Tag Archives: david cronenberg

Splatterhouse: History and Inspiration Behind The Classic Arcade Game

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Before there was a video game content rating system, the creators of Dig Dug and Galaga were blazing trails with a different kind of game, dripping with graphic content. In the late 80’s, Namco unleashed the gore-fest known as Splatterhouse into arcades and home ports. Setting the cornerstone for the future of horror gaming and on-screen violence.

“May be inappropriate for young children…and cowards.”

While horror games had been churned out for years on home computers and consoles, scarier aspects were left to the player’s imagination. The depictions of violence and gore in gaming had a very limited scope. That is until the Japanese game developer, Namco, decided to push arcade boundaries as well as break their own mold. Namco was best known, at the time, for the creation of cute and cartoony games like Pac-Man and Mappy. In November of 1988, under the direction of Shigeru Yokoyama, the Splatterhouse arcade game was released. Influenced by popular Western slasher cinema and parental outrage, Namco was counting on shock factor to bring players to the joystick. Unlike other side-scrolling brawler games, Splatterhouse was hyper-focused on detailed gore and graphic violence. Purposely drawing attention to the gruesome content resulted in the arcade cabinet’s immediate success in Japan and Europe. A slower cult following developed in the United states as Splatterhouse wasn’t widely distributed to Western arcades. Lore surrounding the game claim’s its content stirred controversy resulting in a ban while others believe it was a copyright infringement. Home ports that followed for TurboGrafx-16 and MegaDrive would bring a censored version to wider audiences with toned down splatter and character changes.

Gameplay

The original Splatterhouse arcade game didn’t offer much of a backstory. Only presenting the player with an opening sequence of two figures seeking shelter from a rainstorm in a dark mansion. It would be 1990’s home port that would expand on the game’s plot. In the instruction manual, the figures running through the woods are identified as Rick and Jennifer. College sweethearts and parapsychology students that have traveled to West Mansion for a research project. The West Mansion is locally known as “Splatterhouse”, rumored to contain mutated abominations created in a lab by the homeowner, Dr. Henry West. As they enter the mansion and the door slams behind them, Jennifer screams bloody murder and a game over screen appears. But death is only the beginning. Rick awakens from his own unknown demise in a dungeon, resurrected by the “Terror Mask”. An ancient artifact containing a spirit that grants super-human strength to whomever puts it on. Attaching itself to Rick, he is transformed into a rampaging monster out to save Jennifer and take revenge on West Mansion.

A 2-page advertisement for the Turbo-Grafx 16 port was released as a mini comic of Splatterhouse’s origins. Featuring Rick and Jennifer entering the West Mansion, being attacked, and the Terror Mask fusing with our anti-hero.

A Real Video Game Nasty

For any fan of contemporary slasher figures and horror cinema, the main appeal of the Splatterhouse arcade game is guessing who’s who. A game within a game of spotting all the references in weapons, enemies, and backgrounds. Most are quick to point out the resemblance of Rick’s mask to Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th franchise. Beyond the beloved horror icons of the 80s, the concept of a haunted mask hadn’t yet found its true voice. One of the first horror film entries is the 1965 Japanese supernatural drama, Onibaba. A lost samurai passes on the curse of a jealous demoness with the use of a Hannya mask. Almost 2 decades later we would be reintroduced to mask horror with a disconnected sequel to John Carpenter’s best-known movie. Halloween III: Season of The Witch’s plot was a collision between tech and the occult at the Silver Shamrock mask factory. Italy would step up to the under used trope in 1985 with Lamberto Bava’s Dèmoni. Giving audiences a plague of demonic possession when an ancient mask is tied in with a horror movie promotion.

The second most notable horror reference in the franchise is our villain, Dr. Henry West. Highly regarded in the parapsychology community as a brilliant man, his secretive experiments within his mansion have unleashed Lovecraftian horrors on the world. A direct homage to H.P. ‘s 1922 novelette Herbert West-Reanimator and the 1985 horror comedy film that followed. But it is Lovecraft’s obsession with old dark houses that gives the Splatterhouse arcade game its namesake. Short stories such as From Beyond, The Dreams in the Witch-House, and The Shunned House all offer a residence where either mad science or occult ritual take place. Creating massive rifts of trauma that transform the very structure into a living abomination itself. Splatterhouse’s West Mansion is not only filled with hideous monstrosities but actually births them into reality.

Several other horror films of the 80s are remarked on lending inspiration to the bad guys that come for Rick. Deadly Spawn slugs and Poltergeist mirror reflections are mixed in with xenomorph chest bursting and Cronenbergian fetus mutants. The chainsaw-armed boss called “Biggyman” could have borrowed again from Jason on Friday the 13th II, with a burlap bag over his head. Or it might have been a reference to the Phantom in The Town That Dreaded Sundown.

