Editorials
How Dario Argento Inspired a Generation of Horror Gaming
After last year’s divisive yet memorable remake of the 1977 cult classic Suspiria, it looks like its original director, Dario Argento, is finally emerging from the background of so many recent releases (Mother! and Hereditary to name a few) to once again stand in the popular horror spotlight.
His influence, which continues to cast an imposing shadow across modern culture, has not only stalked the screens of filmgoers for many years, but can also be found lurking throughout the short yet fascinating history of horror gaming. Perhaps the most obvious example of Argento’s work influencing the creation of a video game, also happens to be one of the most interesting.
Clock Tower is an adventure horror game released for the Super Famicom in 1995. It is a somewhat obscure 16-bit title, having never made it outside of the Japanese market (despite seeing several releases for newer consoles), but it is also considered one of the very first examples of survival horror in gaming. Its director, Hifumi Kono, felt so inspired by Argento’s unique approach to stylised horror, that he wanted to create a game that would not only pay homage to Argento’s films, but would make players actually feel like they were in one.
Considering the limitations of the hardware at the time, and how very few horror games had been made up to that point, the task of translating Argento’s films into such an experimental format was no mean feat for Kono and his studio, Human Entertainment. Nevertheless, what they did manage to achieve was so impressive, that it continues to inspire developers to this day.
Typically intended for the use of a mouse and keyboard, point-and-click games had, up to the time of Clock Tower’s development, been created almost entirely by western studios such as the likes of Sierra and Lucas-Arts. Not only was Clock Tower a point-and-click game created with a controller layout in mind, but it was also developed by a tiny Japanese studio most well-known for making platformers and sports titles. Borrowing heavily from two of Argento’s most beloved films, the previously mentioned Suspiria and 1985’s Phenomena, Clock Tower was undeniably unique from the get-go.
The most obvious elements of mimicry can be seen in the game’s protagonist: Jennifer. Bearing a striking resemblance to Phenomena’s very own Jennifer Corvino (who was in turn, played by Jennifer Connelly), the young orphan also finds herself living in an extravagant mansion in the forests of Northern Europe, after being adopted by a mysterious benefactor, Mr. Barrows. What follows is a surprisingly detailed plot (for a game made in the mid 90’s at least) that happens to include many key elements found in both Phenomena and Suspiria, such as; a murderous deformed child stabbing young girls with scissors, the use of satanic magic and sacrifices, and men driven insane by being locked in hidden dungeons, but to name a few.
But Clock Tower’s story doesn’t just include characters and events from Argento’s work like a piece of second-rate fanfiction, it translates his vision into an entirely different medium in an entirely unique way. Most notably, is how Clock Tower uses its low-res graphical style to portray Argento’s iconic use of color, lighting, and set design. Regardless of how unrealistic the game’s characters and environments may appear, Clock Tower looks undeniably striking, with a bold application of contrasting red and blue color palettes and clever use of shadows and lighting. Arguably, it’s far more fitting for a game inspired by Argento’s films to veer away from realism, in favor of a more exaggerated and indulgently colorful version of reality. However, the game’s characters are still made recognizable by the use of a-then popular technique, whereby photographs of people were digitized into a 16-bit format (a rudimentary form of motion capture).
Why Argento’s Deep Red is a Masterpiece
This technique was used to create character portraits that appear whenever Jennifer is in conversation with someone, as well as displaying Jennifer’s intense reactions to a shocking revelation or horrific event. This is how Kono and his team attempted to translate the direction of Argento’s female leads, and considering how little subtlety is involved in those performances, it seems that having exaggerated portraits of characters’ expressions was a logical step to take.
This technique also served an additional purpose of displaying the player-character’s health-bar, whereby both the portrait’s color and Jennifer’s expression indicate her general well-being. Much like in Suspiria, color is used as a visual language to communicate mental distress, with Jennifer’s condition gradually worsening with every new horror she encounters (red being a particularly strong indication of incoming peril). If Jennifer finds herself in a moment of extreme danger, then much like Argento’s victims, it’s physically harder for her to survive if she’s afraid. Being scared means that Jennifer is more likely to fail a ‘panic mode’ check (when the player must button-mash to struggle free), and is more likely to trip over her own feet when running. Jennifer’s health-bar is yet another example of Clock Tower applying Argento’s methods of color saturation, but in a way that only video games can achieve.
