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13 Days of Horror, Day 8: Alone in the Tower
Resident Evil throws waves of enemies at you, Silent Hill gets in your head, and Fatal Frame forces you to get up close and personal with the things that want to kill you. But there’s one series that doesn’t use any of these strategies, in fact, you usually only have a single adversary, occasionally two, that want to hang you over their mantle.
This series is one of the original survival horror series but its last two games weren’t very warmly received so that’s kept it in hiding for almost a decade. Despite that there are rumors a (likely awful) film adaptation is in the works which, depending on its success, might bring with it a new installment in the series. Are you hating this long-winded tease? Fine, I’ll tell you what franchise I’m talking about, it’s… waiting to reveal itself after the jump. Clock Tower! Come on, you had to know that. You’re so smart, I could never fool you. Way back in 1995 we were introduced to the stalkerish Scissor Man, otherwise known as devious Bobby, who apparently wasn’t ever told that running with scissors was a bad thing. This game managed two things: it introduced us to the idea of a singular recurring enemy that was later implemented in other games (like Resident Evil 3’s Nemesis) and it also created a new generation of scissor fearing people. I swear, after playing this game back in the day I’ve never been able to look at a pair of garden shears without breaking a sweat.
The following year Clock Tower made its console debut on the PlayStation, with added multiple endings, five playable characters, and those crisp high-def visuals offered by the highly evolved piece of geekgasmic tech known as the Sony PlayStation. Yeah, that 32-bit tech might not look like much now but if it was 1996 your mind would be blown.
Not long after that we were given a spin-off called Clock Tower 2: The Struggle Within, which outside of similar gameplay mechanics had virtually nothing to do with the previous games. Sadly, despite its offering over a dozen different endings, a larger cast and an increased focus on hiding and puzzle solving, the game mostly sucked. Since its inclusion in the series voice action has never been done well, but its many glaring plot holes and not a single interesting end scenario kept it from living up to the expectations set by the first two games.
I love when developers take criticism from their communities and use that feedback to improve their games. Unfortunately, little was fixed when Clock Tower 3 released a handful of years later. It was still plagued by terrible voice acting, clumsy controls, and bad animating (there wasn’t a single character in the game that didn’t look like they weren’t ingesting heavy amounts of drugs.) That’s likely the reason we never saw a fourth game, but for the few fans left of the series there’s still a small amount of hope for a continuation of this dying series.
For a few years now a film adaptation starring Brittany Snow (Prom Night), who’s face looks remarkably similar to Alyssa, has been going in and out of the dreaded development limbo. This can likely be blamed on the economic recession that’s forced many film studios to go with sure bets instead of risks (a Clock Tower film being a member of the latter group). As for a Clock Tower 4, Haunting Ground was initially supposed to be the fourth game in the series before taking a different route and becoming the game many of us know and love today.
The fate of the series is still really foggy; it’s a safe bet we won’t be seeing the film anytime soon and the chance of a fourth game is even less likely. However, as with all games if the demand is there then there’s a better chance of Capcom greenlighting a sequel, so if you’d like to see a Clock Tower 4 I suggest you start picketing Capcom’s headquarters.
In case you missed the rest of the series, here’s a quick recap:
Day 1, A Resident Evil Retrospective
Day 2, A Silent Hill Retrospective
Day 3, What Do You Fear?
Day 4, The Four Scariest Kids in Gaming
Day 5, A Look Through the Lense
Day 6, Six New Games You Need to Play this Halloween
Day 7, The 7 Biggest Horror Games of 2011
Only one episode remains in Season 3 of “Chucky,” and what a bloody road it’s been so far, especially for actor Devon Sawa. The actor has now officially died twice on screen this season, pulling double duty as President James Collins and body double Randall Jenkins.
