has to offer. Most of all though look at Hollow Man try and see all that it has to offer after all that is what I wrote this post for.