I've decided to turn this into a review thread, for I've got some other flicks I'd like to talk extensively about. Perhaps, one, or two, a month. And they won't all be within the horror and/or science fiction genre. Now, what is a "memory movie" you might ask? Well, we all got 'em. Simply put, it's any film that has a vivid memory connected to it, good or bad, and the best ones, generally those with good memories, are from you childhood, when you first saw it. All the movies in my collection are memory movies, but, some resonate more than others. That's just natural. If you guys have any serious memory movies in you collection, I'd love to hear about them, and the memory, or memories, connected to them. Any genre.
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/image/id/405441/width/1000/height/800 I became aware of this movie back in 1988, through a magazine called, SLAUGHTERHOUSE MAGAZINE. It was a new horror magazine that had just started coming out, and the first two issues have articles on this movie. After that I heard nothing—nada, zilch, zero—until Lionsgate put it out on DVD at the end of 2003.
I bought it based on all those cool monster pics SLAUGHTERHOUSE MAG ran, and I was not disappointed. I tend to watch this flick from time to time, and just recently had another urge to put this underrated gem on. When I went in search of some photos and general info about on IMDB, in preparation for this review, I learned some things I hadn’t known before.
In their trivia section on IMDB’s METAMORPHOSIS page, I learned that even though the film started production in 1987, it was years before it was ever completed thanks to the heavy amounts of special effects and stop motion animation the filmmakers decided to put into it, and it goes on to mention that afterwards it went through some legal red tape, before Vidmark picked it up and finally distributed it in 1993 to a few film festivals before it landed on tape.
It also goes on to say, something which I already knew, thanks to SLAUGHTERHOUSE, that it initially started filming under the title, DEADLY SPAWN 2: THE METAMORPHOSIS, for it was originally set to be a direct sequel to THE DEADLY SPAWN, which I will eventually be doing a review on soon.
The moment the opening credits end we start on a long shot of the TALOS Corporation’s building. It’s night, all looks serene, and there’s nobody around but the security guard, who later on we learn is John Griffen. He’s alive and well, and in one piece at the moment, but all that’s about to change once his computer alerts him to a problem in one of the labs. A quick scan of the security camera shows him something’s wrong with the lab’s high tech door. It looks like it wants to open, but can’t.
Like the efficient security guard he is he heads down to get a better grasp of the problem. But, now, there’s an enormous pool of blood in front of the door. After some fiddling with the lock, it didn’t seem to want to accept his security card, the door slides open, alarms go off, and a man, whose face is mangled beyond all recognition, save for his left eyeball, stumbles out and falls into John’s arms.
John lays him out on the floor, wipes his badge free of blood, and utters, “Oh, my God, Elliot . . .” This poor security guard would still be alive if he had just ran back to his post and called in some back-up, or whomever he’s instructed to call when things like this happen. Instead, he draws his gun, enters the lab and is instantly set upon by an unearthly horror that tears him to shreds.
Good-bye, John Griffen, wish we knew you better.
Once Dr. Viallini, the oily suit in charge of TALOS, and semi-hot, Dr. Nancy Kane discover Elliot and John’s bodies, and the demolished lab, they retire to Viallini’s office where we learn terrible things have already come to pass, and that Viallini has an idea—a really shitty one—on how to cover it all up. He calls into the office two corporate assassins—what I took them to be—and fills them in on what has happened thus far. This is where the movie turns into a flashback, but it returns intermittently to that briefing for dramatic moments between Kane and Viallini.
During our flashback we’re introduced to a Dr. Michael Foster, who with the already introduced Dr. Kane, are hard at work in that soon-to-be demolished lab experimenting with alien life forms. Specifically, a little critter they have affectionately called, Spot. The camera pans around the lab, as it does we see some unearthly sights that we eventually learn are mutant-hybrids, various animals inserted with alien DNA.
One of the more memorable mutants is a very cool looking dog-creature named, Checkers.
We also learn in this early scene that Foster and Kane are an item, and had she not been trying to kiss him during his extraction of cells from Spot, none of this movie would have happened. The needle goes into the wrong place, pissing Spot off, which results in the expected toothy bite retaliation.
