Editorials
Let’s Remember ‘Clive Barker’s Undying’, Shall We?
I remember buying American McGee’s Alice the day it came out. I got it when I left my high school and drove to EB Games at the local mall during our lunch break. I installed it that night and played the unholy hell out of it for several months.
At this point, you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with Clive Barker’s Undying, am I right? Well, the reason I bring up Alice is because it came with a trailer for Undying and that’s how I was introduced to the title.
Now, I was already a fan of Clive Barker and had been for many years. I remember in elementary not eating at school for a week because I was storing away my lunch money to buy a copy of “The Thief of Always” through the Scholastic book program. I was a big fan of the first two Hellraiser films and damn near obsessed with the director’s cut of Lord of Illusions. I had several of his books on my shelf and was working my way through them at a steady pace (sometimes, you have to admit, he’s not an easy read).
So when I saw that he was behind a video game, I knew that I had to get it. In fact, if I recall correctly, I pre-ordered it within a week of seeing the trailer. And when I got it, I played it nonstop until I beat it. Then I played it again. Then again.
Over the several years that I owned a PC, I probably played through Undying a dozen times, most likely more. Recently, I found myself thinking about the game and I actually watched a longplay of it on YouTube. Well, to be honest I put it on as background noise and popped in every now and again to check out specific parts that I distinctly remembered. However, that didn’t change the fact that just having the game audio in the background seriously creeped me out.
So, join me as I write a bit about my love of this game because it absolutely deserves it.
First of all, let’s start with the story of the game, shall we? You play as Patrick Galloway, an Irish paranormal investigator who has a healthy sense of skepticism, even though he himself admits that doing the job for a while has begun to convince him that there is more to this world than we can see.
Patrick is called upon by Jeremiah Covenant, an old friend and his old commanding officer when Galloway was in the military. Jeremiah has called him to the Covenant Estate because of an old family curse that seems to be coming true. This curse was caused when Jeremiah and his four siblings, Ambrose (who is voiced by Clive Barker himself), Bethany, Aaron, and Lisbeth, all found a strange occult book in the estate library as children. Sneaking away, the performed the ritual on a small island and this led evil spirits to haunt them, changing them fundamentally. As Jeremiah slowly withers away due to sickness, he wants to make sure that his family also finds peace, all of whom have come back from death to haunt and terrorize him.
And so begins the quest of Galloway, who goes through basically one fucking horrifying place after another to honor his friend’s wishes, even if it means risking his own sanity…and his own life.
The first thing you’ll notice about this game is that it absolutely oozes atmosphere. Utilizing incredible locations – such as a crumbling Monastery that you visit when it was still whole and intact, the family mausoleum, graveyards, tribal villages, sewers, the outdoors themselves, and the Covenant estate itself – this game manages to remain terrifying every step of the way. Nothing feels safe, even when you know you’re completely alone.
Even though Undying was hampered by frequent and sometimes lengthy loading times, the game tried to utilize large areas to explore so that it didn’t seem like you were waiting for too long when those loads did occur. And these environments were rich with detail and encouraged exploration, so you always took your time really investigating your surroundings. While the game was pretty linear, it didn’t hold your hand the whole way through. You really had to look around on your own to find the pieces in order to move on.
At the time, I remember thinking that the graphics were pretty amazing. There were all these little things that the game did that just “wowed” me. For instance, there was a moment when Patrick wakes up in a side closet with a dead body at his feet. The body was slowly dripping blood upwards to the ceiling, creating a pool of crimson. Or there was that sequence when Patrick had to leap into seemingly thin air in Oneiros, “the dream city of forgotten souls”, only to have stone blocks appear out of nowhere. And when the game couldn’t do amazingly well with the graphics, it smartly knew to use lighting to its advantage, putting certain areas in the dark and forcing you to enter the shadows, even if every fiber of your being shrieked at you to pull away.
The music, which was composed by Bill Brown, is just fantastic. It has this delightful gothic epic quality about it and I’ve always wanted to own a physical copy of the soundtrack, something that was never manufactured. I highly recommend giving the score a shot by listening here.
Additionally, the sound design was one of the main reasons that this game hit levels of “shit your pants terrifying”. It’s the ultimate reason why I never once felt safe in the game. There were constant howls and unearthly moans that seemed to emanate from the very bowels of the earth around you, making it feel like anything could come after you at any time.
However, you had a really cool way of protecting yourself from the wealth of enemies that were after your blood. In Patrick’s left hand he would wield a weapon of some sort, be it a revolver, a shotgun, a scythe (yup), or some other physical weapon. In his right hand, he’d utilize one of many magical spells, including a personal favorite that raised skulls and shot them at your enemies whereupon they would explode on contact. If that’s not some badass shit right there, I don’t know what to tell you.
In conclusion, Clive Barker’s Undying offers a rich and compelling story that is married to a wonderful and still very scary horror FPS. If you can find a way to run it, I highly recommend picking up a copy and giving it a shot.
Editorials
Before ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘Alien Autopsy’ Showed How Real Found Footage Could Feel
The line separating artist from con man is a lot thinner than you might initially believe. While I think we can all agree that lying for the sake of profit is actively malicious behavior, isn’t it also true that the faux documentary aspect of The Blair Witch Project is half the reason why that film became such a cultural phenomenon? After all, if there’s one thing filmmakers have in common with stage magicians, it’s that misleading and misdirecting audiences is simply part of the job.
