Del and Mladen review ‘Pumpkinhead’
Image courtesy of MGM/UA.
“Pumpkinhead” Starring Lance Henriksen, Jeff East, John D’Aquino and Florence Shauffler. Directed by Stan Winston. 86 minutes. Rated R. Amazon Prime.
Del’s take
They had me at the cicadas.
If I remember the South for anything it will be sluggish July afternoons, when the chore of taking a breath is like sucking a wad of steamed broccoli into your lungs, as cicadas hidden within the needles of longleaf pines screech and screech and screech screech screech. According to folklore the infernal bugs “hibernate” underground for 17 years until one night they awaken to scale a nearby slash pine – yes, it’s always at night – squeeze from their shell, pump up their wings and fly away to enjoy a brief yet incandescent third act of noisy fornication.
That rhythmic screeching, like chalk chalk chalk on a blackboard, is stamped onto my brain. So, when I heard it used as an audio effect in “Pumpkinhead” I knew the story was taking place somewhere below the Mason-Dixon, where the ever-increasing heat has baked the brains out of everybody who lives there, transforming them into Trump supporters.
The horror.
I didn’t let that stop me from enjoying “Pumpkinhead’s” other charms. The movie, which was released way back in 1989, has become a cult favorite despite early panned reviews. The directorial debut of special effects wizard Stan Winston, “Pumpkinhead” inspired a straight-to-video sequel, two made-for-TV sequels, a comic book from Dark Horse and even a video game.
Plus, it stars one of my favorite underrated actors, Lance Henriksen, who appeared in several James Cameron movies along with Bill Paxton and Jeanette Goldstein. He brings just the right touch of doom to his role as grieving father Ed, who sets off the horrific chain of events in “Pumpkinhead.”
The story goes like this: As a young boy, Ed witnessed a man being killed by a monster and knows that with the help of the right people, he can summon a demon to avenge the death of his young son Billy, who was accidentally run over by a dirt bike rider who had come to the back woods with his friends to party.
With the guidance of Haggis (Florence Shauffler), a crone who lives in the deep woods, Ed summons the Pumpkinhead demon and sets it loose on the teens, choosing to disregard her warning that Pumpkinhead is as dangerous to those who evoke its presence as those intended to receive its wrath.
The result is well-choreographed and photographed slaughter that follows a predictable path with only a slight deviation there at the end. Lessons will be taught and for some, learned, while for others there may be no moral to this story.
“Pumpkinhead” is one of those fun B movies that works if you can get past the threadbare writing and horror movie clichés. It calls forth an eerily gothic atmosphere you have never seen from Henry James or even V.C. Andrews. Henriksen delivers his patented emotionally wounded performance – you can’t help but sympathize with the guy, even if events leading up to his actions follow a corny, well trodden horror movie trail.
The real star here is the Pumpkinhead demon, which I thought worked very, very well. It’s a movie monster you haven’t seen before and in ways reminded me of the atavistic horror of “Alien.” It produces a similar quality of dread, even if the cornpone story doesn’t.
“Pumpkinhead” has lots of gross and gore, which should forestall whiny lectures from Mladen about R ratings and blood spatter. It’s a necessity for any serious horror movie collector or fan. Watch it in 2021 about mid-October, after the real horror of 2020 has mostly faded from memory.
I give it a B.
Mladen’s take
Del and I have been friends for a long time. And, still, he’s simply unable to judge the depth and breadth of my intolerance for inadequate moviedom mayhem, violence, and cussing.
“Pumpkinhead” is a good movie. I throw it an A- for the superb creature effects, which offset the movie’s quasi-“Deliverance” vibe. However, there are no dismemberments or intestines spilling from sliced abdomens. Shoot, plenty of blood is spilled, but no depictions of arterial pulse squirting. Sure as hell there is very little swearing, if any, that I recall and there is definitely no damned nudity. So, forgive me Del, but I’m whining, anyway, though, really, it’s closer to satisfied grumbling because the “Pumpkinhead” plot is solid.
In fact, I had little trouble overlooking the plot’s trigger, a grieving father mischaracterizing the city slickers’ accidental mistreatment of his geeky son. What unfolds is horror movie commentary on the ruin that engulfs those seeking revenge. For, you see, Ed the father becomes entwined with the monster he unleashes. When Pumpkinhead kills, Ed feels it.
—
Quick, what excellent recent movie uses the same type of symbiotic relationship between man and beast as an integral part of the story? Answer: “Sputnik.”
—
It’s Pumpkinhead who has me enamored by this late 1980s film. This is a lovingly, carefully, patiently, and nicely crafted terror animal. The only non-practical, i.e. without makeup, and non-mechanical visual effect in the movie is blurred and swaying filmography showing Ed sensing that Pumpkinhead is about to strike.
Pumpkinhead, by the way, is a tall guy in a costume. The creature is a decaying pink and skeletal. It has no hair, a tail, claws for hands, pseudo-hooves for feet, and long bony protrusions from the shoulders. Its legs at the knees bend like a heron’s, forward, if I recall accurately. Its teeth are long, crooked, and cracked and eyes white, opaque, and all-seeing. Pumpkinhead is a conjured beast, maybe risen from the fires of hell, making a living in the material world. Pay attention to the shrunken monster’s face when it’s re-buried.
