Editorials
‘Phantasmagoria,’ PC’s Best and Most Dated Horror Game, Turns 21
On the anniversary of Roberta Williams’ groundbreaking, under known PC horror game, we look at what makes ‘Phantasmagoria’ so special
“Pray it’s only a nightmare.”
When the survival horror genre of video games comes to mind, the usual suspects that see discussion are titles like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Dead Space, or even something like the Clock Tower series. One game that stays out of the spotlight, even though it was a formative title for video games and one that sold just as well as any of the aforementioned franchises, is Phantasmagoria from Sierra On-Line. In the days of the ’90s, point-and-click adventure games reigned supreme, with LucasArts and Sierra being the “Nintendo and Sega” of the area and leading the pack for PC gaming. Roberta Williams was Sierra’s wunderkind and the designer responsible for a number of hit franchises like King’s Quest, Mystery House, and The Colonel’s Bequest. She’s also the person largely responsible for adding a graphical interface to adventure games in the first place. But in spite of the many titles that Williams worked on, she’s said that her sole entry in the horror genre, Phantasmagoria, is her favorite.
Phantasmagoria is no doubt one of the biggest spectacles of gaming—something that was especially true in 1995. No expense was sparred here and the game sprawled across 7 CD-ROMs (8 on the Sega Saturn port) due to the heavy amount of FMV (Full Motion Video). Even the game’s description on the back of the box is also more cerebral and mood-setting horror than something that actually tells you what the game is about. More unconventional elements like this were great for setting the tone of this horror experience. Williams had been wanting to do a horror game for a while now (her desire in the matter was probably made increasingly urgent due to the fact that her previous game was Mixed-Up Mother Goose Deluxe, which, by the way, is pretty awesome as far as Mother Goose games go, FYI…), but in a very James Cameron sort of way had been waiting eight years until technology was at a point where she thought she could do properly do the genre justice. Williams wrote a 550-page script for Phantasmagoria, (a typical movie screenplay is around 120 pages, as a point of reference), which required a cast of 25 actors, a production team of over 200 people, took two years to fully develop and four months to film. Phantasmagoria’s initial budget was $800,000, but by the end of production costs had hit a staggering total of $4.5 million (with the game also being filmed in a $1.5 million studio that Sierra built specifically for it). Other luxuries were also brought in like a professional special effects team to handle that area of the game and a choir of over 100 people being assembled to achieve the game’s opening theme.
In spite of these many gambles Phantasmagoria was a huge success, bringing in over $12 million in its opening weekend alone and being one of the best selling games of 1995. To take this one step farther, Sierra’s stock rose from $3.875 in June of that year and was up at $43.25 by September, primarily due to the anticipation and impact of Phantasmagoria, which is just insane. This game is a perfectly fitting example of when some new sort of technology comes out and absolutely everyone has to experience it, not to mention that the advent of FMV technology would also leave a considerable impact on the gaming landscape, too. Sierra would continue to use this technology on The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery, while some game developers from other studios even began to worry that these ultra-productions of games that spanned many CDs would become to be the expected norm, with them fearing the danger of game’s losing core fundamentals in favor of showmanship.
Phantasmagoria was not the first title to use FMV technology, but they featured a mix of both real actors in the cutscenes as well as real actors in 3D rendered environments leading to a curious product. Most video games of the time would feature somewhere between 80 to 100 backgrounds, but Phantasmagoria had more than 1000. The game’s graphic violence and content also led to some controversy where the title was attacked by a number of people, refused to be carried by some retailers, and was outright banned altogether in Australia due to their censorship laws. There was a password-operated censorship system in the game to tone down the violence, but that didn’t seem to placate anyone. Unsurprisingly, all of this red tape around the game just made horror fans crave it even more. It was the perfect marketing tool.
The story in Phantasmagoria is hardly anything revolutionary. Newlyweds, Adrienne and Don, move into a house in Massachusetts that was once owned by a practitioner of the dark arts. This evil soul takes hold of Don while Adrienne must survive this nightmare and figure out the mystery behind it all. If Williams didn’t go ahead and cite The Shining as a major influence here, it would still be pretty obvious that the game takes inspiration from the classic film. Don’s possession feels much like Jack Torrance’s and he gradually becomes more unhinged as this house and the spirit inside it take stronger hold over him.
