The Curator of Schlock #306 by Jeff Shuster

Rabid

David Cronenberg ain’t right.

I’ve got nothing profound to say about anything at the moment. I’m cranky. I’m wishing I could time travel back to 1997. I miss my Nintendo 64, my bubbled out CRT TV, and a new X-Files to look forward to on Friday nights. Or had The X-Files moved to Sundays at that point? I don’t remember.

This is why I like movies. They can be miniature time capsules that let you wallow in a particular decade for a couple of hours.

Tonight, we’ll travel back to 1977 to experience a violent rabies epidemic that could have occurred on the outskirts of Montreal, Canada.

1977’s Rabid from director David Cronenberg was released in not just a very important year for movies, but also a very important year in the history of the world as it is the year I was born.

Imagine if that hadn’t happened.

You would not be reading this blog right now. What would you be doing with your life? Contemplating plastic surgery? Speaking of which, our movie begins at the Keloid Clinic for Plastic Surgery somewhere in the Quebec countryside. A young couple named Rose (Marilyn Chambers) and Hart (Frank Moore) are riding motorcycles near the clinic, but get into bad accident because some loser can’t get his RV started and he’s blocking the whole Canadian road.

The Keloid Clinic is the closest medical facility in the area. Hart’s injuries aren’t critical, but Rose is going to die unless Dr. Dan Keloid (Howard Ryshpan) tries an experimental procedure to that uses morphogenetic skin supplements to repair her skin and organs.

Don’t ask me what that is. I ain’t no doctor.

Rose stays in a coma for a couple of months until she wakes up screaming. A patient named Lloyd (J. Roger Periard) at the hospital goes to check on her, and Rose asks him to hug her because she’s cold and he’s warm. Lloyd complies because she’s young and attractive, like someone out of Behind the Green Door, but then a tendril emerges from her armpit and sucks his blood. This Rose has a thorn.

Lloyd wakes up later with no memory of the attack, but gets transferred to another hospital because his blood isn’t clotting. The next night, Rose leaves the clinic to feed on the blood of a cow, but, naturally, decides to snack on a purvey old farmer instead. Both of these men develop a nasty case of rabies and begin attacking people like zombies. If they bite you, it’s only a matter of time before you start foaming at the mouth too. Rabies shots don’t work either.

Rose leaves the clinic and begins spreading the rabies as she takes the blood of one victim after another. Martial Law gets declared in Montreal as the rabies zombie army begins to grow. There’s a rather tragic scene of a police officer gunning down one of the infected in a mall, and a mall Santa Claus gets caught in the crossfire.

Rabies ruin Christmas.

I don’t think this is going to end up well for anyone. Anyway, Rabid is a good little body horror/zombie movie from the late 70s. It’s no Dawn of the Dead, but this will keep your attention on a Saturday night.

Pray for David Cronenberg, though.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #302 by Jeff Shuster

Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!

Is that supposed to be funny? The main character is blind!

Is gooseberry pie any good? I have never tried it. In fact, I’ve never seen it sold anywhere. Not even on a restaurant menu. I’m beginning to think that gooseberry pie (and the gooseberry in general) does not exist. It’s what country folk eat in Hollywood movies. Some cigar-chomping producer probably insisted that the gooseberry pie be inserted into movies every now and again in an effort to mislead the public for nefarious purposes. Gooseberry pie is mentioned in tonight’s movie, but it does not, in fact, make an appearance. 

1989’s Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! from director Monte Hellman is the follow-up to Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, which was the follow-up to Silent Night, Deadly Night. The movie begins with a young woman named Laura Anderson (Samantha Scully) being chased down hospital corridors by Ricky Caldwell (Bill Moseley, later of Devil’s Rejects fame). Ricky Caldwell now has a glass scalp with some electronics plugged into it. Through that glass scalp you can see his brain and a pool of blood. Here’s your monster, folks. Someone behind the scenes thought this was a good idea. 

Laura wakes up screaming and we find that she’s actually psychic and that a Dr. Newbury (Richard Beymer) was using her to probe a vegetative Ricky’s mind. It seems that all those bullets did a number on Ricky at the end of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, leaving him at the hands of intense reconstructive surgery at the hands of Dr. Newbury. The good doctor even managed to put Ricky’s brain back together and Laura’s psychic probing is proof that something of Ricky still exists in that living catatonic husk.     

