Today, let’s talk about Society.
In the Eighties, there was sort of a horror boom with the success of the Friday The 13th, Halloween, and Nightmare On Elm Street movies. Though the first movie in each of these franchises is pretty good (I’m still not onboard with Friday The 13th, and I like the TV series better than the movie), they were still basically slasher flicks, and over the course of the many sequels the stories within them were worn out. But there were other horror movies besides these, although that is sometimes forgotten when people talk about the period’s horror films. Full Moon Studios was still doing a thriving business during that period, with cheap supernatural horror and sci-fi flicks. And I’ve always leaned toward that type of horror rather than the slasher stuff.
But the slasher stuff fostered a certain element of class warfare among high school kids. Some of us in that generation did go home and watch slasher flicks, as a way of bolstering revenge fantasies against those peers who bullied us. Eventually, slasher flicks became a formula: Stupid kids gather. A couple of good kids are among them; these are our heroes. People start dying, usually in very creative ways. The good kids, who are a little smarter and less prone to doing questionable stuff than the others, start trying to Solve The Mystery and Find The Killer. More creative deaths, highjinks, face down and subdue The Killer, end of movie, next sequel. And as these films made more money for the Hollywood nightmare mill, more and more of these films also became excuses to show off the latest in wildly gross and sickening practical gore effects cooked up by special-effects teams.
Combine class warfare, mystery and practical gore effects, and you get Brian Yuzna’s 1989 horror film Society. Yuzna, who had co-produced classic films Re-Animator (1985), From Beyond (1986) and Dolls (1987) for Stuart Gordon, made his directorial debut with this film, scripted by Woody Keith and Rick Fry, and special effects by Joji Tani, a.k.a. the notorious Screaming Mad George, who had previously done effects on two Nightmare On Elm Street films.
Bill Whitney (Billy Warlock) is a kid living with his wealthy parents Jim (Charles Lucia) and Nan (Connie Danese) and sister Jenny (Patrice Jennings) in a mansion in Beverly Hills. He is handsome and popular at school, being both a basketball star and candidate for high school president. He has his own jeep, a cute cheerleader girlfriend named Shauna (Heidi Kozak) and is basically living the high-school dream. But Bill has a problem.
I’ll give you a couple of minutes to stop laughing.
Finished? OK. Bill’s problem is that he is paranoid about his family and doesn’t trust them at all, to the point that he is having nightmares and sleepwalking. He feels that they dislike his best friend Milo (Evan Richards) and treat him differently from Jenny, and points this out to his therapist Dr. Cleveland (Ben Slack). Some of this appears to be true: the film opens on a nightmare/dream sequence in which Bill, disturbed and frightened by noises in the darkened house, gets a knife from the kitchen to protect himself and starts searching, where he is eventually found in a trance-like state at the bottom of the stairs by his mother. The dream continues with a therapy session in which Bill is comforted by Dr. Cleveland, and while biting into an apple, finds it to be full of worms. Then comes our opening credits, which play out over a mass of darkened, indistinct, and slightly gooey writhing, twisting figures. What have we gotten ourselves into here?
Playing basketball with Milo, Bill notices that David Blanchard (Tim Bartell), his sister’s ex-boyfriend, has turned up, and fears the worst. He is right: Blanchard appears to be stalking Jenny by hiding in her closet, and is dragged from her room and ejected from the house by Bill. His parents witness the entire thing but do not seem appreciative of Bill’s efforts to protect his sister (though she is), and turn away from him. We feel a sense of unease and dislike upon seeing Jim and Nan too: Jim appears to have the most punchable face in Christendom while Nan might as well have I BANG LIKE AN OUTHOUSE DOOR tattooed on her forehead. It is also very obvious that they favor Jenny over Bill.
Jenny comforts Bill over the parents’ attitude, and after a bit of conversation asks Bill to zip her up; she is dressed for her coming-out party, which Bill cannot attend because he has a basketball game. Bill does so, but notices that something appears to be moving under her skin.
