Square Enix dévoile son line-up pour l'E3 2012

Le temps passe et les jours qui nous séparent du plus gros évènement vidéoludique de l'année se réduisent peu à peu. Comme prévu, les gros éditeurs commencent à préciser quels jeux seront disponibles sur leur stand lors de l'E3 2012. Square Enix plonge dans le bain en premier en nous fournissant une petite liste de jeux.






- Tomb Raider
- Hitman Absolution
- Sleeping Dogs
- Quantum Conundrum
- Heroes of Ruin
- Kingdom Hearts 3D : Dream Drop Distance
- Theatrhythm Final Fantasy

Certains noterons l'absence très remarquée de Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Malheureusement, ce n'est pas cette année que nous aurons l'occasion de poser nos doigts poilus sur un jeu qui reste plus discret que de raison. Rendez-vous à partir du 5 juin prochain pour en apprendre un peu plus sur les projets de Square Enix.

Les démos jouables du jour

Ce vendredi est un grand jour ! En plus d'être la dernière ligne droite avant le weekend, cette journée nous offre plusieurs démos jouables à même de nous faire découvrir gratuitement des jeux sympathiques.

On commence avec Kerbal Space Program, un titre original qui fait dans la simulation spatiale, la vraie, sans oublier une bonne dose d'humour. Vous pouvez découvrir ce titre très laid en images à cette adresse. Le principe est simple : le joueur crée ses propres engins spatiaux et se lance à la découverte de tout un système solaire. Notez que les astronautes ressemblent à s'y méprendre à des lapins crétins en scaphandre ayant la nausée. De quoi s'offrir une bonne tranche de rigolade en téléchargeant la démo jouable en suivant ce lien pour seulement 104Mo. On ignore quand le jeu doit sortir mais le site officiel vous tend les bras pour vous livrer plus de détails et même des vidéos.

Du côté des point & click en devenir nous avons deux démos jouables à vous proposer. La première concerne Chaos on Deponia, second opus de la série, qui met en scène Rufus, un héros bourru et antipathique. Une fois encore, notre homme va devoir faire des pieds et des mains pour sauver son monde de la perdition. La démo vous attend juste ici. Il s'agit d'une version allemande.

Enfin, c'est un certain Jack Keane 2 qui nous livre une version d'essai gratuite de ses prochaines aventures. L'action se déroule en 1899 dans un Shangaï impitoyable. A tel point que notre héros va se retrouver en prison pour une durée indéterminée. Téléchargez cette démo jouable à cette adresse. Là encore, la démo est localisée uniquement en allemand.

Notez que Chaos of Deponia et Jack Keane 2 devraient sortir à l'horizon 2013, exclusivement sur PC.

Sony offre 2 Minis sur Facebook

Bonne nouvelle pour les amateurs des consoles Sony. Le PlayStation Access vous permet d'obtenir gratuitement deux Minis. Pour se faire, rien de plus simple. Il suffit de se rendre sur la page Facebook du PlayStation Access et de la "liker".

Ainsi vous obtiendrez un code pour débloquer les jeux Jewel Keepers : Easter Island et Urbanix. Le premier est un puzzle-game classique dans lequel il faut aligner des joyaux de même couleur. Et le second s'inspire du jeu d'arcade Qix. Cela consiste à encercler des zones pour les valider sans se faire toucher par les ennemis. Ces minis sont jouables sur PSP, PS Vita et PlayStation 3.


· Accéder au PlayStation Access

Un trailer live pour PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale

Voici maintenant quelques semaines que PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale nous tease à grands coups d'extraits de vidéo. Aujourd'hui, c'est un long trailer qui nous est dévoilé, dans lequel est mélangé acteurs et personnages virtuels.



Comme vous pouvez le constater, Nathan Drake, Cole, Kratos et même Sackboy ont décidé de se mettre copieusement sur la tronche. Certains attendait toutefois un peu plus de ce teasing qui, au final, est plus là pour faire du fan service que pour nous vendre du rêve. Le jeu de baston devrait pointer le bout de son nez dans nos contrées le 21 novembre prochain sur PS3 et PS Vita.