And there’s plenty for both Jennifer and the player to be scared about in Clock Tower. Any horror aficionado knows that tension is essential to appreciating a good scare, and thankfully, Clock Tower is a masterclass in building anticipation for fear. The game’s animations may appear laborious for the sake of being pretty, but they successfully keep players wondering during the quieter moments, and clinging to their seats when things start getting dicey. Much like the scene in Suspiria, in which Sara desperately tries to stack boxes to reach an upper window, these lengthy animations evoke an intense feeling of panic whenever danger approaches.
Audio is also used to great effect in Clock Tower, with minimal sound playing out during the bulk of the game’s action, except for Jennifer’s echoing footsteps and a solitary phone which can be occasionally heard ringing (despite having had its line cut). When music is playing it usually indicates the presence of something malevolent, with one particular track only sounding when Jennifer is being directly pursued by someone. It’s a piece of music that will inevitably loop several times during a single encounter, but much like Argento’s iconic use of musical cues during Suspiria (and to a lesser extent, Phenomena), it still manages to effectively imbue the player with a feeling of panic.
Escaping from pursuit is a running theme throughout Argento’s entire filmography, with viewers made to fear for victims’ lives thanks to the effective use of cinematography and framing. Clock Tower earns its credentials as being one of the very first examples of survival horror, through its emphasis of flight-over-fight gameplay. Scenarios wherein Jennifer can strike back at her pursuers are few and far between, with players needing to pay attention to the location of hiding spots, so that they may be used during future chase-sequences.
However, much like many of Argento’s victims, not every hiding spot will guarantee safety for Jennifer. Case in point, during my most recent playthrough I attempted to hide Jennifer on an upper platform by climbing a ladder and pushing it down. Believing she was safe, I finally relaxed, just to have the killer burst through the ceiling next to her, prompting me to yell in fear and urge Jennifer to flee in the other direction. Taking control of such a vulnerable character during such a dangerous situation is an incredibly stressful experience for the player, and in many ways, it’s what makes playing Clock Tower far more frightening than watching any of Argento’s films. In this fashion, Kono and his team took the vulnerability of Suspiria and Phenomena’s protagonists and elevated its effectiveness by translating it into a gaming mechanic.
This hiding mechanic has subsequently defined part of the survival horror genre, particularly its more modern contemporaries, with recent-ish releases such as Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Outlast 1 & 2, and Alien: Isolation all favoring a flight-over-fight approach to gameplay. For several years after Clock Tower’s creation, Japan successfully cemented itself as the birthplace of survival horror gaming, with pioneering titles such as such as the Fatal Frame series and Haunting Ground continuing to carry the torch that Hifumi Kono and his team had first ignited all those years ago.
In essence, Argento’s filmography generated a spark of inspiration that would lead to an entire chain-reaction of horror creation; with Clock Tower’s revolutionary approach to survival horror inspiring its very own clutch of creators, who would then in-turn inspire other creators, and so on, so forth. When an Italian horror flick can cause such ripples across the most unexpected of lakes, it’s undeniably worth being remembered in today’s cultural zeitgeist.
Editorials
Larry Cohen’s ‘It’s Alive’ Still Towers Over a 2009 Remake That Maybe Should’ve Stayed Unborn
When I write about remakes, I often bring up the word “justification.” What’s the impetus for the remake’s existence? Reinventing icons for a new generation, or benefiting from a few decades’ worth of special effects advancements? Often, there’s a reason that you can acknowledge and say, “Alright, I see what you’re going for.” That holds in Josef Rusnak’s It’s Alive, which tries to reinvent Larry Cohen’s mutant baby B-movie of the same name in what I consider the worst possible way.
I didn’t say it had to be a GOOD reason.
