Editorials
Demon Hunting In Style: Celebrating the Original ‘Devil May Cry’
It is wild to think that 18 years ago Devil May Cry was released on the PlayStation 2. Since then the series has had numerous entries, an anime, comic books, action figures, and light novels. This month also sees the release of Devil May Cry 5, where we ‘ll be slaying demons left and right with Nero, Dante, and the mysterious V.
Yet while Devil May Cry 5 utilizes the latest in gaming technology to present stunning graphics and phenomenal combat, the original DMC has such an astounding nostalgia that remains to this day. With a new Devil May Cry on the way, I thought it would be fun to revisit the first game, celebrating its history and excellent qualities.
DMC‘s story centers around Dante, a demon hunter who also happens to be half-demon; he is also the son of a powerful demon who rebelled against his kind to protect humanity. One evening Dante gets a visit from a woman named Trish; we don’t know much about her other than the fact she looks strikingly similar to Dante’s late mother.
Trish attacks Dante, but he overwhelms her with his demon powers. Being impressed by his skills, Trish then reveals to him that the attack was a test to see how strong he was. She shares that the demon emperor, Mundus, who Dante sees as responsible for the death of his brother and mother, is planning to return to the mortal world. From there, Trish leads Dante to a castle, where he spends the rest of the game slicing and dicing demons. The narrative is exhilarating start to finish as controlling Dante makes one feel like a genuine badass facing off waves of demons.
Part of DMC’s origin comes from two other Capcom titles, the first being Resident Evil (since DMC was initially intended to be Resident Evil 4). Game director Hideki Kamiya wanted to make a game that was cool and stylish; in response to this, game writer Noboru Sugimura created a story about unraveling a mystery surrounding the body of a superhuman protagonist. The character’s name was Tony, who would be an invincible man with skills and intellect exceeding that of ordinary people, his powers explained through biotechnology. After experimenting with the character, Kamiya did not feel the protagonist looked heroic enough from a fixed camera angle; to cast the character in a better light, Kamiya decided on a dynamic camera angle.
However, producer Shinji Mikami thought the “cool” angle took away from the survival horror elements of Resident Evil; he then encouraged the team to make the game as a property independent from the series. Kamiya, taking inspiration from Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s epic classic, The Divine Comedy, renamed the protagonist Dante. The personality of Dante was based on the title character from Buichi Terasawa’s manga series Cobra; Kamiya also decided to have Dante wear red since red is a traditional color for heroic figures in Japan. The other game that impacted DMC was Onimusha: Warlords. During a test-play of the latter, Kamiya saw that you could keep enemies in the air by slashing them repeatedly; this was due to a glitch, but would go on to inspire the juggles Dante could perform via gunfire and sword attacks. These flashy attacks make up a major portion of DMC’s appeal.
Depending on how you mixed attacks and how long you pulled off combos for, you could go all out on the brutal delivery. A portion of the screen would register how successful your combos were, grading them on letters A, B, C, and D, with S being the best. At the end of each level, players would receive a similar rank based on how fast they finished the level, how many orbs (the game’s currency) they collected, how much damage they took, and how “stylish” their combos were.
It’s important to note that DMC had a hefty difficulty setting, bringing an element of tension into each battle. Kamiya said this was done on purpose as a challenge to casual game players. If you were to get stuck and continue dying, then the game would offer you a chance to play at a lower difficulty. While Dante had access to a variety of weapons, players could take things further and active his “Devil Trigger” form; this allowed for him to shift into a demon, moving much faster and landing heavier blows.
DMC also had a variety of puzzles, having players take on minor pauses between the action-packed moments. There were also side missions which pitted players against enemies they would have to defeat in a set time limit or in a specific way.
Upon its release, the game did remarkably well by commercially and critically. Critics showered DMC with praise, citing the excellent quality of its combat, innovations, and atmosphere. Even to this day, the title continues to receive recognition, appearing in numerous “Top Video Games Of All Time” lists. Dante also gets a great deal of praise, being considered one of the most famous video game characters ever. As of 2006, the game reached over two million sold units in the United States alone.
With Devil May Cry 5 on the way, as well as a new anime in the near future, there’s no slowing down for the series. Since the first game’s release back in 2001, Devil May Cry has gone on to inspire the action genre of gaming; considering how far games have come in technology, the first entry still exudes the same adrenaline and excitement it did all those years ago. Devil May Cry’s explosive combat, excellent atmosphere, and finely crafted mechanics have allowed it to become one of the greatest action video games in history.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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