Scratches: Director's Cut (Spoilers)

Touching upon the game's music and sound.

 
Halloween this year has been an absolute bomb in regard to the media. In terms of films, TV and games getting their shit in gear i don't recall ever feeling less Halloweeny. The Box Office has a single new horror film on offer, freeview TV has nothing but Halloween 2 & 3 playing... on BBC London... and Xbox Arcade and PSN have slashed prices on a collection of possibly the least scariest games ever made. So my interest was waning. But like i do every week i checked out the Steam store... And aside from mini games titled 'Zombie Vs Other Flavour of The Month' the pickings were almost all gold... or silver... a few bronzes at a push... but certainly not material to be scoffed at. Painkiller series, Penumbra collection, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, The Bioshock Series, The STALKER collection... Not to mention gaming soundtrack royalty, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. It's safe to say that Valve actually remembered Halloween was horror related and didn't toss out a bunch of games that feature you controlling a deformed ten year old throwing pumpkins at various malformations of horror icons and hoping they don't reach your tree house or something like that. I've not seen a game do that, but i can assure you there are at least five.

So what did i buy from the Steam store that's made me come out of hibernation and start up the sound blog again? Well. I decided to break my own rules and buy an adventure game... you know, the point and click kind pioneered by the Myst series. The kind that are in fact so retro and dated in their approach to design that you can physically hear the creaking as it loads. And the reason i have a rule against them is that they demand such patience and obscure logic that i get stuck within 10 minutes. But no, i persevered and found it the most rewarding gaming experience of the year.

A typically cliched manor house?

From the offset i thought 'here we go again.' But there's some genuinely great moments in this game, some terrifying, some laughable and some downright depressing. Trust me, i write doom metal... i don't toss the 'D' word around lightly. It wasn't until i ascended the creaking stairs in this old house and saw a portrait of Great Cthulhu on the wall, alongside some of history's most horrific oil paintings that i realised what kind've pedigree this game was taking from. All the while the house is silently creaking in the background, outside i can hear the wind faintly drumming against the walls. It's not scary, it's just fairly unnerving. As you progress through the house, collecting various items, unlocking stuff, sticking your head in places you probably shouldn't (The fridge, the oven, the fuse box, the furnace, the toilet), you become increasingly aware that the house has a worrying history. Please don't read on if you've an interest in playing it through.

Through very slow detective work, you uncover the madness that took over the former occupants... through the old maid's midnight wanderings with a camera, to frenzied journals and sifting through newspapers in the old attic. You uncover truths at a snails pace - but never does it daudle on the spot. The feeling of strange dread as you enter the African Artifact Gallery, or the knot that slowly forms in your stomach when you find building plans for the house in the partly renovated attic - only to notice there's a room next to your bed room that doesn't seem to have a door... But is on the plans regardless. During the night i hear the scratches and talking from the gallery room, that have been mentioned in the journals of Mr. Blackwood, the previous owner. A guy on the other end of the phone keeps telling me it's nothing to worry about. The man who was supposed to fix the house's electricity has failed to arrive again - and this is where the game goes to great lengths to make you feel totally isolated, letters that are delivered to the manor are left by the gate, the phone's ringing is cold and hollow when heard throughout the house and the simple inability to leave is something rarely found in games. Eventually i find a lantern and some matches, which allow me to explore the house on the second night. I venture down into the basement, using a stethoscope i deduced the scratching sound was coming from down there. I climb into the building's inactive furnace (i mentioned the weird logic of these things) and crawled to the end of the piping. As my lantern slowly sputtered out i saw a human shadow move across the opening. At this point i'm starting to think the old mansion owner, who supposedly murdered his wife is still here and doing something down there.

Crawling through the furnace to witness the lurking shadow at the end is one of the greatest scares i've had in my adult gaming life.

