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Puzzle Boxes and Card Games: How Clive Barker’s ‘Hellraiser’ Inspired The ‘Yu-Gi-Oh!’ Anime/Manga

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It’s always fascinating to see how horror from one culture can affect and influence another. America had a large fascination with J-Horror for a good chunk of the mid-2000s, producing remakes of staples such as The Ring and The Grudge. On the other side, while there haven’t been any outright remakes of American properties in Japan, the influences can be seen far and wide. But who would expect that the most prominent work of Clive Barker would inspire in part an anime and manga series about games, Yu-Gi-Oh! by Kazuki Takahashi.

Image via Wikipedia.com

The premise of Yu-Gi-Oh! followed young Yugi Mutou, a reserved high schooler with a love of puzzles and the most ridiculous hairstyle outside of a Final Fantasy character. He receives an ancient Egyptian artifact from his grandfather called ‘The Millenium Puzzle.’ Naturally, he solves it, only to unlock a dark, magical spirit that possesses him called ‘Yami Yugi’ or Dark Yugi. Whenever Dark Yugi assumes control, he subjects a usually deserving bully, criminal, or foe to a Shadow Game, with the loser’s very soul and mind subjected to a hellish ‘penalty game.’

Images via Amazon.com

For example, in the first chapter, Yugi and his friends are beaten up and mugged by a bully. Dark Yugi challenges him to a game that involves stabbing through held stacks of cash just enough without cutting themselves. When he loses, Dark Yugi drives him insane, forcing the bully to imagine everything around him as money. In another, an escaped convict holds Yugi and his friends hostage at a restaurant where Dark Yugi challenges him to a game involving lit cigarettes and cups of vodka, leading to him being lit on fire. Dark Yugi makes a rich, arrogant gamer named Seto Kaiba imagine he’s being attacked by his own monster cards. Needless to say, quite a lot for a series marketed more toward kids.

Image via yugioh.wiki

The influences are pretty easy to see with the dark, magical puzzle box. Though, themed on puzzles and punishment rather than brutal pleasures/pains of the flesh. Dark Yugi having some traits in common with Pinhead, outside of spiky hair rather than a spiky head. Both being supernatural sticklers for rules and order. And horrifically punishing those to try and cheat, be it contracts or puzzle games. With much of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! plotline featuring Dark Yugi doling out some brutal punishments upon the wicked and those seeking wicked goals via these life or death games. Even some of the cards seem to have a bit of a ‘Barker’ style design, such as the Cenobite-lite like Jinzo card below.

Image via yugioh.wiki

Takahashi even admitting in the 36th volume of the manga that the series was intended to rest in the horror genre, but as time went on, the series realigned toward the games (specifically the real life card game) and adventure rather than the horror, shifting the focus considerably. Dark Yugi revealed to be the spirit of an ancient pharaoh, and the more macabre elements toned down. So, while the original horrors of the plot dissipated, it made enough of an impression to give what is a substantially successful franchise its start. And while many would choose The Lament Configuration over The Millenium Puzzle, it would be interesting to see Pinhead try the pleasures of a tabletop game.

Feature Image via youtube.com

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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