JAYSUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH!



GRABBERS (2012)
Richard Coyle, Ruth Bradley, Lalor Roddy, Russell Tovey, David Pearse, Bronagh Gallagher, Pascal Scott
Directed by Jon Wright
A sailor at sea is on his boat at night. As he swabs the deck, a zooming blue light passes overhead and crashes in the distance. Thinking it's a distress flare and acting as skipper, he and his 2-man crew reach the location. As the fishermen investigate, both shipmates are fatally pulled overboard by a lethal hentai-ish tentacle in the water. Having sent an SOS on the wheelhouse CB radio, the skipper arms himself with an axe but is ambushed by something unseen from above. In the morning, garda (police officer) Lisa Nolan arrives by ferry to Erin Island (off Ireland's West Coast) to meet her new colleague, Ciarán O'Shea, who's coming off one of his regular hangovers. She's on temporary loan from Dublin while the Chief is on 2-week vacation and had flippantly stated 'the town will be dead' with everyone going on holiday. Oh, if only he could know what's in store with that ominous statement... Cynical veteran O'Shea is a grumpy hard drinker who resents his female cohort for being an enthusiastic & dedicated straight arrow which has impressed the bosses. He feels he should naturally be in charge. The tourist island's small rural community is soon abuzz after mutilated whale corpses wash up on shore which are not the work of JAWS but of bloodsucking squiddy aliens. Paddy Barrett, the town wino, survives an attack after first removing one of the creatures from his lobster trap (which he then dumped in his bathtub as a souvenir only to have it get loose, then facehug him like John Hurt in ALIEN before detaching itself, and die from being stomped). Paddy brings the dead creature [which if I'm not mistaken suddenly seems smaller] to the lab of dorky British marine biologist/ecologist Dr. Adam Smith who has the hots for Nolan right away, and determines that Paddy's high blood alcohol level was toxic enough to withstand the "grabber" -- Paddy's dubbed name for it which everyone thinks is dumb -- which needs blood & water to survive.

The creature is also an adult female, and an intrigued Paddy wonders if he can sell the dead remains on eBay. When O'Shea and Nolan check out the house of a woman pulled up a chimney (while her husband was watching NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD right at the part where Johnny utters his famous last words, they then grab Paddy and the trio head to a beach cave. There, they find a nest of eggs buried in the sand and flee a large grabber, the adult male. Back at Dr. Smith's lab, O'Shea survives an attack from the female originally presumed dead but revigorated from a sprinkler. Saved, thanks to the literal brewery saturating his body, O'Shea and his 2 companions stomp the female to death. Startled from the encounter, O'Shea tries to contact the mainland for help but he is dismissed by the Coast Guard, and an approaching massive storm cuts off both communication & help. Further adding to the dangerous grabber threat will be the rain allowing the grabbers to traipse about the island with more ease. Inside a church, he & Nolan have the locals rounded up to take shelter (a "lock-in") at a pub where the tavern attendees from relative safety start to relax when the owner, Brian Maher, dishes out free drinks. Everything seems legit and as O'Shea takes the initiative to stay sober so he can organize the island's protection (and for him this is a big deal to not get stumbling tanked), the remaining inhabitants -- including by-the-book bubbly Nolan who's never been soused in her life -- all get sloshed in mass binging as the downpour hits. With the Stout & ale flowing-a-plenty and the beer goggles chugging on in the piss-up, Nolan confesses in their patrol SUV that she came to the island to breakaway from her sister who got all the family attention, and although yin & yang opposites, she tells O'Shea she is attracted to him inspite of rebuffing him earlier while he was shitfaced when putting the moves on her.

When Una the raunchy pub landlady (alongside bar patrons all citing Nolan's prettiness) tried to hook up both gardas, Nolan wasn't having any of it but as she now makes a pass at him, in a class act he skips the opportunity to take advantage of her. He also reveals that the reason for personally drowning in alcoholism from heavy benders is due to his wife having run off with another bloke. Una incidentally is also Brian's wife and under the impression that all the patrons are there to celebrate her birthday. If only. When the creatures gather from the wetness increasing their activity, little sluggy newborn grabbers unsuccessfully swarm a physician named Jim who is outside urinating. He's briefly rescued by the 2 gardas only to be killed by the male which also destroys the patrol vehicle, forcing the duo inside the pub. Dr. Smith attempts to take a picture of the male and believes being fueled up on booze will make him resistant to being dinner, but he is swatted into the air, clear across the horizon and killed. With the taps run dry and kegs outside, the assembled group take cover upstairs (as the pub also serves as a hotel) as the maggoty baby grabbers burst in. A wasted Nolan in her giggly blotto state, inadvertently causes panic for revealing the danger everyone is in, while invalidatingly saying they are all fine. As the gardas devise a means of escape, Nolan accidentally torches the pub while fighting off the male. In the ensuing flames, she and her partner distract it from attacking the upstairs and it proceeds to follow them both as they take off in Brian's pickup truck to a nearby quarry. Figuring they can destroy this big ugly rolling sack of sushi once n' for all, their plan is to use a construction digger to hold the grabber off ground and leave it exposed to the sun where it will die from dehydration. Murphy's Law has other plans for their trap and the male shows up. Nolan uses a bulldozer where quite unexpectedly for her, she angrily calls it a cunt(!) and pins it to the bottom of a gravel pit.

