Census Bloodbath: For The Dogs

Year: 1982

Director: Robert A. Burns

Cast: Terry Evans, Mitch Pileggi, Aldo Ray

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

Plot: The handsome and frequently shirtless blond Ken (Andy Tienann) moves into a... whatever you call a mansion run by Aldo Ray (Dark Sanity, Terror Night) where a different person lives in each room like a dormitory. He quickly befriends nebbish weirdo Jerry (Terry Evans), and while they both have a crush on non-weirdo Sharon (Catherine Molloy), their homoerotic tension distracts them enough that it doesn't become much of a problem. Then the boardinghouse is struck by a pair of tragedies. First, the vicious dog owned by militaristic weirdo Ike (Jonathan M. Ingraffia) is shot by slovenly weirdo Woody (Mitch Pileggi of Shocker and The X-Files) after attacking hippie weirdo Leon (Daniel Medina). Second, a prank goes horribly wrong, resulting in a death. Afterward, Jerry is haunted by dreams of the dog coming back as a ghost, and what do you know, people keep winding up dead, mauled to bits, the next morning.

Analysis: Mongrel was directed by Robert A. Burns, the art director for illustrious horror projects like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Re-Animator, and The Hills Have Eyes, plus less illustrious entries like Microwave Massacre. Hey, we all gotta pay bills. This was his only directorial feature, which frankly makes sense. Although it shows some early promise, it certainly wouldn't function as a calling card for other directorial gigs. The art direction also suffers from him not being present in that sphere, so you can't even point to that as a win.

As a Gay and a feminist, I do love when men are objectified onscreen (Is it ethical that this is the case? No, of course not. Is it satisfying? Hell yes.), and if you're in the same boat as me the first act of Mongrel will treat you real nice. The unmotivated shiftlessness isn't quite as pure or campy as something like The Majorettes, but it does underscore a nice bit of table setting as we get all our ducks in a row and meet all the characters. This first third of the film is also where Burns pulls off his two best shots. They are the only images in the film that might make one perk up, but they're among the best in their breed. One is a shot of Ken's arrival, refracted through panes of glass in an arrangement reminiscent of Almodóvar's The Flower of My Secret, and the other is a kinetic moment where a tranquil cityscape is interrupted by a figure lurching into frame, which provides a propulsive energy that the film sorely lacks elsewhere.

Unfortunately, once the film draws its Psycho influence to its natural conclusion and offs a lead character at the end of the first act, things begin to fall apart. Characters just kind of hang around being weird and gross, but not in the Tobe Hooper way that provides oodles of uncanny atmosphere. Luckily these characters are being brought to life by a better cast than this film deserves, but when they are brought to death, as slasher characters are wont to do, it's not particularly interesting. The film's gore budget is abysmal, and every kill - which all feature the same M.O., usually a demerit in a subpar slasher to begin with - takes place offscreen before the body turns up smeared in Caro syrup. The finale twist is reasonably entertaining, but the doldrums of the middle hour and change can't be erased quite that easily. Overall there is enough solid material bookending the film that I'm glad I came across it, but it's not really a diamond in the rough. Let's call it cubic zirconia in the rough.

Killer: Jerry (Terry Evans)

Final Girl: Sharon (Catherine Molloy)

Best Kill: A guy named Toad for some reason is impaled on one of those useful spikes you apparently have sticking out of the wall in a basement.

Sign of the Times: The ground floor of the boardinghouse boasts a super cool Deep Throat themed pinball machine.

Scariest Moment: Adult men giggle like children while pulling a prank that high school freshmen would deem immature. Straight people are terrifying.

Weirdest Moment: Woody's girlfriend Turquoise hums "The First Noel" while gardening in the summer sun.

Champion Dialogue: "Why don't you stick a dog biscuit up your ass?"

Body Count: 9

Mongrel is shot.

Ken is electrocuted.

Puppy is gutted.

Ike is mauled.

Woody is mauled.

Leon is mauled.

Turquoise is mauled.

Toad is impaled through the back with a spike.

Jerry is shot.

TL;DR: Mongrel has a promising opening act, but fails to do all that much with its potential.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 781

Popcorn Kernels: Cravin' Wes

As we approach the end of my long-running quest to watch every film ever directed by Wes Craven (only 4 TV movies to go!), let’s explore two interesting little scraps of his career: the final theatrical film I had yet to see, and the one porn film we’re pretty much 100% certain he directed, during his time working in New York in the sleazy 70’s.

Vampire in Brooklyn

Year: 1995

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Angela Bassett, Allen Payne 

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

An ancient Caribbean vampire arrives in modern New York City to seduce a lovely cop on the mean streets of Brooklyn.