Kane is infected with alien DNA, and soon, like, within nanoseconds, he’s beginning to mutate into something deadly. These flashback scenes are where I learned how annoying and useless semi-hot Dr. Kane really is. Eventually, we’re introduced to Dr. Elliot Stein, who, at times, sort of acts as the movie’s comic relief.
This is where the impressive creature effects really start to show themselves off, as you can see from the photos I have interspersed this review with below. God, how I miss good old fashioned practical animatronic effects. If you’re into these kinds of movies, certain names among the Special Effects crew will stand out, like John Dods (MONSTERS TV Series, THE DEADLY SPAWN, NIGHTBEAST), and Vincent J. Gaustini (MONSTERS TV Series, SPOOKIES, MIND KILLER).
For his initial transformation, Foster is confined to a writhing, indescribable form strapped to a bed. Most of this time he’s crying out in pain in an alien tinged voice, and coupled with his animated head effects, actually, gave me the willies, still does, too.
One of the more creepy results of his transformation is the little toothy maws he’s able to shoot from various cavities on his mutating form. Just check out the picture below. In the middle of this maw, what Kane describes as a quill, will jut out and secret a caustic venom. This is a cool plot point that gets woefully unused throughout the flick. As most of the cast, and I do mean most, get these things attached to their bodies, no one really succumbs to anything I could pinpoint as alien venom. If it had, I suppose, the movie would have been a lot shorter.
Viallini’s eventually death scene is a doozy, for he takes one of these maws right in the face, like an eye patch. Ouch! When the cast starts to get widdled down, it starts with poor Elliot who is the first victim of the now transformed Dr. Foster. A three-pronged tentacle latches onto his guts and tosses him around the room. He visibly breaks his arm in the scene, but if you go back and rewatch that opening scene with John Griffen, his arm is suddenly working pretty well.
It’s about time I introduced you to this movies heroes, Griffen’s two daughters, Sherry (Tara Leigh) and Kim (Dianna Flaherty), and Sherry’s still-in-the-closet boyfriend, Brian. Seeing that their father never came home from work, they get a little worried, and realize that something may have happened to him at TALOS. That’s when Sherry decides to play Scooby-Doo one night, (she’s the Alpha Male in that relationship), and sneaks into the building, armed with the security pass her Father forgot to bring the night he was chewed on, but this ain’t no cartoon and things turn bloody real fuckin’ fast for the naïve three. Sherry drags Brian along but won’t let younger sis, Kim, come, so, she stows away in the car, and gets into the building later on using a method no respectable security would fall for unless he was Moe, Curly, or Shemp.
The movie has a nice 80s vibe, you can see it in Kim’s garb, and hairstyle. Not to mention music and out of place song that runs over the credits. Hell, they still do that today. Just stick to the moody instrumentals, I say.
There are two moments, well, three actually, that don’t work for me, simply because they’re implausible. I’ve seen them all done in other movies, too. There are two scenes where characters are walking down the hall, and are suddenly taken by surprise by something they should have seen in the first place given the line of sight. One moment concerns Brain and alien slime on the floor that he slips in, and the other is when Kim, lost in the labyrinthine hallways, stops for a smoke. She leans against the wall, goes to light up, then turns her head slightly, and is horrified by Checker’s dead body. I’m thinking, how did she not see that unholy mess as she walked up to it, in fairly well lit conditions!? Incidentally, Checkers got free after his lab was demolished, one of the assassins happened upon him, and gunned the poor fucker down with his concealed UZI.
The third is a major character being seemingly killed off by our alien/hybrid menace, but shows up minutes before the movie ends in one piece.
“How did you survive?” Sherry asks him.
“Just lucky, I guess,” he replies.
Oh, please . . . dude, you should be deader than a doornail.
Actually, this is one of those movies where all three of the principal cast should have ended up dead, due mostly in part to that unused caustic venom plot point.
Back to the movie . . . let’s see, where did I leave off? Oh, right, Sherry and Brian are snooping around Viallini’s office, Kim is roaming the halls, and getting freaked out by Checkers, who’s splattered all over the floor, Dr. Kane and Viallini are somewhere in the facility, too.
