Why are Handheld PCs so Popular?

The Handheld PC Gaming Market is Weird

So I am ignoring my monthly challenge for a moment to post more on handheld PC gaming. I guess I could spin it into a weird article, as in, "Isn't it weird that the handheld console-like PC market has gone insane, let alone that it has such a high level of interest?" And I say this as someone who currently owns no less than four handheld devices (not counting the Switch or Switch 2), and I have sold at least three other handhelds. I have a problem, and I think this obsession is rather weird....and also weird that it seems to afflict so many other people.

Before we analyze the weirdness, let's pin down the practical aspects of handheld PC gaming: 

1. For many, carrying a handheld PC around for some quick gaming is very convenient. This makes sense; the console handheld market has been super popular for a long time now, and the idea, in principle, makes sense for PC gaming, too. Right? Well...see the cons below for the counterpoint to this.

2. A lot of people have invested heavily in  their preferred storefront for PC gaming, so being able to access their games in an on-the-go format makes sense, right? Right??? Hey, it does mean you don't have to restart in a different walled environment like you would with the Switch 2, for the most practical example.

3. A handheld PC can provide a more dedicated gaming experience, something that may be more tempting than the next rung up the ladder, gaming laptops. This part is (mostly) a solid truth; a dedicated handheld that runs well may indeed prove to me more consistently satisfying as a gaming experience, especially on the road traveling. 

4. For a lot of people it's not even about travel, but instead about convenience. You can pull out the handheld and play in areas not at your PC desk or in front of the TV. You can play games while others are using the TV, and in rooms you ordinarily couldn't game in. So the same value for portability as the Switch 2.

But, there are many cons to the PC handheld market! These are largely unique to the PC market, too, as console-based handhelds (of which the Switch family is the only current option; the new Xbox branded Asus handhelds are well-established as being just PC handhelds) are generally designed to solve these problems. These cons include:

1. Battery life is not great. You are not getting phone levels of battery life out of handheld PCs. The first generation of handheld PCs are relatively infamous for lasting maybe 1-2 hours at most unless you were willing to tinker heavily with the power wattage and performance metrics, which these devices mostly give you a lot of tools to manipulate. The battery power has gotten better, starting with the Steam Deck OLED and Asus ROG Ally X, but the performance levels you set the devices at can dramatically alter battery life. This leads to problem 2....

2. To really make these devices work for your needs you need to tamper with their settings, a lot. In fact, I think there are really two kinds of players for handheld PCs: those who are fairly into or at least savvy about altering the specs on a device to optimize performance to improve battery life, and those who (like me) kind of can't stand dealing with that, and set it to the highest performance you can get, then just make sure you have a plug in handy nearby when playing.  This level of complexity is lessened with the SteamOS based systems (such as of course the Steam Decks and the Legion Go S), but the windows based devices are all going to make this more complex because not only are you dealing with the device's overlay setting but you will also be diving into Windows, and if you're not technically savvy on this stuff you will be watching a lot of videos on how to make your device feel like you imagine it should. I just got a MSI Claw 8 AI+, for example, and spent close to 6 hours with the device trying to figure out why it ran like crap, and in the end it was all because the device had no obvious and easy path to updating the Intel integrated graphics drivers without going to Intel's site and downloading their latest drivers, something I would have thought could be done through the MSI overlay....but nope, even their updater seemed not to see the latest updates. Still, after all that tinkering I now have it running better than any of my other devices, but it really shouldn't have required that I jump through all those hoops imo.

3. If you get a Switch 2 from Nintendo you are locked into their store and games designed for their system, but in general those games run straight up and without issue. The only variable is the extent to which the studio provided the proper resources to optimizing the game for the Switch 2 (or original Switch), and you don't have to worry about anything. Even the battery life on the Switch 2, while not amazing, is consistently always better than the same experience on a handheld, even the ones with really good battery lives. But handheld PCs just can't manage this. You can access multiple storefronts, sure....but you are limited on some games, especially those using anti-cheat, on SteamOS systems. For Windows 11 devices you're dealing with a cumbersome OS not designed for handhelds, and can run into many unexpected performance issues. This means you may be loading, testing, modifying setting and then reloading multiple times before you are happy with a game's performance. 

4. Ditching a gaming laptop for a handheld is not practical either if you use your PC for work or other non-gaming tasks. A handheld can be souped up to handle non-gaming tasks for the most part, but now you're adding a Bluetooth mouse, keyboard and maybe even a screen; when you're done, your setup consumes as much or even more space than the laptop probably does, especially something like the compact 14 inch ROG Zephyrus which is what I use for work travel. 

