The Imp (1981)

Children can be a real handful.  I neither have nor want any, myself, and I suppose, to some people, this makes me a bad person.  It’s not that I don’t like kids (some would say that I act like one).  Some of them I get along with like gangbusters.  But in the main, I prefer them in small doses.  Cinema has done nothing to disparage this perspective.  For every Gordie Lachance, there’s one or more Clifford Danielses.  I think the problem lies in the fact that most screenwriters simply don’t quite get writing child characters.  This is funny, because at one point or another in life, we’ve all been one.  These characters tend to be either tooth-achingly sweet or misanthropically self-centered.  Even giving them a reason for their bad behavior doesn’t discount their actions.  Further, children are more often than not written to be little adults, unreasonably wise beyond their years, because, you know, making mud pies is beneath them (or, at the very least, makes for bad movie watching).  When kids are given supernatural powers, they get even worse, most especially when they’re already dead.  This is a mainstay of Asian ghost stories, where children who died horrible deaths come back to take vengeance on adults who didn’t even have anything to do with their demises.  Such is the case with Dennis Yu’s The Imp (aka Xiong Bang).

Keung (Charlie Chin) can’t get hired for anything.  It’s not that he doesn’t put in the effort.  The whole universe just seems to be against him.  With a baby on the way, he finally lands a job as a security guard in a large building complex.  But the titular entity has plans for Keung, his friends, and his family, and none of them are very good.

The Imp takes its horror concept and posits it in everyday life.  Keung and his wife Lan (Dorothy Yu) are low-income people struggling to make ends meet.  The pressure of their impending bundle of joy crushes down on them.  They are normal folks with real-world issues.  This is compounded by Keung’s inability to find work.  His familial responsibilities weigh heavily on him, but he keeps trying.  Chin does a great job of encompassing both the sad sack and Everyman aspects of his character.  At work, Keung is surrounded by character types, all of them just grounded enough to be believable.  Han (Chan Shen) is the elder of the group, the leader.  He’s an old hand and accepting of Keung.  Fatty (Kent Cheng) is, no surprise, the fat guy, but the film doesn’t define him by his weight, ironically enough.  He’s not some slob constantly stuffing food into his face.  These two are the most important in Keung’s story, because they are the ones most eager to help Keung out (Fatty even transports Lan to her pre-natal appointments).  Yet, Han considers firing Keung when the fatalities start piling up.  He’s not above letting superstition guide his actions, though his decisions may be in the best interest of all involved, save Keung.  The other two that we are introduced to, Ting (Hui Bing-Sam) and Mr. Hong Kong (Wong Ching), are more peripheral.  Ting is a bookworm with very little interaction with Keung.  Mr. Hong Kong is a bit of a boorish dolt who doesn’t really care for dogs.  Yu gives all of the characters just enough personality to distinguish one from another, and they are compelling enough to get us involved in their fates.  Even when all Hell breaks loose, the film maintains a certain sense of grounding.  This is a world where the supernatural reigns, but the characters still have to get up and go to work every day.

The mystical elements of the film focus strongly on predestination, especially as it pertains to the concept of Yin and Yang.  Keung was born under the strongest possible Yin signage (being both sinister and feminine, this points to not only Keung’s fate but also a character weakness that makes him a bit of a pushover).  Under the tutelage of Master Chiu (Yueh Hua), a Taoist (?) priest, Keung attempts to defy his destiny.  They post amulets in places of power, they fix the Feng Shui in Keung’s apartment, and so on.  But the ghost always comes out on top.  There is a sense of desperation at play in the film, even when the characters are going through a ceremony that they believe has to work.  It’s this struggle to thwart fate which drives the horror of the film.  The characters believe in the use of magic to aid their cause, and the film accepts that these things exist.  Yet, it never goes so far as making them feel outlandish.  They’re simply another component of this world.  

Yu and company take their story very seriously.  There is little to no humor in the film, as might be expected in a Hong Kong film of this vintage.  Fatty, the clear, viable target for derision is treated like an ordinary guy who just happens to be overweight.  He doesn’t do pratfalls, he doesn’t make a pig of himself.  Keung is fighting for his life and soul as well as that of his family, and hope is threadbare.  It’s this grim earnestness that makes The Imp such an affecting experience and one worthy of praise.

MVT:  The film’s tone strikes just the right amount of dread.

Make or Break:  The finale is tense and serious, and it brings home the message.

Score:  7/10      

The Pit (1981)

Young Jamie Benjamin (Sammy Snyders) isn’t very well-liked around town.  Marge Livingstone (Laura Hollingsworth), the local librarian, is leery of him.  Her niece Abigail (Andrea Swartz) delights in tormenting him a la Lucy Van Pelt and her classic football gag.  Freddie Phelps bullies him and won’t let Jamie join his “club” (we’re never told what kind of club it is).  But Jamie sees a ray of sunshine through the grey clouds when Sandra (Jeannie Elias) shows up to watch him while his parents are away.  If only it weren’t for that pesky pit out in the middle of the woods that is filled with monsters (dubbed “Tralalogs” by Jamie).  

