The Being

Though it has its faults, this movie has several core messages that make it work as a horror film. First, environmentalism: Showing how the disposal of nuclear material can negatively affect the world Second, the philosophical question of the innocence of children: The monster in this movie is just a mutated child who has little to no control over their actions, which brings into question the ethical validity of killing them/.

Happy Easter, you One-Eyed Willy Monster.

As a bona fide horror fan, especially from the 80s, I'm shocked I missed this one. I've known about it my whole life, but never got to it. And wow, I'm pretty shocked how much they put into this.

The biggest positives stem from how many times they showed the penis creature, or at least, parts of the penis creature. Like right from the beginning, every couple of minutes until the great penis monster's climax.

Now, the acting, editing at times, continuity and people's unnatural reaction to green ooze all over the town or the monster's appearances are all bad, but I was actually entertained through to the end...even when I couldn't really comprehend how many penis monsters there were, if there were more than one or their powers.

I will have to also point out that I suspect the studio invited morons to its test screenings. In the beginning, there were a lot of odd narration (over a radio DJ - hard to hear both!) and voice overs to explain the thoughts of our husky lead detective. I bet they added these in post because, I assume, the test audience had less-than-desirable I.Q.s.

Some of the subplots I found amusing: Mayor Spuds Mackenzie and his extremely limited Jaws ripoff scenes and the townsfolk's objection to smut coming into their very Southern-acting town in Idaho. Specifically, they're scared of a massage parlor opening as they might be massaging something else...

(Insert penis monster reference here.)

It's not perfect, but I would've enjoyed the heck out of this as a kid for how many times we saw the monster in a creature feature. If you're like me with cheesy 80's monster movies, watch this.

***

Final Thoughts: It was a major coincidence I decided to watch this on Easter-Eve and I didn't even know it was a holiday film. Huh, they should really market this as such. I can't think of another Rated-R Easter Horror movie, other than The Passion of the Christ.

The first thing that struck me when watching this was how on earth the lead actor got the job. He has to be one of the worst I've seen, honestly, he delivers his lines like he's in a school play. Then I found out he's married to the director, who is also the writer. Aside from all that this very much wears its influences on its sleeve, it's mostly 50's style B-movie horror. A monster movie that begs and borrows ideas from its predecessors. It's not very good to be honest, it's badly edited, poorly lit, wastes its location, has weak monster design, and of course the terrible wooden acting from the main character. There's also out of place voice-over moments early one where we hear the lead characters inner thoughts, really odd. Also, we hear a radio broadcast every now and then telling us about a storm that is never actually in the movie, completely pointless. Landau, Ferrer, and Buzzi are actually ok in their supporting roles and ultimately carry the movie. Not surprisingly the director didn't go on to have much of a career, a case of too much imitating over innovating it seems.

.... when it first came out. I still remember it being awful. But I told my friend it was awesome and recommended he take his girlfriend. He did and they both hated it as much as I did. Story still makes me laugh.

This movie is almost like CHUD except not as good. It was somewhat disappointing in its first half, and then I realized that it wasn't going to get any better after that. The movie is on the par with cheap 1950's B-movie horror flicks, and is worth a watch on late night TV when nothing else is on. It's main problem is that it is rather un-inspired in its use of the overplayed theme of radioactive waste turning things into monsters, and is slow. It is quite funny, though and frightening in places. I rated it an embarrassingly high 5 -- Hey, so I'm easy to please.