Editorials
The Claustrophobic Horror of ‘Condemned: Criminal Origins’
The empowerment of arming the player has always been somewhat of a conundrum for the horror genre.
While necessary to the player’s survival, the inevitable firepower bestowed upon the player can be detrimental to the carefully crafted horror elements.
So, what happens when the player is stripped of that empowerment and trades in their gun for a lead pipe? Developer Monolith Productions wasted little time in establishing Condemned: Criminal Origins defining tone, which holds up remarkably well 16 years after the game’s release. Channeling the aesthetic and brooding atmosphere of iconic horror films such as David Fincher’s Seven, Condemned’s most distinctly unique feature is its claustrophobia.
Much like the films it emulates, the player is dropped into an unforgiving and filth-covered world. Players take on the role of FBI agent Ethan Thomas who finds himself framed for murder by the very serial killer he’s hunting. Making matters worse there is a mysterious wave of violence plaguing Metro City, somehow tied to Ethan’s case.
Monolith Productions does a terrific job of immersing players into this uncomfortably suffocating world. Ethan’s fugitive status forces him to adopt a “behind enemy lines” survivalist mentality that weaponizes his surroundings. Repurposing inconspicuous items such as 2×4’s, pipes, school desks, and even mannequin arms into instruments of death becomes his DIY means of survival. The inherently limited range of melee weapons makes combat an intimate affair as death is never more than an arm’s length away.
The result is a brutally refreshing approach to combat, as coming face to face with your attackers gives a constant, chilling spike of adrenaline. While the melee mechanics are relatively simplistic, the unpredictability of Condemned’s enemies allows it to avoid overly devolving into a mindless hack and slasher.
Crazed vagrants will feign injuries only to lash out when Ethan closes in, weaponize their environment, and retreat around corners to set up ambushes. For Ethan to survive, he must become that which hunts him.
And hunt him they will. Enemies will at times literally burst through drywall or ceiling panels in their hunt for Ethan. Emphasizing melee combat may, on the surface, seem like a gimmick when in actuality, it sustains the game’s horror aesthetic. The player is in a constant state of vulnerability, only ever as safe as a well-timed block to counter an incoming swing of a pipe.
Periodically, Ethan will stumble upon firearms though they are often anything but reliable. Most guns have less than a handful of shots or sometimes none at all. This lack of consistent ammo supply adds yet another layer of anxiety-inducing tension to combat, but more importantly, ensures the player never feels like a super-soldier.
Inversely, the unpredictable nature of firearms allows for moments of immense empowerment when the player discovers a fully loaded one. This can quickly alter the course of sticky combat situations but comes at a cost. These moments of firepower superiority, while briefly rewarding, reveal how vital melee combat is to the core of the game’s identity. Had there been more emphasis on firearms, the persistent sense of being hunted would be lost. The limited and unreliable nature of guns allows the strength of its visceral melee combat to shine.
There is also the seemingly inconsequential mechanic of ammo management. There is no continual ammo HUD display, and the player must activate a short animation to check their ammo supply manually. This animation leaves the player momentarily vulnerable and makes the already hectic dance of combat that much more so. There’s nothing quite like learning the hard way that your shotgun is empty until an enemy is charging towards you. This is yet another cinematic quality that provides a more grounded horror experience.
The close-quarters nature of combat works in tandem with Condemned’s suffocatingly claustrophobic environments. Leaving Ethan with little room to retreat or hide, the environments actively push him to face his current threat. While an abandoned school and decrepit metro station aren’t the most original horror settings, the difference is how Monolith Productions presents their vision.
The studio’s ability to inject nerve-wracking tension through subtle details, often due to exceptional sound design, exemplifies these stock horror settings. Whether it’s feet shuffling above the player or an enemy screaming incoherently from afar, Condemned’s world is an inherently volatile place.
Unfortunately, Ethan Thomas’ story would never see a proper conclusion. Despite receiving a sequel three years after its release with Condemned 2: Bloodshot, its campaign would end on a cliffhanger. The sequel was also a distinctly different game in terms of tone and gameplay focus. The focus shifted from an engrossingly grounded authentic crime atmosphere in favor of an overtly supernatural one and an increased emphasis on firearms.
What Condemned 2 did best exposed what makes the original such a timeless horror classic. Condemned’s challenging player empowerment and claustrophobic tension is interwoven into its foundation, which allows the game to hold up as well as it does, 16 years later.
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.
You must be logged in to post a comment.