Editorials
‘Resident Evil 2’ Turns 19 Today!
Video games have evolved so much ever since Capcom’s original Resident Evil was released on PlayStation nearly 21 years ago. It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, but it has. The game was such a success that Capcom rushed a sequel into production almost immediately. Resident Evil 2 was released less than two years later on January 21, 1998 which means it turns 19 today! Help us celebrate one of the best video games ever made on this very special day.
The reason that most sequels fail to surpass the quality of the original is because they take things that made the original so special and try to replicate them. “More of the same” is not always a good thing. The best sequels expand upon the mythology of the original and try to improve upon it while still maintaining a certain amount of reverence for the source material. It’s a tricky tightrope to walk but it has been done before (Aliens, The Godfather Part 2, and Scream 2, just to name a few). Resident Evil 2 may be “just” a video game, but with it Capcom managed to craft one of the best sequels ever made.
Picking up just two months after the events of Resident Evil, Resident Evil 2 introduces players to two new protagonists in rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield, sister of the first game’s Chris Redfield. In the game’s opening moments it becomes readily apparent that the T-virus has escaped the confines of the Spencer Mansion and Raccoon Forest. The game brings players to Raccoon City itself and hits the ground running. The slow-mounting dread of the first game is replaced with a visceral assault on the senses, dropping players into the zombie-infested streets of Raccoon City. Rather than replicate the feel of the original, Capcom opted to shift the style of its franchise into a new direction, something that it would repeatedly try with subsequent sequels to varying degrees of success (Resident Evil 2 falls in third in aggregate critic scores, just behind Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil: Code Veronica). The player eventually makes it to the Raccoon City Police Station, but quickly learns that the street may have been even safer. One of the most notorious moments in the game is the initial confrontation with the Licker.
Resident Evil 2 kept the basic gameplay the same, but introduced the “Zapping System” that allowed players actions to affect future playthroughs. For example, unlocking a door while you were playing as Leon would enable you to get into the room that the door leads to when you play as Claire. It was a novel approach to gaming that helped Resident Evil 2 stand apart from its predecessor.
The game took 21 months to produce, but the initial concept of the game was actually much different than the version that was released (example: the female protagonist was a college student named Elza Walker, rather than the now iconic Claire Redfield). The production team, which comprised of almost 50 people, completed nearly 80% of the game before the producer declared the game to be too monotonous. The concept was scrapped and a near-complete overhaul was made.
Thank [insert name of a higher power here] for that! The game that was eventually released is, as previously mentioned, spectacular. It earned critical acclaim upon its release and to this day remains the highest selling game in the franchise for a single game console. It was also the fastest-selling game in North America at the time. In an interesting bit of trivia: it sold 380,000 copies, earning $19 million in revenue. That is more money than every single Hollywood movie the weekend before earned except for one (that exception was Titanic, which earned $25.2 million the weekend after Resident Evil 2 was released).
I was unfortunate in that I was not able to play Resident Evil 2 when it was released. You see, I was a mere eight-year-old when the game was released. I wasn’t able to play Resident Evil 2 until it was ported over to the GameCube (What? I was a Nintendo kid.) in 2003, almost exactly 5 years after its initial release. While I still maintain that the 2002 GameCube REmake is the definitive Resident Evil game, I still enjoy Resident Evil 2 immensely.
When did you first play Resident Evil 2? Where does it sit in your ranking of the video game franchise? Share your thoughts and memories of this quintessential game with us in the comments below!
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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