Reassessing Repossessed

 

Reassessing Repossessed 

by Kristin Battestella

The Exorcist star Linda Blair is all grown up and, according to our theme song, “re-re-repossessed” in the 1990 head-spinning, pea soup spewing, oft-maligned spoof Repossessed. Priest Leslie Nielsen (Dracula: Dead and Loving It) is on the devilish case, escalating to the Pope saving souls on live television and an infamously low 11% Rotten Tomatoes score – if viewers remember Repossessed at all. With today's cult-like administration practices, however, it's time to reassess how the religious and political satire of the much derided Repossessed may have actually been ahead of its time.

As a kid, Repossessed was one of my VHS staples. 1990 was still very eighties and Reagan-esque, so anything scandalous with tawdry nudity was treasured. When the bimbo in the front row at Father Leslie's lecture is showing too much leg, he asks her to pull down her dress. She of course responses by pulling the top down and letting the bazongas free. Re-watching Repossessed now, there were many more anticipated punchlines and rim shots that still made me laugh – much to the chagrin of my never-seen-it-before husband who was both annoyed at my predictions and didn't find any of it all that funny. Such datedness is indeed much of the problem with Repossessed. Like new viewers who won't understand the Glenn Miller jokes on The Golden Girls, Repossessed is so overly reliant on eighties scandals, headlines, and pop culture moments that you really had to be there to get it. You may think that makes Repossessed bad now, but just think how all today's quip a minute movies will be undiscernible in forty years!

Demure, yuppie housewife Blair (Witchery) who's supposed to have the ideal conservative life is once again possessed by the devil, who discovers that exorcisms on television are the gateway to spreading demons to leaders across the globe thanks to America's sanctimonious floundering over the likes of Jerry Falwell and Jessica Hahn. Telethon cameos from Body by Jake, Jesse Ventura, and more people modern viewers probably won't recognize anchor music montages to “Devil with the Blue Dress On” but, do folks today even know that song? Yes, it's busy and messy, descending into mixed meta, slow chases, and the Pope on guitar. Repossessed does not always succeed in its larger satire comedy thanks to a muddled, stupid finale designed for the MTV generation. Had Repossessed had a more finely tuned script or edit then, maybe it wouldn't have flopped into obscurity. The “Father Mayii” name in itself is hysterically genius to every twelve year old.

Anthony Starke (The Magnificent Seven) is also here as Nielsen's priestly sidekick, and for a time, to me as a precocious kid anyway, it seemed that he'd cornered the market on satirical genre fare thanks to the likewise shrewd Return of the Killer Tomatoes. Blair and Nielsen also seem to be having a great time with the self-referential performances, confronting Blair's horror typecasting while Nielsen lampoons it – like when our priest is caught on camera calling his agent asking how to get out of this. For all the nostalgic eighties floral prints, bright colors, and big hair; Repossessed actually looks good when it comes to the expected Exorcist effects, making one wonder what might have happened if the story was told straight. However, to be so chilling was not Repossessed's intent. Unfortunately, viewing Repossessed again under the orange cloud that is Trump brings the film disturbingly full circle. The devil shall enter in via the perfect housewife! How can he spread evil to the masses? Television!

When Repossessed originally bombed at the box office in the Fall of 1990, Trump was already a well-known, notorious businessman with his Art of the Deal ghostwritten fakery – as parodied in much better in Back to the Future Part II. It wasn't until the 2004 reality show The Apprentice that Trump was re-imagined as savvy cool wealthy business leader who could fire at will. Television had made the now seemingly downright demure scandals of the eighties mocked in Repossessed, and the reality show era likewise capitalized on creating scripted shock value. Now, the daily absurdities and constantly escalating extremes of our current regime make Repossessed perhaps seem even weaker because it doesn't go far enough. We were too innocent then to think you could pretend to be Jesus and piss off the Pope and just get away with it. Our husband and son just want their possessed mom back sans the demonic drama and split pea soup. American families currently suffering the increasing sociopolitical consequences can certainly relate to the desire for normalcy. Devil with a blue dress blue dress blue dress devilwithabluedresson...we impeached a president for lying about a stain on a blue dress but now we let them tear down the East Wing and hawk edited Bibles with Trump's gold seal of approval. Make it make sense!

Even if you don't get all the pop culture puns or televangelist taboos and thus some of the jokes fall flat, there's a lot of Repossessed that's eerily all too familiar thanks to the contemporary political climate. Don't dismiss the comedy performances and social commentary just based on that Rotten Tomato score. Reassess Repossessed and heed the horror comedy parable.

A Vintage Horror Trio

A Vintage Horror Trio

by Kristin Battestella

Step back in time to the retro decades of yore for this classic trio of steamy slashers, epidemics run amok, and high school old school horrors.

