Census Bloodbath: Computer? I Hardly Know Her!

Year:
1985

Director:
Andy Anderson

Cast:
John S. Davies, Lauren Lane, Michael Hendrix
Run Time: 1 hour 18 minutes

Plot: Interface follows Professor Rex Hobson (John S. Davies), who teaches a computer class as a local college and moonlights as a hacker. He becomes the primary suspect in a series of slayings that is being perpetrated by the Circle of Logicians, a cult of masked computer programmers who believe that they are ridding the world of evil. He reluctantly teams up with Amy Witherspoon (Lauren Lane of The Nanny), the resentful wife of his student Bobby (Michael Hendrix), when she shows up brandishing a gun and attempting to get to the bottom of things. Honestly, I'm not actually sure what her goal is, and she's mostly not sure how to accomplish it, so at least we're in the same boat. Anyway, the distrustful pair begin to fall for one another as they become targets of both the police and the computer cult.

Analysis: Weirdly, immediately after watching Post Mortem - Return to Carnage Hall, we are encountering another Texas-based student film, this time produced by the film program of University of Texas at Arlington. Even more weirdly, this one was also a pretty good time.

But let's make one thing clear. Interface is a weird movie, and that is not a word I throw around lightly. The fact that the original goal of the Circle of Logicians was merely to throw paint on evildoers is but the tip of the iceberg. Eventually the movie mutates into this bizarre femme fatale romantic comedy of errors that blends a 1970s conspiracy thriller and a 1980s slasher into the mix. And the thing is, that rom-com mode is actually where it really shines.

Interface is simply not a good slasher. Anything fun that it manages to accomplish with its techno-horror backdrop has already been done better in Evilspeak and much better in Murder by Phone, at least in terms of the kills it doles out to its victims. The body count deaths are bloodless and bland, and the movie eventually gives up on them in favor of a whole lot of gun violence, which as we know is a cardinal sin of the slasher genre. If you're not in the third act of a Scream movie, guns have no place here. Slasher murders demand flair!

The wide variety of inhuman masks worn by the Circle of Logicians (one of which is featured on the poster above) are at least very eerie and well-rendered, but the characters mostly just use their robotic voices to whine at one another in their big scenes. (That said, you do hear a robo-voice say "oh shit" at least twice in this movie, which is worth the price of admission alone.)

But once Amy and Rex are tossed in a box together and Interface starts shaking that box vigorously, everything comes alive. Their nagging, circular, back-and-forth dynamic felt punishing at first, but it eventually coheres into this bizarre blend of alt-comedy and slapstick that produces some genuinely funny moments with great timing, without sacrificing any of the movie's signature weirdness. Case in point - Rex (who is not a pinup hunk, nor does he pretend to be) spends a good chunk of the movie in a towel, having been forced to escape after coming out of the shower. Once he gets some pants, he's then forced to run around shirtless for the next 20 minutes or so. You just haven't lived until you've seen a man in a towel run away from a shotgun-wielding computer hacker. And basically every choice the movie makes is both as inexplicable and as deeply committed as that ever-so-long-running gag.

Another thing that helps boost the weirdness of the movie is the casting. The core cast is perfectly competent by the standards of this kind of amateur production, but there are some baffling choices around the edges. For instance, the movie opens on a scene where Lou Diamond Phillips (in his first credited role, already looking for all the world like a proper movie star with an innate command of the camera) battles the shortest crime boss you've ever seen. But the biggest whiff is the character of the jock bully (already a no-no for a college movie - jock bullies simply do not exist at universities, because they have already evolved into frat bros), who is portrayed by the world's most middle-aged man.

At the end of the day, none of this really adds up to Interface being "good." The first half is too tedious and packed with interchangeable characters for it to accomplish that. Whatever things it is good at, being a slasher certainly isn't one of them, and that's the reason we're here in the first place. However, it is a compellingly strange motion picture that earned a few genuine laughs from me, and that is something I desperately needed now that we have gotten this deep into 1985, which is so far shaping up to be the worst year of the 1980s for the slasher genre. At least, I sure hope it never gets worse than this.

Killer: The Circle of Logicians

Final Girl: Rex Hobson, Ph.D. (John S. Davies) and Amy Witherspoon (Lauren Lane)

Best Kill: Honestly, none of them, but the death of the prostitute Bambi (and how 1980s of this movie to assign the sex worker as "evil" rather than her pimp) at least involves her talking to a john who appears on a television screen and then exploding, so that's kinda weird.

Sign of the Times: The conversations about how computers need to be connected to phones in order to do anything was just as mystifying to me now as it probably was to people at the time.

Scariest Moment: Honestly, any time the scene lingers in the cult's lair, just staring at those masks is pretty spine-chilling.

Weirdest Moment: Midway through the third act, about 15 minutes before the movie ends, Rex takes a potty break and we just sit there watching Amy impatiently waiting in the foreground while he pisses like a racehorse for 52 straight seconds, the sound of which then makes her need to pee.

Champion Dialogue: “What's the matter? You seem more pathetic than usual."

Body Count: 12

1. Punk Sidekick is shot.
2. Crime Boss is shot.
3. Nervous Punk is elbow-choked.
4. Bodyguard is shot in the forehead.
5. Lead Punk is killed offscreen.
6. Bambi is killed in a hotel room explosion.
7. Paul is electrocuted by his phone.
8. Sidney is killed offscreen.
9. Male Cop is shot.
10. Security Guard is shot.
11. Female Cop is shot.
12. Cult Member is bonked on the head.

TL;DR: Interface is not a particularly good cyber-thriller slasher, but it's got a surprising amount of vim and vigor as a warped romantic comedy.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1133