baumgart@esquire.dpw.com (The Phantom) (11/01/89)
SHOCKER
A Review in the Public Domain
by The Phantom
(baumgart@esquire.dpw.com)
The Phantom takes some of the blame for the letdown his phans will surely
feel upon leaving SHOCKER; truthfully, he added to the unwarranted hype
surrounding the film by encouraging his readers to save their money for Wes
Craven's latest by avoiding the dismal HALLOWEEN 5 two weeks ago.
But surely no one could be more disappointed than the Phantom himself, who
has admired Craven since his horror debut -- THE HILLS HAVE EYES -- over a
decade ago, and who has followed his career avidly ever since, from the
original A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET to THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW. Of course,
there have been some duds along the way (DEADLY BLESSING comes to mind), but
even the ones that weren't standouts were generally a cut above the usual
horror fare.
Pholks, there's good news and (mostly) bad news with this one. The good
news is that Craven still makes some of the most interesting horror films
around; the creator of Freddy Kruger and the atmospheric SERPENT has returned
with Horace Pinker, a truly loathsome character who has as much personality as
Freddy, but who spends considerably less time talking and considerably more
time killing. Horace, you see, is a television repairman with a taste for
murdering people -- whole families, actually -- and although he cracks a joke
now and then, he is to Freddy Kruger what Dolph Lundgren is to Bruce Willis.
But sadly Craven doesn't seem to know what to do with Horace; during the
first half of the film, Horace is strictly a devil worshiping maniac (actually,
a television worshiping manic, though the Phantom has long believed them to be
one in the same), but as the film progresses, Horace becomes more and more like
Freddy, thus doing himself and his audience no favor at all: if we wanted
Freddy (and after the disappointing NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5 it's not clear
that we do any more), we'd head for our local Blockbusters.
This brings us to the bad news, of which there is plenty. We'll start
with the plot, although even with his Official Phantom Film Reviewer's Notebook
(R), the Phantom was unable to jot down all of the loose ends, false starts,
missed opportunities, and what looked to be the outcome of a few too many
script conferences with nervous studio executives. It boils down to this:
quite simply, somewhere along the way someone lost faith in this film. Someone
decided that audiences don't really want to see horror films that are filled
with horror; instead, they'd rather watch a watered-down "Elm Street" clone.
So a film that begins with a great good many killings (some quite messy indeed)
transforms itself about half way through into an "Elm Street" retread, complete
with the requisite "Is this a dream or isn't it?" sequences and cut-rate ELM
STREET special effects.
The plot goes hither and yon, never quite settling down into anything we
can sink our fangs into. For a while, Horace is a run-of-the-mill mass
murderer. Yet Our Hero Jonathan Parker can sense him in his dreams (shades of
"Elm Street" here), and even join him as he stalks and kills various family
members in a house miles away. Why is this? We never find out, because after
about 30 minutes, Horace is captured by the police and the film comes to a
screeching halt as we wait for Horace to get the chair (though once the action
shifts to the prison, things pick up a bit). Needless to say, Horace survives
this in one form or another, and the film lurches onward for a while in a
completely different vein. Then, after another 30 minutes have passed, the
film transforms itself yet again, as Horace finds a way to live on by
inhabiting and using the bodies of those around him.
This lack of pacing and continuity is one of the biggest problems with
SHOCKER. As Craven picks up and discards ideas -- how television violence
(especially television news) affects us, a couple of dream sequences, some
possessions, a bit of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, a couple of gross-out scenes,
some flirting with the tired "love conquers all" theme -- the film goes all
over the place and ends up nowhere. Why Craven didn't just start the film with
a brief introduction and then 50,000 volts is a mystery. Why waste half an
hour on a traditional Hero Chasing Murderous Lunatic plot when it turns out to
be almost entirely irrelevant to the remainder of the film, which is anything
*but* traditional and in fact borders occasionally on the truly weird?
Along with its continuity problems, SHOCKER also suffers from too many
scenes that misfire -- scenes that may have worked better on paper than they do
in the theater, where they generally had the audience and the Phantom himself
hooting in both laughter and derision.
And there's still more bad news, phans. With the exception of Horace, the
characters -- and the actors who portray them -- are uniformly bad, as is the
dialogue (although Horace does get in a few good lines, Freddy-style, toward
the end). Worst is Jonathan's father, a police lieutenant (more shades of ELM
STREET), who despite overwhelming evidence that something out of the ordinary
is happening steadfastly refuses to believe that Horace isn't just your garden
variety, fully human, non-electrified lunatic. True, most horror films are
filled with people who wander innocently down basement steps or say "There must
be a logical explanation for all this" without cracking a smile, but the
lieutenant truly tries our patience and makes nearly every one of his scenes an
agony of bad acting, bad delivery, and bad scripting. The same can be said of
Jonathan's girlfriend Alison; after taking leave of the movie early on, she
returns later to appear in some of the most awful scenes in the film, during
which time the audience prayed fervently, repeatedly, and vocally for her
timely death.
Lest the Phantom make SHOCKER out to be a complete disappointment, he will
say that although it doesn't always succeed in its goals; although it misses
too many payoffs; and although it loses its way -- and its audience -- about
half way through, SHOCKER remains one of the year's better horror films. In a
year that brought us nothing new from Clive Barker or Stuart Gordon, and with
only the unrelentingly stupid PET SEMATARY and a smattering of warmed-over
horror sequels to compare it to, SHOCKER is worth seeing. Certainly it's worth
2 stars, and it's certainly more entertaining than the rather tedious HALLOWEEN
5, which is it's only competition at the moment.
See it for its top-notch camera work and for the way Craven can set up a
scene, be it a FRIDAY THE 13TH-like attack in a bathroom or a NIGHT OF THE
LIVING DEAD-like chase through a park. See it for an original and entertaining
new horror personality, though one who won't have his own 900 number,
television series, or merchandising blitz this Halloween because despite the
occasional wisecrack, he is just too loathsome, too vicious, and too cruel to
attract the mass-market audience that Freddy can. And see it because it will
most likely be a long, cold winter before we get another horror film that's
substantially better. For all it's flaws, SHOCKER is mostly fun, and if you
don't mind the lumbering plot, it's almost never boring.
So go, phans, but keep your expectations in check and your hopes among the
popcorn littering the theater's floor. Don't expect a film as original or as
well executed as the the first "Elm Street," but if your nature is more
forgiving than The Phantom's, you might find it quite enjoyable.
: The Phantom
: baumgart@esquire.dpw.com
: {cmcl2,uunet}!esquire!baumgart