Grotesque (1988)

Grotesque
1988
Rated R
89 Minutes





Alternate Titles
- Bloody Serious (Norway)
- Infernal Weekend (Portugal)
- Grotesque - Fight For Survival (West Germany)





Taglines
- There is a fate worse than death.



"If I said I wasn't trying to scare you, I'd be lying."
                                                                                   - Orville Kruger

Oh man, this is a classic of the VHS rental era!

When I was growing up in my hometown of Fitchburg, MA we had a mom and pop video rental store called Video Paradise. When we bought our first VCR circa 1983 we immediately got a membership to the store and it was a part of my life right up until it closed in 2003. I even worked there for a while after high school.

Anyway, I can remember walking past the horror section to get to the children's section when I was a kid and I was a notorious scaredy cat in my single digit ages. Just seeing some of the box art gave me nightmares (there will be an upcoming article on that very subject!) I can vividly remember seeing Grotesque sitting there on the shelf and feeling that there was something horrible lurking inside that box. Was I correct in my pre-teen feelings?  Let's find out!

While the credits are rolling we get a bizarro monologue from a woman talking about avoiding someone and being tired of fighting after so long, blah, blah blah....the whole time we're hearing this there's just an exterior shot of a house (or is that supposed to be castle?) at night with some nicely animated lightning flashing periodically.  Finally, we switch to an interior shot where we see this woman sitting and brushing her hair haphazardly. Cut too this chubby deformed monk looking fella who is slowly stalking through the place. The woman is still droning on about not wanting to fight anymore and says "Take me or kill me, but I beg you...do it quickly." before lying down on the bed.

After lying down the chubby monk monster enters the room and at first I thought they were going to get it on, but instead he just gives her a fatal hickey. Evidently our friend here is part vampire or something.  I'm very confused by this point.  But wait, what's this?

 Oh, it was a movie that was being screened by some Hollywood execs and apparently they loved it. They fellow in the back (with his shirt buttoned far too low) is apparently the boss-man and congratulates Orville Kruger (Guy Stockwell) on creating the best make up and special effects of his career so far promising a bonus when the money starts coming in.

The best make up and special effects?  A putty faced vampire monk and a dollop of blood on the neck in the late 80's is considered the state of the art? I mean, I realize that this is a low budget flick but as you'll see this guy has far more effective monster costumes just lying around his house that he uses for fun! It's like he phoned this one in and everyone's going head over heels for it!

It's really not that big a deal because this introduction to Orville is really just that, an introduction, and has nothing to do really with the rest of the film except to inform you that he's a special effects guy that works with movie stars from time to time.

Orville says that he's going to his home in the mountains for the weekend for a family reunion.  Cut to:

 Lisa (Lind Blair) and Kathy (Donna Wilkes) who are enjoying a nice breakfast and or brunch. I'm not sure why, but Linda Blair always seemed to wear outfits with the biggest shoulder pads I've ever seen.  I mean, I know shoulder pads were IN during the 80's, but even these seemed bigger than the norm. Ah well.

After brunch the girls hop in the car and we discover that Lisa is Orville's daughter and she's taking her friend along on their little weekend reunion. They stop at a Burger King to get some drinks in one of horror cinema's most superfluous product placement scenes of the late 80's. They just went out of their way to let you know that these girls were stopping at Burger King. I'm fairly certain that the drive thru server was an actual employee as well. It's a strange little detour in the flick.  Check it out:

 

 Anywhoo, the girls continue on their way and run into a group of punks in a VW Bus that's broken down.  Little do they know that these punks are actually also on their way to Lisa's father's home because they heard about a big secret that he's got hiding up there.  They figure it must be a stash of cash or blow.  Cause, you know...punks. It certainly couldn't be anything else, could it?

The girls narrowly avoid getting robbed, raped or worse by pretty much just driving through the punks and forcing them to avoid getting run over.

 The girls arrive at Lisa's parents home and her mother shows them up to what I guess is Lisa's old room. Lisa asks how her mother how "Patrick" is seeming very concerned.  Who the hell is Patrick? I wonder if we'll find out.  The girls put their bags down and decide to take showers to get ready for dinner.  While Lisa takes her shower, Kathy decides to lay down for a few minutes. We see a shadowy form slowly ascending the stairs and turn the doorknob of the bedroom. The door bursts open and an aquatic monster menaces Kathy.  Lisa rushes out of the bathroom and immediate puts on an "oh geez, here we go." face.

Yep. It's Orville.

After dinner, Orville takes Kathy for a tour of his den where he keeps a bunch of his work. Literally everything in this den is awesome and easily a thousand times better than what I saw in that faux film that started us off.  There's masks of- hey wait.....is....is that the Pumpkin Mask from Halloween III???  IT IS!  That may be a repainted Witch Mask on the upper right corner of the shelf as well, but I'm not 100% positive on that one.

