Only If You Wear That Dress: Street Fighter (1994)

Being the first of several possible reviews of 90’s video-game movie adaptations!

Fans who were at the right age when Street Fighter 2 ruled the world in the early 90’s remember that there were two films based off this franchise at the time. One of them was hard to find (in Ireland at least!) since it was a Japanese animated effort, and anime hadn’t yet become the ‘nerd-chic’ powerhouse market that it now is in the west (before the information age, ‘niche’ actually meant ‘niche’! As in, you couldn’t buy it anywhere!). But if you did manage to come across a copy of it on VHS, bootleg or otherwise, you were in for a shock: to kids used to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, this stuff was somewhat adult. It was definitely aimed at an older audience, and, unfamiliar with any form of Japanese weirdness, we didn’t quite know what to make of it. We certainly didn’t know what to make of the Chun-Lee-in-the-shower-scene, that’s for sure. April O’Neill never did anything like that.

In Celebration of the Ghost Ship

Being an insane over-analysis of one of my favourite sub-genres!

You know this story, you’ve seen it a million times. It’s two parts sci-fi and one part horror, and it owes its ancestry almost entirely to movies and later, videogames; its only direct literary ancestor would by the haunted house story. Usually taking place in the future, the story will feature a group of humans (often military) who either stumble upon or are sent to investigate a mysterious space ship, space station or remote colony or outpost of some sort. At first it seems as if the place is deserted. There will be no signal and no response to any attempts at communications. There may be some evidence that the previous occupants came to a sticky end. The characters will wander around in the dark with flashlights. Sooner or later, they will encounter whatever it was that killed the original crew, and things will get nasty. It’s often aliens, zombies, ghosts, demons, or some combination of the above. Depending on the ratio of horror to sci-fi, members of the team may be killed off one-by-one, or they may fight the threat outright.

Fictionpress

So, maybe you’ve heard about this fanfiction thing, eh? I remember when I first did, because it was in an article in the Sunday Times, and it was opposite a review for Jurassic Park 3. Nothing dates a moment like a reference to a tired film franchise.

The idea always intrigued me- the presence of a large base of readers and writers of amateur fiction out there seemed like a positive thing. But, by and large, playing in other people’s universes did not really appeal to me. These writers were stuck on using characters and situations that were not their own. Fanfiction.net is the biggest collection of this stuff out there, but it’s got its own sister site for ‘original’ fiction too at Fictionpress.net.

An Airport Novel Takes Off: The Eye of Ra by Michael Asher

*Spoilers all over the shop*

I found The Eye of Ra in the library at work. At first glance, I pegged it as the kind of history-themed thriller that has been clogging bookshelves since the success of The Da Vince Code. In fact, it was published in the late 90’s (most of the action takes place in 1995), before the Dan Brown effect made centuries-long conspiracies, Templars, and famous stuff from history necessary for thriller plots. In fact, this book takes its cues more from Indiana Jones as well as a bunch of much stranger sources, such as the work of Erich von Daniken. So, yeah, there’s going to be some ‘ancient astronaut’ theories bandied round before the sun sets behind the pyramids in this one.

The Table-Rappers by Ronald Pearsall

The Table-Rappers is presented as a scholarly and exhaustive take on Spiritualism and other Victorian occult phenomena. It isn't that exactly, but it still makes interesting reading.

What the book really is, for the most part, is a sort of high-brow, skeptical version of the works of Charles Fort, or even the later books by Colin Wilson on the supernatural. In Table-Rappers, seemingly hundreds of individual cases and incidents are chronicled in an endless array of brief encounters.
Like Wilson's books, there are many fascinating stories buried somewhere within each chapter, though the 'filing' system seems rather odd (some of Wilson's stories stuck in my head for years, prompting much flipping through his strangely-edited chapters to find them years later). And as an Irish connection, I was delighted to learn that gangs of occultists wearing 'all-concealing black robes' were operating in Dublin during the late Victorian period!

