Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s installment of A Movie A Day.
[The regular A Movie A Day list has been frozen in order for me to do an all-horror line-up for October. I’ve pulled many horror titles from my regular “to see” stack and have ordered many more horror and thriller titles to make sure we have some good stuff. Like the regular AMAD column all the movies I’m covering are films I have never seen, but unlike the regular AMAD column I will not connect each film to the one before it. Instead I will pull a title at random every day and watch whatever the movie Gods determine for me.]
Happy Halloween!
We cap off the 31 day run of Horror AMADs with 1981’s horror movie spoof STUDENT BODIES.
Now, this movie is not a horror comedy. A horror comedy is EVIL DEAD 2 or ARMY OF DARKNESS or RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD or Peter Jackson’s BRAINDEAD (aka DEAD-ALIVE) or SHAUN OF THE DEAD. This is a flat out spoof, more comfortable sitting next to movies like SATURDAY THE 14TH, which came out a few months after this film.
And this movie was almost brilliant.
The opening of the movie is fantastic. It’s funny, smart and full of random humor. You have a Michael Myers house clone and a subtitle that burns in saying “HALLOWEEN NIGHT” then it fades out… fading back up to the house again. This time a different holiday is slapped on the subtitle. Then it fades out again. Then fades up one more time, this time saying “Jamie Lee Curtis’ Birthday” before finally cutting inside.
We get a typical stupid babysitter pretty much talking to her friend on the phone saying, “Gee, I sure hope nothing happens to me tonight,” while her prude friend on the phone is warning her not to have sex.
The bad guy of the movie is called “The Breather,” who is voiced by Richard Belzer, so you get a general idea of how much the comedy is being played up with him.
The Breather starts calling this girl, who is, of course, waiting for her horny boyfriend. Like any horror bimbo, she keeps answer the phone with the heavy breather on the other line. Then she doesn’t and the phone starts jumping on the table, demanding to be picked up… then I swear it cums on her. Maybe it was supposed to be saliva, but it sure didn’t look like saliva.
I was thinking, “Okay, this is kind of smart and funny,” then she goes outside to check on the meowing of a cat… and they cut to a dog barking at her, except every bark is a meow. Then the dog lifts its leg to piss and they put in a ripping fart sound effect.
It was this point that I was like, “This movie might be my favorite film of all time if they keep this up.” It stays strong for the entire opening scene. The girl goes back inside and the camera lingers on the door lock. If that wasn’t enough to get the point, they put a flashing arrow and the word “Unlocked!!!”
The girl goes to the kitchen (which is fucking filthy, dishes piled everwhere), opens the fridge and grabs a piece of fried chicken to eat. Her boyfriend jumps her mid-bite and says he wants to do it. She’s like, “Not here, not now!” and he goes, “How about in 10 seconds in the bedroom.” “Okay.”
Little things like that, poking fun at slashers, keep the opening really funny, but after the two are killed (the girl with a paperclip, the boyfriend hacked up off-camera) and we follow the main story of the virginal teen friend I’d say 90% of the jokes fall completely flat.
That’s not to say there aren’t any interesting ideas… the Breather is seen only by his galoshes and rubber gloves, like kitchen gloves, so every creepy teacher we meet who would be a suspect ends up wearing these rubber gloves during their classes. Sometimes they even go the extra mile and have the adult branded “Suspect #1” or whatever.
And there’s also a running body count.
I’d say my main problem is they don’t make use of some of the most funny characters they introduce. There’s a blind black dude who has a car accident with a student in a wheelchair, fighting for the handicapped space. Or rather, it’s the blind dude’s dog, who was driving, that has the accident. But for the rest of the movie they’re a team, the wheelchair dude narrating what’s happening.
These dudes are hilarious, but they are little more than glorified extras.
The star of the movie, though, is the creepy janitor, Malvert. I say this in all kindness and with all respect, but Malvert is one fucked up looking dude. He’s super tall, super lanky, but maybe 100 pounds. In fact, the actor’s name is The Stick. That’s how he’s credited. He’s only done this one movie, but I think he could have been a star in the same way Michael Berryman was a horror icon.
He’s so awesome and I want to see him star in a film. His comedic timing is right on and he’s just so interesting to watch. His body moves differently than an average person and he’s just fascinating.
Unfortunately, we’re left with the less interesting story of the Absintence poster-child Toby (Kristen Ritter) who figures out the killer is only going after teenagers who have sex, which happens everywhere around the school at any time. Hell, the next to die get it while trying to fuck at the funeral of the first two victims.
Ritter’s not bad in the role, but her character just isn’t all that interesting and only seems to run into more interesting people… There’s the shop teacher obsessed with horse head bookends, the Biology teacher who hates frog dicks, the creepy principal, the cop on the case (who should have been played by Leslie Nielson… “I’ll cut right to the point. You’re the murderer.”) to name a few.
They also throw a lot of the random humor that I love so much out the window after the meowing, farting dog. Although we do get a death-by-eggplant, so I’m not left completely in the dark.
Another negative is the lack of satire on the nudity and gore. There’s even a scene taking place in a girl’s lockerroom that you feel is obviously meant to satirize this very point, but the movie is PG for some damn reason.
Now, I know the movie is rated R and they do that by stopping the film and having one of the producers come on to say that all their research has shown that R-rated horror out-perform PG horror, so with that in mind… “Fuck you.” And then we see the MPAA R-rating band… Okay, that’s funny… but seriously, if you’re going to send up slashers, you gotta have tits and gore. You have to.
