GAMES ON FILM #25 Servants of Twilight

Brief overview

The Servants of Twilight (1991) was directed by Jeffery Obrow, based on the novel by Dean Koontz. The novel was generally well-received, while the film was slightly more divisive, gaining average to mediocre reviews, but it was still regarded as a faithful adaptation.

A religious cult led by the crazed Grace Spivey (Grace Zabriskie) seemingly at random targets a kid, Joey Scavello (Jarrett Lennon), whom the cult believes to be the anti-Christ. His mother, Christine Scavello (Belinda Bauer), hires a PI, Charlie Harrison (Bruce Greenwood), to help protect them. The cult is relentless in its pursuit, killing whoever gets in its way. They take the kid to many hidden locations, but it isn’t long before they are found again, and again. One last showdown, and the cult leader is defeated. The family returns to a normal life, but wait, was the kid really the anti-Christ the whole time?

The Scenes

While at the private investigators’ office, the kid plays TETRIS on Game Boy with the receptionist, Sherry Ordway (Kelli Maroney)

The receptionist says, “ Wow, 2000, you’ve beaten my record”

2000 as a high score for TETRIS isn’t exactly difficult to obtain,

so either she wasn’t very good at the game, or she was just trying to be nice to the kid, even though he clearly sucks.

The scene opens with a close-up of the Game Boy’s screen, which shows that the kid has just stacked the Tetrominoes (blocks) on top of one another, seemingly with no attempt to actually clear any lines.

The TETRIS theme (Music A-Type) can be heard throughout most of the scene.

In a brief scene, the Detective, Charlie Harrison, and some of his team, along with the kid, are eating Chinese takeout around a table. The kid mentions “…it’s the world of Nintendo”. Greenwood replies, “You have to be a computer brain to figure that stuff out. I can’t even load my programmes”

“World of Nintendo” was a branding primarily used during the NES era to promote Nintendo games and characters. In more recent years, the term has been used for a Nintendo toyline from Jakks Pacific.

In a later scene, back at their house, the PI, along with his team of bodyguards, are helping protect the kid. The kid is shown playing a Tiger Electronics handheld (recognisable for its distinctive white shell) with one of the bodyguards, Pete Lockburn (Al White).

Anyone familiar with Tiger Electronics’ LCD handhelds will be familiar with the beeps and wailing bloops that it attempts to pass off as sound.

In the scene, the sound coming from it is something a real Tiger LCD could never do, and sounds more like an NES game.

It’s undoubtedly a Tiger LCD, but we never really get a clean look at it to see just what game it is. The music they used sounded very familiar, but I wasn’t quite able to place it. Sounded similar to one of the Tecmo Bowl games.

Bonus: The secretary’s computer appears to be an ATARI 1040 ST.

Are they playing?

Most signs point to “yes”. Not much is shown of the actual gameplay, but given the less-than-stellar gameplay performance and the fact that they filmed the actual Game Boy screen, suggests the kid was actually playing.

The Tiger LCD is a little more debatable, but even though the sound was replaced, I think it’s likely that he was actually playing. For both examples, it might have been a good way of keeping the kid focused.

Whose Gameboy?

It’s somewhat implied that the Game Boy belongs to the receptionist.

She says, “You beat my high score”. and “…Guess I’m going to have to start practising weekends” The Game Boy also doesn’t appear again later, which strengthens this idea.

When Joey and the kid are playing the Tiger LCD, Joey says, “… it’s my game,” so it is also perhaps a little ambiguous. It could be my game, as in he owns it. Or perhaps more likely “my game” as in my turn [at the game].

As with all these video game props, you have to wonder where they are now.

Film in review

The film is quite well made and acted; it creates some decent thrills and tension. Not being overly familiar with the source material, I can’t speak to how it fares as an adaptation.

The religious cult is played just right and manages to avoid Ham Territory. Head cultist played by Grace Zabriskie delivers a great, crazed performance. You can really get invested in the detective trying to stop these crazy S.O.Bs from getting at the kid. Carel Struycken also does a great performance as a conflicted cult member.

