Confession time: Your Aunt John has a major thing for the genius that is director LARRY COHEN. Sure, from a technical perspective his movies aren't necessarily the prettiest to look at (IT'S ALIVE), and yeah, his special effects are typically more, ummm, "special" than effective, but sweet baby Jesus, that man is not only an astute observer of popular culture, but also a brilliant satirist to boot!

Case in point, 1985's THE STUFF.

Like most readers in my age demographic, I originally caught this gem on basic cable the same year a TCBY yogurt set up camp in a neighboring town's strip mall and became THE frozen desert palace du jour (coincidence or conspiracy?).

On the surface, THE STUFF centers on an over-marketed frozen dessert (Is it ice cream? Is it frozen yogurt? Is it, gasp, tofutti?) that becomes a must-have for mindless American consumers along the lines of Swatch Watches and Coca-Cola clothing. Enter MICHAEL MORIARTY (in one of the worst hair-pieces ever!) as David ‘Mo' Rutherford, an industrial saboteur with a silly Southern drawl hired to find out the secret ingredient of the titular "Stuff" by some rival company. He quickly recruits the brainy and beautiful marketing wunderkind behind the successful Stuff advertising campaign (ANDREA MARCOVICCI), a little boy with hypnotically blue eyes (JASON BLOOM), and a deposed cookie entrepreneur (GARRETT MORRIS as "Chocolate Chip Charlie") to ascertain the specifics of said recipe.

If you try to watch THE STUFF as a head-on horror flick, the cheesy zombie-inducing effects caused by mass "Stuff" consumption will surely disappoint you. It's straight up ridiculous, and the shoestring effects budget really doesn't help matters. However, if you focus solely on "The Stuff" advertisements sprinkled throughout the movie, you will see the aforementioned COHEN genius. He lampoons advertisers over reliance on supposedly sexy models, "urban" dance troupes, Broadway actresses, and ‘80s octogenarian ad queen CLARA PELLER.

 

Did you catch kinder-heartthrob ABE VIGODA in the above ad? Like I said, COHEN is a genius! Repeat viewings of THE STUFF was enough to keep my family away from TCBY and on the Carvel path. Long live COOKIE PUSS and his (her?) non-zombifying side effects!

PET SEMATARY 2 is just bizarre. In fact, if the original PET SEMATARY died and you buried it in the pet cemetery it would probably come back as PET SEMATARY 2. Although there are several nods towards the first film (hey look it's the Creeds mailbox! Let's meet Church the cat's veterinarian) drastic liberties are taken and important boundaries present in the first installment are ignored. I don't know about you, but bad table manners are the last thing on my list of concerns about the recently deceased.

EDWARD FURLONG plays Jeff Mathews a boy who recently lost his famous movie star mother after she was electrocuted during an on-set mishap. He moves to the town of Ludlow, Maine (Georgia is cast as Maine) with his veterinarian father Chase (ANTHONY EDWARDS). Jeff is not in town long before he meets a mean kitten-napping bully (BIG's JARED RUSHTON) and an overweight kid (JASON McGUIRE) juggling an abusive step dad and a doomed pooch. Things are said, punches are thrown, dogs are shot and eventually people are trotting off to the old Indian reanimation station.

Director MARY LAMBERT doesn't really have much to work with here, and even the cemetery itself seems scaled down and rushed. She still has a great eye for twisted details and gothic nuances, but some of her off kilter sensibilities glare rather than enhance. Part of what made the first film so potent was its appreciation of a permanent, weighty environment rich in history. In contrast, PET SEMATARY 2 feels like a transient carnival passing through town. I don't know if the focus on younger characters is to blame or if it's the absence of recalled horror, but the ancient evil vibe is M.I.A. Lamentably, when cornered LAMBERT tends to fall back on her extensive music video background. The songs we hear are great but really a little goes a long way and they tend to elbow out any established mood. (The tracks chosen actually would have made an outstanding soundtrack, unfortunately such a thing never materialized.)

The good news is that CLANCY BROWN who portrays Jeff's pal Drew's bastard of a step father is a wonder to behold. His character may make little sense when held up against what we've seen in the original film, but if you just let that go he's a darkly humorous marvel. In fact, if we could just rip out this movie's connection to the first film entirely it would fare a lot better. If this was not a sequel to PET SEMETARY, scenes like the one where Jeff's father dreams that he's making love to a woman with a very unconvincing dog mask on might actually be kinda fun. Instead it's just kind of head shakingly sad.

As far as the film's climax goes I'm kind of torn. I don't think I'll be ruining anything here when I tell you that Jeff's mother does indeed return from the grave. Unfortunately, just about every opportunity to make this development suitably gruesome is avoided. The problem is she's looking too damn good. I know that this may be partially due to illusion but still, the fact remains, bitch ain't scary. Although it's undeniably fun to watch her burn alive, face all dripping apart, something just seems too theatrical and corny here to be taken seriously. In a way, this climax isn't so different from the one in DARIO ARGENTO's INFERNO with that nutty dime store death skeleton. I always enjoyed that, it's sort of goofy but that's just DARIO being DARIO right? Why can't I give MARY a break like that? If this film was in Italian would I think it was artsy and cool rather than cringe-y and cartoonish? The answer to that question is pending. Bottom-line is PET SEMATARY 2 is not a great movie, but it is reasonably entertaining. If you pretend it has subtitles you might even like it. The problem is that as a sequel it drops the ball in any language.

