Editorials
Christmas Eve: What a Perfect New ‘Parasite Eve’ Game Could Look Like
Spontaneous human combustion isn’t synonymous with yuletide cheer quite like hanging stockings or drinking eggnog are, despite Parasite Eve suggesting otherwise. Sure, the tale of a New York City cop chasing after a malevolent swarm of mitochondria may not be the most recognizable Christmas story, but hey, if Die Hard counts then so does this. Square-Enix took their experience with RPGs to create a unique spin on the survival horror formula, rather than make yet another Resident Evil clone. Though if the series were to return (and there’s some hope), there’s plenty of ways to improve it without sacrificing the core tenets that made the original special. A grounded setting, tactical combat, and emphasis on body horror make up the powerhouse of the cell that is Parasite Eve.
Dilapidated ghost towns and spooky mansions were the go-to settings in survival horror’s early days, but Parasite Eve opted for the very real New York City. Opening on a stage play at Carnegie Hall during Christmas Eve where our protagonist, police officer Aya Brea, bears witness to a songstress’ ballad that causes the audience to erupt in flame. The perversion of the familiar is what the game goes for, and that tone should return for a new installment. Having a chat with your fellow officers at the N.Y.P.D. or spending time with friendly police dogs grants reprieve, and accentuate horrific moments when those safe havens become a hell on earth.
Environments are at the will of Parasite Eve’s antagonist, Mitochondria Eve (just ‘Eve’ for short), spreading chaos through New York as she goes. Central Park might be where people walk their dogs or build a snowman with their kids, but once Eve comes through, all that’ll be left is charred bodies and malformed beasts. A new Parasite Eve doesn’t need to specifically return to New York, but it should maintain a juxtaposition between the safe and recognizable, and the mitochondria’s ability to burn it to a cinder. Parasite Eve 2 opened on Los Angeles but immediately ditched the city for, you guessed it: a dilapidated ghost town. So, just saying, the City of Angels is still open to the potential of a mitochondria uprising.
While the original game let players visit New York landmarks like the Statue of Liberty; there wasn’t much in the way of actual exploration. Waiving off the beaten path wasn’t encouraged outside finding hidden items or the endurance test that was the Chrysler Building climb. Parasite Eve should’ve taken advantage of the fact that it was set in a major metropolitan area, and a new installment could easily remedy this. Don’t turn it into an open world or anything like that, rather think how the Yakuza or Persona games flesh their worlds out with districts. They’re dense with various activities, side quests, and NPCs to interact with. Districts would add some personality to the city and up the immersion since a police officer should, you know, actually spend time on duty patrolling the streets. Getting more acquainted with citizens only to have them later wiped out by the mitochondria could add to the emotional weight of the story too.
Combat, on the other hand, makes full use of Aya’s capabilities as a police officer. Battles are fast, proximity dependant, and rely on being mindful of all chess pieces on the board. The closer Aya is to her target, the more damage her guns will do, and the inverse is true for enemies. Trudging up to an enemy will yield high damage in your favor, but it’s tougher to avoid melee and projectile attacks. Parasite Eve’s combat system is more akin to strategy RPGs than it is Final Fantasy. Sure, it’s still turn-based, but Aya is free to move about the battlefield with the only restriction being the parasite energy meter that replenishes after an attack or special ability is spent. There’s a good base here but given how it leans into tactics, a slight subgenre shift might spice things up in all the right ways.
Veering Parasite Eve straight into the strategy RPG lane could improve the established mechanics while amplifying the tension immensely. Imagine if Aya were to lead a SWAT team into battle and worry about their safety in addition to her own. Add in permadeath to the mix, and there’s a gravitas to every action that wasn’t there before. In the strategy RPG Valkyria Chronicles, for example, soldiers that fall in battle potentially die permanently if not resuscitated in time. Make a small tactical error, and the rookie on your team could be down the gullet of one Eve’s minions. It’s a perfect addition to a horror game all about disempowering players with an anxious roll of the dice.
Parasite Eve remains one of the few examples of the body horror making its way into a video game. Cerebrospinal fluid inexplicably gushing from eye sockets and muscle sinew being torn as a rat’s skeleton grows beyond the confines of its body are some of the tamer visuals seen in just the opening hours. Eve likes to manipulate the mitochondria in living cells to make their host either spontaneously combust or twist into an unrecognizable shape. It’s excess, no doubt, but it’s thematically appropriate in a story about microbiology and the emancipation of the organisms that literally power the cells in our bodies.
If there’s one thing from of the original that needs a new coat of paint more than any other, it’s the body horror aspect. This might not be fair, but like most early polygonal games, time has not been kind to Parasite Eve’s graphics. Mutilating the human body isn’t all that psychologically disturbing when the vehicle for the visuals is the original PlayStation. There’s no denying the artistry on display when a skull splits in half revealing a row of misaligned teeth though. It still elicits revulsion in the intended way but only slightly, so the potential is there, it just needs modern technology to bring the vision to life. Parasite Eve’s sequels didn’t attempt to replicate that grotesque nature which is a shame considering it was a defining trait of the original. Basically, the world is in dire need of bodily orifices vomiting up internal organs rendered in Unreal Engine 4, just grant our sick minds this one thing, Square-Enix.
The holidays tend to be inadvertently melancholic, and for a small subset of horror fans, it’s because this time of year is a reminder that Parasite Eve’s time has come and gone. It especially stings this year, considering the original came out within weeks of Resident Evil 2 and that has a remake looming on the horizon while Parasite Eve hasn’t had a new installment in nearly a decade. With such a plethora of fresh ideas it brought to survival horror that makes it stand out even now, there’s no reason it needs to remain bygone. Hopefully, one day Square-Enix will take some cues from the mitochondria, and spark new life back into Parasite Eve.
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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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