Editorials
The Timing is Right for a ‘Scream’ Video Game
That’s a headline I never thought I’d write. I usually don’t push for more adaptations when anyone who watches movies or plays video games knows that’s never been something we need more of. Scream is an exception to that rule and now that everything has lined up just right, it’s time we start talking about why it’s time for it and what we would like to see from a possible adaptation.
The reason why I’m bringing this up now is because of that excellent timing I mentioned earlier. Horror games are hot right now, and if you read Bloody Disgusting with any kind of regularity, you know that Scream is, too. Then there’s the growing number of slasher games we have on the way with Until Dawn, Last Year, Summer Camp and that mysterious Friday the 13th game, and in the next 6-12 months we’ll have a promising new subgenre of horror on our hands.
In other words, the road is being paved for a Scream game as you read this.
It will only take the success of a few of these games to prove this isn’t just a passing trend and that there’s a future — and more importantly, an audience — for slasher video games. Thankfully, as their numbers grow, so do our chances of seeing a few that get it right.
As for a Scream game, there’s a myriad forms it might take, and until we some of these games release so we know what works and what doesn’t, they’re all worth exploring. I can see it taking the Heavy Rain approach with a story comprised of several characters with interconnected stories. Until Dawn is going in a similar direction.
Asymmetrical multiplayer is the approach the makers of Summer Camp, Last Year and whoever it is that’s working on the Friday the 13th game took. It’s popular because that twist on multiplayer means one player can assume the role of the murderous villain while everyone else becomes their victims. I say we wait and see how an asymmetrical multiplayer agrees with them before we add another game to that list.
We went from having zero slasher games on the way to having several in such a small amount of time that I don’t think many people stopped to consider how confusing it might get. With the similarly titled Summer Camp and Splatter Camp, the former of which stars Kane Hodder, Jason Voorhees himself, even though there’s also a Friday the 13th game, and that game recently clashed with Last Year which featured a killer that looked like Jason… see what I mean?
Starting now, any developers that are itching to take a stab at making a game about a psychopath who hunts down horny teenagers needs to prioritize coming up with a way to make that game stand out. Even the small crowd we have now is taking on an amorphous shape already. It wouldn’t take much to make it nigh-impossible to distinguish one murder game from the next.
Scream can accomplish through two easy steps. The first is by not becoming the fourth multiplayer slasher game, because any more would be excessive, and the second involves its going episodic.
Granted, the upcoming television series should give us an idea of what an episodic Scream game might feel like, so it would be a good idea to wait and see how that goes, but even if it fails, I can’t see the fault resting with its new easier-to-digest format.
Episodic games got a significant amount of attention in 2012 with the impressive debut of Telltale’s The Walking Dead. Several other studios have since joined in with their own series — including Capcom with Resident Evil Revelations 2 — but the force behind this episodic renaissance we’re seeing is still mostly being led by Telltale and their desire to become the HBO of the games industry. With series based on Game of Thrones, Borderlands, Minecraft and Fables, among others, they’re also the most invested in its future.
Telltale might be the best candidate to handle the development of an episodic Scream game. They’re very good at adapting TV shows into video games and they have some experience with the horror genre. The studio also comes with a stellar writing team, and that’s mandatory if the game is going to continue the Scream tradition of being self-aware and making full use of its medium.
It’s why I have some hope for the TV show, even if it is on MTV. There’s untapped potential there, just as there is in video games. The films have mined that vein for meta humor long enough that it took the fourth film all of ten minutes to run dry. It was a glorious opening ten minutes, sure, but then you’re left with the other 80 or so that can do little else but disappoint.
To recap: today we discussed how scary video games are hot, slasher games may be hot a year from now, and if Scream wants to reclaim its title as one of the “cool” and innovative brands in horror, it should look to the sometimes cool and always innovative medium that is video games.
If you’re still on the fence, just picture a Stab game you can play in a Scream game that’s being played by teens in the Scream TV show that’s playing on a television in a Scream movie.
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.
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