Skip to main content

The Vagarant (1992) - Chris Walas

This ugly, straight to cinemax, black horror comedy. Stars Bill Paxton and Michael Ironside in mediocre performances. This was really hard for me to find. During the time of this review, I had not seen the movie since I was thirteen or so. I was really young. I remember a lot from it. Some images have danced through my mind for the past fifteen years or so. I would search for it online and come up with nothing. Then BAM! right out of nowhere it pops up on YouTube and came out on Blu Ray in August. Wow.

The Vagarant features Paxton as a jerk, yuppie that becomes obsessed with a strange homeless man that constantly invades his home. Almost instantly bad things start happening. People start turning up dead and Paxton is the lead perpetrator. He has no case when it turns out that he is a sleep walker and now apparently sleep killer. Michael Ironside does his usual heavy man work. No problems there. The movie is hokey and silly. Too silly at some points. It should stop that. However, the movie has a unique storyline that sort of draws interest.

The movie is poorly made but on the high side of poorly. The scary scenes are actually really creepy and some of the comedy scenes are funny. This is just one of those highly predictable movies. You know whats coming at every turn. For once I would like to see a movie with believable dialogue. Most of the effects are stylized and exaggerated. The homeless guy in this movie looks extra crispy and covered in some sort of slime. Just look at the art direction! Contrary to the movie poster this is not a movie about a leprechaun.

I thought that this movie was... Okay. It has blood and guts. It shows mutilated body parts and showcases a serial killer at play. That's all fine and good. The underlying plot isn't horrid. It's just incredibly cheap and predictable. The parody of the middle American yuppy life aspect saves it a lot but not much. Be wary that it might get boring. I think I loved watching it for the nostalgia factor. 

  • The SWAT raid scene took three days and 1500 bullet hits to set up. All of which were fired in less than one minute, resulting in less than 10 seconds of on-screen time. 
  • Shot in 45 days.  
  • Richard Jefferies based the character of the Vagrant on an actual homeless person who lived in a vacant field located across from a guest house Jefferies was residing at in Studio City, California at the time. Moreover, the script Jefferies wrote took almost ten years to finally be made into a film. 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Human Monster (1939) - Walter Summers

Bela Lugosi turns in a fantastic performance. It is right on par with the exact same films that had made him famous like Dracula . My personal favorite being The Black Cat . Like the latter, this film suffered from poor circulation and lack of advertisement. Either that or the public wasn't interested in seeing Lugosi in anything else other than his famous bloodsucker. This film has a broad and well acted plot that was rich with detail.  Lugosi has two sides in this picture. His well loved and compassionate side. The other is a strict, brutal lone shark that acts as a sinister villain to blind and handicapped people. He really brutalizes his victims. It's a macabre message to pay your bills.  The film is slow moving and plagued by the usual setbacks from its time. Most of the nation wasn't really that concerned with horror at the time. But studios knew that they would always have an audience. This film is a prime example of that. It's sad because it's 

Ju-On (2000) - Takashi Shimizu

Watching Japanese horror is similar to watching British comedy. If you enjoy dry whit then you probably enjoy the boys of Monty Python in drag. That's the joke, they're dressed like women. Get it? Well, that's British humor. But if you're like most Americans you probably prefer Adam Sandler farting his way across a football field and hooking up with chicks that are way out of his league. Americans usually prefer this more in your face, crass brand of humor. My point is funny in England is different from funny in the US. The same goes for J-Horror. What the Japanese consider scary is very different from what Americans consider scary and it shows in this horror film. Japanese horror is generally slow (a little too slow sometimes), suspenseful and creepy. Ju-On is a creepy effing film. The movie has almost no soundtrack. It is incredibly suspenseful and the pay-offs are pretty awesome, but I think that it was done better in the American version (cultural t

Inseminoid (1981) - Norman J. Warren

What can be said for mindless schlock pictures like this one. They were pumped out in droves during the eighties. Inseminoid !? give me a break! It sounds like some pre-pubescent teenage boys came up with the title. On the plus side the movie isn't horrible to look at and it has a decent amount of gore. If you can separate yourself from the political incorrectness, then you might have a perfectly decent Sci-Fi Monster Feature.  A research team exploring caves on Jupiter accidentally awakens an ancient alien that rapes and impregnates one of the team members. She suffers from terrible shock and trauma, leading to a complete mental breakdown as her pregnancy accelerates faster and faster. Feeling threatened she decides to kill anyone she deems a threat. Can the rest of the research team survive or will they all become victims of INSEMINOID! Apparently this movie had a million dollar budget. That's really shocking considering the outcome of the picture. The acting