Editorials
Do You Remember the Bizarre NES Game ‘Monster Party’?
The anticipation and release of Friday the 13th: The Game a few months back got the whole horror community buzzing, whether they were gamers or not. Even I was excited by all the gameplay videos I saw, and I haven’t touched a newly-released video game in more than a decade.
One look at the footage made it immediately clear that the creators of the game love and respect the original film franchise (the nostalgia factor in Friday the 13th: The Game is off the charts), and fans seemed to enjoy the multi-player aspect which forces them to work together with other players in order to defeat the mighty Jason. Sadly, I doubt I’ll ever sit down and play Friday the 13th: The Game (I barely have enough time to perform normal day-to-day tasks like showering, eating, etc.), but everyone’s enthusiasm for it got me thinking about the first horror video game I did play…
Monster Party.
Growing up in a low income household, I rarely received new Nintendo games. In fact, now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t think I ever received a new Nintendo game. All of the games I bought or received were second-hand, stuff you’d find at pawn shops, thrift stores, and the seasonal yard sale. Most of the games you’d uncover in these places were totally unheard of. No Mario, no Duck Hunt. Only the weirdest stuff imaginable. But they were always cheap, so I didn’t complain.
One of these unheard of gems was Monster Party, a platform game released by Bandai for the original Nintendo Entertainment System that, even today, remains a relatively obscure title.
My memories of the game are vivid to this day, probably because the game scarred me for life. It begins as your basic side-scroller; you’re a kid armed with a baseball bat, and you’re whacking unremarkable bad guys as you encounter them. Nothing too out of the ordinary. But at a certain point, after you’ve crossed some invisible threshold, the game pauses – flickers a strobe-like flicker – and resumes… only everything has changed.
The smiling blocks that you once jumped to and from have now morphed into oozing skulls. The inconspicuous sunset-tinged background has turned into a row of rotting faces, bleeding from their mouths. It’s no longer just bad guys in black jackets that you have to fend off; now you’re battling eyeballs that walk around on octopi-like appendages and dogs with human faces. In short, a literal nightmare. (Pretty surprising considering Nintendo had strict censorship rules in place when the game was released.)
Since this was a second-hand purchase for me, it didn’t come with an instruction manual. That was always the dice you rolled with picking up a used game. Thus, when the game decided to let literal hell break loose, I wasn’t expecting it at all – and it made the bizarre visuals that much more frightening. Another complication of not having any instructions was that the already-difficult game became impossible to beat.
One of my fondest memories of Monster Party was its unusual final bosses. At one point, you have to face off against a giant piece of deep-fried shrimp, which then becomes an onion ring after being defeated(!). And there’s another boss which doesn’t even need to be fought: a giant dead spider. Upon encountering him, he says “Sorry, I’m dead” in a pop-up dialogue box – and that’s it. You just leave him there. Super weird stuff, man.
Of those final bosses there was one that always stuck out to me. It looked like a mix between an eggplant and a Venus flytrap, and it greeted you with a “Hello, baby!” The combo of this phrase and its appearance always made me think of Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. Upon doing a little research for this piece, I discovered that the comparisons to Little Shop were no accident: in the late-2000s, gamers discovered “deleted” content within the games source code which revealed that many of the final bosses were indeed homages to famous American monsters, including films like Planet of the Apes, Gremlins, and Alien, and were later altered slightly to avoid any copyright infringement.
Monster Party is a strange little game, full of humorous parodies of both Japanese folklore and American horror films. It has puzzled both fans and critics alike, and it’s safe to say it is one of a kind. While I might not play video games anymore, my memories of Monster Party are enough to keep me satiated for many years to come.
It’s been 75 years since The Thing From Another World first warned us to “watch the skies”, and filmgoers have done just that by showing up to multiple instances of extraterrestrial contact on the big screen. This makes sense, as a recent CBS news poll estimated that 63% of Americans believe in intelligent life on other planets, and the ongoing disclosure movement aims to raise that number with each passing day.
With Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day leaving many genre fans hungry for more alien footage (preferably of the spooky variety), today I’d like to share a list recommending six underrated alien invasion thrillers for your viewing pleasure. After all, regardless of whether or not you believe that we’re alone in the universe, it can be fun to dream about the worst-case scenario if our cosmic neighbors ever decide to visit.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be focusing on lesser-known invasion stories rather than the popular extraterrestrials of franchises like Alien and Close Encounters of the Third (or even Fourth) Kind. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own alien favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling movie.
While it won’t be featured in this article, I’d highly recommend checking out Dean Alioto’s UFO Abduction/The McPherson Tape if you’re up for some ufology-inspired found footage thrills.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. The Arrival (1996)
Not to be confused with Denis Villeneuve’s Academy Award-winning Amy Adams vehicle about learning to communicate peacefully with extraterrestrial life, David Twohy’s The Arrival is a much more straightforward (but no less entertaining) genre romp where Charlie Sheen faces a global conspiracy involving hostile alien invaders.
It’s not exactly up there with Close Encounters or even Independence Day, but Twohy’s conspiratorial thriller plays out like an exceptionally fun episode of The X-Files that I’d recommend to sci-fi/horror fans who don’t mind a little bit of wonky CGI and 90s excess alongside their alien thrills.
5. Extraterrestrial (2014)
The Vicious Brothers made a name for themselves with the success of 2011’s Grave Encounters, but that was far from the Canadian duo’s only collaboration. And while it’s not exactly a fan favorite, I always point out 2014’s Extraterrestrial as one of their most underrated projects simply because I agree with the filmmakers’ opinion that there aren’t enough ‘cool alien abduction movies’ out there.
Admittedly, the majority of the picture functions like a run-of-the-mill creature feature with paper-thin characters and familiar horror tropes, but I’d argue that the cosmically-terrifying final act elevates the experience to new and memorable heights. The movie also boasts great performances by both Michael Ironside and Emily Perkins – a combination that more than makes up for the occasionally janky CGI.
4. Alien Raiders (2008)
Director Ben Rock has gone on record lamenting how his John-Carpenter-inspired creature feature was forcefully renamed from Supermarket to the painfully obvious Alien Raiders (a change which likely resulted in many potential viewers skipping out on the experience), but the new title doesn’t change the fact that this single-location thriller is something of a hidden gem.
Taking place entirely within a supermarket, Alien Raiders tells the story of an ensemble of customers and employees who are taken hostage by a group of armed men looking for something far more dangerous than an easy payout. I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoiling the experience, but I’d highly recommend this criminally underseen flick to fans of John Carpenter and the Resident Evil games.
3. Phoenix Forgotten (2017)
You’d think that a Ridley-Scott-produced retelling of one of the most infamous real-life UFO sightings of all time would have a bigger following, but I rarely see Justin Barber’s Found Footage period piece brought up during discussions about extraterrestrial-focused horror movies.
This is a huge shame, as Phoenix Forgotten is just as spooky as it is convincing, with this well-researched dive into the Phoenix Lights incident benefiting from surprisingly believable special effects as well as an appropriately horrific finale.
2. Communion (1989)
I wouldn’t blame you for disregarding Whitley Strieber’s controversial book about his alleged close encounter as sensationalist slop, but I’d argue that Phillipe Mora’s 1989 adaptation of these events is much better than the source material. After all, the movie works as a standalone piece of speculative fiction while also benefiting from an incredible performance by the one and only Christopher Walken!
Mora’s take on Communion may not be particularly scary, but the film is still an unforgettable character study regardless of whether or not the abduction really happened. Not only that, but the flick also paved the way for plenty of future sci-fi stories where the extraterrestrial invaders aren’t as evil as they initially appear.
1. Altered (2006)
Originally envisioned as a Sam Raimi-style horror-comedy titled Probed, Eduardo Sánchez (of The Blair Witch Project fame) eventually realized that it would be much more interesting to turn the film into a serious exploration of the emotional aftermath of a traumatic abduction incident.
That’s how we got Altered, a clever inversion of the standard abduction narrative that follows a group of troubled friends as they capture and experiment on an alien in order to enact revenge for their own abduction years prior.
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