Since I have mentioned very little about the corporate assassins, let me rectify that right now. They do have names: Mitchell and Jarrett, and like Viallini, they both come off as oily scumbags. So much so that when Jarrett encounters Sherry and Brian in the office, going through Viallini’s computer, he beats up Brian, and later when he finds Sherry in the hall, he beats her up, too. Have no fear, scientist-turned-mutant, Dr. Foster, bumps into Jarrett and eats the fucker.
As we near the end of the film (this is where the glorious stop-motion begins to take over) the only survivors are the daughters, her boyfriend, and one lone assassin, Mitchell, who aligns himself temporarily with them as they are cornered at a very critical place in the building. Earlier, when everything was fairly okay, and no one had yet to succumb to any kind of bloody death, Elliot came up with a cure for Foster. It entailed hitting him with a major blast of electricity, that when done on a low-key basis, killed the alien cells. Though the kind of blast Foster would need required a special lab that looks like the loading bay of the Sulaco from James Cameron’s ALIENS, and a device code named, the Atomic Shotgun, which extends down from the ceiling. A very impressive set for an ambitious film like this one, I must say.
The finale of the film takes place here, where the Atomic Shotgun actually does succeed in turning Foster back to his human form, unfortunately a moment later he’s back in his mutant-alien form, and swallowing Mitchell whole.
Oh, Mitchell, we knew you all too well. And, good riddance. Though, you were fun to watch.
When all is said and done, Sherry, Kim and Brian stagger out of the lab and towards the front doors looking like bloody death warmed over. This is where, like the end of THE DEADLY SPAWN, the movie hits you with that one last punch. Remember Spot, well, he’s mutated into something that’s going to present a lot of people with a lot of problems later on. (See below).
Then we cut to the outside of TALOS, as Spot comes crashing through the roof in a form big enough to take on Godzilla.
Aside from those “problems” I mentioned, this movie kicks some serious ass. If you like monster flicks, and practical effects, and stop-motion, you need to see this.
Now the DVD.
As I mentioned earlier Lionsgate put it out back in 2003, barebones, save for the trailer, and to add insult to injury they released it full frame. Considering the problems this flick went through in getting made and released, and the extensive effects employed, to wondrous end, I say, this movie deserves a special edition. Whether we’ll ever get to see that special edition is another story altogether.
The transfer, however, is quite vivid and clear. More clear now that I’ve gone from a component hook-up to an HDMI one. Audio is Dolby Digital 2/0, and it comes with subtitles and a scene selection screen.
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/image/id/405441/width/1000/height/800 I became aware of this movie back in 1988, through a magazine called, SLAUGHTERHOUSE MAGAZINE. It was a new horror magazine that had just started coming out, and the first two issues have articles on this movie. After that I heard nothing—nada, zilch, zero—until Lionsgate put it out on DVD at the end of 2003.
I bought it based on all those cool monster pics SLAUGHTERHOUSE MAG ran, and I was not disappointed. I tend to watch this flick from time to time, and just recently had another urge to put this underrated gem on. When I went in search of some photos and general info about on IMDB, in preparation for this review, I learned some things I hadn’t known before.
In their trivia section on IMDB’s METAMORPHOSIS page, I learned that even though the film started production in 1987, it was years before it was ever completed thanks to the heavy amounts of special effects and stop motion animation the filmmakers decided to put into it, and it goes on to mention that afterwards it went through some legal red tape, before Vidmark picked it up and finally distributed it in 1993 to a few film festivals before it landed on tape.
It also goes on to say, something which I already knew, thanks to SLAUGHTERHOUSE, that it initially started filming under the title, DEADLY SPAWN 2: THE METAMORPHOSIS, for it was originally set to be a direct sequel to THE DEADLY SPAWN, which I will eventually be doing a review on soon.
The moment the opening credits end we start on a long shot of the TALOS Corporation’s building. It’s night, all looks serene, and there’s nobody around but the security guard, who later on we learn is John Griffen. He’s alive and well, and in one piece at the moment, but all that’s about to change once his computer alerts him to a problem in one of the labs. A quick scan of the security camera shows him something’s wrong with the lab’s high tech door. It looks like it wants to open, but can’t.
