Only now does it occur to me... KUNG-FU MASTER (1988)

Only now does it occur to me... that I must tip my hat to noted cat lover and French New Wave scamp Agnes Varda for making the most accurate video game adaptation of all time. That she does it in a twisted arthouse bildungsroman starring Jane Birkin and Charlotte Gainsbourg makes it all the more remarkable.

In a brief segment, Varda––who, bar none, is my favorite nouvelle vague gremlin–– recreates the stilted, sidescrolling action of arcade classic KUNG FU MASTER (a.k.a. SPARTAN X and SVT)

in a live action fantasy, down to the awkward walking animation, the weird crouches, and the unwieldy controls.

A+. What I wouldn't give to see Agnes Varda's MS. PAC-MAN.

Film Review: SUPER MARIO BROS. (1993, Annabel Jankel & Rocky Morton)

Yoshi Eggs: 2.5 of 5?
Running Time: 104 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Bob Hoskins (THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY, MONA LISA, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT), John Leguizamo (ROMEO + JULIET, CARLITO'S WAY, ENCANTO), Dennis Hopper (BLUE VELVET, WATERWORLD, EASY RIDER), Samantha Mathis (BROKEN ARROW, PUMP UP THE VOLUME, AMERICAN PSYCHO), Fiona Shaw (MY LEFT FOOT, MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON, the HARRY POTTER saga), Fisher Stevens (MY SCIENCE PROJECT, HACKERS, SHORT CIRCUIT), Richard Edson (DO THE RIGHT THING, STRANGE DAYS), Lance Henriksen (ALIENS, HARD TARGET, NEAR DARK), Don Lake (WAITING FOR GUFFMAN, POLICE ACADEMY, BEST IN SHOW), Francesca P. Roberts (HARD TO KILL, INSIDE MOVES). Music by Alan Silvestri (BACK TO THE FUTURE, THE AVENGERS, MAC AND ME). Cinematography by Dean Semler (THE ROAD WARRIOR, APOCALYPTO, COCKTAIL, XXX, YOUNG GUNS). Edited by Mark Goldblatt (TERMINATOR 2, RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, HALLOWEEN II, PREDATOR 2, BAD BOYS 2, XXX 2: STATE OF THE UNION).
Tag-line: "This ain't no game."
Best one-liner:  "Remember, trust the fungus!"

For this particular film––from the directors of MAX HEADROOM and many a "Rush" music video, and in which stars Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo allegedly drank themselves into a stupor between takes––I feel that my review is best delivered as a series of questions to which there are (likely?) no answers. As it were, a sober philosophical inquiry.

Why did they feel the need to invent an entirely new mythology for the Super Mario universe, one which involves a parallel dinosaur dimension caused by the extinction asteroid event and called "Dinohattan?"

Could there possibly be a more '90s tableau than a recumbent "Luigi" Leguizamo in acid-washed jeans, a sideways ballcap, a generic "flaming yin-yang" tee, and while playing with a Pin Art executive toy?

Is it now official canon that the Mario brothers are so called because their actual names are "Mario Mario" and "Luigi Mario?" Is it canon that they are half-brothers separated by twenty-two years of age? How did they manage to shoehorn in "Manhattan land developer villains" in a movie which takes place largely in the SF&F hellscape of "Dinohattan?"

Are all of the dinosaurs here because of Yoshi's popularity, or because of JURASSIC PARK's? How many dinosaur bones are under the Brooklyn Bridge anyway?

How strange is it that the "portal to another dimension" plot feels nothing like the SUPER MARIO BROS. games, or even anything like the formative "magic gateway" genre classics (ALICE IN WONDERLAND, WIZARD OF OZ, THE LION, THE WITCH, et al.), but in fact most resembles the Cannon Films/Kathy Ireland classic ALIEN IN L.A.?

Is it wrong that I like the sprawling, chaotic, teenage mutant "Albert Pyun"-itude of it all, and way more than I should? 

Here's a question I can answer: is it because the production designer is the Oscar-nominated David L. Snyder, who worked on BLADE RUNNER, DEMOLITION MAN, PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, and BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY? Yes, yes it is.

Is it wrong that it feels so strange to see Samantha Mathis (the egg-hatched-and-raised-by-nuns Princess Daisy, here) in an early '90s movie without Christian Slater?

Do you think Slater/Mathis were more of an early '90s Tracy/Hepburn, or more of a Bartel/Woronov?

Do the creators of "Dinohattan" regret including the now-chilling image of a crumbling World Trade Center?