· Forum PlayStation All-Stars : Battle Royale

2012-12-21-110

[Rumour] GeForce GTS 450 in September; clock speeds revealed

Turkish website Donanimhaber report that NVIDIA's next release, GeForce GTS 450, will now release on September 13th, pushed back two weeks from initial expectations of late-August. In addition, the early clock speed estimates run at 789 MHz core, 3760 MHz for 1GB GDDR5 memory over a 128-bit memory bus.

Further information regarding functional units remains unclear. Most rumours suggest between 192 and 256 SP. At 789 MHz, it will also be the highest clocked GeForce card ever, surpassing the card it is replacing, the GTS 250 (which itself is a rebranded 9800 GTX+), finally marking the end of the highly successful G80 line of GPUs first introduced nearly four years ago!

Interestingly, the recently leaked claimed PCB designs suggest a 192-bit memory interface. The GTS 450's competitor, the HD 5770, runs 4800 MHz memory over 128-bit, and is thought to be short on memory bandwidth itself. It would thus make sense for NVIDIA to offer a 192-bit bus. That said, the GTX 460 seems to do well against the HD 5830, despite lesser memory bandwidth. It is also possible they there will be two GF106 variants - one with 192-bit, the other with 128-bit, similar to the GF104 series.

The GTS 450 releases exactly 11 months after HD 5770's release (13th October 2009). With a Southern Islands derivative expected some time in Q4 2010, NVIDIA simply cannot afford any more details for a card that is already almost one generation late.

Reference: Donanimhaber

2012-12-21-441

Activision announces release dates for last two content packs for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Activision has announced the release dates for the final two content packs for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, adding new modes, maps and missions to the first-person shooter.

Collection #3: Chaos Pack will launch on 9 August, introducing players to the Special Ops Chaos Mode, three new Face Off maps (Vortex, U-Turn and Intersection), and four new Special Ops missions (Vertigo, Arctic Recon, Light Em Up and Special Delivery). The new gameplay mode pits gamers against unending waves of enemies, helped by power-ups across maps like Resistance, Village, Underground and Dome.Collection #4: Final Assault will launch on 6 September, adding five new multiplayer maps. The Gulch map involves a mining town, the Boardwalk map will feature beach combat on the Jersey Shore, the Offshore and Decommission maps will set players up on oilrigs and ocean liners, and the Parish map will take place in the French Quarter of New Orleans.This will be the “final act” and is aimed at hardcore gamers. It also brings the total DLC updates to 29 for the game, which launched in late 2011, making up a sizeable addition to the core title in less than one year.The updates will be available initially on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 1,200 Microsoft Points or $14.99. They will then be released on other platforms soon afterwards.

2012-12-21-182

[Updated] Nvidia Responds to Intel Lawsuit - Right to Innovate for Consumers

NVIDIA has responded to a court filing on Monday in which Intelalleged that the 4-year-old chipset license agreement between the twocompanies does not extend to Intel’s future generation CPUarchitectures with “integrated” memory controllers, such as Nehalem.

Nvidia's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang reiterated thatthey are confidentthatthe license, as negotiated, applies andthat this is clearly an"attempt to stifle innovation to protect a decaying CPU business".

Nvidia Press Release :

SANTA CLARA, CA. – FEBRUARY 18, 2009 – NVIDIA Corporation today responded to a Monday court filing (Court of Chancery in the State of Delaware) in which Intel alleged that the four-year-old chipset license agreement the companies signed does not extend to Intel’s future generation CPUs with “integrated” memory controllers, such as Nehalem. The filing does not impact NVIDIA chipsets that are currently being shipped.

“We are confident that our license, as negotiated, applies,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA. “At the heart of this issue is that the CPU has run its course and the soul of the PC is shifting quickly to the GPU. This is clearly an attempt to stifle innovation to protect a decaying CPU business.”

NVIDIA entered into the agreement in 2004 in order to bring platform innovations to Intel CPU based systems. In return, Intel took a license to NVIDIA’s rich portfolio of 3D, GPU, and other computing patents.

