Editorials
How ‘Bloodborne’ Does Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror Right
The very first note in Bloodborne reads, “Seek the Paleblood to transcend the hunt.” Given the fact that hulking beasts roam the dreary Victorian streets, most people fixate on the hunt portion of that note. While this is representative of a lot of the experience of Bloodborne, it’s the word “transcend” that clues you in to the game’s true nature: a Lovecraftian tale of mankind experimenting with forbidden knowledge. Could they have shown their hand from the beginning and still drawn people in? Probably, but discovering this twist is such a wonderful feeling that’s integral to the experience, as well as being in line with the structure of many of Lovecraft’s stories.
There’s a distinct point in the game where the story starts to take a turn. In the beginning, it seems to be about a simple plague that turns villagers into violent creatures. You hunt them through the streets and into the woods until you stumble upon Byrgenwerth. Here you find even stranger creatures: a giant centipede-scorpion hybrid, a human-fly with a bulbous head covered in eyes and students seemingly melting into a puddle of goo.
The most jarring part of Byrgenwerth is the boss fight with Rom, The Vacuous Spider. After exploring the school and finding the head scholar immobile on a balcony, you dive off and transport into a brightly-lit lake that goes on forever. It’s a stunning image that contrasts harshly with the dimly-lit city and night-drenched forest you’ve been traversing thus far. When Rom shows up, she’s almost sad. Her giant body rolls around trying to attack while summoning meteors from the heavens and sending smaller spiderlings after you. It’s not the most fun boss fight in the game, but it is the first one that gives you the sense that there is something grander, more cosmic going on in Yharnam than you’re led to believe.
The phrase “eyes on the inside” becomes an important one to understanding the story of Bloodborne. In the fiction, it’s a colloquial way of talking about the game mechanic of insight (in-sight, get it?) and refers to being able to understand the incomprehensible nature of the universe. Much like in the work of Lovecraft, there is always something lurking just beyond our perception that would drive a normal person mad to discover. This knowledge is being researched by several parties throughout the game, all who have conflicting ideas about how to elevate mankind to their next stage of existence.
Eyes are an important symbol with a lot of the enemies and can help say a lot about the creature’s relationship with arcane knowledge. For example, the Witch of Hemwick takes the eye metaphor literally, removing eyes with a hooked tool, theoretically in an attempt to gain knowledge. Similarly, the description of the Accursed Brew item mentions the practice of forcibly searching the inside of a skull for eyes.
The Insight stat itself doesn’t seem to have any impact on the game early on. Some actions use it as a currency, but there are other more subtle things that it does as it goes up. The lanterns held by the Church Servants are revealed to be covered with glowing eyes, Mad Ones spawn in specific locations, and the giant Amygdalas show up hanging from the buildings in Yharnham. While it’s not called a “Sanity Meter” like in so many other games, it manages to capture the concept in a more Lovecraftian manner than other games.
One especially Lovecraftian enemy in the game is the Winter Lantern, which will cause your Frenzy Meter, another variant on sanity, to raise just by looking at it. So many Lovecraft protagonists end up losing their minds just by gazing upon some inhuman horror, making this the perfect type of monster for the theme. The more Insight your character has, the quicker a Winter Lantern will raise your Frenzy, reinforcing an idea of the genre: knowledge of the forbidden is dangerous.
My favorite part about Bloodborne is that while it explores all of these very Lovecraft-influenced ideas, it does so without using the mythology. Sure, there are lots of tentacled creatures or the occasional fish-man, but it never uses Cthulhu proper, despite the fact that it’s public domain and could have been used. In creating its own mythology, it’s able to explore the ideas of cosmic horror in its own ways that don’t come with the baggage of Lovecraft, making it so much more unique.
By not telling us about the cosmic horror story from the get-go, it gave players the experience of a Lovecraft protagonist’s, slowly unraveling mysteries around them while losing more of their mind in the process. This melds perfectly with the storytelling of the Souls games, forcing you to actively hunt down and piece together the information yourself. It’s the perfect combination of theme and genre, and while I don’t think I’d ever need to see an explicit sequel, I would love to see From Software do something similar again.
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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