Editorials
Horrors of Yesteryear: The Forgotten ‘The Haunted Mansion’ Video Game Deserves a Remake
Remakes are officially cool again.
At least if we go off of the recent successes of games like Resident Evil 2 and 3, and the Crash Bandicoot Trilogy, remakes seem to be experiencing a new renaissance in the past decade entering into 2020. With the evolving status of mainstream video games offering newer and more polished experiences than ever before (at least, that’s the idea), remakes were only an inevitability in the video game industry.
The logic parallels the idea behind movie remakes; a well-known property from back in the day gets reintroduced to a modern audience for the sake of profit and nostalgia. The practice is quite cynical from the creative perspective, but a reliable moneymaker from the business perspective. Games have been dabbling in remakes for a while now, often being labeled as “remasters” and only adding in some extra polish and maybe a different voice cast to justify a remastered label.
But as of late, remakes have gone the extra mile in not only adding in some shine to an older game, but sometimes even vastly retooling the entire gameplay experience to give the game a breath of fresh air. Resident Evil 2 was a massive success because of how different the game felt while still maintaining its schlocky B-movie heart. It’s a remake that literally felt as though it was “remade” from the ground up, encouraging the idea of other older games to receive similar treatment.
But with popular (or once popular) game franchises, there’s still the crushing reality that many older games, popular or not, are likely to sit in obscurity without any possibility of a remake to bring them back to the limelight. Perhaps this is for the best. After all, a remake doesn’t automatically guarantee success or acclaim, and some games are better left to be their own experiences.
But when it comes to the 2003 children’s horror game, The Haunted Mansion, a potential remake feels both appropriate and necessary for the new Remake Renaissance.
The Haunted Mansion is most well-known as the 50+-year-old ride at Disneyland, long-standing as one of the most popular attractions at the “Happiest Place on Earth.” It’s quite ironic considering its reputation as a scary ride inside a mansion long haunted by hundreds of lively spirits. There’s enough of a scare factor to keep the children on their toes while clutching their parents’ pants without invoking some type of serious trauma.
Yet, for some odd reason, High Voltage Software didn’t seem to get the memo during the development of the Haunted Mansion game. Although the game came out at roughly the same time as the Disney movie starring Eddie Murphy and even incorporated some of the production designs from the film, it stood mostly as an adaptation of the ride itself, intended to capture the “spooky ghost tour” spirit of the famed ride.
The story for the Haunted Mansion game is set in the 19th century and centered around the character of Ezekiel Halloway, an orphan-turned-aspiring author who takes a job as a caretaker at the mansion to raise funds for his writing career. What he doesn’t realize is that the mansion is filled with ghosts, a healthy mixture of friendly and aggressive, and he cannot leave the mansion until he frees the souls of the trapped ghosts from a vengeful spirit.
The game’s plot is relatively simple and makes for some interesting game mechanics. The main point is that you play Ezekiel (or Zeke) and are forced to wander through the massive and mostly coated in darkness mansion as you battle through hostile spirits that could literally scare Zeke to death if not careful. With this being a Disney game, it’s tough to imagine the game being overly violent and traumatizing for children.
Indeed, the tone of the game is rather whimsical as half of the fun is seeking out the various ghosts from the ride, located in various spots of the mansion. More often than not, you’ll need to fight through enemy ghosts to find them, which can get pretty messy, but the end result is usually a cute little cutscene or interaction with said ghost. As you unlock more areas of the mansion to explore, the thought of friendly ghosts lounging around makes the experience of exploring feel more comforting and reassuring to know that some nice breathers are waiting for you.
But in order to get to the fun, Disney-style portions of the game, you have to journey straight through a storm of relentless terror and challenging puzzles that make up the meat of The Haunted Mansion. When you start, all of these friendly ghosts are trapped within the walls of the mansion and armed with a special lantern that can damage evil spirits; you must liberate the ghosts room by room and gradually restore power to the mansion.
Meaning that you start the game with virtually no power running through the mansion.
Because of this, every square inch of the gargantuan ghost haven is shrouded in darkness, leaving you to toil with only your trusty lantern to light the way. Even then, much of what the lantern lights up is likely something you wouldn’t want to come across, like the various spirits intent on scaring you to death. More often than not, the spirits will materialize out of literally thin air, forcing you to keep on your toes while you search for the light switch in each room that is normally hidden away somewhere.
