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5 Times Atari Gave us 8-Bit Horror Movie Games

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Chances are if you’re a product of the ‘70s or ‘80s, one of your earliest home gaming memories was brought to you by the Atari 2600. This monstrous console was the first system a wee Patti owned and was shared, albeit reluctantly, between my little brother and I. I can’t tell you how many times I would get the urge to play Kaboom or Haunted House, and find my 8-bit hogging 4-year-old sibling snotting all over the joystick playing Frogger. 

The struggles of a one-console household, my friends. 

Although presently the original Atari 2600 is but a dinosaur (and looks like one too), the beast console boasted some graphics that looked like sorcery in our eyes at the time. Regardless of the now outdated sights and sounds of the Atari, the gaming system launched the beginning of household video games 40 years ago and hell, we need to respect that. Not to mention, hosted some pretty off-the-wall cartridges that embodied the glorious horror genre within them. Four decades later, and I still haven’t seen one damn Texas Chainsaw Massacre video game! Unless of course, you look towards the Atari 2600! 

As we break out the over the hill birthday wishes for Mr. Atari turning 40 this year, let’s look back at some of the coolest horror-themed video games the breakthrough gamer device had in its library. 


Halloween

First released by Wizard Video in 1983, The Shape was forever immortalized 2600 style with his very own Atari game. You actually don’t play as Michael Myers, but the “babysitter”, whom I can only guess is supposed to be Laurie Strode. 

The object of the game is to save the children you’re supposed to be caring for from the Boogeyman. Who, by the way, is running through the house waving a knife all to an Atari-ized version of John Carpenter’s Halloween theme. FANTASTIC. You’re given three lives which are represented by jack-o-lanterns on top of the screen, of which will disappear one by one when you are caught and killed. The highlight of this game, and I’ve been known to purposely do this just for fun, is when you’re caught by Myers. Why? Because he decapitates you (as shown in the video below). Yes, ladies and gentleman, this appears to be the very first video game decapitation in history. You only get a tiny bit of blood spurts from said kill, but nevertheless is extremely amusing…


The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Another horror treasure from Wizard Video brings the Tobe Hooper classic to the Atari world in 1982. Unlike the Halloween game, gamer roles are reversed and you actually get to play as Leatherface; with a chainsaw attached to his dick. 

Playing as Sir Leatherface, you are basically just running across a field of cow skulls and wheelchairs trying to get to your next victim. It’s heavily rumored throughout the gamer community that the high-pitched tones you hear when a victim appears is actually supposed to be a girl’s scream. The chainsaw in the game is run on fuel, and when you press the appropriate button to run it, your fuel starts to deplete. When you run out of fuel, you lose a life. So, just an educated guess here, the point is to kill off as many people as you can before running out of gas. 

It’s a fun way to murder ten minutes of your life. But one thing that really irked me about this game other than the inability for game developers to give Leatherface’s body a different color than the chainsaw, is the fact your character gets “stuck” quite easily. The obstacles I mentioned above, as it turns out, you better steer clear of them. If even one pixel of Leatherface breathes too close to these in-game hazards, you’re stuck for a good couple of seconds. It’s a total pain in the ass. 


Alien

Well, looky at this beauty. Our very first video game based off of Ridley Scott’s beautiful Alien film! Developed by Fox Interactive Games in 1982, Atari Alien has no shame in hiding that it is, in short, a basic rip-off of Pac-Man. However, instead of dodging ghosts through a maze, you’re running from Xenomorphs, which is just way cooler anyway.

The in-game maze is supposed to be designed to look like the inside of a spaceship, and said ship is infested with adult aliens laying these eggs all over the place. Just like Pac-Man, the pellets littering the screen are eggs and can be destroyed by simply running over them. There really isn’t too much else to explain, as it really is just Pac-Man with aliens. Though if you enjoy the classic arcade game, as a horror fan you’ll likely get a kick out of something different from that floating yellow head.


Frankenstein’s Monster

Published by Data Age for Atari in 1983, Frankenstein’s Monster, for me anyway, is one of the more entertaining games to come out of the 2600 era of gaming. The basic object of gameplay is to build a wall surrounding the monster before he comes to life. To do this, you have to climb up and down the screen grabbing bricks one by hellish one. Along the way, you’ll encounter a giant tarantula, bats, ghosts, and a lovely pool of acid. You know, normal creepy castle shit. If you build the wall before the timer runs out, you save the village below from a monster rampage. If you don’t make it in time, Frankie comes to life and destroys every damn thing in its path, which is kind of my favorite part anyway. If you get a chance to play, let yourself lose at least once. 


Ghostbusters

Birthed by Activision in 1985, Ghostbusters for Atari 2600 comes one year after the theatrical release, and is fuckin’ fun as hell. 

You immediately begin by trapping ghosts in front of buildings, which in most cases, takes the form of Slimer. All the while, a gorgeous Atari version of the Ghostbusters theme plays in the background.  The graphics when ghostbusting aren’t half bad considering the console, and the driving sequences with the Ecto-1 are not as stretched out as other versions.The greatest part, however, is when you finally get to the end and fight Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. It’s goddamn hilarious because he just kind of jumps around in front of a building like a little kid.

