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The Voice Of Horror Issue 3: The 7th Guest And Phantasmagoria II

Published

16 years ago

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With Halloween being so close, I have to keep this Voice Of Horror thing going, so enjoy it while it’s going on, because once Halloween is past, these will be more spaced out. But for now, I’m excited to bring up two more games that scared the bejeezus out of me as a youngling: The 7th Guest and Phantasmagoria II: A Puzzle Of Flesh. These were two games that I played through several times on the PC and still remember very fondly to this day.

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The 7th Guest
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Around the age of 8 or 9, my family got our first real PC. It ran Windows 3.1 (how many of you remember THAT?) and almost every game had to be run via DOS. This was during the height of point-and-click adventure games such as Myst, Grim Fandango, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Loom, and others. However, to us horror fans, the game that stood out at the time was now defunct Trilobyte’s The 7th Guest. A point-and-click puzzle game that took place inside a haunted house where the player had to solve twisted riddles and games in order to figure out the truth, The 7th Guest was a game built around gorgeous, albeit MIDI, music and haunting, creepy sounds that truly breathed life into the Stauf mansion. The soundtrack, composed by The Fat Man, ranged from twisted jazz to eerie lullabies to lounge music, all of which always felt slightly…off. 
As this was a game that was put out on CD-ROM, the audio was of much higher quality than NES and offered more depth and variety of sounds. The sound bites of plants rustling, doors squeaking, the house moaning and groaning all added to the gaming experience that made The 7th Guest a difficult game to play in the dark. 
Phantasmagoria II: A Puzzle of Flesh
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Several years later, when I was about 14, I managed to get my hands on a used copy of Phantasmagoria II: A Puzzle of Flesh at a local EB Games. I only got the first Phantasmagoria years later and always had trouble running it on my Windows XP PC, so I never fully got the opportunity to enjoy it. However, A Puzzle of the Flesh worked almost perfectly (a hang up here, a crash there, nothing serious) and I was able to delve yet again into the world of survival point-and-click. In this game, players are put into the role of Curtis, a seemingly mild, everyday guy who begins to experience terrifying hallucinations and events, all while gruesome and grisly murders are being committed.
This was yet another game where each successful click would activate a movie, complete with actors and sets, to show the resulting action. Because of this approach to gaming, the audio had to feel just as real, even if the cut scenes might have felt a little forced here and there. What resulted was a game where the background noise became truly unsettling and made one feel as though there was something crawling underneath one’s skin. As Curtis descends deeper and deeper into the madness of his visions, the music becomes more and more unsettling and the sounds become more and more acute. This was one of the first games where I needed to take a break every once in a while to get the jitters out of my spine. 
Fun fact: Phantasmagoria II: A Puzzle Of Flesh is considered to be one of the first games to feature not only an openly gay man in a positive light (by the LGBT community standards), but also Curtis is revealed to be a bi-sexual man.
‘The Voice Of Horror’ banner was designed by Dead Pixel’s Adam Dodd
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Managing editor/music guy/social media fella of Bloody-Disgusting

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Music

GUNSHIP Debuts ‘Time After Time’ Music Video Featuring Unseen ‘Whistle’ Footage

Published

2 days ago

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July 29, 2026

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Whistle Gunship video "Time After Time"

Synthwave outfit GUNSHIP has released a new official music video this morning for their cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” featured on the soundtrack to Corin Hardy’s (The Nun, The Hallow) supernatural horror film Whistle.

To bring it full circle, Corin Hardy directs the music video himself, incorporating previously unseen footage from Whistle. More specifically, the new music video features an extended sequence from the film.

This collaboration builds on GUNSHIP’s longstanding relationship with Hardy, who previously contributed vocals to the band’s track “Cthulhu.”

“Working with Corin is a total dream,” said GUNSHIP. “He’s an old friend who we bonded with over our love for cinema and music, and we were honored to have our song featured in the film. After the Whistle premiere, we were chatting over a pint, and he told us about a beautiful pseudo ‘one shot’ sequence he was heartbroken to lose in the final film. We suggested resurrecting it and using it as a music video. Corin got it immediately, and the result is perfect. It’s heartbreaking, haunting and pure 80s noir soaked.”

Corin Hardy added: “I wanted Whistle to feel like a horror movie I might have watched around the late 1980s, alongside films like A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Lost Boys, and The Breakfast Club. Films steeped in teen-angst and heightened feelings. Music was such a huge part of creating the romance of those cinematic worlds. Gunship’s synth-drenched cover of Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Time After Time’ was always top of my list. Their unique heart-on-your-sleeve sound was the perfect choice for a key moment in the movie. To come together post-release and create this extended music video is simply the cherry on top. Dan, Al & Al (Gunship) have provided the film a real companion piece in the world of Whistle… it makes me want my MTV again!”

It’s a fitting collaboration, as music serves a narrative purpose in Whistle. Music, the director told Bloody Disgusting, was a means of immersing viewers in this world and its characters’ perspectives. Hardy even touched on this particular track: “So in a way, the music you’ll listen to is effectively what Chrys is listening to, which is her dad’s record collection. Then there are other songs like the Gunship track, which is a Cyndi Lauper cover, which is more like Rel’s [Sky Yang] music. It comes in when we have a sequence in Rel’s romantic heartbreak moment. So yeah, I made a character list of who might be listening to what.”

Whistle sees a misfit group of unwitting high school students confronted with mortality when they blow a cursed Aztec Death Whistle, setting a terrifying chain of events in motion.

Dafne Keen (Logan, “The Acolyte“), Sophie Nélisse (“Yellowjackets”), Sky Yang (Rebel Moon), Jhaleil Swaby (“Supergirl”), Ali Skovbye (Grizzly Night, “Firefly Lane”), Percy Hynes White (“Wednesday”), Michelle Fairley (“Game of Thrones”), and Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead).

The supernatural teen horror movie is available to stream on Shudder now.

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