(The movie was released fewer than three months after the 1993 WTC bombing. See also: DOWN/THE SHAFT.)

Did the producers realize that one of their trendiest resources was not, in fact, Was (Not Was)' "Everybody Walk the Dinosaur," but having Sonic Youth's Richard Edson and Naked Angels Theater Company co-founder Fisher Stevens as rando Dinohattan henchmen?

Is the greatest moment of Fisher Stevens' life when he said "Sayonara, dicknose!" in MY SCIENCE PROJECT or was it his Grand Skateboard Entrance in HACKERS?

Was it a mistake to reimagine King Koopa as a "germaphobe Frank Booth" with weird Maggie Simpson cornrows and a bitchin' snakeskin jacket?

In which of his '90s villains does Dennis Hopper channel BLUE VELVET the hardest? Is it his work in WATERWORLD, SPEED, CHASERS, RED ROCK WEST, or SUPER MARIO BROS.? (Eh, I actually think it's SPEED.)

Who is "Lena" meant to be in the wider SUPER MARIO mythos? Does it matter when it's essentially the great Fiona Shaw playing, um, a live-action Disney villain?

Is the Yoshi puppet actually.... really impressive? I swear, it's one of the better puppet/animatronics of the CGI era and pretty much equal to anything in JURASSIC PARK. How 'bout that?

Why does the film take such a hard turn into a Terry Gilliam-influenced Kafka nightmare, complete with Rube Goldberg torture devices and Soviet gulag ambience?

Is it a "fun" gag when the Mario Brothers are nearly executed at a Lavrentiy Beria-style tribunal which resembles Goya's painting "The Third of May 1808?"

Is John Leguizamo even acting at this point, or has he surrendered to the existential horror of appearing in this film?

Is a tableau such as this what the kiddies are hoping for in their SUPER MARIO popcorn fare, an extrajudicial political prison to contain their favorite 16-bit heroes?

I mean, this would be at home in an Andrzej Żuławski film, or maybe an early Lars Trier joint, but...

 

maybe they've stumbled onto something good here, with this conceit of the "De-evolution" chamber––can finally the disparate worlds of MAX HEADROOM and IN THE PENAL COLONY co-exist? Do you receive a similar religious epiphany when you Devolve as you do when your crimes are carved onto your flesh with Kafka's Machine?

What was the impetus behind reimagining the "goombas"––tiny villainous mushrooms, in the game––as BEETLEJUICE-shrunken-headed dinosaur monsters?

Can Dennis Hopper explain it to us? (The answer? "Partially.")

Should the entire movie instead have been refashioned to center on Francesca P. Roberts' character, "Bertha," who has rocket boots and the best fashion sense in the film (courtesy of THE MANDALORIAN and NEAR DARK's costume designer Joseph A. Porro)? (Undoubtedly, the answer to this one is, "yes.") 

Why does the sequence of the movie which seems most directly based on a video game––featuring Bob Hoskins dodging traffic––

 take its inspiration not from SUPER MARIO BROS., but from the arcade classic FROGGER?

Why does the final showdown with Dennis Hopper/King Koopa center entirely around gunplay, when guns and first-person-shooting are have never been associated with the sort of games released under the SUPER MARIO umbrella?

 

And are you going to tell me that, ackshually it's kosher because those are SNES "Super Scope" guns, which technically were a Nintendo product compatible with exactly one game in the SUPER MARIO-verse, the mostly forgotten YOSHI'S SAFARI (1993), which, again, represents only one of forty-nine (!) MARIO-adjacent titles and is only representative of the series at large if you are a big ol' nerdy nerd?

So why does Lance muthafuckin' Henriksen play King Reznor, who, now that Dennis Hopper has been defeated, is no longer a giant fungus installation piece, and... er... who is King Reznor anyway? Trent's dad?

Is a fitting finale to have Lance Henriksen sit up in a golden throne and exclaim, "I'm back!––I love those plumbers!"

Perhaps it is.  

Then there is a post-credits scene which tries to imagine that this film is simply the ur-text from which Japanese game developers adapted the games. Okay!

What's the worst thing Bob Hoskins ever did? Wait... I'm being told we have an answer for this one!

"The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Brothers. It was a fuckin' nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! Fuckin' nightmare. Fuckin' idiots."

–Bob Hoskins, as told to The Guardian in 2007

Well, there ya have it folks. SUPER MARIO BROS. 

To quote this film's version of "May the Force Be With You," I'll leave you with this benediction: "Trust the Fungus."

