Coroner’s Corner
by John Bikowski
Death on the Home Screen
Before the advent of the VCR, people used to be able to pay good money to see all sorts of horror crapola on the big screen. If some small company of idiots got together and shot what may have been construed as a “film,” it usually found its way to a theater somewhere or other. Classic grue-fests such as Dawn of the Dead, Evil Dead II and Suspiria all were shown as they were meant to be seen – in a huge, dark room with 200 of your closest strangers. You wouldn’t catch me making out at one of those puppies.
Nowadays, usually only the neutered horror films make it to the theater and the rest all go straight to video, thereby losing that giant cinematic limbs-a-loppin’ fury. When I am rich, I will run a movie theater that shows only the greatest slashers. I can pay actors to interrupt the flicks by running through screaming and hacking each other up. It’ll be like when they used to rig shock treatments up to certain seats or send out flying skeletons. Yeah…
Clive Barker has two projects that are presently in danger of going the direct-to-video route. The Lord of Illusions looks like it will be an intense, epic tale of horror much in the vein of the original Hellraiser. One of the holdups is that advance screenings were shown to unresponsive audiences. As a result, they took the film and recut parts of it. I think this is a crappy policy because they probably gave out free tickets to people who would rather see Terms of Endearment six times in a row. You could send me to review the best opera ever, but I would give it a shitty rating because I couldn’t care less about operas in general. Idiots! The other film due out by Clive is Hellraiser IV: Bloodline.
I’ll wrap up with a good bet on video – Maniac, starring Joe Spinell and directed by William Lustig. Be careful! There are many different flicks called Maniac. This one is about a complete fat slob who was abused as a child. Now he is older and loose in New York City. Many people will not like this film because the main psycho’s sickness is too realistic. This is no pretty picture; everything is sweaty, stinky and in your face. Tom Savini provides the incredibly gory special F/X which will excite the gag reflex of many of the wimpier viewers. Keep that popcorn bucket handy just in case you spew. The story concerns the phase of the nut’s life that involves butchering women and nailing their hair and clothes to mannequins that he gets a woody for and sleeps with. One victim is slowly scalped and has her hair pulled slowly back from her from her blood-sopped face. Other interpersonal mayhem includes a sword rammed through a nurse and the messiest shotgun blast you will ever see! The F/X crew had to dump the car in the East River because the sheep guts would not come off the upholstery. The maniac himself also gets it good in the end as mannequins come to life (?) and rip him apart finally tearing his squealing head off with their fingers. Creepy, gory and powerful, yet sleazy enough to remain a video-classic oddity.
