Dissecting Slashers: Shocker (1989)

Cody launches a new series that's all about slasher movies. First up: Wes Craven's Shocker.

A few years ago, I wrote a WTF Happened to This Horror Movie video for the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel that covered the 1989 Wes Craven movie Shocker... but that script became a WTF video through a rewrite. Initially, the Shocker script was a pitch for a series that would have been an examination of slasher movies, a series I thought of as "Dissecting Slashers". That series didn't move forward, but I still have my passion for slashers, which are my favorite types of movies to watch. So I figured, why not write up Dissecting Slashers articles right here on Life Between Frames? Starting with the original version of the Shocker script, with a few touch-ups:

BACKGROUND

Wes Craven gave the horror genre one of its greatest icons when he introduced dream stalker Freddy Krueger in 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street, but he had very little to do with what happened to Freddy after that. As his character's adventures continued, Craven had zero creative control over the Nightmares – aside from when he co-wrote the third film and wrote and directed the seventh film – and didn't see much money from them. As he told Fangoria, creating Freddy gave him great credibility, but not a great payday. So when Alive Films approached him and asked him to create a new horror franchise that he would have control over and a financial stake in, he jumped at the chance. Alive gave him complete creative freedom, and he gave them 1989's Shocker, mixing together ideas from some of his previous films, like A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Last House on the Left, with elements inspired by the likes of The Hidden and The Thing, and a desire to examine television's place at the heart of modern culture – by creating a character who can travel through TV land.

SETTING

Shocker is set in the city of Maryville, and while the characters spend a good amount of time in a quaint neighborhood and a park, these areas are part of a large city that has its own college and TV station. This isn't your typical horror movie small town. Craven intended for this place to be in his home state of Ohio, but it's pretty obvious that the movie was filmed in the Los Angeles area. Even though the production went through the trouble of putting Ohio license plates on all of the vehicles, they didn't bother hiding the palm trees in the background of some of the locations. 

When the film begins, Maryville residents are living in terror because their city has been the site of a nine month killing spree being carried out by the Family Slasher, someone who is believed to be intelligent and savagely powerful, a maniac who has battered his way through locked doors to slaughter entire families, claiming nearly thirty victims.

KILLER

The Family Slasher is TV repairman Horace Pinker. Mick Fleetwood auditioned to play this character, but the role ended up going to Mitch Pileggi, who really shines in the scenes he has in the first 45 minutes. There is no explanation given for Pinker's madness, no mythology built up around him, this guy is just a violent, sleazy, scumbag. It's not hard to imagine him plotting to commit the sex crime of the century with Krug and the gang from The Last House on the Left. We never find out why he chose to wipe out entire families, but we do learn that he had a family of his own once, one that he beat relentlessly. Until the day his seven-year-old son shot him in the knee, giving him a permanent limp.

Pileggi turns in an incredible, intimidating, unnerving performance as Pinker… in those first 45 minutes. After Shocker has earned its title by executing Pinker in the electric chair and turning him into a supernatural-slash-electrical force that can travel through bodies and appliances, he kind of becomes a joke. He was scary when he was flesh and blood, but when he gains supernatural abilities he does things like transform into a Vibe-O-Matic recliner and chant “I think I can, I think I can” while elongating his fingers and fingernails so he can plug himself into an outlet. It's unfortunate. It took Freddy a few sequels to become overly comedic, but Pinker gets there within his first movie.

Between Pinker's execution and the point in the film when he starts jumping between TV channels, he possesses the bodies of a lot of people, giving other actors a chance to play the character. Vincent Guastaferro of Jason Lives, Michael Murphy, Alice Cooper's guitarist Kane Roberts, Janne Peters, Dendrie Taylor, Sam Scarber, and even Craven's son Jonathan all get a turn, but the standout of the bunch is Lindsay Parker – who was nine years old when the film was released – as a little girl who develops a nasty disposition and a foul mouth when Pinker briefly takes control of her.

One thing that becomes quite obvious when Pinker is possessing people who have guns is that this guy is a lousy shot. It's no wonder he chose to use a knife when he was committing his Family Slasher murders.

FINAL GIRL

Usually it would be up to a Final Girl to put an end to the slasher's rampage, but there is no Final Girl in this movie. The lead female is killed by Pinker just 25 minutes in. But don't worry, we will be seeing her again. Her name is Alison, she's played by Cami Cooper, and Craven and Cooper were clearly endeavoring to give the character an ethereal quality during her early scenes. Mainly they tried to do this by having her whisper nearly every line she says. Even when she talks on the phone, she whispers. It's kind of irritating. She also claims to have a chaste relationship with her boyfriend, but given that he's a college athlete who rents his own place I have trouble believing the line where she says they haven't slept together even after dating on and off for a year. 

Her boyfriend is the hero of the film, the Final Guy, football player Jonathan Parker. Jonathan spent nine months ignoring news reports about the Family Slasher, but that changes when he realizes he has a psychic connection to the killer and starts dreaming about Pinker's crimes before they've been committed. He'll soon find out that he has this connection with Pinker because he is the man's long-lost son, that kid who shot him in the knee. Jonathan is played by Peter Berg, who doesn't look anything like Mitch Pileggi but does make his character a likeable person and is capable of bringing some impressive intensity to some of his scenes. 