This all sounds a little tedious when you line it up. There's also a new huge problem looming on a post-tariff horizon: these devices are getting more expensive, and the dollar value is going to really depend on your use case. If you're just looking for a device to play for an hour or two while commuting or in a hotel room somewhere, then there is really no reason not to get a Switch 2 or a Steam Deck base model, as you can spend $450 for the Switch 2 and $400 for the original Steam Deck new. You get a device that can handle a wide array of games which will be more than enough to keep you busy.

All of the other devices are for the enthusiast with money to burn, and in the case of myself and possibly many others, apparently not enough common sense. I think I have reached a point where I feel like I'm at a satiation point....and the new devices are all coming  in at $1000 or more, which really is past my tolerance limit for cost on this sort of device. Even some of the older devices which came out earlier this year and last year have gone up in price, so I am happy as an example that I got my SteamOS edition Legion Go S before the price hikes (and even on sale when I snagged it). I would be reluctant to pay any of the prices out there now....and only grudgingly caved on snagging the MSI Claw 8 which came in at $1049. Much as I'd like the Legion Go 2, I just can't justify the $1350 price tag for a handheld.

One of the problems I have run in to with handhelds is that the performance value on the device has an element of diminishing returns with cost. While running a game on the MSI Claw 8 or the Legion Go S (Z1E edition) definitely shows better performance than the Steam Deck OLED, they do not in fact provide enough value on this performance for me to feel like the Steam Deck is somehow no longer a viable product....it's still totally useful as a handheld device* (though I would like to know what SteamOS seems to be a much more stable experience on the Legion Go S than it is on the Steam Deck OLED, but that is a question for another time....)

The weird part of all this for me is that I feel like there is a real driver happening behind these handheld PCs which defies their conventionality as portable devices. Many of the games I can get to run well on these devices are still going to be better games to enjoy on a large screen with a dedicated desktop or laptop running them.** So this gets back to the weird part: why are they somehow as attractive as they are to a certain segment of the population? I have two working theories beyond what were mentioned above in the initial "pros" section:

First, I think that there are a lot of Gen X level gamers and maybe Millennials as well who either grew up in an era where the concept of a handheld was dominated by consoles, with the likes of the Gameboy, Game Gear, PSP and later PS Vita. There's always been interest in the ability to play games in this convenient format, and I know that growing up in the 80's I often dreamed of the idea of having a handheld device that could do what these modern handhelds do. This is a generational thing, is what I am saying; and it's one of the reasons that so many people are so fascinated with these handhelds, and will pay ridiculous prices for them, even though the actual practical experience of a much cheaper handheld makes far more sense.

Second, I think that despite the fact that so many of these devices are allowing you to play and enjoy these games on a suboptimal level of experience, the truth is that the transition to digital services for games going back to 2004 with Steam has led to a generation of gamers who have far, far more game in their backlog than they will ever have time to play. As an aging population of gamers increases, and their catalogs of unplayed and ignored games explodes, the handheld PCs provide a unique and effective way to quietly load and enjoy some of that backlog, and the trade off on fidelity is often worth it, because the gateway of a desktop PC or a console on the family TV has proven to be too big an obstacle for many busy gamers to ever get ahead of the tide of available gaming at their fingertips. Handhelds actually help to stave off a bit of this.

For those of you who have read some of my prior articles on handheld PCs, here's my current rundown: I sold by original Rog Ally (white model) and upgraded it to a ROG Ally X. I am done with the ROG Ally's for the foreseeable future, and plan to skip the Xbox branded editions. Then I did upgrade to a Steam Deck OLED a while back and greatly appreciated the experience, and donated my older Steam Deck. I had and enjoyed the original Legion Go but after I got the Z1E SteamOS edition of the Legion Go S I realized I liked the performance of a Linux-based SteamOS version of the Legion, as well as the better ergonomics so much more that I sold my original Go. I also really didn't like the detachable controllers, which were okay but fiddly; rumor is the Legion Go 2 makes its detachable controllers much better. 

Finally I just added the MSI Claw 8 AI+ to the collection, and am so far startled at how well it runs everything...after I spent six hours updating it. Despite all these lovely devices I still find half my handheld gaming is happening on the Switch 2, which is the best bang for the buck as long as you like Nintendo's offerings. 

Okay! Maybe this was just an excuse for me to talk about handhelds again, but I do think the phenomenon of this exploding and now very expensive market is just very, very weird....so there ya' go! 

