Editorials
[Retrospective] A Curse of 30 Years for ‘Castlevania III’
Released 30 years ago this month in Japan, Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse can be seen as a return to form after the brief experimentation of Simon’s Quest. That’s not a knock against either game, though the RPG aspects of Simon’s Quest were seeds that would take almost a decade to come to fruition with Symphony of The Night. That being said, Dracula’s Curse offered up some seeds of its own, while bringing the series back to the basics of what made the original so enjoyable to play.
Taking place prior to the first two Castlevania games, the year is 1476 and Count Dracula has begun ravaging Europe with an army of monsters, with the sole purpose to exterminate mankind. The Belmont Clan of vampire hunters, once exiled from Wallachia due to their “super-human” power, is begged by the Church for help. Trevor Belmont, the current wielder of the Vampire Killer, travels to Transylvania to end the Count.
Jettisoning the adventure game and RPG elements found in the previous entry, Dracula’s Curse goes back to the original game’s linear stage progression. However, in a progressive twist, players could take alternate paths along their journey to Dracula’s Castle. Depending on the path you take, you encounter one of three companions, each with specific abilities: Grant, a pirate captain; Sypha, a witch; and Alucard, the son of Dracula. You can only take one companion at a time, so if you happen to encounter a second companion, you must make the choice of taking the new companion, or leaving them and continuing on with your original companion.
As one would expect, each character played differently. Trevor retained the classic Belmont stiffness and “deliberateness” in his movement, while Grant is quicker and more agile in the air, and is able to climb walls/ceilings. On the negative side, Grant is also weaker in offence in the non-Japanese versions (instead of a throwing dagger, Grant attacks with a short sword), and will also take more damage. His defense pales in comparison to Sypha, who is the weakest of the characters, offensively and defensively. She instead must rely on her magic attacks, which tend to be overpowered in the Japanese version (particularly her lighting attack). Meanwhile, Alucard is the slowest and least agile of the group, but makes up for it with his bat transformation. He can be hit out of it and uses up hearts quickly, but is invaluable for avoiding certain hazards.
Konami didn’t just put these gimmicks in for nothing, as you will often have to switch to your companion (which shares the same health bar as Trevor) in order to make traversing the stages a little easier. These stages in question are leaps above the original game in terms of content and complexity, with their designs logically matching up to their location on the map. No longer are you tromping around the grounds around Dracula’s castle. Again, depending on the paths you take, you may make your way through marshes and caverns, a rotting galleon, the clock tower, a forest and more. Depending on your companion, you can use their abilities to traverse walls, freeze streams in order to make it easier to cross, or simply fly above an obstacle.
And you will have obstacles. From trying to navigate between swinging pendulums, avoiding dropping blocks while waiting for them to drop enough to let you make it up to the exit, acid eating through blocks, to a stage where you have to climb as quick as possible in order to not be cut off at the bottom as it scrolls up in chunks, Dracula’s Curse doesn’t let up. That’s on top of the multiple bosses in some stages, which require you to fight in succession. True, some of the bosses are repeated across stages, but given how much Konami was able to cram into the game, it’s easily forgiven.
As you might expect, Castlevania III is superior in the graphics department to its previous entries, pushing the aging hardware to its limits. Along with the aforementioned pendulums and the rotating gears in the clock tower, the game kicks off appropriately with Trevor kneeling in front of a cross (which looks more impressive in the Japanese version). Lightning flashes, Trevor stands up, throws back his cape, and we’re off. The game maintains a dark and gritty atmosphere throughout, with many of the stages changing their look midway through as your progress. There are a few jumbled messes of tiles from time to time, but it’s nowhere near how the first game looked.
It’s at this point that by law you have to talk about the soundtrack, which is legendary. Composed by the trio of Hidenori Maezawa, Jun Funahashi, and Yukie Morimoto, the soundtrack (in the Japanese version) was aided by a custom memory mapper called the VRC6 that added more sound channels. The result was higher quality fidelity music and sound effects. The European and North American NES lacked the hardware necessary to use the VRC6, so the music was a few notches below the Japanese version. That being said, the music is still a staple for many fans today. The first stage’s music, “Beginning”, has made frequent appearances in successive Castlevania games. Other songs such as “Mad Forest”, “Aquarius” and “Prelude” are also standouts.
The music wasn’t the only thing changed when the game arrived a year later for English-speaking countries. As alluded to with regards to Grant’s weapon, the game was made noticeably harder. Sypha’s overpowered magic was dialled back and doesn’t track enemies as well as before, enemies were added in places, and each enemy now dealt the same amount of damage to the player (although this damage increases in the later stages). The checkpoint system was also changed where if you lost to Dracula in the final battle, the player starts back at the level’s second section instead of right outside of the castle keep.
This all made for the common “Nintendo hard” complaint about Castlevania III. It’s definitely a difficult game, and there are a few cheap hits and deaths to be found. However, most of the game’s difficulty requires you to memorize certain aspects in order to better yourself. Like some games that straddle that line of “difficult” and “impossible”, Dracula’s Curse is a “tough but fair” affair. Approaching it as you would Super Mario Bros. would have you ending up dead rather quickly. Like modern equivalents such as the Souls-like games, Dracula’s Curse requires a methodical pace and patience to truly succeed. Plus, if you tried to plow through the game, you’d end up missing a lot of the cool graphics and music! Unlike the first game, you also now had a password system that made coming back to Castlevania III a little easier if you took a break.
But probably the most noteworthy aspect of Castlevania III is its legacy. Konami reached the pinnacle for a lot of old-school players with this one. And while Castlevania IV and Rondo of Blood carved out their own successes, they still treaded the path set out by Dracula’s Curse. Of course, after Rondo of Blood, the series experienced a further revolution with Symphony of The Night. And, if you needed further proof of Castlevania III‘s endurance, look no further than the Castlevania Netflix series, which took the original concept of a Dracula’s Curse movie and expanded it into a multi-season show.
As far as the original NES games, Castlevania III is a perfect send-off. The game advanced and refined practically every element from the first Castlevania, and even with the SNES on the horizon, Konami still devoted time to pack Dracula’s Curse full of content that rivalled almost any other 8-bit console title. Adding to all of this is its enduring appeal, which not only exemplifies for many what made a Castlevania game, but also what could be done in other mediums.
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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