Author: unkle lancifer

If you're hungry for the elaborate squishy kills usually associated with early eighties horror, THE UNSEEN might leave you high and dry. This throwback with its crusty Victorian homestead and basement full of family secrets walks in the long shadow of PSYCHO even going so far as aping its superior's voyeuristic eye for bathing blonds.

Beauty BARBARA BACH stars as ace reporter Jennifer Fast, hot on the story of the century, documenting a North California Dutch street fair. (Wait ‘till the big wigs see her footage of the red rider wagons handsomely decorated in aluminum foil!) Although obviously a mover and a shaker, Jennifer is denied a hotel room due to no fault of her own and is left along with two tag along, doomed-from-the-get-go pals to rely on the kindness of strangers to put a roof over her head. Strangers don't come any stranger than pot bellied jittery stutterer Ernest Keller (ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST escapee SYDNEY LASSICK), but when you're desperate, you're desperate and who wants to be left on the street when there are crazed Dutch revelers about? Jennifer is unaware that her estranged boyfriend Tony Ross (DOUGLAS BARR of DEADLY BLESSING & THE FALL GUY) has followed her and her friends. Thanks to a football injury, he's about as useful in the events ahead as a screen door on a submarine, but he does make a fine chauffeur.

Once in the Keller home we are introduced to my favorite character in the film, Ernest's wife/spoiler-alert sister Virginia (LELIA GOLDONI), an obvious graduate of the VERONICA CARTWRIGHT school of self-composure. Soon Jennifer's pals are being tugged into (eat your heart out THE BOOGENS!), and bashed in the face with, heating vents and it's gleaned that Virginia's basket case disposition is warranted. As it turns out Flounder from ANIMAL HOUSE (STEPHEN FURST) is trapped in the basement condemned by a local witch's curse to perform RIDING THE BUS WITH MY SISTER to an audience of zero for all of eternity. O.K., that's not true, he's the Keller's incest spawn and I know you're not allowed to say "retard" anymore, so let's just say he's special. In this case special means stopping just short of dropping to the ground like CURLY from the THREE STOOGES and spinning about in a circle screeching a-woo-woo-woo! It also means when you clock a chick in the skull with a metal heating grate she's done.

This is where THE UNSEEN kind of looses me. All of the sudden we are meant to feel sympathy for the monster baby who KILLED TWO PEOPLE and transfer our fear over to his far less threatening Daddy Ernie. What's the point of that? Did they think they would receive an image award from the disability advocacy community? That ship sort of sailed when Flounder shoved a teddy bear down the front of his diaper, went for a joyride on what I think was a vacuum cleaner, and then dived into the nearby pile of garbage that he uses as a bed.

As disappointing as this too-little-too-late I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK AND LARRY-type insincere display of a conscience is, I have much love for THE UNSEEN. For a movie with the paltry body count of a mere four (that's including the villain AND a decapitated chicken!), I think it's really special.

What is up with COMMUNION, the 1989 CHRISTOPHER WALKEN movie based on WHITLEY STRIEBER's best seller about alien abduction? A thread on IMDb's discussion board for the film entitled "Worth seeing for one scene" currently has 91 responses. Somebody hit a nerve. The scene in question takes place early in the film where WALKEN, as STRIEBER, wakes up in the middle of the night and wonders aloud if there is another presence in the room. His suspicion is validated in the form of a half obscured, dark-eyed alien face staring back at him. Many who had watched the film as children claim that this scene still remains the scariest that they have ever witnessed, some revealing that it still haunts them even to this very day. It is undeniably eerie, but its real strength lies in the fact that it strikes a familiar, recognizable cord. Who amongst us, especially as children, has not awoken in the dark with just such a feeling? Squinting our eyes, trying to make out shapes, perhaps not being too comforted by what we imagine we see lurking in the shadows.

The fact that the scene occurs early on before the movie itself has had time to lose the audience's faith in what it's selling only adds to its other worldly power. For COMMUNION is such a bizarre, I should say "experience" rather than film that many viewers certainly WILL be throwing in the towel and jumping off this runaway train before the end credits roll. I myself could never put my glowing E.T. finger on whether the movie is an out-and-out hilarious disaster of epic proportions or a well calculated assault on human consciousness. When you consider that director PHILIPPE MORA is also responsible for THE HOWLING 2: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF signs point to the former, but yet I'm still undecided. True, MORA does the unthinkable by allowing WALKEN free reign to riff and improvise as he sees fit. As endlessly fascinating as this is, and WALKEN is never more lovable than he is in this picture, the unleashing of the Mad Hatter tends to work as a reality vacuum throughout the film. Was this his intention? MORA must be aware of what he's creating, there is nary a shot in the film that does not have some sort of unsettling malevolent object hiding in the corner and there's a willful use of disjointed angles and discomforting close-ups throughout.