Furthermore, many of these rooms require you to complete some sort of puzzle that sees the game experimenting with various set pieces, such as a mini-game where you’re shrunk to the size of a pool ball and placed on a pool table as an invisible hand lines up shots that could kill you. Puzzles that involve finding ways to ignite a fire in a kitchen using a poltergeist and navigating a room that changes shape and structure make up a fraction of the obstacles blocking your path towards completion.
Considering the fact that you have to liberate literally hundreds of souls from the confines of the mansion, the bulk of The Haunted Mansion is dedicated to having you confront each and every terror coming your way and in a Disney game, that might not sound like an arduous task. The game even makes sure to have a nice bit of comedy to balance everything out for younger players at the time.
The Haunted Mansion doesn’t let you off easy though, letting the black void of darkness follow you at every turn while exploring through the mansion. Not only is your only source of light a single lantern (which doesn’t light that far away from you anyways), but cold and empty ambiance makes up for the majority of the game’s music, recreating the feeling of walking down a dark hallway in the dead of night. Even when enemies appear, the soundtrack hardly changes, as the sounds of their impending arrival are your only warnings before they lunge at you. The music will change to lighter classical fare when you clear out a room, but even that only serves as a slight reprieve before venturing towards the rest of the dark ghost prison.
It doesn’t help that the enemies in the game are not the most pleasant to look at. There’s regular floating spirits, with faces twisted in a pained scowl, spiders that literally come in all sizes, a banshee ghost with long hair and sunken eyes that has a memorably terrifying reveal as she screams right at the camera, and more crawling and hiding around the mansion. They can appear anywhere in the dark and will often come in droves just to attack you, amounting to a near-constant barrage while you scramble for the elusive light switch.
The Haunted Mansion is frustrating, thrilling, scary, charming, and ultimately a game that has no business being as good as it was. The fact that it served mostly as an advertisement for the Disney ride and its film adaptation makes the end result somewhat jarring and demonstrates the genuine effort the developers put in to make the game as exciting as they possibly could.
Just imagine what a remake could entail for the game.
The ride has been around for over half a century, building up detailed lore surrounding the ghosts of the mansion. The game does its best to cover the most popular aspects of the ride, but there was only so much that could be put in at the time, a problem that could potentially be rectified when looking at the dominance of Disney in popular culture. They were already huge during the game’s release, but the success of their modern films, shows, and merchandising alone means that they can afford to throw money at a long-forgotten piece of their past media.
A remake, if done right, would do well to expand on the core of the game and fix some of the dated bugs and flaws to prepare it for a modern mainstream release. The game functions best as a “baby’s first horror game”, balancing the charming Disney aspects with the horror of ghosts trying to attack you. It’s a simple concept and in a game industry that has continued to push the boundaries of video games as an art form, a return to basics would likely have its own place carved out in the vast sea of video games.
As of now, there has been no hint of The Haunted Mansion being remade, and the game itself has fallen into obscurity, barring some Let’s Plays and speedruns from smaller YouTubers on emulators. My gut tells me that the game will never be remade, given its soft reception at launch, but my heart can’t help but witness the trend of game remakes making a comeback (Demon’s Souls, anybody?) and hope that maybe there’ll be room for the Disney horror-comedy after all.
Editorials
Before ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘Alien Autopsy’ Showed How Real Found Footage Could Feel
The line separating artist from con man is a lot thinner than you might initially believe. While I think we can all agree that lying for the sake of profit is actively malicious behavior, isn’t it also true that the faux documentary aspect of The Blair Witch Project is half the reason why that film became such a cultural phenomenon? After all, if there’s one thing filmmakers have in common with stage magicians, it’s that misleading and misdirecting audiences is simply part of the job.
That’s why I’ve developed a habit of mostly ignoring the moral quandaries behind many of film and television’s biggest “hoaxes” in favor of appreciating the narrative elements that drive productions like Mermaids: The Body Found and even Animal Planet’s highly underrated The Cannibal in the Jungle. However, if there’s a definitive case of a highly publicized broadcast fooling the world into taking it seriously, it has to be Fox’s infamous 1995 TV special Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction.
It’s been over three decades since that eerie footage first haunted television screens right at the peak of the ’90s ufology craze, and in that time, the video has taken on a life of its own. From countless parodies and references in everything from The X-Files to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (as well as John Dower’s recently released tell-all documentary The Alien Autopsy Scandal, which I’d highly recommend to genre fans everywhere), there’s no denying the legacy of the Alien Autopsy video. However, I rarely see the tape discussed as what it truly is: a highly convincing found footage film directed by a passionate stage magician and brought to life by masterful practical effects work.
