Shocker

Truth be told, I really had no idea what this movie was about. I made some assumptions like a really bad dude gets electrocuted and comes back to kill more people That part was correct. But outside of that, I was completely blind on this movie. I didn’t know, or at least wasn’t consciously aware that it was a part of the Wes Craven filmography. 1989 put this movie in his catalog after he had already hit the scene with both Hills Have Eyes movies as well as the first Nightmare on Elm Street flick. While he didn’t direct subsequent sequels in the Freddy franchise, he did pen the third installment in that series which we reviewed in a Spooktacular previously. I won’t say I’m intimately familiar with all of Craven’s work. I’ve burned through the Nightmare series a couple times, admittedly not all his work. But between that and the Scream series, coupled with several other stand alone titles, Craven is a trusted name in horror. Shocker is a fantastic example of the fact that just because someone is well known for a particular genre, it does not mean that all their entries are gems. Shocker is far from a gem.

I honestly don’t even really know where to start with this movie. The one word I’ve been using all day is simply “unhinged”. Everything about this movie is just wild. From scene to scene there’s just this insanely disjointed connection that I sat there the whole time just becoming more and more confused as to what was going on in the entire film. One of the things that was so funny to me was that there’s a pretty solid comparison from the structure of this film to Nightmare with Freddy. He and Pinkers, the villain of this film, are very similar. As are Jonathan, the protagonist of this film and Nancy in Nightmare. So there’s plenty of things that are similar. And it’s not to say that Nightmare is some masterpiece that holds up to the highest of scrutiny. But it is an iconic film that holds up pretty well even today. It’s not without it’s flaws but it’s been a classic for a number of generations now. So it’s so weird that a film like Nightmare could exist in the same time as space and this wacked out misadventure. I think one of the starkest contrasts was that there seemed to be some semblance of “rules” to Nightmare whereas in Shocker, kind of anything goes. It seemed very much to me that Craven wrote the entire movie when he was 11 and left it as is without any changes. His understanding of interpersonal relationships. His idea of what police do and do not do. His estimation of college and sports. There were just so many things that I kept watching and was just baffled at how this film ever got made.

One of the first things you’ll note in this film is that no one acts, ever. They can’t. Why is this? How could this be you may find yourself inquiring? Well it’s because no one has time to act because they’re all painfully busy OVERacting. There are times that people are just shouting dialogue at each other and you have no idea why. Sometimes characters come out of nowhere without motivation to do anything in particular and then they are doing whatever it is they’re doing at ten thousand percent intensity. I think it’s why I had to keep watching. I didn’t notice initially but the run time on the movie is almost 110 minutes. That’s almost a 2 hour horror movie from 1989. That’s unheard of. Horror movies of this caliber stay pretty tight at that 90 minute mark. So to tack on almost a whole extra hour of fever dream to this cinematic masterpiece is a feat I’m still trying to figure out how it was accomplished.

I think because this movie is a little off the beaten path, at least in my estimation, some context to the story is necessary. So our main protagonist is Jonathan. He’s on the football team at his college and is quite the athlete. He’s got a girlfriend whose name I forgot and right now I’m not curious enough to even look it up. But she’s there. They have a house for some reason. In this house they sleep on a waterbed. I needed to mention that because why would I not. This movie prominently features a waterbed. I know you thought those were only for uncles who live by themselves but Jonathan and girlfriend have one. There’s also a psycho killer on the loose. He’s a TV repair man. His name is Horace Pinker. Thats a name you don’t forget. Horace Pinker. The murdering TV repair man. Jonathan has a dream, on his waterbed, that Horace Pinker murders his brother, mother, and little sister. When he wakes up he finds out that Horace Pinker has murdered his brother, mother, and little sister. Whoa. Not just a dream, right? Also, Jonathan’s dad is a cop. The cop in charge of finding Horace Pinker. Small world again, right? So Jonathan tells his dad he knows who did it. His dad does a lot of wild shouting. But then he listens to Jonathan and they go to Horace’s workshop. Through some light violation of constitutional rights, they make their way in looking for Pinker. While inside, Pinker decides this is the perfect time to kill some more people. So he kills some police officers and then changes into his uniform so he can sneak out. Smart getaway, right? I know. It works until he runs into some more cops who don’t realize he’s not one of the 5 cops that came with them. But timing is perfect because he just murders the rest of the cops. Then he gets away. He’s a sly one, that Pinker.