With its flurry of fleshy multi-limbs, the creature grabs O'Shea by the waist and pulls him towards its maw but he drops a bottle of Paddy's homemade liquor into its mouth. The highly potent moonshine repels the grabber which lets him go. Nolan uses a flare gun to set off an explosion of oil barrels and the male is killed in the blast. With the storm clearing up, both gardas walk back to town in the morning and kiss, with a new O'Shea having thrown his flask away. Goodbye swigging and hello sobriety. Unbeknownst to all on Erin Isle is the extent of spawning & multiplying by the parent creatures that took place, and we close to the hatching of more little bastard grabber eggs on the shoreline. GRABBERS is a funny sci-fi horror comedy whose grippy, entertaining B-movie irreverence is a happy marriage of The Cornetto Trilogy, THE BLOB, ATTACK THE BLOCK, SLITHER, CRITTERS, GREMLINS, a less-refined but more energetic Kang and Kodos, and quite blatantly Ireland's version of TREMORS. And for all the abundant references, still manages to find its own distinct niche and avoid being a premature ripoff even as its tone also plays like a slick hidden tribute to the many 1950's drive-in sci-fi classics (and turkeys) that featured interstellar behemoths and deformed oversized gargantuans. And theme wise, there's a clever winking role reversal here in regards to the belligerent outer space aliens of old: As alcohol is the Achilles heel to the vulnerable grabbers and proves their undoing, this is infact a twist on INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN (1957) wherein the bulbous-headed & bug-eyed 'little green men' of that picture used retractable needle fingernails to inject people with pure alcohol so humans could die from blood poisoning. [The movie was remade in 1965 as THE EYE CREATURES and in both low-budget versions, the aliens die from the bright glare of car headlights].

Besides the heavily played-up shameless stereotype of getting rip-roaringly plastered, also on display is a longstanding separate UK tradeoff: the common Irish are seen as talkative and relaxed though quickly prone to excitement and colorful profanity, while the stuffy egghead Brit is a stiff-upper-lipped and privileged elite. [No doubt any Scots would have been volatile countrymen with parallel inebrious consumption matched by their purported tight-fisted penny pinching]. These provincial parochial idiosyncrasies however are all in good jest making satiric fun of cinematic cultural notions regarding compatriots. There is a curious paradox when it comes to international drinking: No nation likes being accused of being a population of perpetually intoxicated and obnoxious slovenly drunkards, but when it comes to bragging rights, that same nation is not immune to taking celebratory pride with copious next rounds in how much they can drink everybody else under the table. For stein and country! Still, nothing is deliberately depicted in an inconsiderate mean-spirited manner to evoke any real offense, so hopefully none is taken. With a mixture of humor & gags from played straight and light hearted to full-on hilarious, the dialogue and character interactions also come off as a cross between Father Ted meeting THE GUARD. As citizens disappear and severed heads turn up, it's interesting to note that there are no guns. And the closest thing to "arms" are a nailgun, a board with a nail in it, a pellet gun with no pellets, a frying pan, and petrol-filled super soakers to act as flamethrowers which are unconventionally lowbrow yet hurriedly improvising for these amateurs as the isolation & tension takes hold. The idea of alien aquatic sea monsters (looking like toothy Lovecraftian Cthulhu octopuses with whiplashing tongues) that are severely allergic to alcohol is perhaps equally akin to the martian invaders from WAR OF THE WORLDS being defeated by bacterial flu (whose immune systems were mortally weakened by sickness).

What could have failed as a stupid, full of slapstick one-joke premise for GRABBERS actually works and has that near-believability component thanks foremost to the great chemistry of the garda duo who predictably put aside their differences. Their forged relationship is the anchor here that verges on quirky rom-com because of the unlikely mismatched pairing, but the affection is genuine and free of being sentimentally sappy. As alcohol is easily positioned as the mighty slam dunk, defense mechanism-champion that saves the day, O'Shea and Nolan are themselves heroic from the situation turned nuts. When both are not generating faint sparks as love interests [whereas 2 men would have made this another "buddy film" about bonding], Nolan is a professional stickler who does initially disagree & disapprove but she's also that stick in the mud who succeeds in winning you over because she's so damn adorable in pulling her weight. And her clumsy fall down a flight of stairs and declaring herself fine is actually one of her finer moments. O'Shea demonstrates how effective and responsible he can be when the urgency calls for it. In addition are endearing commendable performances from the feckin' gobshite residents who embrace being three sheets to the wind; a decent pace albeit a little pedestrian; beautiful quaint scenery (filmed in County Donegal); and slimy CGI monster fx which are very good and detailed [SyFy Channel take note, this is how it's done]. The rainstorm not always convincingly stormy enough, and the relative no-gore zone are the movie's small weaknesses. And speaking of weather and background, filming took place during one of Ireland's worst winters causing regular delays. For whatever external problems, incredibly none of those complications show. In closing, GRABBERS is firmly tongue in cheek and definitely worth raising a couple pints of Guinness to. [Whether or not you stay sober or get blackout hammered is entirely up to you].




