The Boneyard

We've got another weird one here, folks.  Strap yourself in, we're taking a trip down to The Boneyard!

Released in 1991, The Boneyard has a screenplay that contains more ideas than it knows what to do with, mixing in bits of psychic powers, Chinese mythology, creepy zombies, wacky monsters, action movie explosions, and attempts at comedy.  It's quite the hodge-podge of whatthefuckery and the film can't seem to stay focused on any one idea, continually abandoning one thread for another.  This scattershot approach probably helps the movie more than it hurts it, although it complicates the story endlessly.

Police Lt. Jersey Callum (Ed Nelson) and his newbie partner Gordon Mullen (James Eustermann) pay a house visit on reclusive and semi-retired psychic investigator Alley Oates (Deborah Rose) in need of help on a baffling new case.  It seems the police have found the bodies of three children in the back of a local mortuary owned by a Mr. Chen and to make it worse it seems he had been feeding them pieces of his "clientele" while they were captive.  Unable to identify the badly decomposed bodies, Lt. Jersey is hopeful that Alley can use her powers to determine who the children are, how long they've been missing, and what exactly happened to them.

Alley Oates makes for an interesting and ununusual lead female character in a movie.  She's middle-aged, overweight, a heavy smoker, and kind of a sad sack.  She not the typical female-hero type, but her vulnerability gives way to her toughness and fortitude as the movie goes on, so she definitely has some of the action/horror movie heroine DNA in her.

She gained her abilities after the death of her daughter and has been in seclusion since the burden of her psychic powers and the public scrutiny became too much to bear.  She does however reluctantly agree to help out on the case, but only after having a freaky ass dream where her dead daughter gives her a big hug.  It's this short dream sequence that is the movie's first signal that things are going to get crazy and freaky.

Mr. Chen claims the children found at his mortuary are actually "kuei-shen," Chinese demons that he and his family have been cursed to keep under guard for centuries, "if they are not fed. . .they will feed!!," and stuff like that.  The police think he is crazy, so they take him down for a psyche evaluation,  but he never quite makes it (he steals an officer's revolver and kills himself).  Alley doesn't know what to make of Chen's story, but she needs to be in physcial contact with the bodies to get any sort of psychic reading, so they head down to the coroners office.

The coroners office, it should be noted, is it's own building, offsite from either the police station or a hospital, and apparently there is only one exit/entrance to the basement (where the bodies are) as all other entryways have been blocked off or are broken because it's an old building and they're closing down soon and relocating which means there is a minimal amount of staff wandering about.  Oh, and it's nicknamed "The Boneyard," so that's where the title comes from.

Working the front desk is Miss Poopinplatz (along with her poodle Floofsoms), a funny cantankerous old lady who gives Lt. Jersey a hard time about bringing Alley down to see the bodies.  She tells a couple jokes and lets out a big Phyllis Diller laugh at one point, which is totally fine as she's played by legendary comedian Phyllis Diller.

At the request of the director, Diller did this role without one of her trademark wigs.

Eventually Alley gets to view the bodies over a monitor thanks to the on-duty coroner Shepard (Norman Fell, sporting a big mustache AND ponytail) who then sends up a sample of hair for her to take a psychic reading off of.  Giving Alley some space to do her psychic thing, Jersey and Mullen head down to the basement to watch as Shepard starts to perform an autopsy on a just arrived female suicide (Mullen's never seen an autopsy before, so Jersey thinks it's a good idea) but as soon as Shepard starts to make a incision, the woman wakes up screaming!  Turns out she was only an attempted suicide and the EMTs are dumbasses.  Her name is Dana (Denise Young) and she takes an instant liking to Mullen and seems to immediately forget all about her suicidal thoughts that brought her to the morgue in the first place.  Her weird arrival seems to indicate that later she might become important to the story, but no, that doesn't happen.