Pumpkinhead’s interaction with reality as we understand it is very nicely executed in its namesake film.
There’s our nightmare walking past a window as though taking a leisurely stroll while the kid killers inside the cottage talk about what to do. When Pumpkinhead prowls through the house, it ducks beneath doorways. It swivels and tilts its head to listen. And, Pumpkinhead has no trouble looking straight at you while contemplating, I imagine, what to do next. It kills your ass and then hangs around for a moment to watch the reaction of your friends. There are no rampages. Just a methodical hunt to pick off the offending, big-hair youths. Wait till you see how the monster decides to handle a rifle. Pumpkinhead is scary as hell because it’s very human.
To me, Pumpkinhead has a subtler charisma than the Xenomorph in “Alien,” more natural finesse than the Predator in “Predator,” and a finer malevolence than Freddy in “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”
It’s my hope that no dumbass 21st century producer decides to re-make “Pumpkinhead.” This is a story and a monster that stand on their own. The beast borne of revenge shouldn’t be risked by a crappy re-do.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical editor. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Quinn Dombrowski by way of a Creative Commons license. https://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/
As a homeowner, I have had my eyes opened to a range of marvelous new experiences, many of them requiring the absence of money. One such experience is a clogged drain.
In the halcyon days of my youth, a clogged drain meant waiting until 2:30 when Dad would come home from work to fix it. Now, a clogged drain means that I, as an adult male and, by default, the head of the household, am expected to flail at the accursed thing for at least an hour before calling Dad, who must come home from work and then drive across town to my house to fix it.
I was taking a shower recently when I noticed that my kneecaps were submerged. My keen powers of perception told me that water was not draining from the bathtub, and with my equally acute powers of deductive reasoning, I swiftly determined that something – probably a big wad of mutant hairballs – had plugged the drain.
Minutes later I entered the bathroom dressed for battle: a plumber’s snake dangled from my fist like a bullwhip. The furrows in my forehead, plowed there by grim determination, were dotted with beads of sweat, or perhaps bath water, because I had forgotten to towel off.
You are probably asking yourself: What is a plumber’s snake? Is it one of those things you read about that swims up into toilets and gives elderly ladies heart attacks?
No. Basically, a plumber’s snake is a long metal device that you use to damage shower tiles and small children if they happen to be in the same voting precinct when you are cranking it.
I began ramming the snake down the drain. I immediately encountered an obstruction, because the snake kept wanting to spring back out of the drain as if it were some mad jack-in-the-box. The obstruction turned out to be a bend in the pipe.
More of the snake began to slip into the drain. I could hear it clearly … so clearly that my powerful intellect was able to guide me to the conclusion that it had gone UP the pipe instead of DOWN, and would have inserted itself into my ear had it not been for a metal plate covering the opening beneath the faucet.
I reasoned that if I could remove that metal plate, I could force the snake DOWN, and it could go nowhere but into the drain pipe, unless it bored through the pipe and into Earth’s crust.
So I set about unscrewing the screw that held the plate in place. I did not know the screw hadn’t been moved since man developed metallurgy, and no sooner than I could say, “What hath God wrought,” the screw broke, the plate fell off and I was staring at a slime-encrusted hole that resembled a biblical description of hell.
Ever the opportunist, I inserted the plumber’s snake into the hole and began merrily plunging away, and half an hour later I had slime all over the bathroom, the drain was plugged worse than ever and it was almost time to go to work.
That’s when I called Dad.
I’m happy to report the drain is now clear and the lid to hell has been capped and you can all return to your homes. Except the kitchen faucet is dripping.
This column was originally published in a February 1988 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, Ello and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Who knew I had such deep thoughts?
Filmmakers would have you believe every hour of every day is fraught with adventure. The typical cinematic day begins with an illicit love affair followed by a mysterious telephone call, a car chase and a narrowly thwarted assassination attempt.
But life rarely imitates art. This occurred to me recently as I was standing in an office supply store. The clerk had just told me IBM manufactures a ribbon cassette that is compatible with my Royal typewriter. That made me happy – inordinately happy. And I didn’t know why.
After all, small success stories such as these are not the stuff of which entertainment is made. Had I not been taught by 25 years of watching television and movies that a person could not be truly happy unless he were realizing his most extravagant dreams?
It had been a good day, so far, and as I went over the events that had made it that kind of day, I began to remember something many of us often forget under the barrage of video and celluloid fantasies.
That morning, I finally discovered a place where our writers’ group could meet. I belong to the Redneck Riviera Writers Group. We get together twice a month and compare notes on the business of writing. We had been meeting at people’s homes, or local eateries, but it soon became obvious that if we were to expand beyond our current membership of five people, we would have to find a permanent meeting place. After a fruitless search, we found a new home at the YMCA, courtesy of Joe Lukaszewski. That made me feel good.
