Editorials
Looking Back at the Horror Movies and Their Monsters That Inspired “Castlevania”
My first console was a second-hand Super Nintendo, and before I was even old enough to process what a “videogame” was, I was already begging my parents for more “playable movies” to put on the TV. While that’s a pretty reductive way of looking at gaming, it’s also not entirely inaccurate. In fact, legendary developer Hitoshi Akamatsu once said that he approached the creation of the original Castlevania as if it were an interactive film, using cinematic references as visual shorthand in order to tell a classic tale of gothic terror.
That’s why I’d like to use Castlevania‘s 35th anniversary as an excuse to unpack the horror movie influences behind the franchise. These games have a long history of borrowing elements from popular media in order to craft their own original take on interactive horror, and I think that these cleverly chosen references are partly responsible for their massive success.
Back in 1986, horror games weren’t exactly unheard of, with everything from arcade cabinets to the Atari 2600 boasting at least a handful of spooky titles, but none of these would have the staying power of Castlevania. In some ways, I’d chalk this up to the game’s brilliant simplicity. With cover art promising that a whip-wielding Conan the Barbarian is on his way to beat up Count Dracula (which almost makes sense, given that Conan has faced off against literal Lovecraftian entities in the past), and a finished game that actually lives up to that premise, it’s no wonder that Castlevania is still regarded as a classic.
Of course, despite his similarity to Schwarzenegger’s legendary incarnation of Conan, Simon Belmont is allegedly meant to be an amalgamation of Bram Stoker‘s Van Helsing and Harrison Ford‘s Indiana Jones. The game’s depiction of Dracula is also more reminiscent of his Bela Lugosi incarnation than Stoker’s original description, settling for Universal Studios’ interpretation of an elegant nobleman with sinister intentions. While this would vary in later games, with some of them suggesting that Dracula was literally the real-world Vlad Tepes and others remodeling him to look like an anime version of Gary Oldman, the evil Count would remain a constant threat throughout the series.
Where it all began.
In fact, before there were any talks about a sequel, Akamatsu was already planting the seeds for Dracula’s inevitable resurrection, once again staying true to the spirit of classic horror flicks where the antagonist is destined to return again and again like a cyclical curse. The developer apparently insisted that the final boss’s exploding body parts were meant to imply that the villain would one day be reassembled (with future games borrowing the Hammer Horror approach of having cult-like followers attempt to bring back the vampire lord through occult rituals).
The game’s other main antagonists also heavily reference cinematic icons, with Universal Studios providing a template for many of the game’s bosses through their classic monsters. With a loosely connected cinematic universe already holding these characters together, it’s no surprise that Akamatsu would turn to crossovers like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and House of Dracula when thinking of how to populate the world of Castlevania.
With bosses like Frankenstein’s Monster and The Mummy, not to mention the Wolfman and Carmilla in later entries, horror fans were in for a treat as they whipped their way through the game’s thrilling levels. Hell, even the Medusa boss was clearly inspired by Ray Harryhausen‘s stop-motion incarnation of the creature in Clash of the Titans (even more so with her full-bodied design in the sequels). This is all just further evidence that Castlevania was developed by a team of cinephiles who wanted their game world to be a little less abstract than your usual mushroom kingdoms and non-descript labyrinths.
Common enemies boast a cinematic influence as well, with the shambling zombie hordes obviously owing a lot to George Romero while the Fishmen are a clear allusion to Creature from the Black Lagoon (and possibly a reference to H.P. Lovecraft’s The Deep Ones). Even the Hunchback enemies were meant to recall one of Universal’s original creations, as the boss battle against Frankenstein’s Monster features a specific Hunchback named Igor that aids the creature in his fight against the player. While these references would become less frequent as the franchise developed its own identity, they would never really stop, with even future protagonist Alucard being inspired by Universal’s 1942 sequel Son of Dracula. Unfortunately for fans of this sexy vampire, Lon Chaney Jr. doesn’t sport the character’s now-iconic hairdo in that film.
There’s a lot of effort behind those pixels.
Naturally, it’s not just the enemies and characters that reference classic movies, as the original game’s level design was almost certainly meant to evoke the decadent crypts and gothic dining rooms of Roger Corman‘s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. Not only did films like House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum launch the career of genre legend Vincent Price, but they were also obvious sources of inspiration when designing the look and feel of Dracula’s 8-bit castle. Even the game’s secondary weapons took inspiration from horror tropes, featuring holy water and crosses alongside traditional weapons like knives and axes, as if Simon Belmont would somehow stumble upon an exorcism while wandering the castle.
Of course, with nearly 40 games and (hopefully) counting, this is far from a comprehensive guide to all the horror movie references that the developers have snuck into the Castlevania series over the years. However, from the movie reel start screen to the humorous end credits parodying famous horror artists, there’s no doubt that this iconic franchise was created by horror movie fans for horror movie fans, and I think that’s a huge reason why these games took off.
While I personally love how weird the Castlevania games became after getting lost in their own convoluted timelines and in-depth lore, I think that this simple love of classic horror is something that future games should try to keep in mind should Konami ever consider reviving the old Count for another round of monster-slaying adventures. After all, the horror genre has been through a lot since the Universal Monsters, and I’d love to see what a new generation of passionate developers could bring to Dracula’s dinner table.
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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