Like the efficient security guard he is he heads down to get a better grasp of the problem. But, now, there’s an enormous pool of blood in front of the door. After some fiddling with the lock, it didn’t seem to want to accept his security card, the door slides open, alarms go off, and a man, whose face is mangled beyond all recognition, save for his left eyeball, stumbles out and falls into John’s arms.
John lays him out on the floor, wipes his badge free of blood, and utters, “Oh, my God, Elliot . . .” This poor security guard would still be alive if he had just ran back to his post and called in some back-up, or whomever he’s instructed to call when things like this happen. Instead, he draws his gun, enters the lab and is instantly set upon by an unearthly horror that tears him to shreds.
Good-bye, John Griffen, wish we knew you better.
Once Dr. Viallini, the oily suit in charge of TALOS, and semi-hot, Dr. Nancy Kane discover Elliot and John’s bodies, and the demolished lab, they retire to Viallini’s office where we learn terrible things have already come to pass, and that Viallini has an idea—a really shitty one—on how to cover it all up. He calls into the office two corporate assassins—what I took them to be—and fills them in on what has happened thus far. This is where the movie turns into a flashback, but it returns intermittently to that briefing for dramatic moments between Kane and Viallini.
During our flashback we’re introduced to a Dr. Michael Foster, who with the already introduced Dr. Kane, are hard at work in that soon-to-be demolished lab experimenting with alien life forms. Specifically, a little critter they have affectionately called, Spot. The camera pans around the lab, as it does we see some unearthly sights that we eventually learn are mutant-hybrids, various animals inserted with alien DNA.
One of the more memorable mutants is a very cool looking dog-creature named, Checkers.
We also learn in this early scene that Foster and Kane are an item, and had she not been trying to kiss him during his extraction of cells from Spot, none of this movie would have happened. The needle goes into the wrong place, pissing Spot off, which results in the expected toothy bite retaliation.
Kane is infected with alien DNA, and soon, like, within nanoseconds, he’s beginning to mutate into something deadly. These flashback scenes are where I learned how annoying and useless semi-hot Dr. Kane really is. Eventually, we’re introduced to Dr. Elliot Stein, who, at times, sort of acts as the movie’s comic relief.
This is where the impressive creature effects really start to show themselves off, as you can see from the photos I have interspersed this review with below. God, how I miss good old fashioned practical animatronic effects. If you’re into these kinds of movies, certain names among the Special Effects crew will stand out, like John Dods (MONSTERS TV Series, THE DEADLY SPAWN, NIGHTBEAST), and Vincent J. Gaustini (MONSTERS TV Series, SPOOKIES, MIND KILLER).
For his initial transformation, Foster is confined to a writhing, indescribable form strapped to a bed. Most of this time he’s crying out in pain in an alien tinged voice, and coupled with his animated head effects, actually, gave me the willies, still does, too.
One of the more creepy results of his transformation is the little toothy maws he’s able to shoot from various cavities on his mutating form. Just check out the picture below. In the middle of this maw, what Kane describes as a quill, will jut out and secret a caustic venom. This is a cool plot point that gets woefully unused throughout the flick. As most of the cast, and I do mean most, get these things attached to their bodies, no one really succumbs to anything I could pinpoint as alien venom. If it had, I suppose, the movie would have been a lot shorter.
Viallini’s eventually death scene is a doozy, for he takes one of these maws right in the face, like an eye patch. Ouch! When the cast starts to get widdled down, it starts with poor Elliot who is the first victim of the now transformed Dr. Foster. A three-pronged tentacle latches onto his guts and tosses him around the room. He visibly breaks his arm in the scene, but if you go back and rewatch that opening scene with John Griffen, his arm is suddenly working pretty well.
It’s about time I introduced you to this movies heroes, Griffen’s two daughters, Sherry (Tara Leigh) and Kim (Dianna Flaherty), and Sherry’s still-in-the-closet boyfriend, Brian. Seeing that their father never came home from work, they get a little worried, and realize that something may have happened to him at TALOS. That’s when Sherry decides to play Scooby-Doo one night, (she’s the Alpha Male in that relationship), and sneaks into the building, armed with the security pass her Father forgot to bring the night he was chewed on, but this ain’t no cartoon and things turn bloody real fuckin’ fast for the naïve three. Sherry drags Brian along but won’t let younger sis, Kim, come, so, she stows away in the car, and gets into the building later on using a method no respectable security would fall for unless he was Moe, Curly, or Shemp.