I’ll start with Cohen’s own reaction to Rusnak’s 2009 update: “It’s a terrible picture. It’s just beyond awful … I would advise anybody who likes my film to cross the street and avoid seeing the new enchilada.” A blunt take, but I agree. Rusnak justifies his remake by diverting drastically from Cohen’s exploitation-y flick about a newborn monster killinPreview (opens in a new tab)g Los Angeles residents, but it’s such a bafflingly weak reimagining. Cohen remains faithful to tenets of creature features while tugging at our hearts with commentaries about parents caught between morality and adoration, whereas Rusnak asks, “What if we punished a mother for trying to have an abortion?”
As Cohen says, cross the damn street.
The Approach
It’s Alive (2009) is one of those women-focused horror projects that make you scoff, derogatorily, “This was written and directed by dudes, wasn’t it?” Cohen’s original screenplay isn’t airtight, yet it does well to respect Sharon Farrell‘s “shaken mother of a monster,” Lenore Davis. Paul Sopocy and James Portolese, on the other hand, pen a screenplay that reductively focuses on Lenore protecting her bitey offspring, with a bent-out-of-shape abortion subplot thrown in. That’s not to say Cohen’s Lenore doesn’t display the same protective maternal instincts, but Rusnak plays in a sandbox of lame-duck tropes, dooming Lenore for the supposed sin of a mother’s love.
Teenage party-girl turned actress Bijou Phillips stars as Lenore Harker, a New Mexico college student who quits to live with her architect boyfriend, Frank (James Murray), and raise their incoming baby. She’s ditching pizza nights and girl talk with bestie Marnie (Ty Glaser), moving into the Albuquerque woods, where Frank has a secluded homestead with brother Chris (Raphaël Coleman), who is wheelchair dependent. Lenore goes in for a pregnancy checkup, where she learns her unborn child has doubled in size, requiring a cesarean section birth. So the surgical team opens her up and extracts “Daniel,” only to be murdered by the newborn, found resting on Lenore’s stomach, taking a post-slaughter rest.
The immediate deviation is how Daniel is found nuzzling Lenore in the hospital, and doesn’t look “freakish” at first glance. Daniel comes home with Lenore and Frank, setting up the happy lil’ family dynamic. It’s no longer a conspiratorial hunt-and-hide scenario; the “home sweet hell” take on Cohen’s original. Which, frustratingly, dissolves the core suspense that Cohen achieves. For Daniel to kill, victims have to come knocking on Lenore’s door, which becomes a repetitive cycle of visitors and hidden bodies that remove any excitement and surprises.
Does It Work?
Rusnak earns points for trying something new. Remakes have historically been less willing to put unique spins on existing stories (see: Cabin Fever). But there’s also a question of retaining the essence of the source material. Why remake a movie if you’re going to spin so far from the original that you don’t even need to use the title? It’s the Child’s Play of it all. If you wanted to make a killer AI toy movie, why use the Child’s Play legacy to do so (outside of market familiarity)?
It’s Alive doesn’t fully abandon Cohen’s ideas, but it does feel thinner than expected. There have been plenty of killer baby movies since It’s Alive—Cohen hardly has the concept trademarked. What’s fun about Cohen’s It’s Alive is how Frank chases his mutant kin around Los Angeles, eventually into the sewer system, culminating in the Los Angeles (drained) river. Rusnak directs what’s essentially a one-location thriller that minimizes the scope to meet not only its lower budget, but lesser ambitions. Where Cohen pushes farther, Rusnak pulls back, losing the idiosyncratic quirks of Cohen’s superior It’s Alive.
There’s nothing wrong with a good chamber piece, but the psychological torments Sopocy and Portolese opt for are soft as fresh-out-the-bag marshmallows. So much of the film hinges on Lenore’s cover-up tactics when she realizes her wee one is a maneater, which becomes one-note in the process. Frank wanders around, ignoring red flags, and Chris is removed from the picture for a small bit to keep the massacre going. In both films, Lenore has trouble turning against her child—but Cohen is much more thoughtful about Lenore’s state through it all. Rusnak’s direction is short-sighted, rudimentary, and flat, as it has nothing interesting to say about the fears of parenthood that drive Phillips’ Lenore to nurture the vengeful child she once wanted to terminate.
