Society

I'm not really keen at all on Yuzna films. They tend to lack in, well, everything. Plot, character development, style, script. Society, on the other hand, is almost a decent film. It's very cheesy and very 80's. The directing is lacklustre and the script is poor. But, the over all idea is quite good and fun at times, and the gore is decent. A decent remake of this film, with more humour, better actors and a better script would make for a much better film. At the moment it's very slow paced for what is essentially a teen horror film. it's certainly not on a par with 80's horror classics like The Lost Boys, or Amercian Werewolf in London, say. Society revolves around a teen (Billy Warlock) who begins to realise he doesn't fit in - quite literally. His adoptive family and most of the town take part is weird 'orgies' where all their bodies morph in to all kinds or weird shapes. They also morph into each other. The final 15 minutes or so does kind of make up for some of the more boring parts in Society - focusing entirely on one of these orgies as Warlock tries to save himself and his friends from being 'assimilated'. The end death, where Warlock literally pulls one of the characters inside out is an awesome moment and one of the great celluloid death scenes. Whether or not it justifies the rest of the film is debatable!

They made some movies with serious balls in the eighties, man. And this is one of them. The movie's basically a vicious, over-the-top satire of what I think many people are afraid is secretly going on with those at the top tiers of society: a covert culture of unimaginable depravity, perversity, exploitation, and soul-annihilating sociopathy. Kind of like Eyes Wide Shut. And that this Hell on earth going on behind the facade of these majestic mansions is, in some mysterious alchemical way, what keeps them on top. The plot is driven by this popular kid from an expensive Beverly Hills neighborhood who is obsessed with his fear that everyone in his life is not what they seem. And based on what we see, this actually looks like it's true: his family is wooden and distant, and all his "friends" appear to regard him with veiled contempt -- except the two whom his parents openly dislike, of course. After a series of events which gradually make his world seem more suspicious, it turns out that he was adopted into this family for the sole purpose of being a human sacrifice at one of their parties. After witnessing one of his friends basically getting turned into a tapestry of mangled flesh, and witnessing bizarre body mutations, he escapes with the help of his other friend -- which seems a bit unlikely, given how cunning and powerful that "Society" was portrayed as being. But I guess they needed to tack on a happy ending. But damn, though -- the movie symbolically taps into a LOT of effed-up things that one's innermost heart fears is going on in secret. Like his high school debate for class president. What appeared at first to be the unpopular nerd vs. the popular athlete was really a fixed game where both sides were completely controlled by the same force... Like how I feel about every presidential election. Or the fact that in the end, which one of his friends gets "sacrificed?" The relatively fat and unattractive one. It makes you think. Why do I just accept that as a movie cliché? Are we, on some level, just like the awful Society that frivolously ruins and desecrates whom they regard as "inferior"? Would we enjoy doing the same if we were born into such a high caste? Is this Society, at the end of the day, just the natural order of things? very disquieting. Another symbol that I think most only see the surface of are the surreal body mutations. In the end, the part where the protagonist witnesses his poor friend (who happens to be Jewish... not sure what that means) gets turned into a huge elastic abomination while getting fisted and eaten. It's not just weird, man, it MEANS something. It could be: -hallucinations brought on by the trauma of seeing your friend get murdered -and this is the scariest thing: it's simply the closest visual metaphor we can get for the unimaginably, appallingly sadistic thing they do to people as part of their ritual. I think it's something like eating their soul, not just raping someone but forcing your way into their deepest being and chewing it up like a damned wad of bubblegum before discarding it, leaving the person an utterly devastated wreck. That's some ballsy sh*t, man. And SCARY. There's like, more going on in the heavens and the earth than we know. Some genius said that once. I appreciate this movie for being the few that makes me feel that way.

source: Society

Society (1989) ** (out of 4) Bill Whitney (Billy Warlock) is a popular high school teenager who has two great parents, a wonderful sister and an all around great life. That's until one day he gets a warning from a friend who believes that there's something off about the society they're living in. SOCIETY comes from Brian Yuzna who was sitting in the director's chair for the first time after producing RE-ANIMATOR. This is a film that has a rather large cult following but I must admit that it didn't do much for me. It's weird but SOCIETY was one of those movies that I respected a lot more than I actually enjoyed it. I say this because the movie was certainly well-made and for the most part it was a lot different than what you were normally seeing out of horror movies in 1989. You can say that this was influenced by INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS as we've got a lead character who basically begins to realize that the normal life he's in isn't so normal anymore and the people around him aren't like him. The film has a very strange atmosphere and I give the director a lot of credit for building this up and really deliver a different type of movie. The first eight-minutes or so features very little gore but that all changes towards the end when we get some really bizarre and great looking effects. The orgy sequence is certainly the highlight of the picture and this includes several now notorious creations including the man down on all fours with a face coming out of his behind. Fans of Fangoria will probably remember this still as once you see it you're certainly not going to forget it. The performances are good for what they are and on a technical level the film is quite good. With that said, I just didn't find the movie entertaining enough to hold my attention throughout the running time. The social satire just didn't work for me and in the end I just didn't care too much for it.

