#brain yuzna

[heliojip]

i recorded the broadcast of the reani panel at horrorhound come get yall juiiiice!!! (might get copyright sniped for this but fuck it)

[moony-myles]

H.P. Lovecraft Film Adaptations

A small list of the H.P Lovecraft film adaptations that I've seen, including the Re-Animator trilogy! Thought I'd bring more attention to these movies as well as some of the other films that I've seen in the hopes that someone else who hasn't seen them might enjoy them too!

A lot of these movies, if not all, I found for free on Tubi if you are looking for/interested in them.

✶ ✶ ✶

Re-Animator - 1985

Bride of Re-Animator - 1990

Beyond Re-Animator - 2003

From Beyond - 1986

Dagon - 2001

Castle Freak - 1995

[ash-eats-film]

So I was just randomly scrolling through insta stories when I saw someone had added a post to their story of a horror com Jeffrey Combs was gonna be at so I looked into it cause it’s within a distance I’d be willing to drive, AND OH MY GOD LIKE ALMOST EVERYONE IVE EVER WANTED TO MEET IS GONNA BE THERE ALL OF THE REANIMATOR TRIO INCLUDED

[cursed-and-haunted]

web weaving for my oc, Graves

Re-animator dir. Stuart Gordon / No Ghost Abandoned, Tyree Daye / Another Last Day, Aex Lemon / Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Willem van Der Meer, Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt / Jenny Holzer / Practice of Autopsies, G. Reign / The Book of X, Rose Etter / haruspice, Yves Olade / self portrait as a murderer, Juliusz Lewandowski / Love via Purpose, I.B. Vyache / Anatomy Lesson by Dr. F. Ruysch, Adriaen Backer / Blood Wedding, Federico Garcia Lorca / The Gross Clinic, Thomas Eakins / On The Romance of Cannibalism, Silas Denver Melvin / Blood Tin Straw, Sharon Olds / All the Wrong Colours, Yrsa Daley-Ward / Bride of Re-animator dir. Brain Yuzna / Baby Teeth, Laura Villareal / I Keep a Strange List, Talin Tahajian / Hannibal 1x05

[twinktor-frankenstein]

Look up Brain Yuzna's list of movies...

[pierppasolini]

fave psycho sexual movies??

Off the top of my head: Oedipus Rex (1967, dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini) Teorema (1968, dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini) Cruising (1980, dir. William Friedkin) Crash (1996, dir. David Cronenberg) The River (1997, dir. Tsai Ming-liang) The Wayward Cloud (2005, dir. Tsai Ming-liang) Brain Damage (1988, dir. Frank Henenlotter) In the Realm of the Senses (1976, dir. Nagisa Ōshima) Videodrome (1983, dir. David Cronenberg) Audition (1999, dir. Takashi Miike) Society (1989, dir. Brian Yuzna) Martin (1977, dir. George A. Romero) Suddenly, Last Summer (1959, dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz) Law of Desire (1987, dir. Pedro Almodóvar) Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989, dir. Shinya Tsukamoto) Perfect Blue (1997, dir. Satoshi Kon) Ichi the Killer (2001, dir. Takashi Miike) Careful (1992, dir. Guy Maddin) The 4th Man (1983, Paul Verhoeven) Tokyo Decadence (1992, dir. Ryū Murakami) Muscle (1989, dir. Hisayasu Satō) Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967, dir. John Huston) Blue Velvet (1986, dir. David Lynch) Phantom Thread (2017, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) Hellraiser (1987, dir. Clive Barker) The Ornithologist (2016, dir. Alain Guiraudie) O Fantasma (2000, dir. João Pedro Rodrigues) Stranger by the Lake (2013, dir. Alain Guiraudie)

as always I know I am forgetting some but these are some of my favorites.