Since signing the agreement, NVIDIA has offered innovations such as SLI®, Hybrid power, and CUDA™ parallel processing. ION™, the most recent innovation, integrates a powerful NVIDIA GPU, north bridge and south bridge into one compact die. When combined with a CPU, ION enables a two-chip PC architecture for Intel processors two years ahead of Intel’s own solution. In addition, the ION platform offers 10x the performance of Intel’s current three chip design.1

The industry and consumers now count on innovations from NVIDIA. Microsoft recently endorsed ION because it offers consumers the first truly affordable premium Windows experience. Late last year Apple selected NVIDIA’s chipset for its entire new line of notebooks including the MacBook Classic, MacBook Air, MacBook and MacBook Pro. Today, companies like Acer, Alienware, Asus, Dell, Falcon Northwest, Fujitsu, Gigabyte, HP, Lenovo, MSI, NEC, and Toshiba all ship exciting innovations created by NVIDIA as a result of its agreement with Intel.

Huang said that, given the broad and growing adoption of NVIDIA’s platform innovations, it is not surprising that Intel is now initiating a dispute over a contract signed four years ago. Innovations like ION, SLI, Hybrid power, and CUDA threaten Intel’s ability to control the PC platform.

NVIDIA has been attempting to resolve the disagreement with Intel in a fair and reasonable manner for over a year. NVIDIA’s chipsets for Intel’s current CPU bus interface are not affected by the dispute.

Update (19th Feb): The News has managed to scan a copy of the court filing.

Update 2 (19th Feb): This is starting to look like a reenactment of the saga betweenIntel and VIA back in 2001, when Intel tried to block VIA from usingthe Pentium 4 FSB on its chipsets. As a result of that lawsuit, manyboard makers became reluctantto make motherboards based on VIAchipsets, afraid of gettinginvolved in the lawsuit.

This made us wonder if the same thing was going to happen again.Most motherboard manufacturers have replied that they are awaitingfurther instructions from both sides. One manufacturer cited poorsupport from Nvidia as a reason for such a potential action.

“fright night” (2011) has medium-sized fangs

I suppose it was inevitable, really. With the vampire craze in full swing thanks to TV shows like True Blood? and The Vampire Diaries, and with the damn-near-ubiquitous-at-this-point Twilight franchise ruling at the box office and still sitting somewhere near the top of the fiction bestseller lists, it was probably only a matter of time before the creatively-stagnant-powers-that-be in Hollywood turned their attention to a remake of one of the quirkiest, most downright fun vampire movies ever made, namely writer-director (and eventual Child’s Play creator) Todd Holland’s 1985 mini-masterpiece Fright Night.

Here’s the thing, though — any “reimagining” of Holland’s film was doomed to be subpar in comparison to its progenitor almost from the word go because a big part of the original Fright Night‘s charm is that it’s such a product of its time. It’s unpretentiously, unapologetically 80s all the way, not because it was trying to be or anything, but just because, hell, that’s when it was made and they didn’t have much budget to reach for anything greater than they were capable of. It’s from that brief-but-glorious time when Hollywood decided to try to blend equal parts teen horror and teen comedy and see what it could come up with — if there was money to be made halfway between Friday The 13th? and Porky’s, if you will.

The answer, ultimately, was “some, but not enough to keep it going,” but in both the sort and the long runs the fusion-formula gamble paid off , and continues to pay off, for us genre fans with classics like Holland’s film and Fred Decker’s superb Night Of The Creeps.

That, however, was then, and this, needless to say,? is now. And what has the now brought us?

Well, something of a “close-but-no-cigar,” I’m afraid.

Director Craig Gillespie (best known for the indie-hit Lars And The Real Girl) really does seem to have his heart in the right place here, and some of the “modernizing” touches, such as setting the story in a typically barren suburban Las Vegas cul-de-sac, work quite well (Vegas has a transient population and it’s not entirely out of place to see a house with blacked-out windows because so many people work night and need to sleep when it’s light out) — and some of the casting choices are damn-near brilliant, to be honest. Colin Farrell as vampire-next-door Jerry is out-of-this-world menacingly cool and oozes dangerous charisma throughout. When he’s hanging out just on the other side of the doorway of our ertswhile teen hero Charley (Anton Yelchin)’s house because he hasn’t been invited in, the tension’s palpable as he quite clearly is trying to ingratiate himself to the point where Charley tells him “hey, man, come on in” but is also trying to suss out whether our intrepid adolescent has figured out who and what he really is. It’s a highlight-reel moment in a (no shit here people) Oscar-worthy performance from Farrell.

