Director: Joel Bender
18 | 96 min | Horror
Move over, Dr Frankenstein, there’s a new re-animator in town. His name is Dr Devine, and in his business a mishmash of body parts will not suffice. We’ve all dreamt of eternal youth, but for those who are uninterested in being turned into a plastic zombie, our crazed innovator has come up with a mind-boggling alternative — providing you are hideously wealthy and bereft of all human emotion. His modus operandi is thus: 1) find lithe, nubile specimens; 2) send enslaved mutant wrestlers to kidnap and sedate said specimens before injecting them with neon-green ooze; 3) present a catalogue of specimens to the ageing elite; 4) transfer brain of aged elite into the body of lithe, nubile specimen. Brilliant, right?
Well, no actually.
Neon-based scientific ingenuity aside, Devine’s business model is rather flawed. Firstly, as owner and operator of the Seaview Ageing Therapy Clinic, you would have to advertise kidnapping and murder as your primary services. One botched surgery or moral disagreement and the cops would be kicking down your door, particularly since your practice is located in the middle of an everyday suburban community and surrounded by potential witnesses, one of whom stares blatantly at proceedings through giant binoculars. Before you could say ‘scalpel!’, you’d be up to your neck in lies, forced to commit one murder after another in a ceaseless attempt to cover your morbid tracks. Soon you’d be killing friends and family, limo drivers, yapping little terriers ― the treachery would never end.
The binocular-wielding woman certainly has her suspicions. Did she spy the doctor’s steroid-induced troglodytes bungling school kids into the back of a van? Did the doctor flash her one of his Disney-sinister glances while off to buy a new stethoscope, or did the two drunks tasked with handling the grubbier side of things accidentally spill the whiskey, so to speak? (the idea that the men in question would find employment anywhere in the world, let alone as the trusted lickspittle of the film’s nefarious genius, may qualify as the most absurd element of a movie that can’t turn a corner without stepping in its own narrative bilge). Maybe she’s simply concerned by the thought that a full-scale doctor’s surgery could be operating in one of her neighbour’s houses? It’s not exactly something you see everyday outside of a seriously strapped-for-cash production.
Then there’s the matter of your employees to consider ― you know, those people whose trust your entire business depends upon. Call me cynical, but I don’t remember being particularly fond of any of my previous bosses. Even those who I kind of liked I would inevitably find fault with, the monotony of everyday servitude leaving a particularly bad taste in the mouth. So what if one of them didn’t appreciate the way you were treating them? Soon they’d be turning up late for work or running their mouths and demanding raises in return for their silence. Then there’s the personal ad to consider. I mean, what on earth would the application form entail?
Nevertheless, Devine’s business seems to be thriving by the time the sleazy Dr Timmons (Jamieson) arrives to fill the position. Timmons has had a recent brush with the medical board and seems to be entirely motivated by greed — just the kind of dirt bag Devine can exploit to the whims of his insanity, though there must be a particularly fine line when it comes to trust. If you’re willing to take part in such a morally bankrupt process for a bit of extra scratch, what else are you capable of? Meanwhile, a fresh batch of teens are kidnapped and brought to the prep room for transformation, but Gregg (Crone) manages to avoid the sedative-laced claws of their mutant captors, wisely playing dead until left alone and presented with the chance to escape.
After diving through a windowpane in the dead of night and disturbing absolutely no one (no, not even the binoculars woman), Gregg goes straight to the local sheriff, who in typical horror fashion dismisses everything the poor lad throws at him, excelling in the neglectfully obtuse ramblings stakes. Spending a night in the slammer, our clean-cut hero harbours hopes that some late-night detective work might clear his name, but when the sheriff returns with news of a missing cop, Gregg soon graduates from petty drunk to suspected murderer faster than he can say, “huh?!” His only hope of evading the ‘hot seat’ lies in their fruitless investigation of the suburban horror house (is it really so hard to search a residential property harbouring all kinds of blatant horrors?). Fortunately for Gregg there’s a shed nearby, and after slipping the sheriff’s equally laughable grasp he manages to hide in it, totally bamboozling the number one cop in town.
Worse luck befalls Gregg’s friend, Darrell, who after experiencing an allergic reaction to the dubious neon gook at the centre of the doc’s miracle process is transformed into one of Dr Devine’s hideous mutants. This provides the movie’s solitary punt at serious drama, the two having a moment the way a human Shaun and Zombified Ed do during the closing moments of horror comedy Shaun of the Dead, only with none of the charm or humour (okay, so it is a little funny; accidentally so, of course). Gregg then convinces suspicious neighbour Agnes (Wendel) to masquerade as a customer in the hope of infiltrating her psychotic neighbours, but suspicion rears its ugly head when her walkie-talkie is discovered, leading to a treacherous love triangle involving Dr. Devine, Dr. Price (Lindsley) and insatiable harlot Nurse Blaine (Patterson), whose obsession with the body of a beautiful young redhead threatens to unravel the whole sordid scheme.
