Wes Craven’s “Shocker” (1989) opens with a robust case of déjà vu.
We see the close-up of crud-smudged palms placing one thing collectively in a workshop, whereas a bloody knife sits unattended to the aspect. It appears a lot just like the opener of Craven’s “A Nightmare on Elm St” (1984) that solely the slick cinematography and busy heavy steel soundtrack point out we’re watching a distinct film.
From the opening moments, Craven’s comedian horror movie declares its intentions to fulfill and presumably surpass the Freddy Krueger customary, in addition to set itself up as a cultured studio movie and a attainable mainstream hit.
Alas, “Shocker” didn’t recreate the horror mega icon of Fred Krueger and wasn’t a field workplace success, both. It’s a curious, usually risible, however bold, playful work that emerged as a artistic and field workplace failure in 1989.
Now, it’s one thing of a curiosity merchandise. To be extraordinarily beneficiant, it would emerge as a camp basic.
Peter Berg stars as Jonathan Parker, a highschool quarterback who goals of a assassin at giant killing his mom and siblings. When he discovers that his dream has come true, Parker and his police workplace father (Michael Murphy) shut in on the native serial killer, named Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi, years earlier than “The X-Information”).
As soon as Horace is arrested and despatched to the electrical chair, issues solely worsen, as a rushed cope with the satan permits Pinker to exist as a supernatural being who can enter the properties of his victims via their TV units.
Tone is every thing for a movie like this and, as in Craven’s subsequent “Vampire in Brooklyn” (1995), the issue is that “Shocker” by no means decides if it’s imagined to be a comedy or a horror movie. As a substitute of both merging genres or selecting one over the opposite, it arches uncomfortably between broad, jokey self-parody and harsh, “Final Home on the Left”-level depravity and violence.
Not less than Craven’s movies are at all times entertaining, however the insanely wavering tone and inventive indecision additionally put it alongside Craven’s “Lethal Buddy” (1986) and “My Soul to Take” (2011). It doesn’t work however at the very least you’ll by no means be bored.
Till he’s reborn as a wisecracking, Krueger-esque entity who can go to your nightmares and journey via TV waves, Pinker is intimidating and unsettling. Pileggi makes him vile and loathsome.
Berg works exhausting to keep up the pathos of his character intact and principally loses that battle, whereas Cami Cooper is putting as his ill-fated girlfriend. Years in the past, whereas interviewing Heather Langenkamp, she admitted to me a longstanding rumor – sure, that’s her underneath a sheet on a gurney, enjoying a corpse in a single scene!
Craven’s screenplay takes wild swings however hardly ever is smart. For instance, it’s putting to see Pinker making a Faustian pact in a jail cell to a TV spirit (or one thing), till you cease and marvel how a convicted killer on dying row was capable of procure jumper cables and lit candles proper earlier than his execution!
Craven additionally goes with the identical goofy physique bounce possession that marked “Fallen” (1998), a uncommon failure for Denzel Washington.
Craven is exploring the tv obsession of the zeitgeist that might finally develop into our fixation on the Web. Right here, TV units are at all times on, and so they present both a literal portal for Pinker or a way of pacifying everybody else.
By way of portraying goals as a doorway to getting into the area of a killer, any of the “Elm St.” sequels has this beat. What makes “Shocker” fascinating is to see what “A Nightmare on Elm St.” may have been if it had been made as a mainstream studio movie.
The fervour and psychological richness of the ’84 movie is absent. Whereas by no means uninteresting, “Shocker” has a lot of scenes that don’t work and are available throughout as downright laughable.
After a strong hour of coasting from one actually ridiculous set piece to a different (the spotlight being Pinker’s possession of a small woman, who turns into a foul-mouthed killer who kicks Berg within the groin), Craven comes throughout an impressed sequence.
Late into “Shocker,” when the movie is previous the purpose of no return and appears decided to ensnare so-bad-its-good standing, we get Berg chasing Pileggi via varied TV exhibits. It’s a humorous, wild bit with everybody from Ward Cleaver to John Tesh and (no joke) Dr. Timothy Leary instantly witness Berg’s countless chase n’ brawl with Pileggi.
“Shocker” is each an excessive amount of and too little, a set of scenes to captivate within the second however make no sense upon reflection. By the point Pinker demonically possesses a Lazy-Boy chair (I’m not kidding), it’s clear The Grasp of Horror took too many artistic unsuitable turns right here. N
evertheless, for a foul film, “Shocker” does have a an terrible lot of showmanship.
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