[moviesludge]

Okay now the older stuff:

The Uncanny - Solid British anthology horror with cats as a theme. A little more intense than expected. Graveyard Disturbance - Lamberto Bava Scooby-Doo type of thing with friends staying the night in a creepy crypt. Killer Crocodile - B-movie about a radioactive croc attacking everybody. The Devonsville Terror - Town has history torturing and killing women accused of being witches. Present day women find moods haven't changed much, and might have a link to original accused witches. And Soon the Darkness - 70s suspense thriller about 2 British women on a bike ride holiday in France. One of them goes missing, and her friend tries to find help. Unfriended - Friends on a video chat experience a supernatural entity. The Caller - Strange 2-person suspense thriller from the 80s that feels like a play. Man shows up at a woman's house during a stormy night. She's there alone. They have conversations trying to learn each others motives and if either of them is in danger from the other. Very diabolical, and has a memorable ending. The Laughing Dead - Archaeological bus trip to Mexico turns into supernatural monster mash The Giant Spider Invasion - Exploitation B-Movie with a lot of weirdo stuff. Fun. Curse of the Blue Lights - A group of friends happen across the lair of 3 demon monster guys bent on malevolence. Habit - Fessenden romance horror about a guy dating a vampire woman. Queens of Evil - 70s atmospheric Italian horror about a motorcyclist who stumbles upon 3 beautiful sisters living in a big house in the forest. Splatter: Naked Blood - During the clinical trials for a contraceptive, a scientist's son adds his own formula to the drug. This makes the girls in the trial able to withstand extreme pain and to experience pleasure from it. Exte: Hair Extensions - Japanese horror about evil hair extensions that take over the brain. The Vineyard - Fun James Hong horror about an evil shithead using peoples blood to make wine that keeps him young. Scary Movie - John Hawkes, terrified of everything, goes to a Texas community haunted house, but there's an escaped mental patient on the loose. Mimic - GDT horror about a cockroach monster that lives in the sewer and can look like a person. Faust: Love of the Damned - Weird Brian Yuzna super demon hero bullshit about a guy that sells his soul to become devil batman. The Relic - Monster in museum

[sleepythug]

best in bed half falling asleep dumb movies to throw on and fail to stay awake for? I usually go for sci-fi/creature features 90s/2000s

I half read this question wrote a whole paragraph on how i threw on tarkovsky's stalker several times (fell asleep every time) and didn't finish it until recently, however view it as the perfect film to watch in the very late hours of the night, half asleep, as well as, a paragraph on how i enjoy the films of jacques tourneur at night until i reverted back to the question and saw "dumb" lol

hmmmmmm kind of stumped by this because my first instinct/first films that jumped to mind i would describe as sleepy but i would definitely never regard as dumb because they are too well made, there's some intellect involved in making them.... are you talking like "midnight movies"? (can you also tell i over-read things and im a neurotic)

....

i wouldn't say most of these are "dumb", but for the sake of the prompt will pretend there's a gun to my head and if i don't answer i will be shot, some movies i enjoy suitable to watch after midnight (dumb or not)

....

god told me to (larry cohen, 1976)

danger diabolik (mario bava, 1968)

brain damage (frank helenlotter, 1988)

bloody muscle bodybuilder in hell (shinichi fukazawa, 1995)

nemesis (albert pyun, 1992)

dhoom 2 (sanjay gadhvi, 2006)

night of the hunted (jean rollin, 1980)

deathdream (bob clark, 1974)

man with the x-ray eyes (roger corman, 1963)

turkey shoot (brian trenchard-smith, 1982)

night tide (curtis harrington, 1961)

next of kin (tony williams, 1982)

conquest (lucio fulci, 1983)

demons (lamberto bava, 1985)

two thousand maniacs (herschell gordon lewis, 1964)

intruder (scott spiegel, 1981)

planet of the vampires (mario bava, 1965)

the dentist (brian yuzna, 1996)

double team (tsui hark, 1997)

the super inframan (hua shan, 1975)

[skelegun]

Quick overview of the Return of the Living Dead franchise:

Night of the Living Dead (1968): this film created the “zombie” genre as we know it. The dead begin to rise from their graves and hunger for the flesh of the living. Co-created by George A Romero and Jack Russo. Long story short, George Romero and Jack Russo have a legal battle over the rights to sequels. The two reach an agreement and George’s sequels are titled such as “Dawn of the Dead”, omitting the “Living” part, where as Jack Russo gets to keep the “Living” part. Weird flex but okay.

