Retro Raunch Revisit

SHOCKER (1989)
Mitch Pileggi, Peter Berg, Michael Murphy, Richard Brooks, Camille Cooper, Ted Raimi, Vincent Guasteferro
Directed by Wes Craven
Released October 27, 1989 (Happy 35th Anniversary)
Horace Pinker is a terrifying serial killer with a limp, and doubles as a TV repairman. He's slaughtered over 30 people in an L.A. suburb named Maryville, and the police finally zero in on him as their prime suspect. Lead detective, Lt. Don Parker, is all set to at last nab the sonofabitch, but Pinker eludes him and savagely kills Parker's family, except for his foster son, high school football star Jonathan, who by sheer luck was not at home during the massacre, but dreamt it. Parker remains on the case, and as Jonathan mourns the devastating loss of his adoptive family, he starts having more disturbing dreams that point to Pinker's repair shop. He tells his Dad, who in turn with a number of cops arrive at Pinker's place which is full of cluttered junk, electronics, and numerous TV's displaying scenes of catastrophe & destruction. After a shootout resulting in 4 dead officers, the killer's narrow escape, and Parker in deep shit with his bosses, Pinker murders Jonathan's girlfriend, Allison, in revenge. She quite literally dies in a bloodbath. Jonathan (who at this state should be catatonic) has another dream of Pinker on the prowl, but this time he thwarts the madman's kidnapping and barely escapes being killed himself during a fight on a rooftop. With the cops in tow, Pinker is finally apprehended, and his arrest is followed by un unseen but no doubt sensationalist trial resulting in quick conviction, and sentence of death by electric chair. Jonathan demands from his Dad to attend as a witness, and Parker agrees. On the execution date, Pinker is in his jail cell making a deal with the Devil, by performing a black magic ritual on his knees infront of a TV, hooked up to jumper cables(!) He is zapped/anointed from a groovy-voiced, demonic force and sparks fly just before he is stopped by guards.

The accompanying Priest is stunned and disgusted by the Satanic paraphernalia. Having passed out, Pinker bites the lip of one guard trying to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, chomps on the fingers of the other, and is then beaten while he laughs maniacally. Led to the chamber and utterly remorseless, he locks eyes on Jonathan and tells him that he is his real father. As a boy, Jonathan shot biological Papa in the left knee to protect his mother whom Pinker was fatally attacking; thus accounting for their strange, psychic connection. Parker angrily jumps up and tells Pinker to STFU. The execution goes awry, and Pinker disappears in darkness where he kills some prison staff. Jonathan and Parker find Pinker's body which bursts into flames and vanishes. Having gotten a real supercharge instead of just dying-by-frying, a now newly juiced-up Pinker has turned into an immortal being of pure, evil energy; able to body-swap and travel through cable wires & powerlines into people's televisions to slaughter more families. Back home (how the hell does a kid at 16 or 17 back then even have their own place?), dreaming Jonathan is visited by Allison's ghost, and she hands over a heart pendant which gives him the strength to drive Pinker away; setting the course for our hero to play a deadly game of cat & mouse, trying to stop Pinker from resuming his body count. Our killer on the loose possesses the female prison doctor; a cop; most memorably: a little girl in a playground who swears like a trucker as she bouncingly hops & drags to operate a bulldozer, and is tackled by Jonathan infront of the girl's freaked out mother; the mother; a buff construction worker (Alice Cooper guitarist Kane Roberts) who tosses the pendant into a lake with his pickaxe; Jonathan's football coach; and Parker who nearly suffers a lethal heart attack during a chase atop a high voltage broadcast tower.

