Editorials
13 Memorable ‘Resident Evil’ Moments from Lacuna Coil’s Cristina Scabbia
[Editor’s Note: I tried to find footage from the original games for each entry. However, sometimes I could only find clips from the HD remaster. Sorry!]
We’ve been bringing a ton of Resident Evil content this week with our Resident Evil Week. It’s a chance for us to showcase our love and criticism of the games and films, which is essentially a way of showing just how much the franchises have impacted our lives.
But today brings something a little different. Rather than hearing just from us and our perspectives on the series, we’re bringing in an outside voice, one that has enchanted and thrilled millions across the globe: Cristina Scabbia of Italian metal band Lacuna Coil! She has come to share her 13 most memorable moments from the Resident Evil games.
Scabbia is no joke when it comes to the Resident Evil series. Her knowledge and passion for the games is obvious with how strongly she talks about them, her excitement almost palpable.
Scabbia tells BD:
It is no secret that Capcom’s game Resident Evil has been in the Top 3 of my all-time favorite games EVER since it came out for Playstation in 1996.
It came as a storm for me: the story, the videos, the tension… Even though it was not the first survival horror game, the overall theme was exciting and the game refreshing.
Since ‘96, a lot of editions have been released but my heart still belongs to the first three chapters of the saga: Resident Evil, Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.
The recent release of ‘Origins’, where the first chapter ever (remastered and with lot more scenes and locations) and ‘Zero’ are released as a combo, made me go back in time and I HAD to replay it… Mmmh, wait. Yep! Still awesome.
Here is a little random list of some of my favorite moments and things about these chapters.
Additionally, if you want to hear more Lacuna Coil, their eighth studio album Delirium is coming out May 27th via Century Media Records. You can pre-order it via iTunes. or through Amazon!
First time playing RE, I was basically exploring a very quiet mansion where the only noises were coming from a clock, a fire crackling, my own steps and the doors that I was opening… All of a sudden, the animated movie of this zombie who turns to look at me as I interrupted his dinner… on a corpse, of course! It is the very first zombie I had to kill in the game and I will never forget how I felt when he looked at me.
When I was walking back to the mansion, the game kinda stopped for a second and a sudden scene of something running veeeeery fast towards me, basically following the same looking path I just followed in the game a moment earlier but 100X faster than I did, and it was clearly hunting me. It ended up being a monstrous green creature I believe is called, guess what, the Hunter. Well, it was “poo your pants time”. I freaked out back then and still remember that “What the hell is this? Is he coming for me?” feeling.
The enemies you have to face are, in a lot of cases, HUGE animals. Like a giant snake, a giant crocodile, enormous spiders and wasps. But the scene that really creeps me out is when you have to walk through a pool where two live sharks are free to swim in their element but they don’t really like you being in there with them and try to feed themselves with an unexpected snack: you.
I felt pretty bad bad when I had to electrocute them in the game… After all, it was my bad for going to bother them in their own house, right?
Let’s talk about Mr. X from RE 2.
Ok, imagine a HUGE creature that you can’t even kill with bullets (unless you have with you at least 25 full rounds of ammunitions) that moves toward you slowly and it doesn’t make a sound or say a word. You surely convey that is not the description of someone you would want to cross path in a dark alley.
BUT knowing that he is also uncomfortably wrapped in a long grey/green kind of Russian war coat… well, go figure!
In Resident Evil 2, Chief Irons speaks in a very calm way about the mayor’s daughter who is dead on his table, describing her as in a cold medical report. He was supposed to take care of her but obviously kinda failed, duh!
Eh, whatever, he will pay for his negligence during the game as he will become a sort of monster incubator.
After getting the sheet music you will find during the game you will be able to play the music on a piano and open a little tunnel in which you will find an emblem.
Don’t ask me why but that part got stuck in my memory, I think is a cool moment.
Birkin’s transformations – William Birkin who worked on Umbrella corporation as a scientist and has created the T-Virus (and worked on the G-Virus too), injects himself with the virus itself – it is definitely no vitamin D! – and slowly turns into something that has only little remains of something human.
The fight on the elevator made me nervous as this disturbing creature was jumping everywhere, disappearing from the screen, not knowing where he will be coming from next.
He will come out in the game on several occasion (RE2) and it will not be fun.
You will also meet his daughter and you will have to struggle a bit to let her stay with you all the time and not go around alone. KIDS!
The first time I saw a Licker was kind of a shock. It was waiting for me in a corridor and walking on the ceiling, looking at me with his tongue hanging out, covered in copious saliva. Its look really reminded me of Marvel’s Venom. Very effective and a moment to remember.
The crows. I believe it is genius that as the player you have to walk slowly through them to not get them scared and attack you. It definitely adds tension to the game.
In the remake of ‘RE Origins’ it doesn’t happen all the time (I was surprised) but I think is a very cool touch to the game.
The zombie dogs. Beautiful dobermans turned into bleeding living dead creatures ready to bite. The scene of the corridor when they jump in from the windows when least expected was so amazing when I first played the game.
They are not always rebels, though, In some parts if you walk slowly they don’t even care about you and in ‘Origins’ you can even call them with a whistle! Good doggies!
In the remake of RE (Origins) the game has been remastered and the mansion is way bigger and there are lots of things I didn’t remember at all from the first game (I might be wrong though).
There is a part in the backyard of the house where, by a cemetery there are some stairs that are taking you into a basement where there is a metal coffin held by rusty cage. I have to say I was a little disappointed when I killed Crimson head so fast (the monster you have to fight) as it takes some time to release that coffin from the ceiling, through a puzzle of masks… So I was expecting a little extra action after lot of work, ha!
Totally worthy though and great idea.
The Tyrant: the ultimate form of perfection.
When Chris stays in front of the tank containing the monster and the guy who created (I believe) this creature (that has some internal organs inside out on his body) drains the protecting liquid to releases him… only to get killed by his creation, is a moment to remember.
The sounds. The noises. The contrast in between the silence and the break scenes are so well studied that are a big part in the success of this game but I have to ask, isn’t the music in every saving room in the first RE rooms hypnotic for you all as well? I would freeze at times because of that and feel calm, even if I know there is a zombie out of the door waiting for me.
Well, there you have it! There are 13 memorable moments from the Resident Evil game series from Cristina Scabbia! But instead of just ending with these choices, she wants to posit a very serious question:
I will end this piece on RE with a last question for those of you who played the first episode and played ‘Origins’: Is it just me or are Jill Valentine’s boobs downsized from the original RE to the ‘Origins’ remake? Not that I am surprised, they must be uncomfortable on missions like these. Just saying’.
Lacuna Coil online:
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Tour dates w/Butcher Babies, 9ELECTRIC, and Painted Wives:
Sat/May 07 – San Francisco CA – Social Hall *
Sun/May 08 – Los Angeles LA – The Roxy
Mon/May 09 – Phoenix AZ – The Marquee
Tue/May 10 – El Paso TX – Tricky Falls
Thu/May 12 – Dallas TX – Trees
Sat/May 14 – Cherokee NC – Cherokee Event Center #
Sun/May 15 – Richmond VA – The National #
Tue/May 17 – Davenport IA – Adler Theater #
Wed/May 18 – Madison WI – Majestic Theatre *
Fri/May 20 – Traverse City, MI – Ground Zero *
Sat/May 21 – Flint MI – The Machine Shop
Wed/May 25 – Brooklyn NY – Saint Vitus ^^
Thu/May 26 – Uncasville CT – Mohegan Sun Wolf Den ^^
# – Direct Support to Halestorm – LC Only
* – no Butcher Babies
^^ – no support
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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