![]() The final element that makes Arcade fascinating on paper if not in actuality is that the eternally litigious folks at Disney were so enraged by how shamelessly the computer generated imagery in the original version of Arcade stole from Tron that they threatened to sue unless the filmmakers threw out all of the existing CGI and started over from scratch. True, you get a glimpse of a Simpsons arcade game at one point but it’s literally a blink and you miss it cameo predicated on Full Moon guessing that Fox wouldn’t sue over its intellectual property making a split-second appearance in a low-budget horror movie. ![]() Arcade was shot as cheaply and simply as possible so they did not bother to get the rights to show even a single goddamn game, no matter how obscure. When the gamers entered Dante’s Inferno the first time I prepared myself for a glorious nostalgic trip through some of the most beloved arcade games of my youth, zeitgeist-capturing masterpieces like Double Dragon, Super Mario Bros. Įven at that early stage of his career, Green was too successful to be wasted in a supporting role in a go-nowhere video game thriller in a role so bland that his character’s defining characteristics are that he’s short, wears sunglasses and likes playing video games. Seth Green was similarly only a teenager when he snagged the thankless role of “Stilts” but he’d already appeared in The Hotel New Hampshire, Radio Days, Can’t Buy Me Love, Pump Up the Volume and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Star Peter Billingsley is of course best known as the lovable lead of A Christmas Story while female lead Megan Ward was a staple of Clinton-era cult movies like Encino Man, Freaked and PCU and A.J Langer had already achieved horror immortality when she was cast in Arcade thanks to her role as Alice, the dewy innocent at the heart of Wes Craven’s cult allegory The People Under the Stairs. Goyer ended up playing a huge role in the superhero movie boom with his work on the screenplays for 1998’s Blade, 2002’s Blade 2, 2005’s Batman Beings (which he co-wrote with Christopher Nolan), 2008’s The Dark Knight (whose story he co-wrote with Nolan), 2013’s Man of Steel and 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.īut before Goyer was an A-list screenwriter of D.C and Marvel blockbusters Goyer paid his dues at Full Moon writing Dollman, Arcade and Demonic Toys.įor a zero-budget direct to video horror movie Brainscan has a shockingly loaded cast as well as a surprisingly auspicious writer-director team. If Pyun never quite made the big time his Arcade screenwriter David S. Pyun did not get a chance to bring Steve Ditko and Stan Lee’s web-slinger to the big screen but he did direct a number of films of note, including the Full Moon franchise-starter Dollman, the memorably named Andrew “Dice” Clay vehicle Brain Smashers: A Love Story and any number of exploitation movies starring various rappers shot quickly and cheaply in Eastern Europe. Marvel movies are now of course the engine that powers the global economy and mankind’s reason for being but there was a time when superhero movies were B-list at best, and not commercial behemoths. Needless to say Pyun did not end up directing Spider-Man or a Masters of the Universe sequel but during that very strange period when superhero movies, particularly Marvel movies, were seen as a low-budget garbage for small children he did get to direct a 1990 feature film adaptation of Captain America starring J.D Salinger’s son that can best be described as politely forgotten. ![]() Pyun hooked up with Cannon and directed the early Jean Claude Van Damme vehicle Cyborg, which began life as a sequel to Masters of the Universe that Albert Pyun was going to direct back-to-back with Spider-Man. ![]() It was directed by prolific schlockmeister Albert Pyun, who made his name with the independent hits The Sword and the Sorcerer and Radioactive Dreams. On paper Arcade is full of interesting, eccentric and noteworthy elements. It’s one of those obscurities that promises to be utterly fascinating then utterly fails to deliver. Even by the exceedingly lenient standards of this website Albert Pyun’s 1993 video game horror movie Arcade is weird and random. ![]()
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