#horacepinker

It’s that time of year again! As usual, my goal is to watch & write about 31 horror movies before Halloween arrives, at least half of which must be new to me. Here’s my report on the first bunch! 

SHOCKER (1989): It’s pretty clear that Wes Craven’s intention with this movie was to create a new Freddy Krueger in Horace Pinker, this movie’s supernaturally-endowed serial killer. Unfortunately, instead of emulating the truly creepy dream goblin of the original A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET from 1984, Craven modelled Pinker on the Freddy of later, crappier installments--a profane-wisecrack spewing cartoon who’s more funny than scary. The plot and concept of SHOCKER plays like a Frankensteined-together mess of half-formed Craven ideas: college football player Jonathan Parker (Peter Berg) has a series of dreams that put him and his cop stepfather (Robert Altman regular Michael Murphy) on the trail of homicidal TV repairman Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi, AKA Skinner from THE X-FILES!). Pinker strikes back by killing Jonathan’s girlfriend, who then comes back as a ghost to help take her murderer down, with the use of a magic necklace (still with me?). Pinker is caught and sentenced to the electric chair, but not before he...makes a deal with  the devil, I guess? It involves jumper cables, and an old TV set, and a ghostly set of lips that form out of static to speak to Pinker. This ritual allows him to come back from the dead and possess people, of course. His rampage continues as he jumps from body to body, and Jonathan has to enlist his football teammates to finally destroy Pinker, who can now travel through TV sets and is also secretly Jonathan’s real father. Got all that? The finale involves Jonathan and Pinker chasing each other through TV signals, making cameos in everything from stock A-bomb footage to old LEAVE IT TO BEAVER episodes before busting out into the living room of a white trash family. This is a weird movie, but it’s certainly never boring.

THE GREEN INFERNO (2013): The appeal of Eli Roth’s homage to 1970s cannibal splatter-fests like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and CANNIBAL FEROX was admittedly lost on me, as that’s not a horror subgenre I’ve ever explored (or had much interest in). However, this movie did make me realize once and for all that Roth is really only capable of writing one kind of protagonist--dumb, overprivileged, college students who make the mistake of travelling outside their comfort zones and pay The Ultimate Price for it (granted, his next film, KNOCK KNOCK, seems to break that cycle--it just looks terrible in a different way). A bunch of would-be do-gooder students fly to Peru to protest the razing of a rainforest,  but when their plane crashes, they end up on the dinner menu of the very tribe they’re trying to save. Boring, insulting, and mostly just pointless, THE GREEN INFERNO’s biggest crime is that its most annoying character, the heroine’s roommate (pop singer Sky Ferreira), doesn’t even go on the excursion (“Protesting is so gay”, I think she says--charming!) so we don’t even get to see her get eaten.

GARGOYLES (1972): This is one of those weird, cheap TV movies that used to get shown on our local NBC affiliate on dreary Saturday afternoons, and even though it’s not remotely scary or interesting, I would always end up watching it. Thankfully, the whole thing is on YouTube, so I was able to revisit it pretty easily on a similarly overcast Saturday last week. A professor of--I dunno, demonology, maybe? Why not?--and his daughter investigate a weird old desert packrat’s claim of finding a monster skeleton. While he’s showing it to them, something attacks his hermit-hole and the place is set ablaze, killing him. The doc and his daughter escape the fire with the skeleton and are soon besieged in their motel room by rubbery goons who steal it back and kidnap the girl. The professor teams up with the police and a gang of dirtbikers (led by a young Scott Glenn!) to invade the nearby cave of the gargoyles--who are, I think, are a species of earthbound demon. Or something. Honestly, I stopped paying attention near the end. The only real reason to watch this movie is to see what kind of weirdness was rampant on primetime network TV during the 1970s. Or to watch the mostly wingless, flightless gargoyles prance around the desert at night in slow motion--that’s pretty funny too.

NIGHT OF THE COMET (1984): When a comet that hasn’t passed over the earth in 65 million years (you can see where this is going already, right?) returns, all those who are outside watching it in the sky are reduced to red dust overnight by its radiation. Those who spent the night indoors, like the film’s valley girl sister-heroines (played by Kelli Maroney and THE LAST STARFIGHTER’s Catherine Mary Stewart, a big childhood crush of mine), are spared, and are free to roam the now-deserted cities of the world fighting the zombified survivors of the cosmic plague--that is, when they’re not shopping (in a montage set to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, no less) or trying to attract the attention of the last remaining men in the world. This is a fun excursion into 1980s sillliness--it’s kind of like if THE OMEGA MEN starred Laverne and Shirley instead of Charlton Heston. Cult favourite actors Mary Woronov (ROCK & ROLL HIGH SCHOOL) and Geoffrey Lewis (not the FRIGHT NIGHT one, but the guy from HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER) appear as possibly sinister scientists living in a bunker, who want the girls’ blood so they can try and develop a serum for the zombies. This plotline leads into a third-act reversal that I genuinely didn’t see coming, and really, how often can you say that?

HONEYMOON (2014): A couple of young newlyweds, Paul and Bea (Harry Treadaway and GAME OF THRONES’ Rose Leslie) plan to spend a few days at a cottage in the woods, but things go astray when Bea goes sleepwalking in the middle of the night. The next day, she starts acting strangely--forgetting the meanings of words, exhibiting strange marks on her skin--and Paul starts to wonder if she is really herself anymore or if she’s been possessed, or possibly replaced by something inhuman. This is a neat, creepy idea--what if the person you married suddenly wasn’t the person you first fell in love with?--but there isn’t really enough story here for a feature (it might have made a great TWILIGHT ZONE  or OUTER LIMITS episode, though), and the vague payoff is pretty disappointing. But Rose Leslie is, as always, very easy on the eyes, so that alone is reason to watch.

OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN (1983): You know how you can tell some movies were filmed here in Canada simply by the look of the film stock? This is one of those. And even without that, the presence of Kenneth Welsh, Louis Del Grande, Shannon Tweed, and Maury Chaykin would be more than enough to clue you in. This 1983 flick stars future Robocop Peter Weller as a business dude who does battle with a giant rat that’s taken up residence in his condo while his wife and son are away, and I think it’s singlehandedly responsible for my fear & hatred of rodents: while watching this movie on First Choice as a kid, my dad surprised me by jumping out and grabbing my knees at about giant-rat level after I went to get a glass of pop. I’m pretty sure I didn’t see the rest of the movie, or sleep a wink that night (although in retrospect, that’s a pretty solid gag--nice work, Dad!). This movie is mostly a one-man show for Weller, who devolves into madness fairly quickly, while also serving as a kind of all-in-one Chief Brody, Matt Hooper, and Quint. Also, I feel as though his nail-spiked rat bludgeon served as the inspiration for Charlie Kelly’s vermin-killing weapon of choice on IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA. Not a great movie, but a cheesy good time nonetheless.