In terms of gameplay, Phantasmagoria is no different than the majority of point-and-click adventure games of the time, with familiar trial and error mechanics stringing everything together in a way that Sierra did like no other. Puzzles take a backseat to the FMV here, resulting in the difficulty being a little disappointing and condescending by King’s Quest standards. Honestly, it’s frustrating how little you’re actually controlling this game, with so much here seeing FMV sequences finishing your sentences with you only having the briefest of interactions along the way. This also inevitably leads into a lot of heavy exposition where video is just telling you backstory rather than you actually playing a game. The assumption present is that all of this is forgivable and fascinating due to the graphical innovations that are present. All of this becomes kind of laughable when you look at the screen within a screen that the FMV plays out of so it can optimize correctly. There’s so much wasted space here that it becomes almost as big a focus as the video itself.
It’s a little insane how much the game banks off of you being wowed by all of this. For example, one sequence sees Adrienne rooting around with a letter opener for literally three minutes, only for nothing at all to be achieved. Sequences like this happen simply because the game’s production team believes that literally anything shown through FMV is fascinating and groundbreaking. There’s an exceptionally long sequence of Adrienne tearing down a wall to get through where it really shows all the boards getting broken to great detail, pulling off the most comprehensive “wall tearing” animation to date. Much of this attitude fuels the game where weird amounts of focus are placed on random animations or elements that ultimately aren’t important. It’s a good barometer for where FMV games were at during this time, gamers’ brief obsession with them, and why they were quickly abandoned accordingly.
Characters are always a crucial part of a horror game (or film) and as mentioned before, Williams’ title assembles a roster of 25 weirdos to bring this story to life. It’s a little comforting to see Williams leaning into stereotypes as a means of automatically filling in backstory. It’s not the most progressive things to do, but it’s an approach that works for horror. Especially for a video game made in 1995. Who’s the deepest video game character from that time period that comes to mind? Crash Bandicoot?
Some of the more standout additions to the cast come in the form Cyrus, who could give Of Mice and Men’s Lenny a run for his money (at one point he pulls down a tree to fashion into a bridge, and exclaims, “Of cowse I did! I’m stwong!”), and his mother Harriet, with weirdness constantly emanating off of them. Cyrus nearly mutilates a cat in one scene with all of this shocking content automatically becoming a little hokey due to the FMV filter it’s coming through. Then, the villain during all of this is an evil magician named Zoltan Carnovasch of all things, which seems more like a wizard foe from out of King’s Quest instead. Don’t worry though, if that name seems like a little too much, his magician stage name is Carno, so dealer’s choice here. After a magic trick went wrong, Carno became coma bound before becoming an evil spirit that has a heavy case of revenge on his mind.
Through Williams’ career she began to become known for her unforgiving adventure games where gamers could actually be punished and die on their quests, making saving a necessity and experimenting a tense experience. Phantasmagoria’s environment feels tailor-made for a game that’s focus is horror rather than adventure, and while not quite hitting the same tense heights from other titles from Williams’ oeuvre, watching your character die and fail on their journey does give this game a tremendous amount of charm (especially with the production quality of all of these ridiculous death sequences). The majority of these are saved until the latter moments of the game, but they certainly make an impact.
On the topic of these death sequences, it’s worth discussing the many murders from Phantasmagoria to a more thorough degree since they yield such significance. Carno arguably operates with a sort of Freddy Krueger black wit to his murders, which is never a bad thing in my opinion. Each of his executions contain some sort of excuse me? element that you just can’t believe. There’s a murder in the greenhouse, where it looks like a woman is being fed dirt until she dies, and then gets a trowel to the mouth to top it all off. Another seemingly innocent scene between Carno and his wife, where they share fine wine and toast one another leads to a sequence that’s almost too ridiculous to explain. It’s a moment that gives the Joker’s “pencil trick” in The Dark Knight a run for its money and is capped with the perfect line of, “No, here’s to you.” There’s such a sadistic glee in the murders here that it’s hard to not think that Williams is being tongue in cheek on the topic.
