80's Foreign Horror Part Twenty-One

NIGHT OF DEATH

(1980)
Dir - Raphaël Delpard
Overall: GOOD

Though it can afford to shave off about twenty minutes to streamline the pacing, filmmaker Raphaël Delpard's first of two horror movies Night of Death, (La nuit de la mort!), is a uniquely sinister bit of black comedy strangeness.  On paper, the premise of a sweet, unassuming nurse who arrives at a home for the elderly that is full of eccentrics may not be entirely singular in the annals of genre cinema, but Delpard balances a bizarre tone that keeps even the frequent number of slow moments brooding in suspense.  Extreme violence and some nakedness show up at unexpected intervals, firmly fitting this into the exploitation realm without bringing profound attention to it. Instead, the movie plays on the inherently creepy aspects of pale-faced old people who unwholesomely stare and walk slowly in groups while a wonderfully off-setting violin score ominously plays in the background.  Whatever is actually going on in this home for the elderly is never convincingly explained, but even the sloppy ending is fitting where such a ridiculous nightmare is taking place for our innocently doomed heroine to escape. It keeps its tongue in cheek without becoming too silly to undue its macabre spell, which is an admirable tight-rope act to pull off.

 

JOEY

(1985)

Dir - Roland Emmerich

Overall: MEH

 

Co-writer/director Roland Emmerich goes hard on the Steven Spielberg worship/plagiarism with Joey, (Making Contact), a cutesy Close Encounters of the Third Kind/Poltergeist hybrid.  Channeling the most popular filmmaker from across the Atlantic, Emmerich drenches the movie with a Disney-worthy musical score, focuses on a misfit kid and his lone female friend, as well as the not-too-mean bullies in his school.  Said kid talks to his dead dad via a play phone, toys and a creepy ventriloquist dummy come to life, a portal to an imaginary dimension opens up, and various household items obey his newfound telekinetic command.  While dated, the special effects are still decent for the era and a cameo by Darth Vader and various, supernaturally-charged Star Wars merchandise enhance the major American blockbuster vibe that the movie is clearly going for.  Unfortunately, the script is both bloated and underwritten at the same time, with one-note characters and big ideas that never go anywhere beyond just visual spectacle.  As one could guess, the bombastic presentation renders the atmosphere light years away from sinister or creepy, but the objective is to be kid-friendly and centered and low on story, yet full of popcorn-munching spectacle.

 

THINGS

(1989)

Dir - Andrew Jordan

Overall: WOOF

Easily surpassing Monster A Go-Go and Birdemic: Shock and Terror as the most technically incompetent "movie" ever made, Things is what Evil Dead would look like if drunk twelve-year olds with a double digit IQ between them made it.  Well deserving of its reputation, Canada's alleged first SOV crapterpiece is from the same "director" who "produced" the also baffilingly inept Wicked World two years later, but this one is its own anomaly.  Awkwardly shot footage of intoxicated schlubs stumbling all of their lines, (ninety percent of which are ADRed, presumably by people who are also pickled in alcohol), make up the majority of screen time; screen time which is periodically broken up by a couple of papier-mâché monsters casually doing stuff as well as porn legend Amber Lynn in front of TV sets pretending to be a news anchor while reading her lines off-camera.  The most entertaining of bad cinema is when one can revel in the clueless ineptitude of the people behind of and in front of the screen.  While there is more of that here than most tolerance levels could stomach, the "movie" breaks the very medium of film early on and it only gets more aggressively unacceptable from there; crossing over into a realm where you actually feel bad for whatever mental illness is suffered by the people responsible.  The only thing keeping it remotely tolerable is a perplexed curiosity for the viewer as to how it was made/escaped into a video market in the first place.