I manage to reach the sealed room upstairs by using the window. It's a perfectly preserved nursery room with the door bricked up. There's letter blocks on the floor, spelling 'Robin.' At this point some augmented 4th have kicked in on the piano score and i'm already clambering back out the window, muttering 'Fuuuck thisssss!' I've also come across a newspaper article about the death of the family's new born son and a receipt from the local butchers for off-cuts. I also managed to locate the posessed mask that the raving journals refer to, kept hidden behind a display case in a small store room. That night i hear the scratching and talking again. I go to check on the mask, to discover it isn't there... when i turn to leave the storage room, there's a man wearing the mask, staring at me through the crack in the door. Bricks were well and truly shat, here. On the third day, things start getting wrapped up and making sense. I've found the family crypt, several bodies are missing, including the child's. I've found the birth certificate. I've found a photo the maid took of Mr. Blackwood, burying Mrs. Blackwood. Along with this i'm reading up on Blackwood's notes and those of his psychiatrist, who has something to do with the whole afair - from the notes i've worked a way to destroy the cursed mask! I do this, in probably the most anticlimatic sequence of events possible. Which only reinforces my later theory. With the curse lifted, The fate of Mrs. Blackwood established and a pressing need to leave the estate, it's time to go into the secret coal cellar and tell Mr. Blackwood what an utter twat he is.

Only when i get down there i find a heavy, bolted prison door. The one i could see through when i was in the furnace. I find a torn teddy bear on the floor, a room that reeks of urine and meat off-cuts that have been shoved through the cellar-window. I peer into the darkest corner... Two eyes open and stare at me. I'm chased out of the room by something genuinely horrifying and forget to lock the door behind me.

A suitably weird attic. It's the traces of recent movement and current use that make this room unsettling. You know you aren't the only one to have been up here recently.

The tribal connections and the cursed mask were red herrings, absolutely. From all the evidence collected throughout the game - the child was born with defects, courtesy of Mrs. Blackwood taking too much thalidomide during pregnancy. He was locked in the coal cellar and fed off-cuts from the butcher. Mr. Blackwood had blamed it on the cursed mask - and the game convinces you of this for the first two thirds. The child eventually kills Mrs. Blackwood, and the maid photographs her being buried after what we assume is murder. Mr. Blackwood dies of stress two years later (so the clippings say.) So with what began as a supernatural story is cleverly unwound to be a drama, which shows the destruction of a family. By the end i was pretty heartbroken for them. The final ending scene reveals what the scratches were. Young Robin, locked in the cellar. Each night he was slowly scratching through the brick and dirt, trying to get out. For what must have been a decade or more.

It's safe for me to say i've not experienced anything quite like it. Sure i've seen films do this kind've thing - but it's always handled with no sentimentality or any subtlety. The act of slowly uncovering the mystery without any other characters being present is a testament to the medium and the writing behind it. I genuinely felt pity as i found Mrs. Blackwood's shallow grave and witnessing Robin's shambling movements in the closing minutes of the game.

I should probably get onto the sound of the game... I always go way off the mark.

Scratches' soundtrack (and sound design) is done by a guy going under the name Cellar of Rats. From what i can find on him he's exclusively an adventure game composer. What struck me about the music was its neutrality and minimalism. It's not particularly effective until you make your 15th trip through the hall, dragging a muddy shovel or being blocked by everyone you attempt to call for assistance or information. The music pairs up with the atmosphere and together they slowly become opressive and weighty. Like i said earlier on, there's a very 'oh here we go again' problem at the start of the story, and the music doesn't help - lonely cellos that seem to know only the darkest, saddest parts of baroque-era requiems and pianos that linger between dorian, minor and augmented. It always sounds like Jazz when i do it, so respect to Cellar of Rats for managing this. The music overall suffers from Mark Snow/X-Files/Millennium syndrome, in that there's virtually no dynamics within each track. But almost by accident it relies heavily on this and it pays off. Once the music finally subsides you're left with nothing but the sound of the wind outside, the cold ticking of a grandfather clock and the sounds of your own movement. The stillness of the place, i think, is largely created by the almost drone-like music and the vast gulfs of silence it leaves behind it. The music cues generally come and go as they please, ocassionally chiming in when you discover places for the first time or seemingly creeping in to accentuate how you're feeling.