*I used Senua's Saga: Hellblade II as a test example, since I have four of these devices. I was surprised to discover that while I could get the most graphical fidelity out of the MSI Claw for the best overall experience, the actual feel of the gameplay and overall look felt smoothest and cleanest on the Steam Deck! I think this is at least partly because the way SteamOS works, and the way Linux handles optimization on the graphics drivers, allows for publishers to very specifically target the Steam Deck performance almost as if it were a console. I'm still going to play it on the MSI Claw, but only because I need to cost justify my purchase....  

**Example: Senua's Saga: Hellblade II which is a gorgeous game, especially on a 48 inch OLED screen.

Twelve Weird Things November!!!

 I enjoyed doing 31 Days of Horror in October, it forced me to get out of the creative writing rut I've been in for quite some time now. I'm also opening up my post topics more to thinking about things unrelated to griping on my gaming group proclivities; oddly enough I think that has settled down into a routine, and it looks like it will be a sort of regular vacillation between Pathfinder, Tales of the Valiant, Starfinder, Mothership and Call of Cthulhu for the time being. Other players who want to GM can introduce their preferred games into the mix....those are mine. 

But this post is not about perpetuating on such endless musings! It is instead about setting a new goal for November to keep my writing habits up. Now, doing a daily post for 31 days straight was actually a great way to kick into gear but that is just not a realistic goal for me, as I am neck deep in very involved work so such a pace is too stressful at the moment. But the creative exercise is good for the soul, so I am not interested in slacking, either. I will instead commit to Twelve Days of Posting, and the theme shall be: Weird Things! Yes, weird things is a broad and interpretive topic, but that is the point. Thematically I will pick things that are weird, be they games, movies, books, game content or topics, and then run with them. Twelve posts would be approximately three a week, but could be more, could be less in any given week....but we will absolutely have 12 posts by the time the 30th of November hits.

Okay! So this post kicks it off, but I'll defer to the next post for the First Weird Thing.....

The 31st Day of Horror: Spring (2014)

 

Spring (2014)

For the final 31 Days of Horror challenge I am pleased to see that the final stretch is populated heavily with cosmic horror films of different fine calibers. Spring, a movie that apparently came out 11 years ago and I only just now watched, is often described as in the cosmic horror/Lovecraftian vein, but I rather disagree; it fits a niche more in line with mythology and even creeps into the realm of allegory just a little. Spring is only partially a horror film, and takes themes of transformation, immortality and tradition that might exist in a decidedly different context in another story and treats them in unique and new ways.

The story premise is simple: Evan is a cook at a bar who has been taking care of his terminally ill mother. After she passes away he gets into a brawl at the bar and soon decides maybe he needs to get out of California entirely, and takes a trip to Italy on a lark, the place he wanted to go with his father before he passed as away as well. With so much loss in his life, he needs an escape, and Italy provides it.

First Evan runs into a couple Englishmen who he tags along with, then while visiting a remote seaside town he meets Louise, a young local woman who he rather quickly becomes obsessed with; she for some reason just wants a one night stand, but he wants a real relationship. She blows him off, but Evan is persistent and decides to stay in the town, working for an old gentleman offering lodging in exchange for farm work. Evan then manages to bump in to her the next day and convinces her to give him a chance on a date. They hit it off well, and it quickly builds up a week long whirlwind relationship.

The problem is that Louise seems to have a secret. She has two different color eyes, though she tries to disguise it with contacts. She works on a research program for a University to study the genetics of the local population, which has changed very little over the centuries. She takes special shots for an unusual skin condition she manifests. Occasionally, she transforms into a horrifying monster and murders things.

Evan's and Louise's relationship is the core of the film, but her complication as a unique, ancient immortal Roman with a monstrous variation of lycanthropy that you really have to see to appreciate makes for a fascinating character study laced with a unique form of horror mixed with, at its core, a deep and impermeable love story about two very complicated and extremely sympathetic people.

This was a fascinating, thoughtful and even philosophical movie, and honestly almost more of a love story than a monster flick, though it is absolutely both. If you are like me and missed this gem for the last decade, definitely check it out. Yet another A+! Deeply interesting, and it honestly goes in directions I don't think any other film has quite managed to do so well. 

SPOILER SECTION

This movie is so much better than it lets on, a deep dive into a world that is more than the sum of its parts. It's a love story, and its markedly allegorical in how it spins a story of two young lovers who just happen to have this extra hurdle, specifically her monstrous nature, and her inevitable reincarnation which leaves her both herself, in her consciousness, but an entirely new person as well. An an allegory this could be symbolic of any relationship in which one partner has a deep, dark secret, obligation, addiction or other obstacle to properly embracing the relationship or building trust. By veiling this practical issue in building a relationship in a literal monstrous allegory it allows for a fun exploration of what it means to fall in love and build trust.

