Editorials
Exploring the Horror in ‘Undertale’
Note: minor spoilers ahead. I won’t ruin major plot elements.
If you have played Undertale (if you didn’t, please stop reading right now and go play it), you may have come through some interesting feelings. It can be a cheerful journey most of the time, with likable characters and silly jokes here and there, even when the sense of humor gets a bit dark. Your lovely time with your “stepmother” or that unforgettable date with the one and only Papyrus are some of the sweetest times you’ll have. Laughs and smiles will be a common situation during your time with Undertale. However, I can’t deny there was something “itching” in my brain the whole time, a continuing state of anxiety. I found horror in this adventure, and I want to show it to you.
Don’t get me wrong. There aren’t scare jumps or a “frightening” story in Undertale. You won’t necessarily feel fear while you play it, maybe the complete opposite. Nevertheless, I felt nervous and aghast with some specific scenes and with what is under this tale of the last war between humans and monsters. These dark little secrets (who are we really?), the missing pieces that we will try to find and connect in our walkthrough(s). You can sense the fear of the Unknown in these pixelated lands, in whoever you’ll find in your way and the lack of knowing what you should expect.
Take the first “enemy” you encounter, for example. It’s a smiling and speaking flower. A quite cute one if you ask me, and I wanted to have a charming conversation with it because it seemed like a cool fella. My expectations were subverted from the beginning of the journey when this rude piece of leaves deceived me then attacked me. Not only it almost broke my heart (in a literal way, because in Undertale you protect your heart from the enemies’ moves), but it spat these words with a horrendous beam: “You idiot. In this world, it’s kill or BE killed. Die”.
Luckily enough, a human-like goat named Toriel helped me and later she would take the place of a mother. A remarkable one, that would teach me the basics of the game and some lore, all while taking good care of my human character. But again… my expectations would be subverted when I tried to exit the Ruins (the starting location in the adventure) and she would attack me. My own new stepmother, someone who just seemed impossible to do harm. And she’s an incredible spellcaster; the enemies I fought before were a joke in comparison.
In Undertale you can attack or spare the lives of the creatures you find along the way, and this will affect the journey and the ending you get (there are three possible endings depending on how you’ve treated enemies). When you fight bosses, this will change possible outcomes, if they live or die, their reactions and how other characters will behave with you. However, this doesn’t change the fact that our character’s own “mother” tried to murder us. She sure had her -understandable- reasons, but we are still talking about parricide here. Are we still going to have mercy with every creature we battle, considering they could stab our back in the end?
This anxious feeling of mine will appear with almost every character we meet. Some of them may change their thoughts towards us and others will be just an enigmatic personality with hidden desires, like Sans. Even the most inconsequential NPCs have an existential crisis and/or nihilism vibes around them: “Someday, I’d like to climb this mountain we’re all buried under”. “All that pressure to succeed… really got to her…”. “Everyone is always laughing and cracking jokes, trying to forget our modern crises… We can’t do anything, so why be morose about it?”. It was hard for me to feel safe in this treacherous environment, not to feel in danger around every corner. Of course, there will be genuinely good creatures, that will help us along with our quest and wish us good. But trust is a delicate matter when we are a stranger in a strange land and most of the natives try to kill or at least deceive us. It’s hard to form bonds with people when they can do harm when we least expect it. People can be pretty dangerous. Like in real life, isn’t it?
The last aspect I want to scare (tell) you about is how Undertale plays with your mind, not only with the creatures and the situations you have to face, but with the scenery. The map design in this title is fabulous, full of carefulness and attention to detail without a doubt. Despite the artistic choice and the inner-beauty of it (you’ll love it if you like games made in GameMaker), it has meaning. The different kinds of scenarios we will walk over vary from simple chunks of lands to labyrinthine laboratories. There is a constant “trick” between what is shown and what isn’t in these places. The use of darkness, in places where we can actually avoid any possibility of light and have our screen pure black. The use of excessive light, in locations, that present “magic” transitions and tense situations. It doesn’t matter that we have a cell phone and some characters will contact us from time to time (one of them will harass us, honestly). We can feel alone in this journey, maybe even in this whole existence in this odd universe, and it looks like there isn’t much we can do about it.
Undertale is a unique experience I just recently had. I laughed out loud with some corny jokes and hilarious moments, and I felt emotional with other situations. Specific characters grew on me and they became some of my most loved cast in quite some time. However, the most relevant sensation I got from this game was how it dug into my nerves, and the ever-present thought of “something is wrong and I’m being lied every moment”. The eventual macabre art such as the final boss design didn’t help much.