Alison protects Jonathan with an inner light (the power of undying love?) that repels Pinker, but after a brief wrong arrest for copycat murders to which he fled, Jonathan is cleared by his father. As Pinker escaped via a beam from a TV satellite dish, Jonathan is helped by his teammates (on standby at a power station ready to pull a little technical difficulty ala short circuit sabotage), and a pair of TV videocameramen (in a replica of the dead little sister's bedroom, set to go live-on-air) to bring Pinker back; trapped in the real world, where he'll be subject to the physical limitations of manipulated signal reception. [For Jonathan, this seems like the biggest/cleverest/riskiest experiment he'll ever partake in, for I'm guessing the how-to instructions needed for this digital trickery were probably not exactly plastered in the Panasonic and Sony equipment manuals of the day. So bravo & good luck you stealthy stuntman, as you venture into the idiot box airwaves]. While dreaming in his vibrating reclining chair, he makes out with Allison and gets back the pendant. He is also visited by the spirits of Pinker's victims who tell him to wake up, stop smooching, and prepare for his showdown. Pinker attacks him in his house by passing through light sockets in the wall but is repulsed by the pendant. Jonathan goes after him and the term "don't touch that dial" is completely thrown out the window as both men engage in a bizarre, channel surfing chase as they run amok through a crazy TV show landscape of documentary war footage; classic sitcoms; Alice Cooper concert antics on stage; historical disaster; South Korean street rioting; boxing; Entertainment Tonight with John Tesh (atleast he wasn't singing); Dr. Frankenstein and his famous monster; nuclear explosions; a redneck family's living room (complete with obligatory fat wife pigging out on the couch); and a televangelist preacher game show(!)

Will Jonathan get remote control, freeze-framing retribution? Will he still bang his dead girlfriend? Will Pinker be reduced to the output of a kiddie sparkler? What will happen to the neighborhood in a blackout? With their boob tubes broken, what will people do without their nightly fix from the TV Guide? While similarities to A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET can't be helped (a wisecracking villain who goes after his victims with an emphasis on sleep, anyone? How about parental guilt, or alternate realities?), this was a better than average slasher flick for Craven, inspite of the negativity heaped upon it. Originally more graphic with its violence, the movie was submitted to the MPAA 13 times before finally getting its X-rating changed to R. As Pinker was intended to be a new horror icon, the subgenre was fizzling out near the end of its craze, and the idea of a freshly-created franchise never saw fruition. However derided it is in Craven's stable for being cheesy and over the top in ridiculousness, its premise certainly brings laughs -- even if unintentional. Berg (more of a direcor & producer these days) looks a bit too old to be a high schooler, but ironically (and hilariously) he seemed to get his ass kicked more harmfully by running into a goal post and falling over a water table, than by Pinker tossing him around like a rag doll and beating the crap out of him. Yes, Berg's stiff & monotone acting is quite bad, and his character is a slight dork, but this is Pileggi's movie through n' through.

Best known as Walter Skinner on "The X-Files" for its entire run, Pileggi shines playing a merciless, brutish psychopath, and is clearly having a blast hamming it up as a homicidal heavy with bursts of insane giggling. [Pileggi and Craven teamed up again 26yrs later for the Director's last film (which he co-produced), THE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS, before his death at 76 on August 30, 2015]. Heather Langenkamp, Dr. Timothy Leary, and Craven himself (along with his son & daughter) drop in for quicky cameos, and the soundtrack features Megadeth covering Alice Cooper; Iggy Pop; Dangerous Toys; and hair metal one-off The Dudes of Wrath comprising members of Alice Cooper, Kiss, Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, and Whitesnake. In closing, SHOCKER is enjoyably silly, with some interesting & imaginative ideas for the sfx of the time. While there might have been an attempt at some sort of subliminal commentary about the exploitive oversaturation of 24hr news trauma, or excessive media consumption, or the budding germ of technological overload thanks to the proliferation of a mass communication medium, the movie is still a very funny romp. [The sound of an unseen British nature show narrator being punched out as he describes the red-crested nuthatch, instantly followed by Pinker climbing a tree near the bird's nest, and peering out over a sleeping Jonathan, still cracks me up]. In all fairness, the movie's amusing and wild absurdity single-handedly makes this an unapologetic, unashamedly, nostalgic, guilty pleasure fave of mine. Uneven and filled with imperfection, I loved it in high school and still fondly dig it the same all these years on. It definitely hits the spot for those goofy moods.