This one definitely takes me back as I remember it was one of the first films I watched on our new SKY satellite TV system – what I was doing watching 18 certificate films at 14 years old I’ll never know, but system automated parental control I don’t think existed then and my folks were pretty cool with that sort of thing anyway!
Well, in a nutshell, a crazed serial killer with a tell-tale limp by the name of Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi) gets caught and gets the chair. However, whilst being fried, he somehow develops the ability to transport himself in and out of bodies and later on in the film can travel via any electrical cable into any electrical outlet – I promise I will give examples as we go.
To set the scene Jonathan Parker (Peter Berg – yes THAT Peter Berg) has been having dreams of the aforementioned Pinker and in one of these vivid dreams he sees his step mother and his family murdered – these dreams in fact turn into a reality and it turns out that he is having premonitions and knows Pinker’s next move, so with the help of his step-father (Michael Murphy), who is a detective with the local police, Pinker is finally caught and sent to the electric chair.
There is quite a lot of set up, a lot more than I remembered and it was quite a pleasant surprise not see Pinker caught, fried and re-appear within the first 10-15 mins, in fact, his first appearance after ‘dying’ was around 40 odd minutes in. However, after he does re-appear he is always around in some sort of guise, be it a cop, a jogger, a little girl, Jonathan’s football coach and even at the end Jonathan’s dad.
The fact Pinker can adopt anybody all adds to his menace and you are often wondering if he has already become someone or if not, when he will – which again adds to the movie.
As finale’s go, this is pretty good considering the subject matter and I think it’s an entertaining supernatural horror thriller. The cast are excellent, the story for 1989 is unique, only Craven can think up this stuff and what really makes this film, bearing in mind it is nearly 30 years old was the use of special effects, although it was apparently this was shot on a very low budget.
This film is violent, it has some scares, nothing to bad though and it contains a memorable gross-out scene, which it was also later used in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol.1 – I will let you work out which.
I can’t say this is a great film, as it isn’t compared to stuff that is available now, but the fact that it holds so many memories for me, is why it will always be a guilty pleasure for me.