I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel of 80s flicks in my collection (aka: in existence), so this trio is the crap on tap this time around.
SHOCK TREATMENT (1981)
Director Jim Sharman returns, Richard O’Brien returns, Patricia Quinn returns…Charles Gray…Nell Campbell…Imogen Clair…everyone returning from The Rocky Horror Picture Show plays a different role in Shock Treatment, except Jeremy Newson, who reprises his role as Ralph Hapschatt. Um…I have absolutely no recollection of who that character is in Rocky considering I’ve never felt the need to see it more than a few times…like once in the movies in the 80s and once when I bought the DVD…
Janet and Brad are back…but recast with Jessica Harper and Cliff De Young. Apparently the big leads didn’t want to return for this pretty bogus sequel. Honestly, it could’ve just been a different couple in this unrelated story.
Meanwhile, as described on IMDb, this plot would have ruled as a direct sequel:
One working idea for the movie was that Frank-N-Furter was going to come back from the dead and travel to Denton to find out Janet was pregnant with his child. Brad and Dr. Scott were supposed to have become lovers, and discovered a way to revive Frank using virgin blood. When he returns to Denton, Frank attempts to convert the entire town into a new cult of Transylvanians, and Riff-Raff and Magenta were to return to kidnap the child and destroy Frank once more. The idea was dropped when Tim Curry declined to participate.
Instead, all the subversive themes that made Rocky what it is are thrown away for this generic cult film. Brad and Janet go on a weird game show in which Janet is coerced into committing Brad to a mental institution by the host and audience.
Meanwhile, the diabolical dude behind the plot ends up luring Janet into a world of fame and fortune that totally goes to her head.
While the songs are catchy here, this mess has one thing going for it—Jessica Harper.
She rocks the songs she performs, and even delves into an early 80s new wave rocker once she hits it big.
This disaster even throws in a completely pointless musical number by some random testosterone head, which seems to be in place simply so Richard O’Brien can totally denounce Rocky, with the song’s final line being, “Faggots are maggots, thank God I’m a man.” Whatever. I’m glad Laverne Cox played Rocky in the TV remake and ruined his day.
Here’s a great Q&A with Jessica and Cliff about the movie:
MONSTROSITY (1987)
I love my 80s trash…but this gets so crappy it lost me by the end.
It starts off with a really bad gang in great tight leather pants going around killing innocent people on the street and raping women.
When some dude’s girlfriend is a victim, he decides to get revenge with a little help from his med student buddies…
They basically pull a Frankenstein, creating a monster out of various body parts. But it turns out to be a goofy monster dude and the entire film turns badly slapstick, with the monster mostly starting a relationship with some girl named Jamie Lee…for the obvious reason.
When she explains why her mom gave her that name, I couldn’t help but think that her character would have to be like 9 at the oldest based on this movie being made in 87, provided her mom named her after Ms. Curtis after seeing just Halloween in 78.
The three main guys are cute, they try to teach the monstrosity to be like Rambo and The Terminator, and everyone looks like they just stepped out of a new wave video, but the movie just gets worse and worse, with the monstrosity even getting a guardian angel that can beam in and out of his life at will. Ugh.
AENIGMA (1987)
Lucio Fulci pumped them out in the 80s, and Aenigma makes me itch for the days when foreign language films were badly dubbed and threw random horror shit in left and right, with horror music and absurdly cartoonish character topping for the cheese factor.
The film begins with a girl being dolled up for a date…which turns out to be a big prank that lands her in a coma.
Then vengeful coma chick somehow possesses some other girl who goes away to school and begins killing all the students there.
A creepy possessed face pops up now and then, a gym teacher seems to be killed by his own doppelgänger, girls roam around the school at night and run into horrific things you’d never actually run into in school, and one girl is killed in a gnarly snail smothering incident.
There’s no logic to anything…the best part of most foreign films in the 80s. The only downside is that the main chick looks like she could be Melania years before she did lesbian porn pix and married a porn star fucking scumbag cheater for citizenship.
Yeah, this chick has that total cold-hearted cunt face, making it easy to believe that she’s a killer who doesn’t care if children are being torn away from their parents and locked in cages.
