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myhahnestopinion · 7 years ago

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The Night CRACKHEAD FRANK GORSHIN AND THOSE DARN HIPPIE COMMIE ROCK-AND-ROLL CULTISTS Came Home: IGOR AND THE LUNATICS (1985)

What’s in a name? Well, for a horror movie, a name should have some signifier as to the frights one can expect within. Paranormal Activity relays to us that there will be activity, and that it will be of the paranormal nature. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre informs us that there will be a massacre, in Texas, with a Chainsaw. These are good titles. What is one supposed to do with a title like Igor and the Lunatics though? I mean, is that, like, a band?

Well, um, I really don’t have anything else with which to introduce today’s film, so, uh, let’s get to it. Today we look at Igor and the Lunatics, presumably about a rock band.

The film begins with a young woman running through an abandoned saw mill. She is pursued by a trio of characters, dressed in a manner that does nothing to dissuade me from believing this film centers on a rock-and-roll band, who capture her. “You’re scum” the woman spits.

“Who’s scum? We’ll see,” one of the bandmates replies, before tearing the woman’s clothes off, tying her down, and chopping her in half in a saw mill, a manner that does nothing to dissuade me from believing that they are indeed scum.

The opening credits that play over this scene list the film as being directed by Billy Parolini. It also has a credit stating that the film’s “Horror, Action, and Suspense sequences” were directed by Tom Doran and Brenden Faulkner. Now, this may lead one to wonder what exactly Billy Parolini directed in this horror film in which he did not direct any of the horror scenes, but upon watching the movie, I’m more curious about which scenes the other two were in charge of, given that the film does not have any horror, action, or suspense that I can make out.

We cut to a mustachioed man, Tom, brandishing a gun in front of a mirror, before leaving a note at the bedside of his red-headed lover, Mary Anne. Mary Anne awakens and reads the note, which tells her to read this diary. She then puts down the note and begins to read the diary. One may wonder why the film felt it necessary to make this a two-step process, but perhaps it was to establish that Tom expresses himself in many ways, as also indicated by the fact that his voice-over noticeably switches recordings every other sentence.

Tom narrates this diary to the audience in voice over, as the film cuts to footage of the transcribed events. The diary regales us with the history of a group of people with whom Tom used to drink, do drugs, and pray. Turns out that they are not a rock-and-roll band though. They were a group of hippies. No, wait, they were a group of communists. Nope, nevermind, they are actually a cult. There is no distinction between these three groups that the film cares about making.

The cult is centered around worshiping a man named Paul… or maybe Byron… The characters in the film can’t seem to decide what to call him. After having sex with one of his followers in the hopes of conceiving an heir, Paul stands up suddenly and rigidly, and declares in a monotone voice, “Let this mark the end of our time together.” This is, of course, the proper procedure for announcing when one has finished.

Paul moves the hippie commie cult from the “Lower East side” to a cabin in the woods, where, as Tom informs us, he “outlaws monogamy.” Now, Tom was perfectly happy with all this drinking, taking drugs, and packing up his entire life to go live with this random man in the middle of nowhere, but outlawing monogamy is just a step too far for him! After being unable to convince Sharon, a cultist pregnant with his child, to accompany him, Tom decides to leave the cult. But, as with all cults, this is easier said than done!

Nope, actually it’s pretty easily done. They just let him leave. I guess this was one of the scenes that didn’t fall under that “Horror, Action, and Suspense” umbrella.

Tom explains that he wasn’t the only one who wasn’t on board with these new teachings, referencing another cultist named Sara. “I only learned what became of her years afterwards,” Tom narrates from his diary. The film then proceeds to replay the opening scene of the woman being killed in the sawmill. In its entirety. The same scene. Played again. I, uh, already used up all my comments on this scene, so not sure what to do with this. Mindless repetition is conducive to cult-building, not to movie making, Igor and the Lunatics.

To be fair, there is some new footage attached to this scene this time around. It’s here that we are introduced to the eponymous Igor. Well, maybe not, considering he’s actually credited as “Ygor” with a “Y”. There is never a character named “Igor” with an “I” though, so presumably this is the one. Perhaps the inconsistent spelling is meant to indicate to us how unhinged this man is, though this is immediately evident through Joe Niola’s performance. The best way in which I can describe this performance to you is that it is essentially Frank Gorshin’s Riddler from the 1960’s Batman show… if he was constantly on large amounts of crack.

…Hmm, actually, come to think of it, that might not be a necessary distinction. It’s hard to see how there weren’t already lots of drugs involved in the making of 60s Batman.