Lew Lehman’s The Pit is the oddest of odd ducks.  It is a pubescent boy’s wish fulfillment/power fantasy, yet the script by Ian A Stuart is weirdly structured, giving the audience what it wants a bit too early and then changing the film into a different film for about the last third.  Jamie is picked on by absolutely everyone who comes across him, and his mother (Laura Press) seems to dote on him too much to his detriment.  Meeting Sandra, Jamie has something to aspire to, even though there’s never a chance for romance with her, and this impossible love is what fuels some of Jamie’s actions.  Being left alone with a nubile co-ed day and night is enough to put any adolescent boy into a tailspin of emotions, all of them focused on sex.  Jamie watches Sandra while she’s sleeping, staring at her bare nipple.  He writes “I love you” on the bathroom mirror for her while she showers.  Clearly, the boy has boundary issues.  And Sandra is nice but not overly accommodating to Jamie, the first person (we can assume) to try to connect with him rather than reject him out of hand.  

The pit becomes Jamie’s super power, in a way, as it’s the agency by which he can take care of his enemies, to have power over them (both his enemies and the Troglodytes [not Tralalogs, Jamie]; He says, “They’re looking up to me,” referring to his station as the Giver of Life and Death, a god, for these monsters and the people of his town).  The pit is concurrently a metaphor for Jamie’s puberty.  It’s dark, filled with hairy things that likely stink, and those hairy things are just chomping at the bit to do what they do best.  When the pit is finally utilized, it’s Jamie’s self-discovery of his true self, the person he was always going to become, a man.  This puberty facet is also reflected in a visual way.  There is a scene where Jamie looks at his family during dinner through an empty glass, their images warped and distorted, their world alien to him (or he an alien on their world).  This motif is mirrored by the Troglodyte Vision POV shots.  They are tinted yellow, slightly fish-eyed, and have a blurry, wavy quality to them.  Jamie and the Troglodytes are directly linked because their outlooks are similar to each other’s and different from the rest of the world’s.  In like fashion is Jamie’s teddy bear, Teddy, who talks in Jamie’s voice but with a slight echo.  Teddy is Jamie’s tempter and advisor, always pushing him to go one step further.  Teddy recognizes what Sandra means for Jamie (“She’s just what we’ve been waiting for”), and he is the rationalization Jamie uses to justify the actions he takes.  Further, Teddy is a bridge between childhood and adulthood.  He comforted Jamie when he was a child, and he counsels him as Jamie changes.

While we can understand why Jamie is the way he is, however, we also can’t stand him.  Yes, he’s a social outcast and put upon by the world, but he’s an obstinate brat.  Snyders does his level best to sell us on this, though my guess is that wasn’t necessarily his intent.  For as much shit as Jamie is given on a daily basis, he sure doesn’t shy away from dishing it out.  Take Marge Livingstone, for example.  Jamie cuts a nude photo out of an art book from the library and sends it to Marge with a picture of her head taped on it.  Later, he anonymously tells her that Abigail has been kidnapped and the only way to secure her release is for Marge to show him her naked body (while he takes polaroids from the shadows and giggles about how low he is able to bring her).  The way Marge acts around Jamie is peculiar.  Just hearing his name, she seems to tense up (this is before the false kidnapping), and she behaves as though either there may have been something which had passed between them (which would have been truly skanky) or she can read into the boy, knows what lies underneath, and is afraid of him.  When Jamie steals money from Sandra and she confronts him about it, he runs away, unsure how to deal with this (he settles on picking flowers for her).  Jamie throws a tantrum (either ignored or unnoticed by Sandra) when her beau’s football team wins a game.  He is quick to anger, irritability, and self-righteous indignation.

Aside from the randomness of the Trog pit, the film has one other distinctly bizarre touch.  Teddy is presented as Jamie having an interior dialogue with himself, but at one moment in the film, Teddy’s head turns toward Sandra all by itself.  Does Jamie have psychic abilities?  Is Teddy alive?  We’re never told, just as we’re never told how a pit full of monsters just appeared (Who dug it?  How did all the Trogs fall in at once?  How long have they been there?  How long can a Trog last without eating?).  We expect from The Pit that Jamie will get his revenge on his tormentors, and he does.  But this all happens in the span of about five minutes.  It’s what happens afterward that makes the film feel like either it wanted to go in a different direction entirely, or that the story had run its course and now there’s a new story the filmmakers had to tell to fill out the runtime, one which is more conventional and less satisfying than the one they had been building up to that point.  It throws the film’s pacing way off.  Yet, the film is intriguing because it comes across as so guileless, so matter of fact, that when the freaky elements pop up, they’re both startling and fully acceptable.

MVT:  The oddity of the premise.  It’s hard to fathom who thought this was a sane idea, but the way it’s presented makes it easy to swallow.

Make or Break:  The cold opening (which is shown again later in the film, almost shot-for shot) is creepy and blackly humorous.  But mostly creepy.  

