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        <h1><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b><i><a href="../../index.html">loonygames</a><br>
          <font size="1">a <a href="http://www.bluesnews.com">blue's news</a> 
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<p>&nbsp;</p>Vol. 
                2, Issue 10<br>
                February 1, 2000</b>
              <b> 
                </b>
              
                <b><i>Pixel 

                  Obscura:</i></b></p>
                <b><i> 
                  Saturn's in Retrograde</i></b></p>
                by 
                  Josh Vasquez</p>
              
              <p>
                

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              <i>&#147;Sometimes 
                we cannot believe that what is happening is real...pinch yourself 
                and you may find out that it is&quot; - Texas Chainsaw Massacre</i></p>
              One 
                of the major obsessions of horror cinema is its placement of individuals 
                within the collapsing roar of a landscape gone mad. The once familiar 
                world is rendered alien and unknowable, a dark universe rearing 
                its head late in the day to cast everything into a twilight chaos. 
                Characters are left running through the ruins of what they originally 
                perceived as an ordered existence. Horror cinema destabilizes 
                the boundaries between what can and cannot happen and, as a result, 
                the world is pushed out of joint. </p>
              Those 
                who survive can never be the same.</p>
              The transformation 
                is a savagely swift one. The finest horror films move with a kind 
                of red velocity, a terrible and bloody speed at which space is 
                rapidly complicated. This environmental unraveling, however, tends 
                to fall into two basic categories: expressionistic and realistic. 
                Expressionist horror cinema, beginning in Germany with works like 
                Robert Weine's <i>Cabinet of Dr. Caligari</i> (1919) and Paul 
                Wagner's <i>The Golem</i> (1920) and continuing on into the early 
                sound period in such films as Dreyer's <i>Vampyre</i> (1932), 
                created landscapes based on the principle that the exterior world 
                was a reflection of the tortured interior of the individuals populating 
                it. </p>
              Realist 
                horror cinema, however, builds its terrible momentum from an eruption 
                of nightmares into the daylight.</p>
              In this 
                context, realist refers to the treatment of the landscape as something 
                existing independent of the individuals who dwell within it, an 
                objective space which is infected by the darkness rather than 
                being directly shaped by it. Films as wildly different as <i>Seven</i>, 
                <i>Night of the Living Dead</i> and <i>Let's Scare Jessica to 
                Death</i> are brought together by their depiction of the universe's 
                sudden decision to pull back the curtain, turning itself upside 
                down and inside out, only to embrace the individuals caught up 
                in its revolution with a glacial indifference. There is an implicit 
                statement being made that the darkness has always been present, 
                waiting in the angles and hidden folds. <i>Psycho</i> took the 
                first significant steps towards giving a nasty bite to this realist 
                bent. George Romero's late sixties zombie plague reached even 
                further than Hitchcock's tale of a lonely, psychotic boy in trying 
                to pierce the &quot;real&quot; with the nightmarish. Both <i>Psycho</i> 
                and <i>Night of the Living Dead </i>could be seen as the first 
                steps in a new evolution of horror cinema, a terrible realism 
                which would result in the creation of a film so ahead of its time, 
                so profound in its implications, that it still stands as a cinematic 
                landmark.</p>
              <i>The 
                Texas Chainsaw Massacre</i> may be one of the most beautiful realist 
                horror works ever made. Tobe Hooper's film is an apocalyptic masterpiece, 
                a dark fairy tale about the ultimate impossibility of understanding 
                the universe. <i>Chainsaw</i>'s greatest effect is found in its 
                depiction of the most terrible violations taking place in the 
                most seemingly ordinary of worlds. </p>
              Hooper's 
                direction emphasizes both odd angles and distorted perspectives 
                as well as unusually smooth camera movement for such a low budget 
                feature. Frantic cuts and sudden zooms struggle alongside graceful 
                tracking movement and still long shots as if he's trying to find 
                a way to portray the interlocking levels of this dying, schizophrenic 
                reality.</p>
              <p></p>
              <p></p>
              </p>
              </p>
              <br>
             