"The Forbidden Labyrinth: On THE NAME OF THE ROSE as a Video Game" in Epiphany

My latest essay––about the 1987 Spanish video game adaptation of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (Paco Menéndez and Juan Delcan's The Abbey of Crime)––has been published by Epiphany: A Literary Journal as a part of my "Lurid Esoterica" series.

"The Abyss Munches Back: On Martin Amis' INVASION OF THE SPACE INVADERS" in Epiphany

I have a new essay about Martin Amis' INVASION OF THE SPACE INVADERS (a bizarre arcade "how-to" volume with a cult following) online at Epiphany: A Literary Journal as a part of my "Lurid Esoterica" series.

Only now does it occur to me... THE THIEF OF BAGDAD

Only now does it occur to me... that while Raoul Walsh's THE THIEF OF BAGDAD is commonly and accurately posited as the great-granddaddy of the modern action-adventure genre, rarely mentioned is its influence on... vintage video games!

Before I begin drawing somewhat absurd comparisons, I'd like to offer some sincere words of praise.  THE THIEF OF BAGDAD is truly something special, a magical fusion of the irrepressible star quality of Douglas Fairbanks, William Cameron Menzies' spectacular art direction, imaginative staging, and innovative special effects– it's truly the perfect blend of adventure-fantasy-comedy-romance, and its shadow lays heavy across the canon, from THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD to JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS to BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, to the STAR WARS, INDIANA JONES, and LORD OF THE RINGS trilogies.  I could go on.  But I, devoted to bizarre 80s pop culture minutiae, shall now draw parallels (with increasing specificity) between THE THIEF OF BAGDAD and classic Nintendo games (specifically SUPER MARIO BROTHERS and the CASTLEVANIA series), whose makers were likely inspired by this classic of silent cinema.

The General:

It might seem fairly broad to draw a parallel between Douglas Fairbanks sliding down a magic, freestanding rope


and a similar action in SUPER MARIO BROTHERS,


but then there's his propensity for popping in and out of pipe-shaped wells,



his battles with dragon-like foes,



and his skillful dodging of fireballs by timing his jumps through a now-stereotypical "Cave of Danger"


which easily compares to a similar trope seen in nearly every sidescroller.


Pictured here from CASTLEVANIA I.


These are all fairly commonplace ideas, and not necessarily tied to THE THIEF OF BAGDAD,  though the film's latter "quest" half is neatly divided into levels with "bosses" at the end of each scene, with creepy enchanted forests and spider-monsters

killer man-sized bats,

and dangerous spiked gates.

The Specific:

The similarities become stranger and more explicit when we examine the NES game, CASTLEVANIA II: SIMON'S QUEST.  The ignominy of this notoriously bad sequel (best described by James Rolfe, "The Angry Video Game Nerd," in his two reviews of the material) centers on the oppressive interruptions of the action with intertitles announcing day/night transitions, as well as its cryptic puzzle-solving (including an infamous scenario where you must kneel in a precise spot in a graveyard with a specific crystal equipped in order to summon the conveyance of a traveling tornado).

I first thought of CASTLEVANIA (and the ZELDA series, too) when Fairbanks encounters a old man who offers obscure puzzle-solving advice,


which later became a cliché in Nintendo adventure gaming:

CASTLEVANIA I.

   

CASTLEVANIA II.

But then I began to think about the day/night transitions.  THE THIEF OF BAGDAD has a greater magnitude of these than most comparable silent films.  The transitions become a plot point, too, as the Princess summons her suitors to bring her the world's most magical treasures within "seven moons."  

 

And after each moon, we're privy to a transition:

This continues throughout:

et cetera, 

et cetera...

While these title cards are not narratively bothersome in THE THIEF OF BAGDAD, it is my belief that the makers of CASTLEVANIA II, in attempting to pay homage, inadvertently peppered their game with this kind of action-pausing distraction:

Finally, for those not yet convinced, I present the coup de grace.  In THE THIEF OF BAGDAD, Douglas Fairbanks acquires a "Cloak of Invisibility."  When he wears it, he is transformed into a mostly-invisible energy tornado, and speeds along on his merry way.

 

Now, compare this to the aforementioned cryptic "traveling tornado" in CASTLEVANIA II:

Simon kneels in the cemetery with the crystal,

 summons the traveling tornado,

becomes invisible,

 and travels on his merry way.

I'm certain that this exercise has been incredibly enlightening to the two or three of you out there who are scholars of both silent film and NES gaming.