Note: One other bizarre thing about the film that is equal parts fascinating and embarrassing is its closing credits which elect to show you the film's victims in cut out circles on the side of the screen. To me it laughably looks like the opening of a mid-eighties night time soap. One more head scratching choice in a movie filled with many.

Thank God MARY LAMBERT directed STEPHEN KING's PET SEMATARY. I don't think anybody could understand the material as well as she does. Certain parts (especially particular lines of dialogue) may come off as clunky, but her ability to blur the lines between a believable reality and an obtuse spiritual world is what makes the film so powerful (check out her earlier film SIESTA for even more evidence of this talent). Scripted by KING himself, this update of the MONKEY'S PAW was never in line to be your typical slash-and-boo show, but LAMBERT's personal touches somehow make the film's taboo busting creep-outs all the more universal.

The story centers around a young family so optimistic and unstained that they might have been plucked from a department store catalogue. DALE MIDKIFF as father Louis is a dedicated physician who is rugged yet soft as suede, and mother Rachel DENISE CROSBY has a habit of jutting her jaw-line like she's contemplating war bonds. They have 2.5 children (Smokey-blue cat "Church" being the .5). Daughter Ellie (BLAZE BERDAHL….GHOSTWRITER!) has a knack for asking all the big questions and is as equally whiney as she is psychically inclined. Our perfect family is completed by rugrat Gage MIKO HUGHES who begins the story looking like a Christmas tree ornament and ends it looking like the non-tranny version of SEED OF CHUCKY.

The cast is rounded off by what LAMBERT refers to in her DVD commentary as the "good" and "bad" angels. "Good" being BRAD GREENQUIST as the recently dead and nearly translucent Pascow, a tsk-tsking Cassandra prophet in jogging shorts. "Bad" being a scene stealing FRED GWYNN as the history-hoarding neighbor Jud, who is also the king of bad ideas and an unknowing underminer. If he is not exactly consciously "bad" he is at least toxically passive aggressive. Advice like, "Sometimes dead is better" would be a little more effective without the "Sometimes" part. A small amount of redemption is found as Jud realizes his blunder, but let his folly be a lesson to us all: "Sometimes keeping your pie-hole shut is better."

When the industrial (urban) world of metal and steal barrels through this Maine rustic mirage of safety in the form of a giant truck with RAMONES music blasting it snatches away a dream. The nightmare of not only every parent but also anyone who ever loved anyone is revealed to be always just a stone's throw away. This is a tale of profound loss and the unhealthy lengths one might go to in an effort to resist moving forward; LAMBERT creates a child's drawing of a happy family and then lights it a flame. Ironically it's rare that real death is presented in a horror film, but SEMATARY's fascination echoes a child's determination to turn over road kill with a stick just to see what's on the other side.

Many of our first encounters with the subject of death are through that of storytelling by those who walk before us in life. KING's tale provides several flashback inserts that operate the same way. LAMBERT relishes these scenes and the eerie quality she provides them with would probably have been lost on a less earnest director. Rather than concentrate on the flight or fight response that dominates most modern horror, we have here a meditation on a certain horror that is steady and unavoidable. Various characters actions may speed the process along but the inevitability of all our outcomes hangs just below the surface like a carpet of fog. It's not without its humorous moments, but any chuckles you might be able to produce are akin to whistling past the graveyard. In this world, as in our own, there are only two types of people, those who have suffered a great loss and those who WILL suffer a great loss.

Critical response to the film might have been lukewarm, but audiences gravitated in droves. If there is an innate desire to work through death issues by attending a horror film PET delivers in spades. (In fact it's sort of like dumping a loaf of bread on a pigeon that is anticipating a crumb). Although the film is far from seamless, its determination to move past assembly line murder and glare at the after effects of tragic death rings a too seldom heard bell. Ultimately horror films are naturally critic proof, alphabet grades are about as durable as autumn leaves when a film successfully touches a nerve as this one does. PET SEMATARY's success proves that empathy and character identification can trump gore and visceral thrills when given the correct amount of attention. Die hard fans of the original novel might be less convinced but as a film PET SEMATARY left an imprint all it's own.

As far as Traumafessions go, PET SEMATARY is one of the most prolific providers. Besides the several found on these pages a thread on Imdb concerning the effects of encountering the character of Rachel's sickly sister Zelda is currently up to 130 responses. There's no denying the film scared the bejesus out of many. MARY LAMBERT, whose directorial output never again reached this particular zenith, took what many would have made a glorified zombie flick and gave it a vulnerable bloody heart; a heart whose rhythmic beating reminded audiences of their own.