Thursday, January 5, 2012

The Immortalizer

It truly is amazing what some people do to appear young. Ladies often put on a pound of make up that requires a good chiseling at night to get off. The gentlemen will try to hide that spare tire by throwing on some baggy clothes. Then the cream of the crop is the plastic surgery bunch who have doctors slice and inject away their imperfections. Either way, it all kind of equates to people putting a bandage on the festering wound of aging. In other words, the wound is there and covering it up only makes it worse.

Which brings me to the method used by the quack doctors in this film crap I’m about to take on. Matter of fact the film beings with one such procedure being done on a struggling blond. The medical staff proceed to restrain the patient as she is injected with a mysterious green goop. I’m assuming they found the elixir in Herbert West’s basement.

After this terrifying (um, I guess) scene, we cut to a local pizzeria where four crazy kids from the 80s are hanging out. Gregg, Darrell, June and Celia are coming off the heals of a ho-hum double date. Gregg and Darrell are apparently brothers. Darrell is a horny jackass while Gregg seems to be the voice of some kind of reason. Of course that means Darrell is going to get knocked off rather early. As for the girls, they’re both equally bimbo-ish.

The four decide to take a nice evening stroll down a dark alley which of course leads up to nothing good for them. A few henchmen are waiting with two humanoids that attack the four lovebirds. During the attack, a cop arrives but gets owned by one of the humanoids. The henchmen proceed to back up over his head with their vehicle which in a normal world would crush his skull like a tea cup. However in the idiocy of this film, he gets a small blood trickle instead.

Everyone is packed up like produce in the henchmen’s vehicle and taken to a nice looking house in the suburbs. Gregg is the only one still conscious but he decides to play possum for the time being. The kids are hauled out and slapped onto stretchers. Gregg immediately gets up once the room is cleared and tries to revive his counterparts. He notes a voyeur across the street who proves to be not much help.

Gregg, apparently not a master of hide and seek, hides in a corner when the nurse comes back into the room. Bruce makes a break for it which leads to a silly time killing cat and mouse game. This eventually leads to him jumping out a window and hiding in the front seat of one of the quack doctor’s car. Once again I must stress playing manhunt with this guy is like shooting ducks in a barrel. Gregg eventually gets away and runs to the police.

Somewhere in between all this happy horseshit we get introduced to the medical staff. There is Dr. Devine, his assistant Dr. Price and Nurse Blane all of who are part of the wonderful art of restoring youth to older folks who have a sheedload of money. They are joined by the young and smarmy Dr. Timmons who arrives one night with a resume full of failures. Apparently that doesn't matter seeing they need one more quack to join up with them.

"There's the beef!"

Getting back to our…um…hero Gregg, he heads to the local Sheriff’s department. For some odd reason he smashes the station’s window to get the Sheriff’s attention. Yeah, he’s not too bright. Anyhow, he laments about how his friends are going to be killed if he doesn’t rescue them. The Sheriff pretty much assumes he’s a nutcase and locks him up for the evening.

Meanwhile back at the funny farm, Dr. Devine explains to Dr. Timmons the method to his madness. The green goop he injects people with accelerates something or other in the body. The only problem is one out of ten folks reject the serum thus turning them either dead or into a mutant. Hence the collection of messed up folks in the place’s basement. Speaking of which, Dr. Devine injects Darrell who ends up rejecting the serum. They leave him in the basement to transform into a messed up human being. In other words, he doesn’t change much mentally.

The same day a shrewd old bag named Mrs. Peabody comes in and selects June’s body for some sort of a transplant. What kind of transplant you ask? Apparently Dr. Devine and company, for a healthy cost, transplants brains of older folks into younger bodies. Hmmm…what’s that you ask? A 90 year old brain is one step towards being dead on it’s own? Why yes you’re right! What’s that you ask? The green goop is related how? As for that question I’m sure it’s explained but after all this suspension of disbelief, I decided to tune out.

June (who’s actually conscious during these ridiculous explanations) gets selected for surgery. After a brief argument over body rights ( Blane wanted June’s body for her own) , June makes a run for it. Nurse Blaine stops her and June’s blond counterpart ends up being the host body for the old bitty. The surgery is done with what seems about as much safety as walking through a highly populated minefield.

Meanwhile, Gregg returns with the Sheriff to investigate the place. Through the magic of ghetto technology, the evil medical staff seals off all evidence of their practices. After an uneventful tour of the house, Gregg escapes from the Sheriff’s grasps. He immediately finds refuge by hiding in a nearby outhouse. Once again let’s hear it for the master of camouflage himself.