That’s why I’ve developed a habit of mostly ignoring the moral quandaries behind many of film and television’s biggest “hoaxes” in favor of appreciating the narrative elements that drive productions like Mermaids: The Body Found and even Animal Planet’s highly underrated The Cannibal in the Jungle. However, if there’s a definitive case of a highly publicized broadcast fooling the world into taking it seriously, it has to be Fox’s infamous 1995 TV special Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction.
It’s been over three decades since that eerie footage first haunted television screens right at the peak of the ’90s ufology craze, and in that time, the video has taken on a life of its own. From countless parodies and references in everything from The X-Files to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (as well as John Dower’s recently released tell-all documentary The Alien Autopsy Scandal, which I’d highly recommend to genre fans everywhere), there’s no denying the legacy of the Alien Autopsy video. However, I rarely see the tape discussed as what it truly is: a highly convincing found footage film directed by a passionate stage magician and brought to life by masterful practical effects work.
That’s why I’d like to invite readers to join me on a deep dive into one of the most infamous broadcasts of all time in an attempt to reevaluate the footage as a fascinating narrative experience rather than a complete hoax.
The TV Special That Convinced Millions It Was Real
Ray Santilli next to Extraterrestrial replica in ‘The Alien Autopsy Scandal’
For starters, regardless of whether or not you believe that there was in fact an extraterrestrial crash in Roswell during the summer of 1947 and that some form of autopsy was performed on the victims, the producers behind the black & white recordings, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, insist that their video was a “restoration.” Though I’d argue that the proper word is “remake”of genuine footage that was too damaged to air on television. That’s why the duo went on to recruit filmmaker and eccentric magician Spyros Melaris and sculptor/monster designer John Humphreys to bring their version of the autopsy to life and sell it to the highest bidder.
This is where the story of the Alien Autopsy as a narrative experience really begins. Melaris claims that his approach to the faux recording consisted of striving for extreme period accuracy in both shooting equipment and setting while also planting subtle details that would initially seem like mistakes but could later be revealed to actually fit the time period. That being said, the filmmaker was under the impression that the short would be released for free as a PR stunt, with the team later producing and selling an informative documentary chronicling exactly how the footage was faked and commenting on how easy it is to manipulate public perception with a good old-fashioned magic trick.
This obviously isn’t how things went down, and that’s likely the reason why Melaris has since distanced himself from everyone else involved with the project. Yet, no amount of behind-the-scenes drama can undermine the genuine effort that went into making the short as impressive as it is. From the sourcing of real animal organs from a local butcher to make the organic part of the creature more lifelike to the highly detailed sculpt that made use of a hollowed-out underlayer that could be filled with fake blood and assorted viscera, there’s a reason why so many Hollywood specialists are still impressed with the artistry on display here.
Of course, the believability is only half the story, as I think that the best part of the autopsy is how Melaris builds on the existing tension by obscuring certain details and often embracing the chaos of what a real examination of extraterrestrial life could feel like. The camera often goes out of focus at just the right time to make certain effects hit even harder, and we can only speculate as to what the hazmat-suited doctors are gesticulating about during the operation. There’s a real air of mystery to the whole thing that almost makes it feel like a cosmically terrifying, cursed film containing forbidden knowledge that civilians were never meant to see.
So when Fox’s Fact or Fiction brings in the specialists to comment on the film and its otherworldly subject, it’s no surprise that we end up with one of the most memorable mockumentaries of all time – albeit one where the participants are unaware that the footage they’re commenting on is basically a large-scale practical joke. A joke that the network was obviously in on, as many participants claim that the TV special cut out significant portions where guests point out that they believe the footage to be an elaborate hoax.
The Lasting Impact of the Hoax Turned Cultural Event
Regardless, I remember going to bed terrified after watching reruns of the special and thinking about the respected pathologist who claimed that the body was almost certainly inhuman, with even effects maestro Stan Winston commenting on how difficult it would be to recreate some of these visuals through practical puppetry. That’s not even mentioning Jonathan Frakes’ dramatic hyping up of the disturbing imagery as if he was talking about the tape from The Ring, with his spooky demeanor here likely being responsible for his later role as the host of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction a few years later.
Personally, I’d argue that the Alien Autopsy phenomenon had just as much of an impact on me as a horror fan as The Blair Witch Project, a film that was almost certainly influenced by the success of this immensely popular hoax (to the point where they even produced their own TV special commenting on Heather’s found footage). Even if Fox didn’t intend to produce a narrative feature about the aftermath of the Roswell crash, the end product still holds up remarkably well as a highly entertaining mockumentary exploring the idea that we may not be alone in the universe.
While neither Santilli nor the rest of the production team has ever commented on this, I also think it’s very likely that the idea of a faux Alien Autopsy could have been influenced by Dean Alioto’s The McPherson Tape/UFO Abduction. I’ve already written about how this granddaddy of found footage was co-opted by rogue ufologists who began selling bootlegs of the tape at conventions as if it were real evidence of a close encounter, so it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that Santilli and company could have heard about this phenomenon and been inspired to come up with their own highly profitable hoax.
At the end of the day, it’s unlikely that the Alien Autopsy film is recreating any real footage from Roswell, but I can still appreciate the short and the accompanying television event as a standalone horror story that still influences the way we see found footage to this very day.
After all, the possibility that something could be real is often much scarier than finding out for sure – and that’s why I think Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is still worth revisiting three decades down the line.
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