The Result
In It’s Alive (1974), Cohen makes a point of referencing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as John P. Ryan’s Frank recalls having the epiphany that Dr. Frankenstein is the villain, not his creation. It’s what drives Cohen’s screenplay, as we learn how the doctors tried to kill the original baby, since its deformities made it look like a melon-headed, fang-toothed freakshow. There’s none of that in Rusnak’s remake, which diminishes the creature’s origins and motives to anger. It’s an uninteresting modification because the point of Cohen’s picture is to question what makes a monster, and how its creators process their hand in the chaos. Rusnak’s not interested in such explorations, except when the screenplay shoehorns what foolishly appears as an anti-abortion undertone when we learn about Lenore’s sketchy internet baby-be-gone pills.
Even worse, the technical merits of Rusnak’s It’s Alive are unfortunate. Credit to the original’s cast, because Ryan and Farrell bring dramatic acting chops that accentuate their film’s tragedy; a legitimate heartbreaker. None of Rusnak’s cast are hitting on such a high caliber of talent, especially since there’s nothing meaty about Sopocy and Portolese’s character designs. It’s very Horror 101: ignore the obvious, act gobsmacked when the obvious happens, and bring it home. Phillips has been better in films like Bully and Hostel: Part II (maybe even The Wizard of Gore), while Murray is your average 2000s straight-to-video throwaway boyfriend. The rest of the supporting cast, sadly, barely even register.
There’s a charm to Cohen’s monster SFX, whipped up by Rick Baker—but also an opportunity. Cohen decided to use this three-mirror-blur vision, seeing through the baby’s eyes to show the beast as little as possible. If Rusnak wanted to make a stronger impact, he could have gone all-in on Daniel’s appearance to say, “Hey, at least we developed a rad creature!” But, alas, Rusnak might show even less of Daniel. When he does appear in the basement, or leap out of a trash can in the film’s climactic finale, it’s CG augmentation that distorts a puppet reportedly crafted by SFX superstar Tony Gardner. Cohen accomplishes infinitely more by putting his then-girlfriend Elaine Parkyn in a full-head monster mask, a pair of pointed gloves, and a partial body suit that benefit from optical tricks—because practical always wins.
The Lesson
It’s not hard to wonder why Millennium Films lost faith in Rusnak’s It’s Alive and opted for no theatrical release. In a time when horror remakes were all the rage, Millennium buried It’s Alive so deep that it’s not even watchable or rentable on streaming (ain’t even worth Tubi). No hyperbole, this remake stinks with the stinkiest of ’em. It’s slight on innovation, filled with awful genre generics, and is a slap in the face to what Cohen accomplished. There’s something so fresh about a killer baby flick that focuses on the suit-and-tie-wearing father, who is forced to challenge the stern, macho gender roles of the 70s, and something so disappointing about a 2000s horror movie that falls right back into outdated mindsets.
So what did we learn?
- Yes, for the hundredth time, some of those 2000s horror remakes are as bad as the haters made them all out to be.
- Ex-David Lee Roth, Ozzy Osbourne, and Alice Cooper bassist Todd Jensen plays Lenore’s doctor for some reason (which I wouldn’t have known without the internet).
- You can appreciate a remake for trying something different, but you can also detest a remake for how poorly it does something different.
- Why does Daniel look like a baby shark (doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo)?
Watching both It’s Alive flicks back-to-back gave me whiplash. When John P. Ryan (as Frank) confronts his cowering, terrified child-monster in the bowels of Los Angeles, I nearly shed a tear. That whole scene really, as Ryan realizes he’s become the Dr. Frankenstein of sorts, and his miserable, deformed boy craves his father’s affection in a time of need. Then you have Rusnak’s film, which brutally kills the pro-abortion character, insinuates Lenore is being punished for trying to abort Daniel early in the pregnancy, and deserves to die with her demon spawn engulfed by the worst CG flames this side of Birdemic: Shock and Terror. I just … kudos to Cohen for richly developing a sci-fi curio with a tremendous sense of emotional understanding, and nothing but thumbs down for Rusnak’s remake, which comes off as plenty boneheaded and hella halfhearted in the process.
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