Uh. I got really lucky recently – I kind of liked The Oracle and then I liked The Falling and lovely Amazon suggested another movie starting with the word “The” that they thought I’d like and it was this one and lightning didn’t strike for a third time. I am willing to bet that some of the horror writers I read and then might read here are familiar with the Mill Creek boxes of DVDs that have hundreds of titles on them and some of them are good and some of them are poop but it’s safe to say the quality of rendering is probably not there and if you stretch it out on a large TV it might just make things worse. Well, The Being looked bad, sounded bad and was pretty bad in general but maybe someone loved it and maybe you will too! (I didn’t) (also earlier I wrote this sequence and it processing it on rereading is hurting my head: “The” that they thought)

Picture this, if you want: we open to a small town in Idaho, famous for its potatoes, underneath a large and fake storm cloud at night. Nearby, during the day, a single youth runs from something – he and the something are running away, away from the nearby nuclear waste disposal factory! He’s being chased! Luckily it is immediately night and the boy has come upon a large automobile demolition compound! He finds a car and starts it! Is it his salvation?? He starts burning gas and hauling ass! He’s on the highway! It’s black as pitch! Something years through the roof of the car and rips his head off! Shit!

Later, a cop and a detective survey the damage, failing to notice what would be an enormous rend in the top of the car or tons of spilled blood. “I just don’t get it” the detective mutters and walks off. The poor tow truck driver hears something! the car’s trunk opens! He’s pulled in and – I guess – devoured or torn to pieces! Or something! Upon returning from his paperwork, the detective finds the man’s flashlight on the ground, still lit. “He must be on break” he mumbles and leaves. Little does he know what’s in store for them all:

Here’s the thing: our guy’s name in this is Mortimer which is a good name for a character in Idaho, I guess. I don’t know much about the Idaho Mortimers but I’m sure they have a mighty deal of social wealth and esteem harkening back to the days of Great Prosperity and Prestige, removed from the armpit-fornicating Latter Day Saints. Here’s the other thing: I don’t know how much money these people had to make this feature but there appears to be an alarming lack of outside microphones so the dubbing – or ADR – or whatever we want to call it here is terrible. Our man Mortimer has lines of dialogue but rarely moves his lips to even make noises like Ps or Bs and yet we know they’re his lines. I guess we could chalk it up to poor editing but it’s like that the entire time (fyi).

But on we press and Martin Landau and his eyebrows and extra large mouth show up as some sort of “radiation scientist”. Ruth Buzzi is also in here if you remember her. She plays the mayor’s wife – a repressed and uptight Idaho woman who has organized four other people in this small potato town to be the Smut Sweepers: a group of people who protest filth by sweeping things off sidewalks. “We’re going to sweep that new massage parlor right out of this town and back to hell!” Someone exclaims, sweeping his fucking ass off. Sweep, sweep, sweep. Sweep that fucking smut!

Honestly this whole thing is really crappy and doesn’t even make any sense. There’s this thing that may or may not be from the small town toxic waste dump going around grabbing people from offscreen with its tentacles even though it had hands earlier, there’s the mayor who wants to cover up all of the radiation to protect his town’s potatoes, there’s a lady that goes walking around town in her nightgown, there’s some kids that throw poop at her (I think), there’s a topless lady clipping her toenails and there’s this one part where Landau and Mortimer are searching for the being in the old and abandoned nuclear waste warehouse and a cat jumps out of the closet and they laugh their guts out and high five and hug like a couple of Turks or something.

Honestly I didn’t even understand the credits. First, Mortimer is credited as Rexx Coltrane:

But a couple of seconds later he’s:

Johnny Commander.

But hey what do I know, right? I mean no one asked me, so there. What did I miss? The being turns into a puddle when it goes into light. There’s an extended part where some infant is searching for Easter eggs, there’s a sequence at a drive in that’s pretty funny and I think they used the same car from the opening and – what else – i think they set it up for a sequel. The best part had to be either when the other kids are stealing eggs from that girl or when they laugh their dicks off at that cat in the closet.

That reminds me of that old saying that something stands out “like a dick on a fish” HAHAHAHAHAH Jesus.

FILED UNDER: RUTH BUZZI