Upstairs, Alley attempts to take a reading off of that lock of hair and at first she "sees" the past, as a Chinese couple (Mr. Chen's ancestors?) make some sort of black magic deal to return life to their recently deceased child.  Alley's vision then flashes to the basement of the morgue, as the three deceased kids start to move around in their body bags, with all the lab technicians, Lt. Jersey, and everybody else in the adjacent room.  Alley snaps out of her psychic trance and runs to warn them of what's going on, stealing the elevator key from Miss Poopinplatz and making a dash for the elevator with Floofsoms in hot pursuit.  The pair of them go down to the basement and Poopinplatz soon follows.

Once down there, Alley discovers Jersey, Mullen, Dana, and Shepard all holed up in one of the offices, but not before she finds everyone else slaughtered and the zombie children demons feasting greedily on their innards!  The zombie kids are slimy and decomposed looking and they move around with a jittering quality, upping the creep factor considerably.  To make matters worse, one of them carries around a doll.

Jesus!  That shit is freaky!  It's at this point the movie goes full on bonkers-crazy, as the survivors must arm themselves (most notably with a machine gun found in the evidence room at the coroners office[?]) and battle these creepy demon kid zombies and fight their way out of the basement.  They quickly find that they can kill the zombies by destroying their hearts, which is a nice change of pace for a zombie(ish) movie, and turns out to be not that difficult.  One of them is killed by a forklift, which I found hysterical, but this begs the question, if it was so easy to kill them, why was Mr. Chen and his ancestors keeping them alive for centuries?

Miss Poopinplatz has a good chase scene with one of the little buggers, ending with her pushing a shelf full of chemicals over on the thing.  In its death throes, the little bastard shoves a piece of its rotting scalp into Diller's open mouth.  It's pretty gross and obviously she gets pretty ill.  You might think that this would turn her into one of the freaky little zombie things, but no, it doesn't.  Instead she eventually turns into a BIG bug-eyed Phyllis Diller monster, which is both goofily-amazing and a little terrifying.

It's quite the impressive special effect and at one point in the scene it lets out a big Phyllis-Diller-laugh, which is crazy.  Phyllis Monster doesn't stick around long though, but her exit makes way for the monster pièce de résistance, which might be considered a SPOILER but it's hard not to talk about it when it's all over the posters and video box art and stuff.......so yeah, Floofsoms eats some zombie goo and becomes a giant poodle monster and attacks our remaining survivors.  It's crazy.

Dana has the inappropriate reaction of laughing when she see Floofsoms, which seems very much appropriate in context of watching the movie, but probably isn't when faced with a giant dog monster.

These scenes alone make this movie worth watching, but luckily there's enough other weird stuff to keep you interested while waiting for Floofsoms to hulk out.  The movie's biggest problem is that it is heavy on overly written exposition scenes, like the over-explaining of Alley's psychic powers and history or the over-long tender moments between Mullen and Dana.  There's lots of talking between the (admittedly limited) action, which is obviously just filler and seems to do little more than bring up loose threads for the narrative to play with and then abandon.

For example:

*Alley's psychic powers don't come into play in the second half of the movie (nor does her dead daughter) and it seems like a rather moot point for her to have them at all.
*The entire Chinese mysticism stuff that is brought up is never mentioned again.
*Why have Mr. Chen and his ancestors kept these apparently easily killable zombie around for all this time?  AND Mr.Chen's body shows up at the morgue late in the movie, but NOTHING happens with it, it's not relevant at all.
*In regards to there being three zombies kids (Alley only sees one kid in her flashback to ancient China), at one point they talk about "one becomes two" or somesuch, but nothing comes of it and there is no further explanation.  Which brings me to:
*Why does ingesting zombie flesh/goo turn them into GIANT monsters and not, you know, little slimy ones?
*As I said, Dana the attempted suicide is a strange way to introduce a love interest to the movie.  I kept waiting for her to get zombified or something, but no.  Nothing.
*Shepard is scratched or bitten on the leg and you wait for him to turn into a zombie, but he doesn't.
*I really don't know why there is an evidence room at the coroners office, let alone why it's stocked with a fully loaded machine gun and pipe bombs.
*Oh, and for no discernible reason, the movie is set during Thanksgiving.