Something else nice happened that morning. I found a book of Ramsey Campbell short stories I hadn’t known existed. I’m a student of the short story and Campbell is a bona fide master. The book should be fascinating.
I also picked up what I think will be the perfect gift for a friend. It, too, is a book of short stories, but these are special. I had never seen the book outside of the one copy I’d been hoarding for myself. Now she can enjoy it too.
Pop artist Andy Warhol died recently. In one of his obituaries I came across a reference to a movie of his titled “Sleep.” The movie depicted a person sleeping. That’s it. Two hours of a person sleeping. The entertainment virtues of the film are less than dubious and the artistic virtues debatable, but I think I understand what Warhol might have been saying.
The small, mundane successes and failures – things that would end up on the cutting room floor – are the body and texture of life. They are what make life an endlessly fascinating experience. Spilling coffee on the living room carpet. Finding a letter from a friend in your mailbox. The thousand things that you forget a day after they’ve happened. They are what get us through accomplishments to crises.
So it was a pretty good day. Not great, but not horrible. Just something to be thankful for.
This column was published in the Sunday, January 10, 1988 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
This is the Sunday, Feb. 7, 1988 edition of the Northwest Florida Daily News featuring the new name and new look. Image by Del Stone Jr.
Our newspaper, the Daily News, has embarked on an ambitious redesign project which I am overseeing, and this has given me the opportunity to investigate many important design questions, foremost among them the question of how much am I going to be paid extra for doing this.
The staff and I have become like brothers and sisters during this project, and though my sisters and I fought to near-death until we were older and wiser and could hire trained killers to manage our inter-family relationships, I have nothing but optimism for the redesign’s eventual success, though I may be witnessing that happy event from the great newsroom in the sky.
If I were to offer a single piece of advice to an editor contemplating a redesign, it would be to lie down and take several pills until the feeling passes or you die. But newspapers must change if they are to survive, which what the last Neanderthal man said as the tool-making Cro-Magnon man sedated him with a large clubbing tool. So to avoid the tar pits I have blundered into, you should consider the following:
WHAT GOES THERE? The most difficult aspect of a redesign involves choosing an identity for your newspaper. Presumably, your newspaper’s identity should be derived from your community’s identity, unless your community consists of a penal colony, an industry that has been rendered obsolete by talking Japanese toy robots and a rehabilitation clinic for serial ax murderers. In that case you should put a large brown bag over your community and kidnap subscribers from other communities.
If felony is not an option and your community has no identifiable identity, it would be best if you published your newspaper under what is known as an Assumed Identity, which will then impart an Assumed Identity to your community so that nobody will know who anybody else really is, and your community will probably be crossed off the map, as if it were participating in a federal witness protection program.
WHAT’S IT GOING TO LOOK LIKE? Will your newspaper be gray and drab and remind the reader that he really should get going and have that will made out? Or will ti feature high-candlepower, dazzling color photographs, eye-popping graphics and multi-chromatic bar treatments, so that when the reader opens the page he is charred by third-degree powder burns?
Decisions, decisions. You can save yourself some trouble if you take this precaution: If the redesign looks bad, stick to your guns, at least for the first 10 minutes, then blame it on someone else such as the Advertising Department or the community. You can even blame it on the federal witness protection program. At any rate, it certainly wasn’t YOUR fault.
PRODUCING MOCKUPS: A number of pitfalls await the designer at this stage of the project.
1. You will be tempted to use may different typefaces so that your pages resemble ransom notes. Do not do this. Stick to only several hundred typefaces, and carefully regulate their usage, as in, “Helvetica may only be used when the Pope canonizes another street dweller” or, “Perpetua is reserved for stories about hang glider pilots who find religion in the clouds, not to mention birds of prey.”
2. You will be tempted to box as many stories and photographs as you can, which will look as if a spider’s web has been sucked into the press. It’s much easier if you use fewer rules but compensate by increasing the thickness of the rule. For example: DON’T use 400 one-point rules on a page. Instead, use a single 400-point rule.
3. Many, many years ago, as far back as the early ’80s even, it was decided that tint blocks could break up a gray page with the really novel approach of putting even more gray on the page. Now that pages resemble aerial photographs of Nebraska farmland, you may be tempted to refine the process by screening only selected passages of stories, as if your page had passed through the hands of Israeli censors.
I suggest you screen the entire page.
GETTING READY FOR THE REDESIGN: Eventually, you will actually have to do something to bring the redesign closer to reality, such as talking about having a negative of something made. This will require expertise in negotiating with the cameraroom, which means you should spend few hours each week at a pistol range before you actually go into the cameraroom to negotiate.
This is how the conversation might go if you are unprepared:
You: Excuse me, sir, but could you please make a negative of this? I know it’s an imposition and I promise to make it up to you somehow, though I can’t say when because little Billy needs an operation to remove my wife’s pacemaker from his stomach, which he accidentally swallowed when he was giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to his older sister after she tried to hock the pacemaker to a neighborhood crack dealer and the FBI raided the place and she put it in her mouth to hide the evidence and then fainted because she’s hypoglycemic, and the only reason little Billy was there to save her was because she was supposed to be babysitting him since my wife is in the hospital having her intestines scraped.
