TheResident Evilteam at Capcom has seen a lot of creators come and go overthe series' 24-year history, but one consistent thread throughout its run is that most of the series' developers have always been massive film geeks. Many of the individual games in theResident Evilseries are a hodgepodge of homages, thefts, swipes, and nods to American and European action, horror, and science fiction movies, particularly from the 1990s, which is likely to become and remain hilarious now thatResident Evilis warming up for a Netflix show and a second live-action film franchise.
Sometimes, it’s subtle. For example, Leon’s starting handgun in both the 1998 and 2019 versions ofResident Evil 2is a Heckler & Koch VP70M, a rare firearm that’s notorious for being hard to use. Its one real claim to fame is that it looks sort of futuristic, so James Cameron opted to use the VP70M as the standard sidearmfor Colonial Marines inAliens. The real-life VP70M has a trigger pull comparable to a staple gun and was already nine years out of production by the time in whichRE2is set. No one in their right mind would ever just have one on them as an everyday-carry weapon, as Leon does inRE2, unless it was a deep-cover film reference.
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Sometimes, it’s not subtle at all. InResident Evil 4,Ada Wong’s pose on the title screen of her side scenarioSeparate Waysmimics that of Anna Parillaud on the American poster for 1990’sLa Femme Nikita,an early film by French writer/director Luc Besson.Ada herself is a full-body referencetoNikitaand other enigmatic female secret agents throughout film, but theSeparate Waystitle screen makes it blatant. At least, it was blatant to anyone who’d seen this one specific French movie that was 15 years old at the time the version ofRE4withSeparate Wayscame out. So a dozen people, easily.
At this point in theResident Evilfranchise’s history, there are many fans of the series who are significantly younger than many of the films that inspired it. To get up to speed with the pop-culture diet that produces a series likeResident Evil,scour the back alleys of video-on-demand for these films, which represent some of the highlights ofRE’s history of cinematic theft.
The Professional(1994)
For a director/writer who’s never made a horror movie, unless one is feeling truly unkind towardsTaken 3, Luc Besson’s contributed a lot toResident Evil’s creative DNA. Leon,throughout his appearances in the series, is typically equipped with a handgun called the “Matilda,” although the make and model of the gun sometimes differs between games. This mimics the names of Jean Reno and Natalie Portman’s characters from Besson’s 1994 filmThe Professional, which also lends its name to the hardest difficulty settings inResident Evil 4and5.
Nowadays, the movie is perhaps best-known for being Portman’s film debut, as well asGary Oldman’s gloriously hammy performanceas corrupt DEA agent Norman Stansfield. It’s vaguely disquieting to think that a lot of younger viewers today would first recognize Oldman’s Stansfield from “that meme where he screams ‘EVERYONE,'” but that’s how it goes on this mess of an Earth.
BetweenLa Femme Nikita,The Professional,and 1997’sThe Fifth Element,Besson’s ’90s work went a long way towards informing how action movies would look from that point forward. (And then he made a bunch ofTaken,and then he got accused of rape, and now Besson should probably just go away forever. But in the ’90s…) That, in turn, helped to informthe style-over-substance approach that definesResident Evil 4, and thus, many of the action games that followed afterward.
The original 1968Night of the Living Deadis a bit of a gimme in a conversation aboutResident Evil. The typical zombie inRE,and in many other works likeThe Walking Dead,is the kind of classic shambler that Romero made famous:unintelligent, uncoordinated, and heavily resistant to damagethat’s inflicted anywhere but their heads.
Ten years later, Romero went on to further codify his take on zombies with 1978’sDawn of the Dead, which does double duty as a zombie apocalypse film and a relatively subtle consumerist parody. The latter of the two is the more important aspect of it, so naturally, it’s the point that’s been missed the hardest by the subsequent 40 years of zombie media. (Oddly, the originalDead Rising didpick up on that… but of course, none of its Western-made sequels did.) BothNightandDawndid a lot to forward what’s become one of the biggest go-to features of the genre, though, that in a tight spot, the zombies aren’t as threatening as the survivors are towards one another.
Tom Savini remade Romero’s original 1968Night of the Living Deadin 1990, with Tony Todd(Candyman, The Rock)playing the role of its tragic hero Ben. Naturally, sinceSavini is a famous special-effects wizardwho was working with a budget roughly 2,000% of what Romero’s was, his version is in color with vastly superior makeup and gore. The script also dramatically updates the role of Barbara, who spends most of the original film catatonic from shock, but is one of the smartest characters in the remake. (She’s also played by Patricia Tallman, who sci-fi fans will know from her subsequent roles inBabylon 5andStar Trek: The Next Generation.)
