The Strangeness

There are nostalgic reasons to like this now, back in the good old days the mid 1980's when low budget still meant you shot the thing on film and went outside of your neighborhood to shoot it. But I saw this in the 80's before the nostalgia kicked in and it was fun and it holds up for the most part now, rewatching a well battered VHS.

This is in the Lovecraft zone for sure and the story is good. The execution varies, it would be great to see a DVD release of this with some background info as this is an Indie production and therefore its origins would be interesting. A DVD might show the cave sets to be sets, but would probably also show the image more cleanly in good ways too. I think it's pretty well photographed,but in some instances video transfers just couldn't handle the contrast ratios like this. In one scene, for instance, a flash camera is used to light the way and each flash makes the whole video image jump and ruins a cool reveal shot of the creature.

(A pretty nice DVD of this was released in August of 2009 and is well worth getting)

The monster is creepy looking, even if you're not afraid of vaginas and part of it certainly does look like one. The DVD reveals two things that have to be mentioned in light of this. The director is now a women (though still married to his/her wife that he had kids with?!?) How much of a woman then is he/she? And the designer of the creature is now openly gay though at the time says he was not "out" yet. So think, or don't think, about this too deeply while watching the movie. They also show the puppet, battered but still looking very, well vaginal or as the designer says, it looks like a penis with a vagina on the end of it. Does all this make the monster sound scary enough for you?

Performers vary but several of them engage your interest enough to care about their fate and one of them, who deserves to die, does indeed have a very good death scene. Yes 1980's film fans, the lead large-possibly-not-real-breasted actress, seemingly the only veteran actor of the bunch, wears a tight white semi tube top,and even tighter jeans, and yes they eventually get her wet. But the thing that it deserves credit for is you can always tell which character is which, which, if you pardon the repeated word, is more than THE DESCENT managed to do.

The enjoyable John Carpenter rip off score is probably the most dated element and it actually dates it in a good way, the whole story with a cave monster gives it a old fashioned feel in a good way too. It's a good old fashioned monster story.

Other films in this ballpark are of course the recent THE DESCENT, and WHAT WAITS BELOW, and THE BOOGENS, but this film is not exactly like any of those and though not as good as those in many ways still has its share of creepy moments amid a couple of "we didn't really shoot this action scene well enough for it to all make sense sequences." The mine setting is well enough done to build interest and it moves pretty well to the end. Bring on a DVD version someone. Some of the well done animation is by Ernest D Farino who has for many years worked at Industrial Light and Magic doing work on Star Wars films and several James Cameron title sequences.

Some movies are just … unlucky. These are the films that obviously thrived on a lot of goodwill and a handful of potentially great ideas, but simply didn't have the budgetary means and/or professional cast and crew members at their disposal to make it happen. "The Strangeness" definitely belongs in this category. You really want to like it, but even the most tolerant and undemanding 80's horror fanatics will have to admit the film barely reaches the level of mediocrity due to its atmosphere of cheapness, clumsy stop-motion effects and impenetrably dark cinematography. "The Strangeness" has a fairly original plot and setting (okay, it's similar to "The Boogens" but I sincerely doubt that director David Michael Hillman intentionally ripped off a fellow insignificant 80's B-movie) and the players deliver enthusiast performances even though they're all miscast. An assembly of amateur speleologists go on an expedition to explore the infamous Gold Spike mine. Many years ago, several miners mysteriously died there and the place has abandoned ever since, but there's supposed to be too much gold hidden there to remain closed forever. Shortly after they descended into the mine, the group members one by one encounter the slimy ruler of the Gold Spike mine; a Lovecraftian monster with tentacles and an incredibly cheesy way of moving forward. Throughout most of its running time, "The Strangeness" is a boring and incompetent mess that is difficult to follow due to the complete lack of lighting. The characters are uninteresting and the mine remains a mystery because the only lighting effects come from the helmets of the speleologists. There's very little action or horror to experience in the first hour, but director Hillman cleverly grasps the viewers' attention by showing bits and pieces of the monster at regular intervals. As soon as you catch the first glimpse of the monster's tentacle, you're doomed to keep watching till the very end. The creature is realized with stop-motion effects, which I usually adore and worship, but here in this case they look extremely weak and pitiable. The person responsible for the special effects should have paid more attention to the work of Ray Harryhousen. The death sequences largely occur off-screen and there's very little suspense throughout the whole movie. A horror flick with a setting like this should benefice from claustrophobic atmosphere and unidentifiable sound effects, but "The Strangeness" lacks all this. The biggest trump of the film is unquestionably the beautiful appearance of blond actress Terri Berland. She resembles a speleologist as much as I resemble Mother Theresa, but she surely looks good in her tight white top and beige pants.

THE STRANGENESS is about an abandoned mine, it's valuable contents, and the hideous whatsit that lives there.

After an earthquake, and a pair of mysterious disappearances, a group of six surveyors / geologists and their guide head for the mine. For the snotty, greedy head of the team, gold is more attractive than science. Unsurprisingly, horror and death ensue.

The story is straightforward, and plays like the second cousin of BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE. The characters are fairly familiar, 1980's monster fodder. The monster itself, apart from a few noises and glimpses, takes forever to show up! Until then, semi-drama, clunky "humor", and general ding-a-ling dialogue pad things out.

About the creature: It's a stop-motion, H.P. Lovecraft-type nightmare, complete with squiggly tentacles and an oozing, vertical mouth! Is it worth the wait? Sort of. There's an awful lot of extra-thick cheeeze to wade through before we get a -brief- look at this thing.

EXTRA POINTS FOR: Some of the gooey death scenes.

Worth a watch...

My boss at the time and showed it to us at a Halloween party at our office. He is the Chris Huntley that co-wrote and acted in it. He knows it's bad, we know it's bad and we all agree that the monster looks WAY too much like a vagina to be coincidence. Maybe it was from a gynocological experiment gone wrong.

It was a VERY low budget and the actors were all friends so what you have here is a case of "hey gang, lets' put on a show".

Nobody got hurt and it was a first attempt. Nothing wrong with that. It gave us all a good laugh and it's a great film to watch with friends and make fun of. :-)

A geological expedition of an abandoned mine becomes a living nightmare when its members find themselves trapped underground with a hulking, tentacled vagina monster. The interesting looking beast is brought to life via stop-motion animation(with marginal success). This creature, of origins which are never conclusively deduced, appears to digest its victims externally by covering them with a thick, enzymatic slime.

This unjustly overlooked monster movie was clearly produced on breadcrumb rations, but well-maintained suspense and a dark, foreboding atmosphere make up heartily for its bush-league deficiencies. Not a classic, perhaps, but certainly deserving of a more prominent placement within the annals of horror cinema.

6/10... Recommended.