Editorials
The Advent of Late 90s J-Horror: ‘Parasite Eve’ Turns 20
Riding high after the phenomenal success of 1997’s Final Fantasy VII, Squaresoft decided to be a little ambitious. Its next projects not only included branching out into other genres with their impressive shoot-’em-up Einhänder, but also seeing how far it could go with its tried-and-true genre, the RPG. Enter Parasite Eve. Blending a mix of real-time combat and traditional role-playing mechanics, the game ended up being a hit for Square, though has sadly been forgotten. On the 20th anniversary of the game’s release (in Japan), it’s worth looking back on how the game wasn’t just another Final Fantasy, but also how it was part of the J-Horror phenomenon of the late 90s.
Before actually getting into the game, it’s worth noting that Parasite Eve the game is actually a sequel. A sequel to Hideaki Sena’s 1995 novel of the same name, to be exact. Sena’s background in pharmacology, combined with his day job in microbiology, as well as a television documentary that he had watched, inspired him to write “Parasite Eve”. The story for the novel revolves around symbiogenesis, a theory that mitochondria (aka the powerhouse of biological cells) were originally a separate organism unto themselves, but lived in a symbiotic relationship within the cells of another organism. Sena’s novel concerns the idea of “What if the mitochondria are actually a sentient lifeform?,” and the resultant chaos that occurs when the mitochondria decide to take over their hosts on their way to taking over the world.
The novel became the first winner of the Japan Horror Novel Award, and with Koji Suzuki’s “Ringu”, spawned film adaptations and mangas, and in the case of “Ringu”, started the ball rolling with American remakes of Japanese horror films in the late 90s-early 2000s.
As for the game, thankfully it’s not necessary to have read the book (which is good, since the novel wasn’t translated into English until 2005). The plot centres on New York City police officer Aya Brea over a six-day span in 1997. On Christmas Eve, Aya attends an opera at Carnegie Hall, where during the aria of the diva, Melissa Pearce, people start to spontaneously combust. Aya and Melissa are the only ones left, with Melissa soon mutating into a creature and escaping into the sewers. Later on, it’s revealed that Melissa (now calling herself “Eve”) is the living embodiment of the mitochondria, and can control other people’s mitochondria. Aya must now find a way to stop Eve from destroying New York City, but also the world. The premise is both cool and ridiculous at the same time, but isn’t what you’d call a standout. It’s your basic “save the world” scenario, with the mitochondria situation being explained to the player in Grade 10 biology terms. While the story isn’t anything to fawn over, the characters do pack a lot of emotion into the dialogue, and the plot twists and eventual over-the-top climax do manage to keep you engaged in some form.
What set Parasite Eve apart from Square’s previous RPGs was the combat. Like Final Fantasy, players engaged in random battles. However, upon entering a battle, instead of it being turn-based, Parasite Eve uses a real-time combat system with an Active Time Bar (ATB) that sets the time that a player must wait until they can take their next action. During this wait, the player can move Aya around the area to dodge enemy attacks, or find a safe place to mount an attack of their own. When the ATB is full, the player may choose to escape, use an item, attack with their equipped weapon, or in place of magic, use Aya’s PE (Parasite Energy) for an attack/defense “spell”. If you choose to attack, the battle momentarily pauses, and a dome/sphere appears to indicate the range of the weapon, allowing the player to target an enemy within range until the rounds in Aya’s gun have been spent. This also puts Aya in a vulnerable position, as she’s unable to move until she finishes firing, making the player think carefully about their attack position. This combat system was later modified and reused two years later in another of Square’s forgotten games in Vagrant Story.
As far as weapons go, there are no shortage of guns in the game, ranging from pistols and shotguns to machine guns and grenade launchers. Each weapon has varying properties (range, clip size, rate of fire, etc.), and both weapons and armour have common RPG battle system properties, allowing the player to have things such as the ability to have the first attack in the battle, add ice or poison effects to your weapon, and so on. The game also has an equipment mod system in which weapons and armour can be broken down and their modifiers transferred to other items. Again, this premise was used in Vagrant Story years later.
Graphically, the game obviously looks dated, but it’s not outright laughable, either. The character models are more detailed than they were in FFVII, and New York has been recreated (and in some places, reinterpreted) to the best of 1998 abilities. And it’s not too shabby. The environments all reflect a certain cinematic quality in them. Even the camera angles are reminiscent of the ones found in Resident Evil. Speaking of “cinematic”, the cinematic when you start the game is definitely one that will grab your attention even today. This is definitely a game for body horror fans. Another cinematic where the audience hearing Melissa’s aria spontaneously melt certainly proves that. Granted, some of the cinematics do appear a bit rough today, but Square’s mastery of CGI back then still gives the cinematics a boost.
Musically, the score by Yoko Shimomura (who also did the immortal Street Fighter II soundtrack) is excellent. Mixing opera and electronica, Parasite Eve‘s music is quite engaging. It’s certainly not what you’d hear from Squaresoft’s go-to composers, which is refreshing. So much so that Shimomura’s work on Parasite Eve landed her the job of scoring other big-name Square games, most notably the first two Kingdom Hearts games.
If there was anything negative to say about Parasite Eve, then or now, is its linear progression and its length. You can finish the game in about 12 hours, and you’ll spend about as much game time watching characters talking as you will be exploring Manhattan and fighting battles. Compared to FFVII‘s 40 hours and its expansive world, this is definitely short. There’s the New Game+ option where Aya starts out equipped with the gear she had at the game’s end, and this also unlocks the Chrysler Building. The Chrysler Building consists of 77 floors of randomly-generated maps, bosses at regular intervals, and increasingly stronger monsters. At the top is an optional end boss, which after defeating it gives you an alternate ending. It’s one of those “nice that they included it” things, but it all just feels like busywork, especially when the game could’ve been so much longer.
Parasite Eve was released to favourable reviews, with attention paid to the graphics and cinematics. The game ended up selling 1.9 million copies overall, with most of them being sold in Japan. It was good enough to warrant a Greatest Hits re-release here in North America. Eventually, the game received a sequel in 2000, but the game mechanics were changed to focus less on the RPG elements, and more on the action and survival horror themes. These days, you can grab a complete copy of Parasite Eve on eBay for around $30 USD, or if you want the emulated version, it’s available on the PlayStation Store for the PS3 (for NTSC regions only, sadly).
The game was definitely a break in the mould for Squaresoft, who sadly don’t seem to be interested in revisiting the series. Despite the short amount of gameplay and its relatively linear progression, the game certainly deserves recognition for being different, but also for being just as fun as any of Square’s other RPGs. It’s also a must for those into survival horror and body horror. Give it a shot if you missed it the first time.
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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