Despite the music playing such a huge part in Scratches, i only found it overwhelming and overly noticeable twice. Both times i felt it was entirely appropriate though. Firstly during the frightening scene in The Furnace (track is titled 'The Lurker') where a brass section came out of nowhere, playing in 5ths and 6ths. Somehow i got confused and got stuck in the furnace with that music grinding out for a good 30-40 seconds, horrible feeling. The next ocassion was on day two when a storm was raging outside, the phone was ringing... and i realised i was going to be alone for another day. The cellos creeped in again and i just felt like i was part of the story, trapped in the setting. The minimalist approach i was talking about; there's really only music and diagetic sound. There's no drones or sweeps, no hits or rises. It's all done with the music and real-world sound effects. This somehow increases that feeling of isolation. There's very little in between, which takes you in extremes of both sound and silence.

My primary gripe with Cellar of Rat's work here is that the sound effects do not sit in the environment particularly well. I understand that most modern games have some degree of evironmental acoustics simulation built in, which saves the game designers having to put different footsteps in for each individual room or space. The Scratches team obviously don't have that are their disposal and have had to reach a comprimise. As a result of this, There seem to only be a few different footstep samples, depending on stone, wood or carpet surfaces. And these never quite get the vibe of the space they occupy. The same can be said for doors opening and closing. The sounds feel very restrained and very muted. Perhaps this is deliberate - but i can't see why when things like the clock and telephone are designed to be so cold and cavernous. To some it may add to that unsettling atmosphere, to me it just felt a little careless.

Your 'charming' room is beset with a miserable view, grim wallpaper and angry portraits. You constantly feel you are under the gaze of something old and unfriendly.

The dialogue is also very hit and miss. The game is set in England, with a main character from Providence (little nod to Lovecraft there) who can't seem to make his mind up. I think it's part of the character, but it just sounds forced. Jerry is the most consistent character, always sounding distant through the telephone and maintaining his accent. All of the acting feels a little too posh and it kind've adds a 'twee' icing to the game that it could definately do without. Had they used actors with natural accents i think the game's presentation would be improved. Dialogue tends to be mixed fairly well... aside from the retired policeman i could barely hear over the music "I'll have to call you back, mate - i cant hear you." The loose end is, again, your main character. He sounds like a haunted grandfather clock, telling ghost stories with a pillow over his face. He's so warm and fluffy i almost wanted to hug my monitor. And he only really speaks by the telephone, in the hallway - so a little ceramic chill to his voice would've been nice.


Other than these petty gripes i can barely fault Scratches for its inginuity using a very old medium. I'm going to take a lot of things away from this game. Namely it's story and harrowing conclusion. The way it paced itself is something i'm not going to forget, i'll be adding it to my own writing. The music and sound i'll keep in reference, but music-wise it's very hard to adapt something that sounds like this into anything else. It has such an obvious macabre about it that suits the scenario so well - and put anywhere else would feel hackneyed and cheap. Here is where it belongs. I won't soon forget!

Condemned

Those of you who know me, or at least know me well enough - know that when i'm downtrodden or sad or disenchanted with anything fairly serious i like to wallow in it. Nothing severe - i don't recycle my own excrement or burn eyeholes in photographs with cigarettes - i go quiet, off my food, sleep a lot and dig out my MillenniuM Box sets. Nothing new this time round, apart from i watched all three seasons of MillenniuM about three months ago. So i'm not so eager to dive into The Big Yellow House just yet. Whilst browsing my shelves i came across this:

Condemned: Criminal Origins

This is about as close to ripping something off as a video game can get. It reeks of Se7en, from the opening titles to the opening section of the game - with Frank Black (MillenniuM, X-Files) Themed premonitions that give you an incite into a serial killer's mind. I think i picked this up from GAME when i first got my xbox (2007), so already it was two years into the bargain bin. For the last four years it's been sat on my shelf - unplayed aside from the first level.

I think what put me off Condemned initially was that it wasn't scary. It was forboding, somber and nasty. Granted it had tension, and on occasion bricks were shat - but it was never scary. Let me give you a run down of video game horror in easy to follow pictures and captions:

Doom 3. Enemies are spaced out between lengths of corridor and the story is delivered via retrospective - audio logs and diaries etc. Games like this enjoy setting up a foundation for you to become comfortable - and then to take it away. This can be anything from taking your weapons or to adding monsters to previously safe areas. The horror generally stems from surprises and you overcoming the enemies' advantage it gained from the surprise. See also Aliens Vs. Predator, Prey, FEAR, Metro 2033.