Layered on top of this fine allegory is a surprisingly deep conceptual space about what is literally happening in the film: an immortal, ancient woman who is genetically anomalous, bordering on magic, with a condition that could be the actual explanation for so many mythological creatures of the archaic world. Her awareness of her condition and her attempts in the modern age to study and understand her own genetics and treat it to give herself a better life, even as she tries to fall back on old occult paths as a last resort, makes her a remarkably sympathetic character, no matter how many animals and tourists she eats along the way. Her decision at the end (and we assume the best ending here, which is what seems to be implied), is that like her mother in Pompeii she can choose to fall in love, and the chemical influence of oxytocin causes the "birth" of her new self to stall, leading to her existing self continuing, but now as a mortal woman. But the subtly stated implication is, just as with her mother, that her children will be born with her genetic monstrousness, so the cycle still continues. 

As a stand alone film Spring is great, well worth a watch. But as a concept space where I want to learn more about Louise and her kind, for surely there must be others such as her who have perhaps disappeared over time? Throwbacks to a wild sort of mutation that founded the belief in everything from Lilith to the gorgons, lamias to chimeras, you name it....the implied universe of Spring is deeply fascinating to think about. Given Hollywood's track record for pile-driving expanded universes into the ground I'll just say that Spring, by itself, is more than enough to let me imagine what this universe is like.

The 30th Day of Horror: Liminal Horror Investigators

 

Liminal Horror Investigators (Goblin Archives)

You know what I haven't reviewed yet? An actual paper-and-pencil RPG! Lots of movies, several books and graphic novels, a few video games....but no RPG. Well, let's fix that with Liminal Horror. Published in the indie scene by Goblin Archives, the current edition is called Liminal Horror Investigators, which is a slightly buffed up version of the original Liminal Horror book. Being indie zine RPGs, these are slim tomes, but don't worry....a recent crowdfunding campaign which I backed is for a thick and heavy hardcover Deluxe Edition, so as with all good and simple RPGs, that will inevitably change. It's like the carcinization effect on beaches, except in the RPG book world, all slim and to-the-point RPGs inevitable morph over time into immense, weighty hardcover tomes.

Liminal Horror uses the game engine introduce in "Into the Odd," which is a very simple mechanical system involving only three stats: Strength, Dexterity and Control. You have a hit score, "HP" for Hit Protection, which is effectively your "combat competence timer to death" meter.....the game system's combat mechanic is unique in that during combat, an attack simply rolls damage and applies it to the target's armor and then HP score. Hit Protection is really measure of how tough and competent you are in a fight, and when it hits zero your luck has run out and damage is now critical, going against your stats. This leads to the Wounds table, where bad things happen, or the Fallout table which is what happens when you take mental damage against your Control score. In Liminal Horror Fallout can be customized to the module, and it can mean anything from mental effects such as paranoia to bizarre supernatural curses and manifestations. The sample tables provided provide some great concept spaces for a game.

Most of the game's character generation process boils down to rolling for a profession, appearance personality traits, gear, and some bonds and features to link the party together. The remainder of this 44 page book is a couple pages of rules (it's a very simple game) and cool stuff for a "facilitator" to use -- the game's name for the GM. This includes rules on artifacts, a small bestiary, different styles of adventure design (voidcrawls, mysteries, funnel rules and flashbacks all get some attention). There's no magic system as such; magic may manifest as a side effect of fallout, resonant artifacts, or whatever the GM (facilitator) might throw in the investigator's way.

Overall Liminal Horror is a very nice, slim pick-up-and-play zine RPG and well worth a look if you like portable games that can get a group up and running in no time. It has a number of modules available from different supporting publishers, of which The Bureau and The Mall are two of the most noteworthy, though I am especially fond of The Parthogenesis of Hungry Hollow. The style of horror in the game and its modules is reflective more of modern horror themes common online and in video games. Imagine Silent Hill, The Backrooms, Creepy Pastas, Slenderman, Sirenhead and such and you will get an idea of what is thematically in sync with what Liminal Horror supports....but even in the bae book there are some curiously Innsmouthian influences hidden in there so mythos horror is also in the mix. Note also that there is a module featuring these frog men in the first Liminal Horror book that is missing from the Investigators edition, so still a reason to hold on to that tome if you find an original. Mechanically this newer version just adds more rules options and ideas, but leaves that module out. I am interested to see how they fill up a couple hundred pages with the Deluxe Edition.

For useful resources on Liminal Horror click here!

