Society

Dir: Brian Yuzna

1989

*****

Brian Yuzna's 1989 film Society is one of the most underrated and overlooked horrors of all time. The late 80s and early 90s spawned many a great horror movie, directors like Brian Yuzna, Frank Henenlotter, Peter Jackson and Stuart Gordon at the forefront, making some of the most absurd, colourful, gory and inventive films of the era. Society has the perfect balance of horror, suspense, humour and gore but it's also quite intelligent. Based on society's ideological class system and the idea of the rich being a desirable but impenetrable group, Society questions capitalism in the middle of the yuppie era. It's actually more of a grotesque satire than a pure horror film, very much in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft who is a huge inspiration to Yuzna's work. The general idea is that the rich feed off the poor and stick together, quite literally thanks to the amazing effects by horror legend Screaming Mad George (Big Trouble in Little China, Predator, A Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors). Bill Whitney (Baywatch’s Billy Warlock) seems to have it all. His family is wealthy and he lives in a mansion in Beverly Hills, California. He's popular at his high school, looks to be a shoo-in for class president, has a cute cheerleader girlfriend and owns a new Jeep Wrangler (a universal 80s dream). Despite this, he tells his therapist that he does not trust or fit in with his high-society family. When his sister's ex-boyfriend Blanchard gives him a surreptitiously recorded tape of what sounds like his family engaged in a vile, murderous orgy, Bill begins to suspect that his feelings are justified. Bill gives the tape to his therapist Dr. Cleveland to listen to. When he comes back for his appointment, Dr. Cleveland plays the tape back for Bill. The audio has now changed and now merely contains the sounds of his sister Jenny enjoying her coming out party. Bill insists that what he'd heard before was real and calls Blanchard to get another copy. When he arrives at their meeting place, Bill discovers an ambulance and police officers gathered around Blanchard's crashed van. A body is placed into the back of the ambulance, but Bill is prevented from seeing its face. Bill attends a party hosted by his upper-class classmate Ferguson. There, Ferguson lasciviously confirms that the first audio tape Bill listened to - with the sounds of an orgy on it - was the real tape. Angry and confused, he leaves the party with Clarissa, a beautiful girl he'd been admiring. They have sex at her house but something doesn’t seem right. Bill meets Clarissa's bizarre mother who seems to want to eat his hair. Bill returns home the next day and confronts his parents and sister, who are all in the master bedroom dressed in lingerie. At Blanchard's funeral, Bill and his friend Milo discover that Blanchard's corpse either needed a lot of reconstructive work for display, or is not real. Bill is approached by Martin Petrie, his rival for the high school presidency, who says he must speak with Bill and agrees to a secret meeting. Bill discovers Petrie with his throat cut. He is spied on, and sees someone race off through the woods then runs off to get the police. When he returns with the cops, the car and the body are missing, with a different car in their place. The next day at school, Petrie shows up, alive and well. When Bill arrives at home, he confronts his family again, but with Dr. Cleveland's help, they drug Bill. As Milo secretly trails him, Bill is taken to a hospital. Bill awakens in a hospital bed and thinks he hears Blanchard crying out, but discovers that nothing is there. He leaves the hospital and finds his Jeep waiting for him. Milo tries to warn him, but he drives back to his house. Back home again, Bill finds a large, formal party. He is snared by the neck and Dr. Cleveland reveals all of the secrets he has been searching for. He is not really related to his family after all. In fact, his family and their high-society friends are actually a different species from Bill. To demonstrate, they bring in a still-living Blanchard. The wealthy party guests strip to their underwear and begin "shunting". The rich literally feed on the poor, physically deforming and melding with each other as they suck the nutrients out of Blanchard's body. Their intention is to do the same to Bill, but after escaping them and running about the house - seeing his family melding with each other as well (including his father switching his own head for his butt) - Bill manages to goad Ferguson into a fight. As the "aliens" cheer Ferguson on, Bill is subdued, but in a surprise attack, Bill manages to reach inside the pliable Ferguson and pull his head out through his buttocks, turning him inside-out. With the help of Milo and Clarissa - who is also of the alternate species but has fallen in love with Bill - he escapes, as one of the men at the party tells another he may have an "opening in Washington". As well as a class satire, it's a swipe at 80s teen films in general. Our leading man Bill is a popular high-school student, dates the lead cheerleader and drives a Jeep Wrangler. He's the epitome of what every kid wanted to be in the 1980s and yet he's troubled. When he finally discovers the despicable truth of everything it's like Yuzna has just punched the Breakfast Club in the face. After having several of his productions fail for lack of finding a director, Yuzna decided to move into directing himself. As producer of Re-Animator, he held the rights to a sequel and knew he could find financing. He used this as leverage for a two-picture deal, the first of which turned into Society. Yuzna said that he wanted the safety of having two pictures to establish himself as a successful director. Society's script appealed to Yuzna partly because it was thematically similar to a failed project he had begun with Dan O'Bannon. Yuzna altered the script from a traditional slasher film climax about a religious cult to the surrealistic aliens. The production company introduced him to Screaming Mad George, who they knew to also be interested in surreal gore. For the film's most surreal and gory sequence, the "shunting," Yuzna based it on his nightmares. The sequence was further inspired by Salvador Dali’s The Great Masturbator. It was way ahead of its time, indeed, it was a further three years until it was allowed to be released in the US after finding success in Europe. I often look at ‘high society’ today and wonder whether Yuzna was actually on to something and that maybe, just maybe, his 1989 horror classic could be fact, rather than fiction.