The movie has a nice 80s vibe, you can see it in Kim’s garb, and hairstyle. Not to mention music and out of place song that runs over the credits. Hell, they still do that today. Just stick to the moody instrumentals, I say.
There are two moments, well, three actually, that don’t work for me, simply because they’re implausible. I’ve seen them all done in other movies, too. There are two scenes where characters are walking down the hall, and are suddenly taken by surprise by something they should have seen in the first place given the line of sight. One moment concerns Brain and alien slime on the floor that he slips in, and the other is when Kim, lost in the labyrinthine hallways, stops for a smoke. She leans against the wall, goes to light up, then turns her head slightly, and is horrified by Checker’s dead body. I’m thinking, how did she not see that unholy mess as she walked up to it, in fairly well lit conditions!? Incidentally, Checkers got free after his lab was demolished, one of the assassins happened upon him, and gunned the poor fucker down with his concealed UZI.
The third is a major character being seemingly killed off by our alien/hybrid menace, but shows up minutes before the movie ends in one piece.
“How did you survive?” Sherry asks him.
“Just lucky, I guess,” he replies.
Oh, please . . . dude, you should be deader than a doornail.
Actually, this is one of those movies where all three of the principal cast should have ended up dead, due mostly in part to that unused caustic venom plot point.
Back to the movie . . . let’s see, where did I leave off? Oh, right, Sherry and Brian are snooping around Viallini’s office, Kim is roaming the halls, and getting freaked out by Checkers, who’s splattered all over the floor, Dr. Kane and Viallini are somewhere in the facility, too.
Since I have mentioned very little about the corporate assassins, let me rectify that right now. They do have names: Mitchell and Jarrett, and like Viallini, they both come off as oily scumbags. So much so that when Jarrett encounters Sherry and Brian in the office, going through Viallini’s computer, he beats up Brian, and later when he finds Sherry in the hall, he beats her up, too. Have no fear, scientist-turned-mutant, Dr. Foster, bumps into Jarrett and eats the fucker.
As we near the end of the film (this is where the glorious stop-motion begins to take over) the only survivors are the daughters, her boyfriend, and one lone assassin, Mitchell, who aligns himself temporarily with them as they are cornered at a very critical place in the building. Earlier, when everything was fairly okay, and no one had yet to succumb to any kind of bloody death, Elliot came up with a cure for Foster. It entailed hitting him with a major blast of electricity, that when done on a low-key basis, killed the alien cells. Though the kind of blast Foster would need required a special lab that looks like the loading bay of the Sulaco from James Cameron’s ALIENS, and a device code named, the Atomic Shotgun, which extends down from the ceiling. A very impressive set for an ambitious film like this one, I must say.
The finale of the film takes place here, where the Atomic Shotgun actually does succeed in turning Foster back to his human form, unfortunately a moment later he’s back in his mutant-alien form, and swallowing Mitchell whole.
Oh, Mitchell, we knew you all too well. And, good riddance. Though, you were fun to watch.
When all is said and done, Sherry, Kim and Brian stagger out of the lab and towards the front doors looking like bloody death warmed over. This is where, like the end of THE DEADLY SPAWN, the movie hits you with that one last punch. Remember Spot, well, he’s mutated into something that’s going to present a lot of people with a lot of problems later on. (See below).
Then we cut to the outside of TALOS, as Spot comes crashing through the roof in a form big enough to take on Godzilla.
Aside from those “problems” I mentioned, this movie kicks some serious ass. If you like monster flicks, and practical effects, and stop-motion, you need to see this.
Now the DVD.
As I mentioned earlier Lionsgate put it out back in 2003, barebones, save for the trailer, and to add insult to injury they released it full frame. Considering the problems this flick went through in getting made and released, and the extensive effects employed, to wondrous end, I say, this movie deserves a special edition. Whether we’ll ever get to see that special edition is another story altogether.
The transfer, however, is quite vivid and clear. More clear now that I’ve gone from a component hook-up to an HDMI one. Audio is Dolby Digital 2/0, and it comes with subtitles and a scene selection screen.
