L'esprit du mal

Here's another one from those score of dreadful Oz horror's, courtesy of the CBS Fox, video collection, and this one's pretty bad. Hembrow in not the best of leads (this is his only lead movie) plays a young music composer, who is suddenly having really bad premonitions. Victims, mostly female are being elevated to great heights by an unknown psychic force, and their eyes removed. He starts going crazy, and is seen as a cuck (nutter) by authorities, and others, where soon, things get more serious for him. This is so stupid, especially in the end, with a unimpressive after ending, or twist, which would even make less sense. The film has loads of dreadful dialogue, and some real ridiculous moments of overacting, that has to be seen to be believed, not just on Hembrow's part. The classy middle aged American woman, who's killed early in the peace, was unbelievably bad (watch the part, where she's screaming in the backyard of her Sydney villa at night, just before her demise). A "WTF" or Are you fu..ing kidding me" moment. Like the other terrible CBS FOX '87/'88 Oz horrors here, a lot of dots in the story don't add up. We can be thankful for one thing here- John Ley (aka: Dodge, I'd recognize that voice anywhere) as a young oversexed detective. He's the only redeeming thing in this piece of s..t. Even some of the responding dialogue, and it's pretty bad ("Shoot to wound", a little Turkey Shoot joke line of familiarity, attached too) doesn't even fit, as if suddenly the actor horribly improvised. And with this, comes laughs, trust me, (oh, the other enjoyable quality in this film). This one, out of that sh..ty video collection, is the most unforgettable film. Simply dreadful, need I say more. What? Was the writer having an outer body experience, when he wrote it?

You know, I didn't get paid for sitting through this garbage, so there must be something wrong with me; what kind of a masochist would watch a film like "Out of the Body" for free? A man "has visions of murders". The cops "don't believe him" and "think he committed the murders". He is "possessed by an evil spirit". A tired, senseless script, combined with the strangely amateurish work of an experienced horror director (Brian Trenchard-Smith) and a completely unengaging lead, produce a pathetic time-waster. Not to mention the heavy Australian accents or the poor audio, which make much of the dialogue hard to understand. (*)

This film is easily some of BMX Bandits star John Ley's best work. His part as the detective trying to catch the astral travelling killer is played with the skill of an acting genius. The plot is thin, to say the least, but you can't go past a low quality Australian movie like this. The slender plot is sure to provide a few laughs (it's not supposed to be a comedy!), as are those ridiculous black eyes...

Nothing else in the film beats the sudden opening death, and mood setting in Brian Trenchard-Smith's Australian supernatural-horror (which was filmed on Sydney locations). The above quote is the response of one the investigating police detectives to the aftermath of the first kill. 'Out of the Body' is entertaining when it goes against logic, relishes in its lead's exaggerted performance of his character's decaying head space and sprinkles in some dark humour within bizarre situations. But you can say it's an up and down affair, which grows stranger, yet less effective as it goes along.

The story doesn't break new ground, where an unlucky music university student begins to have premonitions when alseep of POV shots of some unnkown killer stalking/murdering women by removing their eyeballs. So the added twist to the well worn premise is that it's primely supernatural in the way the victims are killed and those being targeted seem to be professional, headstrong and independant women. So what's the link. Well, lets just say expect there to be more questions than answers by the end of the film. There are certain story arches that feel like they're leading up to something of importance, but go nowhere with it. So the plot is incredibly disjointed, inconsistant and quickly moves through "nobody believes me, especially the cops, so I better save the day myself" routine which drives our protagonist to astral travel/specteral vampires mode without any sort of basis. Actually those moments are enjoyable, because they're so silly in their hsyterics which undermines whatever tension and an intensely jittery Mark Hembrow amusingly over-does it when fighting his confusion and desperation to save these women.

There's a otherworldly vibe to its atmosphere, especially during the night dream sequences as the cinematography glides and music creeps in. Smith also tries stylise alot of the night time set-pieces with lighting, shades of red/or green/or blue. Nothing over-the-top, but it was noticable, sometimes oddly placed, but typical 80s flair.

One evening I wanted to watch with my two friends the film "Scream" but we had borrowed the wrong one and the lady had given "Out of the Body" to us. So we watched it and we almost just laughed. The whole film is so stupid that I can't really explain it. At the beginning a woman is hanging in the air or when the man is at the psychiatrist's and suddenly opens his eyes and starts to scream it is so strange and silly that you just can laugh. WARNING: Don't watch this film!!!