Score:  6.75/10    

Saturday the 14th (1981)

I really can’t stand the word “panties.”  I get that British folks call underwear “pants,” and I assume this is the feminine variation of that, but it just bugs me.  Some words just sound wrong to me, and I avoid saying them.  The same can be said for certain foreign words that can only be properly pronounced by adopting an accent I don’t have, and I can’t decide if I sound like more of an ass pronouncing it like some haughty continental jerk or just some low grade ugly American.  Back to the point, I think the reason why I don’t care for the aforementioned word is the “-ies” at the end of it.  Maybe it makes it just a little too dainty for me.  Maybe it augments the bilabial and alveolar aspects of its pronunciation beyond my breaking point.  Either way, I usually strain to elude the word’s usage.  Daughter Debbie (Kari Michaelsen, perhaps best known for her work on the Nell Carter sitcom Gimme a Break) spends some of her onscreen time in Howard R Cohen’s Saturday the 14^th in her undies, and I must say that these moments and her bathing scene are what have stuck with me all these years since this film came out (hey, I would have been about eight years old).  For better or worse, they’re still a highlight in a film that’s not as godawful as it could be but also isn’t nearly as good, either.

Vampires Waldemar (Jeffrey Tambor; is it possible the creators were making an oblique reference to Paul Naschy’s Waldemar Daninsky character, even though that one’s a werewolf not a vampire?) and Yolanda (Nancy Lee Andrews) get screwed out of the dilapidated house that they simply must buy for some nebulous reason (okay, it’s to lay their hands on the Book of Evil hidden inside), because it has been willed to John (Richard Benjamin) who immediately moves his family into it.  Will there be strange goings on?  You betcha!  Will hilarity ensue?  Well…

The movie starts off with a credit sequence that involves some of the worst animation possibly ever committed to film.  It tells the “story” of a bat (replete with cool shades) who repeatedly flies into a tree outside the house until he dies and gets dragged under the ground by a pair of hands.  Ho.  Ho.  The rest of the film’s humor teeters between not bad (but definitely not gutbusting) jokes and true groan-inducers.  For example, after hearing a scream, John suggests maybe it was an owl.  Wife Mary (Paula Prentiss) lifts the window shade, revealing a fake bat smacking into the glass and confirms that it is, indeed, an owl.  Her delivery makes this pleasantly amusing.  This joke is then driven into the ground by being repeated like a catchphrase, beating this dead horse into glue. John is constantly bewildered by things going on around the house, like who washed the dishes, and he keeps bringing this up as if repeating it will somehow make it funny.  Tambor is his usual dry, tense self, and he and Severn Darden truly make the most of the premise, delivering signature performances that stand out for how much they work (in fairness, Prentiss does a good job with what she’s given, as well).  When asked if he and Yolanda have children, Tambor retorts with, “As often as we can.”  It’s the humor that doesn’t “mug” to the audience that works best.  Son Billy (Kevin Brando, who for some reason reminded me of the kid from Troll 2) is the smartest member of the family.  After being in the dark upon their entrance to the house, the lights mysteriously come on.  John asks where Billy was, and he says he was fixing the fuse box.  The comedy is just hit and miss enough that it never elevates the film, but it never drags it down.

The film is not a parody of a specific horror franchise (as is suggested by the title) or trope.  Instead, it’s a story told with horror elements.  One of the more interesting facets of this narrative is the concept of legends coming to life.  The Book of Evil contains photographs of various creatures (who took them is an enigma never explained), and as each page is turned, the monsters in the pics disappear from the page and appear in reality.  Monsters already exist in this world, but I have to wonder if they all initially sprang from the Book’s pages?  There is some evidence of this being the case later on in the picture.  This connection between the creation of fiction and the creation of reality is intriguing, as it is in films like I, Madman, though it’s not played up here as much as it possibly could have been (then again, the Book is nothing more than a MacGuffin and a means of explaining the appearance of the monsters, so you can’t really blame the filmmakers for not going all deep on this aspect).

One of the other reasons that the film both succeeds and fails, and in fact, one of the reasons why it’s as engaging as it is, is the relationship between violence and humor.  As has been postulated for a long time, the link between Horror and Humor stems from the same primal core of human beings.  Both attempt to elicit extreme physical reactions from an audience (screaming for Horror, laughter for Humor), and both have a way of being very individualized to a specific viewer.  The way that Saturday the 14^th mixes the two is odd.  There are scenes that are shot and edited to be particularly horrific, with nary a chuckle in sight.  For example, Mary is attacked by a bunch of bats in the belfry (get it?), and they draw blood, leaving her injured and shocked.  A monster is shot in the head, and it bleeds.  A rather realistic severed head is mistaken for a roast in the refrigerator.  Conversely, there are broad comedy elements that strike like a pie in the face.  A giant, three-fingered rubber glove is discovered in relation to the washing of the dishes.  The family lawyer chokes to death while talking about the curse on the house.  The film is such an oddity in the balancing (or non-balancing, if you like) of its tones, it charms more for its ambitions than for its successes.

MVT:  Darden and Tambor shine when they’re onscreen.  The monster makeups are cheap but appealing, as well.

Make or Break:  The title credits may break some viewers’ will to go on (with the film, at any rate).

Score:  6.5/10