'Terrorvision' will never be a legend in its own slime
San Diego Union, The (CA) - April 17, 1986
Author: David Elliott, Movie Critic
"Terrorvision" 1/2 * An Empire release. Directed, written by Ted Nicolaou. Produced by Albert Band. Photography by Romano Albani. Music by Richard Band. Rated PG. In local theaters. The Cast Gerrit Graham-Stanley Mary Woronov-Raquel Bert Remsen-Grampa Alejandro Rey-Spiro Diane Franklin-Suzy Chad Allen-Sherman
"Terrorvision" will be gone from local theaters by Friday. There's no review as damning as a one-week run. But I'll try.
Is it a comedy? Is it a horror film? Is it a space fantasy? No, it's just dung. Not that I expected much -- you don't go to see a movie called "Terrorvision," doubled at the Casino Theater with "Zone Troopers," expecting the movie experience of a lifetime.
Seems the planet Pluton is using monsters to scavenge its garbage. One of the mutant uglies, called Hungrybeasts, beams across the cosmos thanks to some technical foul-up and enters Earth through the TV satellite dish of the Putterman family, headed by swinger Stan (Gerrit Graham) and his slut wife Raquel (Mary Woronov). Their cute kid Sherman (Chad Allen) plays with handguns, and the cute Grampa (Bert Remsen) is a full-time paranoic, beaming into his own crackpot channel.
Right away the Hungrybeast smells out the best garbage -- bad acting -- and munches Grampa into a mess of goo. If there's art here, it all belongs to special-effects creator John Buechler, who makes the monster into a fairly lovable grotesque. The thing has enough slime to lube a dozen Godzilla pictures, and indeed we see a dozen cheapo monster movies flash by on the Putterman's TV screen.
The writer and director, Ted Nicolaou, seems to be making a satirical swing at bad television. He sinks below it, and pea-shoots upward. This is the sort of intentional spoof so bad that it doesn't give us unintentional laughs, which are the main reward of lousy movies. Though made in Italy, it won't be matched on double bills with Federico Fellini's new satire on TV culture, "Ginger and Fred."
This beauty is shot in some sort of psychedelic '60s BlazoVision, or LuridScope. The colors are so raw that after 20 minutes I put on dark glasses, and found some relief. (Better to lose some nuances than get a migraine.) To go with the retro-visuals, there are dated jokes about heavy-metal music and Sammy Davis love chains, and lines that get the big-belch treatment, such as, "Hey, he's a gross-lookin' booger, ain't he? I'd nuke that sucker!"
That whiff of Noel Coward comes from Bert Remsen, whom devotees of '70s films will recall as one of the funniest actors in Robert Altman movies like "California Split" and "Brewster McCloud." Gerrit Graham, blithely retching his way through the part of Stan, was long ago hilarious in Brian DePalma's "Phantom of the Paradise." Big, cartoon-faced Mary Woronov was once funny in "Eating Raoul," and Alejandro Rey, badly playing a Hefner-lizard called Spiro, was the amusing Cuban lawyer in "Moscow on the Hudson."
So here they all are together, making a living that looks like dying. Seeing the film is on a par with acting in it. That's like a draw in a duel where both sides get killed.
Trying to limit the damage, I caught only a section of the companion feature, "Zone Troopers." In this treat, another Italian effort with international zilch appeal, some rather pleasant space aliens beam into World War II, and give our boys a hand against the Nazis. It's "E.T. Meets Klunks vs. Krauts."
Starring such ticks on the underbelly of cinema as Art LaFleur and Biff Manard, the film gives the GI Joes lines like this (to an alien): "You have any women with ya, like blondes from Venus?" Connoisseurs will chalk that up as a nod to the 1966 cheapo classic, "Mars Needs Women."
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'TERRORVISION': FULL OF GORE AND SEXUALITY
Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - February 18, 1986
Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Film Critic
"TerrorVision." A horror comedy starring Gerrit Graham, Mary Woronov and
Bert Remsen. Written and directed by Ted Nicolaou. Photographed by Romano
Albani. Music by Richard Band. Special gore effects by John Buechler. Running time: 83 minutes. An Empire release. In area theaters.
The new pornography of movies - namely, aggressive violence, laced with overall inhumanity - comes to a head with something called "TerrorVision."