I can say without equivocation this is surely the worst movie I have ever seen in a movie theatre. One of the defining lines from the movie goes like this "Who are you people. Are you aliens ?" "No, we're the Rich. And we've been sucking the backs off the poor for generations". (Wait for it, here's the kicker) - This is followed immediately by loud slurping sounds ! The person being questioned takes out some sort of straw and starts slurping the skin off some poor shmo ! Then the rich people turn into some sort of blobs. I should point out that prior to this the movie had a semblance of normality and that there was absolutely no inking that this sort of thing was going to happen. After that point in the movie we were the only remaining audience. However, out of a sense of morbid fascination I stayed 'til the end. When others ask me about the movie I find it difficult to describe it, but the above line of dialog is usually sufficient to encapsulate the movie.

This just did not work for me. It's like watching a somehow more obvious They Live, a more blatant The Thing, and less entertaining From Beyond. It's a mixed bag of not only other better movies but of tone. I don't much like when a movie gets gross but then adds in comical sound effects or one liners that don't fit the rest of the film. The film obviously knows how silly the ending gets but the build up to it isn't at all. Other then some corny dialogue and one liners, most of the film is treated pretty seriously. Which is why the goofy ending comes off wrong to me. It's unpleasant in all the ways you wouldn't want this to be. That is the most disappointing aspect. It goes pretty far but it also doesn't feel confident that it can pull off how far it goes. I also don't love this story. Somehow it feels both rushed and meandering. For the first hour it's just scene after scene of something weird happening and then that being covered up. That coupled with it rushing through these moments and you have a very boring/frustrating experience. There's so many scenes of the main character confronting people and then going somewhere else and doing it again. You never feel like he is learning or uncovering anything. Things just sort of happen until they do or don't anymore. There's also a fair amount of purposeless characters. His girlfriend who literally does nothing, or his friend who is just around when things happen so he can see things happen. Needless to say, it's weird, and not just in how crazy the ending is. The whole film has a vibe of cheapness and amateurish qualities. Which is why it's weird. Most of the makeup and prosthetics don't hold up at all, the editing is jarring/distracting, most of the performances are unconvincing until the ending, and the tone is just a jumbled mess. I didn't hate the movie but it takes a lot of things that I like and twists them a bit too far.

This dreadful, sick, evil, pile of junk, revealed in the last stomach churning 30 or so minutes, how the filthy rich see the rest of us in the lower classes. It showed that the boy in the family did not fit into his own families world, that he knew nothing about. And it showed that even the rich are expendable in their own world. I watched the film to the end, wondering how it possible could end, I was hoping for a hole to appear from the floor, and that these awful people would be sucked into hell, but it didn't happen, their son told them what he thought of them, and he walked out the door. Suffice to say that the "Society" are the soulless filthy rich, who enjoy treating the lower classes with utter contempt, something like the Nazis treated the Jews. I cannot possibly give this mess of a film more than 1 star, but in highlighting how the soulless rich feel about the lower classes, I give this film a million stars. The top 10 per cent I believe, hold the mass of wealth, while the rest of us minions take a great delight in a tax cut now and again, thinking we are hoping to join this bunch of rabble we continually pay homage to in our continued pursuit of wealth. The rich are laughing all the way to the bank, and to the devil.

17 year-old Billy Whitney feels alienated in his upper-class Beverly Hills home.He hears a tape that seems to indicate that his entire family are having secret orgies.People appear dead one moment but are alive the next and then Billy's girlfriend's body appears to twist into abnormal positions.His parents insist Billy is imagining everything and try to commit him to an institution.Billy slowly discovers that his parents and the people around him belong to a different breed of people,a secret inbred Society who are capable of melding and shifting their bodies."Society" is one hell of a bizarre film.The conclusion scenes with gruesome and unsettling special effects by Screaming Mad George are truly startling and gooey.There is also some nudity and sex scenes.Check out this weird and surreal splatter flick.

'Society' is one of those films I wish I'd rather not have seen. Nothing about this film made any sense. The script is weird for the sake of being weird. The acting wasn't good at all and the premise had me raising an eyebrow or two. I firmly believe the film was a result of director Brian Yuzna's fantasy, or the fantasy of writers Ricky Fry and Woody Keith. The film could also have been a vessel for Brian Yuzna to display the cringe worthy visual effects, and I mean cringe worthy in a good way - the fact that the visuals are really creepy and good. Apart from the visuals, nothing about this horrid film interested me in the least. They provide no explanation whatsoever for what happens, confirming my suspicions of the film being a visualization of a fantasy. There really is no point to this film. The best part of the film, was when the end credits rolled...Ugh! Would I watch it again? NO!

This was a disjointed mess, filled with acting that was terrible. I am not talking terrible as in The Room, where they know they are terrible. I think this group of thespians actually felt they were great actors. I get that this was a giant metaphor about how the rich eat the poor, but it was just terrible. And like all terrible things, say like a train wreck, no matter how badly I wanted to stop watching I just had to see this through to the bitter end.... Do yourself a favor, skip this.