Through the images in his nightmares, Jonathan is able to deduce the killer's identity. Using his dreams as a guide, he helps the police apprehend Pinker. He is easy to root for as he dedicates himself to taking Pinker down, whether he's a slasher or an electric ghost, and lucky for him, his girlfriend Alison was so special that she's even able to give him assistance from beyond the grave. 

VICTIMS

Pinker's idea of a good time is massacring families during home invasions, but once Jonathan has caught his attention (and after Pinker has slashed his way through multiple random police officers), he becomes focused on making his son's life a living hell. Several innocent bystanders are killed and/or possessed while Pinker relentlessly pursues his offspring, along with a few people who know Jonathan personally: his adoptive father Don, a police detective who reluctantly lets Jonathan influence the Family Slasher investigation with his psychic clues, his football coach Cooper, and assistant coach Pac Man - who is played by genre icon Ted Raimi, the brother of Sam Raimi. Craven's Elm Street star Heather Langenkamp also makes a blink-and-miss-it cameo as one of Pinker's victims, appropriately credited as Victim.

Cooper and Pac Man are minor characters. We know who they are, but they don't get a whole lot of screen time. Cooper's biggest moment comes in his final minutes, when he's struggling to keep control of his own body while Pinker possesses him. This isn't a movie where characters have much fun before the killer comes along; Don is given a lot to do in the story, and most of his scenes involve him being high-strung over the Pinker case or upset over the murder of his family (at the hands of Pinker). Then, of course, there's Alison...

DEATHS

Alison is one of several people killed by Pinker over the course of the film – although, surprisingly, the Shocker doesn't use his ability to manipulate electricity to score many kills. Most of the deaths are bloody slashings, and we're usually just seeing the aftermath. That's partially due to the way the death scenes were shot in the first place, but Craven also had trouble securing an R rating from the MPAA on this one and some gore effects had to be removed. We do get to see a head twisted around, and a goofy-looking strangled corpse seen early on serves as a warning sign for the silliness that lies ahead. The most memorable violent moment in here isn't even a death; it's when Pinker bites a prison guard's lip while he's getting mouth-to-mouth.

CLICHÉS

Shocker doesn't really revel in the murders committed by Pinker, nor does it feature much in the way of the usual slasher movie clichés. It kills off the character you might expect to be the Final Girl, there are no instances of sex equaling death, there isn't any gratuitous nudity – not even when Alison is seen taking a bath. The biggest cliché in here is one of my least favorites, the presence of a wisecracking killer. Pinker turns into a quip machine in the second half of the film, and his offer to take Jonathan on a ride in his “Volts-wagen” is one of the all-time worst groan-inducing one-liners.

POSTMORTEM

Looking back at the production and 1989 release of Shocker, it's obvious that the legacy of Craven's earlier creation Freddy Krueger was hanging over this project like a cloud. It's almost like the movie was made as a challenge to Freddy. Set reports and interviews conducted at the time were packed with references to the character; for example, one article said that Craven was aiming to “build a better Freddy” here, and in a “making of” featurette Craven straight-out said that the villain in this film was “designed to retire Freddy” and was “more exciting” than Freddy. The concept originated as a TV series idea that Craven had pitched to Fox, and the title of the series he wanted to make was The Dream Stalker, which is how Freddy is often described. But the plan to replace Freddy Krueger with Horace Pinker didn't work out. Shocker reached theatre screens on October 27, 1989, just in time for Halloween and just two months after the release of the latest Elm Street movie Craven had nothing to do with, The Dream Child. In the end, the icon the film had challenged, the one whose success Craven was chasing, beat Horace Pinker at the box office. Shocker's domestic total was $16.5 million, and the fifth Freddy movie made just over $22 million. That's less than half what the previous Elm Street movie had made a year earlier, but it was still enough to overcome Horace Pinker.

While Shocker wasn't successful enough at the box office to kick off the franchise it was supposed to lead to, and Alive Films didn't last much longer as a company, are sequels really necessary when Horace Pinker already goes through multiple movies worth of changes within this one's 109 minutes? Shocker quickly developed a solid cult following, but someone checking it out for the first time more than thirty years down the line will have to be accepting of the issues its fans see as part of its charm.

This film is extremely inconsistent in tone. What starts off as a promisingly chilling slasher goes off the rails and becomes an insane live-action cartoon; a villain who starts off frightening and repulsive ends up chasing the hero through an episode of Leave It to Beaver. It's a mish-mash of ideas that doesn't really hold together… But the fluctuating tone and the ridiculousness of it all is what earns the film a place in the heart of some viewers.

Craven wasn't happy with the film's rushed special effects, but even though they look silly at times, they're still fitting for the mind-boggling scenes they're featured in. The director was also uncertain about the rock soundtrack, which was surely a sign of the involvement of executive producer Shep Gordon of Alive Films, who was manager of several musical acts, including Alice Cooper. While Craven might have felt that an orchestral score would have worked better for some scenes, the film's fans love that soundtrack and have a lot of fun rocking out to the likes of Megadeth, Dangerous Toys, Bonfire, Iggy Pop, Dead On, and The Dudes of Wrath while watching Horace Pinker do his thing.

For audience members who find Shocker's scattered ideas and tonal shifts to be off-putting, the movie is a mess and has been ever since it was released. But if a viewer can appreciate the craziness it has to offer and overlook the dodgy effects, it's just as entertaining now as it was in 1989.