Hysterical

Please, for the love of all that is holy, would someone involved with this movie please write and tell me why this movie was made? I just watched it on Showtime and my brain feels about to explode from the sheer "bad movie" experience. The zombie theatrical dance number was, without a doubt, the topper. Oh, the horror...the horror...

I usually couldn't stomach the Hudson Bros' brand of humor before this movie. I thought they were mindless morons, even as they related to fellow talk show guests. But I sat down in 1985 or so when this came out on cable and was pleasantly surprised at how funny this movie really is.

If you appreciated John Larroquette as D.A. Dan Fielding on TV's Nightcourt, you'll love him as Bob X. Cursion, the impudent but oblivious, pot-smoking boating tour guide in Hysterical.

And who couldn't be amused by Robert Donner as the "prophet" who, riding his rickety bicycle through the lanes of the lighthouse town warns, "You're doomed!"

Yeah, it's ridiculous and far-fetched, similar to some of the antics in Princess Bride, or The Burbs. My son, now 31, and I have talked about this movie for years, (not so with The Burbs). It's not in my top 20, but definitely worth renting if you want to see a funny "horror" movie.

I just saw this movie on cable (not, I assure you, by design). The plot is pretty much as described here in the IMDb. "Hysterical" IS pretty hysterically awful, but it does not quite fit in the category of Movies So Bad They're Good. Yes, the plot is clichéd and predictable. Yes, it stars the Hudson Brothers, those inoffensive pop products from the Seventies who were quickly forgotten in the Eighties. I, for one, certainly hadn't thought about them since then and had no idea they'd made a movie. It also features a gaggle of supporting actors whose faces will be recognizable to anyone who watched movies and TV in the Sixties and Seventies or who watches TVLand today. The female lead is Cindy Pickett, who looks and acts so wholesome here that it's hard to believe she appeared in an earlier film, Roger Vadim's "Night Games," that was very erotic. She radiates essentially no sexual luster in "Hysterical." Still, the production values are surprisingly good for a bad movie. It looks and feels like a real movie; this is not Edward D. Wood stuff. The Hudson Brothers actually manage to work up a respectable comic energy. There are a few breakout scenes that are extremely funny, especially the big production number with dancing zombies in an amusement park, and a too-brief scene in which the brothers try to confuse some pursuing zombies with an impromptu doo-wop session. The movie also works in sendups of a lot of other films ("Vertigo," "Marnie," "The Rocky Horror Show," "Chariots of Fire," and "Night of the Living Dead," to name just a few). All in all, this is a movie that is fun to see once just for laughs.

This movie makes me laugh every time I watch it. I first saw it when I was 4 and I often sought to find a copy of it. I bought it when I was a kid and have had it ever since. It consists of many funny scenes, including a library/chase sequence, and a battle between humans and former psychiatric patients turned zombies at the top of a lighthouse. Can we say The Fog?

There are enough good things about this little-known comedy that the viewer really wants it to work. The Hudson brothers are charismatic and often funny, but the overall ineptness of the production seems to smother them. Despite some very funny gags and lines, Hysterical is hopelessly bogged down by redundancy and a myriad of technical problems. The fact that the director of this film has no other directorial credits may be one indication of why things went badly.

The story centers around a disillusioned yet successful writer who decides to spend a month in a quaint coastal Oregon town to write "the great American novel". Most of his books have been trashy sex stories, and one of the running gags of the film shows people reading his latest book wherever he goes. Even inside a loony bin. Anyway, no sooner does the writer arrive in his new town, than things start going haywire. The body of a deceased sea captain surfaces in the harbor, for example. And the spirit of his old mistress haunts the writer after he moves into the captain's old lighthouse. The town folk are baffled as to the strange goings on, and two crazed adventure seekers are called in to help solve the trouble.

The film is a vehicle for the three Hudson brothers who play the writer and the two adventurers. This film was apparently supposed to make them the Marx Bros of the 1980s. Needless to say, that didn't happen. The three of them are likable, but the material is just too cheesy in many aspects of the film. There are some very funny lines and a few of the running gags are quite funny, too. One involving a crazy guy on a bike warning people "they're doomed" has some clever angles. Of course this is a spoof of the guy from Friday the 13th 1 & 2, and this film spoofs countless other films along the way. One hilarious scene spoofs The Exorcist. The film also hits some good notes with a scene in a library where apparently the only black resident of the town works.

There are all kinds of things wrong with Hysterical, though. First of all, this film was about as technically inept as any film I've ever seen not called R.O.T.O.R.. The lighting is so minimal that you can hardly see which characters are even in some scenes. The editing is choppy, and the special F/X are putrid. Some gags are revisited way too often. There are a total of three musical numbers; one of them seems to last forever. Then there are times when the ancient technique of speeding up the film is used to emphasize the fact that we the audience should be laughing now. And the film has a cheap look to it in general. Even if a film has a tiny budget, there are ways make it look less obvious.

Overall, this film was a nice try, but just not good enough to launch anyone's career. The Hudson brothers are like that crazy uncle everyone has who can be funny for a while, but he just doesn't realize when to turn it on or off. Honestly, there just wasn't enough funny material here to stretch it out into a full length movie. In the end we get a marginally funny film that looks cheap, and probably resulted in more than a few wet and bored actors. Many of them appearing in much better films before and after this one.

4 of 10 stars.

The Hound.