RAWHEAD REX (1986)
David Dukes, Ronan Wilmott, Niall Toibin, Kelly Piper, Heinrich von Schellendorf, Niall O'Brien, Cora Lunny, Hugh O'Connor
Directed by George Pavlou
RAWHEAD REX is based on Clive Barker's same-titled short story from the 3rd volume of his 1984 'Books of Blood' anthology. [The story itself is based on a 16th Century English tale called 'Rawhead-and-Bloody-Bones' sometimes aka 'Tommy Rawhead' with both renditions meant to frighten children. The mythos also has origins in the Missouri Ozarks, and a foothold in African-American roots]. Howard Hallenbeck is an American photojournalist who has traveled to the small remote countryside village of Rathmorne in Ireland with his wife and 2 kids to research sacred Celtic neolithic sites for his historical book. While he visits the church with permission to photograph in a cemetery, 3 local farmers are trying to raise a large phallic-looking megalith in a field. At its base are engravings but if the writing is some kind of warning that speaks of a curse, it is ignored. When 2 of the men call it a day, the other's on-going labor causes a sudden freak thunderstorm. Thick smoke begins pouring from the ground and gives rise to a jacked-up pagan demigod known as Rawhead Rex. Howard's wife, Elaine, is not enjoying the stay in town. Inspite of her Irish heritage, she's bored of the trip and would rather be shopping in Dublin. Daughter Minty(!) [who was obviously named after a spearmint gum commercial] and son Robbie are restless brats. When Howard stumbles across the murdered farmer, he tells the police who believe the deceased to have been slain in a revenge killing. After Howard first meets the Verger, the curmudgeonly Declan O'Brien, and is then introduced to the friendlier Reverend Coot, Declan experiences strange visions from touching an altar. Later, the son of an arguing couple in a forest, finds an earlier kill by Rawhead. Seen also by the parents, the fearful trio race out of the woods with only Mom & son making it out alive. Later, townsfolk Dennis Nicholson and his pregnant wife Jenny are in their cottage home and disturbed by a racket outside. Rawhed shows up from refuge in a barn, kills Dennis, and drags his body through the forest. As police are called to the Nicholson house, Rawhead stops infront of a trailer park.

Teenager Andy Johnson is getting frisky with his girlfriend and the young lovers head into the woods oblivious to the waiting danger. They are chased by Rawhead whom Howard, during a late-night stroll, later spots in the distance as the creature stands on a hill holding Andy's decapitated head. With Rathmorne's inhabitants panicked over the creature having massacred the trailer park caravan as well, the bumbling police (except for Detective Larkin) are not swayed by Howard's description of a monster on their hands, and Howard suspects that suspicious Declan is the culprit behind the slayings. As Declan grows unstable & hostile, Howard asks to look into the church's parish records which Coot allows to arrange. Following up with Coot, Howard is then told the parish records have been stolen, and has his camera broken by Declan, causing him to hit the road with his family. When their van pulls over so Minty can pee by a tree, her screaming brings both her parents while Robbie stays in the vehicle. Rawhead emerges killing Robbie and drags his eaten body into the forest. A devastated and furious Howard blasts the police for failing to get Rawhead, and he returns to the church seeking revenge where he is drawn to the cryptic stained glass window featuring the image of a faceless victor casting down a devilish creature. He concludes that whatever can kill Rawhead must be hidden on the grounds. When Howard leaves, Coot touches the altar and struggles to succumb to the temptatious visions he undergoes. Rawhead noisily arrives at the church and in the movie's pre-eminent WTF boffo scene, baptizes an insane kneeling Declan with a graveyard golden shower(!) [Hey, if Linda Blair can chunder pea soup and masturbate with a crucifix, hold my beer]... Shocked and disgusted by the sight, Coot flees into the basement as Rawhead trashes the church. Coot finds the missing parish records which feature a blueprint of Rawhead [which fails to explain his presence other than offering a vague ecclesiastical knowledge of his existence] but is found by Declan. The corrupted apostate turned zealot (who steps up in dropping f-bombs) forces Coot upstairs to be sacrificed by Rawhead.

The police arrive at the church ready to gun down the creature but hold off when they see Coot. The police eventually open fire resulting in Rawhead using mind control to hypnotize Inspector Isaac Gissing to douse gasoline around the police cars which he ignites during the shooting, burning all the officers and himself to death. Howard leaves Elaine & daughter to again return to the church where he finds a dying Coot telling him that Rawhead is scared shitless of an object in the altar which stands as the antithesis to evil. He finds Declan burning books, kicks his ass, and uses a candlestick to pry open the altar where he retrieves the weapon -- a holy stone carved as a pregnant woman. In the cemetery, deranged Declan snivels back to Rawhead and tells his angry master of Howard's find. Howard faces off with the creature but uses 'little miss preggo' unsuccessfully, and is tossed aside. Rawhead kills an orgasmic Declan by ripping his throat out as a terrified Elaine watches from having followed her hubby. When Rawhead tries to kill Howard, Elaine picks up the 'bun in the oven' figurine and in the vein of She-Ra, holds it above her head where it activates with a ray of light that beams onto the creature hurting it. It has to be a woman wielding the weapon to trigger its power. The spirit of a woman then materializes from the gravid gizmo along with zapping electric rays that pierce into a bawling Rawhead, knocking him to the ground and severely wounding him as he now endures hair loss, premature aging, and Howard hitting him with a shovel. Fatally ill from the magic laser light show, Rawhead collapses dead and falls back into the ground where he's crushed under broken slabs of tombstone, completely finishing him off. Elaine has dropped the weapon in with the creature and runs to Howard, with hubby & wife making their exit from the cemetery. Farewell once-impending Armageddon. Sometime later, a boy from the trailer park is putting flowers on Andy's grave and when he leaves, Rawhead pushes up in the foreground and roars in quick monstrous return.

