Census Bloodbath: The Lame Street Electrical Parade

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Year: 1989

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Michael Murphy, Mitch Pileggi, Peter Berg

Run Time: 1 hour 49 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

1989 was not a good year for slashers. Time and again, we’ve run through the mind-bogglingly long list of nails in the subgenre’s coffin that were released in theaters that year, but we’re about to alight upon one of the most storied and baffling of them all: Wes Craven’s Shocker.

Conceived as an answer to A Nightmare on Elm Street (on which Craven was pretty much cheated out of profit participation), Shocker was an attempt to kick-start a new franchise, done right this time. That patently failed to happen, and Shocker ended up a funhouse mirror vision of Nightmare, wanly trudging through the exact same story beats to lesser effect, both thematically and entertainingly.

Though, admittedly, Shocker has it over Nightmare in the “wall-to-wall Alice Cooper songs” category.

Shocker tells of the exploits of TV repairman Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi), who moonlights as a serial killer with a predilection for offing entire families in their homes. When he quite rudely annihilates the family of the detective on his tail, Lt. Don Parker (Michael Murphy of Strange Behavior), Parker’s foster son Jonathan (Peter Berg) gets dragged into the mix as he begins to have dreams conveniently highlighting Pinker’s whereabouts. Pinker is subsequently caught and sentenced to the electric chair, but not before performing a Satanic curse that will transfer his soul INTO the body of a doll an electrical current, allowing him to possess other people’s bodies in his pursuit of Jonathan.

…Wes Craven was a humanities professor, not an engineer. Horace pursues Johnny in a variety of bodies before remembering hat an electrical killer is actually an OK concept as long as it’s serving a satire of how reliant Americans are on their gadgets. After about 80 minutes of meandering (this is an astoundingly long film – civilizations have fallen in less time than it takes for Pinker to get to the chair), he converts entirely into an electrical current and travels into his victims’ homes via TV. Now it’s up to Jonathan to save his life, avenge his murdered girlfriend Alison (Camille Cooper), and stop the killing spree once and for all.

He needs to hurry too, before the FX budget gets too high.

Look, Shocker is not an outright terrible film. Wes Craven has certainly made some clunkers in his career, but when he’s behind the wheel of the script, you can be certain he’s at least attempting to engage with an idea. The biggest problem with the film is that it’s crammed into the Nightmare beaker, they aren’t quite soluble, leaving half-worked chunks floating around, knocking into one another.

Luckily, these problems don’t really arise until the halfway point, when Pinker makes his transition to wisecracking electricity demon. Again, this doesn’t speak well of Shocker’s flabby run time, but that leaves us with a good 45 minutes to spend with the human Horace, who is unpredictable, raw, and more than a little unsettling. Mitch Pileggi’s live-wire performance is riveting, thoroughly committed stuff, crackling with restless energy and minute tics while he dishes out the gore like a demented close-up magician.

The first act is really where Shocker’s personality shines strongest, because it hasn’t yet glommed onto its obligatory supernatural Krueger-lite framework. In addition to Pileggi carving the place up and getting a chance to have some blood (a throat-slashing and a lip-biting in particular are choice cuts of gooey mayhem), the ever-present silly humor is more character-driven and less reliant on quips that would make Carrot Top blush. Unfortunately, Shocker makes a dramatic shift hallway through, dumping a pile of deus ex machina, nonsense setpieces, and an excruciating abundance of dream sequences onto the already overloaded film’s back.

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to rock.

Not only are we saddled with the burden of attempting to comprehend the eternally shifting tapestry of rules that govern Pinker’s powers and Jonathan’s dreams, we are also forced to face a magical love necklace, a laser beam of pure virginity, and Alison’s ghost, who so frequently reappears in Johnny’s life that her death loses every ounce of impact. She shuffles off and back on the mortal coil without breaking  a sweat like she’s doing cosmic aerobics. Because death is clearly only a mild nuisance in this universe, the stakes are lowered into oblivion. The entire third act is like this, driven almost exclusively by deus ex MacGuffins. It’s nonsensical and scattershot, but worst of all, it’s boring.

