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| Rhodri Evans |
| Spookies USA, 1985 [Thomas Doran & Brendan Faulkner & Eugenie Joseph] Felix Ward, Dan Scott, Alec Nemser, Maria Pechukas Horror |
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| How I suffer for my art. Earlier this year, in an uncharacteristic act of self-abnegation, I toddled along to my local Arseache-a-plex to see the Steve Martin monstrosity Bringing Down the House. I did this solely to give it a five star rating on this beautiful website, to see if I would get my name on the video box; God knows no-one else has given it a good review. My, how that one backfired. I left the theatre with a chasm in my soul deep enough to store several thousand Queen Latifahs. Write? I could barely fucking speak. Even my self-penned sitcom about the non-events surrounding the employees of a relaxed and booming pant-retailer, No Worries in the Trouser Department, had better jokes in it, and that was absolutely godawful. I suppose Steve Martin did his best with the material he was presented with, which was akin to attempting to weave a Persian rug out of arsehair. I thought it could not get any worse than that. I was sorely, sorely mistaken.
Of course, you don�t have to be Barry freakin� Norman to work out that if you rent a film called Spookies, then you�re hardly in for an evening of cinematic excellence. However, you could seldom anticipate the extent of cinematic excrement that awaits you either; your hands renting films your arse can�t cash, you actually are dealing with dark forces here. It�s such a load of shit you could grow tomatoes in the case. The story, as far as I can make out, involves old-skool sorcerer and downright fiend Kreon the Necromancer�s attempt to harvest enough souls to bring his beloved bride, the unbelievably Winona Ryder-ish Isabella, back to life. He does this with the help of his severely monged offspring, the Spookies. The main Spookie is a feral cat-dude, who weirdly resembles Michael Jackson in Thriller (i.e. when he actually needed a bunch of make-up artists to make his face fall off). No surprises then to find him chasing a young boy early on, whom he slashes up and buries alive. Apologies if I made that sound exciting, it isn�t. Next up is a bunch of lost �teenagers�, who stumble upon Kreon�s mansion after being thrown out of a party for being too ugly and suspiciously old-looking. They start pissing around with a ouija board. I know this wildly original set-up may seem alien and revolutionary to you, but try and keep up. They get deaded one by one in a blitzkrieg of FX that the case assures us is �award-winning� (golly, was there a Cannes Golden Anus award back in 1985?). Isabella is resurrected, only to be reminded that the dreaded Kreon not only looks like Ian Duncan Smith but also has about as much, possibly even less, charisma. If only the horny sorcerer had spent more time washing his rotting cock rather than orating endless deathly-dull and confusing monologues, all of which were soul-obliterating aural compost, he might have been in there. Then again, probably not. As it happens, he gets stabbed in the head. Granted he�s no Orlando Bloom, but that kind of thing is uncalled for. The beauty then makes a runner but is pursued by the Spookies, in a seemingly never-ending chase scene that�s accompanied by the lamest rock �n� roll music you�ve heard this side of Bon Jovi�s vasectomies. It was at about that point that I officially concluded that I had been sucked into a vortex of student arsewater. But it�s not even over yet. There follows the obligitary twist, in which we discover what�s been bubbling away in that crypt since the beginning of the film. It is, in fact � look away now if you don�t wanna know the result � KREON. That�s right, fucking Kreon. Err, wasn�t he also in the film? Perhaps he has the power to be omnipresent. It�s debatable whether the old turd is omnipotent. He�s almost certainly impotent. This is not a film, it�s a feat of endurance that even twat-in-the-box David Bland would cack his man-nappies over. It sucks so much I was covered in fucking lovebites by the time it was finished. Get the picture? I didn�t like it very much. It�s just not very much fun. The script is criminally bad, but bad bad rather than funny bad (upon hearing a youngster pondering the mansion�s ownership, Kreon says, to himself �Yes, someone lives here�FOREVER�. Ooo, menacing. Err, who�s he referring to though?). It took three directors to make this film, which might explain why the end result looks oddly like a bunch of out-takes pasted together by David Blunkett. The one redeeming feature is the admittedly hilarious farting monsters who can only get killed by wine, but on the whole I just wanna put the whole experience behind me. If you are still interested in spending money on seeing this film, may I suggest you get that lobotomy you always wanted instead? |
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