Rewatching this over 30yrs later, RAWHEAD REX is not so much a truly terrible movie, as it is just not a very good one at all. The idyllic Irish landscape/ambience on display is made splendid use of, there are some effective scares, and a decent violent gore factor is in tandem with off-screen kills that were treading carefully in the then-surrounding UK controversy over video nasties. But the major negative outweighing the few positives is the lousy cheap monster design of Rawhead in rubber mask & Mad Max suit; played by muscle-bound Schellendorf (aka Heinrich von Bünau) in his only screen performance who was a 19yr old bodybuilder that would make Schwarzenneger proud. [Peter Mayhew aka Chewbacca was first approached for the role but he wanted too much money]. Equally cheesy and embarrassingly bad (and very laughable), the crux of the problem is that Rawhead unfortunately simply doesn't hold up. It was always a given from the short story that his physical form was imposing and unusual. And as a savage brute force of nature who leaves a trail of destruction in his wake, he may not be a typical slasher but he's not exactly out of place in the splatter arena either. Almost werewolf-ish, Rawhead looks like a shaved mutant ape on steroids with a near-mohawked mullet; an extended/exposed lower jaw sprouting fangs in fixed puppet expression; retractable fingernails; and has possible strabismus issues. Imagine what the offspring of Rammstein and Gwar would resemble -- a conceived penile demon-baby born out of a nightmarish hair metal hell fused of pyrotechnics and sorcery. That little bugger is an adult Rawhead. And the mind swirls wondering what Rawhead could have been in the hands of Tom Savini, Rick Baker, or Stan Winston. Vicious and fast in unleashing his carnal fury, Rawhead's animalistic killing spree is impressive and he shares a primal similarity with Molasar from THE KEEP: both are ancient pre-Christian hulking beasts that are close to 9-10ft tall; have glowing red eyes; are steeped in folklore superstition; and each ready to slaughter when unintentionally released from centuries of sealed imprisonment after the removal of a confining marker.

But just how unconvincing is Rawhead's description you may ask? Well, consider Barker's own words: He first said, "Basically, I wrote a story about a 10-foot prick which goes on the rampage." After seeing the portrayal, he called it "Miss Piggy in combat fatigues." At his core, Rawhead is a giant peeled & sunburnt walking erect penis with his very name of "rawhead" having a sexual tint standing for over-aggressive male libido that would make Manowar jealous. If we remove all of the masculinity and alpha cock symbolism ["Rex" incidentally being Latin for "king"], Rawhead is reduced to being a Halloween-dressed marauding menace in shredded shag carpet; a cartoonish badass berserker who with better artistic altering, would fit more in a setting of early Iron Maiden album covers. To the annoyance of many, the movie further deviates from the more elaborate short story and wimps out mainly in ditching a lot of religious subtext; moving the locale from London; changing the depiction of Rawhead's look; eliminating Rawhead's larger propensity for butchering children; leaving out Rawhead's inner thoughts explaining his ambivalence towards humanity; tinkering with the Hallenbeck family; and making Rawhead's death different. One exception that proves quite fun is the expansion of wayward Declan's breakdown into a full-blown lunatic disciple. He's hysterically over the top. There's also a curious gender & fertility observation going on here: a purity in the female weapon needed to defeat Rawhead when the whole while, none of Rawhead's victims were women as he has no dominion over them. And in keeping with the era's penchant for gratuitous topless moments, an attractive victim has her clothes flagrantly torn off. Barker would go on to have several of his baroque writings adapted into movies but vehemently and notoriously disowned this flawed film treatment (which was banned in Iceland) citing his hatred due to the improper representation of his screenplay being not just diluted but with plenty of what he envisioned being scrapped altogether. He wasn't even allowed on the set(!)

It was RAWHEAD REX's disappointing dumbed-down compromising, undermined translation, and poor reception that led Barker to have a more adamantly hands-on control in the director's chair when it came to later productions of his work. A remake was slated in the years after but abandoned as his involvement with the HELLRAISER franchise grew. [Oddly enough, Rawhead's leatherwear predates the Cenobites]. I wonder by 1987's PREDATOR, if that movie's creature fx, prosthetic, and costuming department had seen Rawhead and studied firmly what not to get wrong. In total, RAWHEAD REX is actually not unwatchable. If everything previously described makes it sound like a shoddy joke and painful mess, think of it more as a psycho cousin of LEPRECHAUN. It's just the kind of past recollection to pull from the shelf should you feel the need to breakout a dose of something rather peculiar -- especially a long unseen & less-celebrated hokey relic of the 80's that is impossible not to find ridiculous. So yeah, not garden variety but it deserves a revisit after 3 decades, and a recent blu-ray release from Kino with a 4K restoration does give it a sharper enhancement. It's nice to have the visibility looking cleaner than it ever has. Honestly though, while full of shortcomings and a misguided path which lost its way [the 1993 EC Comics graphic novel is more faithful to Barker's original story with an almost sympathetic Rawhead appearing Xenomorph/Slenderman-ish], the movie is not without justification for being an off-the-wall one trick pony hampered by budgetary pitfalls. Nevertheless, we can however particularly cut it some campy popcorn slack because it's still a glimpse from a then-upcoming new author whom Stephen King famously praised as the future of horror. And Barker's prolific output and memorable contributions of far better visceral titles to the genre, both in book & on screen (NIGHTBREED, CANDYMAN, LORD OF ILLUSIONS), were just around the corner. If RAWHEAD REX ever comes up for a reboot, maybe Guillermo Del Toro could give it a go.