This new footage of Ygor actually uses a nice bit of misdirection. Ygor awakens, chained to a tree, and is distraught over Paul going off to kill Sara. He yells out her name in agony, and tugs at the chains. After breaking free, he witnesses Sara being sawed in half. It is revealed that his expressed concern was not because he cared for Sara, but because he wanted to kill her with a knife, instead of using the “dirty machine.” It’s a fun trick, only undone by the over-the-top performance, nonsensical editing, and bad writing. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s a good scene, except for the fact that it is a bad scene.

Tom goes on to narrate how the cult was eventually broken up by the police, as shown in this scene where policers officers break into their cabin, punch everyone in the face repeatedly, and leave Sharon’s newborn baby abandoned in the woods. If you’re having difficulty figuring out who the good guys are in this scenario, why then you’re probably a darn hippie communist yourself, goshdarnnit!

Paul and his cultists are arrested, and spend the next several years in jail. The film then jumps forward in time, where the hippies are released on parole. “The exact day and time that I predicted!” Paul declares triumphantly, as he steps outside the prison gates. WOAH! YOU GUYS! THIS MAN PREDICTED THE EXACT DATE AND TIME OF HIS PRISION RELEASE! A THING THAT IS SCHEDULED FAR IN ADVANCE AND TYPICALLY HAS TO GO THROUGH MULTIPLE LEVELS OF BEURACRACY TO CONFIRM THE EXACT TIME. TRULY THIS MAN HAS AN EXTRAORDINARY GIFT AND WE SHOULD ALL JOIN HIS CULT!

Anyway, Paul, Ygor, and the other hippies decide that, because the town rejected their cult’s teaching, they should start killing everyone in town. They begin by picking up a random hitchhiker and having Ygor cut out her heart. “One day you’ll have your own operating license. But now it’s time for me to operate!” Ygor screeches before he cuts open the woman, apparently implying that he himself holds an operating license. I mean, I guess after seeing Hospital Massacre, I’m no longer surprised by killers going through all the years of expensive medical school just for the chance to cut one woman’s heart out.

And this point, when the movie has rambled on for quite a while without establishing any coherent direction, it decides to reintroduce us to Mary Anne, the woman who has been reading the diary this whole time. It’s unclear why the movie is making Mary Anne read from Tom’s diary about the events she participated in and Tom did not. Maybe it’s to help her make sense of what exactly those events were, because, well, I certainly can’t.

First, Mary Anne meets two random guys drinking on a park bench, who tell her about the cult that used to reside in town. Following the surefire advice of two random drunk sexual harassers, Mary Anne decides to visit the cult’s cabin in the woods, where an arm reaches out through a window to grab her. This window is covered by a thin sheet of plastic wrap that the arm tears through to grab Mary Anne, and I’m not sure whether this was to indicate that the cabin has been rundown for a while now, or if this film honestly couldn’t afford a plate of glass.

After being attacked, Mary Anne runs into town, not to the police, but to the nearest bar. It is here that she meets two more random drunk characters that she is apparently familiar with, yet who will never show up again in the film. Later, she meets a painting woman named Lucielle… or maybe Colette… The film can’t seem to decide. Mary Anne suggests to Colette that she should try painting “the cornfield behind Galen’s house,” which Colette agrees to do. We cut to Colette in this cornfield, where she is promptly killed by Paul and the other cultists. You know, Collette really should have just taken a lesson from the director of this movie and outsourced the production of her art!

We’re then reintroduced to Tom’s character, having now grown his mustachio from the film’s beginning. Tom is back in town to speak at “The convention,” though what convention is never specified, so feel free to speculate. He meets Sharon again, who’s now working as one of the three prostitutes in this small town. Despite trying to distance himself from the cult, Tom gets dragged back in when one of the cultists send him a tape-recording of Sharon being murdered. Well, half of the recording is of the murder, the other half of the tape is the sound of this cultist punching his way through a wooden door. It’s unclear why the cultist felt the need to include that half of their recording, but it makes sense when you consider that I don’t think anyone involved in this film knows what editing is.

“I knew then I had to stop them myself,” Tom informs us in voiceover. “So, I rented a car,” he adds, as the film shows a five second shot of a still image of a Budget Rental Car location, in case you were wondering just where this rental car was rented from. One does have to wonder why this was the one plot point that the film was insistent on clearing up, given that they seem content to let so many other things slide.

