Time for another big(ger) budget stab at
mainstream Hollywood success, this time with 1989's SHOCKER. This movie's box
art is iconic – a man getting fried in the electric chair. I remember it vividly
from wandering the aisles of the video store when I was a kid. So, I was
excited to give it a look.
I was not disappointed. SHOCKER is awesome.
Don't get me wrong: it makes almost no sense at all. But it's great. It's
biggest issues are it seems to be built out of disparate elements – there's a
guy who sees the future in his dreams, a ghost and a villain with electrical
powers who can not only jump from person to person and possess them, but also
travel through televisions. Oh and there's a good hair metal score, too.
Got all that?
SHOCKER stars Peter Berg as a college football
jock whose foster father (Michael Murphy) is tracking a prolific and
particularly gruesome serial killer (Mitch Pileggi). Berg begins to see the
crimes in his nightmares before they occur, and helps his father capture the
killer – but not before the killer does away with Berg's family and his
girlfriend (Camille Cooper).
On death row, Pileggi completes some kind of
weird electrical/satanic/television-oriented ritual in his cell and manages to
"survive" electrocution on the electric chair in a weird electrical
form that allows him to jump from person to person in order to escape and
continue his killing spree.
So, it's Berg against Pileggi, with Berg's
football buddies (Sam Scarber, Richard Brooks and Ted Raimi) teaming up to
help, along with the ghost of his dead girlfriend. This leads to a climax in
which Berg follows Pileggi from one TV to another, jumping into and out of
different shows. It makes no sense.
But, it's awesome! The movie is funny and
action packed, and slickly put together. The special effects are pretty sweet
for 1989 and even though the movie has basically no logic, it is intoxicating
how the screenplay just keeps jumping from one damn thing to another. You can
never really guess what's coming next.
No comments:
Post a Comment