Return of the Living Dead (1977): A novel written by Jack Russo. Meant to be a sequel to Night of the Living Dead. Set a few years after the events of the movie, society has returned to normal, however people must still be vigilant as the dead still reanimate. Things are going smoothly until a bus accident on a remote highway causes an new outbreak. It’s a bad shitty book. There is also a part where Russo goes to into excruciating detail about a zombie eating certain parts of woman that lead me to believe that the man is fucked up in the head.

Return of the Living Dead (1985): Someone bought the rights from Russo to the title of his book and produced an otherwise completely unrelated horror film. This film is an absolute classic mix of punk rock, dark comedy, and scares. It also created the trope of zombies moaning the word “brains”, as unlike Romero & Russo inspired zombies, the ones in this film are more like cannibalistic crackheads who crave craniums. The zombies are created as a result of a chemical called Trioxin, and isn’t spread through bites because it’s a chemical not a virus, also destroying the brain doesn’t stop the host, you must completely obliterate the body. One of my top 5 favorite films of all time, go give it a watch and get a copy of the stellar soundtrack.

C.H.U.D. II: Bud the C.H.U.D (1987): uhhh technically not a Return of the Living Dead film, but according to several sources it was originally meant to be. This is very apparent when you watch the film as the first CHUD film was about bulging eyed sewer mutants, where as this film is about talking zombies who can only be killed by electricity. It basically feels like a shittier first draft of the next film because the “the zombies can be stopped by electricity” wasn’t in the first RotLD film but ends up being the climax of the next film. Also the plot to both films are basically “due to a military mix up a small town gets attacked by zombies and a bunch of young folks gotta round em all up and stop em”

Return of the Living Dead 2 (1988): it’s basically the first movie… but for children. Seriously this movie replaces most of the edgy humor of the first film with slapstick. It’s really fucking weird, but there was this thing in the late 80s where they would try to like market stuff like Robocop and Freddy Kreuger and shit to children, and this movie is a flagrant example of it. On the plus side however it stays faithful to the rules laid out in the first film, only real adding the bit about electricity being their weakness.

Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993): This movie saw the last’s films lack of sex and gore and decided to make up for it in spades. Directed by Brian Yuzna a man who’s films are famous for their over the top gore and bizarre sexual degeneracy. This film is like a fucked up version of Romeo and Juliet where Juliet is an undead goth chick who gets off on self mutilation. Also Yuzna ignored the part about bites not causing infection because it’s not infection it’s a chemical, so now anyone who gets bit becomes a zombie. The zombies eat any flesh now not just brains, where as in the first two films they were only interested in brains. That being said it’s still an interesting movie and the only other film on this list after the first Return that I’d recommend watching, particularly if you enjoy Reanimator.

Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis & Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave (2005): absolute abominable shit. Was co-produced by the fucking Scifi channel. Zombies don’t seem to follow any consistent rules. Why these were even made boggles the mind. These movies were filmed together and technically share continuity with each other, but they don’t really? Like the characters who survive Necropolis suddenly act like completely different people in Rave to the Grave and seem to have amnesia or something. Like Necropolis is about a bunch of friends who break into an evil corporation’s lab to rescue their friend, and the end up discovering it’s full of zombies. Rave to the Grave is about the survivors from the last movie developing a party drug from Trioxin that turns people into zombies. From a narrative perspective it almost feels like Necropolis would have made more sense to come after Rave. Like you have Rave come out first and they learn about the horrors of Trioxin so the next one is them storming the evil lab to shut down the the evil company. Finally they are both clearly filmed in Romania and have a bunch of Romanian actors which would be fine if the plot took place in Romania and not America.

Somewhat mercifully the franchise is now dead.