After this, all the news media outlets do a really great job of specifically naming Jonathan as the one who knew that Pinker was the killer. Unfortunately, no one realized this might backfire and Pinker would come after Jonathan. Oops. So he does and he viciously murders girlfriend. Still haven’t looked up her name. She’s just girlfriend. Jonathan is pretty bummed she’s dead. It might be because he comes home from football and walks past a thousand cops who don’t stop him at all as he trapses through his blood stained home into the bathroom where he finds the corpse of his girlfriend in the tub all dead and stuff. That will ruin your weekend. Time to suit up again for ANOTHER funeral. Good thing it’s not a rental suit. Once girlfriend is dead Jonathan is serious about catching Pinker. So he decides hes going to dream again and find Pinker one more time. So he does that. He just goes to bed in his car with his football teammate friend ready to help him out. In his dream he drives right to the place where Pinker is getting ready to kill some more people. Jonathan stops him but just as Pinker is going to kill him, football teammate friend wakes Jonathan up just like they planned. So they drive Jonathan’s 1950’s Cadillac right off the running track at his college to the place where Pinker is. Unfortunately the cops realized that Jonathan was going to dream track Pinker and so they all waited for him to leave and then followed him. Once Jonathan got to the place where Pinker was, the cops showed up and ruined Jonathan’s plan of singlehandedly taking down a maniac killer. Oops again. So the cops and Jonathan chase Pinker but he gets away onto the roof of the building next door. All the cops go to the building next door but Jonathan uses his football skills and jumps over to the roof and fights Pinker. Then the cops show up again and they arrest pinker. Aw man.

Through what must have been a very speedy trial and considerably abbreviated appeals process (again, its’ that 11 year old understanding of the complicated innerworkings of the legal system) Pinker is going to be put to death. Jonathan and his angry cop dad show up to watch. But Pinker used magic and jumper cables to turn his TV into something he can make deals with the devil and some lips come out of the TV digitally and agree to let Pinker be a ghost or something. It was a weird scene like pretty much all the other ones. The guards come to take him to get executed and they get into a fight. He bites some fingers off one guard and does this cartoon thing where he bites and stretches out the lip of the other guard. They take him to get electrocuted. He does but he doesn’t die. Then he becomes an electric ghost though. Yup. An electric ghost.

Jonathan is still sad his family and girlfriend are dead. But he’s happy that Pinker is dead. Only he’s not. He’s jumped bodies like electric ghosts always do. He’s now in a cop’s body who shows up at Jonathan’s house. He tries to shoot Jonathan so he runs out of the house and to the park. Then electric ghost Pinker hops a couple different bodies while they are there. This is also the part of the movie where Jonathan wears sweatpants for a really long time. It was just a really odd wardrobe choice and he had them on for a really long time. I just wanted to note this. At one point Jonathan realizes that the heart necklace he got for girlfriend’s birthday is now also magic and electric ghost Pinker does not like it. So he uses a pick axe to chuck it into a lake. And mind you, this is a lake that you can’t just see in the lake unless you are wearing goggles. Just kidding. I didn’t know that about the lake. Jonathan tells his football teammate friend that a little later when he realizes he needs to find the magic necklace. Oh yeah and Jonathan also got shot in the arm by that cop that first chased him into the park. So he’s been shot this whole time too. So eventually he escapes the park and Pinker and goes to the gym at his college where he talks to his coach, Coach Cooper, and the team medic played by Ted Raimi. I feel like his name was like Scooter or something but it’s not important because he’s gonna die pretty soon too. Spoiler. But Coach is 100% in on Pinker being an electric ghost that hops bodies. Does not question it. AT ALL. On board from the first moment. So this is where Jonathan tells everyone about the magic necklace and how its in the lake but he needs his goggles from his house. So coach is gonna go get the goggles. And Scooter goes with him. They are going to meet up at the lake in the park in 30 minutes. 105 minutes later and guess what? Coach and Scooter still aren’t there. They’re probably off having a good laugh at Jonathan’s expense. At first Jonathan is just going to go in the lake without the goggles, even though it’s night time now. He gets about waist deep in water and realizes this is a bad plan. So he’s gonna go get his goggles himself.

