Sometimes a film is worth noting not for how good or bad it is but for historical reasons.
Take, for example, the curious case of “The Bishop of Battle“, one of the segments of an entertaining, if minor, horror Anthology from 1983, in which a very young looking Emilio Estevez plays J.J. Cooney, a young LA video arcade fanatic who goes through life to his own punk rock soundtrack. He’s obsessed with the game “The Bishop of Battle” and hustles other kids to earn enough to play it non-stop.
In the game, a wire-frame animated head declares “Greetings, Earthling. I am the Bishop of Battle, master of all I survey. I have 13 progressively harder levels. Try me if you dare,” but neither J.J. nor any other players he’s ever met has ever gone further than the twelfth level. Many people believe that the Thirteenth level is just an advertising stunt, although J.J. has heard that someone out in New Jersey reached it twice.
But he’s becoming more and more obsessed with the game — and even tells people he’ll give up videogames if he beats it — so one night, knowing how close he is to finishing the twelfth level, he breaks into the arcade.
And that’s when things start getting strange.
The first Video Arcade game, Pong, had debuted in 1972, and by 1983, hundreds of different game machines filled the video arcades, along with lots of obsessive players.
And there were so many home console systems that most of the companies making them went bankrupt.
So it’s no real surprise that they started showing up in the movies. Tron in 1982 was perhaps the first released, War Games came out in 1983, and The Last Starfighter in 1984. This makes “The Bishop of Battle” one of the earliest examples of a videogame-based science fiction or fantasy film. And those of you who are somewhat familiar with videogame lore and Urban Legends will recognize this story’s ties to the legendary game, Polybius.
However, Nightmares started life as a group of episodes from the ABC horror anthology series Darkroom, which were supposedly too intense for TV. The series was more or less a copy of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, and ran from 1981-82.
This means “The Bishop of Battle” may even have predated Tron.
The effects for the videogame sequence nearly bankrupted the film, although that might reflect the fact that the film was not an A-budget production. They are done in a wireframe animation style, with bright colors and the various objects essentially see-through. This was the first time anyone combined computer graphics with a live background. I was a little amused to note that the thirteen levels are not visually distinct, but seem to take place within the same maze. While this might seem ridiculously cheap these days, it doesn’t seem out of place in an early Eighties game, which were simpler than those today and had limited memory. The only real visual difference I noted is that, while most of the game gives the player a bird’s eye view from above the maze, level twelve apparently puts Emilio in the maze itself, thus making it harder to see what’s going on.
The Bishop itself looks quite impressive, even if its mouth movements are minimal and not necessarily fully synchronized. His voice doesn’t sound particularly familiar (other than perhaps a “computer run amuck” family resemblance to that of HAL 9000), even if it belongs to James Tolkan whom most of us remember as Principal Strickland in Back to the Future.
Now I should note that the rest of the film is very watchable — if not necessarily that scary. After an impressive model sequence with a devastated landscape scrolling towards the camera and a very iconic set of titles, it starts with an urban legend story about a knife killer with a brief, unbilled appearance by William (Hi, I’m Larry, this is my brother Daryl and this is my other brother Daryl) Sanderson. The third story features Lance Henriksen as a Priest who has lost his faith, who encounters a vicious driver in a black truck; and the fourth a battle between a suburban family and a monstrous, supernatural rat. While the film got an “R” rating, it seems a bit out of place as there is little gore or violence.
Like a lot of other technical milestones (Destination Moon, anyone?), “The Bishop of Battle” looks rather antiquated these days. It doesn’t help that there isn’t a lot to the story beyond those impressive CGI effects, although it is never dull, thanks to the location shooting, convincing performances, and the chance to see what an arcade looked like back then.
And, yes, you’ll probably spot the Twilight Zone-ish twist ending a mile away.
Still, it does actually generate a few real scares and goes well with popcorn.
After all, it is an Eighties horror film.
rivets on the poster 
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