Somewhere between Mario Bava’s
monster-movie debut Caltiki – The Immortal Monster and Neil Marshall’s cave dwelling The
Descent lies Melanie Anne Phillips’ microbudget indie mining-horror gem The
Strangeness, a do-it-yourself gathering of friends kind of film production
that does a lot with very little.
A
literal 16mm backyard production about a group of miners in search of gold who
end up being attacked by a strange tentacled creature dwelling therein, this
low budget suspense thriller while occasionally campy with some relatively
silly vistas of a Claymation creature winds up being a really cool and
entertaining monster movie with many tricks up its sleeves. Moreover, like Sam Raimi’s original The
Evil Dead it brought together a group of talents who worked on the
shoestring with limited means to produce some surprisingly effective thrills.
The trouble is they’re immediately lost and
cut off by recurring cave-ins as they continue to try and blast their way
out. As supplies run out and morale
dissipates, they soon discover there’s something else, a mythical otherworldly
tentacled creature that frankly looks like a hermaphroditic penis replete with
a vaginal mouth that bites off the heads of its victims. Think of Carlo Rambaldi’s inhuman sexual
beast slithering about in Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession done by Lee
Hardcastle and you have a rough idea of what’s in store.
Though clearly a made-for-nothing
cheapie that takes a little while to get going, with a number of expository
scenes that could’ve been trimmed, The Strangeness somehow still manages
to pack a minor punch by playing heavily with red light, shadow, claustrophobic
corridors and subliminal strobing in key scenes.
Yes for the most part the scenes of the
vaginalpenis monster will trigger laughs particularly when you see it eating up
a human that looks like an action figure prototype but all the scenes in
between, compounded with a surprisingly hip and moody synth soundtrack it all
sort of gels together in a way that works anyway. Fans of the ensemble cast thriller will find
much to enjoy with the sense of encroaching suffocating danger being created
somehow in someone’s backyard. Scenes of
caves inner corridors, as it turns out, were just handfuls of tin foil
plastered on the walls of the filmmakers’ garages.
Initially composed for theatrical
release in 1979 before being shuffled around a mishandled distribution deal
that sent the film straight to VHS obscurity in 1985, The Strangeness was
pretty much forgotten until being rescued by Code Red DVD in the early 2000s. Interestingly the film’s director in the
years since came out as transgender, transitioning to Melanie Anne Phillips and
becoming herself a major proponent of trans rights.
Looking at the film’s monster now, the
developments make sense and no doubt some might reevaluate the film as
allegorical about the fears of coming out with the monster possibly being a
white elephant in the room? A then
unknown early entry in what would or would not become the proliferation of
distinctly LGBTQ oriented horror, the realisateur’s own personal changes
invariably further enhance the mythology surrounding this made-for-nothing
cheapie turned minor cult favorite ripe for rediscovery from fans of regional
exploitation that doesn’t necessarily need all the money in the world for it to
give you a little kick.
--Andrew Kotwicki
-Christopher S. Jordan
