Society

Possible Spoilers

I recalled Brian Yuzna's name from the credits of RE-ANIMATOR, one of my favorite horror films.  By the time his directorial debut SOCIETY opened in theaters (shot in '89 but not released until '92) I had kinda moved on from watching grade B horror on my own.  A little later I did have friends who were into those Full Moon video titles and coerced me into watching them.  I don't remember this one playing in West Palm Beach, and in the early '90s I did not have cable.  It was a few years back that the title was popping up on Letterboxd with favorable notices.  Then the Criterion Channel included in it its October lineup under "80s Horror".   I dove in...and that really is the way to describe this grotesque littler chiller.  By the much discussed finale, I felt as if I was plunged into the muck, not necessarily emerging any wiser or necessarily enlightened, despite Yuza and screenwriters Woody Keith and Rick Fry must've hoped and intended for what they had to have known would be a limited audience. 

Beverly Hills teen hunk Bill Whitney (Billy Warlock) suffers from crippling paranoia.  He admits to his shrink, Dr. Cleveland (Ben Slack) that he's afraid of everyone, even him.  Yet Bill cannot pinpoint just why, aside from what is brushed aside by the doc as typical teenage identity crisis.  Bill counts himself a misfit among his platinum blonde upper class mother (Corine Danese), father (Charles Lucia), and sister Jenny (Patrice Jennings), wondering if he indeed was adopted.   The paranoia will deepen after Bill hears a covertly recorded tape of his sister's coming out party, which turned into an orgy, encouraged by their parents!  Maybe it is a final confirmation of what Bill long suspected, that something very, very wrong is bubbling under the Tiffany surfaces. 

As good a set-up as any for a psychosis tale, with an inspired setting that reeks of  Beverly Hills 90210.  Yuzna mounts a game effort at a terror/satire mashup.  There are some amusing (and period typical) characterizations of Bill's family, friends, foes, and lovers.  But this perfectly ripe premise doesn't seem to have been thought through.  Something that barely got past the idea stage. The possibilities were endless!  But much of SOCIETY plods through the sort of scenes you've watched a million times, how a crime scene just vanishes when the hero brings the police there.  When Dr. Cleveland plays said tape all the damning evidence is missing.  Is Bill delusional? In the throes of monomania? Is he dreaming? Why are there so many plot holes? And what is up with Clarisa's (Devin DeVasquez) strange mother, the one who wants to eat everyone's hair? She appears as if a refugee from a John Waters movie.

Then we get to the final twenty minutes or so, when the movie more than delivers on its mission to poke the bear on class division, examine how the rich may quite literally eat the poor, and unleash yucky practical effects.  I can honestly say I haven't seen anything quite like it elsewhere.  Artist Joji Tani (professionally known as Screaming Mad George) creates a disgusting surreality that truly has to be seen to be believed.  Maybe even Roxanne Pulitzer would be shocked.  You will never consider the word "shunting" the same way ever again.  A free-for-all burlesque of body horror with some witty observational comments sprinkled in by its participants.  Don't let me spoil it for you.  Shame about some of the lame comedic bits.

But as, erm, interesting as that sequence is, SOCIETY in total falls short of its intended nasty sociologic commentary, never completely landing its intended bite.  It did make me wonder about what really goes on at those Palm Beach after hours soirees.