Back to the house and something seems wrong. I say this because Scooter is already dead in a closet and Coach is possessed by electric ghost Pinker. Pinker wrote a note in blood on the mirror in the bathroom where he killed girlfriend. This brings up some heavy memories for Jonathan since it’s only been a few days since girlfriend was murdered in that bathroom. But electric ghost Pinker/Coach comes out of the shower and tries to attack Jonathan. He tries to convince coach to fight Pinker both mentally and emotionally but coach is clearly stifled by his own emotional baggage to be comfortable enough in his own skin to confront Pinker internally to free himself. There’s a struggle and in a valiant effort, coach simply murders himself so that Pinker might die too. Then the electric ghost version of pinker comes out of dead coach’s body and he’s pretty worn out from all the murders and the running around and the mental/emotional confrontation he just had inside coach’s body. He tells Jonathan about the mess he made in the closet and we see the goggles Jonathan needed in a pool of blood. At first we don’t know who’s blood it is. Maybe it’s a can of cherry pie filling that’s been punctured and tipped over. But no, it’s not. It’s Scooter. He’s dead. Coach/Pinker just put his body up on a shelf in the closet we couldn’t see at that point and then the body fell down on the floor and you could see that Scooter was totally dead. While that’s happening Pinker is also trying to recharge himself electrically. He’s a couple feet away from an electrical outlet and because of his training in TV/VCR repair, he wonders if plugging his fingers into an electrical outlet will give him energy as an electric ghost. But instead of moving closer to the outlet, he just magically extends his two fingers. Neat trick, I know. I didn’t even know you could do that as an electric ghost. I also got the feeling that Pinker didn’t definitively know it at that point either because he seemed pretty surprised too. So he recharges and goes into the electrical outlet and disappears just as Jonathan’s dad busts in the front door.

The two of them have a confrontation and his dad thinks Jonathan is now a murderer. Probably because he’s been around all these murders recently and Pinker really seems to enjoy it. But other cops also show up and they find dead coach and dead Scooter and Jonathan gets arrested. Bummer. But then he notices his dad has a limp like Pinker and realizes that Pinker took over his dad’s body. Just as you think something bad is going to happen, Jonathan’s football teammate friend shows up and breaks the glass on the car window he’s been put in and Jonathan makes an escape down the street. As any good father and cop would do, Jonathan’s dad begins wildly firing his gun down the street at Jonathan. A chase ensues. One of the things here I had a real hard time with is the fact that Pinker has that limp and Jonathan is a healthy and active football player in his early 20’s (presumably). Most of the time it seems like Jonathan has a steady lead ahead of Pinker but eventually he catches up. Seems a bit fishy how that happened. But as any good chase goes, they end up climbing to the top of a television antenna on top of a building and Pinker gets sucked out of Jonathan’s dad’s body and goes into the TV airwaves. Jonathan and his dad awkwardly sit together at the top of the antenna and embrace.