That’s why I’d like to invite readers to join me on a deep dive into one of the most infamous broadcasts of all time in an attempt to reevaluate the footage as a fascinating narrative experience rather than a complete hoax.
The TV Special That Convinced Millions It Was Real
Ray Santilli next to Extraterrestrial replica in ‘The Alien Autopsy Scandal’
For starters, regardless of whether or not you believe that there was in fact an extraterrestrial crash in Roswell during the summer of 1947 and that some form of autopsy was performed on the victims, the producers behind the black & white recordings, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, insist that their video was a “restoration.” Though I’d argue that the proper word is “remake”of genuine footage that was too damaged to air on television. That’s why the duo went on to recruit filmmaker and eccentric magician Spyros Melaris and sculptor/monster designer John Humphreys to bring their version of the autopsy to life and sell it to the highest bidder.
This is where the story of the Alien Autopsy as a narrative experience really begins. Melaris claims that his approach to the faux recording consisted of striving for extreme period accuracy in both shooting equipment and setting while also planting subtle details that would initially seem like mistakes but could later be revealed to actually fit the time period. That being said, the filmmaker was under the impression that the short would be released for free as a PR stunt, with the team later producing and selling an informative documentary chronicling exactly how the footage was faked and commenting on how easy it is to manipulate public perception with a good old-fashioned magic trick.
This obviously isn’t how things went down, and that’s likely the reason why Melaris has since distanced himself from everyone else involved with the project. Yet, no amount of behind-the-scenes drama can undermine the genuine effort that went into making the short as impressive as it is. From the sourcing of real animal organs from a local butcher to make the organic part of the creature more lifelike to the highly detailed sculpt that made use of a hollowed-out underlayer that could be filled with fake blood and assorted viscera, there’s a reason why so many Hollywood specialists are still impressed with the artistry on display here.
Of course, the believability is only half the story, as I think that the best part of the autopsy is how Melaris builds on the existing tension by obscuring certain details and often embracing the chaos of what a real examination of extraterrestrial life could feel like. The camera often goes out of focus at just the right time to make certain effects hit even harder, and we can only speculate as to what the hazmat-suited doctors are gesticulating about during the operation. There’s a real air of mystery to the whole thing that almost makes it feel like a cosmically terrifying, cursed film containing forbidden knowledge that civilians were never meant to see.
So when Fox’s Fact or Fiction brings in the specialists to comment on the film and its otherworldly subject, it’s no surprise that we end up with one of the most memorable mockumentaries of all time – albeit one where the participants are unaware that the footage they’re commenting on is basically a large-scale practical joke. A joke that the network was obviously in on, as many participants claim that the TV special cut out significant portions where guests point out that they believe the footage to be an elaborate hoax.
The Lasting Impact of the Hoax Turned Cultural Event
Regardless, I remember going to bed terrified after watching reruns of the special and thinking about the respected pathologist who claimed that the body was almost certainly inhuman, with even effects maestro Stan Winston commenting on how difficult it would be to recreate some of these visuals through practical puppetry. That’s not even mentioning Jonathan Frakes’ dramatic hyping up of the disturbing imagery as if he was talking about the tape from The Ring, with his spooky demeanor here likely being responsible for his later role as the host of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction a few years later.
Personally, I’d argue that the Alien Autopsy phenomenon had just as much of an impact on me as a horror fan as The Blair Witch Project, a film that was almost certainly influenced by the success of this immensely popular hoax (to the point where they even produced their own TV special commenting on Heather’s found footage). Even if Fox didn’t intend to produce a narrative feature about the aftermath of the Roswell crash, the end product still holds up remarkably well as a highly entertaining mockumentary exploring the idea that we may not be alone in the universe.
While neither Santilli nor the rest of the production team has ever commented on this, I also think it’s very likely that the idea of a faux Alien Autopsy could have been influenced by Dean Alioto’s The McPherson Tape/UFO Abduction. I’ve already written about how this granddaddy of found footage was co-opted by rogue ufologists who began selling bootlegs of the tape at conventions as if it were real evidence of a close encounter, so it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that Santilli and company could have heard about this phenomenon and been inspired to come up with their own highly profitable hoax.
At the end of the day, it’s unlikely that the Alien Autopsy film is recreating any real footage from Roswell, but I can still appreciate the short and the accompanying television event as a standalone horror story that still influences the way we see found footage to this very day.
After all, the possibility that something could be real is often much scarier than finding out for sure – and that’s why I think Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is still worth revisiting three decades down the line.
You must be logged in to post a comment.