And on the supporting actor front — recasting Roddy MacDowall’s legendary Peter Vincent character as a Criss Angel Mindfreak-type Vegas performer rather than a washed-up TV horror host is another stroke of pure genius, as was casting Doctor Who? alum David Tennant in the role. Essentially he’s just playing the Tenth Doctor with a substance abuse problem (and, it’s strongly hinted, the sexual dysfunction issues that often go along with that), but it works and it’s a hell of a lot fun.

It’s in the rest of the casting, though, that the big cracks in this flick begin to show. First off, Anton Yelchin is just a straight-up bore as Charley, and nowhere near as interesting, or even mildly sympathetic, as a lead needs to be. He just never gives you much of any reason to give a shit whether or not he, and by extension through him everyone he loves, gets killed. So that’s a bit of a bummer. He’s not even so much actively bad as he is just crushingly bland. And the same can be aid for his supposedly too-hot-for-him, entirely-out-of-his-league girlfriend, Amy, played by Imogen Poots (today’s winner of the “celebrity-names-that-are-too-fucking-clever-by-half award, runner-up being Miranda July), who (sorry to be superficial, but) isn’t all that outrageously hot and more importantly isn’t all that good an actress. And finally, we’ve got Toni Collette slumming is as Charley’s mom (quite an international cast here, by the way — Collette’s Australian, Yelchin’s Russian, Tennant and Poots are British, and Farrell’s Irish), who’s serviceable enough, but this role is too blase for an actress of consequence like her to be messing with.

And lastly on the poor casting and performances front, and this one really hurts — Christopher Mintz-Plasee, McLovin himself, absolutely sucks as the 2001 version of Evil Ed. Granted, the script absolutely wrecks the character from the outset, turning a likable geek from the original into an asshole geek in this one, but even still, Mintz-Plasse is so unconvincing as a prick-ish nerd, and even more unconvincing one’s he’s “turned” by Jerry, that even a better-written character wouldn’t have stood a chance.

The other big flaw with this film is the script itself. the pacing just seems off from the start and when the film’s earlier attempts at blending some comedy into the mix, as the original did so effortlessly, are abandoned, we end up with a flick that takes itself way too seriously when at the outset it seemed like it wanted to plant its tongue firmly in its cheek. The massive, cop-out, deus ex machina-type plot device that resolves everything at the conclusion is impossibly lame, too, and probably made David Tennant feel right at home because it’s just the sort of mega-big, but mega-cheap-and-obvious ending that Russell T. Davies used to wrap up every season of Doctor Who with.

All that being said, there’s slightly more good than bad here on the whole, especially if you see it in 3-D (and yes, this was actually shot in 3-D rather than having it added in post-production, so there are some really cool, old-school 3-D style moments), and hey, you even get a cameo by the original Jerry himself, Chris Sarandon, so all is not lost by any means. But it sure comes close. Gillespie and crew seem to either lose sight of, or change their minds about, exactly what type of film they’re making here at right about the halfway mark, and make the rather perplexing choice to bury the fun under the grim way past the point where they ever had much chance of actually scaring us very much,? and the result is a movie that tries to be more than it has any business being, and consequently, and ironically, ends up being so much less. in short, it’s tough to go for pure thrills, chills, and gore when you start off letting us know we needn’t take anything here too seriously. Either stick with trying to blend horror and comedy from start to finish, as the original did so successfully, or just go with one or the other. And hey, if you ‘re absolutely determined to convince us that suddenly,out of nowhere, this now-dark-and-humorless world has consequences, don’t insult our intelligence by telegraphing an obviously consequence-free ending? (remember that deus ex machina I mentioned a second ago?) while there’s still a good half hour left to go.

Don’t get me wrong — as remakes go, this could have been a lot worse (most are), but to see a movie that really does seem to get where it’s coming and have an equally solid idea of where it’s going suddenly become so thoroughly and completely lost thanks to some ill-advised, and out-of-the-blue, tonal shifts just when it seemed to be in a position to really hit its stride is a real head-scratcher. Gillespie just about had a film here that you could happily compare to its predecessor, as with Let Me In/Let the Right One In (just for the sake of a recent comparison in the vampire genre), but the whole thing really loses it focus, and its heart, when it decides to ditch the fun and start taking itself seriously for no discernible reason whatsoever.? Some of the actors, most notably Farrell, who’s just plain dynamite here, really deserve better than to have their self-assured, supremely confident work lost inside a movie that? can’t quite decide what it wants to be.

the films of frank henenlotter frankenhooker

We’ll conclude our little look back at the madcap career of semi-legendary director Frank Henenlotter with his 1990 trash masterpiece, “Frankenhooker.” I won’t beat around the bush, this is my favorite of Henenlotter’s films, and is a bona fide cult classic completely deserving of its reputation.? Hysterically funny and just-as-hysterically gruesome, “Frankenhooker” packs more punch than any multimillion-dollar Hollywood blockbuster and delivers the gore-soaked goods on a budget that directors like Zack Snyder and George Lucas probably blow on lunch.