              </p>
              
            There are 
              three basic &#147;movements&#148; to the opening, and this first 
              part, &#147;the argument&#148; if you will, is a stunningly atmospheric 
              introduction. By utilizing video and what looks like 16mm film, 
              the piece projects a creepy documentary feel that radiates a frightening 
              desperation. Like<i> Texas Chainsaw&#146;s</i> farmhouse and the 
              video dream sequences of the abandoned church witnessing the rebirth 
              of an ancient evil in John Carpenter&#146;s <i>Prince of Darkness</i>, 
              what is so disturbing is that these overgrown fields and reedy streams 
              are so recognizable yet that the moment you recognize them they 
              are rendered suddenly &#147;untranslatable.&#148; Even the use of 
              the police adds to this unsettling feeling, the assumption being 
              that they can maintain order. When that trust is violated, particularly 
              by less than normal means, there is a deep sense of having lost 
              any hope of being saved by an authority that, whether we like it 
              or not, most people look to in the end for some kind of final reassurance 
              (this might account for some of <i>X-Files</i> popularity and certainly 
              speaks to Dan O&#146;Bannon&#146;s comic yet frightening <i>Return 
              of the Living Dead </i>where we get to see just how graphically 
              &#147;the cavalry&#148; can be overwhelmed).</p>
            The heroes 
              of <b>Nocturne</b>, however, seem quite up to the task. The second 
              movement finds us introduced to the agents of Spookhouse, the government 
              agency dedicated to battling the darkness. The characters and their 
              designs recalled two comic series, Mike Mignola&#146;s truly excellent 
              Hellboy and Steven Seagle and Matt Wagner&#146;s Sandman Mystery 
              Theatre, the latter reflected quite heavily in the Stranger, the 
              be-goggled, fedora wearing, grim faced star of these proceedings. 
              Now, I am not suggesting that the gang behind <b>Nocturne</b> even 
              knows about these books, much less drew inspiration from them, but 
              they draw from the same dark 1930&#146;s pool of murderous forces 
              and occult agendas, a style that has a real pulp beauty about it. 
              Backlit and surrounded by smoke or hit straight on by beams of light, 
              staring into the face of doom, they are the secret hope. The third 
              and final movement of the piece lets us finally see what they war 
              against.</p>
            <p>Zombies and vampires 
              run amuck. Intercut between shots of the Spookhouse operatives preparing 
              for combat, we see the dead arising, a man being chased through 
              the woods, a vampiric girl smirk at us over her shoulder, a bloody 
              corpse sprawled out before her, zombies staggering in the dark and 
              frantic eyes darting back and forth. One of the nicest touches is 
              the use of spots of concentrated light mimicking flash light beams 
              to pick out the rotten, tattered figures and bared fangs, as if 
              we are sharing the moment of horrible discovery. Again, we see this 
              wonderful breakdown of normal experience, a falling out between 
              what should and should never be able to happen.</p>
            <p>But it is happening. 
              The screen being cut down to video dimensions, <b>Nocturne</b> has 
              a sweat inducing air of claustrophobia, the world crumbling inward. 
              Rapid cutting, for once finding a good reason to be so frantic as 
              opposed to just looking &#147;cool,&#148; both bleeds everything 
              together and, ironically, also isolates each individual shot as 
              a unique horror filled moment, a trap of seconds. This is a bleached 
              and faded world cast into sudden relief by a streak of vibrant red. 
              But what really stands out in <b>Nocturne</b> is the music. A cross 
              between James Horner&#146;s Aliens soundtrack and Stravinsky&#146;s 
              &#147;Rite of Spring,&#148; the score is superbly effective in underlying 
              the fractured, disorienting visual tone of the opening. Not having 
              a grasp of musical terminology to the extent that I believe the 
              score deserves, and feeling a bit insecure about trying to fake 
              my way through it, let me just say that the music is refreshingly 
              classical in its outlook and is exceedingly well written, a perfect 
              fit that demonstrates that these Nocturne fellows really care about 
              their work.</p>
            <p>And what a fine piece 
              of work it is; <b>Nocturne</b>&#146;s prelude is an example of how 
              to bring the perfect balance of artistic merit and entertainment 
              to this emerging video game genre. Both electrifyingly new and aware 
              of the past, the piece is a gorgeous little slice of realist horror. 
              It may not be the three-hour epic that I pined for in the last column, 
              but in its own way the opening of Nocturne is indeed a masterpiece.</p>
            <p></p>
            </p>
              <p></p>
              <p></p>
              </p>
              </p>
              
