Society
(1989) 99 Min.
Rated: R (gore, nudity)
Country: USA
Director: Brian Yuzna
Starring: Billy Warlock, Devin DeVasquez, Evan Richards
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★★☆
Bill grows increasingly paranoid about his family despite having a seemingly perfect life.
Synopsis:
Bill Whitney (Warlock) has an ideal life. His family is rich, he lives in a mansion, he’s popular at school and he is about to be elected school class president. However, despite his ideal life, he keeps having reoccurring nightmares and feels like he doesn’t belong to his family. He also feels ignored. His therapist, Dr. Cleveland, believes that there’s a rational explanation and that he’ll make a wonderful contribution to society someday.
Bill is home and he’s looking for suntan lotion. He hears his sister, Jenny, showering and when he looks into her bathroom he sees a strange sight of her body seemingly misshapen. He opens the shower door and sees his sister is normal. She screams at him and he apologizes and leaves with the lotion.
Bill goes to the beach with his cheerleader girlfriend, Shauna, at the private Albacore Club. At the beach Bill’s sister’s ex-boyfriend David Blanchard talks to him and has him listen to a tape. On the tape Jenny and her parents discuss her coming out and how she’ll copulate with men and women her own age as well as her parents. Bill takes this tape and gives it to Dr. Cleveland so that he can listen to it later.
When he sees Dr. Cleveland later, he plays the tape for Bill and it’s a benign dialog of the family discussing the coming out party for Jenny. Dr. Cleveland warns of society’s rules of privacy and that Bill shouldn’t break them. Bill phones Blanchard to meet up with him, but when he drives there he discovers a car accident and a bloody body is packed up in an ambulance. Blanchard is seemingly dead.
Bill gets invited to a fancy party held by Ferguson. He spots a girl he keeps being attracted to named Clarisa Carlyn (DeVasquez). Ferguson tells Bill that he had sex with Jenny as well as everyone else at the party. Bill fights with Ferguson and then runs off to Clarisa’s house. The two have sex and Bill hallucinates that Clarisa is in a twisted up body position. That fades away and he has tea with Clarisa and they make out again. Clarisa’s mother shows up. She’s bizarrely huge and doesn’t talk but holds onto blonde hair and grunts.
Bill has a fight with Shauna who knows Bill has cheated on her. Bill goes up to talk to his parents to find his father massaging his sister while his mother watches. He leaves them disgusted, declaring he’s moving out.
Bill goes to the funeral of Blanchard and sees fellow classmate Martin Petrie who insists on meeting up with him later in private. Bil goes to the canyon where they were to meet up bit finds Petrie dead inside a Volvo with his throat slit. When Bill calls the police they return to find a different car and no Petrie.
The next day is the class president debates and Bill tells the student body that Petrie is dead and won’t show up. However, Petrie shows up moments later saying he had car trouble. Bill’s best friend Milo (Richards) confesses that he’s been following Bill out of worry and that he saw cars driving in and out of the canyon meeting place.
Bill decides to confront his family with Milo waiting outside to witness. Bill goes into his home and his family and Dr. Cleveland are there. They inject him with medication and he’s taken to a hospital. When Milo tries to find him at the hospital the nurse says he would be in the morgue since he is dead. Bill wakes up from a hospital bed and stumbles out of the hospital. Milo pleads with him not to leave since he feels it’s a setup, but Bill is very confident.
Bill goes home but is surprised by a lavish party and is snared around the neck like an animal. Dr. Cleveland is there and explains to Bill that he is not related to his family at all that they are a different species but not alien to the Earth. That this society, the upper class rich, literally feed off the lower class.
Blanchard is pulled out by snare. He is alive and the upper class then begin to feed off him. They turn into jelly and stretch and meld with his form as they devour him. They call this method of feeding “shunting”.
Clarisa is also at the party and she helps Bill escape. He runs around the house, seeing his mother turn into a weird shape and seeing his father have a face on his rear-end.
Bill manages to goad Ferguson into a fist fight with him, and Ferguson is almost too strong for Bill. Bill manages to punch up through Ferguson’s body and pull it inside-out. The guests are horrified.
Bill, Milo and Clarisa escape the party and drive off.
Review:
This story of increasing paranoia and a literal tale of the rich feasting upon the poor is pretty fun. The overall pace may seem a bit dull if you are aware of the gore and special effects makeup that make this film somewhat notorious. Unfortunately the society fiends feast upon Blanchard in the last portion of the film and the majority of it is filled more with Bill’s paranoia and the audience being unsure if Bill is imagining this all or if it’s real.
The performances in this film are pretty decent and Billy Warlock really does sell his anxiety. There’s a lot of little touches in the film that add to the humor. The fact that the Society love to eat slugs and seem to keep plates of it handy at their functions, Clarisa’s strange mother and her obsession with hair. These things aren’t really explained, but they add a kind of craziness that help build this secret world.
The special effects by Screaming Mad George (AKA Joji Tani) are really the highlight of this film. It just so happens that this highlight is at the tail end of the film and most of the story is more of a thriller where Bill is mostly just paranoid. There is a light touch of silly humor, but it is scant.
The film has mostly gross out silly gore and there’s not a lot of tension in the film. Again, most of the excitement comes at the very end of the film so it’s a bit slow. I would, however, recommend a watch for those types who love special effects and want to see a silly sort of gross little cult film.