Camerarooom dweller: Die and go to hell.
You: Yes sir, and thank you sir. You’ve been more than generous with your time.
But with adequate preparation, you can have the cameraroom eating out of your hands.
You: Hands up against the wall. Spread ’em! Make a negative of this and don’t give me any backtalk or I’ll blow your brains out all over the mounting plate with this .357 Magnum.
Cameraroom dweller: YES SIR! You’re a rough and tough newspaper designer, and I’m going to do exactly what you say right now! And how else may I serve you, Master?
CHANGE, CHANGE AND MORE CHANGE: At some point during the redesign process, probably between the “Developing of High Concepts” stage and the “Just Chewing the Fat about It” stage, keener minds will begin to suspect that a redesign might alter the newspaper’s appearance.
This must be avoided at all costs. Nobody must know anything – not even you. Otherwise, you will seriously reduce the level of confusion when the redesign debuts.
WHEN THE REDESIGN DEBUTS: You will know if the redesign is a success if you walk into the newsroom and are greeted with thunderous applause and the publisher hands you a check for $20 skillion dollars, in which case you should thank your producer, your director and all the little people who helped you.
But just to be on the safe side, have a Lear jet standing by with the engines running.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image courtesy of Concorede Pictures.
“Chopping Mall” stars Kelli Maroney as Alison Parks, Tony O’Dell as Ferdy Meisel, Russell Todd as Rick Stanton, Karrie Emerson as Linda Stanton, Barbara Crampton as Suzie Linn, and Nick Segal as Greg Williams. Directed by Jim Wynorski. Rated R with a 1-hour, 17-minute run time. See it on Amazon Prime and Tubi.
Del’s take
“Chopping Mall” is a product of the incomparable Roger Corman, king of the independent, low-budget exploitation film.
Corman began his career in the mid-1950s making science fiction/horror movies (“The Beast with a Million Eyes”) and Westerns (“Five Guns West”), and became known as the “King of the Drive-In.” He continued in the 1960s with a series of opulent gothic horror movies based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe (“The Pit and the Pendulum”) and worked with stars such as Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Ray Miland and Peter Lorre.
Eventually Corman established his own studio, New World Pictures. He is credited with starting the careers of numerous A-list actors and directors, including Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorcese, Peter Bogdanovich, James Cameron and Jonathan Demme, to name a few.
Corman produced “Chopping Mall,” along with his wife, Julie. It was shot mostly at the Sherman Oaks Galleria mall in Los Angeles in 20 days, with two days of studio filming. The film is described as a parable of Reaganesque consumption and has become a bit of a cult hit over the years.
The plot is fairly straightforward: A group of teenagers holds an after-hours drinking and sex party at a furniture store in a shopping mall on the same night a trio of security robots goes online for the first time. Unfortunately for the teenagers, a lightning strike damages the robots’ programming and they embark on a killing spree. Armed with tranquilizing darts, tasers and directed-energy weapons, the robots are more than a match for a group of oversexed teens … or are they?
Originally marketed as “Killbots,” (a superior title in my opinion) “Chopping Mall” was filmed at the same location as “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” But trust me, it bears little resemblance to that classic coming-of-age movie. “Chopping Mall” is mostly a bloody excess of exploding heads, lots of jiggling breasts, tacky ’80s-esque music, some seriously terrible dialogue (which was mostly ad-libbed from what I understand) and crappy special effects – heck, they even poached the ray gun sound effects from the George Pal version of “War of the Worlds.”
But as an artifact of the ’80s, “Chopping Mall” is a fascinating time capsule. As I watched the movie I made a list of some of the uniquely ’80s features: big hair, designer jeans, pay phones, landlines, popped collars, circular glasses frames, pastels, Better Cheddar, CRTs, gun stores in a mall, cigarette machines (a pack of smokes cost $1.25), suspenders, button-down shirts, wooden skateboards, handheld calculators the size of mobile phones, khakis with pleats and shoulder boards.
Wow, those were the days. Not.
Look, “Chopping Mall” isn’t high art. It’s a low-budget exploitation film, squarely within the Roger Corman mode of a moviemaking. As silly entertainment it’s just fine. I can think of worse ways to waste an hour and 17 minutes of my life. Go into it with low expectations and you won’t be disappointed. Just be prepared for some serious gore.
I give “Chopping Mall” a grade of B. Anything higher would dishonor its low-budget aspirations. But I’m guessing Mladen will gush – it’s right up his alley. So expect multiple A’s, maybe even with a bullet. Or an exploding head.
Mladen’s take
Yeah, I was hyped when Del used the phrase “jiggling breasts” in his review. All of a sudden, I was looking forward to watching “Chopping Mall.” But trouble soon arrived. The problem? The bared breasts were front-loaded. So, the remaining four-fifths of the movie was barely tolerable to me. No more nudity, just hokey – even for a Corman film – analog-ish visual effects and blood splatter. Let’s face it, despite years of writing movie reviews with Del as my antagonist, he still has no ability to distinguish between cartoonish depiction of slit throats or exploding heads and realistic, honest-to-goodness, stomach-churning graphic violence.
