The Borrower – 1991, US, 92m. Director: John McNaughton.
The Dark – 1979, US, 91m. Director: John ‘Bud’ Cardos.
Zombie 3 – 1988, Italy/Philippines, 84m. Director: Lucio Fulci, Bruno Mattei.
THE BORROWER (1991) An alien is cast out for killing its own kind and sent to Earth in an unstable makeshift human form. When the form deteriorates, the alien must use fresh heads as replacements—the first of which is ripped off a hillbilly (Tom Towles) before descending into the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles. A homicide detective (Rae Dawn Chong) takes notices of the crimes and pursues the alien, but unlike Michael Nouri in The Hidden—which The Borrower resembles in many ways—Chong doesn’t have the help of Kyle MacLachlan’s intelligent alien bounty hunter and must use her street smarts to catch the extraterrestrial. In one of the film’s funniest and genuinely shocking moments, the “borrower” tries to acclimate to suburban life by taking over the existence of a medical doctor only to end up using the head of the family dog. In fact, so much of The Borrower works, it’s a wonder why the movie hasn’t attained a following in the same regard as director John McNaughton’s critical darling Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Kevin Yagher’s makeup FX are excellent and convincing. Terrific stuff! B+
THE DARK (1979) A woman walking alone at night is attacked by a humanoid beast. She’s later found beheaded. A local news reporter (Cathy Lee Crosby) investigates the crime and discovers the victim’s father (William Devane) is a recently paroled ex-con who, while up the river, wrote trashy novels about the occult. The creature later blows up a factory worker’s head by shooting lasers of out its eyes. A psychic (Jacquelyn Hyde) who’s been having visions of the murders goes to the police but barely provides enough information for them to do anything. After more people are decapitated, Crosby and Devane team up to try and stop the mayhem, and engage in a little flirtation. The unstoppable monster (deriving from space, I think) takes out half of the LAPD in a flashy climax before going up in flames. Hyde supplies the film with the funniest moment when a struggling actor looking for love suggests he’s not gay. Her response: “Give yourself time. Ambition can work miracles.” A strange, totally illogical, completely enjoyable B-movie. B–
ZOMBIE 3 (1988) (AKA: Zombi 3) A commando squad on leave is forced to fight the never-ending battle with the walking dead, which have invaded a small town in the Philippines. The soldiers include the typical Americanized idiots who, as expected, run into a group of Americanized idiot tourists who exist solely to get eaten and/or turned into zombies. Even animals aren’t immune to the zombie plague as an infected flock of birds crashes into a bus, swarming and pecking the commuters. Zombie 3 isn’t so much a sequel to Lucio Fulci’s 1979 Zombie (released in Europe as Zombi 2) but a remake—the zombies here are the result of a failed government experiment called Death One, as opposed to Caribbean voodoo in the earlier movie. The zombies range from slow-walking stiffs to hyper-animated ghouls—some even sprint towards their victims with weapons, just like in Nightmare City (1980). A lack of financial support is evident in the film’s murky photography and chintzy acting. The makeup is inconsistent but bloody, with some of the contaminants oozing green pus instead of gore. Fulci himself directed the majority of Zombie 3 but left the production due to collaborative differences and was replaced by Bruno Mattei. (Mattei’s secondhand experience in the genre was proven with his Dawn of the Dead rip-off, Hell of the Living Dead.) Splashes of creativity (including a zombie birth scene!) occasionally lift Zombie 3 out of the doldrums of a subgenre past its prime. This was apparently successful enough to spawn two more unauthorized sequels. C
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