Shocker
It's electric, boogie-woogie-woogie!
Do horror and comedy ever truly mix
well? I'm hard-pressed to find a movie that fits both genres well.
The closest I can think of are spoofs of well-known horror movies
such as Repossessed and the Scary Movie series. Those movies are
really just comedies with some horror tropes and references, so I
suppose they don't really count. The character of Freddy Kruger is
funny throughout the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, but they are
certainly not comedic in nature. Scream had it's funny moments, but
they were more self-aware clever remarks than straight comedy. Comedy
is a science, needing the right amount of wit, timing, and delivery.
Horror is broad with lots of variables that can make a movie
disturbing or scary. For whatever reason, the two genres are like
water and oil, but that doesn't stop people from trying to mash them
together.
Shocker is a 1989 horror comedy written
and directed by Wes Craven (Scream, The Last House On The Left). The
movie stars Peter Berg (Cop Land, Fire In The Sky) as Jonathan Parker
and Mitch Pileggi (The X-Files, Sons of Anarchy) as Horace Pinker. A
series of brutal murders has gripped a small California suburb with
no clues as to who is committing the crimes. Jon Parker is a college
football player who has a strange dream-like vision of a bald man
murdering his mother, brother, and sister. He see's the man's van
outside the house, revealing he is a TV repair man named Horace
Pinker. Jon tries to stop the killer by when he lunges at him, he
awakens in bed with his girlfriend, Allison (Camille Cooper). When he
returns home, Jon discovers that his family has in fact been
murdered. His father, Lt. Don Parker (Michael Murphy, X:Men:The Last
Stand, Batman Returns) had been working on the serial killer cases,
and the killer murdered his family when he got too close. The police
go to arrest him, but he escapes, and kills Allison. Jon uses his
strange connection to Pinker to help his father and the police force
find him again. Pinker kills a few police officers before being
arrested and given the electric chair. Before dying, Pinker reveals
that he is Jonathan's biological father and that, as a child,
Jonathan shot him in the leg to stop him from murdering his mother.
Pinker also reveals that he sold his soul to the devil and when the
switch is flipped, Pinker becomes pure energy. His new powers allow
him to travel through electricity as well and possess people. Pinker,
through other people, tries to kill Jonathan through various means,
murdering his friends along the way. How will Jonathan be able to
stop this supernatural serial killer who can become anyone at any
time?
Being executed by the state is a laugh riot. Well, at least in Texas
I really wasn't sure if Shocker was
supposed to be a comedy or not because it is simply not funny. It
tries some slapstick with Jonathan running into the goalpost during
football practice and tries to have funny one-liners ala Freddy
Krueger. Both fail miserably. If the movie wanted to be a comedy, it
should have focused on that because the horror is not much better.
The basic premise of the story is fine with Jonathan having a
supernatural connection to a supernatural killer. Unfortunately, the
execution of the events in the movie is so clunky that nothing really
makes sense. Nothing is ever really explained with things getting
progressively weirder. Why are the police so inept? Why does Jonathan
continue to run head-long into danger? How is Jonathan able to have
the weird visions of both Pinker and his dead girlfriend? Pinker can
now jump from person to person, even though he's supposed to be made
of energy? And he can now jump out of televisions? What? How? Why?
When? It's amazing that this was written by Wes Craven who has a long
track record of great horror movies. It's like he took 10 ideas for
different movies, threw them in a blender, and then spit it out onto
the screen while giving everyone the finger.
While the movie lacks in humor and
logic, it does have a good amount of violence. It has lots of gun
play, stabbings, and a few explosions. There is nothing particularly
gory about the violence, which is surprising considering it's a movie
about a supernatural serial killer. The acting throughout is very
questionable. Both Peter Berg and Mitch Pileggi have had long careers
in show business, so it's not like they didn't know how to act. I
chalk up their bad performances to terribly written dialogue and poor
direction. Pinker's lines mostly revolve around horrendous one-liners
and and curse words. Jonathan spends most of the movie running and
looking shocked, but in the last 10 minutes or so, he is all sorts of
confident in knowing how to fight Pinker. The special effects used in
the movie are decent for the time, but many scenes are obviously in
front of a blue screen. The movie is entrenched in the 80's, complete
with it's own theme song performed by Paul Stanley from Kiss with
members of Def Leppard, Whitesnake, Van Halen, and Motley Crue. It
also had an unintentionally funny cover of Alice Cooper's “No More
Mr. Nice Guy” performed by Megadeth.
Comedy!
Shocker has very little in the way of
comedy and the horror portion of the movie is poorly done. There is
nothing particularly funny in the movie, and if there was, I
completely missed it. The story is all over the place, leaving logic
and reason by the wayside in favor of 80's special effects and chase
scenes. It's amazing that Wes Craven was at the helm of this movie
and downright shocking (sorry, couldn't help it) that he actually
believed this movie would be the start of a series. The dialogue is
horrendous and the acting is pretty bad. If you're looking for
something to laugh at instead of laugh with, Shocker is your movie.
3/10
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