An argument can be made for either version ofNight of the Living Deadbeing superior. Savini’s can’t help but look better, and Barbara’s competence upgrade counts for a lot, but Romero’s is one of the biggest success stories in low-budget horror and has aged remarkably well. (Its ending, while a huge downer, has only become more relevant in 2020.) The 1990 remake is unquestionably a bigger influence onResident Evil,though, between Barbara’s expanded role, the zombies’ design, and even the basic premise of zombies surrounding and breaking into an isolated countryside manor. There’s even a big deer head trophy inthe Spencer mansion in the firstResident Evilthat’s identical to one that’s on the wall of the house in the 1990Nightremake.
John Russo co-wrote the script for the original 1968Night of the Living Deadwith George Romero. Afterwards, the two filmmakers parted ways, but Russo ended up with the trademark on"Living Dead," forcing Romero to make the rest of his zombie films as “of the Dead.”
Russo immediately jumped into horror’s more gonzo side, as opposed to Romero’s borderline-respectable career, and was involved with making multiple cheap slasher and exploitation films across the ’80s and ’90s. Primarily, Russo is known as a screenwriter, but has a handful of directorial, production, and other credits to his name. When Russo went back to the zombie well with 1985’sReturn of the Living Dead,on which he has a “story by” credit, the result was a splatterpunk horror comedy. It’s perhaps best-known now for codifying the belief in popular culture that zombies arespecifically hungry for brains, as well as the famous “send more paramedics” scene, which would be horrifying if it wasn’t in such a silly movie.
(It’s interesting to see how the two series have ended up defining the video game zombie between them. Romero’s are cannon fodder,too slow and dumb to be a real threatunless they’re numerous enough to overrun a position; Russo’s are intelligent, fast, insane with hunger, and practically indestructible. Romero made trash mobs; Russo made stage bosses.)
There are alotofLiving Deadmovies out there at this point, and Russo isn’t involved at all with many of them. There have been a lot of unofficial sequels, prequels, parodies, and side stories over the years, many of which are only vaguely connected to the original films; at best, they usually all give the zombies the same origin story, of cadavers reanimated by a gas created by the American military. Most of theLiving Deadmovies aren’t worth watching, even ona designated bad movie night, but the original three have held up well enough.
There are a lot of incidental shout-outs to the first threeReturn of the Living Deadfilms in theResident Evilseries, particularly in the original PlayStation games. For example, the cutscenes that begin and end1998’sResident Evil 3: Nemesis, which show the Raccoon City police’s doomed final battle against the zombies and the missile strike that destroys the city, both resemble similar sequences in the firstReturn of the Living Dead.
The most blatant homage and/or theft, though, is in 2000’sResident Evil: Code Veronica. There’s a famous sequence early in that game, where Claire watches as a monster beats a scientist to death against an observation window, that’s a close recreation of a similar sequence in 1993’sReturn of the Living Dead 3. The monster in question, a big one-armed melting-wax creature thatthe game’s developers called a Bandersnatch, is designed to resemble the weaponized super-zombies inLiving Dead III.
Zombi 2(1979)
The late Lucio Fulci was an Italian director and screenwriter with over 60 films to his credit between 1948 and 1997. While he wasn’t exclusively a horror director, he’s famous among genre fans for graphically violent movies likeCity of the Living DeadandThe Beyond. The latter film was re-released to theaters by Quentin Tarantino in 1998, becauseofcourseTarantino is a Fulci fan. Tarantino probably has a half-dozen filmmakers locked in his basement specifically so they remain obscure enough that he can still like their movies.
Most relevantly for this article, Fulci directedZombi 2in 1979, which has confused American audiences ever since, because there isn’t actually a firstZombi. More accurately, that was the Italian title for Romero’s 1978Dawn of the Dead. A different screenplay was adapted forZombi 2,and its European marketing campaign advertised it as an unofficial sequel to Romero’sDawn. It’s the kind of all-star move that exploitation filmmakers could only do in the ’70s. Today, even hinting that was the plan would gethalf a metric ton of lawyersair-dropped directly on some indie director’s face.
Zombi 2and its sequels were box-office successes, became famous/notorious in the international market, were among the biggest hits Fulci had in his lifetime, and achieved the weird badge of honor of being listed as “video nasties” in the United Kingdom.Zombi 2is particularly well-known among horror fans for two scenes: painfully slow stake-through-the-eye kill,where an unfortunate woman gets impaled through the head,and the zombie-vs.-shark fight. (It wouldn’t be a surprise to learn thatZombi 2is the entire reasonwhy there’s a shark fightin the originalResident Evil.) There’s a grimy backwoods energy to theZombifilms—a “whole mood,” as today’s youths sometimes say—that has influenced horror games in particular ever since.
Specifically, much ofResident Evil 4,with its initial rural setting,gory head explosions, and half-dead homicidal villages, owes alotto Fulci’s gory effects and cinematography. The beginning of the game marks a sudden shift away from its Romero-inspired roots, where the gore was sparse but massive once it finally appeared, to a more generally grimy, bloodsoakedgiallofeel.