            
              <i>- 
                Joshua Vasquez is the resident film critic here at loonygames. 
                He also writes for the Internet film site Matinee 
                Magazine.</i></p>
              </p>
              <p></p>
              <p></p>
             <br>
             
              </p>
              Near the 
                beginning of the film, one of the characters, reading out of a 
                tattered astrology book, tells the others that Saturn is in retrograde 
                and must therefore be considered an evil influence on the workings 
                of the universe. It is a sign, like the watch hanging from a tree 
                driven through by a nail the viewer glimpses minutes before the 
                killing starts, a symbol of the unseen, unknowable forces that 
                constantly threaten to overwhelm us all. <i>The Texas Chainsaw 
                Massacre</i>, by situating a disturbingly tactile evil within 
                the mundane space of a summer day, made horror films dangerously 
                real.</p>
              The next 
                step came with the wave of Italian cannibal movies in the 1970&#146;s 
                that focused on realistically trying to portray atrocity, the 
                &#147;art&#148; of these films being one of camouflage. Perhaps 
                the best example of this obsession with &#147;objectively&#148; 
                presenting nightmare is Ruggero Deodato&#146;s<i> Cannibal Holocaust</i> 
                (1979), a work that wonderfully summed up the genre&#146;s bizarre 
                self-awareness by centering the story around an academic&#146;s 
                journey into the Amazon to find the remains of a Western film 
                crew that was devoured by cannibals. In many ways, <i>Cannibal 
                Holocaust </i>is the direct precursor to another far more recent 
                horror work that tries to completely hide its structure within 
                a blur of fuzzy, washed out chaos, <i>The Blair Witch Project</i>.</p>
              Daniel 
                Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez&#146;s film (a piece that has taken 
                on a resonance that these two slightly foolish guys probably couldn&#146;t 
                have planned) is a ground breaking horror work because, as Michael 
                Atkinson writes, it&#146;s &#147;a radical act, withholding information 
                and contriving to be without control over its own visual narrative.&#148; 
                What we are witnessing while watching <i>Blair Witch </i>is footage 
                from the front lines of the breakdown of the rational universe. 
                News is that now <i>Blair Witch</i> is going to get the video 
                game treatment from the gang at Terminal Reality, and although 
                the idea of a game based on the film leaves me feeling very wary, 
                after watching the brilliant cinematics for the company&#146;s 
                most recent game <b>Nocturne</b> I am sure that if anyone can 
                pull it off, Terminal Reality can.</p>
              </p>
              </p>
              <i>&#147;I 
                am the bloody top of the food chain&#148; - Nocturne</i></p>
              </p>
              </p>
              The opening 
                of <b>Nocturne</b> is one of the finest video game pieces that 
                I have watched during my time at loonygames, ranking up there, 
                in my estimation, with <b>Fallout 
                2</b> and <b>Wipeout 
                III</b> as an example of the heights of artistic achievement 
                that this fledgling medium can attain. <b>Nocturne</b> takes the 
                tradition of realist horror and sculpts it quite eloquently to 
                video game dimensions.</p>
              As the 
                scene opens, two policemen search through a field of tall grass, 
                the cut of their uniforms indicating that we are watching newsreel 
                footage taken years ago, perhaps in the 1920&#146;s or 30&#146;s. 
                Suddenly a struggle breaks out, and the camera is shoved away...cut 
                to a woman&#146;s body lying covered by spider web laced dirt 
                and patches of forest shadow. It seems that the strange earth 
                is giving up her hoarded dead as we see a frantically cataloged 
                series of blood impatterned bodies lying scattered across a curiously 
                empty landscape. And night is falling.</p>
              </p>
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Print CGI is 
  &copy; 2000 <a href="http://www.square8.com">Square Eight</a>. Used with permission. 
  Article is &copy; 2000 its original author. All other content is &copy; 2000 
  loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. You got that??</font></i></p>
 