The majority of the Splatterhouse arcade game’s tributes fall under 1987’s Evil Dead II. The final act of Stage II is an entire room and its contents shuddering at the presence of Rick. Attacked by flying furniture and squaring off with a hung portrait flapping about. Stage V gives you pools of sentient severed hands crawling about and a few giving the finger. But it is the moment when Rick encounters Jennifer laid out on a sofa, that leads me to emphasize Evil Dead II. She awakens to transform into a hideous monstrosity that reminds me of Ted Raimi as a Deadite Granny. Rick has no choice but to kill his own girlfriend, in an anguished moment once shared with Ash as he chainsawed Linda.  

“It begins again…!”

The success of the Splatterhouse arcade game in Japan was followed in 1989 with the first and lesser-known sequel of the franchise. Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti was a Japanese exclusive for the Famicom system. More of a cutesy parody of the original, the graphic violence was removed and it was marketed to a younger audience. Wanpaku Graffiti deviated from the original storyline and featured even more horror pop-culture references that made the game downright silly, at times. Fans continue to debate whether or not it was intended to be a prequel to the original game. In 1992, Namco released Splatterhouse 2 for Sega Genesis. The game’s plot would pick up 3 months after the events of the Splatterhouse arcade game. Rick plagued with nightmares and tempted by the spirit of the Terror Mask to return to West Mansion and revive Jennifer’s soul. 1993 followed with Splatterhouse 3 on Sega, with the disruption of happily ever after. Rick and Jennifer are now married with a child as Dr. West’s horrors once again invade their lives. 2010’s Splatterhouse is a retelling of the original story for X360 and PS3. Updating the 16-bit world to a modern-day bloodbath that is packed with horror reference easter eggs. Following in the arcade cabinet’s footsteps of valuing blood n’ guts over gameplay, the reboot is incredibly entertaining for a gore-hound. In fact, the entire franchise is highly recommended to fans of retro horror gaming, if for nothing else than the nods to hack n’ slash cinema throughout each installment.  

A Putrid Pioneer of Horror Gaming

It may not have been the first horror game, but the Splatterhouse arcade game reshaped the genre. Giving the player the opportunity to be a Jason Voorhees knock-off that punches bats and chops levitating heads with a medieval axe. Namco reached new audiences with gruesomely detailed carnage and solid Eldritch elements; a formula still prevalent in modern horror games. Without Splatterhouse we may have never gotten Friday the 13th: The Game for PS4 and Xbox One.

“If coin-ops could give out smells, this one would reek of an abattoir.”

In a 1989 Splatterhouse review in Computers and Video Games magazine

Further Reading

Splatterhouse fan-site “The West Mansion” 

Splatterhouse arcade emulator (in browser)

Do Androids Dream of Cronenberg? Philip K Dick’s Influence on the Baron of Blood

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Canadian director, David Cronenberg, is best known to cinephiles for body horror of a particular kind of yuck. Whether it’s a parasitic relationship or a medical kink, his use of practical effects could make any gore-hound squirm. Others are drawn to Cronenberg’s cerebral adaptations of unfilmable literature. The not-too-distant dystopian unrealities of J.G. Ballard and Burroughs were brought to the big screen with Crash and Naked Lunch. Yet David Cronenberg’s amalgamation of technological unrest and quivering gristle may yet best envision the fictional worlds of Sci-Fi guru, Philip K. Dick.

Everybody’s a mad scientist, and life is their lab.

The producers of Alien had been trying to adapt a short story of sci-fi guru Phillip K. Dick since the 70s. “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” became the basis for Total Recall with David Cronenberg as the first director considered. Spending a year working on 12 different drafts, Cronenberg kept the script as close to Dick’s novel as he could. Remaining dark and paranoid, he contributed the concept of mutants and his own on-brand yonic imagery. But studio executives were looking for “Raiders of The Lost Ark goes to Mars”. Something much different than what he was willing to give and eventually left the project. Though the stories of Philip K. Dick would always have an influence over David Cronenberg. His pessimistic futures of isolation and counterfeit realities blended well with the director’s affinity for perversions of science. The foundations of Dick’s novels continue to manifest within the films of Cronenberg. Here we examine the similitude of their three most popular novels and films.