Despite the awesomeness of The Boneyard's monsters, they really don't do that much.  The kills are pretty unspectacular, really.  The initial attack the zombie kids make on the lab is done off-screen, and all you see is their gut-munching aftermath (it's still effectively creepy).  The Phyllis Monster, while quite an achievement, really just throws a couple people around into walls and such.  The Poodle Monster does even less, but goddamned if they don't make the ridiculous thing look cool.

Director James Cummins had a career in special effects and this was his directorial debut (he also wrote the screenplay).  He had previously done special effects work on Jaws 3D (1983), Enemy Mine (1985), House (1986), Slumber Party Massacre II (1987), and DeepStar Six (1989).  I'm sure he intended The Boneyard to be his calling card, but it seems as if Hollywood wasn't biting at giant poodle monster movies.  Honestly, the movie is a little flat, as far as the direction, and the story swings wildly between seriousness and camp, not to mention the scenes of expository dialogue that are, well, not very good.  Cummins did however conceive of the design for the monsters, so kudos for that.

This was a fairly cheap movie (isolating the action to a confined area and having a limited cast helped keep production costs down), with the majority of the money they had going towards the special effects.  The execution of the practical effects was accomplished by a team of guys, most of whom have gone on to work on big Hollywood projects in varying degrees.  Key make-up artist John R. Bayless now works on Showtime's Homeland as a department head and special effects coordinator Ray Bivens worked on Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth and Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (both, 1992) and has since graduated to much more hellish work like Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009) and Furry Vengeance (2010).

As I mentioned, Alley Oates makes for an atypical female lead character in a movie.  Her demeanor isn't very appealing and usually a woman of her physicality would be relegated to a supporting role as a trucker or lunch-lady or something.  Odd choice as it might be, Deborah Rose's casting makes the movie that much more interesting.  This would be Rose's final film of her short career.  She had single-episode bit parts on TV shows like The Golden Girls and The Wonder Years and also starred in Ski Patrol (1990) as Inspector Crabitz.

Ed Nelson was the very definition of a working actor, with a career that spanned 6 decades, working in both film and television.  His most famous role is that of Dr. Michael Rossi on 60s soap drama Peyton Place.  Fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 might recognize Ed Nelson as Dave in Night of the Blood Beast (Season 7) and the elusive Robert Denby from Riding with Death (Season 9).  He also had small parts in Teenage Cave Man (Season 3) and Superdome (KTMA).  Nelson also starred in Roger Corman's Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) and A Bucket of Blood (1959) and was later in sequels like Airport 1975 (1974) and Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986).

James Eustermann and Denise Young both didn't really have careers outside of this movie, which is for the best probably, as they're both not that good, which is a shame as the movie spends quite a bit of time with their characters.

Norman Fell is almost unrecognizable as Shepard the coroner.  He doesn't do anything funny, not really, and he's got the big mustache and ponytail.....I'd go out on a limb and say that this is his most atypical role ever.  Norman Fell of course was Mr. Roper on Three's Company and at this point in his career he was doing cheap schlock like Transylvania 6-5000 (1985) and C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud (1989).  He had earlier career highlight that included supporting roles in The Killers (1964), Bullit (1968), and Charley Varrick (1973).

Phyllis Diller is of course Phyllis Diller.  Here's a clip of her telling jokes, looking crazy.

Final Thought:  The Boneyard is more weird than anything and has a wildly inconsistent tone and a lot of it doesn't make any sense, but if there is a better giant poodle monster movie out there, I've yet to see it.

Warning about this trailer:  it is extremely SPOILER heavy, giving away the entire movie, ending and all.  It's basically a three minute version of the movie.  You've been warned.

