Event

Society

Wed Oct 24: 8.00pm

Brian Yuzna
US
1989
1h 39m
Series - Schlock and Awe: Reagan-Era Horror

About
Theres something perfectly elemental about the fear that everyone around you family, friends, schoolmates may not be what they seem. A mistrust of ones own place or social worth sits securely at the root of a host of anxieties that haunt most of us every day. In this transcendently disturbing classic from Brian Yuzna (producer of Re-Animator and From Beyond), Beverly Hills jock Bill Whitney (Billy Warlock of TVs Baywatch) suffers from a paralyzing fear of his community. Bill struggles to put a face to the fear, confessing to his therapist: my parents, sister, you I feel like somethings going to happen, and if I scratch the surface, therell be something terrible underneath. When his sister Jennys ex accosts him at the beach to play him a mortifying audio tape of from Jennys coming out party, Bill knows hes not ready to take his place in society.

Hailed for its singularly creative and astonishingly perverse use of special effects, designed by the aptly named Screaming Mad George, this film will make even hardened horror gourmands squeal and squirm with a heady mix of revulsion, amazement, and delight. And if youve never seen it with a crowd, on the big screen, this is the walk-in-cold horror experience of a lifetime.

Description by Paul Siple

encapsulates all that made the 80s a halcyon age for horror; bursting with truly bizarre ideas, the film is a cavalcade of winking satire and social commentary, and culminates in an epically grotesque twenty-minute finale that remains one of the genres most out-there, boundary-pushing, memorable endings Josh Miller, Friday Night Frights