Peeping Tom – Director Michael Powell's (The Red Shoes) initially colorful, pleasant mid century movie soon switches to reel perspectives, stocking seams, and ladies of the night for a 1960 two quid bargain. The camera cuts away from the unseen weapon only for our voyeur to replay the black and white action – creating a snuff film meets noir mood as our unassuming photographer Carl Boehm (Sissi) films police at the crime scene and claims to be from The Observer Newspaper. He moves closer rather than zooming in and wipes the sweat from his brow as he watches. His materials are hidden in his secret dark room, but the seedy fishnets, corsets, near nudity peeks, and cheeky dialogue are risque for the time without really showing the audience anything super saucy. Retro film sounds, old fashioned cameras, picture plates, clapper boards, large spotlights, and red lighting emphasis the illusion as our polite killer offers a guest milk before filming her watching his childhood movies – bizarre pictures made by his extreme scientist father in a study of fear. He describes his constant reliving of past trauma as sequences, successors, out of focus, and for the camera in meta before meta was Inception parallels as the audience tries to separate the repeated outtakes, set within a set, and redhead lookalikes. Coaxed stand ins doing an audition become photographing you photographing me ruses, with the orchestrated life imitating art captured on camera as simmering murder pieces wink at the nature of cinema itself. The orchestrated impalements and elaborate trickery, however, are not without dark humor, as newsstand pornography schemes and bodies on set add to the morbid fascination – our stalker knows he's being tailed by police who know they are being watched. This topsy turvy mirroring, layered voyeurism psychology, and potential therapy cures bridge the horror genre between Psycho and Mario Bava's giallo flair. The stylish suggestion remains sophisticated, and that may seem ironically tame in our era of scandal as status quo. We live in an open curtain social media glass house for all the world to view how we turn the lens on ourselves, but this is just a film isn't it? This unobjective camera making his masterpiece and our subjective interpretation of seeing that fear accomplished is worthy of repeated viewings and carefully study indeed.

Prom Night – Talk about kids being cruel! Morbid child's play leads to deadly chases in this 1980 slasher – complete with one brat making the others swear to never tell, pathetic still seventies dudes, ugly vans a rockin', station wagons, transistor radios, drive-ins, and obscene phone calls. Remember those? Although a few silly voiceovers could just be said out loud and some of the intercut flashes dump information in a quick reset, we know who is who for this eponymous anniversary vengeance. Six years later the killer has the names on his list and he's checking them twice amid whispers of neighborhood sex offenders, creepy janitors, and mirrored innuendo. There's terrible matching stripes, flared bell bottoms, knee socks, feathered hair, and side ponytails, too – not to mention escaped mental patients and a fatherly cop not telling the locals what's afoot. This all must seem like Halloween deja vu for twenty-two year old high schooler Jamie Lee Curtis! Disco ball glows and red lights add flair, and there's a sardonic humor with principal dad Leslie Nielsen (The Naked Gun) so awkward on the lit up floor before the big dance off, oh yeah. If there was going to be a Saturday Night Fever nod, they could have at least sprung for Bee Gees music instead of generic disco that's honestly a little late. The prom king and queen ruses are i.e. Carrie as well, however these snob teens deserve what's coming to them. How can a guy say he loves a girl when he helped kill her sister? We may laugh at some of the sagging datedness or bemusingly preposterous – violence in the gym showers and nobody in the school gives a hoot? However, a lot of horror movies and teen flicks are still using these borrowed staples. There's a sense of small town swept under the rug paralleling the prom and sex calm as the ominous school hallways escalate to bloodied virgins in white dresses, lengthy slice and dice chases, rolling heads, light show disasters, and fiery vehicle attacks. This isn't super gory and there's no groundbreaking horror effects, but the well filmed checklist vignettes and shrewd cut corners editing build suspense alongside the red herrings and obvious killer guessing game. This isn't super intellectual on the mentality of the killer or the full psychology of the crimes, either, but the misunderstood whys and psychosis seeds suggested continue the conversation long after everything plays out right on the dance floor with a power ballad topper.
 

Rabid – Vintage motorcycles, wild car crashes, and explosive accidents open this 1977 outbreaker written and directed by David Cronenberg (Eastern Promises). Good thing that radical plastic surgery clinic is nearby with its old school ambulance, retro medical equipment, and rotary phones! Life saving surgery is the perfect opportunity for experimental skin graphs, morphing tissues, and prophetic talk of neutral cells as in the embryo here at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. Gore, striking reds, and blood against clean white mar the vain facade of cosmetic bandages, white gloves, mirror obsessions, and beautiful patients. Of course, there's nudity – it wouldn't be a Marilyn Chambers (Behind the Green Door) movie if there weren't boobs. Unfortunately, the naked woman is after the warm man for sinister reasons, escaping in the rainy night for some animal horrors and icky vomiting. This unnerving experiment was done to our Rose, making her sympathetically trapped by her condition and aware she is becoming a seductive predator attacking her men and women prey be it in the hot tub or at the adult theater. She does indeed have a new vaginal like orifice in her armpit with a phallic looking thorn, and there are consequences to this reverse woman queen bee with a penetrating stinger and the appetite to use it. The doctors think this is nothing that can't be fixed, but the titular anarchy and on the road ghoulish quickly spreads – reminding us why the term “viral” really isn't a good thing. Quarantines and pursuing authorities can't keep track of the infected on the loose expanding to the big city and congested subways. The zombie twists move fast without major spectacle for a surprisingly realistic turn of events with martial law, failed vaccinations, I.D. badges as proof of health, babies in danger, and hazard crews on the streets like regular trash trucks. Mall shootouts at Christmas, ineffectual medicine protocol, and governments desperately trying to keep control add to the jaded irony for today's viewer. We know this won't end well, and that's the most frightening thing of all.