[adamwatchesmovies]

From Beyond (1986)

From Beyond is a backup/substitute movie. In tone, it’s similar to Re-Animator. The nauseating special effects will remind you of The Thing. The mix of bizarre eroticism and horror is akin to that of Hellraiser. There are many others you can compare it to but you get the idea. The thing is, you would never recommend this 1986 film by Stuart Gordon over any of those but if you’ve seen them so many times you’ve memorized all the best parts and you want something like them but not them, this is the movie for you.

Dr. Edward Pretorious (Ted Sorel) has developed the Resonator, a machine that allows humans to see the unseen creatures that live inside our space but outside of our realm. Unfortunately, the machine also allows them to see us. Pretorious is attacked and killed by a creature from this realm and his assistant, Dr. Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs) is accused of his murder. His claims of invisible monsters make everyone think he’s crazy, except for Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) isn’t so sure.

The best thing about “From Beyond” is that it knows exactly what sort of movie it is. Writer/director Stuart Gordon (who wrote the screenplay with Brian Yuzna and Dennis Paoli) has no delusions about who is watching and what they want to see. He knows this isn’t some deep tale about the human condition. This is a sleazy, campy horror comedy. It grosses you out. It loses its mind. It doesn’t quite hold up logistically. None of that matters. There’s a lot of gore, plenty of nudity and kink, tasteless depictions of mental health, outlandish characters, and it’s all the better for it. Science runs amok, Eyeballs get sucked out of people’s heads, brains enlarge until they crack through skulls, and you get all sorts of phallic and uncomfortable-looking beasts sliming all over Barbara Crampton. From Beyond knows that you could probably tell this story with a straight face but that it would be all too easy to try, fail, and become the subject of ridicule. Instead, it beats the audience to the punch by making fun of itself - which is not the same as attempting to make a movie that’s “so bad it’s good” on purpose.

The most memorable aspect of this film are the terrific special effects. The primary monster goes through all sorts of transformations/shapes and it’s made extra discomfiting by this running theme of a quasi-masochistic obsession that develops in anyone exposed to the Resonator. It’s funny, and a bit unsettling too despite never being adequately explored. It feels like there’s a scene with Pretorious missing, the one extra point needed to make this more than a weird addition. There's the beginning of an idea present. What kind of horror might emerge from someone who can only get it up by inflicting pain, or from an overly stimulated part of the brain that draws us to danger even though logic says we should stay away?

The performances aren’t bad, but they’re not great either. It would’ve been nice if they were just the teensiest bit better. The story would’ve benefited either from holding onto its mystery for longer or finding a way to avoid the machine being turned on and off over and over. I don’t know if we necessarily need a remake, however. As-is, From Beyond looks great and you just know a new adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story just wouldn’t be the same in terms of tone or humor. What we need are other movies influenced by this one, or that push some aspects of it a little further. Thankfully, there are plenty.

It’s difficult to imagine someone calling From Beyond their favorite movie. Not because of the uncomfortable horror elements (I’m pretty sure one of the genre’s objectives is to make you uneasy). Because it doesn't do anything better than everybody else. This doesn’t mean it’s bad. It means this is a film that’s comfortable with holding onto its silver medal. There’s nothing wrong with that. One thing’s for sure; it’s memorable and has a certain undiscernable quality that’ll get you coming back to it. (March 4, 2022)

[the-technicolor-whiscash]

Bride was shockingly less horny than I expected I think it’s probably bc it was Yuzna and not Gordon who seems to love fucknasty gore sex and like that’s not a criticism I like that even though the bride was effectively wearing a tulle sheet the entire movie, Dan desired her for her brain and her heart, not her body. However I was let’s say looking forward to literally the most insane threesome scene I had imagined them doing in my head with Dan fucking the bride and Francesca at the same time with Herbert stumbling in out of nowhere without warning to remind Dan to take note of the body’s performance and sensation. I imagine if Gordon directed it we’d probably have gotten a scene like that.

