SOCIETY

 

Publicity poster for Society (© Brian Yuzna/Wild Street Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Many years ago, I turned on the TV one evening and out of sheer boredom watched a movie whose plot was unknown to me, as was its title, because I'd missed the opening credits. It starred Billy Warlock as a seemingly disturbed teenager named Bill (but also called Billy by some characters) who didn't fit in with either his rich Beverly Hills family (mother, father, and sister) or the rest of society there, so much so that he secretly suspected he'd been adopted, and he was now seeing a psychiatrist at his father's behest.

As this mystery – and mysterious – movie progressed, Billy experienced several strange sights involving various locals, including his own sister. Jenny, who in one scene seemed momentarily to contort her body into a bizarre, anatomically-impossible position, as did another young woman in a later scene. But clearly these were simply hallucinations, figments of Billy's fevered imagination...weren't they?

Slowly but surely, however, events became ever more strange, ever more sinister. Something was definitely very wrong here, but nothing prepared me for the unutterably unreal, shockingly surreal climax, in which everything was finally revealed (in every sense too!), and which is unquestionably one of the most eye-popping, jaw-dropping, brain-bursting 'wtf scenes' that I have ever witnessed in any film!

Even if I hadn't revealed its title by heading this present review with it, many of the more informed film aficionados reading the above summary would have already guessed by now the identity of this truly bizarre movie, as there is nothing else out there that is remotely like it, but it took me a long time back in those pre-internet days to do so. Eventually, however, I discovered that it was called Society, was directed by Brian Yuzna in his directorial debut, and was originally released in 1989 by Wild Street Pictures.

On 27 August 2024, around 30 years after watching it all unsuspectingly on TV, I rewatched Society, but this time on DVD, in its full-length, uncut version, and from the very beginning. In so doing, I discovered a scene half-hidden by the opening credits that hints at what to expect, but which I'd not viewed or known about first time round, due to having missed the movie's beginning, thus explaining why the grotesque climactic revelation came as such a shattering surprise. And what is that revelation?

SPOILER ALERT – Read no further if you don't want to know!

Here it is.

After Billy escapes from a hospital where he has been forcibly taken as a supposed corpse (long story…), he returns home to confront his parents once and for all, only to find a sizeable party taking place there – but this is no ordinary party!

To Billy's horror and disbelief, his parents and sister as well as many of the guests, including his psychiatrist, are all engaged in a terrifying orgy, one in which a lot more than mere sex is taking place, although it is true to say that there is certainly plenty of flesh on show!. Incredibly, they are physically melding and melting into each other, a process dubbed shunting by this movie's producers, their bodies' flesh sucking and slurping and squelching and sliding into and onto each other, a vast amorphous abomination of obscene pulsating protoplasm – but even that is not the worst of it.

They are holding one of Billy's friends, David (Tim Bartell), captive, and it becomes swiftly apparent that these shapeless monstrosities previously in human form are intending to devour him, via some hideously intrusive means – and indeed they do. Not for the squeamish, I might add, though amazingly there is literally no blood to be seen anywhere in this stomach-churning scene, but the unholy melding of flesh in all its voyeuristic vision of revulsion is horrific enough for there to be no need for any additional gore.

Moreover, after the doomed David is consumed by these incorporeal nameless ones, who reveal that they constitute an alternate species that has always existed and which devours lower-class humans (this entire movie satirises society living off those it deems are beneath it), Billy is next on the menu, having been captured by his psychiatrist while still in (mostly) human form. Happily, for Billy's sake, however, one of the other guests, who is of this same shape-shifting, shunting species but has not become part of the current abhorrent assimilation, remaining instead in her usual guise as a young woman named Clarisa (Devin DeVasquez), just so happens to have taken a romantic liking to him. So she rescues him, and together with Billy's best friend, Milo (Evan Richards), who has surreptitiously arrived in the hope of assisting him, they flee the house and drive away. The end.

Or is it? Because here is a very strange thing.

When I watched Society for the first time, roughly three decades ago on TV, I distinctly recall that while in this house of horror, Billy had covertly tampered with its gas supply, and that as they drove away into the distance at the end, the house suddenly exploded – a fitting fate for the revolting life-form(s) inside it. Yet no such scene was featured in the full-length DVD version that I watched in August, nor is it present in a version presently viewable on YouTube (see later). But this is not all.