Where to begin evaluating “Chopping Mall?” How about the old saying, “lightning never strikes twice in the same place?” Why? Because in “Chopping Mall” lightning struck THREE times in the same place to send the trio of Bobcat tractor-like killerbots on a hunting spree. Sheesh. From there, the movie gets better in the sense that it gets worse.
We start with four heterosexual couples and then there were three and then there were two and then one. I concede, the couples countdown was a tidy way to knock off the subadults portrayed in the film. The systematic, one-couple-slaughtered-at-a-time pace of the movie generated anticipation. “Ah,” I’d say to myself, “she bought it because she was unable to use a Molotov cocktail correctly. Burning to death sucks. How will her boyfriend meet the Grim Reaper?” Wait a few minutes and, pow, a killerbot grabs the boyfriend and drops him from the mall’s third floor. Thud, and we’re shown a pool of diluted ketchup pooling around the boyfriend’s cracked skull.
For Christ’s sake, the movie didn’t even have a decent soundtrack and it was made in the decade, 1980s, that generated some of the best songs ever. Yes, Corman’s studio did things on the cheap but, come on, why not drop a bit of change for the right to use Blondie’s “Rapture?”
Why the f— Del thought I’d like this movie, I have no idea. Maybe he thought I’d like it because it has gained somewhat of a cult following over the years. Maybe he just wanted to insult my taste in movies. No matter, “Chopping Mall” deserves no better than a C-. But, I don’t want to discourage filmgoers from watching other “Gore”man flicks. There are a lot of them. Del, here are a few that I watched and enjoyed: “The Wasp Woman,” “Carnosaur,” “Death Race 2000” and its sequel, “Death Race 2050,” and let’s not ignore “Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda.”
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.
The sadists I work with on the wired desk have a game they play from June 1 to Nov. 30.
They know I am fascinated by hurricanes. They see my tracking charts featuring the scribbled admonition that he who steals this chart will die of earworms.
Worst of all, they know I am always anxious to study the satellite photographs.
We receive three satellite photographs each day. The first is transmitted at about 4 a.m., the second at 4 p.m. and the last at 9:30 p.m. Each has its own idiosyncrasies. The morning photo has poor resolution. The afternoon photo is usually sharp, and more closely represents the extent of the cloud cover. This is the photo we publish in the newspaper. The night photo exaggerates the cloud cover, but it can give you an idea of trends in a storm’s movement.
At any rate, I want to see them all. Enter the sadists.
My desk used to be next to the Laserphoto receiver and I could quickly intercept any photographs entering its collection tray. But now my desk is located across the room. Now I must rely on the good graces of the wire desk to supply me with satellite photos.
Ha ha ha ha ha, boy am I a schmuck. Relying on the good graces of the wire desk is like hiring a 40-foot python to babysit small children.
The game goes like this:
1. I am sitting across the room, minding my own business, when suddenly I hear the telltale click of a Laserphoto being cut and fed into the collection tray. All eyes on the wire desk also turn to the Laserphoto machine, as if were a slot machine that had just rung up four cherries.
2. Somebody on the wire desk leaps up and snares the photo.
3. A triumphant “AH HA!” rings across the newsroom.
4. The satellite photo is held so that everybody on the wire desk may see it, but not I.
5. Suddenly, everybody on the wire desk becomes an expert at interpreting satellite photography. “Looks like a suspicious cloud mass in the Caribbean,” they shout in delight. “Yes sir, I see evidence of a circulation in that cloud mass,” or, “Are those spiral bands beginning to form in that Atlantic disturbance?”
6. They sneak peeks at me and titter like schoolgirls. They want me to get p and come over there and try to beg for the photo, but I know they’d pass it from person to person in a perverse game of keep-away, so I refuse to act like I’m interested.
7. They raise the stakes by saying in loud voices, “Uh oh, this looks like a Category 5 storm to me. I don’t think we better let Del see this. I think we should tear this up and burn it. Del wouldn’t be interested, anyway.”
8. The final act in the game involves my capitulation, where I must prostrate myself and shout, “Come on you slimes, gimme that satellite photo. PLEEEZE?” This always is greeted with malicious merriment, especially if I have to get down on my knees and grovel.
Now isn’t that sick?
This column was published in the Playground Daily News sometime in the 1980s, possibly 1986, and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image courtesy of De Paolis In.Co.R. Studio.
“The House by the Cemetery” Starring Catriona MacColl, Paola Malco and Ania Pieroni. Directed by Lucio Fulci. 86 minutes. Not rated.
Del’s take
“The House by the Cemetery” is a film only a horror purist could love, and love it they do, in gushing online paeans that celebrate its blood-drenched genius. Written by legendary screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti and directed by the Godfather of Gore, Lucio Fulci, “House” is itself a paean to violence, splashing its audience with viscera, maggots, and other gory tropes of Italian horror cinema.