The great Ernest Dickerson turns seventy-five years old this month, so we’re looking back at his most memorable contribution to the horror genre – 1995’s Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight!
The film hit screens while the Tales from the Crypt series was winding down its run on television, and it stands apart with a story that feels a step or two removed from the franchise norm. That was the smart play, though, as the show’s stories – and those from the original EC comics – work best in short bites. The result is a film that holds up beautifully as a gory good time.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
Commentator: Ernest Dickerson (director), Michael Felsher (moderator)
1. Dickerson was in post-production on Surviving the Game when he got a call from his agent saying that producer Gil Adler wanted to meet about a Tales from the Crypt feature film. It went well, so Dickerson met with Joel Silver next and secured the job.
2. The original screenplay for the film came to the producers as a spec script wholly detached from the Tales from the Crypt brand. They added the Crypt Keeper (voiced by John Kassir) bookends to make it fit.
3. Dickerson was more familiar with the original EC comic books having read them as a kid, but he had watched a few episodes of the HBO series, so he knew what the current vibe was for the project.
4. Adler directed the film’s wraparound segments, meaning Dickerson never actually got to work with the creepy puppet. “Gil and the Crypt Keeper had a great relationship,” he adds, “they worked together for years.”
5. While he was new to the Tales from the Crypt family, Dickerson had previously worked as a director of photography on the Tales from the Darkside anthology series. That show is underappreciated in my humble opinion, and I will go to bat for both it and the equally underloved Monsters.
6. A big appeal of the horror genre for Dickerson is the idea of dark mysteries that challenge our imagination. For this film, that came down to the mythology being created between the characters.
7. Five executive producers are listed in the opening credits, but Dickerson says the only two he had dealings with were Silver and Richard Donner. The other three were Walter Hill, Robert Zemeckis, and David Giler.
8. Dickerson had only ever seen Billy Zane in movies with a full head of hair, so he was surprised when Zane showed up on the first day with a bald head. “He had this case, and he opened up the case that he had all these hair pieces in, and he says, ‘So which one of these do you think I should use?’” Dickerson looked at him and suggested he just go bald for the character.
9. While the bulk of the opening exteriors were filmed in a desert just outside Los Angeles, the shot of the old church at 11:26 was created on a warehouse hangar soundstage where the film’s interiors were shot.
10. When he had read the script, Dickerson pictured the character of Jeryline (Jada Pinkett Smith) “as a little, tough lady.” He had recently seen Smith in Menace II Society, and while the producers had someone else in mind for the role, he fought to get her instead.
11. Just as Zane surprised Dickerson with his hair (or lack thereof), Smith arrived on the first day with her hair dyed platinum white. He “liked the idea” but asked her to please get it tweaked so it looked more yellowish blond. “It’s definitely a statement.”
12. He had seen Brenda Bakke in the 1989 sci-fi/action film from Japan, Gunhed, and thought she’d be great here as Cordelia. The rest of us might recognize her from Death Spa or Trucks.
13. Felsher comments that the film’s setup does a good job not telegraphing who’s going to live or die, and he uses the “nice guy” (Charles Fleischer) and “the kid” (Ryan O’Donohue) as examples. “You don’t play by those rules here,” he says, and Dickerson replies that he wanted to subvert those rules. That extends to Smith as well because she’s Black, “and usually in movies like this they’re the first folks to die.”
14. Dickerson says they had forty days of filming, “which, the way I’m used to working, was a very generous schedule.” It was budgeted at around $10 million.
15. This probably won’t surprise you, but Zane improvised the bit at 26:25 after he jumps out the window and says, “Fuck this cowboy shit! You fuckin’, hodunk Podunk, well, then, motherfuckers!”
16. In the original script, the demons that The Collector (Zane) raises from the dirt actually looked more like the people they used to be. “They were more human,” but the very smart decision was made in pre-production to make them look far more unique instead.
17. The demons are killed by shooting their eyes, but Dickerson felt there should be one more element to it. “Shoot out their eyes, you gotta duck because the souls come shooting out, and if it hits ya, boom, it can kill ya.” This is a fun touch.
18. He’s been asked more than once if these demons are where Peter Jackson got the idea for how the orcs would look in his Lord of the Rings movies. “They do look like orcs.”
19. He recalls having seen Ronny Yu’s The Bride with White Hair shortly before going to work on Demon Knight, and he hoped to bring some of that staged style into his own film. An example of that in practice is Brayker’s (William Sadler) brief flashbacks to Christ on the cross.