The Boneyard was released to home video with two different covers, the yellow one playing up the comedy aspects, and the black cover selling it as a straight horror movie.

Re-Animator

Re-Animator (1985) is an all-time classic horror/comedy/zombie/gore/mad scientist/cult film based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft concerning a brilliant and obsessive young doctor named Herbert West (Jeffery Combs) who has perfected a serum that brings the dead back to life.  He is a medical student at a school in New England where he finds assistance from his classmate Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) and opposition is met from Dean Alan Halsey (who is also the father of Dan's girlfriend, Megan [Barbara Crampton]) and the menacing Dr. Hill (David Gale).

I'm fairly sure I don't really need to sell anybody on Re-Animator.  If you're into horror films at all, you've most likely seen it, and if not, you've at least heard of it and quite possibly plan on watching it.  If that's the case, what are you waiting for?  Get to it.

It has this:

this:

this:

this thing here:

this:

some of this:

one of these:

this too:

a little of this:

these guys here:

this:

and this:

That pretty much covers the basics.  Any questions?

Director Stuart Gordon was operating The Organic Theater Company in Chicago, Illinois, when he decided to try his hand at making a movie.  Gordon wanted to do something with the Frankenstein myth, but a friend turned him on to the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, specifically the short story "Herbert West-Reanimator."  Once this concept was decided on, Gordon started to develop the project as a possible half-hour long anthology TV series, but none of the networks were interested in half hour shows (they preferred hour long), nor were they interested in anything horror themed.

Gordon was then introduced to first time producer Brian Yuzna, who had some personal money to spend at the time, as well as the means to raise more funds.  More importantly, Yuzna was a fan of horror films and was an enthusiastic producer.  Dropping the idea to make it an anthology series, they focused on making a feature length movie instead.  The final screenplay is credited to Dennis Paoli, William J. Norris (who was involved more with the TV series proposal), and Stuart Gordon himself, and it makes many deviations from the source story, such as modernizing the setting and adding the characters of Dan, Megan, and Dr. Hill.

Shot in 3 weeks in Los Angeles, Re-Animator would feature a great cast that was more than willing to get gooey and gross with the fantastic special effects work.  The effects were completely practical (all done on set), utilizing gallons of fake blood and animal guts.  The most complicated effects work was done with the severed, re-animated head of Dr. Hill, which was accomplished by using a combination of 7 different techniques to sustain the macabre illusion.  The simplest effect, that of the glowing re-animate serum, would also end up becoming one of the more iconic images from the film.  The sickly, green goo was made from the same solution found most commonly in glow-sticks and its use in Re-Animator was the first time it was seen on screen in a motion picture.

The film is energetically in-your-face and over the top, bringing black, gallows humor in combination with the graphic special effects.  The entire scene with Herbert and Dan chasing Rufus the cat in the basement is both tension filled and a laugh riot.  It's perfectly punctuated by Herbert pulling a "gotcha" on Dan after he hurls the cat at the wall.   The balance of horror and humor in the Re-Animator is comparable to that of other horror/comedies such as House (1986), Evil Dead 2 (1987) and Peter Jackson's Bad Taste (1987) and Dead Alive (1992).

Released in October of 1985, Re-Animator would be met by an enthusiastic public and would even win the critics award at the Cannes film festival that year.  The film would do good financial business and would garner positive reviews from critics Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael.  This feat is even more impressive as the film wasn't submitted to the MPAA and was released 'unrated,' which severely limited how and where the film could be marketed.  The film would later find new life (so to speak) on the home video market where it would cultivate its cult following.

Stuart Gordon would go on to sign a three picture deal with executive producer Charles Band and Empire Pictures, moving to Rome to direct From Beyond (1986, another Lovecraft production), Dolls (1987), and Robot Jox (1989).  He would work again with the same cast and crew on multiple projects.  In recent years, Gordon has returned to directing productions on the stage; his last film was the based-on-a-horrible-true-story Stuck (2007).  One of Stuart Gordon's most interesting film credits (given the rest of his body of work) is a story credit (along with Brian Yuzna) for the family adventure film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989).