 

The 29th Day of Horror: Suitable Flesh (2023)

 

Suitable Flesh (2023)

Some movies fall under the category of cosmic horror, and they may or may not draw direct inspiration from Lovecraft and the many, many successors in this genre. Other films are distinctly Lovecraftian, either referencing elements of Lovecraft's mythology (Arkham, Cthulhu, etc.) or adapting his actual stories. There's also a third category of films as I see it: movies based on Lovecraft's reinterpretation through the lens of Stuart Gordon's style of Lovecraft movies. I think Suitable Flesh fits this last category. This last category isn't just characterized by a style emulating Stuart Gordon's direction or screen writing, but also the notion that there's a strong psycho-sexual undercurrent in the mythos of Lovecraft, something that may have been there on an unconscious level for Lovecraft himself, not out of sorts for his time, when psychiatry in the nascent age of Freud and Jung. Also, Gordon's penchant for copious levels of gore. Director Joe Lynch is channeling all of this in spades in Suitable Flesh, which is loosely based on The Thing on the Doorstep (super super loosely), and to prove my point further is even dedicated to Stuart Gordon.

Dr. Elizabeth Derby meets the wrong kind of patient, but perhaps it was inevitable given she maintains a practice in Arkham, Massachusetts. Asa Waite is a young man who claims to be periodically possessed by his father, Ephram. At first she thinks she just wants to help him, but really she's abnormally, sexually intrigued by Asa and what she thinks is just a schizophrenic episode. Asa, however, contends that his father is literally possessing him. After meeting Ephram, Elizabeth has lots of clues in front of her she does not recognize with her clinical nonbeliever mind (including what one can only assume is the Necronomicon on his desk). A short time later an emergency happens, Asa begging for her to help, and she stumbles on a scene in which Ephram appears to be having a heart attack and Asa wants to finish him off. Things go sharply awry as Asa is possessed, then they have sex, then she discovers that in having sex he possesses her, and then in short order Ephram with Asa's mind awakens and possessed Asa cuts his head off. Then the house catches fire. 

Like, that's all in the first act!

Anyway, it continues from here and escalates....quite rapidly.....as Ephram, now in Asa's body, reveals he very much wants to take possession of Elizabeth now. He can do so over the phone, with the right spell, fairly easily, while leaving his own body as Asa chained up on a basement somewhere so she can't escape once she's swapped bodies with him. This leads to an interesting undercurrent of sexual violation as the mind of Ephram has his way with Elizabeth's body while she is dispossessed. Oh yeah, and there's an altar to what I would assume is Azathoth or something in the basement. Weee!

This movie was a trip. Watch it with people who don't mind lots of sex (though, to contrast, it is slightly tamer sex than in, for example, the recent movie Honey Don't), and the sex does play heavily into the story. There is also Elizabeth's friend who works at Arkham Asylum, Dr. Upton, who is the straight-laced friend who wants to help but can't quite put the clues together (and also in the original story the actual narrator).

This movie was frickin' wild, a total trip. The one takeaway you should get out of this movie is that weird shit goes down all the time in Arkham, Mass. and the profession of psychiatrist is probably fraught with existential danger in that lovely town. Well worth a watch, even if you aren't in to Lovecraftian stuff! A solid A!

Spoiler! Best moment: the scene where Elizabeth tries to kill Asa by backing into him with the car,  and the lovely use of the car rear-cam during the scene. Second best moment: that poor security guard!

The 28th Day of Horror: The Breach (2022)

The Breach (2022)

John Hawkins is the Sherriff of the lakeside town of Lone Crow investigating a body in a boat that washed ashore in his district. The body is a mess, and Hawkins quickly brings in coroner Jacob Redgrave, while  his reliable officer Parks starts researching to find evidence of missing persons. The coroner quickly identifies the body is effectively shredded and missing all of its bones. Parks finds out the clothing and ID of a missing man, a physicist named Cole Parsons who apparently came to the area and hired a guide to take himself and his crates of equipment upriver to a remote house only accessible by boat. The person who took him is Meg, an ex girlfriend of both the sheriff and the coroner.

Hawkins decides a trip upriver to investigate the house Parsons was staying at may shed light on his grisly death. He brings Redgrave along, and Meg knows where to go so they take her and her boat. On the way out they hear strange, ominous noises that seem to come from everywhere all at once. Not long after they arrive at the house, but something is off. Meg realizes the house looks different aged far beyond one year since she last was there. Inside, the decrepit mansion has more weirdness. A mysterious surging generator, a strange room filled with arcane trappings, and then Linda, Parson's estranged wife shows up....she's been looking for Parsons ever since an event where their daughter disappeared.

