​ 
As has been explored in previous articles, the seminal Super Nintendo horror Clock Tower never received an official release in its original, 16-bit incarnation in most Western markets, owing to Nintendo primarily appealing to an adolescent demographic throughout the 1980s and 1990s. At the time, horror and explicit material in video games was still relatively taboo, especially here in the UK, where we were still suffering the after-shocks of an excessive right-wing clamp down on any media considered to be “corrosive” or perverse (the so-called “Video Nasty” scare, primarily facilitated by Mary Whitehouse and her brigade of professional whiners).
 
The game has, however, since developed something of a cult following on the internet, largely owing to its sheer novelty at a time when horror in video games was largely relegated to particular systems and occurred in the most limited fashion.
 
Not only that, but it is a remarkably sophisticated and novel piece of work, marrying elements of occultism and supernatural phenomena to classic “slasher film” motifs, boasting technical elements such as a randomised play area (the house in which most of the action occurs restructuring itself every new play through), multiple routes, events and endings (thirteen conclusions in all) as well as a shear-wielding, deformed killer who stalks the house and can occur at almost any moment, leaving the player in a state of almost constant tension.
 
There are numerous moments within the game that would warrant further discussion here, such as the random scream that occurs when Jennifer, the player character, is wandering through a darkened hallway, leaving the player with the choice to either carry on or look out through the window. If they choose the former, then the game continues and certain events don't occur until much later on. If they choose the latter, however, they will see one of their lost and terrified friends plunge through a window in one of the adjacent manor wings, down into the pool below. Likewise, one of the many endings to the game involves repairing and starting up an old car in the garage. If the player manages to do so, then the ending sequence consists of Jennifer driving away, glancing back at the manor in the rearview mirror in utter terror. Just before she can make her getaway, however, a pair of open shears rises over the back seat, the screen cutting to black with a scream.
 
Given that the game is fairly limited in terms of its graphics and by the technological constraints of the 16-bit era, it's truly incredible the degrees of invention and innovation the game designers went to in order to evoke atmosphere and cultivate a genuine sense of threat and disturbance. Much of that derives from the game's amazing sound design, which can set the player on edge with nothing more than a creaking open door, a telephone ringing, footsteps in the corridor ahead.
 
But perhaps one of the most terrifying moments, and certainly the one that springs most readily to mind, occurs very early on in the game: 

​Following the introduction sequence, in which the various victims are gathered in the main hall of the house, player character Jennifer decides to head off in search of their host, who has been absent for quite some time.
 
Venturing into a darkened corridor, she manages only a few steps before a scream sounds in the hall behind.
 
Rushing back, she finds the lights out, the hall in disarray, her friends gone, with no sign as to what happened or why.
 
It's at this point that control is handed over to the player, allowing them to explore the manor in various ways and by various different routes.
 
One of the most common takes the player back out into the corridor into which they previously ventured, past a series of doorways most of which are sealed against trespass. However, occasionally wandering past one door will trigger a strange event in which an eerie chord of music starts to play, a watery drip, drip, drip emanating from within. Should they choose to investigate, they will find a bathroom wreathed in steam, as though someone has recently enjoyed a very hot bath or shower.
 
And, though there's no evident source, that drip, drip, dripping continues.
 
Should the player venture over to the sink, several scripted events may or may not occur: they might turn on the tap and find nothing but water running out. Or sometimes, blood pulses until it fills the sink or sometimes the tap sprays living maggots onto the horrified Jennifer's hands.
 
Whilst distressing, none of these experiences are particularly lethal. Should the player continue to explore, however, they will likely find the bath-tub, around which a curtain is drawn. 

​Should they pull it back, occasionally they'll find nothing untoward (depending on what structure the game is following at the time). However, often they will discover the slaughtered and strung up body of one of Jennifer's friends, the girl horrendously mutilated and quite decisively dead.
 
This isn't the end of Jennifer's trauma, however, as from beneath the murky water pooling around her friend's legs erupts a hunched, deformed figure bearing a pair of rusted shears. Slumping to the wet tiles, the “Scissor Man” (as he has become known), slowly advances on her, until Jennifer breaks and runs. Control is then returned to the player, who must find a way of throwing off or hiding from the Scissor Man before he runs them down.
 
The tension of the moment combined with the excessively distressing imagery, the suggestively creepy soundtrack, induces a state of blind panic, especially for players new to the game, who will often wander through corridors and into rooms randomly, seeking some hiding place or weapon, finding themselves cornered by Scissor Man, at which point it's game over.
 