[woundthatswallows]

the dentist 2 (1998) dir brian yuzna

[sarah1228]

Bride of Re-Animator came out 27 years ago today :)

[glitchbirds]

thoughts- silent night deadly night 1: its fine i guess. overall a fairly generic slasher with more sexual assault than necessary (note: every single silent night movie has at least one incident of sexual assault, excluding the remake) (though i think in 3 its just in a flashback to the previous movies?) silent night 2: a bit overrated in "so bad its good" circles imo. the garbage day scene does not make up for showing me 40 minutes of footage from the first movie in voiced-over flashbacks silent night 3: personally this is one of the ones i enjoyed the most but i think im just predisposed to liking films that remind me of halloween 5. bill moseley is Wasted in this one though they dont let him do anything fun aside from having his brain exposed in a little dome silent night 4: who cares about killer santas this is brian yuzna's evil man-hating feminist bug cult movie now. i think this is my favorite just because of how deranged it gets? silent night 5: somehow i have forgotten everything that happened in this movie aside from the weird incest-y sexual assault scene where pinocchio yells "i love you mommy" over and over again and tbh i think thats probably everything i need to say about this one silent night remake: got jumpscared by malcolm mcdowell being in this esp since this came out only a couple years after rob zombie's halloweens, i just spent the whole movie thinking of him as cop loomis. undoubtedly the worst one, utterly charmless and i do not enjoy being stuck the whole runtime with cop protagonists who make jokes about police brutality

[aviculor]

From Beyond, another great 80′s horror produced by Brian Yuzna. Directed by Stuart Gordon who was Re-Animator’s director and co-wrote Honey I Shrunk The Kids with Yuzna...it seems the two collaborated on a lot of projects. Gordon passed away last year.

I’ve never read the source material by Lovecraft and I have no intention of praising him, so I’m looking at this within a bubble. It’s a classic story of a scientist consumed by hubris who bit off more than they could chew and becomes a victim of their own experiment gone horribly right. I can always at least respect the vibe when a film does that (like with Mimic). What’s a little less tight here is Dr. McMichaels’ fixation on curing schizophrenia. The pineal gland resonator has nothing to do with the disease. Tillinghast was in the mental hospital because he had PTSD from a paranormal incident nobody believed. McMichaels just made up a connection once she was able to vouch for Tillinghast’s story...almost as if she’s seeing things that aren’t there. But I guess there always has to be a reason to advance the plot, in this case a reason why anyone would want to keep turning the machine on.

This is dumb in a camp way, which I find a lot more enjoyable than dumb in a “durr hurr taking things seriously is for loser try-hards” way. *coughTUSKcough*

Fantastically moist practical effects.

You know, it kind of gives me Videodrome vibes with exposure to a frequency causing a brain growth and “enhanced” sight and someone becoming seductively addicted to it.

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/4/2020: SOCIETY

Without having a survey to back me up, I feel comfortable asserting that as a horror fan, you go through different phases with SOCIETY. It’s a basic fact of life, and yet it morphs and mutates underneath you, shocking you anew just when you think you’ve got a grip on it. You never forget your first time, because there is simply nothing like it. Then, after you get over the initial shock of its patented brand of body horror, you start to take it for granted; it's so broad and monolithic that it becomes something like the Grand Canyon--when it’s not right there in front of you, you begin to experience it more iconically, as part of the wallpaper of existence, rather than an in-your-face confrontation with the limits of experience. Then, you revisit it every few years (or months, depending on what sort of person you are), and the prophylactic layer that your brain has wrapped around your memories of it--the one that allows you to think of SOCIETY as a fun, wacky cheap thrill--begins to crumble, and you realize all over again how iconoclastically vile it is. Wherever you happen to be at, with this inimitable genre landmark, you'd be hard pressed to deny that it earns its royal status among horror movies, just for being so uniquely fucked up.