The very next day after watching it on DVD, I mentioned having done so to an extremely knowledgeable film buff friend, John, who remarked without any prompting from me whatsoever that he particularly remembered the finale "when the house blows up"! Needless to say, therefore, he was most surprised when I told him that although I remembered it too, this scene seems no longer to exist. So as it appears unlikely that we both independently imagined an identical false ending, what has happened to the house-exploding one? I have researched this mystery online, yet can find no mention anywhere of the house exploding. Another example of the Mandela Effect? (Click here for more movie-related info concerning this anomaly presented and discussed by me.)

The body-shunting scene is a truly gruesome sight to behold (and if you don't believe me, click here if you dare, to watch a segment of it on YouTube; incidentally, this segment is labelled on there as 'Society Ending', but it's not, because the escape of Billy, Milo, and Clarisa isn't included). Nevertheless, it is also an incredible feat of on-screen special effects, including extensive prosthetics, and was achieved by internationally-renowned Japanese sfx/make-up supremo Joji Tani – or, as he is much better known to his legion of fans globally, Screaming Mad George. He has designed and devised make-up and special effects for many significant fantasy and sci fi movies, including Big Trouble In Little China, Predator, some of the Nightmare On Elm Street and Silent Night films (click here for my review of the first Elm Street entry), The Bite (reviewed by me here), and Progeny, plus many more.

A sequel movie, provisionally entitled Society 2: Body Modification, was in development as of 2013, but nothing more has apparently been heard of it for quite some time now. However, after acquiring the comic-book rights to Society, two sequels in comic-book format were published in 2002 and 2003 respectively by Rough Cut Comics.

Would I recommend this film? If you enjoy singularly grotesque, gross-out, bizarre, macabre, and totally off-the-wall comedy/horror flicks of the indisputably crazy kind, the chances are that you're gonna love it! Conversely, let's just say that if you don't like body-horror fests featuring gallons of glutinous shunting slime and semi-fluid melding flesh, Society may not be the movie for you!

But don't take my word for it – click here to view an official Society trailer on YouTube; or click here to watch the entire movie, as it is currently free to watch on YouTube.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

CRYPTOZOO

 

Publicity poster for Cryptozoo (© Dash Shaw/Fit Via Fi/Electro Chinoland/Washington Square Films/Low Spark Films/Cinereach/Magnolia Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial; Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

What if someone well-meaning but ultimately misguided decided to create a Jurassic Park-like establishment, yet populated it not with dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, but instead with mythical monsters and cryptozoological mystery beasts – on the idealistic yet somewhat ingenuous assumption that because they should at least in theory be safer behind bars, albeit ensconced within this veritable crypto-utopia, than risking capture or even worse out in their natural wild habitats, they would therefore actively prefer to be in captivity?

That is the basic premise of an extraordinary adult-oriented animated movie set in San Francisco's late 1960s hippy 'Flower Power' period that I watched on 7 August 2024 – just a day after watching Mad God (click here to read my review of it) and two days after watching The Primevals (click here to read my review of it), thereby concluding my long-planned viewing of these three wholly independent but equally exceptional yet by no means widely-known animated or semi-animated movies. Directed and written by Dash Shaw, and released in 2021 by Magnolia Pictures, this now duly-watched third movie is entitled – what else in light of its premise but? – Cryptozoo.

Unfortunately, however, the US military see these entities (which are all termed cryptids in this film, irrespective of each example's respective scientifically undiscovered vs wholly mythological status) as being potential bio-weapons. Think what could be achieved with a platoon of petrifying gorgons, or a phalanx of flying horses, a herd of harpoon-horned unicorns, or, above all else, a small yet potentially invaluable dream-devouring baku that could be trained to consume anyone's dreams that were anti-governmental?

Sure enough, the military duly hire a talented but merciless cryptid hunter named Nicholas (voiced by Thomas Jay Ryan) who utilises a traitorous faun, Gustav (Peter Stormare), to track down and capture the baku. Opposing their plans, however, are the staff of the Cryptozoo, especially its elderly owner Joan (Grace Zabriskie) and her principal assistant Lauren Grey (Lake Bell), a veterinarian cryptozoologist, plus a friendly gorgon named Phoebe (Angeliki Papoulia). But when meddling trespasser Amber (Louisa Krause) releases all of the zoo's cryptids, total havoc swiftly ensues.

How will all this chaos resolve itself, will the baku evade capture, and in the final analysis could it be that the zoo's staff need the cryptids more than they need them?