Silent Hill. Enemies are infrequent and often challenging to deal with - either from their strengths or your weaknesses. Story is often delivered via Cutscenes which move the story through different chapters, all centered around a hub-location. Horror is a mixture of subversions - playing nightmares with the American Dream and Mid-west idealism, as well as hideous beauty and body horror. Enemies often don't CARE about you, which is one of the games defining high points. A lot of times enemies are walking around, raping each other, eating vomit or just screaming in agony. See also: STALKER, Amnesia: Dark Descent, Call of Cthulhu.

Gears of War. Yes, while billed as an action game, it makes genuine attempts are horror and is very comparable to the likes of Dead Space and Resistance. Enemies are frequent and obvious, exposition is delivered by men growling at each other between killing. Enemy is never really a threat. Your guns are huge.

So you get the idea - prizes for who guesses which is most popular. And the reason Condemned is now growing on me is because it comes close to types one and two, but at the same time never neatly sits into any of them. And it doesn't apologise for this. Ever.

At the core it's a first person shooter with some crime scene investigation and some fucking nasty domestic violence. You're Ethan Thomas, a detective on the trail of The Match Maker - a Kevin Spacey by way of Hugh Jackman serial killer - was that him... or was that The Torturer... Anyway... Things go bad, two FBI agents get shot and you're to blame. So far so yawn. The set up is very ho-hum. Within ten minutes you've lost your gun and maniacs are taking an interest in you - it is alluded to early on that these maniacs are under some sort of sonic manipulation or are the result of an accident. Which makes what follows even worse.

This guy was posing as a shop dummy only seconds before he came at me. (Bro)

I can use pipes, wrenches, hammers, axes, rebars, crowbars, curtain rails, signs and even bits of wood with nails in to absolutely fuck someone's day up. The most amazing part for me was when i hit a guy with a taser and then bashed him over the head with an iron bar. He dropped his weapon a metre or two away and i watched as he, dazed and confused, scuttled across the floor to retrieve it. To make sure he didn't get up again, fully armed i had to bash his head in with a locker door... Single encounters quickly turn into brutal fights for survival - and more often than not you come out very much worse for wear.

Say i've got a metal pipe, if i swing at my enemy he's going to feel it, but unless he drops his weapon he's capable of spinning around and hitting me in the face. There's a block mechanic but it's touch and go and frequently these bait and chase battles turn into outright facial obliteration. For every hit you land, you'll be made aware of how it feels. Each time you take a hit there's an appropriate impact noise depending on the weapon and force behind it. Your vision is smeared with blood and you even go a little off-axis. There's a painfully convincing scene where you fall, in first person, down an escalator and then land in the middle of a Subway Maniac fight. This goes on to more dilapidated locations - a department store playing creepy christmas music, worryingly abandoned subway stations and unfinished office buildings. The locations are fairly by the by, misery-injected haunted houses where all the spring-mounted cut outs also have nails and used syringes attached to them.

So let's talk about sound - really... i start off with that in mind and just go off on one. The sound's pretty special. Unfortunately i don't have my 5.1 Surround set up - which as most reviewers will tell you, is this game's most amazing aspect. Since you can see very little, and even then, only what your light is shining on sound is vital - and Monolith haven't played this down at all - shuffling feet, grunts, whispers - any sounds that these maniacs make when trying to flee or remain hidden from are pinpointable - even in stereo. If i hear a guy panting i can stop and work out of which of the eight pillars he's hiding behind. I've not seen anything to top that since. Although it may not sound like it, but this is also pretty impressive - FEAR and Doom3 had this right - objects that are knocked over by enemies (and are then entirely at the mercy of physics) MAKE A NOISE WHEN THEY LAND. Doesn't sound like much - but how many games can be listed that have done this convincingly? There's one scene in kind of an office lunch room where a maniac was running up behind me, and i only heard him because he knocked over a paint can and bumped into the microwave door - it's remarkable to think that Condemned's AI Bad Guys can make mistakes and interact with the environment as you do.