It is part of Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy, which also includes “City of the Living Dead” and “The Beyond” – entries in a catalog of horror movies, spaghetti westerns and comedies that make up the erstwhile communist agitator’s body of work. Fulci passed away in 1996 due to complications from diabetes after suffering a life nearly as tragic as his horror films, but he has developed a cult following over the years and many of his fans rate “The House by the Cemetery” one of his best works.
The story is about a young academic, Dr. Norman Boyle, who brings his wife and son to a small, rural town so that he may resume the work of a colleague, identified only as Dr. Petersen. Petersen was researching the notorious Dr. Freudstein, a 19th century medical practitioner who allegedly conducted forbidden experiments resulting in disfigurement, death and, shall we say, supernatural complications. During his investigation, Petersen inexplicably loses his mind, kills his girlfriend and hangs himself from the rafters of the town library. Now Dr. Boyle has arrived to finish Petersen’s work. He has even moved his family into the house that was previously occupied by Dr. Freudstein.
The Boyles are joined by Ann, ostensibly a babysitter for young Bob, the Boyles’ blindingly blonde-haired son. But she may be in league with the supernatural forces that rule the Freudstein house. Bob’s mother, Lucy, seems to sense something is off about Ann. In fact, she knows something is off about the entire house but she soldiers on, the loving if weary spouse of an obsessed academic.
The Boyles’ presence rekindles the ghostly inhabitant of Freudstein House and all manner of jump scares, sudden spooks and not-so-ethereal attacks commence, culminating in an inevitable showdown between man and boogeyman.
The film was released in 1980, which dates it. More substantially – and jarringly – its Italian roots, and its Italian horror sensibility, establish a distance between movie and audience that “House by the Cemetery” may not be able to overcome in the United States. Its case is not helped by the oceans of blood and horrifically graphic violence that, even by today’s standards, will present a challenge to weak-stomached audience members. It could have been worse. According to lore, Fulci was mandated to slay at least some of his darlings to keep the movie at an R rating in the U.S.
More puzzling are the weird lapses in cognition experienced by the characters. For instance, in one scene a woman is brutally (and bloodily) murdered. Her body is dragged across the kitchen and down into the cellar, leaving a blood trail wide as an interstate highway. The next morning Ann, the suspicious au pair, sets about cleaning up the mess (without inquiring as to its cause, which to my mind casts her in league with the devil). Lucy walks into the kitchen, sees Ann down on the floor with her bucket and scrub brush, and asks her what she is doing. Ann says, “I made coffee,” and that answer seems satisfactory to Lucy, who turns and heads toward the stove. Blood trail? What blood trail? The movie is rife with such oversights.
Replete with overly dramatic acting, a musical score that will strike Americans as intrusively silly, and inexplicable gaps in storytelling, “House by the Cemetery” falls more into grindhouse mockery than art house storytelling.
For those reasons I won’t recommend it. I watched out of a sense of duty to Fulci and Sacchetti, but in retrospect, “House by the Cemetery” wasn’t very good.
If you are a horror purist or a collector of oddball cinema, you might enjoy the movie. Otherwise, try something a bit more modern, and a lot more consistent with reality.
“House by the Cemetery” is available on Shudder.
I rate it a D+.
Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.
Image courtesy of Karolina Grabowska of Pexels by way of a Creative Commons license. https://www.pexels.com/@karolina-grabowska/
To watch Mom iron is to watch a carpenter join pieces of wood into something that ill be handed down, parent to child, for generations. It is watching an artist imbue blank canvas with timelessness. It is watching a craftsman at her trade, doing a thing I will never be able to do.
It is almost seeing art done.
She shoulders me aside – amused by my fumbled attempt to press a pair of pants – and takes the iron in hand. Suddenly it is endowed with power, supernatural, no longer inanimate but a living thing. She wields it as if it weighed nothing. She never hesitates.
The pants are splayed on the ironing board, impossible wrinkles over every square inch. They couldn’t be straightened. The thought of even trying leaves me giddy.
Mom sets to work.
“It’s important that you stretch the pants over the board,” she says, her voice stretched too, as she pulls the pants over the board’s tapered snout and spreads them flat. She sprays starch over them, then presses with the iron. It plows into the wrinkles, smoothing them. Steam rises from the fabric as the iron is drawn back, and a hot, electric smell fills the kitchen.
She gets to the pocket and pulls the pants away from the board, grabs the pocket the way one would handle an unruly child, and spreads it flat. “Always iron the pockets before you iron the outside. If you don’t, you’ll leave an imprint of the pocket on the outside.”
I wonder why I never noticed imprints of pockets on my bachelor friends’ pants. Do they know?
She shows me how it happens and, just as she explained, the imprint is there. She irons the pockets steaming flat, then flips the pants over and irons the outside. No imprint. Maybe I would’ve discovered that for myself. Maybe not.
Then she starts on the legs. She holds the pants vertically, matches the seams at the bottom. “Line these up as closely as possible,” says she, eyeballing her work as if she were about to cleave a gemstone. “They have to be matched just right or the crease won’t come out the way it’s supposed to.” I believe her. But I don’t see how she’ll manage it.
