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Dreaming of Another Undead Nightmare For ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’

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red dead redemption undead nightmare

Rockstar’s long-gestating epic Western Red Dead Redemption 2 is finally here this week, likely to set records and gain plaudits by the metric ton.

You can understand why. Rockstar may be known predominantly for Grand Theft Auto, but Red Dead Redemption became one of its greatest triumphs when it released eight years ago. That ride to Mexico! That sucker punch! That Redemption! More moments like these in Red Dead Redemption 2 will be most welcome, but personally, I’m dreaming of a different kind of Red Dead sequel. Namely a return to Undead Nightmare.

Released eight years ago on the very date Red Dead Redemption 2 is set to launch, Undead Nightmare is an expansion to Red Dead Redemption, but it takes a rather unexpected turn from John Marston’s cowboy adventure and drags the realm of horror firmly into the Old West. So much so it ended up being a standalone game in its own right. It was Rockstar toying with the zombie game they wanted to make whilst shifting a familiar landscape.

Undead Nightmare is set in an alternate timeline, where the dead have risen and all manner of nasties prowl the wilds. John Marston seeks to cure the zombie plague and rid his ailing wife and son of it in the process. Zombies were already being overused in games at this point, but credit to Rockstar, it really went somewhere different with them.

Being set in the Old West is obviously chief among the reasons Undead Nightmare stands out, but it adds other fun elements too. For instance, John’s arsenal is bolstered by Holy Water and a Blunderbuss that actually shoots bits of undead out of it. Then there are touches like having undead horses to tame and being able to hunt down mythical creatures such as the Chupacabra and Bigfoot. It’s all so wonderfully bizarre and incredibly loving the horror genre, and is Rockstar’s only other stab at it outside Manhunt.

It even had its own multiplayer modes, include a 4 player co-op horde mode that was an absolute blast. Truly, Undead Nightmare remains one of the greatest expansions to a game ever made and damn if I didn’t want to see it come back for Red Dead Redemption 2.

I’d doubt we’d see something exactly like it this time though (though I wouldn’t be surprised to see a mission take inspiration from the film Bone Tomahawk). GTA V came and went without ever delivering single-player DLC after GTA Online kept that game in the Top 10 of most charts for most of the last five years, that became the sole focus. If Red Dead Redemption 2‘s Red Dead Online follows suit, I can’t see a traditional Undead Nightmare return, but I could see it appear in Red Dead Online to some degree.

See, GTA Online has evolved beyond mere deathmatches and heists on the streets of Los Santos, and now boasts things like sky track racing and Manhunt-inspired murder matches alongside the traditional fare. For Red Dead Online to have longevity in a modern gaming environment full of viable choices (from Fortnite to Overwatch to Rocket League) for swallowing up free time, it needs to have the kind of variety its stablemate’s online portion has built up, and that should allow, eventually, for things outside the conventional cowboy box.

That should include some trace of Undead Nightmare‘s D.N.A. be it a zombie horde co-op, seasonal event or even Legendary weapons and items (that blunderbuss would be a welcome, if macabre, addition!). Of course, it’d be even better if Rockstar surprised us all and sought to emulate the great feat they pulled off eight years ago.

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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