Winning the Innovative Award at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival that aptly hosted its global premiere on 29 January (aptly because that was the birthday of my late mother, Mary Shuker, who had always supported and shared my lifelong cryptozoological interests), Cryptozoo took four years to animate, from 2016 to 2020. And whereas the traditional hand-drawn mode utilised has yielded a relatively simplistic style (especially with regard to how the human characters are depicted), it is exceedingly colourful, exhibiting a very distinctive beauty and imagery wholly unlike the full-length CGI-laden animated movies more frequently released nowadays. Indeed, both in visual terms and in its philosophical approach, Cryptozoo is certainly influenced by the 'peace and love' ethos of the specific time and place in which it is set.

Its cryptids are portrayed very effectively, in particular the flying horse, camoodi, griffin, and tengu (no Mongolian death worm as far as I could see, sadly). Having said that, they were given far less screen time than I'd have liked or expected for a cryptozoology-themed film, especially as there are several slow-paced conversation-heavy sequences that warranted editing in favour of more cryptid content, I felt, when watching this movie.

Speaking of conversations, however, I should mention that quite apart from those already named above, Cryptozoo's impressive vocal performers also include the likes of Michael Cera and Zoe Kazan.

Needless to say, cryptozoologists and zoomythologists are likely to love this film, as will animation traditionalists, but I'm sure that its appeal will extend beyond those specific categories of movie viewer if given a chance.

So why not do that? For Cryptozoo can currently be watched in its 95-minute entirety free of charge here, on DailyMotion. Or if you'd prefer to view a couple of trailers for it first, please click here (for a general one) and here (for a baku-themed one) to do so on YouTube.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

And just in case you were wondering what it looks like, here is the baku as it appears in Cryptozoo (© Dash Shaw/Fit Via Fi/Electro Chinoland/Washington Square Films/Low Spark Films/Cinereach/Magnolia Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial; Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

MAD GOD

 

Publicity poster for Mad God (© Phil Tippett/Tippett Studio/Shudder – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 5 August 2024, I watched a stop-motion animation-featuring movie that had taken a staggering 56 years to complete – The Primevals, finally released in 2023, and reviewed by me here. A day later, on 6 August 2024, I watched an almost exclusively stop-motion animation movie with another seriously long production period, over 30 years this time. The creation of modern-day stop-motion movie maestro Phil Tippett, but very much an adult horror movie in nature, as opposed to the family-friendly stop-motion animation-featuring fantasy films of Ray Harryhausen, it is entitled Mad God (aka Phil Tippett's Mad God in some sources), with imho the emphasis very much on mad.

Not only directed but also produced and written by Phil Tippett, who also contributed to the cinematography, and released in 2021 by Shudder, Mad God is as much a series of loosely-connected sequential vignettes as a single cohesive, coherent story. As for its content and tone, the prologue is more than sufficiently daunting to inform you in no uncertain manner of what to expect from the movie itself. Here is that prologue, which consists of a quote from the biblical book of Leviticus:

If you disobey Me and remain hostile to Me, I will act against you in wrathful hostility. I, for My part, will discipline you sevenfold for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your cult places and cut down your incense stands, and I will heap your carcasses upon your lifeless idols. I will spurn you. I will lay your cities in ruin and make your sanctuaries desolate and I will not savor your pleasing odors. I will make the land desolate so that your enemies who settle it shall be appalled by it. And you I will scatter among the nations and I will unsheath the sword against you. Your land shall become a desolation and your cities a ruin.

The principal character in Mad God is an enigmatic anonymous humanoid figure clad in iron, wearing a face-obscuring gas-mask, armed with a tattered map, and carrying a suitcase, who is named in the credits merely as the Assassin. He(?) descends inside a diving bell into a ruined, infernal, post-apocalyptic city populated by indescribably hideous monsters and monstrosities, the stronger ones taking savage, sadistic delight in mutilating and slaughtering the weaker ones with unnervingly, unnaturally casual indifference. Even the Assassin himself does not shrink from nonchalantly trampling underfoot a squabbling group of tiny gnome-like entities.

But perhaps the most stark scenes of wanton cruelty are those featuring what appear to be identical (cloned?) humanoid but faceless drones or slave workers carrying out the Mad God's will with regard to extensive construction work, overseen mercilessly by flogging foremen. Moreover, health & safety guidelines are conspicuous only by their absence here, as the drones are regularly maimed, decapitated, or worse by flying sections of machinery, metal shards, etc. And when they have served their purpose, these poor helpless, hapless souls meekly line up to throw themselves down into a deep fiery pit where they are instantaneously incinerated. If ever a work force was in dire need of a representing trade union!