Brian Yuzna would produce Stuart Gordon's next two movies and would start directing films himself with the amazing special effects spectacle Society (1989).  He would also direct both Re-Animator sequels, the enthusiastically weird Bride of Re-Animator (1989) and the not so good Beyond Re-Animator (2003).  Brian Yuzna would reteam with Stuart Gordon in 2001, producing his adaptation of Lovecraft's Dagon.

1985 was a busy year for zombie movies, also seeing the release of George Romero's Day of the Dead and Dan O'Bannon's Return of the Living Dead.  Both of those films would see greater financial success, but Re-Animator is a much more entertaining and enjoyable film when compared to the rather bleak (but admittedly still entertaining) Day of the Dead or the rather stupid ROTLD (for my money, I've always preferred Part III (1993) of that series, which happens to be directed by Brian Yuzna).

"Mr. West, I suggest you get yourself a pen!"

Jeffrey Combs gained genre icon status with his portrayal of Herbert West, giving him this detached sense of superiority and brashness.  Combs has a great, intelligent snideness about him, playing complicated weirdos with the seemingly greatest of ease.   He would reprise his role as Herbert West in the two Re-Animator sequels, as well as work with Stuart Gordon another 7 times.  He was also in Peter Jackson's ghost-fest The Frighteners (1996) as the beyond troubled Milton Dammers.

David Gale plays a great villain and has a classic screen presence about him, a more gothic look, like he belongs in a Frankenstein film or something, which might actually be why his casting is so apt.  A subplot was cut out of the finished film depicting Dr. Hill as having hypnotic powers, unnecessarily explaining his control over the zombies later in the film.  David Gale would reprise his role as Dr. Hill in the sequel, Bride of Re-Animator, apparently in spite of his character's condition at the end of the first film.  His promising film career would be cut short by his untimely death in 1991.

Barbara Crampton was very brave to be in this film, considering what her character has to go through later in the movie.  She's really great in the role as Megan, giving her sincerity and confidence, and not just playing her as a terrified, helpless girl (although she does have a great scream).  Her scenes with Bruce Abbott really ground the film and give it a sense of normalcy amongst all the chaos and these weird, eccentric characters.  Kudos to Abbott for playing an excellent everyman and really holding the movie together.

The art direction was done by the great Robert A. Burns (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Mausoleum) and I'd like to think it was his choice to hang up that big Talking Heads poster on the wall behind Dan's bed during all the love making scenes.

The writer of the film Dennis Paoli would also write Gordon's From Beyond, The Pit and the Pendulum (1991), Castle Freak (1995), and both of his Masters of Horror entries.  He would also pen Brian Yuzna's dental horror/Corbin Bernsen showcase The Dentist (1996) and its 1998 sequel.  At his day job, Paoli is a professor of gothic literature at Hunter College in New York City.

The iconic theme song by Richard Band (Charlie Band's brother) borrows motifs from Bernard Herrmann's score for Psycho (1960), which has caused him to be accused of being a hack and/or a plagiarist (by some).  I think by borrowing from a film score as famous as Psycho it gives the music a playfulness that alerts the audience that, yes, you are watching a horror film, and yes it's okay to laugh and have fun.  The opening animated credits add to this feeling, as if you are getting ready to watch some sort of demented cartoon.

The cinematographer Mac Ahlberg was an Empire Pictures vet, also shooting the low budgeted (but entertaining) Ghoulies, Trancers (both 1985), and Eliminators (1986).  He helped educate Gordon on the craft of filmmaking during the production of Re-Animator, sometimes through gentle arguments and heated disagreements.  They apparently forged a strong working relationship, as they'd work together on another five films.

Ahlberg is quoted as saying that David Bowie has told him that Re-Animator is his favorite movie.

If that's not an endorsement, I don't know what is.