Speaking of things that the film could have developed instead of informing us of Tom’s exact preference for renting cars, there’s this character called Hawk who the film never bothers to properly introduce. All you really need to know about him is that he wears green camouflage in order to hide himself in a wooden barn, and that he picked up Sharon’s baby in the woods when the cops left him there so many years ago.

After Mary Anne discovers Colette murdered, she runs into the police station, but her cries for help are ignored. She runs outside, where she finally crosses paths with Tom, who runs her over with his car. As learned in Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, this is always the start of a great romance. “She came out of nowhere,” Tom says in voiceover, after hitting Mary Anne three steps after she exited the front door of the police station.

While I’ve tried my best so far to craft a navigable path through this film’s inept narrative structure, my efforts fall apart in explaining how the film tries to weave together its disparate plot threads for its conclusion. After Mary Anne meets Sharon’s son whom Hawk adopted, the cultists come to kidnap this child, believing him to be Paul’s heir. Though as Tom later explains to Paul in a gunpoint confrontation after going after the cultist, “He was my son all along, Paul. It takes longer than 5 months from conception to birth!” See, this is the problem with outlawing monogamy! You have to rely on pesky things like math to figure out who your parents are!

Pursued by the cultists, Mary Anne, Tom, and the boy try to get the help of an elderly woman, but are rejected. Man, where’s Granny from Silent Night, Deadly Night III when you need her?! So, they instead run into a barn for shelter. It is within this barn that Igor is hunted down by camouflaged Hawk, who kills him with a crossbow arrow to the skull. Paul is then later taken out by Mary Anne with this same crossbow. “It’s good to see him go,” the police chief later says to Tom, as the EMTs load a clearly still alive Paul into an ambulance. Let’s give the chief the benefit of the doubt, and say he was simply wishing Paul a successful ride in the ambulance, and not celebrating an unrealized demise.

We then cut back to the film’s framing story, in which Mary Anne is reading Tom’s diary of events she participated in, meant to explain to her what danger Tom must now go face alone, even though she lived through that danger and faced it with Tom. Maybe if Tom hadn’t felt the need to mansplain the entire movie to Mary Anne and had gotten his head out of his patriarchal ass, his quest to investigate if Paul and Ygor really had broken out of prison would have made it further than his living room, where he is shown dead.

Mary Anne subsequently heads downstairs, as is confronted by Igor, who is wielding what is apparently a two-inch tall butcher’s knife. I guess that, unlike the killer from Slumber Party Massacre II, Ygor feels no need to compensate for something with his choice of murder weapon. Before Ygor can kill Mary Anne, Tom gets up again and attacks Ygor. This is a pointless development, considering the film immediately cuts to news footage informing us that both Tom and Mary Anne were killed.

The film ends with a bizarre non-sequitur epilogue, in which some old couple visit a teppanyaki restaurant. “My little Jimmy,” the old woman moans, but her husband reminds her that they came to this teppanyaki place to forget about the death of this “Jimmy” person. Yes, I don’t know who Jimmy is, you guys, and I’m done backtracking through this film to figure out who it is. He can’t have been that important if simple teppanyaki can get this couple’s minds off of his passing. The couple suddenly look up to see that their chef is none other than Ygor, and the two scream as he turns his knife on them. I’m not quite sure when and how Ygor got this chief gig. You would think that, considering his operating license, he would be severely overqualified.

Igor and the Lunatics may not have been about a band after all, but the film does play an upbeat rock song over the end credits, in what amounts to a somewhat successful attempt to console my disappointment. Still, this can’t erase the fact that “Igor and the Lunatics” is a terrible title, for a terrible movie. Not only is there no “Igor” to be found anywhere, but the film seems to think that it can use its vague title to forgo having to construct any kind of central conflict or coherent path for the story to follow. I suppose this kind of incoherence can be expected from a horror film that delegates its actual “horror” scenes to a completely different director. You know, watching a film this incompetent really forces one to begin asking the big questions in life. Who am I? Why am I here? What does life even mean if a film like Igor and the Lunatics can get released? Can I even trust the nature of reality, because there is no rational reality I can realize where this was a film someone was willing to spend money making? With questions like these, there’s really only one place a person can go: into the welcoming arms of a rock-and-roll band! Who’s with me?

Igor and the Lunatics is available to stream on Amazon Prime, and is on DVD.

NEXT: The Night A DRUNK REAGAN-HATING SOUTHERN ZOMBIE OUTLAW Came Home…

#film #thenightxcamehome #halloween #igorandthelunatics #bad movies #horror films #so bad its good

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