Later, in 2017’sResident Evil 7,Capcom took advantage of what was then current-generation technology to reproduce Fulci-style set design and cinematography in full HD, resulting in the pure gross-outs of the Baker family’s mystery meal and the unspecified atrocities in their house’s abandoned kitchen. Many fans give a lot of creditto theSawfranchise forRE7, particularly the late-game gauntlets where the player has to navigate Lucas Baker’s DIY deathtraps, but the first hours ofRE7are pure Fulci video nasty, wet and sick and gross and rotting from within. It’s a game that the player can almost smell.
The Abyss(1989)
TheResident Evilseries stopped being quite so overtly film-crazy after its original creator, Shinji Mikami, left Capcom in 2005. While the developers have still admitted to a few of their inspirations, such as how the opening sequence inResident Evil 5owes a lot to the 2001 war movieBlack Hawk Down, it’s not done quite so blatantly as it was in the first 8 years ofResident Evil’s run.
On the other hand, there’s 2012’sResident Evil: Revelations. Most of the game is spent as Jill Valentine,fighting undersea-themed not-zombiesaboard a series of derelict cruise ships. While many of the monsters draw their visual design from creepy deepwater fish or Japanese mythology (Rachael Foley looks really stupid until she gets infected and reappears as a monster, at which point she’s a dead ringer for ayurei), the most common enemies ofRevelationsowe a great deal to James Cameron’s nearly-forgotten 1989The Abyss.
It’s strange that no one seems to talk aboutThe Abyssanymore, given Cameron’s fame (andsome of his more questionable decisions), but it may simply be overshadowed by his later successes likeTitanicandAvatar.It was also only a modest success at the box office, with a cast of not-quite-famous workhorse actors like Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, but it was in very heavy rotation on cable TV in the ’90s.
The Abyss,which was a special-effects bonanza at the time of its release,follows an American marine research team as it races to salvage a destroyed submarinefrom the ocean floorbefore a hurricane makes the operation impossible. They subsequently discover what wrecked the submarine in the first place: first contact with an unspecified, unidentified intelligent species. Admittedly, Revelations' take on the concept is a far departure from the gentle “NTIs” inThe Abyss, but the visual inspiration’s clear. The NTIsdolook creepy for much ofThe Abyss, drawing on the peculiar and fascinating ways that deep-sea life has adapted to an alien environment, andRevelationsfollows that thread all the way into full-blown body horror.
Drive(1997)
This is being included on the basis of one very funny thing about it.Drive,not to be confused with the 2011 action drama with Ryan Gosling, is a direct-to-video action movie that stars the underrated martial-arts star Mark Dacascos (John Wick: Chapter 3). Dacascos has been putting in the work since 1990, with movies like the 1993 capioera filmOnly the Strong, but has never quite blown up the way that he should’ve. If Steven Seagal can get famous for blubber-slapping a bunch of mob thugs to death, Dacascos should’ve had his own film franchise by now.
Drivepresumably owes a lot to the late-’90s cyberpunk wave that also inspired films likeJohnny MnemonicandStrange Days. It’sa cyborg-vs.-cyborg action movieset against the backdrop of Hong Kong’s 1997 reversion to Chinese control. (Yes, Hong Kong had combat cyborgs in 1997.Everyoneknows that.) Toby Wong (Dacascos) flees to the United States from Hong Kong, looking to sell off the secrets of the Chinese device installed in his chest that makes him a superhuman killing machine, and ends up having to kick a bunch of mercenaries.
It’s not agreatmovie, but it ends in a showdown between Wong and another fighter, who’s been equipped with a superior version of the same device. Their climactic fight begins with the “Advanced Model” throwinga pair of sunglassesat Wong’s face as a distraction. Wong catches them, only to find that in the same period of time, the Advanced Model has crossed the room to punch his lights out.
For such an obscure film, the “sunglasses throw” has had an outsized impact on video games. It’s also the inspiration for one of K’s supers intheKing of Fightersseries. More importantly, theDrivesunglasses throw is directly homaged in 2008’sResident Evil 5,near its end, in the hangar fight between Wesker, Chris, and Sheva. (RewatchingDrive,it’s hard not to think that much of the Advanced Model’s fight choreography is the original inspiration for Wesker’s series-long obsession with his sunglasses.)
The same fight is one of the relative handful of moments from the video game franchise that was adapted directly into theResident Evilfilm franchise. When Wesker (Shawn Roberts) fights Chris and Claire (Wentworth Miller and Ali Larter) in2010’sResident Evil: Afterlife,he opens the exchange by throwing his sunglasses at Chris. As inDrive,it’s a distraction for Wesker’s super-speed dash into melee range. It’s a homagetoa homage, a third-generation copy of a stunt that was already kinda dorky from the jump, which accidentally makes it one of the funniest things about both the live-action franchise andAfterlifein specific.