Listening to the soundtrack by itself now, it feels a little standard - and a little slapdash in places. I suppose the nature of the sound and music is edgy and agressive - people who listen to the Jaws theme for relaxation will probably enjoy it as a standalone element. Regardless of how enjoyable it is, by itself - it can't be denied that the game would be an utter failure without it. Especially the department store level - with that creepy rendition of 'Deck The Halls' performed on chimes and then played back using a rather out of place reverb - but not so much so the immersion is ruined. It's quite clever that the game focusses heavily on subjective sounds in its design - sounds that don't really exist but are added to give an emotion. The department store music is treated with a reverb that doesn't suit the environment, immediately creating a slightly warped and unsettled experience. Most of the time spent roaming is often very quiet - considering how many complex noises are swirling around in the mix it's quite surprising they managed to keep it so somber.

I recommend it, purely for the sound work alone. Keep your expectations otherwise simple. You can pick up a copy of Condemned for as little as £1... i bought the sequel for £2 yesterday. I'll leave you with this piece - a mix up of a lot of the different textures and the music from the department store.

Perfectly Dark Sounds

I took advantage of the Xbox Arcade sale this past friday and got myself, along with Magic: The Gathering, a copy of the remade Perfect Dark - originally for the N64 in 1999. Perfect Dark was originally made by RARE, creators of Banjo Kazooie, Goldeneye 64 and Conkers Bad Fur Day... It's safe to say that with franchises like that, RARE were kings of their day, and certainly kings of the N64 console. After the success of Goldeneye 64 (arguably one of the greatest shooters, and most certainly a genre defining moment) RARE moved onto Perfect Dark, a spiritual successor to Goldeneye - since they didn't own the rights to make a direct sequel - they did the next best thing.

The retexturing and lighting look great in the XBLA Version.

I'll be perfectly honest - i got Goldeneye for my n64 but that was it. Forsaken, Pokemon Snap and Podracer don't really count as games. I switched to Playstation pretty early on because it was sexier and more violent so by the time Dark came out i was pretty oblivious. But my friend had it, and i know all about how it was revolutionary for the time.You even NEEDED the N64 memory pack to make it work correctly, which doubled your 4mb of RAM to 8mb... Just listening to the polished music and sound effects you can tell why - RARE clearly didn't give a shit about technical limitations - they just wanted to make an amazing game.

So now it's 12 years on and this re-release of PD is on sale. I'd forgotten, i think, what 1999 looked like. If you've forgotten:

Alone in The Dark: New Nightmare also suffered from performance issues by hardware limitation. It wasn't until i got a PS3 i could see the cinematics and hear the music.

Final Fantasy 9 - perhaps the most accessible and polished of the series to date. A delight to play.

Resident Evil 3 - Graphically and musically it was as high concept as you could get. Shame a lot of the atmosphere had gone in place of heart attack triggering jumps.

And Perfect Dark was no exception. So i expected, from Xbox, a polished port, upscaled to HD - pretty much exactly how Deus Ex looks on a modern PC. But 4J Studios haven't ported it, so much as gutted the original program and replaced everything in the game with how RARE had intended it to be. The textures and lighting have been totally re-done - now characters look human, Jo Dark looks like a really filthy porn actress by way of Victoria Beckham and Carrington looks like a Rainy Day Theatre rendition of Winnie The Pooh. Puddles and shiney floors reflect the world around them and windows shatter into little triangles without any affect on frame rate - where other ports use emulation to run on modern hardware, this version of Dark has been re-done entirely for the xbox engine, and as such has no trouble running at 30fps without any hiccups.

Hard to argue, 4J studios have done as well as they could whilst sticking true to the source material.

Onto the sound side of things!

What i love about Dark's soundtrack and effects is that everything oozes quality. This is 1999, memory is an issue, consoles can ONLY READ WAV FORMAT and the finance for a video game's sound department is usually bugger all. The only reason a sound guy working on games back then had any incentive to put effort in was to hopefully move onto bigger and better things. To be massively blunt - console music prior to 2000 is often ignored in regard to quality and lasting appeal - it's phoned in, it's pretty shit. My only real memories of good console music were Tomb Raider III (which used a huge chunk of it's memory on the title music), Resident Evil and Silent Hill (these will have a specific article to themselves.)