Cut to Beverly Hills Academy, where Bill is debating for the high school presidency against Martin Petrie (Brian Bremer), who appears to be the local brainbox. Shauna cheers Bill on and rallies the school audience, but he flubs his speech upon noticing Clarissa Carlyn (former Playboy model Devin DeVasquez), who is sitting in the front row and lets him know in no uncertain terms that she is not only interested but that it’s on a plate. Shauna is livid, and Milo warns Bill about Clarissa: she is evidently Town Ho.
Regardless, Bill does well in both debate and game, and says as much to Dr. Cleveland at therapy session. Even with these “recent victories” Bill is still uncomfortable with his parents: “They don’t approve of me, they don’t like my friends, they don’t—they don’t talk to me like they do Jenny. And they don’t even look like me!” (This last is true: the first time I ever saw this movie I wondered if Bill was adopted from the start.) Cleveland reassures Bill (not very convincingly and somewhat creepily) that things are really okay, and that he will make “a wonderful contribution to Society.” And the reason I wrote the last word that way is because whenever these people talk about society, you hear the capital S by default.
Later, Bill hits his sister up for some suntan lotion. Going into Jenny’s bathroom, he walks in on her taking a shower and sees that something is drastically wrong with his sister’s body; her upper torso seems to be turned a complete 180, so that her butt is in front. He opens the shower door and is embarrassed, because Jenny appears normal. And naked.
Apologizing and leaving quickly, Bill runs into his parents and the gardener outside, who appear to be examining a "crop" of garden slugs. On top of that weirdness, there’s that sense of disconnectedness and dismissal again. Then Bill finds that someone has left a Ken doll with a screw in the head in his jeep, which he tosses.
At “The Albacore Club” which is beachside, Bill tries to connect romantically with Shauna, but Shauna seems more interested in finagling an invite to local social heavyweight Ted Ferguson’s party than snogging with Bill. He also runs into Clarissa again, who teases him and spikes up Shauna’s jealousy, has an embarrassing encounter with a rather large and oddly retarded-looking woman (Pamela Matheson—she will become important later), and tries to feel out an invite from the annoying and snobby Ferguson (Ben Meyerson), who is supporting Petrie for the high school presidency. Noting that Shauna has left, Bill starts to leave but encounters Blanchard again, who begs an audience; he has something important for Bill to hear. Meanwhile, Jenny interrupts a meeting between Jim and Judge Carter (David Wiley) to ask Jim for help with her earring; there is something stuck in the clasp. That something turns out to be a tiny microphone.
Back at the Albacore Club, Blanchard reveals to Bill that he bugged Jenny’s earring and also put a voice-activated tape recorder in their car. Bill is livid, but Blanchard persists, and Bill eventually hears that something is very wrong with the Whitneys: “You know the drill. First we dine, then copulation. Someone your own age first, then with your mother and me. Then in comes the host. You’ll be ready.”
Further listening indicates that the other Whitneys are not only participating in deranged sexual activities with Ted Ferguson, but also something that sounds like murder. Bill accuses Blanchard of rigging the tape, but takes the tape anyway. Meanwhile, Jim and Judge Carter are already speculating that Blanchard is up to no good.
Later, Bill (who apparently has listened to the tape a few more times and done some thinking) appears at Dr. Cleveland’s house, begging him to listen to the tape. Cleveland tries to put him off, but Bill insists, and finally leaves the tape with Cleveland. The next day at school, Bill tries to talk to Shauna about what happened, but Shauna has no concerns for Bill’s mental health or welfare; her only concerns are for Ferguson’s party. The following fight leads to Shauna leaving in a huff, and Bill then finds a rubber voodoo head left in his locker.
The session with Dr. Cleveland isn’t so hot either; Bill finds that the tape’s audio has changed to normal coming-out party activities. Bill angrily insists that that is not what is on the tape, but Cleveland gives him a lecture about rules of privacy and starts writing out a prescription for drugs. Bill calls Blanchard from Cleveland’s phone and arranges to get another copy of the tape. Rushing to the meeting place, Bill finds that Blanchard’s van has crashed and sees a covered, blood-streaked body being loaded into an ambulance. Bill tries to salvage another copy of the tape, but is prevented from doing so by a police officer (David Wells), who orders him away from the scene. At home, Bill tries to tell his parents and Jenny about Blanchard’s death, but they are more interested in the fact that Bill has been finally invited to Ferguson’s party, and to Bill’s horror, they shrug off the wreck.
