Sci-Fi Channel – Resident Evil 4 Sponsorships (2005, UK) [4K Upscale]
Four spooky 15-second sponsorship bumpers for the Sci-Fi Channel's primetime slot, sponsored by Resident Evil 4. These were a sort of personal 'lost media' find for me. I remember vaguely seeing these on TV, but for many years after I could never exactly pinpoint what these were or where I'd seen them. All I remember is that they were for Resident Evil 4, but a Wii port of the game a few years later made me think maybe it was for that for most of that time. For a while, I just thought they were obscure adverts for the game itself, but after trawling the internet I could never find any record of them. Back then I vividly remember being weirded out and, quite frankly, scared of these. They perfectly captured the bleak, dark, ominous atmosphere of the game itself, and they were a delight to rewatch after so many years of being stored in some kind of miscellaneous filing cabinet at the back of my brain. But like most things I thought I'd forgotten about, I randomly stumbled across them last year, and it's one more obscure thing from my childhood checked off the list. Funny that.
We see a variety of people looking like they have been institutionalised in some kind of rundown mental hospital after encountering the many misfortunes our hero Leon S Kennedy (the protagonist of the game) encounters in the game itself. If you're familiar with the game, then you'll no doubt recognise some of the scenarios they describe, such as the infected demented villagers wielding chainsaws, the infamous man-eating monster in the lake, and the hooded ghouls patrolling the castle "breathing fire" (although they don't actually "breath fire" in the game, but rather it's the villagers that blow the fire from their burning torches onto you, but that's probably me being a bit pedantic). The game is also set in rural Spain, so for continuity reasons it makes sense that the poor souls in these bumpers are speaking Spanish.
Interestingly enough, the 'Evil Evolves' campaign involved a partnership between Nintendo, the Sci-Fi Channel, and Pearl & Dean that included a three-city film tour showcasing acclaimed horror movies "such as Alien, The Exorcist, and The Wicker Man" shown at cinemas in London, Leeds, and Manchester, "with an exclusive chance to sample the superb RE4 before its official 18 March release". A pretty cool marketing campaign if you ask me.
You can read more about the campaign here:
https://www.videogamer.com/news/re4-to-be-...
https://www.4rfv.co.uk/industrynews/38382/...
Happy Halloween!
Directed by Andy Poyiadgi for Devilfish.
Upscaled into 4K using Topaz Video AI.