As for the titular mad god itself, this is seen only as a pair of eyes and a huge mouth with hideous teeth and black-scorched flesh surrounding it that appears on screens attached to a lofty tower, and utters all of its vile dictates in an unintelligible, incongruous babble of baby talk.

Meanwhile, avoiding being attacked himself, the Assassin uses his map to find and fend his way through this perilous city's grim and grimy subterranean bowels, brimming on every side with violence, horror, blood, black bile, gore, and more – a veritable vista of Hell itself, surely – until he finally reaches his destination, a location inside the base of the Mad God's tower containing an enormous pile of suitcases identical to his own.

The Assassin opens his case, takes out a bomb, and sets its clock ticking, but never discovers that the clock isn't functioning properly, because a rapacious monster, having crept up behind him unseen, now seizes him in and drags him off onto the darkness.

We next see The Assassin strapped to an operating table, fully awake, where a human surgeon crudely slices open his abdomen, and then inexplicably hauls out great quantities of jewels and books from inside it, plus copious amounts of blood and black innards, before finally pulling forth a bawling larva-like infant that a nurse hurriedly takes away.

She hands it to a huge, fantastically-designed entity resembling a Venetian plague doctor but wholly composed of a floating mass of black ribbons, who in turn takes it to a dwarfish alchemist who calmly grinds up the screaming infant into a fluid that he transmutes into powdered gold. This is then thrown up into space and creates a whole new cosmos

And that is by no means all that happens in this macabre yet mesmerising 82-minute movie, which includes hardly any audible dialogue, functioning almost wholly on a visual level – with regard to which I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like it before, nor do I particularly wish to see anything like it again. Or to put it another way, every time you think that the next scene cannot possibly be more horrific than the previous ones, you are invariably proved wrong!

One professional movie reviewer described Mad God as "a cacophony of savagery and cruelty – [offering] no hope, no respite from the awe-inspiring terror", and I know exactly what they mean!

Equally, however, I freely confess that technically and visually this is a truly astonishing spectacle. For apart from a couple of brief scenes featuring humans, Mad God is composed entirely of stop-motion animation, and is therefore a definite triumph of sorts within that specific cinematic genre. Consequently, this unique, experimental horror movie makes undeniably fascinating (albeit highly disturbing) viewing. So much so that although I may well never watch it again, as someone with a sizeable collection of animated films on DVD and video I readily recognize that any such collection demands that Mad God be included in it. And not merely because there is absolutely nothing else like it in this particular genre, but also, as noted earlier, because of its unquestionable technical brilliance. So I do plan to purchase its DVD in due course.

I simply wish that all of the highly-skilled, immensely creative, and seemingly tireless workmanship that went into producing Mad God could have instead been directed toward preparing something as beautiful as this is nightmarish. Judging from one albeit brief segment in Mad God that presents the creation of a brand-new universe, the production team could most certainly have prepared such an alternative, visually gorgeous movie, because that particular segment is indescribably exquisite and inspirational.

As mentioned at the beginning of this review, Mad God took over 30 years from its beginning to its release. Tippett began filming it in his spare time during the late 1980s, after working on RoboCop 2. A few years later, however, now working on Jurassic Park and seeing at first-hand the truly spectacular nature of its CGI dinosaurs (his involvement in their creation earning him an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects), he shelved his own project as he feared that with the advent of CGI, stop-motion animation was now obsolete.

And there Mad God remained, in creative limbo for the next 20-odd years, until encouragement and assistance from volunteer animators and other film crew plus donations via Kickstarter combined forces in 2009 to reignite Tippett's interest in it and relaunch work upon it, which continued in stages until the film was completed in 2920, and was then officially released in 2021, premiering at the 74^th Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. Another mammoth movie-making undertaking was finished at last, and its success has confirmed, as did that of The Primevals two years later, that the days of stop-motion animation are still far from over. Fittingly, in the Ray Harryhausen Awards for 2022, Tippett was elected to the Harryhausen Hall of Fame.

In summary: albeit an indisputably astounding feat of stop-motion animation, Mad God is not for the faint-hearted, but for those of you made of stronger stuff you can currently watch it in its entirety free of charge on DailyMotion by clicking here. Or if you prefer a more guarded approach to its bloodcurdling contents, click here to watch an official Mad God trailer on YouTube.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.