Now it’s time to stop Pinker once and for all. Jonathan has a plan. He calls a TV news guy up and they go to his parents house and set up a camera in the room where his mom and little sister died. At 5 minutes to midnight he promises to show up with Pinker so the TV guy gets the scoop of the century. Then Jonathan just leaves. He goes back to his house and sleeps. In his sleep he goes to the lake without the goggles (stupid, I know) and tries to find the necklace. He can’t. He dives down a whole bunch of times and can’t find it. You really need those goggles. But then he sees dead girlfriend and gets freaked out. Not sure why. He saw her ghost before in real life. This is just a dream. He sees all the dead people in the dream and just wants to stay there. But the dead people, mainly his girlfriend, won’t let him. So he wakes up in his room just in time to have a tussle with Pinker. But this time Pinker attacks Jonathan as his massage recliner! Did NOT see that coming. Pinker takes over the chair and starts grabbing Jonathan and they kind of wrestle around a little. Then Jonathan jumps into the TV and Pinker follows after him. They start going through all the channels fighting each other. They fight in a war movie. They fight in an episode of Leave it to Beaver where Jonathan tries to talk to Beaver Cleaver. They fight on a news broadcast with John Tesh. Meanwhile, football teammate friend and the rest of the team, all seven of them, go to the power plant. They’ve got a plan to shut down the power when Pinker is trapped in that room where the camera is. What they’re going to do is find the central power box and open it and at midnight they’re going to hit it really hard with a pipe or an axe or something and break it. When the power goes out, Pinker is trapped because that’s how it works. I know a lot of this was riding on the fact that Jonathan was clearly assuming he could dive into the TV, which none of us saw coming I don’t think. But it was clearly a very well thought out plan.

So Jonathan and Pinker do a bunch of fighting in the TV and even come out of a TV at one point in this random family’s house. Jonathan grabs the remote on his way back in the TV, I think, and now he’s got the power. So they make their way to the new station set up in that murder room in his parents house. He gets out of the TV and so does Pinker. More fighting in the room. Jonathan uses the remote to freeze frame Pinker. Fight fight fight. Jonathan smugly tells Pinker about his plan only to find out that Pinker has observed that his watch was damaged at some point and Jonathan has lost track of time. NOOOO! Just then it’s midnight and football teammate friend and the rest of the football team go through with the plan and strike the power box. Jonathan desperately escapes into the TV camera in time with Pinker stuck in the TV. Jonathan exits his own TV just in time for his TV screen to bust up and start on fire with Pinker’s voice coming out of the TV. The screen is gone. You can just see the inner workings of the TV and flames. Jonathan hits the power button and turns the flames off because that’s how fire works. Pinker is finally dead. Jonathan goes outside his house just as everyone else in their robes also come out of their houses. Jonathan starts walking down the street smiling as the credits role. I’m not sure but I think his dad is also dead now too. But this doesn’t seem to bother Jonathan as he’s all smiles now. Finally working through his emotional baggage of all the carnage he’s bore witness to in the last few days. It’s not explained but I like to think that football teammate friend and the rest of the team are also able to get away from the power station without injury or incarceration. So the plan goes off without a hitch, outside of all the dead bodies.

So that’s pretty much the movie. I still encourage you to watch the movie. I probably messed some things up too. I might have left some stuff out. I might have jumbled some stuff up. I just watched it today. There’s a part of me that wants to never watch it again. But there’s also a part of me that desperately wants to watch it with somebody else to share in the delight of this atrocity. And there’s even a weird part of me that kind of wants to own this film just because of how bad it is. Realistically as a movie on it’s own, this movie is at least a D. I don’t want to straight give it an F. There truly are worse movies than this. I have “Attack of the Killer Donuts” on my list of movies to watch. I know i watched a couple movies last year that were worse than this one. But as a movie rated on it’s own merits AS a movie, this is easily at least a D. It only gains some points back in how absolutely ridiculous the entire movie is as a whole and the fact that many of the things you just have to laugh at after the fact. So if you’re looking to really be scared or want a good fright, this is not it. If you want an 80’s murder horror movie that is completely unhinged that you can watch with a friend and have a really solid laugh at, totally check this one out. I think that’s it for this one. We’ll be back again tomorrow with another spooky selection. But until that time, I’ll catch you on the flip side.