Bill attends the party, where he winds up dancing with Clarissa (after all, Shauna isn’t there and they’re on the outs anyway, and so it goes). Milo shows up, wanting to know about Blanchard, but Bill follows Clarissa into a private tent where Ferguson is, and confronts him about his sister and Blanchard. Ted verifies with mustache-twirling venom that Blanchard’s tape is real: “You know the schedule. First we dined, then I fucked your sister, and then everybody else got so turned on, they fucked her too. And as far as bagel-breath Blanchard goes, I ran that low-rent fool right into a pole. That was a pretty busy week, don’t you think?”
Already angry, Bill struggles with Ted and gets tossed into the pool by Ted and cronies. Clarissa (who manages to be very alluring and darkly weird at the same time) invites Bill back to her house, where he is treated to sex and more strangeness: Clarissa’s body seems to twist in odd and unsettling fashion. Meanwhile, a tearful Shauna and her BFF Sally (Maria Claire), who is egging Shauna’s discomfort and jealousy on in that special way that only BFFs can do, are watching the house. They notice a strange figure going in, and elect to leave.
The strange figure enters the living room, where Bill and Clarissa are preparing for Round Two, and turns out to be Odd Large Retard Woman from the beach, who is clutching a handful of someone’s hair, and is also Clarissa’s mother. (Told you Matheson was important.) Bill (who has good manners regardless of the fact that he’s just been caught in flagrante delicto with her half-naked daughter) tries to introduce himself and is presented with a fresh hairball. Clarissa angrily pushes her mother out, and dismisses all of Bill’s obvious questions: “She does things I don’t like.” Bill leaves, but there are the beginnings of a connection between the two.
The next day, as Bill is leaving for school, he finds that someone has left a cheap blow-up sex doll marked “Clarissa” with another Ken doll jammed in its mouth marked “Bill.” This occurs just as Shauna arrives to confront Bill about his tryst with Clarissa, and seeing the dolls, Shauna officially puts a pin in their relationship. Thinking that maybe his family (which Bill already thinks is weird and perverted by now) has something to do with the dolls, Bill returns to the house and finds Jim, Nan and Jenny together in the parental bedroom suite, all still in pajamas and/or various states of undress. As if that were not disturbing enough, when Bill confronts them about the dolls, Jenny accuses him of being disrespectful and Nan tries to flirt with him. Things go downhill from there, and Bill threatens to move out, then flees.
Just in case you have not been keeping tabs, something is definitely going on.
Bill and Milo attend Blanchard’s funeral and, after commenting on the odd state of the body, discover that it may be fake. Petrie appears and asks to arrange a meeting with Bill about “your parents, about him, about some of the things that have been happening here lately. Society.” Bill agrees and comes to the meeting that night at a local park, but discovers Petrie’s car and also Petrie’s body; his throat has been cut. Milo, who is tailing Bill, notices a different car driving away from the scene. Bill discovers a sweater at the scene upon further investigation, but an unseen figure pushes him down and leaves with the sweater. Bill gives chase, crossing a fence, and sees the car that Milo saw driving away. He also discovers that he has unknowingly arrived at Clarissa’s house, where he calls the police. Returning to the scene with Clarissa and the policemen (one of whom turns out to be the same policeman at Blanchard’s wreck), Bill finds that the car has been switched and Petrie’s body is gone.
The next day, Bill appears at another student body rally and discovers that he has been gaslighted: Petrie appears, alive and well, just after Bill tells the student body that Petrie was murdered, and Ferguson waves the sweater from the audience. Bill leaves in a rage, but Milo comes after him and confesses to putting the dolls in the car, then also confesses to tailing Bill the night before and seeing Petrie and Ferguson leaving the woods together, as well as seeing the other car that Bill found. Bill is worried about drawing Milo into the approaching fray, but Milo resolves to back him up.