Once again filmed in the environs of New Jersey and, most notably, New York’s former scuzzy underside in and around Times Square (and yes, there are scenes set in a sleazy 42nd Street flophouse, in case you were wondering), “Frankenhooker” is the story of aspiring mad scientist and med-school reject Jeffrey (played by James Lorinz of “Street Trash”), who builds his future father-in-law an automatic lawnmower as a birthday gift, only to have the half-assed gizmo shred his fiancee, Elizabeth (former Penthouse Pet Patty Mullen) to pieces when it goes haywire at said future father-in-law’s birthday party. Jeffrey isn’t one to meekly accept tragedy when science can fix things, though, and he absconds with her decapitated head and concocts a truly warped plan to bring the love of his life back from the grave.

On a “shopping trip” to 42nd street in an attempt to find the perfect body to attach Elizabeth’s now-cryogenically-frozen head to, Jeffrey decides his best course of action is to get as many working girls as possible assembled at one time in order to select the perfect unwitting donor for his scheme.? He hires “lead hooker” Honey (former Playboy Playmate Charlotte Helmkamp) to get a bevy of her fellow hookers together so he can literally “play doctor” with all of them, but he hits upon a problem—after taking copious measurements of all the girls, he can’t find just one perfect “specimen” to stick his former fiancee’s head on. Fortunately for Jeffrey, he doesn’t need to pick just one, as the ladies of the evening stumble upon the batch of “super crack” he has cooked up as a little side experiment and soon are getting higher than heck on Jeffrey’s killer (literally) rock. The result? The picture below says it all, I think—

That’s right, the hookers literally explode all over the room, leaving Jeffrey no end of body parts from which to select as he stitches together a new “home” for Elizabeth’s head.? Soon, with the aid of a makeshift operating theater in his mother’s garage and convenient lightning storm, Jeffrey has brought his lady-love back, with her head attached to a body assembled from exploded prostitute-parts—she’s not the same, though—she has purple hair (and nipples), shambles around like a heavy-footed beast, and says things like “Lookin’ for some action?,” “Want a date?,” and “Got any money?” Yes, homemade surgery combined with the wildly unpredictable forces of electricity have brought Elizabeth back from the grave, and turned her into—Frankenhooker!

With a wildly outlandish premise, a truly fantastic comedic performance from Ms. Mullen in the title role, strong supporting performances (especially from Ms. Helmkamp—who knew so many former centerfold models could actually act?), wonderful “old-school” effects, authentically sleazy New York locations, and a tongue-rammed-tightly-into-cheek overall tone, “Frankenhooker” is an absolute gem of a flick, as no less authorities than Bill Murray and Joe Bob Briggs have attested to.

Finally released on DVD by Unearthed Films in 2005 in a package crammed with great extras, “Frankenhooker” is an absolutely essential addition to any B-film junkie’s video library. Besides a terrifically clean 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, the DVD includes a terrifically insightful commentary from Henenlotter and makeup/effects man Gabe Bartalos, an extensive interview with star Patty Mullen, a great set of production still photos, a featurette on the movie’s make up effects, the original theatrical trailer, and lots more goodies to keep the demented “Frankenhooker” fans out there happy.

This movie has aged especially well given the “clean-up job” Rudy Giuliani did to 42nd Street, and so unwittingly provides a slice of nostalgia for a bygone era on top of all its other sick attributes. A true one-of-a-kind movie watching experience, “Frankenhooker” marks the apex of Frank Henenlotter’s uniquely twisted filmic sensibility? and will leave you laughing out loud all the way through while reaching for the bark bag at the same time. Not to be missed under any circumstances!

grindhouse classics “scream” (1981)

Let’s get one thing clear right off the bat : this movie has nothing whatsoever to do with Wes Craven’s postmodern revisionist slasher series that took the cinematic world by storm (for reasons your host still can’t quite fathom) in the late 90s/early 2000s. They share a title, but that’s it.