IF I SHOULD DIE BEFORE I WAKE



FLATLINERS (1990)
Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Julia Roberts, William Baldwin, Oliver Platt, Hope Davis, Joshua Rudoy
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Chicago medical student Nelson Wright is walking along a waterfront and with the sun going down, states in a famous phrase [attributed to Lakota leaders Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull], "Today is a good day to die." He meets up with his friends & fellow classmates -- David, the valiant atheist and most skilled of the students who is praised but suspended for saving a woman's life in the absence of doctors; Rachel, the sensitive introvert who interviews a collection of people about their encounters with dying; Joe, the womanizing Casanova hunk who'll hit on any hot babe with a pulse; and Randy, the bowtied goofy comic relief who's trying to find a title for his memoirs. From Nelson's prompting, the hotshot future practitioners discuss one of life's biggest eternal mystery questions: what happens after death? Nelson introduces his secret tests on controlled near death experiences that take place after-hours in a Campus wing of their University-under-renovation. Scaffolding, plastic tarp and a leaky roof surround the constructed makeshift lab, but the necessary operating table & surgery instruments are at the ready. Nelson is initially scoffed at but under the guise of ambitious academic research, his friends agree to lend a hand, and he subjects himself to being flatlined (having the heartbeat and brainwaves shut down) for 1 minute. Though pronounced clinically "dead", he is resuscitated from a nether region. As crazy as it is, Nelson's extraordinary trial run has worked and at first, he doesn't describe what he saw: an incident in his childhood of bullying a boy named Billy Mahoney because the moment began peacefully innocuous. He is vague in his telling that something has affected him.

The others, except Randy who is the group's voice of reason and acts as a monitor, drop their earlier reservations and decide to undergo their own NDE. Next up is skeptical Joe whose trippy flashback currently reveals his numerous sexual conquests as a Hefner-esque horndog who videotapes women without their awareness or consent. Joe is the Rob Lowe sex tape scandal x 10. David's NDE also recalls the childhood bullying of a black girl named Winnie Hicks which often left her in tears. All 3 men describe a feeling that resonates and soon start having vivid hallucinations as a direct result of their NDE's that become more distressing. An uneasy, pessimistic & neurotic Randy is worried that the risky course they embarked on flirts too close to disaster. Each daring participant grew increasingly competitive in their bidding war one-upmanship of pushing their flatline timeframe to a higher count meaning the tricky method of bringing them back ran higher odds of failure. A shroud of darkness sets in as Nelson gets the shit kicked out of him twice from hockey stick-wielding Billy. Engaged Joe who is soon to be married, is bothered by voyeuristic visions of his trophy girls that nag his conscience and condemn his cheating. David has the tables turned on him from an encounter on the train which sees Winnie mercilessly taunting him with foulmouthed playground verbal abuse. On Halloween night, Rachel is ready for her NDE as David unsuccessfully tries to stop her from partaking. She almost dies for real when a power outage hits leaving her helpless. With her friends freaking out trying to bring her back, she is at first unresponsive to the CPR shocks from the emergency defibrillator paddles but she is revived. Her sad mind-journey voyage was that of her beloved Dad committing suicide when she was little. Devastated & grief-stricken, she always blamed herself.

Nelson, David and Joe share their dismaying NDE stories with severely bruised Nelson's encounters being the most frightening & torturous. A remorseful David sets out to make amends in hopes that his nightmares will stop. Afterwards, Joe's fiancée, Anne, visits his apartment while he's out. She finds his illicit videotapes of homemade bedroom softporn [a forerunner to the sleazy building owner Baldwin would play 3yrs later in SLIVER] and watches selections of the harem. He comes home to find her heartbroken from betrayal and she breaks up with him. With their relationship over, his visions end. Nelson joins David who visits Winnie. Now married with child and having moved on, she still shows a glimpse of fragility. David apologizes for his hurtful behavior and the humiliations she endured. She accepts the apology and thanks him. He leaves heading back to his truck to find Nelson beating the living daylights out of himself in the vehicle with a pickaxe (David is a rock climber) which is infact another thrashing administered by Billy. David interrupts Nelson's attack and both men head home. From their blossoming chemistry, Rachel finds solace with David and they sleep together that night (with Nelson's jealous mutual affection for her forming the love triangle). A stirred up Nelson drags Joe and Randy to a graveyard to reveal he killed Billy after throwing rocks at him while he was cornered up a tree causing him to fall. Nelson leaves upset & alone resulting in David temporarily bailing on Rachel to pick up the stranded duo. Rachel wanders into the bathroom where she has another run-in with her father. He expresses how sorry he is to his daughter for leaving her in the manner he did; having returned from Vietnam addicted to heroin and caught having fatally overdosed.

[In many other hands, let's be honest, Rachel's foray would have been coming to terms with molestation]. Like Joe and David before her, she feels relief from the lifted weight of sorrow. Nelson calls her saying he needs to flatline again to finally free himself of suffering. He also apologizes for enlisting them all in his dangerous & reckless experiment, and for the unpleasant ordeals they each went through. The 3 men reach Nelson first who has been "dead" for a whopping 9 minutes. With Rachel's arrival, the friends frantically try to save him and struggle to bring him back, but this time Nelson's NDE is sacrificial as he puts himself in Billy's place to be the one who dies from the tree fall. Unable to stimulate any activity in Nelson, the friends are prepared to declare him dead -- with the potential of his passing bringing not only expulsion but criminal charges. But Nelson's expiry date is still a long ways off from this mortal coil, and he's not ready to cash in his code blue chips just yet. With a new narrative in Nelson's punishment, Billy has forgiven him bringing an end to Nelson being throttled. As David gives one last CPR shock from the paddles, Nelson is miraculously awakened to the alleviation of his friends, and he whispers, "Today wasn't a good day to die." FLATLINERS is loaded with symbolism. By physically returning to a bystander version of their past to see the youthful wrongs they committed/caused/witnessed, and particularly before balancing previous unresolved harmful actions, these ill at ease manifestations of traumatizing transgressions (which also incorporate the memory & perspective of other victims) would obviously follow them back to present-reality adulthood; returning indeed to haunt.