Filmmaker Brian Yuzna is best known as the co-creator of the indispensable RE-ANIMATOR (or as the co-writer of HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS...depending on what sort of person you are, again), itself a milestone achievement in the blending of sex and gore that so characterized '80s horror production. That film clearly brought out the best in Yuzna and frequent collaborator Stuart Gordon (also of HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS fame...among other things), but it's interesting to see how they operate apart, to understand the unique ingredients that each filmmaker brought to the more perfect union of their classic Lovecraft adaptation. Gordon skewed darker and more intellectual, as evidenced by the end of his career with the shattering mob thriller KING OF THE ANTS, the disturbing true crime drama STUCK, and the Mamet-penned EDMOND. Yuzna, for his part, is almost anti-intellectual, preferring to cook up blackly comic, semi-pornographic nightmares like his two increasingly horny RE-ANIMATOR sequels, the terminal S&M fantasy RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3, and the shamelessly hokey comic book adaptation FAUST: LOVE OF THE DAMNED. Yuzna's lack of shame is really his defining feature as an artist, and nowhere is this more obvious than in his directorial debut and signature masterpiece, SOCIETY.

Salvador Dali's "The Great Masturbator," a chief visual inspiration for SOCIETY.

Yuzna was able to leverage the success of RE-ANIMATOR to lock in two directorial opportunities, BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR, and a bizarre body horror exercise about a Beverly Hills orphan who discovers that not only are his adoptive family from a different bloodline, but they're not even from the same species. That both pictures employed the writing team of Woody Keith and Rick Fry gives you a little taste of what to expect from SOCIETY, but to be frank, the latter threatens to make the former look like a very special episode of ER; "overkill" barely begins to describe SOCIETY’s ambitious assault on the human body. In a recent interview, the philipino-american director giggles perversely, "I think my friends were a little embarrassed for me (when they saw SOCIETY)," and this sound bite reminded me that the last, most important ingredient that Yuzna contributes to any project is unabashed joy. It's a little hard to imagine stomaching SOCIETY without it.

In this unusual scene from the class struggle in Beverly Hills, Billy Warlock (son of HALLOWEEN 2's Michael Myers, Dick Warlock) plays Bill Whitney, a rich, handsome, athletic high school student with a heavy duty anxiety disorder. Although he appears to have it all, he is plagued by nightmares and hallucinations, reflecting suspicions that the family that spoils him is also out to get him. Perhaps this is all understandable, though. Bill is under a lot of pressure these days, with his parents devoting all of their attention to his sister's coming out party, and his narcissistic girlfriend pushing him to ingratiate himself to the assholes higher up the social ladder; it's enough to make any teenager feel alienated and insecure. But, do these garden variety anxieties account for his visions of his sister's body deforming itself unnaturally, or the dubious evidence he finds that her debutante ball involves incestuous orgies and human sacrifice? Is Bill simply crumbling under the strain of societal expectations, or is the friction with his shrink, his parents, and his peers all symptomatic of an elaborate plot against him by elites who are truly less than human?

I can’t believe they use this cheapo blanket trick MORE THAN ONCE in a movie that is famous for its unforgettable special effects, and I guess I kind of love it.

In case I haven't made the answer abundantly obvious, I'll add that while SOCIETY is the purest expression of Yuzna-ness on the market, it has an important co-author in Screaming Mad George. The eccentric japanese FX master, whose name is apparently an amalgamation of Mad Magazine, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and...George, has produced some of horror's most outrageous makeup and visual effects, mostly for Yuzna, many of them in SOCIETY. If you've seen even a trailer for Alex Winter's 1993 oddity FREAKED--which is itself a grossout criticism of American social standards--then you are already familiar with SMG's trademark style. He specializes in twisted perversions of the human form that would make a cenobite blush, driven by a penchant for puns, and influenced equally by THE THING's Rob Botin, and Big Daddy Roth’s Rat Fink style. Screaming Mad George is instrumental in articulating Yuzna's premise: that behind the shimmering veneer of success and sophistication, the upper class are just a bunch of degenerates, who literally degenerate into something unimaginable behind closed doors. It's impossible to imagine SOCIETY without his sinuous, slithering monstrosities, or his indescribable realization of their most important social event, "the shunt".