One particularly violent ending for Adrienne sees Don putting you in the Throne of Terror, punching you in the face, repeatedly calling you a bitch, and then hit in the face all You’re Next style. This all actually works due to how graphic and aggressive it is. Another prime example is this neck breaking murder which is one of the more disturbing, graphic things you’ll come across in a video game, in spite of how much further the form has come at this point. Using real people and the simple brutality of it all gives all of this material a lot more weight. This might feel like a campy B-horror movie 90% of the time, but it’s scenes like these that briefly make you think that you’ve flipped over to a snuff film. The best death of them all though—and one that I still find difficult to watch—is where Carno kills Regina by putting a funnel in her mouth and jamming food down it into her throat. And by food, I mean things like tripe and “scrambled brains.” If the subject matter doesn’t get you, the sound design on the scene will. More great work here. Finally, it’s kind of ridiculous that the final act of the game sees a huge Xenomorph-esque demon coming to be, but the ways in which he deals with you if you’re not fast enough lead to maybe the best piece of animation in the entire game.
The deaths are clearly a big takeaway from Phantasmagoria and part of what gave it its reputation in the first place, but there’s still plenty of other weirdness in this title. 1995 may be in the infancy of survival horror as a genre but it’s interesting to see which elements from the title actually manage to be scary and which reek of the clunky medium that they’re being presented in. For the most part, Phantasmagoria is not a scary game, and it’s even a little disappointing as a game in general since so little of this 7-disc survival exercise actually sees you doing much. In that sense, rating Phantasmagoria as a horror film instead is an interesting endeavor. I’m actually a little surprised that someone on the Internet hasn’t gone about and attempted to stitch a narrative together with all of the FMV content. I daresay it maybe does work better as a horror film. It’s not a good horror film, but it makes for a great B-horror movie, and I’ll gladly take one of those any day of the week, especially with the acting going on here.
The game kicks off with Adrienne experiencing an absurd nightmare, which is a lot more WTF and confusing than it is frightening. That being said, this intro now does a great job at sending you back to the ’90s and the “weirdness” of the era. Like this really is just a bizarre hodgepodge of computer graphics set to some eerie chanting that hopes for the best. At other times scenarios like a séance take place because why not! “Scary” concepts are continually thrown in, creating a good picture of the cluttered composition of some of ’90s horror. While on the topic of the séance, during it Harriet happens to vomit, with this vomit appearing to be sentient monster vomit that then begins to tell people what to do. The effects and voice work here actually are kind of impressive for the time, as ridiculous as the concept is. It feels very Hellraiser, surprisingly. Another well-done concept sees you constantly looking into mirrors to no avail, only for the game to finally surprise you and make use of the moment. It’s these instances of toying with your expectations where Phantasmagoria shines.
The game also explores Don ‘s possession in some interesting ways with the whole thing being such an unbelievably over the top performance. At one point he’s literally Pagliacci-ing himself up as a ridiculous culmination of all of this. It’s all just being weird and “creepy” for no reason. There is a scene towards the end of the game where you stumble upon Don’s collection of cut up photos of Adrienne which does tap into a genuinely uncomfortable place, but ultimately falls short. Possessed Don also ends up leading to a rape scene with Adrienne, which was the main factor in the game’s banning. Again, this kind of feels like Williams is going for broke and rebelling from her Mother Goose ways. There is a moment in Phantasmagoria though where you’re told to “Find the dragon…” that almost feels like Williams forgot for a minute that she’s in a horror game and not the land of Daventry.
Perhaps the most bizarre thing here is that after you escape from this huge demon and leave this cursed house, the game’s ending is simply Adrienne walking away in a dazed stupor. Cut to credits. It’s such a weird, abrupt conclusion for a game that tends to make a meal (more scrambled brains, please) out of everything. A sequel to Phantasmagoria was unsurprisingly made, but not with Williams’ involvement due to her being too busy working on King’s Quest VII at the time. Notably though, Williams did express interest in returning for a third title in the series, but obviously that ship eventually sailed. Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh’s (somehow this has never been used as a Hellraiser subtitle) story is unrelated to the first title and it doesn’t seem to have much of the same charm as the original. The same FMV style is present, but it results in a much clunkier game with deaths that hardly hold a candle to the original.
Phantasmagoria is an odd piece of horror history that deserves your attention if you get the opportunity. Honestly this is the sort of game that’s perfect to have a few friends over where you just mock and laugh at it through the night. It has endless personality, a style that warms your nostalgia glands, and some of the grisliest murders in video gaming.
Plus, it also has the biggest fixation on drain cleaner that I’ve ever seen in a video game.
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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