Flatlining by the foursome became an extreme form of misadventure where unintended consequences from carried burdens that took an alternate physical form, brought serious self-examining repercussions (before any resolution) that required difficult admission of faults; confession; empathy; truthful repentance; and the healing forgiveness of those mistreated to ultimately release both parties from repressed pain. The ego-driven mistake of playing God means paying the price in an unexpected form of martyrdom. Nelson as the maverick ringleader has the rush of an adrenaline junkie. He's a manipulative prick in his desire for fame and could easily be written off as callous but his hesitancy shows he is not entirely without a moral compass, even though he crosses ethical boundaries with his implemented key that attempts to unlock ultimate knowledge. He introduces his group to a project of 'induced demise' with gung ho that pushes the envelope, but the afterlife that waits is not a continuation of existence to explore possible heavenly hereafter in the original sense of his purpose. Instead, it's a landing detached of warmth, and a purgatory represented by a situated troubling moment stuck in an endless loop; a needle in the groove of guilt & regret. With an obsession for decoding the great beyond that intensifies, he's scared and lashes out with tantrums of immaturity but still maintains a tough air of rebellious overconfidence. Nelson bears slight tragic hints of an unhinging Dr. Jekyll and a vain Victor Frankenstein who are fatally penalized for toying with death. As far as his impetuousness fares in the universal mad scientist manual, his creation quickly gets out of hand which worsens into a mess that requires his unhealthy creator self to be rescued.

There are no blissful auras; or tunnels of light; or being outside of their bodies looking downward on themselves; or angels; or Pearly Gates; or reunions with deceased loved ones welcoming the group to the 'other side' with open arms. The friends have entered a dimensional door which is very familiar but changes them through an unsettling revelation of personal baggage in the background. They confront uncomfortable secrets where the buried old ghosts of each can only be pacified by an atoning restitution. With accusations of Gen X cynicism, sophomoric sermonizing for grand answers with arrogant audacity, and opinionated pretentious pop psychology [c'mon, this was the beginning of the ranting-slacker 90's], FLATLINERS is a cautionary tale with decorative flair. Its spooky gothic edge, palette of neon color lighting, and shadowy gargoyled architecture borrows from BLADE RUNNER, and takes an intriguing concept of 'life flashing before one's eyes' that straddles a middleground of compelling with implausibility. The repetitive course of the friends does sag in the individual occurrences but in the movie's defense, would have been more bloated if Randy was a 5th journeyman. On its surface, what may look like a thin story threaded with thick melodramatic ponderings and tense peril, is not outright aimless in its logic but rather offers a consideration on the nature of sin, responsibility & redemption. Without being incredibly profound, and with some lazy writing culminating in a textbook ending that is hurried & tacked on, the movie regardless brings heavier messages about catharsis & closure. Bolstered by stylish atmospheric production design and a strong talented cast of Brat Pack-ish rising stars, what's delivered here is also one of the decade's first entries in suspenseful psychological thrillers, alongside JACOB'S LADDER, with some toes dipping in paranormal/supernatural sci-fi.

Sutherland clearly steals the movie and Roberts has the least to do among the friends. Her episode is the weakest which is unusual considering her high profile from PRETTY WOMAN could've/should've easily brought her installment more showcase. [Both stars announced their engagement shortly after FLATLINERS' premiere and set their wedding for the following summer. They became tabloid fodder when the groom was stood up at the altar by the bride who ran off with Jason Patric -- Sutherland's castmate in THE LOST BOYS. Sutherland's drinking and alleged affair with a go-go dancer was said to have ended their relationship. When Sutherland was set to host SNL a few months later, Roberts got wind of her ex's planned opening monologue about being ditched that took potshots at her and begged him not to do the routine. He ignored her and did so anyway to huge laughs. Sutherland would reteam with Bacon 2yrs later in A FEW GOOD MEN, and reteam with Platt 6yrs later in A TIME TO KILL]. Perhaps forgotten is that FLATLINERS was a box office hit, and received a 1991 Oscar nomination for Best Sound Editing. [It lost to THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER which featured Baldwin's brother, Alec]. Had this movie not been pre-BATMAN Schumacher's [Sutherland incidentally is in 5 of the directors films], I'd love to have seen David Cronenberg at the helm. As for FLATLINERS (2017)? Sutherland has a starring role and claimed the new version, while geared for millennials and widely panned as overt self-indulgent posturing more akin to TV's Grey's Anatomy, was not a remake but a sequel. Despite being a different character (named Barry Wolfson) in a city unidentified (hello Toronto), and with no reference whatsoever to the 1990 events [except for a deleted scene near the end that was cut, and meant as a homage for older audiences], Sutherland added that his playing of a professor/Chief of Staff at a Med School University is actually Nelson who has just changed his name and moved on from his earlier tampering misdeeds.




SOULTAKER (1990)
Joe Estevez, Robert Z'Dar, Vivian Schilling, Gregg Thomsen, David 'Shark' Fralick, David Fawcett, Jean Reiner, Chuck Williams
Directed by Michael Rissi
A man dressed in black (except for his silver-tipped cowboy boots, and no it's not Johnny Cash) enters the hospital room of an elderly man. The visitor is a grim reaper who extracts the soul of the patient who expires. Just as he arrived, he leaves unseen. 'The Man' next appears with another reaper who happens to be his boss, the Angel of Death. Both men walk along a road headed towards a town Summerfest picnic in which Zack Taylor (no, not the 12th President of the USA) has met up with his ex-girlfriend, Natalie McMillan. The duo still have feelings for each other and are joined by friends, wayward Brad [a near-sociopath who's channeling Chicago Bears QB Jim McMahon, and no doubt wears his sunglasses at night] and bro-dude Tommy. Bossman singles out the foursome (and Brad's bimbo girlfriend named Candice) to be 'taken' by his reaper. Grimmy has a special interest in Natalie as she is the spitting image of his lover during the Civil War. Natalie has the disdain of Brad who thinks she's a golddigging rich bitch (hmm, jealous because he can't get into her pants?); disapproval from her father the Mayor who thinks Zack is a loser; and the bad luck of having been ditched by her friend Karen who she came with when Karen splits with her boyfriend. After the festivities, she catches a ride with Zack in Brad's car. Brad's dangerous joyriding is sponsored by having snorted coke and downing a bottle of Jack Daniels, and as he picks up speed, the reaper waits at a far off dead end where he causes the car to swerve & slam fatally into a tree. All except Candice awake unharmed in a forest at nightfall thinking they've been ejected from the car, but unbeknownst to them (at first) is that they were killed in the crash and are now disembodied spirits in the waking world.

