Where the hell is there a gorilla in the movie? We don’t need a gorilla!

October 15, 2014 1:35 PM

This is a tale nobody wanted to be told. It’s a cautionary tale about an obscure 1980s horror movie cobbled together from work by two separate groups of filmmakers working on the same set with two totally different casts. There’s also a savage businessman, crooked real-estate dealings, betrayal, madness, death, ex-Green Berets, ex-porn stars, and one of the founding fathers of the United States. - The Dissolve on "Spookies"
posted by The Whelk (17 comments total)

Trailer (also embedded in the article), and the entire movie.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:57 PM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Oh my god, I love stories like this. Just an amazing thing that any low-budget movies get made, and I'd love it if every one of them had a "Making Of..." documentary attached.
posted by xingcat at 2:09 PM on October 15, 2014

I know right! I just watched House (1986) and it seems like halfway through they decided it really should be Laurel And Hardy Meet Poltergeist...at no point is it scary, it is kind of goofy dumb fun and has some clever practical effects and "dude grosss" obviously fake rubber monsters if you're into that kind of thing and I'd to know how that happened.
posted by The Whelk at 2:21 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Jesus, I've been pretty dedicated to projects, but I just cannot imagine continuing to shoot a movie when your baby has died on set.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 2:22 PM on October 15, 2014 [4 favorites]

We weren’t in our trailers sipping Dom Perignon.

That's all very sad actually. Joseph reminds me of all the bad bosses in all the Asks about toxic workplaces.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 2:26 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Joseph reminds me of all the bad bosses in all the Asks about toxic workplaces.

Do you mean Joseph (the second director who came in) or Lee (the dude who financed the whole thing and added the farting)?
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:31 PM on October 15, 2014

Second director who came in and seems to be on a trajectory of failing upwards. Various radio and self-helper jobs that can be done by talking a good game. (They asked me if I was influenced by Nosferatu and since I don't know anything about horror movies (except the name of classics that I discussed back then and also being at Troma) I just lied and said yes.)

Constantly paints herself as a victim and distances herself.

Or maybe I attributed all the quotes by "Joseph" to one person....
posted by Lesser Shrew at 3:12 PM on October 15, 2014

Where the hell is there a gorilla in the movie?

It was in the scene where people were passing a basketball back and forth.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:38 PM on October 15, 2014 [13 favorites]

Why did no one want to be told this story?
posted by Hildegarde at 3:48 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

I vaguely recall a mid-80s horror film about a carnival funhouse and some dopey boombox-toting character always talking about his tunes. This wasn't it.
posted by dr_dank at 4:05 PM on October 15, 2014

The spider-thing is pretty cool.
posted by Artw at 4:08 PM on October 15, 2014

dr_dank: "I vaguely recall a mid-80s horror film about a carnival funhouse and some dopey boombox-toting character always talking about his tunes. This wasn't it."

You're probably thinking of Ghoulies 2.
posted by RobotHero at 4:42 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

This sounds like something that Penny and Wil Wheaton would star in together...or maybe they'd just be in the sequel.
posted by trackofalljades at 8:52 PM on October 15, 2014

When I was a young'un out in the sticks there was no cable television and all video stores were weird, hole in the wall outfits ran by townie entrepreneurs. My bored and restless teenaged boy pals and I rapidly exhausted the backlog of decent films and the trickle of new releases was inadequate to our overabundance of free time (too much free time, ah youth!) so we moved on to Bad Movies. Roller Blade. Deathstalker. Class of Nuke 'Em High. Phantasm II. I remember the box art of Spookies vividly but it seems to have been one of them we deemed too bad even for us.
posted by nanojath at 10:05 PM on October 15, 2014

I really have a lot of work to do but I just spent about an hour down the Creepies rabbit hole. Great article. I thought I was pretty well-versed with crappy 80s movies, but hadn't even heard of this one.
posted by zardoz at 11:59 PM on October 15, 2014

As a tween I was always morbidly fascinated by the horror section at the video rental store, and although I never watched it I remember the Spookies cover art very well. By the time I was old enough to rent R-rated horror films it only took a couple to realize that most of them don't even come close to delivering on the terrors promised by their lurid boxes, but whenever I see them I still feel that morbid fascination.
posted by usonian at 9:38 AM on October 16, 2014

I'm just amazed that Michael Lee was able to disappear. It probably helps that he has a common name but I find it hard to believe that he isn't Facebook friends with at least one person from the cast or crew.
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 3:35 PM on October 16, 2014