The latest scraps of flesh....
Saturday, November 15, 2014
976-EVIL
976-EVIL
A movie about a demonic
answering machine directed by Freddy Krueger(!?); sign me up twice. Over this Halloween holi-dazed weekend I
decided to dust off my old 976-EVIL VHS tape and give it a spin, and I am glad
I did. The movie itself focuses on an
odd pair of cousins (Spike and Hoax) who live under the rule of a staunch
religious fundamentalist aunt who is obsessed with keeping her couch clean. Spike is the hard knock cool motorcycle
riding greaser dude, Hoax is the helpless nerd who looks up to him. Spike discovers a strange card for a
“Horrorscope” service in a booby magazine, and decides to start calling it for
daily kicks. The strange, supernatural
phone service seems to have insider knowledge in Spike’s life which makes him
uncomfortable with calling the number so he tries to throw the card with the
number away, however his nerdy never-do-well cousin picks up the card and
discovers the phone number is the answer to all his problems. Dark rituals always get the job done. Soon Hoax gets possessed by a demon, he
starts ripping the hearts out of his foes, cracks a ton of puns, grows some
facial hair , soils the couch, and is generally being an evil jerk, which I
thought was a nice change in pace from perpetual victim.
I had a lot of fun dialing
into 976-EVIL. Freddy Krueger knows how
to film sleazy, dirty, dingy piss soaked locals. The entire film has a miasma of trashy
delight that I found quite atmospheric, like a horror yarn told in a neon lit
back alley. I used to live on the wrong
side of the tracks, the “bad” side of town and the locals picked in the movie
reminded me of those streets. You can
almost waft the scent of day old beer and broken dreams. I think maybe they were going for the 80’s
punk trash culture look, which works for the movie.
The main set of bullies that
antagonize and torture Hoax spend their nights playing strip poker behind a
movie theatre that constantly spins horror movies. It’s kind of an odd choice considering there
is only one girl in the group, but there are a lot of little odd accoutrements
to the film that make revisiting it interesting; like the pneumatic air
messaging system the cousins use to communicate between their separate houses
(Spike kind of lives in the shed). I
don’t think I’ve ever seen a bank teller pneumatic air system used as a set
piece in a movie, especially one that dangles over the pits of hell, but here
we are.
There is also a scene that has
fish falling from a sky during a rain storm; seemingly legitimizing Hoax’s
crazy religious mother’s claims that God regularly speaks to her. She claims the falling fish are a sign from
God that something disastrous is going to happen to Spike if she doesn’t
intervene in his ungodly ways. The movie
kind of sides with her on this point; later Spike does find himself in trouble
with the Horrorscope call number. It
brings a reporter into the mix of the story but his thread doesn’t exactly go
anywhere, he stumbles across the origins of the Horrorscope number, figures out
there is some supernatural mumbo jumbo behind it, then finds himself a target of the demon
possessed Hoax.
Hoax is a total Marty-a-like
from Slaughter High. He’s the kind of
nerdy momma’s boy that makes other nerds want to bully him. He is emotionally stunted, has no friends
(hey that sounds familiar), and basically spends his time trying to impress
Spike, who finds Hoax mildly amusing but for the most part treats him like a
nuisance. It’s clear that Spike is the
intended protagonist of the story but I thought he came off as kind of a
dick. He steps in to protect Hoax from
bullies during one scene, but seems extremely reluctance to do so; maybe it was
only to maintain his greaser veneer. The
rest of the film he seems to want to avoid Hoax like the plague, getting drunk
with the “strip poker” bullies that tormented him earlier, and basically just
not giving a shit about anybody but himself.
So I was kind of rooting for
Hoax the entire movie. His mother is
horrendous to him, his “best fiend” is a greaser dickhead, and he gets beaten
regularly by the local bullies. He
deserved his revenge; so when the “Horrorscope” begins to take him over with
dark magic, transforming him into a furry demon elf guy, I was totally on his
side. Finally Hoax gets his day. The movie clearly paints him as the big
baddie, but when he begins ripping hearts out of people’s chests and spewing
one liners I couldn’t help but crack a deviant smile.
In the end Hoax gets a little
too over zealous with his new found powers and thirst for revenge against,
well, everyone, so Spike steps in to finish him off by tossing him into a pit
of Hell; the poor dweeb. I’m not clear
why Spike suddenly felt compelled to stop Hoax from hurting more people,
especially people he didn’t seem to give a squirt about earlier. I guess he felt responsible for introducing
Hoax to the Horrorscope call line, but I think Hoax kind of found that himself
by snooping through Spike’s stuff absolving him of any guilt. I really wish Spike ended up in the pit and
Hoax ended the movie victorious in his revenge, especially after the scene
where he throws Hoax on the floor of a boy’s locker room and mock spits at
him. What a knob.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Soultangler VHS available
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