Starring: Michael Murphy, Mitch Pileggi, Peter Berg, Sam Scarber, Camille Cooper Directed By: Wes Craven Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: March 16, 1999 Running Time: 109 minutes Studio: Universal Studios Theatrical Release Date: October 27, 1989
Product Description: Bonus features: theatrical trailer film highlights talent bios production notes and web links. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 09/02/2003 Starring: Michael Murphy Richard Brooks Run time: 109 minutes Rating: R Director: Wes Craven
Amazon.com: Wes Craven's horror pictures always have a few wild ideas knocking around inside them, and this 1989 slashfest is no exception. The electrocution of a mass murderer turns into a kind of cosmic jump-start: evil Horace Pinker is reborn as an elusive electronic phantom, capable of leaping from one body to another. (This trick is also used to good effect in The Hidden and Fallen.) Pinker's a stinker, and Craven was clearly trying to set up another franchise villain in the vein of his Nightmare on Elm Street champ, Freddy Krueger--perhaps a bit too baldly. However, amidst the mayhem, the film's real subject is the poisonous presence of mass media, as Pinker (played by The X-Files' Mitch Pileggi) insinuates himself as a free-floating spirit run amok in television itself. In its own pulp way, Shocker gets at the heart of media-culture inanity quicker than a ten-week college class on the subject, and although Craven occasionally lapses into generic bloodletting, he always snaps right back with some crazy angle on the TV nation. The hero is played by a young Peter Berg, the Chicago Hope star who would go on to direct his own shocker, Very Bad Things. Shocker failed to catch on with audiences (somewhere there's a warehouse full of unsold Horace Pinker action figures), but it's definitely worth a look for horror fans. --Robert Horton
Great innovative score! ^ Almost all of the reviews attached to this soundtrack album are about the film not the soundtrack.....why are these reviews attached to this CD?
Oh, I'm shocked alright... ^ I'm shocked that this tripe didn't derail Wes Craven's career forever! I'm also shocked that I sat through the entire thing without turning it off. Yet another movie in the slasher format that basically boils down to a special effects overload fit for a complete imbecile.
We meet our main character who keeps having vivid nightmares about a local serial killer (why?). The dreams are so detailed in fact, he is able to lead the police to the exact location of the killer, Horace Pinker (how?). However following Pinker's execution, we find he is able to transfer his soul to other people's bodies (how?). After using various bodies to continue his grisly work, it seems that Pinker is then able to travel through circuitry via electricity (how?). It seems to the only way Pinker can be stopped is with a necklace given to our main hero by his girlfriend (why?).
It's difficult to figure out what exactly they were going for with Shocker. It's far too goofy to be considered a legitimate horror or comedy movie, and it just doesn't gel as a horror/comedy hybrid. The acting is monumentally bad, especially the killer himself with one-liner's that make some of Freddy Krueger's seem genius in comparison. (One of my favorites: "Lets take a ride in my VOLTSwagon!"). I suppose if anything you oould give this a watch just for some laughs, but I wouldn't advise it.
What I find especially hilarious is Amazon's review for Shocker, describing it as a commentary on mass media! Seriously, if you were able to draw meaning from Shocker, you're probably the same person seeing messages in your bowl of alphabet soup. See a psychiatrist. In reality this is some of Wes Craven's absolute worst, if not THE worst movie he's ever made. Definetly take a look at his next, and far superior movie The People Under The Stairs.
Electrocuting nightmare ^ Wes Craven is probably one of the best movie makers in his field, in his genre. Horror does not have any kind of secret for him. But this undeniable quality kills the novelty a horror film is supposed to have in order to go beyond plain technical or even semiological excellence. And that is just the point here. We can recognize all the films that Wes Craven has made, and from each of which he has selected a little tidbit here and a small tiny piece there and then he has knitted everything together, with some loose moments here and there for the seams to be visible and people to recognize the borrowings. And he even managed to get some samples from films by other authors, Stephen King for example and his Green Line. But that is just the shortcoming of the film. It is nothing but knitted together borrowings and there is no new element, no new stuff, no new level of horror. It is déjà vu. The fear of television that invades our life, that manipulates our minds, that violates our virginity, all that is not enough to represent a new discourse. Because it is not. I am afraid this genre leads to repetition and Wes Craven take the sane decision Stephen King has taken, even if he took his time to take it, is the decision to retire one day and just stop always doing the same thing. And don't believe you can change styles. Anne Rice tried that but her life of Jesus is not convincing at all. Vampires are her real stuff. Messiahs are not exactly her cup of tea or should I say her glass of wine. In other words I don't think Wes Craven has reached a new level of extreme superb-ness. Just a well-crafted thriller and horror film. Nothing more, entertainment for sure, but nothing to put aside as the masterpiece you must not forget to take when you leave for the desert island to which we are all convicted to go after six, seven or eight decades of life. The Green Mile yes, Scream yes, a couple of others too, but not this one. It is not one of the five unforgettable ones.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID
Wish you could rate a movie 'below' one star ^ Anyone whose watched lots and lots of movies, always encounters some bad ones...it's the law of averages. But this movie, Shocker...was not just bad, it was horrible. No, horrible would be too kind. I was hoping it ended about 47 minutes before it actually closed it's final curtain. If you ever buy this movie in any format...remember...you were warned !!!!
Shockingly awful!. ^ I really wanted to like this film but I couldn't, no matter how many times I watched this I still end up being bored I'm not sure why some horror fans liked this as it seems to have a cult following and the film itself was a flop. The film had an interesting plot but somehow it just didn't work. Shocker is a very weak slasher film done by Wes Craven, the acting was really bad and not to mention the script was full of plot holes. The story's about a serial killer and television repairman named Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi) who is sentenced to die for a series of brutal murders, he is sent to be electrocuted with Jonathan Parker played by Peter Berg on watch since Jonathan sent Pinker away for killing some members of his family. Pinker though made a pact with the devil and had been increasing his own tolerance for electricity by jolting himself in his own prison cell and so the electrocution attempt fails when Pinker turns into a burst of energy and escapes through the electricity lines, he also has the ability to go from body to body which means that the main character has difficulties knowing whose body he has entered. This might sound like a fun and interesting horror film but its not its absolute rubbish, there aren't any scares in the film and its kind of hard to take seriously since the killer keeps saying awful oneliners and the overall tone of the film is very bright instead of being dark and gritty, the film had a few bloody death scenes but there was little gore and most of it was disappointing. Well there was one part that I did find interesting which was the chase scene in the park where Horace Pinker keeps switching bodies until he finds a little girl who starts screaming and cursing which was quite funny then she starts operating a bulldozer with an evil grin on her face trying to kill Jonathan but that wasn't enough to keep me interested cause half of the time I just thought it was a very silly and dull film and the special fx looked awful, the only good thing I could think of about Shocker was the great 80's metal soundtrack which totally rocked. Overall I would say it was a terrible film from Wes Craven who has made better films then this obviously but this one just stinks and I suggest you avoid it unless you wanna watch every film done by Wes Craven, now I know that Amazon are not going to post this review cause for some reason I wasn't allowed to review Shocker last year for some odd reason.
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