This Christopher Walken Performance In A 1996 Video Game Belongs In A Museum

This clip has been online for a few years, apparently, but it showed up on F*ckYeah1990s recently and it was the first I’d seen it. It’s Christopher Walken starring in a 1996 PC adventure game called “Ripper,” which also starred Burgess Meredith, Karen Allen, and John Rhys-Davies.

You play reporter Jake Quinlan in this modern interpretation of the Ripper legend. Three acts and the possibility of four different endings lead up to an explosive climax in cyber space. [IMDB]

It’s set in 2040, but Jake Quinlan nonetheless has highlights in his hair. We saw Zack Morris and really thought we’d discovered the wave of the future in the mid 1990s. The top IMDB review was written in 2000:

This game is from a genre of games that tried to capitalize off of the whole Myst-inspired trend–walk around, talk to people, solve puzzles. The puzzles themselves are absolutely horrible, but I’ll stick to the acting itself, which is only slightly better. If you’re looking for a convincing performance from any one character, you won’t find it here, but this game is worth buying if only to witness the truly hilarious performance of Christopher Walken. His acting is so horrible in this game that it seems like he’s imitating someone who happens to be impersonating him. He’s a caricature of himself.

I haven’t played the game myself so I can’t weigh in there, but the clip is certainly a masterpiece of Christopher Walkenness. You wonder – did he think that because it was a video game, he had to turn the volume on his acting up to 11? It’s sort of like the acting equivalent of old people thinking they have to shout into their cell phones.

It has all his tics – the total disregard of punctuation, the tendency to heavily emphasize certain words at random just to keep you on your toes, the elegant stiffness of body movements… honestly, anyone looking to do a Christopher Walken impression should just watch this clip over and over.

“You got it look around you asshole. If anything… ….this is more gruesome than the other TWO. …Helluva lot more SPLATTAH.”

“The only thing not where it should be… …is this woman’s INSIDES.”

Every line is such a perfect Walken line. And the movements! I keep clicking back to 55 seconds through one minute to watch him do that crazy hand gesture over and over. No other actor in the game would read that script and think, “You know what this line read needs? About four successive emphatic pointing movements.”

“Far’s I know he left us with one witness? (*point*) And she’s feeling (*point*) a little (*point*) fragmented (*point) at the moment.”

He’s like a robot designed to give political speeches that has malfunctioned terribly. God I love Christopher Walken.

“You been very GOOD… at sharing what ya KNOW… with ME… and several million OTHAH PEOPLE.”

There should really be a game where you get to control Christopher Walken. You get to chose which words to stress and what awkward hand movements to throw in for flair. I’d play that.

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