The legs are twisted beyond hope. She lays them on the board, lifts the top leg and lets it dangle over the front; she sets upon the bottom leg. Starch and steam. She moves the iron at impossible angles, finds all the lines, smoothes them under heat and pressure into a flat plane. Up the leg, over the seam and down the other side. The pants are beginning to look like pants, the improbably magically becoming possible.
She pulls the dangled leg, lays it flat against the other, then goes to work on it, too, with baffling certainty, pushing the iron over the cloth, making it presentable. She puts a crease in this leg, and it is a match with the other.
The whole business is flipped over and she starts from the opposite side, doing away with the last bit of disorder. Then she peels the pants from the board, holds them up for final inspection, slides the legs carefully through a hanger and hands them to me.
“That’s how you iron a pair of pants.”
I hang them in the closet, careful that they don’t touch the other clothes there. I’m not sure I want to put them on. They look too nice to wear.
I’ll never get the hang of it.
Mom has left the ironing board in the kitchen, and I, the understudy to some Florentine realist, am only too happy to do the easy part, to put away the artist’s easel.
This column was originally published in the Playground Daily News in the early 1980s and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, Ello and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image by Flickr user Greg Virtucio by way of a Creative Commons license. https://www.flickr.com/photos/gregvirtucio/
I opened into my personal computer file the other day and there, at the top of the list, was a short story with a message especially for me written above it. The message read: “Good news, Del.” A little farther down was written: “Del, I just knew this would make your day.” Tom Conner, our state editor, had left it for me.
The story was about the Cuban Death’s Head Cockroach. To quote The Associated Press: “The Cuban Death’s Head Cockroach, a three-inch, thumb-sized monster, has migrated from its native Caribbean to South Florida.”
That’s just great.
The story went on to say most of the 2,000 species of roaches already live in Florida, but the new roach claims all prizes for size.
Wonderful news. Clint Eastwood couldn’t have done as much to make my day.
You are reading the words of an adult male who is mortally terrified of cockroaches. I will let snakes crawl up the sleeves of my short, pick up insects of all description, touch assorted creatures slimy and horrible, but I cannot stand the thought of a roach coming near me, the thought of breathing the same air as a “three-inch, thumb-sized monster.” The minute bug experts begin describing new cockroaches with hyphenated words, you may look for me booking it to the next county.
Del turned on the light and something moved.
I have heard horror stories about cockroaches, and I have my own to tell, but none has ever involved a “three-inch monster,” though I would say some looked a strapping 6 feet in the paralyzingly dispassionate aspect of midnight.
Consider:
– A roach somehow gained entry to a sealed envelope and was mailed from Washington, D.C. to somewhere like Nebraska; I am certain the person who opened the letter must have had all of his suspicions about bureaucracy forever confirmed.
Mom vs. the snake around her neck.
– I once covered a town commission meeting that I thought would never end – until a giant Cro-Magnon roach scurried across the wall behind the commissioners. The place emptied in about 30 seconds. And I was the first one out.
– I was at a party when a palmetto bug – not a roach but about as close a relative to a roach as, say, a rat is to a squirrel – crawled across the ceiling above the food table. Our considerate hostess swatted it and that was that, until the next day when she informed me she had found a leg the size of a well-fed mastodon’s in the French onion dip. Had I eaten any of that?
Wild Kingdom at the golf course.
– Once, as I stepped into our outdoor utility room, a roach dropped from the ceiling, slipped down the sleeve of my tank top, crawled across my ribcage and, unbeknownst of me, dropped out of my shirt and vanished to parts unknown. When they found me, I had eaten myself into a coma.
– I was riding in a car when the driver suddenly shrieked and nearly ran us through a telephone pole. A roach, she screamed, had crawled across her foot. Then I screamed. One would have thought a swarm of killer bees had moved into the glove compartment, we were out of that car so fast.
– My premier roach story involves former Daily News reporter Steve Chew. One unforgettable Sunday night, Chew found a very large, very dead cockroach on the floor in our backshop. He appropriated said cockroach and hid it beneath my keychain in a way that I could not see it. As we got ready to leave, I reached across my desk and picked up the keychain. Perversely, the roach’s rigor-mortic leg hooked on my thumb. I raised my hand and the nightmarish thing dangled from it, penduluming back and forth, a torment to me even in death. A bolt of pure fright shot up my spine and I threw down the keys, strangling on a scream I couldn’t get to come out. Chew was paralyzed with laughter.
“Three-inch monsters” invading South Florida, eh. Something tells me my days in this state are numbered.
This column was originally published in the Playground Daily News in 1983 (est.) and is used with permission.
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
“Phase IV” Starring Nigel Davenport, Michael Murphy, Lynne Frederick, Lots of Ants and others. Directed by Saul Bass. 84 minutes. Rated PG. Hulu, Prime.
Mladen’s take
“Phase IV,” lovingly built in 1974 with an admirable effort at incorporating animated and computer graphics to enhance the film, is sci-fi at its finest – provocative and enthralling.
