![]() To all appearances, 'Shocker' would be the first production where Craven unleashed his sarcastic grievances - which in truth is all conjecture and hypothesis based on the sudden shift in tone and style in the filmmaker's oeuvre - as evidenced by one the movie's most absurdly hysterical moments. Craven's movies went from deadly serious to over-the-top and comedic, as though letting loose some pent up frustration with the filmmaking business and the horror genre in general, turning familiar conventions into a laughing-stock or a source of ridicule. You could almost sense the bad experiences he had from his two previous productions, ' Deadly Friend' and ' The Serpent and the Rainbow,' probably took a toll on him. They are still horror movies in the strictest sense of the word, but there was also something cynical and a tad pessimistic in his works of this period. ![]() Fans of the now legendary filmmaker of such horror classics as ' The Last House on the Left,' ' The Hills Have Eyes' and ' A Nightmare on Elm Street' may remember the movies he produced from 1989 to 1996's highly successful ' Scream' as films somewhat outside his norm. Naturally, this being a Craven production, from a script he penned himself, the story is not without some cleverly subtle commentary on modernity. Rather, it's bad in the sense that the idea of a maniac serial killer evading justice by mysteriously becoming some sort of human electric conductor, with the power to travel through anything that runs on electricity, including human beings, is utterly hilarious. ![]() ![]() But thankfully, not bad in terms of unwatchable. While I readily admit my enjoyment - as well as the scoring - are the result of watching through nostalgia-tinted glasses, I won't make any excuses for this Wes Craven-directed cult favorite. And I distinctly remember seeing this fantastically bad movie opening night in the same place I enjoyed several other notably bad horror flicks from the late eighties through early nineties. 'Shocker' is another one of those horror features smothered and steeped in childhood memories, the period when I drove friends to the theater on a weekly basis because, for some reason, I was the only one permitted to drive. ![]()
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