The Carrier (1988)

We couldn't do a month on "how did that movie get made" movies without talking about The Carrier. But we also couldn't do the subject as much justice as the person who introduced this gem to us, so we asked Chris Grap to write up a love letter to this movie. He didn't let us down...
The Carrier is a precious gift that should be shared with as many people as possible. I mean this with all sincerity: it is the best bad movie I have ever seen. It's a lovingly-crafted beautiful oddity featuring an insane (and quickly escalating) social study that masquerades as a horror movie.

I don't want to spoil anything for you, I don't want to rob you of that same joy of discovery that comes from seeing this damn thing with nothing to go off of other than the box art, but I have to! Why would you bother to scour the internets to track this sumbitch down solely based on the word of some rando in Minnesota? I lack credibility dear reader, but if you see this movie, one of two things will happen: I will have forever earned your trust, or you will out yourself as a bozo who hates fun.

Ready? Here we go. (Spoilers all over the fucking place):

The Carrier is about the people of Sleepy Rock (a small, highly religious and somewhat isolated Midwestern town) and a young outcast named Jake who lives alone in a shack. The righteous citizens of Sleepy Rock are wary of Jake because they blame him for the death of his parents. Oh! And there's a mysterious black beast roaming the countryside. Is that important? I don't know because it's a throw away line in a conversation between townsfolk, but to my young ears it seemed like it could be worth more attention than it's given. (There's also a line about about all the feral cats roaming the town. Whatevs.) But while the black beast isn't trying to impress anyone, it does attack Jake the very night it's mentioned in town. The mildly injured Jake somehow, sorta defeats the black beast because it lumbers away and disintegrates. This is not the weirdest thing in the movie.

You see, Jake was infected by the black beast and has now become...THE CARRIER! Anything he touches becomes infected and if anyone but the carrier touches an object he's infected, they melt. Slowly and horribly. As the yokels start to figure things out, they get smarter. Realizing they can no longer go around touching whatever they please and that they need a way to identify when something has been infected, they start rounding up all the feral cats so they can touch all the objects in town with a cat. If the cat melts? They mark the infected thing with flimsy colored tape. If the cat doesn't melt then that object is home free! Until that thing eventually becomes infected... This is also not the weirdest thing in the movie.

The cats that were recently regarded as a nuisance have now become a commodity. Those who have cats, have power because they can identify more infected things. (I think.) This inevitably creates a divide among the town folks. (I should also mention that by this point every one has wrapped themselves in garbage bags, plastic sheeting, chains, and paranoia. It looks like a town of Road Warrior cosplayers having a shitty family reunion.) Naturally this all culminates in an epic battle between those with cats, and those without. It also results in many, many cries of: Cats?! Or death?! This is still not the weirdest thing in the movie.

But, this is where I'm going to leave you hanging. Believe me, you need to find this and watch this movie right now. I'm sure we'll screen it again someday, but until then your best bet is to find a copy of the sweet DVD that Code Red released. You might have to wrap yourself in trash bags and hunt for it, but it'll be worth it.

FUN FACTS!:

The director of photography was Peter Deming (Evil Dead 2, Austin Powers, The Cabin in the Woods). The score was composed by Joseph LoDuca (Army of Darkness, Xena, Brotherhood of the Wolf). Bruce Campbell was a sound fx recordist and provided the scream of the beast. This is sadly the only film directed and written by Nathan J. White. (And Nathan, buddy? If you're reading this let's kickstart a sequel. I'm so damn serious about this. We need to revisit the town of Sleepy Rock. Please?...)

Double Feature: Dying Day and Dark Night

These are the alternate versions of Raiders of the Living Dead, surprisingly the original version makes the most sense, but it was too short to be releasable as a feature, so International International Picture decided to fix that...

Back story: In the 70s, Independent International Picture was notorious for buying “unreleasable” films for cheap, reworking them and then releasing them for a tidy profit. Studio head Same Sherman was pretty confident that with enough work, any picture could be flipped using this method. But when he bought Dying Day from director Brett Piper for a cool $25,000 (at a $7,500 profit to Piper) Sherman might have bit off more than he could chew. Apparently unaware his purchase was only an hour long, he took on reworking it himself. He hired the original cast to shoot additional footage and added some plot points, and edited it into something he called Dark Night. Upon viewing Dark Night, Sam's business partner dubbed this version better, though still not good enough. So they re-re-hired the cast, beefed up the plot up some more, added even more characters, and made Raiders of the Living Dead.



Dying Day:

This is the original incarnation of all these movies and the thing it has going for it over the others is that it mostly makes sense from beginning to end.