The story rapidly escalates with one new twist after another. As with so many other well done movies I hesitate to say any more; this is best watched for effect. I will say this much, though: I bought the movie on a lark because it was listed as in the cosmic horror genre, and that is 100% on target. Indeed, while it does not attempt to replicate any specific Lovecraft or mythos tale, it does have a nontrivial amount of From Beyond in it's DNA.....there's a definite sense that Edward Tillinghast's machinations were a bit of inspiration for the story here, though the actual nature and execution in The Breach is most definitely its own unique take. 

A couple observations that are maybe teeny tiny spoilers: First, particle physics and occult black magic are probably best not mixed together. Second, I notice the Rotten Tomatoes score is fairly high, but the popcorn meter (which I think is the audience score) is really low. Do not be dissuaded; I suspect the low rating is because this movie does not end on a positive note; quite the opposite, it ends like all cosmic horror tales should, utterly devoid of any sort of happy ending for our poor protagonists.

Anyway, the soundtrack as always helps make the movie, and this one is no exception. The gory FX are almost all practical, and the third act of this movie is utterly bonkers, as it should be. Solid B for me! I liked it enough that while I do have it on Vudu, I may see if I can hunt around for a proper Blu-ray for the collection.

The 27th Day of Horror: Ash (2025)

 

Ash (2025)

I got to watch this movie on its limited theatrical release, making me very glad I decided to go see a random movie on a lark on the one weekend it was out in theaters. Ash was released by Shudder, which if you don't know about them, Shudder is a fantastic horror-focused curated streaming service. In fact, these days I only subscribe to four streaming services, and Shudder is one of them. The other three are Curiosity Stream, Magellan TV and Hulu, thought the last one is technically free as part of my phone deal. Shudder however is the best, especially if your tastes run in a "weird and horror" vein for films. 

The setup for Ash is immediately intriguing as a woman named Miya awakens with a concussion and memory loss on a research station on an alien world. She finds the rest of the crew dead, brutally murdered, and outside an alien landscape. She quickly figures out that the atmosphere, while somewhat breathable is actually mildly toxic and she flees back into the ship after witnessing a bizarre "mirroring" image of herself in the hazy distance. Soon, as she begins to have flashbacks of her memory of the living crew on the ship, a second crewman who was on the orbiting ship named Brion arrives in response, apparently, to a distress call.

As the mystery of what happens unfolds, Riya begins to remember the events, and image sof herself killing her fellow crewmates. Evidence is uncovered of an alien artifact, a tunnel network that the crew was exploring, and an unexpected death while doing so. Brion meanwhile remains focused on the next window of opportunity for the lander to break orbit and return to the ship. As daylight falls, a hull breach diverts their attention from the mystery for a moment, though the actual breach appears to have been sabotage, suggesting a third person is still alive....and there is a missing body, or so it seems...

Ash does an amazing job of building paranoid tension and as escalating mystery with only two actors, accomplishing a vibe not unlike The Thing in terms of the "Who's really causing these problems?" kind of sense. By the third act it goes completely off the rails....and I will absolutely not spoil it, but take note that all of those amazing creature effects at the end are practical effects, a real spectacle when the "truth" is finally revealed. 

Much of this film has an eerie, dreamlike quality. There are a lot of impressive establishing shots for the planet's environs, and some eerie dream sequences. Some of the graphics feel like they might be using some AI elements, but the mix with practical effects works very well. The soundtrack is also incredible, deeply unnerving and mood setting.

If you are a fan of horror in general, scifi horror in particular, or want some inspiration for your next Mothership campaign, this movie is well worth a watch! It is another one of my guilty pleasure faves, but is also a genuinely good film. About the worst thing I can say about it is: why don't they have, like, better surgical machines, or even anesthetic in the distant future? You'll know what I mean when you see it! Anyway...solid A, totally worth a watch. 

The 26th Day of Horror: Psycho Girls (1985)

 

Psycho Girls (1985)

It was a while before I decided to pick this movie up from the Vinegar Syndrome collection, but I think I'm glad I did. It's a weird, punk, low budget psychotic movie that is exemplary of its period in time; this kind of movie could only exist in the unique conflux of attitudes and ideas in the seventies and eighties, with twisted and weird takes on sanity and psychotherapy. Watching the extras on the making of this movie was possibly more interesting than the movie itself, but the movie did manage to deliver on its incredibly nutty low-budget "horror comedy" vibe. Also, its a canuxploitation film, another are gem from Canada. 

Directed by Jerry Ciccoritti, who has a great interview on the making of this film worth watching, did it in his early punk days on zero budget with some film they had available, in abandoned properties they had access to. It's a great story. The movie itself is a mix of wannabe actors and friends of the director, none of them especially "good" but all of them doing a fine job of hamming it up for the camera.

