Now that I got THAT out of the way…
Horror movies, as a whole, are hard to do well. I’ll be the FIRST guy to tell you that. Horror comedies are even tougher. If you can hear yourself laughing at any comedy, horror or otherwise, you have the physical and sensory proof that it’s working. Contrast that with a comedy that doesn’t work (cough-cough-NORBIT-cough) and inversely you can actually HEAR yourself being bored to tears. Add that with blood and guts flying every which-a-way and the movie has the additional disadvantage of being thoroughly unpleasant.
But when horror comedies work, there’s nothing in the world like them. It’s like being trapped in the EXTRA FUN kind of funhouse where the laws of morality and common decency have no weight and no place. It’s a GOOD thing that that one guy tore through that other guy with a chainsaw.
THE MAD is even funnier than SLITHER, and while being straight-to-video to boot. It’s the best kind of treasure there is, what with it being buried. I honestly didn’t see it coming because I still subscribe to all the stigmas attached to movies being shat out on video without the benefit of a theatrical release. I have been “Re-Educated.”
We’ve seen guys like Dr. Jason Hunt (Billy Zane) before. Saddled with a bratty kid and a new woman doing a piss-poor job picking up the slack from the old one who was much better and appreciated him more. No one likes him. No one respects him. He doesn’t really want to be there. He is so desperate for the affection that ain’t coming that he lets his fiancée Monica (Shauna MacDonald, and no, not the one from THE DESCENT) make him over as Mid-Life Crisis Man! Complete with retro eighties white tie, horn-rim glasses and an earring. At one point early in the movie he points to his perpetual exasperated scowl and exclaims “THIS IS THE HAPPIEST I’VE BEEN IN YEARS!”
So the Good Doctor and his useless woman are on a road trip. They are accompanied by his daughter Amy (Maggie Castle) who is at that age teenagers get to where they are so snippy and ennui-laden that one wishes we evolved from wolves so we could EAT them. And then there’s Amy’s boyfriend Blake (Evan Charles Flock) whose very presence there is all the evidence one needs that Jason is whipped by everyone. Would you let your daughter bring HER boyfriend on a family vacation? I would FUCK HIM UP!
Anyway, they stop at a rustic and quaint bed and breakfast in a rural state (doesn’t matter ’cause they all look the same). They get a room and a bite to eat… But what is in those burgers..? Why do they kill whoever eats them..? And why do they get back up instantly and start craving human flesh..?
THE MAD is a loose collection of jokes and disembowellings, which is all anyone can really ask for in a horror comedy (unless it’s SEVERANCE). And in a STUNNING reversal of the norm, director John Kalangis paid more attention to the script than he did to the gore. It’s packed with jokes, sight gags and witty banter that are occasionally hit-or-miss, but when they hit, they hit quite well. I particularly liked how they made the character of Blake the whipping boy for all the main characters, as he gets bitten, shot and was viciously attacked by an uncooked hamburger patty.
I also like how Kalangis just sat back and let his actors act with the dialogue they were given (some of which, I am assuming, was improvised). I liked near the beginning how Jason was recounting his teenage glory days to Blake while subtly enquiring whether or not this young punk has violated his little girl.
And one of my problems with many zombie movies has been given a hilarious skewering. Have you ever noticed that in every zombie movies that the zombies exhibit their zombie-like tendencies and someone is dumb enough to ask “What’s wrong with these people?” Like they’ve never seen NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Here, they actually stop and try and figure out what they are and what makes a zombie an actual zombie. They actually paused to have the 28 DAYS LATER argument.
I must give acting props to Zane, and not just because he doesn’t seem like he’s been defeated by being in a straight-to-video zom-com. This is a side to Zane’s on-screen persona that we’ve never seen before. He’s usually the slick, debonair guy with the good vocabulary who was THE ONLY GOOD THING ABOUT BLOODRAYNE! But I’ve never seen him… Shlubby. And not only that, he wears his shlubbiness naturally. I was impressed.
THE MAD ain’t perfect, what with the ass-awful score and having run out of steam by the time we get to the third act, but I was lulled by it’s mid-level charm nonetheless. One of the great mysteries of life, greater than the pyramids and Stonehenge shall be this, and shall echo through eternity and beyond…
How the fuck does THE REAPING get to theatres and THE MAD get dumped to video? Shame, that.
3 out of 4
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