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| Images courtesy of Intervision |
The homegrown regional do-it-yourself backyard movie shot
and/or released on videotape which became increasingly popular throughout the
1980s and 1990s, particularly in the horror movie and/or monster movie subgenre,
is seeing renewed interest in recent years thanks to boutique labels like
Severin Films, Visual Vengeance or Vinegar Syndrome. While not always necessarily representing hallmarks
of quality filmmaking, they’ve taken great pains to ensure these microbudget
films typically shot on Super 8mm film before being transferred to videotape
for home video release are presented in the digital age as close to their
magnetic tape origins as possible. Though
the picture and sound quality as well as the content of the straight-to-video
titles themselves varies if not aims low, fans of the SOV (shot-on-video) film
well aware of their tendency to go-for-broke with balls-to-the-wall batshit
insanity usually kept at bay in fully furnished film productions know full well
the buried underground caverns they’re plunging themselves into.
Which is important to consider when approaching something as
nonsensical as writer-producer-director Andrew Jordan and
co-writer/producer/star Barry J. Gillis’ otherworldly shot-on-Super 8 lobotomy Things
from 1989, a Canuxploitation horror film that’s less of a movie than it is a
maddening home movie featuring bizarre awfulness that makes you feel as though
your mind will melt out of your ears. At
once making history by being the first Canadian Super 8 direct to videotape
release for the VHS market as well as being a thoroughly utterly confounding
dose of blood and guts monster movie nonsense, it tells (I think?) the story of
two drinking buddies, Don (Barry J. Gillis) and Fred (Bruce Roach), who visit a
relative’s home only to be attacked by an armada of spider-like monsters that
are the byproduct of mad science committed by a sick doctor. Seems cut and dried enough on paper as it
pulls from regional classics like The Evil Dead when the twosome
discover a tape recording that forecasts the mayhem to come, but not even the
most seasoned SOV bad movie aficionado will be able to come away from Things
without feeling a little madcap by the end of it.
An experience that includes characters inexplicably being
killed off only to come back to lie later, fairly cheap gory thrills including
an eye being torn out, bare breasts supplied reportedly by a real prostitute, characters
behaving bizarrely with performances that are so outlandishly alien (notably
from Barry J. Gillis) they demand stern viewing, Things is…well, it is
many things. It is bad, absolutely, widely
considered to be the absolute bottom of the barrel in terms of crazy bad
movies. It features a situation where
killer spiders are attacking the heroes and their presence is incidental if not
secondary to their need to drink.
Throughout the movie, there’s a “reporter” giving us the news (I guess)
played by Amber Lynn whose sole purpose in the film added in post via reshoots
was to boost tape rentals though the pornographic actress is just there in
this. Oh and the soundtrack, a tracklist
of underground rock tunes by local groups Familiar Strangers and Stryk-9, that
is both goofy and occasionally cooler than the film itself deserves including a
closing title track that feels like a Daryl Hall & John Oates song. All of it comes together haphazardly edited
by the two directors as a nutty smorgasbord of nonsense that makes such fare as
Mad Mutilator look sane by comparison.
That isn’t to say you’ll (if you know the drill) are going
to have a bad time with this trashterpiece of Canadian Super 8 tape horror. The epitome of a beer-and-pizza party film
where you could come in and out of it at any time or be following it intently
and still emerge just as lost as anyone approaching this, Things is a
literal and figurative drill to the head.
You feel your senses and perception coming apart by the creative
decisions made in this asking how it managed to reach store shelves and what
the first reactions were to it? Whatever
the case, it has invariably amassed a cult following among bad-movie disciples
as perhaps the film to unseat Plan 9 from Outer Space as the singular ‘worst
movie of all time’ and in recent years even garnered a Rifftrax release with
the famous commentators picking away at what they called the worst film they’ve
ever attempted. Something of an
unreviewable poisonous injection between the eyes, Things is either
gloriously or gratingly nonsensical but no one will come away saying it is
actually a secret success.
--Andrew Kotwicki
