Recently Watched, Early February Edition

In spite of long experience to the contrary, I still sometimes have a prejudice against putting on a movie that might turn out to be a “homework movie,” but which is likely just great, in favor of looking for entertainment. This is particularly true if I’m exercising—I just want to watch something “fun,” I say to myself—and later in the evening, when I tell myself I’m too tired. That’s often true, but I’ll fall asleep watching anything, so it may as well be good? And watching a great movie is likely to be more entertaining, in the end, or just more worth it, than taking a chance with schlock. Yet I keep looking for schlock.

Particularly horror, of course; it’s very hit or miss. From duller modern stuff, like The Rental, to duller classic stuff, like the several Lucio Fulci films I’ve seen recently, some of my choices have been disappointing. I don’t typically abandon watching movies entirely; I do set some aside for a while. But so once I decide to continue I just power through, so I can add it to the list of “movies I’ve seen.” I don’t remember why I checked out the Fulci stuff; I’d heard of his Zombi (AKA Zombi 2) for years. When I finally watched it recently, I didn’t even record it on Letterboxd because I hadn’t made it through the whole thing in several sittings. I ended up fast-forwarding, which I really never do unless the movie is just unwatchable.

I found his stuff—I also saw his The New York Ripper and The Beyond—watchable, but only intermittently. The over-the-top gore, unwatchable in a different sense, I found highly entertaining and gross. And each movie offered some extraordinary moments. In Zombi, after all, a zombie fights a shark. And parts of the surpassingly strange The Beyond are beautiful and shocking; it’s a must see if you must see Fulci. But overall—and this is terrible to say—my time would have been better spent watching a highlights reel.

I’ve enjoyed some bigger-budget horror stuff—Mimic, Event Horizon and Lake Placid recently. The latter is especially interesting because it’s the kind of thing I’m spoofing in the book I’m working on. The first act of my story, which becomes a kind of ghost story, basically follows the Jaws, Piranha and Lake Placid script. Killer water creature threatens a pleasant place; motley crew of stakeholders responds, possibly with explosives. Placid is a fun, silly movie anyway, with an interesting pedigree. It’s written and co-produced by TV titan, David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal, Big Little Lies) and, although it’s a horror movie in form, it’s closer to a romantic comedy in attitude, or adventure film. This is a damn smart choice—it encourages the right degree of seriousness in the actors, who are all hugely likable in spite of doing a bunch of dumb shit constantly. It encourages the audience to enjoy themselves instead of thinking through the logic of everything. Then they gave Betty White a hilariously foul-mouthed role. It’s a funny, good time—and they got a horror movie guy to direct, Steve Miner (Friday the 13th 2 and 3D, Halloween 7, House).

At some point, I watched The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, with my children. This is an example of watching bad movies for a while and then suddenly seeing a great film. It’s absolutely thrilling. And I should take it more to heart.

But, instead, I subscribed to Shudder so I could have better luck finding schlock I might like. And, actually, it worked. In the last few days, I’ve seen a couple of incredibly fun, nutty, schlocky works of twisted 80s horror genius. First up, Chopping Mall from 1986, a movie first released as Killbots, which is what it’s about, not some kind of mall slasher, though the robots do kill people at a mall. It was a joyfully exploitative, highly goofy campfest. Next, I watched Brian Yuzna’s Society, from 1989. Yuzna is a horror producer who helped Stuart Gordon make Re-Animator, among other films, and co-wrote Honey, I Shrunk the Kids with Gordon. His directorial debut, Society, is nominally satirical body horror, but that just doesn’t begin to describe this movie.

In 1989, I was crazy about Back to the Future and actor Michael J. Fox. In Society, actor Billy Warlock (later of Baywatch and a metric ton of soap work), does something I have never seen before—an extraordinary impression of Fox’s voice, physicality and mannerisms. It was as if Yuzna told Warlock, “we wanted to cast Michael J. Fox, but we couldn’t get him” and the actor took that as his instructions. So we basically have a movie in which a mulleted Marty McFly, in a parody of an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-type scenario, suspects his own wealthy family of being a part of a disgusting alien sex cult and, you know what, he’s right! By sex cult, I mean, sure, there’s some sex but also this incredible scene in which the cult all sort of melts their bodies into each other so they can absorb a new victim. Practical effects, of course, so it’s plenty crazy, weird and gross. And hilarious. And wildly inventive.

Sometimes you get lucky with schlock—when you do, it’s pretty worth it.