If you're an aficionado of junk, this one has everything - a plot about a TV set that houses a monster, ripping off "Poltergeist;" a cast of perfectly awful characters, representing an assortment of perversions; a monster made of slime and, seemingly, snot; lots of dirty jokes and bad dialogue, and a sprawling set that's supposed to be a suburban home but that looks like a studio soundstage.
Heads roll. Limbs fly. Bodies are sucked into televison sets and hot tubs. Bad taste abounds and, if you're into such things, let me assure you that there's more blood and bile here than there was in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
If you're not into such things, but just have to see "TerrorVision"
because it stars B-movie greats Mary Woronov ("Eating Raoul") and Gerrit Graham ("Phantom of the Paradise"), then by all means, go - but take a No- Pest strip along with you.
Parental guide: Rated R for its gore and leering sexuality.
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FILM: A MONSTER OF A GARBAGE PROBLEM IN 'TERRORVISION'
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - February 17, 1986
Author: Desmond Ryan, Inquirer Movie Critic
Near the beginning of Terrorvision, an undertaking that lives up to the terrible promise of its title, a boy looks at a horror film on cable TV and opines, "This is the dumbest movie I've ever seen."
That might well be true, with the exception of the movie he's in. Terrorvision is the third Charles Band production to be foisted on America in a still-young year - the others being the unforgettable Troll and Eliminators. Low in budget and lower in mind, Band's projects ally transcendent dumbness with dime-store effects. Indeed, he seems to have been listening to his accountants because the monster in Terrorvision sounds exactly like its counterparts in Troll, which is to say like a stopped drain.
Terrorvision tries to have fun with the sleazier aspects of popular culture, but only proves that it is impossible to satirize trash when you have only garbage at your disposal.
Joe Dante combined humor and horror in this vein, most notably in The Howling, which was both a homage to and a loving spoof of the genre and its conventions. But the chemistry eludes Ted Nicalou, who wrote and directed Terrorvision. His one honest idea is to suggest that his monster from outer space is the result of an interplanetary sanitation problem and that the wonders of satellite dish reception can put the creature on the screen and then in the family room.
Moving with the storied alacrity of the Philadelphia Streets Department, the sanitation people on the monster's home planet of Pluton occasionally interrupt terrestial television broadcasts to warn of the dangers. But Nicalou doesn't have the slightest notion of what to do with this premise beyond making the family in question more repellent than the creature from the landfill on Pluton.
The Putterman family boasts parents who are swingers, a pastiche punk daughter and a nutty survivalist grandfather. Their antics are the subject of some awful jokes before they provide various repasts for the monster. Nicalou has contrived to make these meals as revolting as possible.
In each case, the creature leaves only the head and sucks out the brains. This leaves a terrible mess on the carpet, but at least serves as fair warning that Terrorvision is strictly for the empty-headed.
TERRORVISION *
Produced by Charles Band, directed and written by Ted Nicalou, photography by Romano Albani, music by Richard Band, distributed by Empire Pictures.
Running time: 1 hour and 23 minutes
Stanley Putterman - Gerrit Graham
Raquel Putterman - Mary Woronov
Grandpa - Bert Remsen
Suzy Putterman - Diane Franklin
Parent's guide: R (violence)
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`Terrorvision' misses mark
Houston Chronicle - February 15, 1986
Author: JEFF MILLAR, Staff
Nothing would please me more to say that "Terrorvision" (rated R) is a little jewel of a comedy that I have discovered, just for you. I can't. The movie's made by B-teamers and has all the characteristics of same. If a laugh is located at 34 degrees north, 27 degrees south, they spud in at 38 degrees north, 22 degrees south. They try, but they just can't produce. That's why they're B-teamers. Like the basketball coaches say, you can't teach height.
To characterize the film: It's a facetious gross-out horror film. By error, an extraterrestrial is teleported into an American living room via a backyard satellite dish. The ET squishes people with pincers, injecting a solvent which turns flesh into multicolored gelatin, which the ET then slurps up. He's actually rather cute. Introduced to Earthling television, the ET becomes quickly becomes addicted, sitting in a Jacuzzi and gurgling, "Tee-vee, tee-vee."
But the film was made so much on the cheap that the ET is virtually all the filmmakers have to offer in exchange for a ticket. After 20 minutes, you've seen all the cleverness the filmmakers have on their shelves. The dialogue and direction, both by Ted Ninicolaou, are just close enough to funny to make you wish this premise had been taken up by the A-teamers who could have made it actually funny.
It would do none of these actors - one is genuinely talented and may have done this because of financial distress - any good to list their names, so I won't.
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