Bill arrives home, tailed by Milo, and finds his parents, Jenny, Judge Carter and Dr. Cleveland all waiting for him. Bill confronts them, but is drugged and taken away in an ambulance, with Milo tailing them to the hospital. He tries to get in and see Bill, but is told that Bill is in the morgue. Meanwhile, Bill awakens in a hospital bed and thinks he hears Blanchard crying out, but finds that nothing is there after tearing down the curtain next to his bed. Leaving the hospital, an angry and thoroughly frightened and paranoid Bill finds Milo, ignores his warnings and drives off in his jeep (which was also brought to the hospital) to confront his tormentors.
After confronting Clarissa, who tries to make him stay with her (she has, after all, fallen in love with him, which is how these things go) and warns him not to go home, Bill drives to his parents’ house. Going in, he finds himself in the same situation as his dream at the beginning: darkened house, whispering and sounds he cannot identify. He takes a knife and stalks through the house, but the lights go up and Bill is captured, to confront his worst fears: his family, Judge Carter, Dr. Cleveland, Clarissa, Ted, Shauna, Petrie and everyone in his community (except for Milo) are all part of Society—an elitist, sexually perverse and highly incestuous species of humanoid creature with the ability to deform and reshape itself, meld together into one or more fleshy masses, and suck the nutrients from a person’s body, then consume the rest through a process called “shunting.” And Bill has been raised by his "family" not as a member of Society, but as food. And if you had suspicions about what was really being done with the garden slugs or what really happened to Blanchard, you were right.
This satirically twisted comic-horror film first premiered in London and was a big hit in Europe, but it took three years to get released in the States, and while achieving some critical acclaim was largely panned by critics. It’s a shame, because Society is probably the perfect comment on the class wars and excess of the Eighties, with its nearest companion being John Carpenter’s 1988 sci-fi/social satire They Live. Watching it now, considering the current divide between classes on both social and political levels, it almost seems revolutionary in its audacity. It delivers a slow burn in the first three-quarters by building up the paranoia, and then once the nightmare comes true in the last half-hour, it figures it has nothing left to lose and goes for broke. Screaming Mad George’s surreal and Daliesque effects (the final “shunt” mass of Society at the end was actually inspired by a Dali painting), while thoroughly shocking and disgusting, work perfectly within the parameters of this film, but they are not for the faint of heart. There’s not a lot of blood, but there is a lot of slime, goo, fluids, eyeballs, misplaced heads, stretched/twisted/misappropriated skin, limbs and dangly bits. (You will ultimately find yourself thinking it’s a good thing the Whitney home is not extensively carpeted.)
The cast, an interesting mix of younger and older actors, is serviceable: no one particularly busts out with white-hot acting talent (they rarely do in cheap horror movies), but you see pretty much every character you expect, and everyone does their job selling this thing. Our three heroes are charming enough, and though Devasquez and Warlock’s relationship starts out as somewhat perverse (after their first tryst she makes him tea and offers him a choice of cream, sugar, or a special flavoring of her own), she mellows when she realizes that Warlock is not willing to buy into her nonsense. As Milo, Richards is a good foil for Warlock, and has a few humorous moments with Matheson when Milo makes the hair-munching Ma Carlyn into his compadre to storm the Whitney house in the denouement. There are even some nice turnarounds with Clarissa deciding to side with Bill and not be controlled and dictated by Society, and Bill also proves that better breeding doesn’t necessarily make you smarter: he outwits Ferguson in their final fight for Clarissa and his freedom by tempting him into shunting and then, while Ferguson is in his pliable state, pulls him inside out. And he gets to punch out the extremely punchable Lucia as his “father” Jim, who, in an earlier segment of the film, becomes a very literal butthead.
If you have had longtime suspicions that the rich live extremely differently from you, look down on you with immense dislike and sometimes get up to very, very bad things, Society will not do anything to alleviate your fears, but at least you’ll have a good time with them.
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