Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Horrorfest 2014: Society

I'm not sure how I've made it this far without hearing about the 1989 flick SOCIETY. Billy Warlock, of BAYWATCH fame, stars as a Beverly Hills teen who is paranoid that everyone he knows is in on an evil secret. He just doesn't know what it is. His therapist (Ben Slack) assures him it's nothing.

As the film opens, Warlock's sister (Patrice Jennings) is on the eve of her "coming out" party and dealing with a seemingly obsessed ex-boyfriend (Tim Bartell) who won't go away. It isn't long before this ex-boyfriend approaches our hero with a secret tape of his sister's coming out party. Playing the tape back, it seems that his sister, and his mother and father (Connie Daneese and Charles Lucia), are involved in some kind of incestuous, murderous orgy with the rest of high society.

Of course, when the tape is played back for the therapist all of this evidence is missing and has been replaced with a normal-sounding formal event. Other weird stuff is afoot -- seemingly dead kids turn up alive and even Warlock's new girlfriend (Clarissa Carlyn) seems to contort her body unnaturally.

The first half of SOCIETY works as a riff on the 50s-era paranoid genre that gave us INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and INVADERS FROM MARS, in which regular guys notice little weird things about their family and their neighbors and start to suspect there's a conspiracy afoot. Half the fun of the movie is watching Warlock run around town freaking out and no one believing him.

But then. Then you get to the climax. And what a climax it is.

If you're looking for answers to the plot, this is the wrong movie for you. If you're looking for insane (and gross) special effects -- stick around.

SOCIETY works as well as it does because it does not take itself seriously. The film is not quite a parody, but almost, especially when viewed as a product of its time. Even with these humorous elements, though, the movie is not afraid to go somewhere fully and unapologetically insane.

No comments:

Post a Comment