The reaper is at the car where he extracts the soul of Candice among the mangled bodies of the foursome still in the vehicle. Unable to 'take' Brad, he tells Bossman that the foursome are 'displaced' and is ordered to retrieve them. The group return to the car where paramedics have since taken them to a hospital. Brad's big ziplock bag of hidden coke has been found as the reason for the accident, and a detective is curious as to why the front passenger door is open believing it was unlikely to have happened upon impact. When the friends unsuccessfully try flagging down a police car returning to town, the reaper shows himself, attacks Brad, and extracts his soul resulting in Brad dying for real in the ambulance. Zack, Natalie, and Tommy have fled and run into a convenience store asking the cashier for help from a killer on the loose chasing them. They are still unaware that they can't be seen or heard and believe they are being rudely ignored as the employee prattles on to his girlfriend on the phone, thumbs through a porn mag, and empties a coin jar into his pocket. The trio then see a TV news report about their narcotic-involved crash leading an angry Natalie to argue with Zack thinking he's a drug dealer. They are further confused when hearing they are all at the hospital in comas. Outside, after Zack makes a 911 call from a payphone resulting in the operator hanging up, Natalie runs towards a tow truck hauling away their wrecked car and is grabbed by the reaper when it blows past. But his memories of a past life from her striking resemblance cause him to halt 'taking' her, and she is scooped up by Zack as they both run away.

The reaper follows Tommy who has run back into the store as Bossman pops in to reprimand his reaper for not getting Natalie when he had her in his clutches. Tommy tries to offer the reaper money but he ends up paying a different price at the cost of his life. The cashier is arrested by a cop answering the store alarm who mistakes the employee as a robber picking up the cash. As Zack and Natalie run back into town, the reaper is right behind them and both make it to Natalie's mansion house. Her mother can see them(!) and is told about the reaper having killed Brad; is asked for a gun by Zack; speaks on the phone requesting help for the duo when Zack once again can't get through to the receiver; and draws a bath for her daughter. Meanwhile the arresting cop tells the detective about the cashier who blames ghost activity, with the detective again suspicious wondering who set off the store alarm. As Zack and Natalie make nice, she heads upstairs where she hears strange footsteps and rests on her bed which brings dreams of the nights events, and a POV of an oxygen mask being attached while in an ambulance. Zack watches TV and wanders through the house where the pet dog in the kitchen, who can't see him, growls & barks at his presence in DEV (dog's eye view)! A sleeping Natalie is watched over by her mother and told to forget about dating Zack again. Annoyed, she undresses in the bathroom where she is spied on from behind the door. Zack watches a news conference of the Mayor announcing that due to brain death, Natalie's life support systems will be disconnected at midnight. Zack is startled when Natalie's distraught mother then appears on screen by her husband and at the same time, creepy Mom in the bathroom morphs into the reaper causing Natalie to scream.

Flashback memories reveal the reaper was betrayed by his lover whom he shot dead after she was found in bed with another man. Seeing Natalie as a reincarnation substitute, he offers her eternal life to stay at his side. Zack races upstairs to the bathroom and clocks the reaper with a golf club while Natalie flees. She returns with a shotgun from the attic to find Zack being held by the throat in midair, and refusing the reaper's offer again, shoots him to no effect. The reaper throws Zack through a window whose fall also has no effect. Outside, the duo run from the house to a bus stop where Zack tells her of her condition in the hospital, and why no one can see or hear them. Desperate to get back into their bodies, Natalie's parents and Zack's Dad meanwhile are numb in the waiting room with Mr. Mayor dishing out a healthy portion of snobbery, but losing his snootiness as they have to face signing 'pull the plug' release forms. At the hospital, with less than 15 minutes counting down to the permanent exit, Natalie is trapped on an elevator by the reaper (who morphed from a young orderly humorously bumping reggae on his walkman headphones). He tells her they are headed to a 7th floor (seeing as the hospital only has 6) which is an afterlife, and that he is an angel who takes souls for a better world but Natalie wants off of his ride. As Zack feverishly rushes to her (and is freaked out while also passing deceased Tommy's room), with 6 minutes left, he reaches the 6th floor and spends another 3 minutes yelling for her(!) He meets Brad who is now also a black-clad raincoated reaper but more an underling. And still a jerk although a little remorseful. Brad makes a witty Led Zeppelin reference of no such thing as a stairway to heaven and extracts the soul of an elderly woman.