There are plenty of bad movies picking up dust in the recesses of home video purgatory, many of them achieving cult status due to their irresistible and occasionally inspired shenanigans. The Immortalizer doesn’t have a cult following (at least not one that I’m aware of), and it certainly isn’t inspired. In fact, bumbling mutant antics and a deliriously implausible plot notwithstanding, it suffers from some pretty serious pace issues for a 96-minute movie, barely falling into the ‘so bad it’s kind of irresistible’ category. Take out 20 minutes of useless exposition and you’re still looking at a seriously cack-handed affair that proves interminable for long stretches. It’s certainly worth a look, but you may want to keep the fast-forward button handy so you can skip through the film’s more lifeless stretches.
I somehow managed to soldier through the entire ordeal, but by the 45-minute mark I found myself asking, ‘Why bother to review such a hot mess? It’s not like anyone will read it.’ Other than a morbid fascination with the woefully inept and the belief that all movies deserve to be remembered simply for existing, I’m not too sure, but if nothing else productions like this fill you with a renewed appreciation for grainy, low-budget masterworks such as Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead and John Carpenter’s Halloween, and there’s enjoyment to be found everywhere if you can see past the flaws. I’m a sucker for bad movies. They fascinate me, engross me and oftentimes leave me in hysterics. Sadly, The Immortalizer lacks the self-aware qualities or lawlessness of the truly beguiling. This one isn’t so bad it’s good. At times it’s just plain bad.
This is something of a shame because there’s a fun concept at play that should have been so much more, particularly as a commentary on the extremes of cosmetic surgery and the lengths some of us will go to maintain the gift of eternal youth. As proven by the likes of Ted Post’s mind-blowing psychosexual thriller The Baby, there’s nothing more terrifying than someone with a morbid passion, or the very real notion that the world’s wealthy elite see regular people as cattle. If Bill Gates could extend his life by harvesting our organs, I’m almost 90 percent sure you’d be splayed on the operating table with a rather noticeable brain protrusion the very next morning.
In the end, The Immortaliser fails quite dramatically, both as an honest-to-goodness production and as a potential cult favourite. This is no doubt due to the film’s monetary restrictions, but the whole affair is haphazard and ineptly staged, with lifeless sets that border on the moribund. It also lacks the bite of similarly cheapo attempts at social satire. Brian Yuzna’s polymorphous attack on the Reagan 80s Society and Stuart Gordon’s Lovecraftian cult classic Re-Animator were resourceful movies that made the most of their meagre outlays, but low-budget and bargain basement are on different sides of the same galaxy, and this one fell headlong into the creative void.
What Lies Beneath
Big business has a tendency to be ruthless, and ruthlessness generally leaves a lot of skeletons in the closet, but mutant wrestlers in the basement? That’s a new one. Though it does provide the movie’s best kill.
Ostensibly dead having had his guts splattered against a wall with a shotgun, mutant hero Darrell returns to save his friends from the conniving Dr Price, picking him up and stuffing his body into a giant garbage disposal.
When Conscience Strikes
Can zombie mutants recall anything from their past lives, turn vague instinct into sentience through the power of sheer will? In a world where brain-swapping is common place and side-effects are so immediate, anything is possible, I suppose.
Temporarily recalling the college friend he once loved, emotionally conflicted mutant, Darrell, comes to the aid of Gregg after football tackling two other mutants through a cardboard wall.
And to think they could have tore their way to freedom this whole time!
Choice Dialogue
Inspecting her nubile new carriage, the doc’s most prestigious client, ruthless old Mrs Peabody, has a query.
Mrs Peabody: Oh, she’s beautiful! Who is she?
Dr. Price: She’s Phi Beta Kappa – a model student.
Mrs Peabody: I’m not buying her brain!
A concept that could have made bad movie history, but one that doesn’t bear the fruit of its considerable labour,
Edison Smithis a badly staged and increasingly humdrum affair which stumbles around the edges like so many lost actors looking for their cue. The movie’s crux is its total lack of self-awareness. Everything about it screams tongue-in-cheek, but what little humour there is seems accidental, and the lack of gore points to a budget that no horror flick should ever be subjected to.
vhsrevival.com 
Good Lord! This sounds like a hot mess of a movie but yet with just enough cheese to keep me on my toes! Thanks, Hank. I may have to hunt this one down!
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Hi, Susan.
Good luck with that one. I first saw this on the Sci-Fi channel about twenty years ago and spent years trying to find out its name. Once I overcame that decade-long obstacle I then had the problem of finding it to watch again.
Failing in my attempts to buy it I searched for a download and found one, only to realise it was no longer downloadable and up only in name. However, it is now on the web. They must have released it on DVD at some point but I really couldn’t locate it anywhere.
Hopefully you’ll be able to see it.
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