To compare Dark to 99% of the market at the same time is just harsh, man. The three guys who worked in house at RARE also did music on the company's other franchises really went to town on this. While Goldeneye had some classic music, wonderfully dark and subtle textures layered over chilled bass grooves and trip hop percussion - it ultimately lacked any kind've warmth or relatable production. In other words the music was there but it didn't really strike the player with any use of dynamics... no bass punches or searing klaxxons. Dark truly shines in this department and although i have my niggles with the music... i can't fault it. It's actual music... Not just background noise.

The opening theme is droning, moody and dark. There's percussion in there directly from Goldeneye. The main menu and first level themes are pure throwbacks from Goldeneye, the bass and the percussion respectively. But the synth textures and melodies are fresh and engaging. Unfortunately by level 4 i'm starting to get slightly irritated. The main problem with Dark (the original that is) is that it uses an old system of putting a single sound onto the game, and then having a series of signals PLAY the sound in real time. So instead of a hefty WAV file on the game, you're able to have an entire orchestra section occupy maybe 300k, and an arrangement file which merely tells the orchestra sample when to play and what notes to use - you see how it's more ergonomic? Since no single sample is confined to a single song. 

Because of this, Dark has A LOT of different songs, but those songs always draw from the same pool of samples, perhaps 5 melody sections, 5 chord sections and 10-15 individual drum sounds. You get the idea. And unfortunately a lot of this music is poorly cued... If anything it simply loops through the entire level. So for someone like me, who takes their time in a game - it's hypnotically punishing. However by the time we reach the infamous Chicago level, we're treated to this little beauty:

This is image-to-sound perfection at its best, and you can REALLY hear the quality of the samples they used. Along with this and a few other levels, Deep Sea and Airbase spring to mind, Dark is wonderfully characterised by it's music. While somtimes the synth melodies sound like ropey dungeon music from Mario Brothers there's always an edge to the music that stops it being comical. My favourite aspects to the music are the classic saw wave synths that often run underneath the melody, either playing broken chords or arpeggios just to keep the game's pace going. It's a cute little mixture and i firmly believe that without Perfect Dark's pushing, intricate and somewhat optimistic soundtrack, we wouldn't have Deux Ex's more mature, gloomy music or aesthetic. 

Techfags will be saying to themselves 'If it's a full conversion and not an emulation or port, how does the music work?' Well, simply put, as far as i can tell 4J Studios have taken the original software driven instruments from the 1999 game and loaded them into modern software and hardware. From that they've added a little polish and a few minor tweaks (Some mixing and panning work most notably). Music crossover is a little rough around the edges, betraying that 4J have hard-rendered the music as looping MP3s, which is fine - as the music sounds superior to the original.

Sound effects (sorry to go on) are top notch. A lot of older games used low-end WAVs for their audio (Playstation Games are infamous for their dust-bin sound dialogue) but here, it's clear to see the entire sound department had put their foot down and demanded more space. Gunshots punch through the mix like they don't care about the neighbours and everytime something explodes (everything you shoot explodes btw) there's a crystal clear, bottom end rumble that makes me grin. Dialogue, although being criminally daft and camp as christmas is about as clear as it can get. It's just mixed badly, during cutscenes with a lot of action - characters not only talk casually but get drowned out by all those 200-500hz gunshots. It sounds like two deaf people happily nattering away to each other in a club, whilst you're leaning in to hear what they're saying... and they make no effort to make it easy on you. Due to this very problem i'm half way through the game and have no idea what's going on. The only reason i'm vaguely aware of why i'm killing people is because the training level has leaflets that tell you ALL the plot's characters and their hidden secrets. At one point i lol'd hard as Jo Dark was surprised to find the person she's trying to rescue turns out to be a floating laptop with a mind of it's own, when on the training level i'd read all about it. I'm going to have to feign surprise when white-coat-white-hair man reveals to my oblivious entourage he's actually a snake-alien wearing a power-tie.

You cant go wrong for £5 though, do it, it feels good, man.

Now if only they'd seen how she looked in-game in 1999...