Scanners/Ubik

Hollywood continues to try and develop a film version of Philip K. Dick’s Ubik. David Cronenberg was at one point involved in discussions of an adaptation, even directly contacting the writer’s daughters. Though the director’s idea fell through, themes from the novel remained prevalent in another film. Through a combination of Cronenberg’s scripts for The Sensitives and Telepathy 2000 came the movie, Scanners in 1981. It’s a story of a mentally ill vagrant named Vale, captured by a private military company. They cure him of the voices in his head with their drug, Ephemerol, and then inform him of his super mind powers. As a “scanner”, he is recruited to stop an underground ring of rogue scanners through infiltration. Uncovering a plot of mass distributing Ephemerol to pregnant women and mutating the unborn. Transforming a new generation of scanners to overthrow the world. Philip K. Dick’s Ubik gave us the same gritty timeline where psychic powers are used for corporate espionage. Another downtrodden protagonist is employed by a company managing “precogs”. Cyberpathically securing their clients’ private information from telepathic hackers. A rival organization of psychics engage in guerilla style combat to eliminate business competition resulting in a liminal plot of time travel. Between life and half-life, the present or 1939, the characters become trapped Schrodinger cats. Doomed to deteriorate without the widely accessible store-bought product, Ubik. Both Scanners and Ubik would broadcast a faint warning of warring corporate entities and their disregard of consumer casualties.

Videodrome/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner is an acclaimed 1982 film adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Though an excellent piece of cinema, the1968 novel contained more complexities than a single film could possibly capture. David Cronenberg would expand on Philip K. Dick’s story beyond android bounty hunters with 1983’s Videodrome. A retro portrait of post humanism, the movie pokes fun at the idiot box and media identity. A sleazy cable-TV president becomes obsessed with a snuff channel broadcast out of Pittsburg. The addictive signal induces a brain tumor that causes hallucinations. These visuals are recorded and marketed as television programming. All under the guise of a false media prophet, Brian O’Blivion, founder of the Cathode Ray Mission. Existing only within video tape recordings, humans are reprogrammed into an analog hell-LIVE! Dick’s novel, Electric Sheep, gives us another society of stifling technology mimicking the organic. Literally dictating every human emotion with Penfield Mood Organs and a tech-based religion called Mercerism. Utilizing “empathy boxes” to simultaneously link users to a virtual reality of collective suffering. Centered on a Sisyphus martyr-like character who eternally climbs up a hill while being hit with crashing stones.

eXistenZ/The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

The David Cronenberg film most referenced in regard to Philip K. Dick, is 1999’s eXistenZ. A film that takes gaming beyond hobby or addiction and into a complete lifestyle alignment. Popular on the market in eXistenZ are fleshy VR pods that connect on a bio level with consumers. Gamers are surgically fitted with a spinal port that plugs into the console. Dueling game companies compete for control of the market while fending off an underground movement of “Realists”. Domestic terrorists that disapprove of these games distorting reality. A failed assassination on a game-developer’s life has her on the run with the only copy of her latest game creation. To ensure it isn’t corrupted she plays through with her bodyguard, only to enter a deeper level of virtual reality filled with assassins and spies. The addiction to escapism reflects Philip K. Dick’s The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. A novel about the miserable existence of manual labor where citizens are drafted to colonize other planets. Draftees self-medicate with the illegal drug, Can-D. A hallucinogen allowing a controlled simulation of a Barbie doll figure, “Perky Pat”. Continuing with the element of opposing business giants, a famed bio-modified merchant has discovered a better alternative called “Chew-Z”. Double agents fall through the looking glass into their own hallucinations as the battle of drug patents ensues. Both Cronenberg’s eXistenZ and Dick’s Three Stigmata have ambiguous endings that leave the audience wanting more.

 Brandon Cronenberg: Like Father Like Son

David Cronenberg’s son, Brandon, follows in his footsteps as a director and screenplay writer. Deriving inspiration from alternate consciousness and the universes created by Philip K. Dick. His debut, Antiviral, takes celebrity worship and his father’s signature “venereal horror” to another plane. Familiar tropes of misuse of medical technology and quarreling corporate giants,the movie reveals a black market of genetic souvenirs from celebrities. Reminiscent of Ubik by way of a manufactured afterlife wrapped around the consumer market. Brandon’s 2020 film, Possessor, references Dick’s frequent use of imposters and multiple identities. An assassin tale where public persona meets shadow, and all sense of identity is lost in a role. Similar themes arise in Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said and The Simulacra.

Long Live The New Flesh

Philip K. Dick was afraid of how technology would transform humanity, and that fear aroused something within David Cronenberg. He is the grimy lens of our mind’s eye that shows us a broken-society closer than not-too-distant. Where body horror is loss of autonomy when flesh melds with tech. Where humans become fake versions of themselves living in fake storylines. Philip K. Dick warned that this was going to happen, and David Cronenberg rubs our faces in it.

There are about a hundred movies that could be made from Dick’s stuff, but I think people are afraid of it still, which is a testament to the power his work has.

https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/interview-david-cronenberg/

Further Reading

Behold! The Unfilmable: The Literary Adaptations of David Cronenberg  

Every Warning Sci-Fi Writer Philip K. Dick Gave Us About Technology is Coming True

Never-Been-Seen Concept Art for David Cronenberg’s Total Recall