The plot is about two sisters, one of whom (Sarah) kills her parents one day with rat poison and ends up committed for the next twenty years...or so it seems. The other sister Victoria lives her life and seeks to make sure her sister never leaves the asylum. One day, her sister kills an orderly and escapes. First her psychiatrist (the amusingly named Doctor Hippocampus) ends up murdered and skinned, then she seeks out Victoria, and the two of them have a confrontation from which Sarah walks away the lone survivor, Sarah then travels to the house of a writer and his wife where Victoria had been a housekeeper and offers her services as cook while her sister is "away." They accept, and that night at the dinner party things go very, very south.

Sarah, it turns out, escaped the asylum with a gang of fellow inmates, who conspire with her to drug the guests of the evening party after feeding them her sister, literally. They then tie up and proceed to inventively murder the guests one by one in the depths of the now shut down asylum (the timing on her escape vs. shut down of the asylum is a bit wiggly here). It is up to our writer, who has been a quasi-film-noir narrator the entire time, to figure out how to escape before he and his wife are the final victims of the evening.

The "villains" of this movie are caricatures more than anything, suitable as Batman villains more than they would be a representation of real madness. The movie does a surprisingly good job of introducing our main characters (the husband and wife) and their later guests during a lengthy dinner conversation, enough so that their deaths have a bit more impact later on. There's a lot of "80's level" talk about psychiatry and therapy in this movie, and the villains are  to some level supposed to be reflective of this underlying theme. It is quintessentially 80's in this regard, maybe even a throwback to the 70's, with what can only be described as a contentious and very, very dated take on the entire topic of mental health and psychiatry, through the lens of some aspiring early guerilla punk filmmakers.

There is one amusing plot hole, not obvious but I do love it: midway in, the psychos order some pizza for delivery deep in the asylum while torturing their "guests." The pizza guy eventually shows up and almost walks in on the entire affair before dropping the pizza off and fleeing. The entire scene is amusing, if only because its so out of left field, and shines a light on the later sequence in the film when our two protagonists finally escape and then get lost in the endless halls of the impossible to navigate asylum....apparently only the pizza guy knew exactly where the entrance and exit was!

One might also wonder about the name Psycho Girls, because strictly speaking only Sarah is here to do the evil deeds (her gang of psychos are all men). According to the director its the two sisters....but alas, we really didn't get to see Victoria shine. I was sort of hoping for a surprise twist at the end (and there is one, a bit) in which Victoria is revealed not to have been dinner but rather it was the psychiatrist, and she returns to end her sister....but nope, the twist went in a slightly different direction.

Some of this movie, including the extended dinner talk scene and certain other moments (the pizza guy, the confrontation between the sisters, even the entire "dinner party turned massacre night" them) reminded me oddly of Quentin Tarantino's films. I wonder if Tarantino saw this, given how much he was influenced by cinema from this period and earlier.  

So, this is a movie worth watching if you like this period of cinema and enjoy experimental low-budget weirdness from early aspiring directors. It's also worth a watch if you just like creepy and off-putting horror films. For me, it definitely was worth seeing though I do rank it at a solid C.

The 25th Day of Horror: The Resurrected (1991)

 

The Resurrected (1991)

Apparently Stuart Gordon's success at adapting H.P. Lovecraft stories to film led to Dan O'Bannon taking a shot at it. Yes...the man behind Return of the Living Dead and a whole lot of Alien did, in fact, take a shot at Lovecraft with The Resurrected, loosely adapted from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. I had picked this up recently from Vinegar Syndrome, and was all excited to enjoy what I thought was an unknown film to me. Right around the point where the stalwart team of investigators find themselves in the depths of Charles Ward's secret laboratory (which he inherited from Arthur Curwen), the really cool reanimated monster shows up and I was instantly, "Wait, I have seen this movie before. Twice."

So with this sudden realization, the question must be posed: is this actually a good movie if I had completely forgotten about it, twice? Well, assuming the issue is not the high quality 4K UHD copy I watched confusing me into not being a  grainy SD release as I think it was the last two times I saw it, the real answer is: it's actually pretty good, but its also rather slow for the first 75% of the movie, in a manner which, while shockingly appropriate in is methodical pace for your average Call of Cthulhu game, and definitely in alignment with some of the source material, is nonetheless just not exciting enough to be very memorable. This holds true right up until you get to the point where the investigators (for they are the embodiment of your average CoC team) decide to go to the source of the evil, with explosives, though they cannot resist exploring to see what it is they need to blow up first. This leads to some truly inspired rubber monster special effects that are well worth seeing. 

