An '80s slasher with Pauly Shore, modern insanity with a daughter of Tommy Chong.
PHANTOM OF THE MALL: ERIC'S REVENGE (1989)
The video stores in the area I grew up in didn't get copies of director Richard Friedman's 1989 slasher Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge for whatever reason, so the first time I ever heard about this movie was in the pages of Fangoria magazine years after its release. Fangoria had a little column called "Skeletons in the Closet" where they would talk about the horror movies that celebrities had been in before they got popular and probably wouldn't want to include on their resumé. Stuff like Jennifer Aniston being in Leprechaun. In one edition of "Skeletons in the Closet", Phantom of the Mall came up as being a skeleton in the closet of the then-popular comedy star Pauly Shore. I can't imagine Shore feeling too bad about the movie these days, if he ever did at all, but at the time it was interesting to hear that he had a horror movie in his past.
Over the years, whenever I've seen Phantom of the Mall get referenced, it has usually been in a negative way. Some viewers talk like it's one of the worst slashers of the '80s... but it's really not. It's not a great movie, but it's a fine way to spend an hour and a half.
As you can tell from the title, the story writers Frederick R. Ulrich, Scott J. Schneid, Tony Michelman, and Robert King crafted for this film is an '80s update of Phantom of the Opera, replacing an opera house with a shopping mall. The majority of the film takes place within a brand new monument to consumerism, the Midwood Mall, which is set to have its grand opening on the Fourth of July (so if you're looking for some horror to watch on July 4th, here's one), and a major filming location for this was the iconic Sherman Oaks Galleria from Chopping Mall, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Commando, among others. At the center of the story is a young woman named Melody (Kari Whitman), who gets a job in the mall even though her boyfriend's family home used to sit on the property where the mall now stands. All of the homes that used to be there were condemned so they would be demolished and replaced by the mall. And that's not the worst thing that happened to Melody's boyfriend Eric (Derek Rydall). Eric was trapped in his family home when the place went up in the flames and is presumed dead.
No one who's familiar with Phantom of the Opera will be surprised that Eric is still alive, moving through the shadowy back rooms and air vents of the mall, hanging out in his lair beneath the place. He survived the fire with a scarred face that he hides beneath a half-mask, and now he's out for revenge, just like the title promised. The owner of Midwood Mall, Mr. Posner (Jonathan Goldsmith), ordered the fire that destroyed his home and nearly killed him, and now he's going to find a way to make sure this mall is a failure. While on this mission of revenge he happens to murder several people, landing the film in the slasher sub-genre.
Among Eric's potential victims is a mall employee called Buzz, played by Shore; the owner's son, played by Tom Fridley from Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI; the town mayor, played by Morgan Fairchild; Melody's friend Susie (Kimber Sissons); reporter Peter Baldwin (Rob Estes), who is also Melody's new love interest; and a security guard played by Ken Foree. The casting of Foree in this movie indicates that someone involved was a fan of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead - in that film, Foree decided to live in a mall during the zombie apocalypse, and now he's guarding a mall in this slasher movie.
One reason why Shore shouldn't want Phantom of the Mall to be forgotten is the fact that he's one of the best things about the movie. He doesn't have a huge role, but he livens up every scene he's in.
HOMEWRECKER (2019)
Precious Chong followed her father Tommy Chong into a comedy career, and in director Zach Gayne's indie thriller Homewrecker she shows that she can be quite funny, while also proving that she can effectively play a character who is dangerously unbalanced. Chong's character Linda is fixated on a woman named Michelle (Alex Essoe of Starry Eyes); it's no coincidence that they go to the same exercise classes and same coffee shop. Linda inserts herself into Michelle's life by presenting herself as being a friendly, although odd and disruptively talkative, person who needs a friend. But soon after their first conversation, Linda has made Michelle a captive within her home.
Chong and Essoe wrote the screenplay for Homewrecker with Gayne, and it's really cool that they got to write their own characters, because this movie is a two-woman show for the majority of its running time. Other characters pop in here and there, but most of the scenes are carried entirely by the two stars/co-writers, and once Linda and Michelle enter Linda's house the movie doesn't leave the property. "Two people in one location" is about as budget friendly as a concept can get, and Gayne clearly didn't have a lot of money to work with here - viewers aren't likely to be blown away by the look of this film, even with some fun use of split screen. But this isn't a movie that needed flashy visuals, this is all about watching the two leads turn in great performances.
Chong's performance is the real attention grabber. She is entirely believable as a character who is completely insane. Linda is mentally stuck in the time period of her glory days; while holding Michelle captive she watches an '80s movie, plays a decades-old board game meant for teens, and has a memorable scene in which she listens to the 1994 Lisa Loeb hit "Stay". She's so lost that you almost feel sorry for her, but you can't when she's locking someone up and threatening them with a sledgehammer. Chong is so impressive and fun as Linda, I'm hoping to see her in a lot of comedies in the future.
Essoe was tasked with playing the more down-to-earth character. She starts off as someone so overly accommodating and afraid to rock the boat that she gets herself into serious trouble with Linda. During her time in Linda's house, we sympathize with Michelle as her world is torn apart through physical and psychological attacks. She doesn't have a showy role like Chong, but the film wouldn't work if Essoe wasn't able to ground things and make us root for her character as she tries to figure out a way to escape from Linda's place.
It can be tough to draw out the set-up of two people interacting in one location for over an hour and hold the audience's attention while doing so. Homewrecker is quite short (just 76 minutes), but it wasn't packed with filler to reach feature length, it feels like it's exactly as long as it needed to be. Maybe the "Stay" sequence could have been cut, if necessary, but there's no way I would want to give that up.
Gayne and the stars were able to make this story lively, interesting, and quirky enough that the 76 minutes fly by. Along the way, we also gradually learn that there's a surprising depth to the story. Captivating and amusing, with some shocking explosions of violence, Homewrecker is well worth checking out.
The Homewrecker review originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
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