That’s 12 million views on YouTube, you know? HARIS ORKIN: I got to figure out how I can exploit that. MIKE VERDU (general manager, EA LA 2007-9): I was amazed to see how popular it had gotten. I saw somebody post it on Twitter and I saw a bunch of people reacting, too. JOSHUA BASCHE (assistant cinematics editor, Red Alert 3 ): I didn’t know until recently myself. HARIS ORKIN: I just didn’t even know about it. MICAL PEDRIANA (story and cinematics producer, Red Alert 3 ): I didn’t even know it was a thing. GREG KASAVIN (producer, Red Alert 3 ): I remember thinking it was a fun, funny moment, though of course I couldn’t have expected it would end up still making the rounds all these years later. At the time, it wasn’t in the top 10 of what we thought were over-the-top lines in the script, so that’s interesting. JASEN TORRES (lead designer, Red Alert 3 ): I hadn’t heard about that clip being popular. HARIS ORKIN (cinematics writer, Red Alert 3 ): I wrote the line.

KATIE MACK (theoretical astrophysicist): What is it from, exactly? It’s a video game thing? If it came purely out of him trying to steer into the skid, then it’s still brilliant. If it was a deliberate acting choice, then it’s a brilliant one. It is perfect storytelling.ĪLEX NAVARRO: It doesn’t really matter if it was on purpose or not. But then he brings it home! The accent, the costume, the arc of the “character” himself finally exhausted by whatever indignities he has suffered at the player’s hands. Tim Curry has played the devil with 18 inch horns, but this at last is the bridge even he almost cannot cross. It’s like he didn’t know the line was coming and as soon as he realized what he was about to say he couldn’t handle it.ĪNTHONY OLIVEIRA (author and critic): I think the pleasure of it is that Tim Curry is the master of camp and the master of menace and in the clip we finally witness something that is finally too ridiculous, finally too outre, finally too much even for him. Here, for the first time, is the story of that scene, and its legacy.ĬHRIS PERSON (creator, Highlight Reel ): I remember seeing that clip forever ago on YouTube, it usually came up in the same rotation as Anything Can Happen On Halloween from The Worst Witch.ĪLEX NAVARRO (writer, Nextlander, Giant Bomb ): The little flutter toward the end where Curry pauses and looks like he’s recomposing himself before belching up “SPAAAAAACE” in his half-a-Russian accent is just magical. By now, it is absolutely best known out of context, a meme fully detached from its source material, locked in elliptical orbit around the internet. Did he basically blow that take, or make an interesting, interesting choice? Either way, why did they use that take-and who are “they?” This clip was already from an obscure enough entry in Curry’s filmography.

Maybe it’s not Curry’s “best” performance, or the campiest, or the funniest, but it is surely the most enigmatic.

Tim curry devil