Bear in mind, this is long before more recent developments in horror video games led to the invention of the randomised stalker or environment, Clock Tower proving itself massively ahead of its time in many and varied ways. Experiencing this moment now, it's clear to see why this game never got a release in western markets, as those of us that were their primary demographics at the time would have likely had heart attacks or weeks worth of sleepless nights following the encounter.
 
Given the cultural climate of the era, it's highly likely Clock Tower would have sparked an enormous backlash not only against Nintendo but video games in general. The consistent cant from the censurious back in those days was always “Think of the children!” and this went double for video games, which were then a fairly new and burgeoning format, regarded with extreme suspicion by older generations and by society at large. Even I, being a child at the time, can recall the excessive hysteria that marked the era, from documentaries concerning the apparent neurological health issues concerning video games to the more abstract paranoia that they served to introduce children to violent and disturbing material long before they were able to process it.
 
Given how ludicrous the overreaction to the likes of Night Trap, Mortal Kombat and Doom were, Clock Tower could well have marked a backlash against the industry that might have seen it brought under very real legal and political censure in the UK.
 
However, ironically owing to its lack of release on these shores, the game as come to be regarded as something of a retrograde classic, a heretofore unmarked piece of video game history, replete with moments that deserve to be as iconic as any other in this series.
 

Way back in January of this year Jonathan Butcher wrote an excellent article on Beautiful Horror Films  (read it here)

"For casual observers, horror probably seems unconcerned with creating works of beauty, and far more likely to induce nausea than wonder.

This is a shame. Without horror we would have none of the morbidly gorgeous work of Poe or Clive Barker, no unsettling art from Goya or Bosch, and none of the harrowing delights of these pieces of music.

In a genre so driven by aesthetics and powerful emotions, horror is the perfect vehicle for creating visions of dark beauty. Alongside fantasy, the horror genre contemplates the unknown and reaches out to touch the paranormal and mysterious – and sometimes, horrific imagery becomes even more uncomfortable when cosied beside something visually pleasing."

Jonathan has written a follow up piece looking at more examples of beautiful horror from the wider world of horror taking in films, books, and video games.  

I’ve seen mixed responses to this show, but now that I have finished the series, I have to say it: in my humble opinion The Haunting of Hill House is a masterclass in superb characterisation and storytelling.

I was captivated from the opening scene of the very first episode, and have little to criticise about the entire show. As pretty much everyone reading this will know, it tells the era-spanning tale of a haunted house and the unfortunate occupants whose lives were decimated by the restless, malevolent forces it contains.

Aside from the beauty of the house itself, the poetic structuring of the tale, and the painfully raw honesty of the script, what I find beautiful about the show is the respectful way in which it treats the horror genre. There are jump scares and spooky apparitions, jarring deaths and hideous visions, but this is no TV equivalent of a ghost train ride. Instead, it’s about real, three-dimensional people who have found their own flawed ways cope with their traumatic pasts. To state the obvious, they are haunted both literally and figuratively, and the manner in which the series tells their separate tales as well as the overarching narrative is nothing short of exquisite.
​
I don’t remember another horror show or film ever having literally made me whimper in shock, but a scare in episode 9 achieved just that. I’m sceptical about the rumoured 2nd season, but if it comes close to the heart-breaking beauty of the first 10 episodes, then count me in.
 
I’d love to hear your suggestions for other beautiful horror experiences, so please feel free to share them below in the comments.

​Oh, my. The original Resident Evil.
 
It's perhaps somewhat bizarre when nostalgia consists of material that, on a popular level, might be regarded as disturbing, gruesome and unsettling.
 
But there's very little so evocative to me (and, as multiple articles and videos at large on the interwebz testify, to many) as hearing the foreshadowing chords and atmospheric strains of the original Resident Evil's soundtrack (or its fantastic HD remake, which can be currently downloaded from the PS4 store).
 
For many of us, this was the first time in our lives we realised that video games could be as distressing as the horror films and literature we'd already come to love, even at so young an age. It's therefore somewhat difficult to express to those who weren't old enough to experience it from that context why its ostensibly derivative and cliché set pieces exercise such sentiment.
 
The original game marked a turning point in video game horror, but was also an enormous love letter to the genre in its more traditional mediums: almost every element and set piece was derived from some pre-existing archetype or template, from the George A. Romero stylings of its setting and iconic monsters to the Cronenbergian body horror that occurs in its later chapters.
 
