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.