In point of fact,? writer-director Byron Quisenberry’s 1981 feature debut (he would go on to helm exactly one other film, something called Big Chuck, Little Chuck in 2004), Scream, also released under the equally nonchalant title of The Outing, bears little resemblance to any slasher before or since.

We open with a long, slow dolly crawl across a mantle in some unknown house in some unknown place. We see a series of dolls, some in various states of decapitation, a clock chimes, and we see an oil painting of a ship at sail on a stormy sea that’s dated 1891. We also get some voice-over from some unseen and unknown narrator about a sea captain, and the (sort of) cruel fate he suffered at the hands of? the”company men” who ran the ships. Then the clock we hear chiming is shown just as it strikes midnight, one of the dolls moves its eyes, and we’re gone from wherever it was we were.

Next thing you know, we’re observing a group of folks (friends? business associates? it’s never really made clear — some appear to know each other, some are even related, as is the case with a teenage girl and her grandfather, but most don’t seem to know each other at all, so I guess it’s just one of those random “adventure tour” groups) on a rafting trip in what we’re later told is Texas (even though the film itself was shot on the old backlot at Paramount studios in Hollywood that they used for their westerns).? Tired from a long day, the group pulls in to shore on the lake/river/whatever and decides to find a place to camp for the night.

Walking just a bit inland, they find an old abandoned ghost town and decide, as you an I would I’m sure if we found a ghost town, that this looks like a pretty good place to spend the night. The two tour guides and their charges (one of whom is portrayed by John Wayne’s son, Ethan — the only other actors you might recognize are the aforementioned kindly grandfather, who appeared as the ancient bellhop on Twin Peaks that found agent Cooper lying on the floor and asked him what he was doing down there before taking forever to get him a telephone, and one-time John Ford regular Woody Strode, who isn’t part of the tour group but we’ll get to later) set to work rustling up some grub, drinking a few beers, fixing coffee, and getting their sleeping bags spread out on the floor of what appears to have one been a saloon.

Then the killings start. I guess. It’s hard to say for sure who’s doing the killing, although the rather haphazard script tries to play the traditional “whodunnit?” angle of making you wonder which member of the group is killing off the others.

Now, in their defense, Quisenberry and his cohorts weren’t filmmakers per se — they were stuntmen, who hustled up a little bit of a budget and were given free use of the old Paramount backlot to see if they could come up with a quickie slasher flick to make a few bucks since the early 80s slasher craze was in full boom at the time. Every major distributor, including Paramount itself, took a pass on the finished product when they saw it, but they managed to secure some limited fly-by-night independent distribution anyway, which is a testament to their perseverance.

But not to their skill. Scream plays out like exactly what it is — a low-budgeter made by some guys who had no clue what the fuck they were doing. But, again, to give credit where it’s due — by dint of sheer ineptitude and inexperience, they ended up coming up with a movie that, while in no way especially good, is certainly different enough from other similar fare to maintain interest throughout, even though, in fairness, it’s often crushingly,? even mind-numbingly, dull.

There’s a lot of sitting around and doing nothing on display here. There are pointless arguments with incredibly hokey dialogue. There is precious little by way of actual suspense. No compelling reason to actually give a shit about any of these characters is ever offered. In some cases, we never even learn their names.

In short, when they start dying, you really can’t be bothered to care. And it’s not only the blandness and sub-one-dimensionality of their portrayals that “achieves” this result — the nature of how they meet their ends contributes to this lethargy, as well.

More often than not, we see a weapon or other implement hanging on a wall, we see an unseen hand begin to remove it, and then we see a dead body — that’s it. The bloody weapon might get hung back up. We might see some smoke in the darkness. We might see a long-distance shot of the corpse. And then again, we might not see any of that. One thing we definitely don’t see much of, though, is the person actually getting killed. There’s next to no gore on display here, just as there’s no T&A to make things at least dimly interesting, either.

In short, we’ve got a near-bloodless, near tit-less, near ass-less slasher flick that nonetheless racks up a semi-respectable (seven by my count, but the ambiguous nature of the ending leaves open the possibility of more) body count.