Remember, we’re talking about 1974 here. 1974 was 47 years ago. 1974 was the year of another Republican dickhead president’s impeachment (Nixon). Hell, I was but a sprite in 1974.
Del always bellyaches about my inadequate summaries of film plots, so I’ll give it a better shot this go-around. The problem? A completely thorough plot summary gives away the story, which, I assume, makes a movie less fun to watch.
The “Phase IV” plot: Mankind drops to the bottom of the food chain. Sufficient summary, Del? No? OK.
A burst of celestial energy, detected early and highly anticipated by scientists because of what it could do to life on Earth, passes through our planet without causing obvious change or damage. One lone entomologist, however, notices something odd unfolding in Arizona post-energy wave. Ants of different species are no longer feuding, are systematically cooperating to extinguish their predators, and appear to be gathering at pow-wows to talk strategy. The ant tribes build a half-dozen cooling towers for their massive collective nest. No big deal, right? Some regular ants (and termites) have built elevated structures to help condition the air flowing through their underground homes for tens of thousands of years, probably longer. But, the Arizona ant colony chimneys are symmetrical and constructed at right angles. They’re topped with triangular slits inside squares that face in exactly the same direction and tilt upward and back slightly. The chimneys are symbolic structures, too, maybe even a form of religious worship. The entomologist (Davenport as Dr. Ernest D. Hubbs) concludes the energy burst has rendered the ants intelligent. Trouble is on the way unless the “natural order” is restored, he advises a panel. The panel authorizes construction of a research facility smack dab in the middle of the territory of the sectarian smart ants. Hubbs recruits Lesko (Murphy) to staff the laboratory. Lesko is a numbers theorist and cryptographer with expertise in deciphering languages. There’s a third person in the story, Lynne Frederick as teenager Kendra, but she’s used to help the movie along to reach Phase IV of the Ant plan for humanity. In short, Hubbs and Lesko end up fighting the six-legged version of Star Trek’s Borg. Very, very neat.
“Phase IV” is remarkable for its capture of real ants performing ant-like duties in organized, methodical, and adaptable fashion. The humans and the smart ants duel, each species countering the other’s moves of conquest and domination. Wait until you see how the ants flush the scientists and the girl from their geodesic dome laboratory. Hell, Lesko even devises a way to communicate with the ant queen controlling the millions (billions?) of worker ants working to control the humans. She’s in no mood to negotiate a settlement or foster inter-species compromise. That’s very human-like. No?
“Phase IV” is an unambiguous A. You need to watch this blast from the past, something Del has come around to calling a “stream gem.”
Del’s take
I’ve seen bits and pieces of “Phase IV” over the years but never the entire movie until Mladen got a bee in his bonnet and suggested we review a film about super-smart ants.
I could tell it was a ’70s-vintage flick because of the Lazenby Computer Smooth font used in some of the typography. It seems every movie, book or magazine that sought to appear “modern” in the 1970s used Lazenby Computer Smooth. Now, of course, it makes me think “old.”
But that’s OK because “Phase IV” is a darned good little movie, much better than what the movie reviewers like Mladen – oops, that just slipped out – said about it. (Remember how the movie reviewers trashed “The Terminator”? Yeah. Those guys. Can’t believe a word they say.)
Mladen finally, after much ridiculing from yours truly, provided a decent plot summary, so I can get right into the critique itself.
You can’t judge “Phase IV” by today’s production standards. The music is contrived and hokey (though “modern” for its day), the characters behave in ways that would earn them a social media drubbing (Dr. Hubbs smokes!) and the special effects resemble those you and I would create if somebody handed us an 8mm movie camera and told us to revise “Plan 9 from Outer Space.”
My big gripe with “Phase IV” is that the characters seem incidental to the plot. Hubbs is a throwback to the misguided scientist who seemed to occupy every big bug movie produced in the 1950s, while his dashing sidekick – in this case Murphy’s James R. Lesko – seems more interested in 16-year-old Kendra Eldridge (Lynne Frederick) than solving the mystery of the ants, creepy even for that era. Everyone else was cannon fodder so by the end I didn’t care as much about their fates as I should have.
But the ideas! Spectacular and original barely describe them. Director Bass doesn’t limit his ants’ intelligence to mere acts of malice but has them building oddly designed towers, drilling symmetrical holes in animal flesh and using unconventional warfare to flush out their human antagonists from their protective geodesic dome. The towers alone are worth the watch, standing creepily over the desert like mysterious Easter Island statuary, festooned with alien glyphs and designed with an architecture that weirdly, at least to me, suggested a non-human intelligence.
The inventiveness of the ant intelligence is under-appreciated by movie fans not including the cult worshippers “Phase IV” has amassed over the years, and it is one of those movies you should not only watch but add to your collection, along with “Day of the Triffids,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (original) and “Forbidden Planet,” to name a few.
I was surprised to learn the movie was not shot in Arizona but Kenya, and that it was a box office flop, which sealed Bass’s fate as a director. That’s too bad because “Phase IV” is a classic science fiction film and a wonderful cautionary tale about mankind’s hubris.
I give it an A despite its flaws.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and author.