Dracula: Dead and Loving It

Dracula Dead and Loving It Witty and Full of Gags

By Kristin Battestella

I’m not a hardcore Mel Brooks fan, but I adore the 1995 spoof Dracula: Dead and Loving It.  Though perhaps not as classic as Brooks’ earlier delights to some, the whole family can have a fangtastic time here.

English Solicitor Renfield (Peter MacNicol) travels to Transylvania so his mysterious client Count Dracula (Leslie Nielsen) can sign the contract for the Carfax Abbey property.  Unbeknownst to Renfield, Dracula is a vampire! He makes the dimwitted lawyer his servant; and upon arriving in England on the Demeter, Renfield is committed to Dr. Seward’s (Harvey Korman) sanitarium. Dracula meets Dr. Seward’s assistant Jonathan Harker (Stephen Webber) and preys on his fiancée of five years Mina (Amy Yasbeck) and her sultry best friend Lucy Westerna (Lysette Anthony).  As the ladies weaken, Dr. Seward calls in occult authority Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Mel Brooks) to thwart the vampire.  

Largely a spoof of the 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula and other traditional Dracula films, director Brooks (Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Spaceballs) and co-writers Steve Haberman (Life Stinks) and Rudy DeLuca (The Carol Burnett Show) have plenty of room for repressed English jokes, latent Victorian innuendo, and stereotypical vampire myths. Though some of the humor does fall flat or seems like filler even in a short ninety-minute movie, most of Dead and Loving It sticks to a traditional Dracula retelling with witty anachronistic jabs and slapstick fun to lighten the tale.  Even the excessive, totally unrealistic gags work in the first viewing; the jokes smartly slide into the vampire frame with fourth wall breaks and individual wink wink and all in good fun performance.  While this obviously makes the film un-uber scary, there is a very pleasing element of goth atmosphere and spooky décor. I think it’d be a lot of fun to play dress up and fang out with this gang!

While not as perfect here as in classics like Airplane! and The Naked Gun, the late Leslie Nielsen is always a treat to watch. The script hampers him at times, but his physical comedy and mock Dracula hold Dead and Loving It together.  Harvey Korman (Mama’s Family) is also a delightfully stuffy send up as the enema obsessed Seward.  Wings alums Steven Weber and Amy Yasbeck do their best feigning at the stiff upper lip British cliché, and each have some great slapstick moments.  You can tell the cast was having a good time, and Lysette Anthony (Dark Shadows: The Revival) clearly enjoys being sexed up as Lucy.  Ironically, the person who seems the flattest here is director Mel Brooks as Van Helsing.   Perhaps he adds too many of his old school ethnic quips and quick nonsensical interplays, and this style doesn’t quite fit with the Dracula themes elsewhere in the film.  For me, he’s the least funny player here and actually, he becomes kind of annoying in the bumbling battle against the Count.  Thankfully, a goofy cameo by the Oscar winning Mrs. Brooks Anne Bancroft (The Miracle Worker, The Graduate) is unexpected and very bemusing.  In truth, Peter MacNicol (Ally McBeal, Ghostbusters II, ‘He is Vigo! You are like the buzzing of flies to him!’) is the one who steals all of his scenes. Perfect as the clichéd Englishman, MacNicol is a riot as Dracula’s insect eating squire. His simple yet over the top actions get me every time.

I know it’s usually a cop out to say a film is meant to look bad, but Dracula: Dead and Loving It really means it!  The cardboard sets are somehow accurate, yet stupid and fun.  The Victorian dressings all look well and good, even lush and to the hilt with big mirrors, bustles, and chandeliers.  However, we know Styrofoam columns, fake tombstones, and Astroturf greenery when we see it.  Dead and Loving It pokes fun at the cheapness of early horror predecessors whilst also making the basic smoke and mirrors work.  The classical music and up-tempo score also adds a layer of fun rhythm- along with the usual crackles of thunder and lightning for ambiance.  Though the costumes for the ladies are the Victorian satin sweets we expect- and they are very corseted and low cut- there isn’t anything major naughty here to shy away a family viewing.  Adults will notice some of the sexual repression and innuendo in the dialogue, but a lot of that is mostly harmless or will go right over tween and younger heads.   Yes, some audiences may find the entire picture an unfunny preposterous miss.  However, there are enough witty twists and amusing performances to keep Dracula: Dead and Loving It entertaining.  Fans of the cast or Mel Brooks completists can enjoy even if serious vampire audiences may want to skip the spoof and parody. Those looking for a lighthearted Fall viewing or Halloween party filmage can certainly sink their teeth in here.  Bad pun, I know!