As for exposition, there’s precious little of that, as well. The mysterious nature of the weapons being removed and almost floating toward their targets leaves open the possibility of a supernatural explanation for the murderous goings-on, but only when a mysterious rider (played by Western sorta-legend Woody Strode) comes into the ghost town on his horse with a Rottweiler a few steps ahead of him in the mist, shows the group one of their number that had gone out to find help but ended up dead (his covered body is slung over a second horse),? summarily dismounts, goes into the saloon, sits down, and lights up his pipe do we get the closest thing we’re ever going to get to an explanation here.

“Me and the captain, we came here when they gave him nary another ship. They were cruel men, them that run the ships. Company men.”

So, he was the narrator we heard at the beginning. Him and the captain came here (to the middle of Texas?) when the captain got put out to pasture. Company men are bad news. And that’s all we find out before he rides out again.

More people get killed in equally ineptly-staged ways. More scenes play out in such near-total darkness that it’s impossible to tell what the hell is going on, not that it really matters because you won’t care anyway. And then we get a kinda-bloody sickle sitting on the saloon floor and it’s never made clear if everybody’s dead at this point or what. But things are definitely over. How do we know this?

Because next thing you know, we’re back in the house from the beginning, and back at the mantle, and “treated” to a long, slow crawl that shows the decapitated dolls, the chiming clock (it’s midnight again) and a new painting, this time a portrait of the unnamed Captain, dated 1891. And once again we hear the flat, but admittedly smooth, monotone of Woody Strode telling us:

“Me and the captain, we came here when they gave him nary another ship. They were cruel men, them that ran the ships. Company men.”

I just don’t know, friends. I guess the murderous spirit of? “the Captain” haunts the ghost town he came to when the company men clipped his sea legs and if people show up there, he kills them. But it sure could have been a lot more, well — clear, I guess. Especially for the victims. Call me old-fashioned, but if you’re gonna get killed, I’d like to know at least who is doing it, if not why.

Scream had a long, torturous path to its recent DVD release. Originally announced by Code Red, who assembled the extras, it was canceled due to low pre-orders, but appeared about a year later as a joint release from Code Red and Media Blasters, under their Shriek Show label. The print has some flaws, explained by the fact that it was shot in 16mm but blown up to 35mm for theatrical release, so there’s some understandable graininess to the image throughout. The digitally remastered anamorphic transfer does look as good as it probably can, though, all things considered. The sound is remastered mono is suitably crisp and clear. As far as extras go, there’s a theatrical trailer, a TV spot, a selection of other Media Blasters trailers, and then one giant missed opportunity in the form of the feature commentary.

Scream is a movie that has perplexed horror fans for years, and exerted a kind of strange allure over those who actually knew about it. Simply put, people want to know more — specifically, what the hell were these guys thinking? Unfortunately, in the commentary, writer-director Quisenberry proves to be somewhat untalkative, with Bill Olsen of Code Red and moderator Marc Edward Hueck literally having to pull information out of the guy. The best explanation we ever get for why the killings are so bizarrely staged is “we were going for a European thing,” a pretty unsatisfactory fallback explanation that Quisenberry resorts to on numerous occasions. When the dead air gets to be too much, Olsen and Hueck literally change the subject to completely unrelated matters just to get this guy to actually talk about anything. When the subject comes back to the movie itself, though, Quisenberry obviously can’t remember that much about what they did or why they did it and can’t really be bothered to have his memory jogged too often. So anyone watching the commentary hoping for some concrete answers is going to come away understandably disappointed.

But maybe it’s for the best, since the most obvious explanation, “we had no idea what we were doing,” just isn’t going to cut it for many hardcore horror aficionados at this point even though it’s probably the God’s-honest truth.

I can only recommend Scream for true slasher junkies and those who seek out cinematic curiosities for their own sake. It plays by its own set of rules and it’s quite clear those rules are being made up as they go along. There’s next to no onscreen bloodletting, there’s no nudity, there’s barely any foul language, there’s no “final girl” — the list of standard slasher ingredients that it just outright ignores is endless. Quisenberry makes clear that they weren’t actually trying to make anything here but a standard horror flick with a little bit of a supposedly “European” feel to it. What they ended up with is something entirely different, and entirely unlike anything else you’ll ever see.

It’s just that most people really won’t want to see it.