The plot is straight-forward: John March is a private investigator in Providence who is approached by Claire Ward, the worried wife of Charles Dexter Ward, who has been acting very strange lately. He's holed up on the old family property with a strange Asian guy, doing something  that has her very worried. March takes the case, and proceeds to handle it in a remarkably staid and proper manner, with his allies doing research for him while he checks out what's going on. For much of the film this feels like a mellow police procedural, in which occasionally weird murders happen. When there are moments of weird gore its a reminder that there is, in fact, a horror story going on and not just a case of a strange husband shacking up with other strange men in a colonial house. 

March eventually deduces that Ward's got some serious problems, with a lot of corpse theft and possibly a connection to murders in the area that look like wild animal attacks but may, in fact, be cannibalism. As the story deepens, more of Ward's true story and his obsession with his ancestors and their alchemical desire for immortality are revealed, until it all culminates in an explosive finale that reminded me of half the Call of Cthulhu games I've participated in over the decades. 

The Resurrected was doomed not to compete with Stuart Gordon's films due to its almost painstaking effort to follow the pace of a slow, methodical investigative procedural, but when it does go off the rails it does so quite well. It really could have used a few more scenes early on that helped set the stage for the odd murders, for example, but I suppose there was only so much mileage to be had with the grotesque resurrected dead at the end, and introducing them earlier would have used up their impact too soon. 

Overall, for fans of Lovecraft's appearances on film, this is worth a watch. If you like supernatural horror procedurals, you will find something to like. The soundtrack to this movie is great, though typical of the nineties with its orchestration, and a general fan of horror will enjoy the events at the end of the movie for sure. I would rank this a deserving C+ and I look forward to forgetting I saw it all over again in a few years. 

The 24th Day of Horror: Alien from the Abyss (1989)

 

Alien From The Abyss (1989)

Easily set in the category of  "entertainingly bad" and also a movie from when I was still a teenager, I am simultaneously shocked I had never seen it before, and also not shocked at all because my love of really bad vintage films is a more recent thing for me; I generally didn't like wasting my time on garbage like this when I was in my late teens and twenties (ah, the irony). I mean....the first time I saw Tetsuo The Iron Man in my twenties on VHS I thought it was garbage; now I have that director's entire filmography on my shelf. The more things change.....!

Alien From The Abyss is another low budget "filmed somewhere in the Philippines where SAG-AFTRA can't find them" type of films, directed by Italian hack/auteur Antonio Margheriti (I mean that in the best possible way), Alien from the Abyss is a lovely case of how to make a big budget concept come to life on a shoestring budget, and it actually does an entertaining (if not good) job of it. The story revolves around a reporter and her cameraman, who sneak on to a remote island with an active volcano to find evidence of corporate malfeasance. Specifically, the corporation is disposing of nuclear and toxic waste by dumping it into a volcano. 

A tangent! The volcano is a lovely set piece. They have a miniature, filmed from one very specific angle, and any time they want to show the volcano they have someone pick up a pair of binoculars to look at it....always from that same angle, no matter where they are on the island. 

So our lead character and her cameraman quickly get into trouble as private goons try to catch them, and meanwhile we have a mad scientist and the corporate bad guy up to no good, then there's a secondary protagonist introduced in the form of a skeevy snake harvester on the island, and somewhere around the halfway point in the movie something happens, and the eponymous Alien from the Abyss awakens in a lake, melting and clawing everything in its path. We also have lots of miniature shots establishing various facilities to be destroyed later, in some glorious miniature set pieces that any fan of Godzilla movies will admire.

The creature is, for most of its run primarily just a long black claw that snakes around causing all sorts of problems. The mad scientist (hammed up by the actor, making for one of the more memorable characters in this movie) has a way of injuring it, but he's ultimately just a delivery mechanism for the protagonists to nab the weapon when he gets mildly bumped and dies. The last sequence in the film grants us full view of the immense alien, which stands twenty or so feet tall and is held up by a crane, a sort of floppy kaiju sized mannequin. Even despite this, the special effect is surprisingly good for the kind of movie this is; it's well worth a watch for this effect alone.

Alien from the Abyss is a bit of a mess, as most movies of this caliber are, but its got plenty of memorable moments and set pieces, and the actors really do give it their all. I watched the Severin Films UHD release of the restored version and have to say it was worth my time. As with all such films, it rests in the category of a solid B! If you are ranking it against actually good movies I'd probably call it a D+, though. But if you want to watch something you might have stumbled across on Saturday late night TV at midnight? B for sure.