If you thought Chucky’s ruthless eye-gouging of the President was bloody, this week’s Episode 7 traps Randall Jenkins in an elevator that feels straight out of an iconic horror classic.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with series creator Don Mancini and actor Devon Sawa about that ultra-bloody death sequence and how the actor inspires Mancini’s writing on the series.
Mancini explains, “Devon’s a bit of a muse. Idle Hands and Final Destination is where my Devon Sawa fandom started, like a lot of people; although yours may have started with Casper. I was a bit too old for that. But it’s really just about how I love writing for actors that I respect and then know. So, it’s like having worked with Devon for three years now, I’m just always thinking, ‘Oh, what would be a fun thing to throw his way that would be unexpected and different that he hasn’t done?’ That’s really what motivates me.”
For Sawa, “Chucky“ is an actor’s dream in that the series gives him not one but multiple roles to sink his teeth into, often within the same season. But the actor is also a huge horror fan, and Season 3: Part 2 gives him the opportunity to pay homage to a classic: Kubrick’s The Shining.
CHUCKY — “There Will Be Blood” Episode 307 — Pictured in this screengrab: (l-r) Devon Sawa as President James Collins, K.C. Collins as Coop — (Photo by: SYFY)
“Collectively, it’s just amazing to put on the different outfits, to do the hair differently, to get different types of dialogue,“ Sawa says of working on the series. “The elevator scene, it’s like being a kid again. I was up to my eyeballs in blood, and it felt very Kubrick. Everybody there was having such a good time, and we were all doing this cool horror stuff, and it felt amazing. It really was a good day.”
Sawa elaborates on being submerged in so much blood, “It was uncomfortable, cold, and sticky, and it got in my ears and my nose. But it was well worth it. I didn’t complain once. I was like, ‘This is why I do what I do, to do scenes like this,‘ the scenes that I grew up watching on VHS cassette, and now we’re doing it in HD, and it’s all so cool.“
It’s always the characters and the actors behind them that matter most to Mancini, even when he delights in coming up with inventive kills and incorporating horror references. And he’s killed Devon Sawa’s characters often. Could future seasons top the record of on-screen Sawa deaths?
“Well, I guess we did it twice in season one and once in season two,“ Mancini counts. “So yeah, I guess I would have to up the ante next season. I’ll really be juggling a lot of falls. But I think it’s hopefully as much about quality as quantity. I want to give him a good role that he’s going to enjoy sinking his teeth into as an actor. It’s not just about the deaths.”
Sawa adds, “Don’s never really talked about how many times could we kill you. He’s always talking about, ‘How can I make this death better,’ and that’s what I think excites him is how he can top each death. The electricity, to me blowing up to, obviously in this season, the eyes and with the elevator, which was my favorite one to shoot. So if it goes on, we’ll see if he could top the deaths.”
CHUCKY — “Death Becomes Her” Episode 305 — Pictured in this screengrab: Devon Sawa as James Collins — (Photo by: SYFY)
The actor has played a handful of distinctly different characters since the series launch, each one meeting a grisly end thanks to Chucky. And Season 3 gave Sawa his favorite characters yet.
“I would say the second one was a lot of fun to shoot,“ the actor says of Randall Jenkins. “The President was great. I liked playing the President. He was the most grounded, I hope, of all the characters. I did like playing him a lot.” Mancini adds, “He’s grounded, but he’s also really traumatized, and I thought you did that really well, too.”
The series creator also reveals a surprise correlation between President James Collins’ character arc and a ’90s horror favorite.
“I saw Devon’s role as the president in Season 3; he’s very Kennedy-esque,“ Mancini explains. “But then given the supernatural plot turns that happen, to me, the analogy is Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath, the character that is seeing these weird little things happening around the house that is starting to screw with his sanity and he starts to insist, ‘I’m seeing a ghost,‘ and his spouse thinks he’s nuts. So I always like that. That’s Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath, which is a movie I love.”
The finale of “Chucky” Season 3: Part 2 airs Wednesday, May 1 on USA & SYFY.
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