One of many great images from a zine I wish I owned, on SMG’s Facebook page.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by SOCIETY's visual impact, but its message is just as potent now as it was at the end of the Reagan era: Rich people are not only different from the rest of us, but in fact, they aren't even human. Writers Keith and Fry make an interesting choice of hero to help put this across. A lazier writer would have selected any archetype from the Freaks and Geeks set to create an easy Us vs Them tension, but SOCIETY is led by a promising young man who, for reasons he himself does not yet understand, is just not "the right kind of people". Bill appears to have every advantage in life, including a level of popularity that wins him presidency of the debate team despite his nerdier rival’s superior prowess--and yet, he suffers from a stigmatizing psychiatric disorder that is the natural result of feeling indefinably different from one's peers, and intuiting that, as a consequence, they don't even really like you. The shallow jock with deep-seated emotional problems is a much more interesting protagonist for this kind of social allegory than the charismatic outcasts that you get in movies like THE FACULTY and DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, for whom the idea that the elites could be aliens is just de rigueur.

It's worth noting that this complexity of character extends to Bill's love interest, sympathetic society girl Clarissa Carlyn (Playboy Playmate Devin DeVasquez). At first, she seems villainously eager to introduce Bill to the many splendors of "the shunting", but as the plot against him mounts to its horrifying conclusion, she defects. There appears to be a reason for this, although honestly, this is the most difficult part of SOCIETY for me to wrap my head around. Clarissa lives as an essentially independent adult, only burdened by her mother (Pamela Matheson), a possibly brain damaged hulk who lurks in and out of various scenes just to be disturbing, always announced by some toots on a tuba, before eventually siding with our heroes. I'm really not sure what's supposed to be going on in this part of the movie, except that this character contributes to a number of distasteful jokes. But, I hold on to the idea that by virtue of whatever disorder Mrs. Carlyn suffers from, she serves the purpose of priming Clarissa to rebel, since her very existence makes her daughter something of a societal outcast herself. That's the best I can do.

In any case, everyone working on SOCIETY commits completely, with Mrs. Carlyn being no exception. The movie's climactic orgy of the damned is an all hands on deck operation, just as reliant on Screaming Mad George's artistic abilities as it is on the actors' responsibility to make you believe that this fucked up shit is really happening. There's a visceral patina of sleaze spread over the entire film, dripping from the way that characters talk to and touch each other, flirting and flaunting their bodies in a distinctly unseemly fashion, even when it stays within the realm of mundane reality. This constant sinister, insinuating attitude on the part of the whole cast lays the foundation for what is to come, and while I appreciate everybody's hard work, my favorite performance is from an actor who only comes in at the very end: David Wiley as society king Judge Carter. Wiley's career consisted almost exclusively of the most ordinary sort of television work, which makes his outrageous turn in this alien porno flick all the more respectable. While other characters transition from suspicious pod people to full-on mutated perverts, Judge Carter has to show up just for the finale, establish his authority, rip off his clothes, and plunge straight into a sea of slime, happily fisting his way through the cast. Wiley meets this challenge with aplomb, making of himself a hybrid of Robert Englund and Gene Hackman, perfectly embodying the movie's joyful absurdity, and never betraying the slightest hint of embarrassment. 

SOCIETY is very much a don't-look-down type of endeavor, a fairy that could expire at the slightest lapse in faith. There's a visual pun in the last act that's so gross, so offensive, so frankly idiotic, that I don't have the courage to describe it; my whole body tenses up when I know this scene is coming, as if it were the meat hook scene in TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE or the brutal rape in the middle of SHOWGIRLS. I don't like it, but at the same time, I respect Yuzna's unhesitating commitment to show it to me, and I think that actor Charles Lucia should get some kind of award for shouldering the burden so valiantly. SOCIETY is a daring movie in the truest sense, a film with more balls than brains, and in this it exposes the limitation of intelligence and taste, and the real need for pure transgression, in producing art of any real value. You might argue with me about whether Yuzna's masturbatory magnum opus really qualifies as art, but to respond to that, I'll quote the great transgressor Alejandro Jodorowsky: "If you are great, EL TOPO is a great picture. If you are limited, EL TOPO is limited." So stick that in your shunt and smoke it.

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PS Here, have this stuck in your head for the rest of your life.