20. Character deaths were mostly based on the idea that “each person’s downfall was going to be predicated by their weakness.” The Collector discovers someone’s weakness and then uses it against them. Cordelia wants to be loved, Jeryline wants to travel, Uncle Willy (Dick Miller) is a horndog for both liquor and ladies, Danny loves horror comics, etc.
21. Dickerson says that plenty of genre classics were in the back of his head while making the film, including Assault on Precinct 13, Alien, Aliens, and more.
22. Cordelia is possessed into a demonic form, and Dickerson’s idea for how she’d look was originally a bit different. “Since Cordelia was a prostitute, I thought that her mouth should actually be a vertical slit that was in her stomach… which would open up with teeth and a tongue.” It was nixed, he says, when “the wife of one of the producers read that and said ‘no way you’re putting that in the movie.’”
23. The key makes an appearance in the followup, Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, but it wasn’t originally meant to. Apparently, early test audiences expected it to be a more connected sequel to Demon Knight, so the filmmakers added it in to appease them. This is where I go on record saying that Bordello of Blood is a fun time. Can’t touch Demon Knight, obviously, but it’s more entertaining than its reputation suggests.
24. They had to film Uncle Willy’s bar scene “dream” twice, once with the women topless and once with them in bikinis, to have versions for both theaters and television broadcast. “Dick’s a pro.” (To be fair, Dickerson says this in regard to Miller having to endure the makeup application, but the sentiment fits both situations, so…)
25. Dickerson says he’s “always amazed at the love that people show this film,” and adds that fans bring it up to him incredibly often. This is great to hear, as we should always be telling artists how much their work means to us while they’re still alive and able to hear it.
26. Zane also suggested the gag at 1:08:21 with the sponge coming out of his mouth. The beat reminds Dickerson to praise the actor even more, adding that he was an “ally” to the director when “bad ideas” came down from the studio suits.
27. He didn’t get any pushback on killing little Danny. He did insist on one added element, though, as he wanted to immediately follow the boy exploding in the air with a shot of his bloody and torn sneaker hitting the ground below. “And the sneaker had to be a hightop.”
28. Dickerson says there’s “something kinky sexy about” Smith being covered in blood, and then the two commentators go quiet for almost two minutes out of respect for the scene. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on how Dickerson had previously mentioned Alien and Aliens as films being in the back of his head during filming, and how two scenes here reflect that – Jeryline stripping down to her underwear for the final confrontation feels like a nod to Ridley Scott’s film, while an earlier scene with Irene (CCH Pounder) and Dep. Bob (Gary Farmer) realizing they’re surrounded and choosing to blow themselves up alongside some of the demons is something of a callback to the air vent sacrifice in James Cameron’s film.
29. Asked about the film’s critical reception at the time of release, Dickerson says it received good reviews from horror-loving critics and then talks about the importance of horror in general. “Horror has always been a great way of putting out ideas, of talking about some of the things that affect us as people. Some of the best horror, like the best science fiction, talks about what it’s like to be human. Some of the best horror gets very political.”
30. The original ending would have featured The Collector showing “his true self, which is a demon made of fire.” They spent a lot of time trying to make it work, but it was “extremely difficult… back in the day of analog effects.” It was rewritten into the faceoff between him and Jeryline featuring the dancing, the crotch fire, Zane’s attempts at saying “love,” and his eventual demise from her bloody spit.
31. They both agree that a direct sequel to Demon Knight could be a lot of fun, but Dickerson says he’s unaware of any talk on the possibility.
32. Dickerson was super excited about this new Scream Factory Blu-ray in 2015, and he mentions that before its release, he had imported a Blu-ray from Germany presumably to enjoy the film in HD. He’s just like us! (Or am I the only one here who’s imported a German Blu-ray of the much maligned werewolf flick Big Bad Wolf…)
Quotes Without Context
“I was so happy to get Dick Miller for this movie.”
“There was a time when guys used to put ketchup on everything.”
“I’m a big student of Hitchcock, and the best way to make a moment of horror work is to lull the audience into a false sense of security.”
“A villain should always be the most interesting person in a movie.”
“They were a really great bunch of performers who were performing on these little leg-extension stilts wearing a diaper that had a radio-controlled tail that was being manipulated by a special effects tech right out of the frame.”
“It’s hard to direct air; it doesn’t do what you want.”
“The only censorship problem came from the producer’s wife, who didn’t want the vagina dentalis [sic] in the movie.”
“One of the executives wanted to know why the devil didn’t try to have sex with Jada.”
“It always starts with the script.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
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