Scream Factory: The Borrower (1991) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Scream Factory

What do you do when you unleash perhaps the singularly most disturbing serial killer film of the 1980s with Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer as your directorial debut?  Considered a film so disturbing it remained without a distributor for almost five years, it set the benchmark for which all subsequent serial killer film ruminations would springboard from.  Vicious, gritty and raw 16mm docudrama, it was met with enormous controversy and censorship as well as widespread critical acclaim.  

Well, after cementing himself as one of the most formidable horror purveyors of the decade, the obvious next step was to start clowning around with more or less the same cast and crew in the wonderfully silly sci-fi/horror slasher The Borrower.  A film designed to show even the horror genre’s meanest nastiest realisateur was, prior to his eventual Hollywood tenure, more than capable of generating horror comedy laughter by way of Sam Raimi or Frank Henenlotter. 

 
Penned by Henry screenwriter Richard Fire and utilizing the same three composers behind Henry for a decidedly sillier lo-fi casio keyboard score, the $2 million film revolves around an insect-like extraterrestrial serial killer who is banished to Earth to live among the humans.  However, there’s a problem involving the human disguise breaking down back into alien form every few hours and as a result, the killer’s human head explodes.  To counter this, the alien promptly decapitates a nearby victim before sticking the severed head atop his own headless neck before moving on to the next victim.  Hot on his tail are two detectives Pierce (Rae Dawn Chong) and Krieger (Don Gordon) whose only clues are the headless bodies and strange behavior being committed by the film’s unearthly Borrower. 

 
A goof on the menace of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer replete with Otis actor Tom Towles on the poster in newly repossessed alien form as well as characters running into lampposts plastered with the poster for Henry as well as a hospital television playing a TV spot of the film, The Borrower while a straightforward sci-fi slasher clearly has its tongue firmly planted in cheek.  A step up from the grittier fare of his debut, The Borrower includes early cinematographic work from Home Alone director of photography Julio Macat.

Between its sneaky cameos including but not limited to Antonio Fargas as a homeless person, Tony Amendola as an unfortunate doctor and Twin Peaks starlet Mädchen Amick as a rock groupie, the film is a showcase of screen personalities with several actors taking turns playing the head robbing alien amid a bevy of special effects makeup shots designed by Sleepy Hollow artist Kevin Yagher.  Mostly led by Rae Dawn Chong as a tough cop playing against her typecast damsel in distress from Commando including taking on toughies twice her size in several scenes, the movie falls somewhere between Brain Damage and Invasion of the Body Snatchers with just a few reminders it’s coming from the guy who gave us Henry.

As with the film that put John McNaughton on the map in the first place, The Borrower faced distribution hell that kept it on the shelf for three years.  Completed in 1988 before Atlantic Entertainment Group went bankrupt until Cannon Pictures picked it up in 1991, the film also suffered heavy MPAA cuts to obtain a more commercially viable R rating and to make matters worse Rae Dawn Chong was quick to bash the film in the press saying it had the worst script she ever read with McNaughton later suggesting she was perhaps overqualified for the role.  Interestingly, Chicago’s beloved Music Box Theater which also sponsored Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer’s theatrical run came to the rescue offering to book The Borrower at no additional costs to Cannon and soon after a successful movie palace run Cannon eventually struck more prints.

 
Finally given a long-overdue blu-ray disc release in 2021 by Shout Factory sublabel Scream Factory in conjunction with Warner Brothers, McNaughton’s lo-fi alien horror-comedy flick The Borrower like Henry before it looks and sounds rough around the edges with sometimes inaudible dialogue.  Still, in a way the film upends expectations of the director behind arguably the most savage horror film of the 1980s with its goofy tone, tough performance from Rae Dawn Chong and armada of wild practical effects.  

The idea of remaking Henry with a 1950s inspired sci-fi monster creation running around in it is absurd enough by itself but in the end McNaughton had the last laugh in his final official horror film for over another decade before charting his way into Hollywood with Mad Dog and Glory and Wild Things.  After so terribly shocking audiences with Henry, McNaughton honestly earned the right to let a fart out in a theater playing his own movie, seeping gross laughter into the horror proceedings and Scream Factory’s disc release though light on extras looks splendid.

--Andrew Kotwicki