The Being

I actually enjoyed "The Being" for the most part. Obviously it's awful but isn't that the point? The basic plot is a small town in Idaho is victimized by a big, blubbering, wet and greasy, reddish-pink blob with one eye. He kills people at random and a determined detective is going to get to the bottom of it. Martin Landau plays a 'scientist' who is heading up a toxic waste dump research project who tries at first to stand in the detective's way, but then conceded that 'yes in fact, there is a problem in Pottsville...' Along the way we meet some awful actors and actresses and we are treated to many cheeseball performances and some lame killings. We get a nice view of the monster in the end and it actually is a little creepy. One thing we can say about this flick is that it is never really boring, no; it moves along pretty quickly with a decent amount of action.

All in all, I've seen worse, but I've definitely seen better within the genre. The genre of whence I speak being 80's drive-in trash, I mean what do you want?

5 out of 10, kids.

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.

This movie tries very hard but reeks of a production that didn't really know what it was doing.

Many times I got the impression something was missing too, whether because of production errors, the poor night lighting or editing, who knows, but narration often has to step in to tell us what's going on, which is always a red flag.

Add to that some giggle inducing deaths plus the final monster reveal being more comedic than scary and you've got the makings of a cult classic.

With some beer and friends it's not your worst choice, certainly it can't be described as boring as the pacing is good.

Worth a look, if you're into that sort of thing.

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.

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/.