Oh, the sweet, sweet video games of yesteryear. They just don’t make them like that anymore…

Editorials

‘The Company of Wolves’ at 40: One of the Most Underrated Werewolf Movies Ever Made

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There’s a compelling idea in anthropology that many ancient werewolf legends are derived from our species’ need to rationalize the more animalistic side of humanity – which is why lycanthropy has historically been used to explain everything from medieval serial killers to cannibalism. While I personally think there’s a lot more to unpack when it comes to tales of wolfmen and women, this is still a great example of why so many of our most enduring fairy tales involve big bad wolves.

And in the world of film, I think there’s only one feature that really nails the folkloric origins of werewolf stories, namely Neil Jordan’s 1984 fairy-tale horror classic, The Company of Wolves. Even four decades later, there’s no other genre flick that comes close to capturing the dreamlike ambience behind this strange anthology, and that’s why I’d like to take this opportunity to look back on one of the most underrated werewolf flicks ever made.

The Company of Wolves was originally a short story contained in the 1979 anthology The Bloody Chamber, a collection of deconstructed fairy-tales intended for mature readers penned by English author Angela Carter. With the book quickly becoming a hit as readers became fascinated with its subversion of classic folk stories and (then) controversial feminist undertones, it was soon transformed into a duology of BBC radio-dramas which adapted both The Company of Wolves and Carter’s reimagining of Puss-in-Boots.

These radio-dramas soon attracted the attention of then up-and-coming Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan, who decided to meet with Carter to discuss expanding on her stories and bringing them to life on the big screen. The duo soon realized that a single short story wasn’t enough material for a feature-length film, so they decided to adapt all of Carter’s werewolf tales into a single anthology.

With a completed script and a $2.3 million budget, Jordan decided to tackle the project like a hybrid between a theatrical period drama and a schlocky monster movie. Effects-heavy creature features were a hot commodity back in the ’80s, with films like The Howling and An American Werewolf in London proving that there was an audience for horrific lycanthrope transformations, so the director soon recruited a team that could turn this odd collection of feminist folk stories into something commercially viable.

Not exactly a great pick for family movie night.

Shooting would eventually take place almost entirely within the England-based Shepperton Studios, with notable production designer Anton Furst (who would later be known for his work on Tim Burton’s Batman films) helping to bring Jordan’s vision of a darkly romantic fairy-tale world to life. Appropriately enough, production would also involve a real pack of trained wolves (as well as a collection of dyed dogs), though extensive puppetry and animatronics were also used to flesh out the more gruesome parts of the flick.

After a grueling nine-week shoot where budgetary constraints led to corners being cut on props and costumes, The Company of Wolves was finally released in September of 1984 – just in time for spooky season. In the finished film, we follow the strange dreams of a sulky teenage girl named Rosaleen (first-time actress Sarah Patterson) as the film unravels an Arabian-Nights-inspired tapestry of both familiar and not-so-familiar stories about big bad wolves.

From sexually charged cautionary tales to parables about female empowerment, this surreal collection of deranged bedtime stories is much more than the creature feature that the marketing initially suggested. Like a more horror-oriented version of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, The Company of Wolves exudes that same kind of hormonal teenage energy that transports us back to a time when the world was both scary and exciting in equal measure.

That’s not to say that this is an entirely pleasant experience, however, and I’m not just talking about the film’s horror elements. A big portion of the flick’s overtly sexual moments involve the then 13-year-old Patterson coming to grips with her blossoming womanhood and the dangers of predatory men (usually marked with a humorous unibrow), something that naturally makes for some intentionally uncomfortable viewing – especially in the year of our lord 2024.

Obviously, I don’t think it’s my place to dissect (or even judge) the effectiveness of the film’s commentaries on being a young woman, but even as a man I can still appreciate the thought and care that went into crafting this Jungian cocktail of serious themes in a genre-movie package that almost certainly went on to inspire future werewolf movies like Ginger Snaps.

Not the worst wedding I’ve been to.

That being said, what really keeps me coming back to the film is the absurd amount of memorable imagery. From a wedding party being taken over by canines to lonely treks through snowy groves, this is exactly the gloomy world I imagined as a child when reading Grimms’ Fairy Tales – and the dreamy atmosphere is only enhanced by the movie’s overall theatricality.

This also extends to the effects, as it’s easy to forgive decapitated dummy heads and ripped rubber skin when everything is happening in a magical hyper-reality, with a great example of this is being the scene where Grandma’s head unexpectedly explodes like a porcelain doll when it’s knocked off by a wolfman. That’s not to say that the effects are bad, as several of these transformations are downright grisly and likely influenced future lycanthrope effects like those in Underworld and even Trick ‘r Treat (even if the wolf-dogs here often look more cute than scary).

Of course, these aren’t the only things that The Company of Wolves has going for it, as the main trio of Patterson, Micha Bergese and the late, great Angela Lansbury exceptionally bring these exaggerated caricatures to life and the orchestral score is an absolute delight. I also really get a kick out of that bizarre ending implying that the dangers of adult life have literally come crashing into Rosaleen’s bedroom.

The Company of Wolves may not be a perfect film, suffering from some wonky pacing and the classic anthology problem where some stories are clearly much more enjoyable than others, but I’d argue that the flick’s iconic visuals and powerful thematic throughline more than make up for any minor flaws. And while we’ve seen bigger and better werewolf films since then, when it comes to adult-oriented fairy-tales, this is one psycho-sexual journey that is still worth revisiting 40 years down the line.

The Company of Wolves

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