This atmosphere of the second half is hardly helped by a severe lack of gore. Now that Pinker is… whatever he is, he finds less and less use for his trusty knife and the effects crew turns their attention from quality gore making sure that he looks as good as possible.

SPOILER ALERT: He doesn’t.

What we’re left with is Peter Berg doddering through a cavalcade of silly setpieces (including an evil Barcalounger – just when you thought it was safe to relax…), acting louding at whoever happens to be in the vicinity. Admittedly, the climactic battle inside the world of TV is a brilliantly edited effects extravaganze (that precedes the same tricks used in Forrest Gump by several years – suck on that, Hanks!), but this shallow, goofy, half-Jason Goes to Hell, half-Dream Warriors state-of-the-art slasher loses its bearings (and its marbles) long before its strong close.

There’s nuggets of intent buried throughout the film. At any given moment, Shocker threatens to become a satire of American TV culture, an indictment of middle class violent tendencies, and even a campy horror-comedy with a gleam of gritty despair. But as opposed to having too many cooks, Shocker has just one cook with too many ingredients. It’s a fun, scary, incisive movie but only in brief spurts. Mainly it collapses in on itself like an unattended cake in the oven, It’s a must-see fr Cravenites looking to understand the man’s feverishly artistic mind, but otherwise give this one a pass.

Killer: Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi)

Final Girl: Jonathan Parker (Peter Berg)

Best Kill: A cop’s head is twisted all the way around. He’ll never watch The Exorcist the same way again.

Sign of the Times: You’re not allowed to listen to this title track if your hair is under 12 inches long.

Scariest Moment: Alison is murdered while Jonathan heads off to practice.

Weirdest Moment: Jonathan somehow lives in an apartment even though he’s close with his family and is still in high school.

Champion Dialogue: “Pinker is dead, John. Go home and get drunk or something.”

Body Count: 17; not including several entire families that get murdered offscreen.

1. Bobby is stabbed to death.
2. Diane is stabbed to death.
3. Sally is stabbed to death.
4. Sarge’s throat is slit.
5. Cop #1 is stabbed in the gut.
6. Cop #2 has his throat slashed.
7. Cop #3 is strangled with a radio cord.
8. Alison is stabbed to death.
9. Cop #4 has his head twisted backward.
10. Medical Examiner dies in a car explosion.
11. Jogger is shot in the back.
12. Pastori dies when Pinker leaves his body.
13. Amanda dissolves.
14. Amanda’s Mom dies probably.
15. Pac-Man is stabbed to death.
16. Coach Cooper is stabbed in the chest.
17. Horace Pinker is killed by a power outage.

TL;DR: Shocker is massively creative film with a woefully short attention span.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1241

Census Bloodbath: They Must Be Working For The Skin Trade

Year: 1981

Director: Michael Laughlin

Cast: Michael Murphy, Dan Shor, Fiona Lewis

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It’s a miracle that any Australian films get made at all, let alone in the slasher genre, let alone relatively good entries in the slasher genre. So let’s take a moment to respect how incredibly improbable it is that Strange Behavior (AKA Dead Kids) even exists.

I’ll wait.

That said, Strange Behavior is about as far from the slasher formula as it’s possible to get while still being on the same general framework. It’s like somebody gave the Australians a car chassis and they built a mechanical elephant.

Strange Behavior centers around the small town of Galesburg, (cough) Illinois. Pete Brady (Dan Shor) is a high school senior and the son of the sheriff, John (Michael Murphy of Shocker). Pete doesn’t know why, but John is strangely resistant to letting him apply to the local university, to the point of refusing to give him money for the application fee. His friend Oliver (Marc McClure of Freaky Friday) tips him off about a behavioral research program at the college’s psychology department that will give him cash quick and Pete agrees to check it out.

What Olivern neglects to tell Pete is that this research program, led by the beautiful and wicked Dr. Parkinson (Fiona Lewis) is brainwashing teens into murderous acts by stabbing them in the eyes with syringes, with the final target being Pete’s own father, who wanted to destroy the department’s program years ago when their experiments ended up killing his wife. This is the final revenge of the murderous mad scientist Dr. LeSange (Arthur Dignam), whose motives seem rather small-minded for a man who can make anybody do anything he wants.