Final Thoughts: It gets negative points for the giant missed opportunity to go overboard on crazy, unrealistic gore, but ultimately I found myself enjoying the movie even though it is overloaded with more misses than hits. It’s easy to stand back now and see the stereotypes, but when this film was made there were only 2 Friday the 13th films that had been made and the full on slasher rip-off overload handn’t hit, so I have to give it some respect for noticing these patterns and formulas so early in the game. If it had been made better or at least gone whole hog into the bizarre humor then I think it could have been the AIRPLANE! for horror films. As it is now, it’s an interesting send-up, but nothing that’ll ever play for more than a select group of horror lovers.
Before I head off to Harry’s Halloween party, I must close out this HMAD run with my final of this week’s recommendations. If you’ve been paying attention, I’ve been pointing out some of my favorites of the genre that I feel are either underappreciated or overlooked. We’ve covered IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, SLEEPAWAY CAMP, DEMONS, DEMONS 2, WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? and now we have our final entry.
This one is different from the others in that for some insane retarded reason it is not available on DVD, but you can find it on pretty heavy cable rotation still to this day and there are places you can look for laserdisc rips coughcoughebaycoughcough… Excuse me, I got something stuck in my finger-throats.
I am talking, of course, of Fred Dekker’s masterpiece of ‘80s horror-comedy work NIGHT OF CREEPS.
I remember watching this as a kid and I was blown away immediately because it doesn’t start out like your average horror movie. We start this movie in space, jumping into the middle of a story already in progress. These little squat aliens are chasing another squat alien through the corridors of an Nostromo-like ship, firing lazer guns at him.
The running alien is carrying a container and is able to eject it into space before he is captured. The thing falls to Earth in the ‘50s. The opening with the aliens is in color, but the ‘50s are in black and white as college kids make out. They see what they think is a meteor and like THE BLOB have to go investigate it.
On the radio we hear of an escaped lunatic, so the girl is freaked out while her boyfriends leaves her in the car to go explore the meteor.
Dekker cuts back and forth between these two as she anxiously waits in the car, listening to the news report and realizing she’s on the exact road they suspect the killer to be walking… sitting in a convertible, of course.
The boyfriend finds the capsul in the woods, leans in for a closer look and a slug jumps out of the burning metal and into his surprised mouth.
Back in the car, we see the form of the hospial gown-clad lunatic carrying an ax slowely creeping up on the girl. She doesn’t notice him, but we do. The dude raises the ax high and swing it with full force. Just as it connects with the neck (in one shot… which I don’t have any idea how they did) they cut out of the intro and giving us our main setting. This same town, but in the ‘80s.
The movie is so totally ‘80s, in all the best ways, just like REAL GENIUS is totally ‘80s in the best ways. Our heroes are two of the unlikeliest of the genre… geeks. One is a ginger named Chris Romero (Jason Lively) and the other is a handicapped smart-ass named JC Hooper (Steve Marshall).
Yes, most people in this movie are named after famous horror directors. The lead girl is Cynthia Cronenberg (Jill Whitlow), the gruff cop is Det. Cameron (Tom Atkins), but there’s also a Landis, a Raimi, and the C of JC Hooper is Carpenter.
But what’s great about this movie is that it’s not a horror spoof. It’s its own story and doesn’t fill the screen with winks and nudges in every frame. It’s not aping any other movie, but telling its own story.
Basically, Jason Lively falls in love with Jill Whitlow… and that’s completely understandable. I’m totally in love with her, she falls completely into my ideal woman mode. She’s beautiful, but in a natural girl-next-door way, she’s kind, a little shy and can handle a flame-thrower. My ideal woman, in a nutshell.
She’s in a sorority, so Lively thinks the only way he can stand a chance of being with this girl is if he’s accepted into a frat… run by her boyfriend Brad (Allan Kayser). They have no intention of letting in two dweebs, so they send them on an impossible task to gain admittance… that leads our two heroes to a science lab where they’re trying to find a corpse.
They find one, alright. It’s the cryogenicly frozen ‘50s boyfriend who swallowed a slug. They try to steal him, but when he’s pulled out of the ice chamber he shows some life and they haul ass out of there.
One thing leads to another and the ‘50s dude’s head splits open, spilling out a whole host of alien slugs, which begin to infest people turning them into zombies all leading to the climactic Prom Night.
Tom Atkins rocks the house in this movie. He’s a real tough ass and doesn’t take any shit. Sarcastic, mean… awesome badass who answers his phone “Thrill Me,” something I’ve been known to copy from time to time.
The effects are great, the humor is fantastic, all the actors are perfect for their roles and Dekker’s smart script and hunger as a first time director really makes this a classic. And Dick Miller is in it, so case closed.
NOW SOMEONE PUT IT ON DVD, GODDAMNIT!
Tomorrow we return to our regular AMAD line-up. We last left off with 1944’s noir LAURA starring the radiant Gene Tierney and we pick up on November 1st with another Gene Tierney film!
Here’s the list for the first week of November!
Saturday, November 1st: BLACK WIDOW (1954)
Sunday, November 2nd: THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (1947)
Monday, November 3rd: THE FLYING TIGERS (1942)
Tuesday, November 4th: EXECUTIVE ACTION (1973)
Wednesday, November 5th: THE BUSY BODY (1967)
Thursday, November 6th: IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963)
Friday, November 7th: LIBELED LADY (1936)
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
