Shocker

SHOCKER

Even if you overlook its myriad shoddy special effects, the 1989 film Shocker (written and directed by Wes Craven) falls apart the further along the plot goes, which is a shame as the first act is rather gripping. The story follows a college football player named Jonathan Parker who awakens from a dream in which his foster mother and step-siblings are murdered by a television repairman named Horace Pinker. Jonathan then receives a phone call informing him that his family really is dead. He tells his cop father about the dream, and eventually Pinker's captured (but not before he brutally slaughters the protagonist's girlfriend Alison). The movie's most gut-wrenching image appears nearly twenty-seven minutes into the tale when Jonathan sees Alison's corpse in a tub full of bloody water. At the forty-two minute mark, Pinker's execution goes all wrong. Turns out that Pinker (a practitioner of black magic) has found a way to transfer his spirit from body to body, and he's hell-bent on taking revenge against Jonathan (his biological son) for giving his identity away to the police. Pinker leapfrogs from a doctor to a cop to a jogger to a young child, and in the film's wittiest moment (about an hour in) Pinker (in the kid's body) drops an F-bomb. Pinker keeps on hopping bodies until he somehow develops the ability to travel through pure electricity. The story spirals into abject silliness ninety-nine minutes in when Jonathan and Pinker magically hop into a television and travel from program to program (momentarily appearing in an episode of Leave it to Beaver). My willing suspension of disbelief totally snapped when the hero and the antagonist jump out of a television into a random family's home, and the mother (instead of being terrified and awestruck) comments, “I've heard of audience participation shows, but this is ridiculous.” Jonathan somehow vanquishes Pinker by having his friends sabotage the local power plant. If you can sort out the logic of this film's third act, send me an e-mail and let me know how all the pieces fit together.

A review in Variety aptly summarized Shocker's flaws: “At first glance (or at least for the first forty minutes) Shocker seems a potential winner, an almost unbearably suspenseful, stylish and blood-drenched ride courtesy of writer-director Wes Craven’s flair for action and sick humor. As it continues, however, the camp aspects simply give way to the ridiculous while failing to establish any rules to govern the mayhem.” 

On one of the Blu-ray's audio commentary tracks, Craven acknowledges that the special effects are rough around the edges but never addresses the story's problems. In the book Shock Masters of the Cinema, interviewer Loris Curci quotes Craven as saying “I like Shocker.”

Upon further reflection, my biggest problem with the story is that Pinker somehow eluded capture for quite a long time even though he apparently openly parked his business van (with “Pinker's Television Repair” plastered on the side) outside the homes of his victims before he killed them. Surely an eyewitness would've noticed this vehicle and remembered seeing it near the crime scene at least once.

Casual horror fans should steer clear of Shocker, while Craven completists will be delighted with the quality of the new Blu-ray (dense with special features and sporting a fabulous transfer). I wanted to like Shocker given its intriguing core concept, but its flaws are too numerous to overlook.