Natalie with the reaper watches her parents stand sad vigil over her bedside as they prepare to sign the release papers. When she begs for them stop, her mother senses hearing her daughter's cries but the reaper who is determined to rekindle his old flame (I suppose at heart, he's really lonely), convinces her that Zack is dead and she'll be forever safe in his realm as there is nothing more in the current to cling to. As her resistance fades she joins Grimmy back to the elevator to cross the sinister uncelestial bridge. Brad tells Zack that those who kill people, even unintentionally, must serve the Angel of Death as penance. [Wow, a continuous cycle of killing in the infinite yonder. Sounds like virtual ecstasy for every serial/mass murderer wishing to come back from the grave but I digress]... With 1 minute left, Brad brings Zack onto the elevator where Natalie runs back to him, with Brad helping by preventing the reaper from separating the duo. Now midnight, Zack and Natalie make it back to her room where she enters herself, and Zack (finding that a pendant in her hand acted as a source of protection) extracts her soul. With the reaper coming for her, Zack sprints through the halls having denied him his main prize. As the reaper fails to claim Natalie, he follows Zack up stairwells to a boiler room. At 2 minutes past midnight [the hands that threaten doom♪] he drops the pendant which the reaper finds, giving chase to Zack onto the hospital roof. Remembering his being slingshotted from the bathroom window and no longer subject to pain, Zack jumps off the building and again survives where he dashes back to his own room. Shocked by his plummet, the reaper is met by Bossman who tells him that by violating the precious time necessary in his failure to snatch the duo, he must now face lethal punishment.

Now 3 minutes past midnight, Zack enters his body and awakens from bed with a doctor and nurse trying to calm his agitated state. He staggers back to Natalie's room and tries to bring her back by restoration, while the pleas of the reaper to the Angel of Death fall on deaf ears as Grimmy himself is mercilessly extracted by full disintegration. Natalie has flatlined but revives to the happiness of Zack and her parents. Sometime later with the duo recovered, Zack visits Natalie in her room as she's set for discharge, and he is on good terms with her father who thanks him for saving his daughter's life. He then shows her his surprise: his fixed up navy blue 1956 Chevy. Saying she feels they've been given a second chance and asking what happens if the reaper returns, he replies no worries as they'll hook up in paradise. They kiss and drive off. SOULTAKER looks like a straight-to-video release but opened in theatres to what I'm guessing must have been a very short run. Set to the close of the acid-washed 1980's, it's a bomb plagued with uneven wooden acting; stiff dialogue; a wobbly storyline; plenty of out-of-synch emotional beats; a syrupy glaze of clichéd 'love-meant-to-be-together' (he's a poor Romeo mechanic from the wrong side of the tracks, and she's a jittery Juliet socialite from a wealthy family); a clumsy climax that falls apart in a whirlwind of rubbish; and grade-Z sfx. Its silly micro-budget fantasy is a feast of ineptitude that will have you laughing & nitpicking from the get-go, and is best remembered for being bashed on a 1999 episode of MST3K with Schilling -- who plays Natalie and wrote the screenplay -- said to have been irritated when she was mockingly compared to Tonya Harding.

The movie is along the lines of CARNIVAL OF SOULS and Schilling based her script on a real 1986 car accident involving her and a friend. While definitely not as spooky or arthouse (but with lots of the same meandering drifting more than morality tale) and merged with hospital horror, its poor man's lineage shares the eerie plane of protagonists with a footstep in 2 existences. And stuck in a crossover limbo where the thin tether between each is wavering, this gap of twilight atleast doesn't sparkle. With better writing, solid actors and real scares, this could have been FINAL DESTINATION a decade before that franchise began. [If we're talking supplementary romantic angle alone, SOULTAKER also has a veiled semblance to the German films WINGS OF DESIRE; its sequel FARAWAY, SO CLOSE; and the American remake of WOD -- CITY OF ANGELS]. Whereas religion, theology & philosophy for centuries haven't proven what happens when we kick the bucket [the debate lies with individual/collective interpretations based on spiritual faith which is an argument for another time], the Angel of Death and the reaper in SOULTAKER know the score from whom there is no escape. When our time is up, that's it. And no bargaining, negotiating, compromising, or pleading will get us off the hook. When the 2 pale riders show up, you are an absolute goner in the time/space capsule they operate [a mystifying cosmic order which is never properly explained]. Earthly elimination isn't even about malice: it's just a cold rule following a monotone exactitude that seems ruthless because it's relentless & irreversible. The extracting of souls collected in the palm from black rings that glow green are a super streamlined equivalent of ultra low-tech gizmos that you can imagine would be used by any 1990's two-bit generic presentation of an upgraded Horseman of Death.

As the subordinate reaper, Estevez who looks & sounds chillingly like his more famous brother, Martin, was originally asked to play the Mayor and with his darkened eyes and intense piercing glare that could laserburn through brick, he takes his role and runs with it. Square-faced Z'Dar [from a genetic disorder known as cherubism] is instantly recognizable as MANIAC COP. His voice is electronically altered and he sports bad blonde hair which he playfully insisted in the years afterwards was not a wig. He passed away at 64 on March 30, 2015 from cardiac arrest. Surprisingly, the movie won the 1991 Saturn Award [Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films] for Best Home Video Release which in fairness is understandable if you take extra exterior concepts of metaphysical boogeymen death-merchant agents; parallel universes; OBE's (out of body experiences) trapped in harrowing gloom; embodiments of almost hypnotic immortality; and dream-drenched divinity (albeit ominous) bleeding into reality. So yeah, wonders never cease but gold statue accolade aside, SOULTAKER at worst is a mundane limburger-stenched plodding clunker, and at best is amatuerish subpar mediocrity far more downright tepid than anywhere near remotely terrifying. For all its rough margins, flawed continuity hiccups, and skewering reviews of being nonsensical, the movie does have its fans from Variety and Billboard magazine to Joe Bob Briggs. Apparently, a sequel was planned with James Earl Jones, Donald Sutherland, Faye Dunaway and William Shatner(!) but production fell through and was never made. Schilling however, was unwilling to abandon the idea and kept the premise for her 2002 novel, 'Quietus'.