Editorials
[Premature Evaluation] ‘The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct’
Zombies are big right now. Much like a real zombie apocalypse scenario, there’s no escaping them. They’ve shambled onto pretty much every facet of entertainment, and one of the brands that’s leading the undead hordes is The Walking Dead. So far, TWD has seen quite a bit of success in its transition from comics to television and video games, the latter of which has been led by Telltale Games’ amazing episodic adventure series and even a surprisingly great Facebook game based on the series.
Next up is The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, a prequel to to the TV series that follows brothers Daryl and Merle Dixon. It’s had an alarmingly rocky marketing campaign, and with the comics, TV series, and games having set the bar so high, many fans are wondering if this is going to be a solid entry in the franchise or an obvious cash-in. TJ and I ask ourselves this very question, and others, in our premature evaluation of the game, which you can read after the jump.
Adam: Let’s start things off with what The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct is all about. It’s set before the events in the first season of the television series and follows brothers Merle and Daryl Dixon before they met up with Rick and his gang. It’s being developed by Terminal Reality, the guys behind the surprisingly solid Ghostbusters video game — the 2009 one, not that awful arcade game — and published by the house of Call of Duty.
The game had some issues last month when a fan uploaded alpha build gameplay and called it a trailer. This stunt managed to fool most of the Internet, including Activision’s community manager and maybe us too. Everything we’ve seen since then, and I’m referring to the “official” stuff now, hasn’t been terribly impressive either, including screenshots and a trailer. So TJ, what are your thoughts on the game so far?
TJ: I’m so torn on this game. We really haven’t seen enough for it to look promising, but I can’t help but still be kind of pumped for it. I love the Walking Dead universe. I want this game to be good. I crave it. I’m still so skeptical.
Adam: I feel like if Activision thought this game was good, then they would be promoting it. They would be touting it as a worthy addition to the Walking Dead universe. Instead, they’re hiding it under a mountain of new releases, many of which have had their respective hype trains rolling for months, or in the case of BioShock Infinite, years. They’re just tossing it out there with a single gameplay trailer, a few screenshots, and the desperate hope that fans of the brand will see “The Walking Dead” and excitedly throw their money at it.
TJ: Tonight, on Night Court. Adam Dodd v Activision. Though I am inclined to agree. Mostly because of the way you talk to me all sexy and with that thick bassy tone. I feel like Activision dropped the ball as well. I feel like they had gold in their hands and may be letting it turn to crap. They should postpone the release of the game and throw some more money at Terminal Reality. Tell them not to frak this up because it’s the chance of a lifetime.
Adam: So we agree that Activision isn’t handling the marketing of this game well. I’d go so far as to call it a disaster. This obviously doesn’t mean the game isn’t going to be good. Our first look at it was pre-alpha footage, and it lacked many of the details that are usually added when the developer focuses on polishing up their game. The “official” gameplay trailer Activision released after that was significantly better, though to be completely honest, it still failed to wow me, at least visually.
TJ: The scariest thing about it is its release is a month away. This is the time when you want to be blasting gamers with all the good stuff. Getting people amped up, showing their friends, talking about it on super famous Bloody Disgusting news pages. Yet here we are, stuck with one gameplay trailer that ends with some unsynced Daryl voice overs. Boo.
Adam: To me, the one area where this game could still really impress is in its storytelling. That’s always been the strength of this series, and the relationship between Daryl and Merle is one of the more fascinating ones from the show. I think it could impress us all in this department, even though I’m not certain I can handle 8-10 hours of Merle talking about coons and shit.
TJ: I’ll agree with that. Lately, in the TV show, Merle has been pissing me off more and more. I’m glad Daryl has developed how he has and is now the “good” brother. The story between them could end up being very interesting. I’m also curious to see what new and possibly familiar faces they run into. Maybe the game will end where the show began?
Adam: I can see that happening, though I wouldn’t mind if they kept this story completely separate from the television series. The neat thing about having two lead characters like the brothers is they’re survivors. They lived off the land before the zombocalypse, so they know how to handle themselves. I hope Terminal Reality can use this in interesting ways, because all I’ve seen so far has been a lot of running and the occasional stealth section. I’m a fan of the game’s focus on flight over fight, because I’ve had my fill of killing zombies at this point — never thought I’d say that — so I’m looking forward to trying to find a way around the undead, rather than through them.
TJ: Yes, those elements could make for one awesome zombie game. Scavenging is my jam, I love that. People are annoyed when I’m super far behind searching every body and opening everything I can. Something that really grinds my gears is the lack of co-op in the game. It’s definitely the ideal game for something like that, with its two player situation. It seems like a game that could have been built for it.
Adam: It should’ve had co-op, but a feature like that would have put the game’s release too far away from the debut of the (second half of) third season of TWD. So again, we see another reason to be worried about this game. They have the money and even the talent to make a great Walking Dead game, but the signs of it being pushed out the door too early are everywhere.
TJ: It really saddens me to my core that rather than put some more time and money (which Activision has by the truckloads) into a potentially amazing game, they would rather just prematurely push it out into the world for it to most likely fail.
Adam: In its defense, it is a $50 game, so it’s sort of being released at a budget price. Even still, it’s disappointing that there isn’t any co-op, especially when it’d be so easy to implement story-wise. For a publisher like Activision to release something like this, which is guaranteed to sell well, at a budget price? That’s a big deal. I’m also looking forward to seeing how they support it post-release. What will they do with DLC, outside of the already announced “Herd Mode,” which is so generic I don’t even want to talk about it.
TJ: Budget prices are scary because they know the game isn’t worth the full 60 bucks. Deadly Premonition however, that could be argued. How dare they give us a Herd Mode. Especially if we are going to have to pay for it. Even more so if we can’t play it with anyone but ourselves. It would HAVE to be co-op to be fun. The Fight ‘Till Dawn Mode in Alan Wake’s American Nightmare was an epic failure in my eyes because it was single player.
Adam: I wouldn’t call American Nightmare’s Fight ‘Till Dawn mode a failure, because it was fun and surprisingly well done. I still stopped playing it after about a week, but I also can’t imagine a cooperative Alan Wake. That just feels… weird.
TJ: Maybe I just have so much more fun in situations like that playing with others. It was fun the first couple times, but I felt alone and I need companionship. I never liked playing Halo’s Lone Wolf multiplayer, I was always more into the team games, and the Herd Mode sounds like it should be played by a team.
Adam: I think that, for me at least, Survival Instinct has a lot going against it. It’s being released by a developer that hasn’t proven themselves consistently capable of delivering quality games, it’s following after the release of Telltale’s critically acclaimed series (and my my pick for GotY), and it’s the culmination of two things I’ve become increasingly tired of: zombies and wave survival modes. I love zombies, I really do, but we may have reached a boiling point for me. There are just too many.
TJ: I feel bad in a sense for Terminal Reality. It almost sounds like they got the short end of the stick on this game. There will always be a Horde Mode soft spot in my heart. I guess I always have hope that it will be as good as the best ones out there. Mixing it up with being in a new game with a new way to play it always sounds fresh, but doesn’t always come out smelling like roses.
The Verdict:
Adam: As a fan of the Walking Dead brand, I hate to say this, but I am only barely interested in this game.
TJ: I’m still holding onto a small shred of hope. But the game thus far fails to impress.
Have a question? Feel free to ever-so-gently toss Adam an email, or follow him on Twitter and Bloody Disgusting.
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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