35 years later, the hugely underrated sci-fi movie has gotten a huge upgrade

“Another collection of slasher clichés,” he wrote The Washington Post about the 1989 film smashed on cash register to the third week of a comedy about a talking baby. When the horror maestro sadly passed away in 2015, it was seen less as a career note than as failed Oscar bait Music of the heart.

Shocker by title, shocking in nature was the general consensus when Wes Craven attempted to start yet another franchise about a maniacal killer who haunts the dreams of his victim. However, timed to his 35th anniversary, Shocker The latest Blu-ray release shows that critics – perhaps still in the grip of a certain Mr. Kruger – were too keen to sharpen their claws. Although not in the same league with Nightmare on Elm Streetthe film’s cheesy mix of cat-and-mouse chases, meta-media commentary, and body-swapping farce can still be electrifying.

Because the opening scene spends little time explaining itself, the film’s inevitable boogeyman is Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi), a lame-duck TV repairman who, after stabbing at least 30 people in cold blood, has become America’s most wanted man. Hot on his heels is Lt. Don Parker (Michael Murphy), a man who pays for his persistence by murdering his wife and two children. His surviving adopted son, Jonathan (Peter Berg), who may be related to the monster he’s helping to capture, experiences yet another unimaginable tragedy when his friend Alison (Camilla Cooper) suffers a similarly horrific fate.

A relatively standard slasher so far, though there are hints of a super psychic when Jonathan starts visualizing Pinker in increasingly terrifying nightmares. In fact, it takes until the 40-minute mark – when his monster is finally apprehended and sent to the electric chair in record time – for Shockeran amazing unique twist to enter the game.

Pinker doesn’t die when his body is exposed to thousands of volts. Thanks to a deal he made with the devil moments before his scheduled execution, the sadist can now assume the form of pure electricity and subsequently possess any person he comes into physical contact with. It’s a really crazy premise, but Craven ends up having a lot of fun turning innocent runners, football coaches, and teenage tractor drivers into the pinnacle of evil. In the funniest scene of the film, Pinker even manages to settle in a folding chair.

Craven also finds time to tip his hat to the master of suspense with a Hitchcock-inspired fight scene atop a satellite tower and delve further into the supernatural with regular ghostly appearances from poor Alison, Pinker’s most bloodied victim to date. (Craven reportedly had to have the blood reduced 13 times to get an R rating.)

Genuine madness is complemented by the future Secret materials the usual amazingly over-the-top performance by Pileggi as a man with an unquenchable thirst for murder. Pinker doesn’t have much of a backstory or much of a one-liner. (“Come on, boy, let’s go for a ride in my Volt Wagon” is one of his few sounds.) Still, as a puny, mean-spirited killing machine, he’s probably one of the purest in the horror genre.

Pinker’s relentless killing spree culminates in a hilarious encounter with the Looney Tunes-Stay connected series in which he stalks Jonathan using the television itself. The couple makes a cameo appearance throughout Leave it to Beaver to the 1931 version Frankenstein to Alice Cooper’s music video (the shock rocker also performs in front of the heavy metal supergroup Dudes of Wrath, formed especially for the film’s opening theme) to footage of the Berlin riots and the atomic bomb (where Pinker hilariously plays the role of the explosion). “I’ve heard about audience participation, but it’s ridiculous,” quips a stunned couch potato after the battle of good vs. evil spills hilariously into her room.

Admittedly, this detail works better conceptually than it does visually, as do the rest of the film’s special effects, which even by 1989 standards look decidedly amateurish. Craven later admitted they weren’t up to the task of blaming an overambitious VFX artist who had a nervous breakdown after realizing he’d bitten off more than he could chew. Not surprisingly, he also expressed hope for more technologically advanced processing.

You can also hear more of Craven’s musings on his most underrated horror in the audio commentary accompanying his new 4K restoration, along with other previously released extras including chats with Pileggi and Cooper, numerous trailers and galleries, and a feature on the soundtrack that expertly ‘joins two fingers up at the rise of satanic panic.

However, what will most interest fans will be the never-before-seen (or unheard) material, namely interviews with composer William Goldstein, production designer Cynthia Charette and lead actor Berg, whose directorial role makes him a prime candidate to replace Craven, if ever. will get the remake treatment.

with People under the stairs and Swamp thing both said they were joining Last house on the left, The hills have eyesand Freddy Krueger’s first appearance in Craven’s list of remakes, maybe it’s not such a far-fetched idea. But full of high-voltage thrills, the original should have spawned at least one equally silly sequel.