Rather than attempting a chronological history of the subject, Pearsall has opted to separate his chapters based on the various types of phenomena- seances, spirit photography, etc. In a way, there is a loose chronology, as there were slightly overlapping 'waves' of interest in these subjects, but it's done at the expense of a more meaningful, interpretive take on the subject. And while many of the incidents alluded to are fascinating, shockingly short shrift is given to many of the most important spiritualists who shaped the movement: the Fox sisters, whose 1840's table-banging marked the beginnings of Spiritualism, D. D. Home, the only psychic who was never caught cheating, and the Davenport brothers. The book gives little hint about how the movement was perceived in the world at large, or how important these characters were during their lifetimes.

Most of the book is taken up with these brief accounts of Spiritualism, giving the feeling that the Victorian age must have been absolutely full of fraudulent mediums, all squabbling for their 15 minutes of fame and quick to besmirch one another's reputations. Pearsall's tone is skeptical throughout, assuming foul play and trickery in every case. It's true that most mediums were caught cheating at some point, but it's interesting to compare this book with Peter Lamont's The First Psychic, a book that's primarily a biography of D. D. Home, but which serves as a very effective commentary on the Spiritualist movement and the Victorian need to believe. Lamont never assumes that any mediums were cheating unless they were caught; he does eventually confess his own personal skepticism, but on an academic level his scrupulous fairness is impressive.

Later on in Table-Rappers, Pearsall includes a few chapters on other aspects of Victorian spookiness, including poltergeists and good old-fashioned haunted houses. For some reason I enjoyed this stuff better- perhaps because they're just stories, and he can neither prove nor disprove them with his slightly sarcastic prose. But because he was writing in the 70's, when the supernatural- sorry, the paranormal- was having a renaissance in credibility, he does let slip that although most Victorian 'mind-readers' were bogus, we of course now 'know' that there is definite evidence for telepathy (!). He cites some unspecified 20th-century research to prove this; I suspect that he's referring to the work of J. B. Rhine and the Duke University Parapsychology Lab, an interest subject in itself. (In fairness, Rhine seems to have been a serious, rational-minded scientist who worked extremely hard for decades, using only variants on the Zenner cards theme, to provide statistically significant evidence for telepathy without ever getting caught up in the silliness that often comes with the subject). There's also a fascinating chapter on the feud between the outrageous Madam Blavatsky (creator of the break-away movement 'Theosophy') and the mostly-rational Society for Psychical Research.

Late in the book, Pearsall does throw in a few chapter of analysis, but it's very 70's-type analysis that includes some of the odd ideas regarding the paranormal at that time. It's weird to find this skeptical author drawing a line between Spiritualism and manifestations, which he believes to be bogus, and clairvoyance and table-rapping, which he does not. It's still a worthwhile read, however, for the countless strange stories that characterized the 19th -century occult scene.

Sharpe's Tiger by Bernard Cornwell

‘You like Flashman, right?’

‘Yeah. Love Flashman.’

‘Oh, man, you’ve gotta try Sharpe so.’

Fine so. I finally have tried Sharpe. And, while entertaining, I find myself agreeing with the Flashman fan who noted that Sharpe is ‘too straight an arrow by half.’

Bernard Cornwell and his fictional Napoleon-era soldier Richard Sharpe have a lot of fans out there- Sharpie’s probably one of the biggest names in British Empire military-themed historical fiction, only partly as a result of the popular tv adaptation starring Sean Bean. It’s really a bit of a surprise he hasn’t crossed my path before- probably as a result of my lack of interest in the Napoleonic Wars.

But despite the slight age difference, the parallels to Flashy are unavoidable- Sharpe is a British soldier who works his way up to a high rank, and has a long career around the globe, appearing in many of the famous military escapades of his time (including Waterloo).

I picked up Sharpe’s Tiger because I found it for two pounds in a shop in Yorkshire, but also because it featured Sharpe’s early adventures in India, which seemed more interesting to me than his later Europe-based adventures. It’s actually chronologically the first book in the series, though not the first one written.

Sharpe begins the book as a private, having signed up for the army following a scuffle at home. He’s a rough Lancashire lad with a troubled background; he spent some time stealing luggage from stagecoaches, eventually killing a man over a fight with a woman.