Laura may be a super psychic, but she’s also blind. She asks the receptionist at the hospital if she could keep an eye out for brother who’s picking her up. The receptionist is very rude to her. Laura falls asleep and has a dream where the receptionist’s throat is slit. You see, Laura can see in her dreams and in her visions. Laura’s brother, Chris (Eric Da Re), and his girlfriend, Jerri (Laura Harring), pick her up as she wakes up screaming from her violent vision. Jerri is beautiful. Chris is hairy. Seriously, I thought the guy was wearing a shag carpet under his shirt, but that’s neither her nor there. The three of them are off to visit Grandma’s house many miles away. 

Meanwhile, a drunken Santa Claus roams the hospital halls. He visits Ricky’s room, makes fun of Ricky, calls him a vegetable and what not. Naturally, Ricky wakes up and slaughters him. Then he kills the receptionist just like in Laura’s vision. Then Rocky steals a car and decapitates a gas station attendant. And since Ricky has a psychic link with Laura, he knows where she’s going. Ricky decides to get to Grandma’s before Laura. 

Grandma is busy getting Christmas Eve dinner ready for everyone. There’s a glistening roast turkey in the oven that she bastes in its own juices. I’m sure chestnuts are roasting on the open fire. Oh, and Grandma has apparently made Laura’s favorite: gooseberry pie. (Liar.)

A knock at the door reveals not Laura and brother, but Ricky Caldwell. Grandma welcomes him with open arms, even feeds him. It is Christmas after all. Plus, she didn’t see Ricky’s exposed brain because he cleverly covered it with a cap. 

At this point, I’m almost thinking the movie will turn into Hallmark Christmas movie. The love and good cheer of grandma will reform Ricky’s psychotic heart. But then Grandma gives him a wrapped present. Ricky gets triggered and turns into the mass murdering Santa Claus once again. Grandma isn’t long for this world. Those of you expecting a scene of Chris opening up the oven to grab some turkey only to find Grandma’s seared corpse will be sorely disappointed. You were hoping to see Grandma’s seared corpse?

What is wrong with you?

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #296 by Jeff Shuster

The Body Snatcher

Karloff and Lugosi together again for the last time. 

I didn’t know that being a body snatcher was once an up and coming profession for industrious men living in the early 1800s. It would seem that medical schools at the time were hungry for fresh human cadavers for study and dissection. You could make quite a nice chunk of change by dropping off a recently deceased person to your local biology instructor, no questions asked. I think I missed my calling.

Tonight’s movie is 1945’s The Body Snatcher from director Robert Wise. It takes place in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1831. A young medical student named Donald Fettes (Russell Wades) is studying at a medical school run by the driven Dr. Wolfe MacFarlane (Henry Daniell). One thing that I find odd about this motion picture is that some of the characters speak with Scottish accents while other speak with proper American accents. Was this a thing back in the old days? I guess if American actors couldn’t fake an accent, they just didn’t bother. Maybe the producers figured if you had enough Scottish accents, you could sneak a couple of American accents in there with no one noticing. Maybe that was the approach taken by Kevin Costner in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.

Anyway, Donald’s heart bleeds for a young widow and her paraplegic daughter. They beg Dr. Wolfe to operate on the young girl for only he has the skills to restore her mobility by fixing her spine. Dr. Wolfe says he can’t operate on every poor soul that comes to his office. He’d never get any work done. Dr. Wolfe is an instructor after all. It’s his priority to train the next generation of Doctors. Little girls who may never walk again will just have to deal.

Dr. Wolfe insists on giving his students real human cadavers to work with, but supply is scarce so he employs a nefarious individual by the name of John Gray (Boris Karloff) to procure dead bodies for him. John Gray robs fresh graves and Dr. Wolfe pays him handsomely for it. But John Gray resents Dr. Wolfe, hates the man to the core and wants to see him brought down. While Donald and Dr. Wolfe are getting hammered at the local pub, John Gray shames Dr. Wolfe into doing the surgery on the young girl. When Dr. Wolfe wakes up, he insists that he can’t be held to any promise made while inebriated. Plus, he would need a cadaver to practice spinal surgery on and they’re all out.

Donald frantically searches for John Gray, says he needs a body right away, but John Gray doesn’t want to do anymore grave robbing. It’s too risky. But he tells Donald that he’ll get him a body. Said body ends up being a street singer Donald ran into earlier that evening. She was alive and well then, but John Gray insists he was there when the woman suddenly dropped dead. Naturally, this slippery slope has turned into a free-fall. Robbing graves is one thing, but murder? There’s a point in the movie when Dr. Wolfe’s assistant Joseph (as played by Bela Lugosi) tries blackmailing John Gray only to get the life choked out of him. Some point to this movie as the beginning of the end for Lugosi’s career.

This would be the last time he and Karloff would ever perform together.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.