The plot unfolds something like this: Morgan's ancestor brought a curse upon his blood line a hundred years ago and he's being hunted by zombies because of it. As the last of the blood line he and his new girlfriend won't be off the hook as mercifully as his ancestors...

How it relates to Raiders of the Living Dead: The reporter (Morgan) and the girlfriend are mostly the same in both pictures. Many scenes from Raiders come from this version, but those scenes in Raiders don't make much sense.

Reasons to watch: It's fun and ridiculous enough (and the plot has a friggin' through line). It's also interesting to see the cannibalized footage being used with it's original intent.

Reasons not to watch: Much of Raiders of the Living Dead is taken from this version so if you've just watched one, give it some time before you watch the other.

Related movies: Raiders of the Living Dead (third incarnation) and Dark Night (second incarnation).



Dark Night:

This version has almost nothing going for it. They give an asinine amount of screen time to things like walking around a prison, driving to a prison, holding on the sign outside of a prison...

The plot unfolds something like this: This one also has no plot [LINK]. Basically the movie starts with a man raising a zombie from a grave and then cuts to two men at a desk reading a letter aloud. Then it cuts to our reporter wandering around NYC where he stumbles into the doorstep of a kindly doctor [Dr Grandpa from Raiders]. The reporter starts to tell the doctor his sad story and we are flashed back to when the reporter's photographer was killed by a zombie, when he was picked up by a local woman, and when he called the doctor even though I was certain this was a flash back.

How this version relates to the others: Turns out in this version Dr Grandpa is the father of the truck hijacker from Raiders (though the hijacking scene is not in this version) and after his son is electrocuted, he raises him from the dead. The rest of this one plays out more or less like the other two, but without the laser gun building grandson or family curse.

What the filmmakers were thinking: You know that movie we just bought that has a story that makes sense and has action most of the way through? I know how we can fix it...

Hard to watch on many levels: I don't really recommend watching this version, it's a working print and there's not sound most of the time.

Raiders of the Living Dead

Originally purchased as a 60 min feature called Dying Day by Independent International Pictures and re-worked twice over, this movie was a big convoluted mess.

Back story: In the 70s, Independent International Picture was notorious for buying “unreleasable” films for cheap, reworking them and then releasing them for a tidy profit. Studio head Same Sherman was pretty confident that with enough work, any picture could be flipped using this method. But when he bought Dying Day from director Brett Piper for a cool $25,000 (at a $7,500 profit to Piper) Sherman might have bit off more than he could chew. Apparently unaware his purchase was only an hour long, he took on reworking it himself. He hired the original cast to shoot additional footage and added some plot points, and edited it into something he called Dark Night. Upon viewing Dark Night, Sam's business partner dubbed this version better, though still not good enough. So they re-re-hired the cast, beefed up the plot up some more, added even more characters, and made Raiders of the Living Dead.

The plot unfolds something like this: Ok, who are we kidding, there's no plot.

The short version: Stuff happens, most stuff isn't resolved, some stuff is only mentioned once, and a kid makes a pair of laser guns out of a laserdisc player.

The Heist: This movie opens with a hijacking of a tanker truck (in which there is almost no dialogue) and transitions into a hostage situation. The hostage taker is electrocuted twice (once intentionally and once by accident) and the second jolt kills him. That's the last time any of that is mentioned in this movie.

The Reporter and His Photographer: A man who sounds like he's a Reporter driving with a woman who seems to be his photographer, are driving to a destination he insists will make a big story. When they arrive they sneak around the outside of a building, are attacked by Zombies, and the photographer is killed. That is the last she is mentioned in this movie.

The Kid and His Grandpa: Grandpa is upset because the repair store wants $175 bucks to fix his busted laserdisc player ($175 bucks is also what we're supposed to believe he paid for the player in the first place). His 10 year old Grandson says he can fix it so Grandpa hands it over, and soon it will soon be a pair of laser guns.

How some of those things come together: After the zombie attack, the Reporter meets a Local Woman who lives “outside of town”. She feeds him and gives him a ride “into town”. While “in town” the Reporter meets Grandpa, who's also a doctor. The Reporter tells Dr Grandpa about the zombies and Dr Grandpa offers help, but also suggests that the Reporter leave town. There's a zombie attack somewhere that's totally unconnected from the plot. The Local Woman and the Reporter meet up again and call Dr Grandpa insisting that he not help them at the showdown with the zombie master. Dr Grandpa immediately recruits his laser gun welding Grandson (and some neighborhood kid) to help in the showdown with the zombie master anyway.

