American McGee's Grimm, Episode 7
The Devil and His Three Golden Hairs
9/22/2008 5:42 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 1
Erin Bell
Status: Wishing it was Saturday ... even on Saturday!
Humanity has concocted some bizarre superstitions over the centuries, but the one about it being considered lucky for a baby to be born with a "caul" (part of the placenta wrapped around its head at birth) has got to the one of the wackiest.
The "Luck Boy" comes into the world.
Such a boy is born at the start of
The Devil and His Three Golden Hairs, the latest installment in
American McGee's Grimm. The tale traces his charm-filled travels, culminating with a visit to Hell to pluck three golden hairs off of the devil himself as a gift to convince the king he's good enough to marry the princess.
Even the devil has a kindly Gran.
Funnily enough, the whole icky caul business might not even be the craziest thing about this story, but rather the fact that in order to trick Satan, the boy enlists the help of none of than the devil's grandmother -- portrayed by American McGee and team as a kind of red-faced, roly-poly Mrs. Doubtfire character, complete with Scottish accent.
If you've been playing the episodes of
American McGee's Grimm up to this point, you'll be familiar with the
Katamari Damacy-like gameplay that involves walking the grody little dwarf Grimm through sanitized and pretty versions of fairy tales to turn the landscape dark and dirty -- which is supposed to be a means of reverting fairy tales back to their grittier, folksier roots.
Grimm's touch turns the water from blue to sludge.
Well, nothing says folksy like getting to witness a rotund farmwife literally popping out a kid along with all the, ahem, trimmings. This gross-out birth scene that chronicles the boy's entry into the world sets the stage for a series of nasty encounters. Dead bodies floating downstream get caught in a riverside mill and ground up, the citizens of a newly dry town puke until they're wading in it waist-high, and a little laughing child breaks Grimm's fall and gets squished in the process.
The culmination is a John Kricfalusi-esque close-up romp through the devil's hairy back to grab the elusive golden strands. This kind of crass, over-the-top grossness has become routine for the Grimm series -- but who can blame them in this case, given the source material.
Check back for our look at the final episode of Book 1,
Beauty and the Beast.