In the army, he becomes part of the slow British take-over of India. Come 1799, the redcoats are struggling against the mighty Tippu Sultan in what we now know as the fourth Anglo-Mysore war. The Tippu, a Muslim of Persian background, has come into control of the largely Hindu city-state of Mysore in the south of India. The French, always eager to see the British thwarted, have sent an adviser to aid the Tippu. And there is an Irish connection here: the last British leader to have taken a swipe at the Tippu prior to this was Lord Cornwallis, the same guy who surrendered to the Yanks at Yorktown and put down the 1798 rebellion on the Emerald Isle (I'm not a big fan of him, so).

During preparations for the siege of Seringapatam, Sharpe earns the ire of one Sergeant Obediah Hawkeswill, a tyrannical officer who goads Sharpie into assaulting him. A flogging follows, cut short only by the news that a senior British officer carrying sensitive information has fallen into enemy hands. Someone is needed to pose as a deserter and join the Tippu’s forces to rescue the man- is Sharpe up for the job? Already thinking of deserting for real, Sharpie volunteers, but is dismayed to find that he’s going to paired for this perilous mission with Lieutenant Lawless, an upper-class officer who has to also pose as an unruly deserter.

So begins the book. Later, there’s adventures, rescues and spills aplenty in the Tippu’s city as Sharp faces off against tiger-striped Mysore soldiers, a team of professional torturers, and even an actual tiger. It’s all pretty entertaining stuff.

Aspects of the novel are great- the play between Lawless, a decent but slightly effete man who needs to convince as a ruffian, and Sharpe, who’s the real deal, are among my favourite parts. It gives a glimpse into the injustices of the British class system of the time. Other small touches I liked include the French adviser’s shock at how the British army recruits and treats their troops- in France at that time, soldiering even at a private level was considered an honourable and respectable position, and officers often mingled with their troops. Hawkeswill too is a flat if hateful villain, sure to have the reader hissing from his first appearance.

So it’s an enjoyable adventure with some nice period touches. But compared to Flashman?

For starters, the history quite often simply isn’t there. Sharpe, as an uneducated private plucked from the gutter, doesn’t particularly care why the British army are in India fighting against the Tippu, and the reader doesn’t find out much about this issue either. In a Flashman book, the hero would have ended up learning much about the Tippu's point of view and coming to understand (if not appreciate) his culture, but here this fascinating historical figure is reduced to a generic villain. Late in the book, there is a very brief discussion about how trade is the main reason that the Brits, the Frogs and the Tippu have come to blows, but this interesting tidbit is kept tantalizingly brief. Throughout, other interesting topics are brought up and then discarded (such as the place of religion in the various characters’ lives) as though the narrative is afraid to look any further beneath the surface of what is essentially an action-adventure novel. Which is fine, but it could have been much more. In total, what we have here is a British Empire-themed novel that is not really interested in addressing any of the issues raised by the day-to-day realities of the British Empire. Compared to Flashy’s satirically scathing commentary on just about every aspect of Victorian life, it just won’t wash.

The writing is solid and occasionally striking, but it often retains an unremarkable airport-novel style that’s pretty bland and lacking the character of Fraser’s work.

As for Sharpe himself, he is somewhat more interesting than most thriller heroes. His rough background and pragmatism sometimes cause him to do shocking things- in order to prove his ‘loyalty’ to the Tippu, he is fully prepared to assassinate British officers if necessary. And the glibness with which he accepts that he’s been dumped by his up-to-then sweetheart is a bit shocking too. He’s angry at how the world has treated him because of his lowly birth. But by and large, he’s a far more conventional hero than Flashy. Which is to be expected, really.

Perhaps comparing the two isn’t fair. But the Sharpe novels were begun a few years after the original Flashman books, and were surely influenced in some way by them, so in that regard it’s a little disappointing to find them a similar idea carried out far, far more conventionally. The end result: Flashy would totally take Sharpe (probably by throwing sand in his eye and rogering his woman, too, the coward).

Lost Games: Bodies On The Docks

It’s popularly accepted by fans of old-school gamebooks that the coming of age of video games finally knelled the death for the paper-and-dice brigade. Gamers no longer had to shirk their computers for truly immersive experiences. But is this the way it had to have been? Surely the new technology ought to have provided new way to play text-heavy gamebooks, allowing them to be played in a way that didn’t have other, irrelevant paragraphs visible all the time and where cheating was not possible?