Directed by Ted Nicolaou
Starring Diane Franklin, Gerrit Graham, Mary Woronov, Chad Allen, Jonathan Gries, Jennifer Richards, Aleandro Rey and Bert Remsen
Ahhh, TerrorVision. A precious flick from my childhood for a wholly unexpected reason. See, when I was in fifth grade there was this one-month stretch where my brother would pick out a movie for me to watch on Saturday nights. To this day, I still remember those four movies. Schwarzeneggar's Commando, They Still Call Me Bruce, and Spaceballs were the first three, and I'll never forget informing all of my grade-school bros about the glories of those flicks. The last one was the movie in question today, and while I fully acknowledge that it isn't a good flick by any traditional standard, it's loads of fun. Needless to say, 11-year-old me loved it with a vengeance.
Released in theaters just a few weeks after Troll, the movie was directed by Ted Nicolaou, a long-time Charles Band collaborator who would later go on to helm the Subspecies franchise for Full Moon Features. Again, this film kind of has a Full Moon counterpart in Bad Channels, which had a similar concept and was also directed by Nicolaou. I'm sure I'll be getting to that one in due time. There were a lot of directors who repeatedly worked with Band, but Nicolaou has a pretty unmistakable style. He starts off with a singular idea without a whole lot of substance and stretches it out as far as it can go. TerrorVision is no different. He timed this one out like a boss. Hell, there are long stretches where nothing of note happens, and while the stuffy dude that I am today was a little annoyed by it, it's the good kind of annoy. It also has some pretty impressive makeup effects stuff from John Carl Buechler, a name that everyone who read last week's review should be more than familiar with, along with an atmosphere that I can only describe as Pee Wee's Playhouse on crack if it wasn't already on crack. Now, time for the almighty plot description.
The action kicks off with what is pretty much an Empire Pictures staple - a long credits sequence to pad out the already lean 85 minute running time, this time with the added bonus of the Fibonaccis' amazing "TerrorVision" theme song. From here, we flash cut to a house unlike just about anything I've seen in any horror film before or since. There's overly sexualized Picasso-style paintings on the walls, lots of jarring colors, weird decorations...and then there's the people. Kids, it's time to meet the Puttermans, the movie's exaggerated-to-the-hilt nuclear family. The dad kinda looks like Jeffrey Jones if you hit his face with a mallet, and his wife starts the movie off in workout gear. The teenage daughter is the most wildly stereotypical "'80s rocker chick" your mind can possibly conjure up, complete with big hair and lots and lots of leather. That leaves the kid, Sherman, your star character who gives the movie its emotional Tootsie center (/MST3K joke). Oh, and there's also a live-in grandfather who is a gung-ho survivalist in the vein of Burt Gummer. I shit you not, all of this happens.
So how is this a horror movie? Well, I'll tell you. It seems that the dad (named Stanley) is all kinds of stoked about the brand-new satellite TV that he has just installed for their house. Somewhere off in space, an alien tasked with taking care of dangerous specimens has just royally fucked up and sent a dangerous creature out into the opens of space. Guess where it lands when the Putterman family has a fight with the movie's comically huge remote control. We see this beast in the first trimester of the movie, and I rank it slightly ahead of the Trolls from Troll and a good five yards behind Dream Master Freddy Krueger on John Carl Buechler's makeup effects list. It's big, it's fat, it's definitely disgusting and it has a tongue that acts like a vacuum. This thing likes to eat. Be prepared for lots of scenes of said creature eating stuff throughout the movie.
Remember how I said that this movie was weird? Well, as little kid Sherman and the grandfather kill time with a midnight monster movie show featuring a big-titted host wearing a Medusa hat (really), we get more victims in the form of the elder Puttermans and their honest-to-goodness swinger's party that they're throwing that night. Unfortunately, this introduces us to Spiro, a way-over-the-top (just like everything else in this cinematic masterpiece) Ricardo Montalban-style dude who's way more into Stanley than his hot wife. Hey, I thought she was hot in that workout gear, alright? The creature shows up and kills off all of the unimportant characters until we are eventually down to Sherman, his sister and her Heavy Metal Dude boyfriend. And lemme tell you something about Heavy Metal Dude - he is the best part of the movie. Creatively named O.D., I LOVED this guy when I first saw this movie, especially with what followed as the younger characters actually manage to BEFRIEND the monster and spend 10 minutes of your life attempting to teach it the meaning of life on Earth. Again, Nicolaou...he was something else when it came to stretching a basic concept.
I vividly remember that even as a kid I didn't find this movie's epic finale to be all that epic, but still, at least it's better than the final 10 minutes of Troll. See, while all of this has been going on, the alien who accidentally sent the monstrous beast to Earth has sporadically been popping up during the Medusa chick's show to warn the people of Earth about what they are facing. He eventually shows up to relay this message in person. So many complicated, layered plot threads going on at once, I tell you. I won't spoil exactly how this movie ends, but suffice to say it's kind of a downer on par with the Sword of Damocles (/obligatory reference). Although we at least get to hear that awesome song again as the ending credits roll.
To be sure, this movie isn't good by pretty much any definition that someone can objectively look at movies and quantify such things. The external reviews seem to concur, being as this movie has one of those amazing 0% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. But does anyone else besides me think that number is becoming more bullshit with each passing day? It seems that every decent movie these days gets an 80% or above. Some kind of deal between the studios and the critics since box office numbers are down? (/conspiracy theory) Anyway, TerrorVision was in and out of theaters in the blink of an eye in 1986, but it's become a big-time cult hit in the years since because it's just so out there.
I don't know exactly what the budget of this movie was, but whatever they were dealing with they managed to get their money's worth. In addition to the creature itself, there's plenty of laser blasts, electrocutions and even one scene where a somebody's face gets sucked off. Yeah, I know that I didn't mention any actors by name in this review. It's a complete roster of no-names, very different from the surprisingly star-studded lineup that we had in Troll. I can't say that this isn't without merit, considering that I just watched this movie and was blown away for all the wrong reasons by the acting ability put on display. Amazingly enough, though, it works to the movie's advantage. Fans of cheesy horror flicks will find plenty to like here, especially in the form of those characters. Every bad '80s stereotype isn't just on display, it's celebrated, and with how mean-spirited most modern movies are this is always a welcome change of pace.
Rating time. *** out of ****. This one DEFINITELY ain't gonna win any awards, but it brought me right back to childhood, and it looked great in HD. Check it out.
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