Looks like a wikipedia plot rundown right?: Well, the sad truth is there's no way to sum up this version concisely because all of those things happen independently of one another. (It's like if you had to write a summery of Coffee and Cigarettes. Sure you can say “it's a series of conversations between people over coffee and cigarettes” because there's a friggin' through line in that film!)

Questions we asked while the film was playing: Wait, there's zombies now? Why isn't there dialogue in this scene, aren't their mouths moving? Is that the same guy from before? Ok movie, just because you show us a bunch of stuff doesn't mean we will understand what it means! No seriously we see it, but WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Who's that guy –wait, now he's dead never mind. Didn't this movie start with a truck hijacking?

Yup, that's: Scott Schwartz (The Toy, A Christmas Story) and Zita Johann (The Mummy (1932)).

My alternate title for Raiders of the Living Dead: Zombies Show Up Out of Nowhere.

Related movies: Dying Day (original incarnation) and Dark Night (second incarnation).

Second Clue: September

Clue #2:

This movie features one of the most amazing fake bands on the planet.

Tape Freaks Presents: Mystery Movie!: Theatres at Mall of America, Thursday, Sept 17th at 7:30pm, only $5!

Time Guardian

This movie was an Australian movie and we had no idea! It was also terribly convoluted, but still managed to be pretty fun.

The plot unfolds something like this: In the future the only humans left on earth live in a city that travels through time and stands above ground on legs like a table, and has an “underground”, and flies– look that part is complicated. The important part is that they have all but abolished weapons. This leaves them open to attack by the cyborg people that were driven underground many years ago. In order to save their city the future humans must relocate to the Australian Outback circa 1990... Look they just do ok? But first they have to send ahead some scouts to be sure the cyborg people didn't get there first. Even though they're all on the same floating, standing city thing...

Other stuff that happens in this movie: Carrie Fischer leads the scouting party only to be injured 5 mins after landing and has to spend the rest of this film laying around encouraging the main protagonist’s love to flourish. Local cops also give EVERYONE a hard time.

Well that never comes up again: In the beginning of the “present day Australia” portion of this flick, there's a scene where a wind kicks up and freezes all the liquid. Everything from people's sodas to a cop's urine stream are flash frozen, and it never comes up again. The local aboriginal people know about the time-traveling city and anticipate that it's coming back, but once that knowledge is reveled, it doesn't come up again. Also the frozen urine cop gets sucked into a piece of the cyborg's sphere things [don't ask] after reaching into it and pulling out a gun. And that never comes up again...

Things to watch for: Carrie Fischer and the men in the main landing party all have vacuum-sealed chest plates that include graphic nipples. A geologist that never once does anything geology related. Carrie Fischer dying to protect a blossoming love, even though she really didn't have to die to save them...

This movie thinks it's Terminator: The main protagonist is very Kyle Reese-eques, he even fights cyborgs in a police station, and for some reason says the line “I'll be back”.

She's a geologist: Who knows a lot about cave paintings, earth movers, and is responsible for liquids flash freezing (according to the frozen-pee cop anyway).

Contamination

The director of this film has actually said “there is no contamination in this film what so ever” making this a confusing movie if you've picked it up based on the title. But that doesn't mean this film is anything less than amazing!

The plot unfolds something like this: A ship is discovered in the New York Harbor caring a cargo of coffee beans and dead crew people. The first cops on the scene will discover all the crew members have exploded from the inside. They'll also discover some strange glowing eggs, and after picking one up, will instantly discover what caused all the crew members to explode...

Strange...: Though the movie is called “Contamination” this is just a straight rip-off of Alien, which is better reflected in the the American title: Alien Contamination.

Things to watch for: For a small budget film, an impressive amount of humans (and alien eggs) explode on screen. There's some amazingly awkward romance. A gripping scene where one of our hero is locked in a room with a terrifying egg! An impressive monster revel that you half expected not to happen.

What the star thought upon seeing the film the first time: That movie had a bigger budget than I thought it did. (The actual budget was so low he was floored.)

This director also directed: Starcrash, which you might remember from the first Trailer Trash.

What we learned: You can make shoe string budget movies look great if you know what corners to cut.

Where can you watch it?: You can rent it digitally on Amazon. Or if you're into special features for movies like this, Arrow video has some great features on their Blu-Ray.

Check out the trailer:

First Clue: September

Clue #1: This month's movie falls under the category of “How did this get made?” movies.

Tape Freaks Presents: Mystery Movie! Theatres at Mall of America, Thursday, Sept 17th at 7:30pm, only $5!