I guess it’s the simple things in life that really matter.

The most striking thing about Strange Behavior is that its screenplay is almost supernaturally well-constructed. Every piece of it fits together perfectly, forward and backward, in ways both obvious and subtle. Foreshadowing and payoffs twirl together in a delicate dance, but it never asks more of the viewer than they can handle. You could write textbooks off the thing.

The film was penned by Bill Condon, who would go on to make a name for himself with films like Gods and Monsters, Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh, and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1. Hey, we can’t all be Spielberg. In addition to his deft plotting (which hews more toward a sci-fi/small town soap structure with a smattering of slasher kills for flavor), Condon leaves us with a variety of simple, but shaded characters that make the setting feel incredibly present. The film lives in its tiny character interactions, building the relationships between the townspeople and quietly curating a picturesque American idyll before it begins to heartily wrench it apart.

When it finally gets around to doing this, it’s not particularly terrifying, but that comes with the territory. The slasher genre was so well worn by even that point in 1981 that any variations, while welcome, were still about as scary as a glass of warm milk. It’s odd to say this about a film where a character slits his own wrists to a jangling Tangerine Dream soundtrack, but Strange Behavior is soothing. It’s comfort horror: not bad, not great. It fills you up and keeps you warm. But it doesn’t scare you or turn your stomach.

Unless you’re deathly afraid of bro perms.

Everything about Strange Behavior, save its slasher savant screenplay, coasts along at a level just a tick above “acceptable.” The cinematography is crisp, clear, and professional. It makes sure we can see everything but doesn’t try any funny business in the meantime. The sets are similarly wrought. They are provided the exact amount of dressing needed to believe that they might house actual humans, then they call it day (save for one diner set, which looks like someone spilled pink puffy paint on everything so they had to clear away the props, but an emergency forced them to film that day anyway).

The typical campiness of the 80’s slashers (which wouldn’t kick into high gear for another year or so) was also at a low ebb, save for a strange, fully choreographed dance sequence to “Lightnin’ Strikes” that I can’t for the life of me find any reasonable explanation for other than the fact that Bill Condon liked that song. At least the deaths are decent. They’re not particularly numerous or gory, but they’re reasonably chilling, especially considering the unwilling nature of their murderers. And two chase sequences in particular muster up some crumbs of tension – one as a teen girl is harassed in a swimming pool and the killer cuts the string of beads that she clings to, the other as a housekeeper discovers a body and learns that the killer’s still in the house.

By far the biggest actual flaw of the film is the shift in focus from Pete to John in the third act. Scriptwise, it’s an interesting reversal, but this forces the emotional crux of the film to fall on the shoulders of Michael Murphy, who is by far its weakest actor. Imagine if all of a sudden during the climax of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Audrey Hepburn stepped out for a smoke break and Mickey Rooney took her place. It’s something like that. But he’s not enough to totally knock the movie off its feet.

In short, Strange Behavior isn’t a film for anybody who wants to have a great time at their slumber party. For miserable lowlifes like me, it’s a breath of fresh air, but otherwise it’s nothing special.

Killer: A variety of teenagers orchestrated by Dr. LeSange (Arthur Dignam)

Final Girl: Pete Brady (Dan Shor)

Best Kill: Mrs. Haskell’s throat is slit as she describes her killer over the telephone.

Sign of the Times: Pete attends a costume party with an I Dream of Jeannie and a Flying Nun in attendance.

Scariest Moment: Pete pees blood after passing out in the diner.

Weirdest Moment: Pete walks into the bathroom bare-ass naked while his father is getting ready for work.

Champion Dialogue: “You couldn’t get an ‘A’ on Sesame Street.”

Body Count: 5

1. Brian has his eyes gouged out with a scalpel.
2. Waldo is stabbed in the throat.
3. Timothy has his hand cut off.
4. Mrs. Haskell is stabbed in the back and has her throat slit.
5. Dr. LeSange is stabbed in the neck.

TL;DR: Strange Behavior is an off book, only decent slasher.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1096