Kicking it off.

Recently i bought myself 'The Godzilla Collection.' Honesty, until now i've seen only three Godzilla films during my entire life - and that includes the Roland Emmerich remake from 1998. But regardless of not being up to speed on the series, since the age of four i've been enthralled by Toho Studios' creatures. And now, as a progressing film maker and a film buff i'm coming back to the films i loved as a kid. Not for any real reason other than to appreciate them.

Until this box set i'd not seen the original 'Gojira.' I'd always assumed Toho and The Japanese in general treated The Big G as some sort of private in-joke, exporting it purely for financial gain to cliquey types who got excited over subtitles and political commentary - or to American Studios to (i shit you not) re-cut the films entirely and replace the story and dialogue with totally new actors. But i was wrong - if anything, watching the original film shunted the entire series (numbering 30 if you count re-cuts and remakes) into a new perspective for me. It's anything but a joke - and no matter how many times that guy in a rubber suit boots a building over or falls over a train, the actors surrounding the chaos and destruction play it completely straight. Every time i felt a hearty chuckle coming on, one of those stone-faced actors would come on screen and remind me how serious shit was getting. And it does get serious...

Invariably i'm going to have to tackle the environment and climate around the first film - Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Daigo Fukuryu Maru. Japan got flattened by the American Military in WWII, and i mean flattened. Nuclear Armament, even though in its infancy had replaced Religion in both priorities and the food chain. The making of 'Gojira' coincides with the advent of Atom Monsters in The States, monsters that were born or created through the use of nuclear waste or atomic age sciences. There's far too many to list, but generally they're mistakenly called 'B-Movies' ... The correct name is 'Exploitation Movies.'

I JUST TAUGHT YOU SOMETHING, WHAAAAT?!?!

So here comes Godzilla. Even though his exposition is hard to understand and inconsistant - it's generally regarded that he exists because of a certain unnamed country's nuclear weapons testing. In fact, the early scenes with the fishing trawlers being set aflame by burning white lights are about as unsubtle as film can get. Then some stuff happened between uninteresting characters who somehow all know each other and somehow seem to be pretty calm... Perhaps they all got house insurance. But i think the most important scene is Toho Studios' money shot - Godzilla trashing Tokyo. If you visually compare what's going on here to what the western world were making, you see just how far ahead it was for the time. No stop-motion and very little in the way of composite effects shots. It's a beautifully scaled recreation of Tokyo then blows up, smashes, falls apart and crumbles about as close to the real thing as a model can do. If i'd seen this in 1954 i'd have utterly shat myself. Apparently this is cheap film making? It's a shame that the story and the characters get lost within the striking majesty of this one scene - the film never again quite reaches those heights. The camera slowly trails across the city wasteland to Ifukube's haunting music as a closure to the scene. Even if the story and characters are pretty much redundant by comparison to Big G's rampage, the commentary is not. And for this, credit is due.

Obviously, this being (hopefully, eventually) a film/game sound and music blog i need to say something about that aspect of Godzilla. The sound is pretty bad, even for the time. Effects and dubs are out of time, a lot of the time effects don't even suit what they're put to - and while i can understand WHY Gojira's rampages are sometimes hauntingly quiet, one of the characters slammed a door and it sounded like a mountain, coughing. Although considering Japan was practically annihilated a mere ten years prior to this film - i can let them off i think. The music, however, is off the chain. It's ten, if not fifteen years ahead of Western Cinema, both in it's use of orchestral instruments as sound effects and its tension-building perfection. Ifukube uses maces made from knotted rope as a beater and huge drums to make Godzilla's footsteps, which when heard off-screen - all the actors suddenly react accordingly. The iconic sound of the monster is made by dragging a gauntletted hand down the length of a de-tuned Double Bass string. Sorry, Ben Burrt (Star Wars) these guys were twenty five years ahead.


Musicially, everything drives forward and slows down gracefully, the cues and flow of the music are very typically American in their execution and presentation and at times doesn't move well with the Japanese way of storytelling. But it's successful - to listen to this music now, provided you have a remastered copy, it hasn't dated at all. Murray Gold and Chris Franke are doing music very similar and very minimalist on modern productions.