Still cuffed, Gregg heads over to the house across the street. Here we meet Agnes, the non-helpful voyeur from earlier. She helps Gregg out of the cuffs and tells him about her suspicions of the house across the street. The two put forth a plan to foil the evil medical staff. Their secret weapon of choice is using old school walkie talkies to communicate. Brilliance…anyhow Agnes decides to pose as a potential patient and predictably ends up chomped on by the now mutated Darrell.

The film's next sorry 30 minutes serves as a massive excuse to kill time. Basically Gregg finds a handgun in Agnes' house and heads on over. Why she didn't take it along is just a minor stupidity hurting this film. He breaks in through the back door which alerts Dr. Price and Dr. Timmons. The two head to the camera room to monitor Gregg's movement. Dr. Price at this point becomes Captain Evil Laughter and taunts Gregg over the house's loud speaker. Gregg eventually finds himself on a trap door which drops him into the humanoids' den. At this point the viewer should get used to the den because the characters return to it several times in the last parts of the film.

Assuming the humanoids will take care of the issue, Dr. Price and Dr. Timmons head back to work with Dr. Devine and Nurse Blane on the day's cases. Like a factory, they import brains from one body to another. They dispose of the discarded brains and body by dumping them into a meat grinder in the den. A meat grinder by the way that never seems to be working in the film. At the end of a very long day, Dr. Devine reveals he only wants Dr. Timmons for his body. Hmmmmmm...that last sentence could be taken a few different ways. But seriously, Dr. Price knocks out Dr. Timmons and for shits and giggles switches his body with Dr. Devine's.

Nurse Blane and Dr. Price go on to have a little hanky panky while Dr. Devine recovers in his new body. Nurse Blane bitches about not being transferred into a new body yet. Dr. Price agrees to do this after he discharges the recovered Mrs. Peabody. Perhaps the dumbest thing in the whole film happens during this interlude. Mrs. Peabody in her new body is rather happy but oddly has her old lady voice still remaines. I mean really, how the frig is this possible? Only her brain was transplanted, not her vocal chords.

Dumb ass movie........

Meanwhile in the basement, Gregg tries to emote to his mutated brother. Eventually with Darrell's help,Gregg is able to escape with the humanoids in tow. The humanoids storm the house while Gregg alerts the Sheriff. Gregg runs into Dr. Price but is rescued by Darrell once again. Darrell gets a shotgun blast to the chest while Gregg escapes into the basement......once fucking again.

Nurse Blane decides to get the hell out of Dodge with June's body and the new and improved Dr. Devine. However Gregg arrives to save June after playing another round of hide and seek with Dr. Price. Gregg this time hides behind the inoperable meat grinder guessed it...the basement. Eventually, Darrell arrives to chuck Dr. Price into the meat grinder while Dr. Devine and Nurse Blane escape.

The movie wraps up with the Sheriff arriving to clear out the house. Dr. Timmons in Dr. Devine's old body is arrested. Gregg and June are ok but they are PO'd because the main two culprits got away free. Gregg is so PO'd in fact that he breaks the fourth wall for no apparent reason saying "you don't get it" to the audience. I get it probably got paid dick to appear in this film tripe. The last scene forwards to "three months later" where Dr. Devine and Nurse Blane are welcoming a new nursing assistant. Muhahahaha!

This film pretty much ends up being the low budget piece of awfulness one would expect from looking at it's cover. The film bounces between a maximum of five different shooting locations. All the while the characters roam around pointlessly for a better portion of the film's run time. The killing fodder is in the form of what was standard in the 80s. Shapely girls with big hair paired with jock looking guys with wavy hair. The antagonists simply ham it up to a point where it becomes annoying. Every mad scientist in film history comes out through them from the bloody scrubs to the evil cackling. Yep, this film has no problem "borrowing" ideas.

Speaking of which, as mentioned at some point in this review, the film comes off as the poor man's Reanimator. Yeah I know the plot lines are different but really, all the elements are there and without the proper effects the film falls on it's face. This is a shame because for some odd reason I'm under the belief that if this film was done right, it could very well work. There is something interesting about implanting another person's being in another body to restore youth. However much like a brain transfer, that interest simply had no chance of life here.

(the a-holes of the film get their moment)

The Medical Staff

They were last seen dumping their green goo near
four turtles and a rat in the NY City sewer system.

Overall Grade
