I'm sure you won't mind that I went the selfish route and took a couple of "me" days over here;I did some light partying,saw Ted Nugent for the umpteenth time live in the Poconos(I hope I can rock balls out half as much as Uncle Ted if I make it to sixty),wrote off some possibilities,and explored a few new ones,but once the smoke clears(and it rarely does around a guy like me) as always,I'm back to serve up some choice genre stuffs for your reading pleasure.We're at the front end of what looks to be a run of several classics in a row here,and I mean that in an all-time favorites kinda way.Over the next several days and nights we'll be examining some of the best films the horror genre has ever offered,in my opinion anyway(and they're all from the seventies,what does that tell you?),and unless you subsist in a shack on pork n' beans and find your own sister powerful handsome,you'll probably agree with me here.Not much of a stretch,but hopefully,I'll do some justice to most,if not all of these fan favorites.Wait a second,was I just doing humble?
When I met Reggie Bannister,my favorite character/actor from tonight's review(sorry,Mr. Scrimm comes off a little too dramatically for the top spot),we jawed at great lengths about the profound effects that Coscarelli's practically self-made(he directed, written, photographed, co-produced and edited here,ferchrissakes)first excursion into the horror genre with such original,terrifying imagery had on a ten year old Wop,among other things,when suddenly Bannister was approached by a towering,grinning she-dork,stretching the measuring tape to about six foot three,and bearing a hastily produced token of her affection for the actor."You rule,Reggie!"she guffawed,as she handed him a single piece of computer paper with three images from "Phantasm" printed on it.He wasn't even in two of the pictures.Reg,not missing a beat,took the offering,paused for a moment,and said in his inimitable Cali-drawl,"You know....I'm gonna put this in my room of really cool stuff from my fans!"The nerd seemed satisfied with that and lumbered off.Once she was out of ear shot,not missing a beat,I asked,"Room of really cool stuff,eh,Reg?Is that what you're calling the wastepaper basket these days or what?"Yeah,I'm a dick.
"The funeral is about to begin....SHORTY."
Tommy(Bill Cone)is getting laid in Morningside cemetery(apparently the local hot spot),when his partner,the Lady in Lavender(Kathy Lester) suddenly transforms into a tall man,who abruptly shanks him in the labonza with a switchblade.I hate when shit like that happens.At Tommy's funeral,Jody(Bill Thornbury)and Reggie(Reggie Bannister) grieve for their friend,and discuss Jody's younger brother,Mike(Michael Baldwin),who's hiding in the bushes with binoculars,managing to catch sight of the same Tall Man(Angus Scrimm) singlehandedly lifting Tommy's casket and slamming it into the back of a hearse as if it was nothing.Unnerved by the whole experience,Mike visits a blind,old fortune telling mystic who materializes a black box that eats Mike's hand until he learns to let go of his own fear.The creepy old biddie has a good laugh until her granddaughter visits the funeral home,and something horrible pulls a scream out of her.At home,Mike,at thirteen,a bigger gearhead than his brother(who lets him work on and drive the car anyway),works on Jody's Hemicuda,and overhears his brother's possible plans to leave him with relatives.Since their parents untimely deaths,Mike follows Jody everywhere,often spying on him,with the fear of abandonment fresh on his mind. That night,Jody unwittingly picks up the Tall Man's alter ego,but at the cemetery(seriously,what's with that?)his coitus(and subsequent labonza-shanking) is interrupted by Mike,screaming his head off and running for his life from something...small,brown,and low to the ground.It probably wasn't the retarded kid,Timmy,from up the street.Mike returns to Morningside,and breaks in,only to be captured by a caretaker,when a flying silver sphere that has been chasing the boy through the hallways,slams into the caretaker's forehead with twin knifeblades,before a drill bit emerges and drains the poor bastard's blood and grey matter,shooting it out the other end.
If a long,painful screw between the eyes was on the drink menu,I'd stick to Moretti.
The Tall Man appears and gives chase,but in the melee,gets four of his fingers slammed in a door and cut off with a hunting knife by the boy,who takes one of the yellow,gooey digits as proof to show his older brother,but when he produces the box back at the house,the finger has turned into a really angry looking enormous fuzzy bug,which they dispose of in the trash compactor,to the dismay of Reggie,who caught the tail end of that madness.Jody then visits the mortuary himself,and is attacked by one of the hooded dwarves that Mike told him about,but dispatches it with a bullet and escapes to Mike waiting at the main gate,driving the Hemicuda.As the two drive off,they are chased by a hearse that seems to be driven by no one.What's crazier,the hearse having no driver,or keeping up with a fucking Hemicuda,draw your own conclusions.Jody produces a shotgun and blasts the hearse from the sunroof,whereupon it crashes,impaling one of the dwarves on a tree branch,revealing that the dead half a motherfucker in question is their dead friend Tommy.After much preparation,the brothers enlist Reggie and descend upon Morningside to discover the Tall Man's fiendish secret:He's been squashing down the local bodies of the recently deceased into undead dwarves,sealing them in bulky black cannisters and sending them off through a dimensional portal in the mortuary to become his slaves.The portal itself reminds Reggie of his tuning fork from his hot-as-love guitar jam sessions with Jody,and when he touches both metal bars at the same time,he turns it into a vacuum,which causes the whole place to implode upon itself.The brothers manage to trap the Tall Man down an abandoned mine shaft,but Mike awakens to find that the whole thing was just a bad dream,caused by his brother Jody's death.Reggie offers to take him on the road with him,but when the boy excitedly runs upstairs to pack a bag,the Tall Man is waiting in his room,and his dwarves pull Mike into the mirror.
"Dude,if I,like,touch both of these at the same time,I bet it'll produce some totally forked up results."
Released under the alternate and decidely goofier title,"The Never Dead" in Australia so the audiences wouldn't confuse it with the earlier sex comedy "Fantasm"(which also had a sequel,mind you),tonight's cult classic has spurred on three mostly enjoyable sequels to date,and originally drew an X rating from the board over the silver sphere violence and aftermath(which made Bravo's list of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments),though it was eventually released as an R movie,thanks to the unlikely championing and efforts of a Los Angeles movie critic.The characters herein all have a believability rarely encountered in movies,due to being specially written for the actors who play them.The soundtrack by Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave is excellent and atmospheric,and there's even a disco version of the main theme floating around somewhere.Coscarelli won the Jury Award in 1979,and the film was nominated for Best Horror Film at the Saturn Awards the following year.Perish any doubts from your minds,droogs,this movie kicks much ass and is always a good time when screened.It rates four wops from yours cruelly,and comes highly recommended.
"Did your granny knit you that groovy afghan,boooooooy!"
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