Exposing WALKEN's brilliant lunacy is not difficult, but MORA is somehow able to make the usually dignified LINDSAY CROUSE seem equally certifiable. Are the maddening improvisations between the two stars meant to add realism or abolish it? Trust me, if I started quoting the strange interactions between the two, we'd be here all day. By film's end, they're looking straight at the camera and babbling abstractions like drunk relatives whose car keys need to be taken away. The audience has three choices, dismiss the entire affair as trash, begin jolting down the dialogue and form a ROCKY HORROR type cult complete with sold out midnight showings, or simply succumb to this surreal, dimension-shattering celluloid DMT trip. I do believe if you allow it, this film, like the alien invaders who occupy it, will "break you." (Perhaps COMMUNION is the dreamer and you are the dream). I am prepared to back up that assertion with photographic evidence. Do the below un-doctored pictures look like they came from a film that is NOT capable of pushing sensitive souls over the edge?

Whether the film is "good" or "bad" to me, finally, is a non-issue. COMMUNION obviously exists on more than one plane at once, it's a floor wax AND a delicious desert topping. It's a jack in the box with YOUR face on it, a clockwork banana peel, a hoot owl in spats dancing the Bossa nova while singing WHITE CHRISTMAS and delivering an unwanted anal probe as a shadow passes over the moon. It doesn't make rational sense, and why should it? Neither does that presence that wakes you up in the middle of the night and stares at you from across the room…

Several films have been made about aliens and their abductees, but COMMUNION plows its own private psychological terrain, ultimately owing more to KEN RUSSELL than STEPHEN SPIELBERG. It's nuts, it's eccentric, and it's far too freaky to ever garner mainstream appeal (then again, that was probably once the consensus about WALKEN). Ironically, once you realize it is an internal rather than external journey, the universe it presents you with expands greatly. The aliens may look like strung marionettes and CROUSE's hypnosis session a discarded MAD TV skit, but no matter how hard I'm laughing throughout, I'm always left wonderfully dazed and confused. Another director could have possibly made a more distinguished film out of this material, but really what fun would that be? Besides, if the response on IMDb is any indication, COMMUNION succeeded with flying colors in at least one scene. I may hate myself in the morning, but go ahead, count me in amongst the permanently altered believers.

Note: Just like every film ever made, COMMUNION is even better in Spanish.

Between the genre rejuvenators NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and SCREAM, director WES CRAVEN hit a number of fly balls, SHOCKER being one of them. Large chunks of the film work fantastically, particularly the relatively realistic family killer on the loose opening scenes and the rabid bulldog performance of MITCH PILEGGI (Skinner from THE X-FILES), as wannabe horror icon Horace Pinker. Even if you commit yourself to the fact that Craven at this point is really experimenting with dark fantasy rather than outright horror, this mishmash requires the audience to change gears and swallow an awful lot.

Personally I have no problem with folks turning into electricity and jumping through television sets and in-and-out of host bodies. Set it to some heavy metal music and you'd really have to be a stick in the mud to gripe. I just have a real problem with helpful ghosts. I'm sorry I just do.

I hate helpful ghosts.

Like in THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL remake where CHRIS KATTAN appears at the end all fluffy to save the day? It really pissed me off. In SHOCKER it's CAMI COOPER our football hero's (PETER BERG) slaughtered girlfriend who returns to set things right.

Now mind you, I don't care if the ghost gives some advice or leaves messages on the bathroom mirror and CAMI does look swell covered head to toe in the red stuff, but delivering magic love necklaces and shooting beams of light from her abdomen is just too much for your poor Unkle Lancifer. I really have to draw the line.

To tell you the truth I'm not a big fan of rule set-up scenes either, and SHOCKER has a doozey where mid-way through the film BERG somehow explains the perimeters of this movie's "logic" to his nonplussed football buddies.

Of course all is forgiven, when a little girl becomes possessed by the evil Pinker and begins spitting and swearing like a trucker and jumps into a nearby tractor in order to run down constipation-faced BERG. I did see SHOCKER in the theater and will always remember the audience howling at this scene. It certainly went over bigger than Pinker's assortment of BAZOOKA JOE meets FAT ALBERT zingers. (Did the electrically charged Pinker really say, "Care to take a ride in my VOLTZ wagon?") I know there are adamant supporters of this movie and I guess it is goofy fun in many places, but even if I could recover from the constant channel switching changes in tone and the mixed signals about capital punishment and violence in the media, there's still the attack of the massage chair scene to contend with which comes off like a deleted scene from PEE WEE's PLAYHOUSE.

I really wish I could enjoy this near miss more than I do. Here's to hoping that someday a friendly ghost will appear and tell me how.