As such, the various horror set pieces that comprise it are nothing new: they have all been seen and done before, many, many times, but rarely, if at all, within video games up to that point in the medium's history.
 
And there are so many. So, so many that fans of video games recognise and react to with the slightest reference to the game's hackneyed, B-movie dialogue.
 
For my part, those moments are indelibly ingrained in my memory, recalling a cold bedroom in which I spent most of my time one Christmas holiday, unable to contain my excitement for the game or to prize myself away from it for longer than an hour or two.
 
Therefore, choosing one is somewhat problematic. Do I go for the moment the player finds colleague Richard slumped out in a cramped hallway, bleeding and mutilated to the Nth degree by God only knows what or the cut-scene that occurs after returning to the main mansion from the garden area, in which the player is suddenly transported behind the eyes of something barrelling across the same path they've only just walked? 

​But no. The moment that occurs most prominently, that excites the most intense memories, is comparatively quiet:
 
A small, cramped bedroom just off from the mansion's dining room (“A dining room!”), an unmade bed, drawers still full of clothing and personal effects. What seems to be one of the game's rare safe spaces.
 
Investigating, the player finds the journal of what appears to be a groundskeeper of some description, that provides some suggestion as to what the Hell happened to reduce the manor to its current condition.
 
As the journal progresses, the player gets the impression of some sort of accident occurring on the lower levels, a chemical spill that requires various clandestine saftey protocols to be activated. The groundskeeper, for his part, doesn't know much about them or what's going on, but finds himself suffering some odd physical symptoms such as itchy rashes, headaches, nausea, the situation escalating such that portions of his flesh start to become necrotic.
 
By the end of the journal, his state of mind has decayed such that he can only communicate in infantile, impressionist statements of one or two words (“Itchy itchy Scott came. Ugly face so killed him. Tasty.”).
 
The journal is simultaneously horrifying and bleakly comic, setting the tone and the player's state of mind for what happens next: 

​Without warning, the walk-in closet at the player's back bursts open, the former groundskeeper shambling out in a horrendous state, his arms raised as he lunges to grasp the player and bite into their throat.
 
For those of us who experienced the game contemporaneously, this was one of many instances that made us leap out of our skins, often resulting in dropped controllers and game overs, requiring re-loads so that we might attempt the encounter again.
 
To fans of present day video game horror and the twenty years of evolution that the genre has experienced since Resident Evil's release, the moment might seem somewhat crude, unsophisticated: a routine jump-scare the like of which has become powerfully unfashionable to present day palates.
 
And, to a degree, that is true: the moment is one in which the original Resi betrays its age. However, it's also an example of something video game players of the era had rarely -if ever- seen before in the medium, something we were so unfamiliar with, it induced a degree of trauma that has resonated down the succeeding decades to fix this moment as one of the most iconic in horror video gaming.
 
Also, despite its jump-scare nature, the moment boasts more sophistication than it might initially appear:
 
The moment occurs in a room that seems like a safe-zone, after a fraught and frenetic scramble through a series of narrow corridors in which zombies lurch from the shadows, break through windows and emerge from adjacent recesses. As such, the player is already on edge when they enter the room, experiencing a moment of profound relief when they realise it seems to be comparatively safe.
 
That relief is gradually eroded as they read the journal entry, which provides some of the earliest clues as to what is happening within the mansion, but also degrades the atmosphere from one of relief to one of foreboding.
 
The eventual emergence of the groundskeeper is not an isolated jump-scare, but merely one note in a symphony, that serves to reinforce that nowhere is truly safe here, that even places that seem like havens or sancturaries hide malign secrets and hideous revelations.
 

​The moment is recreated in the HD remake but, as is the nature of remakes, re-jigged and made somewhat more threatening by the presence of two corpses in the room:
 
As the player enters, there's a particularly rotund gnawed and eaten corpse on the floor, the closet doors juddering slightly in what seems to be a breeze. Approaching the closet causes the doors to swing open, the groundskeeper emerging, but also the corpse on the floor to stand up, meaning that the player has to deal with both of them before investigating the room.
 
It's difficult to say which is better on a technical level, though the remake certainly takes more time to build atmosphere and tension.
 
Whichever version you favour, it's a moment that has become so iconic in horror video gaming that it has even been referenced and parodied in both successive Resident Evils and other horror franchises and has become part of an unlikely gospel in video game horror.