1995 found Wes Craven in a very strange place. Just a year earlier he had created his latest masterpiece, New Nightmare, to very little fanfare. As much as that film proved he still had the capacity for intelligent, engaging horror, he was still chafing against he constraints of the genre, which hadn’t afforded him a truly sizeable hit in over a decade. So when he learned that superstar funnyman Eddie Murphy wanted to work with him, he leapt at the opportunity. Unfortunately, as it often happened for Craven, he found himself in yet another behind-the-scenes straitjacket.

While Craven assumed he’d be making a comedy, Murphy insisted he wanted to make a straight horror picture. Both men wanted to break free from their typecast genre, but the star’s wishes carried more weight with the studio. Thus we get another film that feels like a tug of war between two entirely opposite sensibilities. However, unlike the equally uneven Deadly Friend, Vampire in Brooklyn pulls together into something more or less amusing, even if it makes next to no sense as it goes along (something which is patently not improved by Murphy’s Blade Runner voiceover that runs through the whole thing like a rusty monorail).

The horror elements are passable, but they’re attempting to resurrect a stately, classic gothic feel that has never made a dent on my nerves in the first place, and they’re intermittently successful. What really saves this film, and I’m a teensy bit loathe to admit it, is its admirably goofy sense of humor. While it undercuts the horror at every turn, that horror wasn’t particularly strong to begin with. Hell, the climax, which I solely horror, is an interminable slog in spite of Murphy’s surprisingly subdued performance and convincing chemistry with the devastatingly sexy Angela Bassett.

No, with Vampire in Brooklyn, the goofier it gets, the better it is. OK, there may be some indefensible scenes that have Murphy Klumping it up in various silly costumes, but the movie frequently hits a register that evokes classic Blaxploitation by way of a Sam Raimi splatter flick. This is most evident in the gleefully gross performance by Kadeem Hardison as Julius Jones, a dock-worker turned ghoulish assistant. As his body rots due to the vampire’s magic, parts of him fall off at very inopportune moments. It’s a very juvenile, Monty Python Black Knight style of body horror slapstick, but especially when he’s paying off John Witherspoon as his grouchy landlord, it’s downright hilarious. A lot of these funny scenes (especially any with the Italian mobsters infesting the town) are pitched at a very high register, but Craven embraces his camp sensibilities and thus allows it to flourish.

Vampire in Brooklyn is no masterpiece, but it’s a diverting way to spend 95 minutes. Almost any other Craven film is a more worthwhile watch, but this one certainly has its cheesy charms.

Rating: 6/10

The Fireworks Woman

Year: 1975

Director: Abe Snake

Cast: Jennifer Jordan, Helen Madigan, Erica Eaton 

Run Time: 1 hour 13 minutes

MPAA Rating: X

A young woman with the possibly supernatural power to ignite lust in those around her pursues an ex-flame who’s a priest… and her brother.

Now, just to reassure any lawyers who happen to have stumbled across this blog, it has not been conclusively proven that Wes Craven directed this pornographic film, though it is known he spent years in the New York porn industry as an editor and producer. The film is officially credited as being written and directed by Abe Snake (and co-written by Hørst Badörties, which I suspect is a pseudonym for the Swedish Chef), but any scholar of Craven could tell you instantly that his fingerprints are all over the project.

For one thing, Wes Craven literally plays a character in the movie: the mysterious Fireworks Man who may or may not be the Devil. It’s kinda hard to deny your involvement when you face is on celluloid, beard or no beard. But even if his literal face was nowhere to be seen, his spirit thrums through the entire story, which chews on a lot of the favorite themes that he would return to over and over again throughout his career: repression of desire leading to violence, the potency of dreams (especially nightmares), the oppressive and hypocritical nature of the church, and the dark side of the suburban family unit.

The entire DNA of his career, from Nightmare on Elm Street to The People Under the Stairs, to My Soul to Take, is present in a film where a woman makes love to her brother with Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” playing in the background. What a trajectory! Being a porno movie, the plot is understandably rather repetitive, but he fact that it has themes worth mentioning at all speaks to Craven’s irrepressible intelligence.

That said, I can’t understand why any self-respecting heterosexual would find the film particularly erotic. A massively uncomfortable rape scene is shoehorned in (though, true to Craven’s ever-goofy form, in the same scene a man is hit over the head with a giant fish), and most of the consensual sex is underscored by tittering, nightmarish Insidious music. It actually kinds works as a horror film, melding woozy dream imagery and penetrative sex in a beautifully eerie fantasia.

Let’s not kid ourselves that The Fireworks Woman is worth seeing by anyone but the most institutionally insane Craven fan, but speaking as one of those, it was certainly an interesting insight into a burgeoning creative mind stripped of all propriety.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1032

Census Bloodbath: The Lame Street Electrical Parade

For our podcast episode about this very film, click here.

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