At times, it can feel like it’s dipping into the same playbook as other horror movies with similar themes, like The Omen (1976). Thankfully, Servants of Twilight does just enough to keep itself original. It has a few surprises and twists and offers up some decent thrills. It’s worth checking out at least once. It is entertaining if a little basic, but will surely satisfy fans of the genre; however, (spoilers), the ending might divide some. I would have preferred there to be nothing supernatural/devilish about the kid and the religious cult, not being retroactively justified in any way, and just remain as a bunch of crazy cult members, who just targeted a random kid. To me, that’s a more realistic and scarier idea.

A brief history of the Game Boy

The Nintendo Game Boy was released on April 21st, 1989, in Japan, followed by July 31st 1989, in North America, and September 28th 1990, in Europe. The original Game Boy was designed by Gunpei Yokoi and Satoru Okada.

The system launched with TETRIS as a pack-in title in NA and the EU.

The system’s best-selling titles were the original Pokémon games, Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow.

TERTIS, created by Alexey Pajitnov. The game’s creation and history are too long to get into here; suffice to say, TETRIS is a globally recognised hit, and one of the most played and critically acclaimed games of all time.

When the Game Boy launched, Nintendo’s primary target audience was kids. However, early on, the Game Boy was also marketed to adults. This is actually reflected in the film with the secretary.

Super Mario Land was originally planned to be the pack-in title for the Game Boy, as it would only seem natural for Mario, Nintendo’s mascot and a huge success on the NES. Having obtained the rights to TETRIS Henk Rogers (CEO of Bullet-Proof Software, and key player in obtaining the rights for TETRIS for the GB). Seeing the wider potential in the game, persuaded the then Nintendo of America president, Minoru Arakawa, to include TETRIS as the pack-in over Mario, reasoning that Mario was mostly suited towards kids while TETRIS could be for everyone.

The Game Boy saw several revisions over its time on the market. The first update was the Game Boy Pocket (1996), a significantly slimmer design that dropped the 4 scales of green for a cleaner black and white look. Followed by the Japan-exclusive Game Boy Light (1998), which fixed one of the system’s biggest flaws by adding a backlight. Gameboy color (1998) was a somewhat modest update, adding 8-bit style colour graphics, but dropped the backlight, and could play Original GB games, with an added very limited colour palette.

Game Boy Advance (2001) was a 32-bit system that could produce graphics comparable to SNES games. The GBA was also backwards compatible with the GB/GBC, but still not backlit. Game Boy Advance SP (2003) introduced a clamshell design and a front-lit screen, later updated to a back-lit screen. The last system to use the Game Boy branding was the Game Boy Micro (2004), a very compact size with an improved screen and backlight, howver it dropped the backwards compatibility with Game Boy and Game Boy color. Ultimately, the Game Boy was replaced by its successor, the Nintendo DS (2004), which had its own line of systems.

The DS and DS Lite (2006) both had backwards compatibility with the GBA only. Lastly (for now), select GB, GBC, and GBA games were added as part of Nintendo Switch Online.

CONCLUSION

As Games on Film appearances go, this is fairly standard. However, it does showcase two handhelds from the era at two spectrums, the higher-end (but reasonably priced) Game Boy and the budget Tiger LCD handheld. The mention of “World of Nintendo” is also a nice little bonus.

While there isn’t any video game technobabble to speak of, as mentioned, the secretary claims the kid beat her high score with only 2000 points. A player with a basic understanding of the game would know that a score of 2000 isn’t exactly high. This would suggest that the screenplay was written by someone with only a passing understanding of video games.

This G.O.F does have a slight advantage over similar examples like the GAMEGEAR in Rumble in the Bronx (See GOF#19), where no gameplay is shown, and there is a prop error in that the GAMEGEAR doesn’t actually have a game inserted.

Game Boy, TETRIS or Tiger are never mentioned by name; however, the Nintendo/Game Boy logo isn’t hidden, unlike in Child’s Play 3 (see GOF#18), where the Atari/Lynx logos are covered up. Although I don’t think this was supposed to be any sort of product placement.

Not the most flashy example, but when games appear in lesser-known and more niche films and TV shows, it is perhaps even more important to document them. Watch out for another GAMES ON FILM (GOF) next month.