After showing some old home movies that are really more like short horror flicks, it's bedtime.  The girls settle in for the night upstairs and Orville falls asleep in front of a roaring fireplace.  I'm not gonna lie, that fireplace is amazing and I'm jealous of it.

All is nice and cozy in the Kruger household, (Well THERE'S a sentence I never thought I'd type!) which means that bad shit must be about to go down.

Cue those damn punks from earlier. Evidently they got their VW back in working order and finally made it to the Kruger household.  They gather the family in the living room and start demanding the money, refusing to believe that there isn't any. This escalate rather quickly. Lisa escapes into the snowy woods. One of the punks pursues her.

The family is slaughtered mercilessly. Unfortunately the punks don't realize that the "Big Secret" that the family is hiding is watching them.

 "Oh hey!  A hidden room!  Surely this has all the money and blow we could ever want in it!"

 Well, shit.  Looks like that big bad secret is actually a deformed fella in a jumpsuit! Oh...is this Patrick?  It IS!  Well this is awkward.  Wait...is that a tiny oven in his room next to the stuffed animal? What the?
At any rate, I don't think that this is going to get well for the punks.

Ooooh yeah.  This aint' good.  Right off the bat one gets crushed to death in a bear hug while the chick gets her neck snapped like a twig.  Ooph!  The rest scatter out the door.  One is immediately dispatched when she is picked up and has her back broken against a tree!  Owie!

 Did I forget to mention the two punks getting it on in Orville's Den of Horrors?
Is this chick wearing the Skull Mask from Halloween III as she does the ol' bump n grind? I think it may be!  What fun!

Now things shift yet again to a cat and mouse game between Lisa, one of the punks and also between Patrick and the lead punks, Gibbs and Scratch.  This is like the fourth time the film has shifted gears, but you get used to it.

************SPOILERS**************

 Okay, from here on out there are some pretty heavy spoilers, so if you haven't seen the flick and don't want the end given away stop reading here.

Still with me?  Great let's continue on!

 It's now morning.  Lisa is still being chased around the woods. Gibbs and Scratch are still running around out there too as is Patrick.
Meanwhile, a family friend is headed to the house to visit.

There is a bizarre scene that switches between him driving and walking up to the house and shots of all the dead family and punks. It is actually a pretty effective scene but it plays on a bit too long and ends up reminding me of the scene from Rocky Horror Picture Show:

Here's the scene in question:

I think if they had just run through the cycle once it would have been much more effective but by continuing as long as they did, it gave it a more comedic edge....at least I thought so anyway.

 After the bodies are discovered a search party is sent out looking for Lisa.
The punk chasing her meanwhile catches up to her and starts choking her. Patrick hears her cries and runs to help, and kills the punk.  Gibbs and Scratch show up and Gibbs shoots Patrick in the back about 5 times. The search party shows up, see's Patrick and shoots him, thinking him the culprit.
Seeing their opportunity to get off the hook, the punks play into.

After some good cop/bad cop play, the punks are let go, the police unable to hold them on anything more than circumstantial evidence for 48 hours.
This does not go over well with Orville's brother Rod, who basically informs the police that he's going to take matters into his own hands.
The police, knowing that the punks are truly the guilty party have no problem with this.

Rod tracks down the two remaining punks and takes them at gun point.
He brings them back to Patrick's room at his brother's house where you discover.......

Well, you'll just have to watch the film and find out final twist for yourself.

Actually there's more than one final twist.
There's a twist within a twist within a twist.
It's really weird.

Time for the tally!


Monsters:
Well, if you want me to get all philosophical, the punks are the monsters. But on a technical level we get several monsters.  There's the putty faced vampire monk from the faux film at the beginning. There's the aquatic monster that turns out to be Orville in disguise and then there's Patrick...the horribly disfigured man-child living in a secret room in Orville's house.  There's also a few more monsters but you'll have to watch the film to figure out where and what.

T&A
Just a tad bit of punk chick boob as she does the nasty in Orville's Den while wearing the Skull Mask.

Gore:
There's a bit of gore on display here. Nothing over the top, considering the subject matter but there's a decent amount of the red stuff once everything gets going.

Fun Factor
I had a lot of fun with this film. I'm a sucker for 80's Linda Blair as well as obscure horror flicks so this one was right up my alley. If you ignore some questionable acting and some questionable weather phenomenon (a raging thunderstorm immediately followed by a snowstorm? I mean I know that thunder and lightning can occur during a snowstorm, but not to this extent!) then there's a lot of fun to be had.

Final Thoughts
I kinda miss the days of flicks like this. They're dumb. They're wonky. They're cheap. But they're not pretentious. They know exactly what they are and they're not trying to be anything else. There are worse ways to spend 90 minutes on a rainy afternoon or late at night.