Wes Craven – Shocker (1989)

adminMarch 29, 2022

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Plot Outline: Horace Pinker, a murderous TV repairman, is finally caught and executed via the electric chair. The teenager who helped capture him thinks that its all over. But it’s not and Pinker returns from the grave as pure electricity thanks to a pact with the Devil. This means that he can travel through TV and the human body and he’s only got one thing on his mind – revenge.

This is a big failed attempt by Wes Craven to come up with a new horror franchise. He’d already created a legend in Freddy Kruger and the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Now he tried to do the same here, only it didn’t work because the film stunk. Mitch Pileggi is the only reason this film is any good. His performance as Pinker is both menacing yet comical. He makes a convincing baddie (I think its just the bald head though that does it) and gets to spout some awful Kruger-esque one liners which I’m sure he had a whale of a time in rehearsing. The first third of the film is quite enjoyable. At this point, Pinker is still human and he is going around killing people left, right and centre. But it all goes downhill as soon as they execute him and he becomes this electric phantom thing. I’m not a big fan of “body swapping” in horror films so when he started moving about from person to person, I groaned. The film sucked whilst the body swapping thing went on, probably because you become subconsciously unaware of the fact that one of the characters is now inhabited by a serial killer. However it did pick up once again towards the end when the inevitable good vs evil fight happens. The teenage hero and Pinker fight their way through TV channels. It’s a very good idea and you just have to laugh when you see them fighting in the middle of a news broadcast on the TV! If only the rest of the film had shown this much imagination and creativity instead of being content in rehashing slasher films 101. In the end this all boils down to Craven ripping off A Nightmare on Elm Street and copying that formula with a bigger budget. Rumour has it that there is a warehouse somewhere with hundreds of Horace Pinker action figures inside which never sold because the film didn’t take off like it was expected to. It just goes to show that not everything Craven touches turns into a good horror film.