Title: Shocker (1989)
Rated: R
Written and directed by: Wes Craven
Starring: Peter Berg as Jonathan Parker
Mitch Pileggi as Horace Pinker
Camille Cooper as Alison
By Shelley Stillo
Pre-screening memories: If this site has taught me anything, it is that I witnessed far too many age-inappropriate movies as a child. I bore witness to more acts of violence, mayhem and destruction before I was even able to remove the training wheels from my bike.
I will leave the analysis of its effects for a therapist to deal with, but all that viewing has instilled in me a life-long admiration of the horror genre. And of all the beasts and boogeymen that made it into my living room television set, Wes Craven was the one I connected with most frequently.
There was something more under the surface of Craven’s brand of horror, commenting on our culture, or state of society. And even though my brain was barely beyond what was on the Saturday morning cartoon showcase, it still seemed to pick up the impulses of Craven’s transmitted messages.
Shocker was a film I discovered on the shelves of my local video store, after A Nightmare on Elm Streethad made its permanent mark on my mind. I would search for anything with his name affixed to it, and I eagerly grabbed it and brought it home.
It is a film that today divides its audiences, between those who ridicule its over-the-top scenario, its dime-store special effects, and its lapses in logic, and those who enjoyed it as a wild ride laced with a commentary on a television-obsessed society. I fell into the latter category, realizing that, despite its limitations, Craven still had more on its mind than just the standard slash-and-scream horror.
New memories: Time may not have been kind to its already-limited special effects budget, and there are certainly more than one moments that illicit an eye roll, but I still find myself connecting with the film’s message and its gritty charms.
Sure, Horace Pinker will never be synonymous with Freddie Kreuger, but he did, and still does, make an indelible mark on this young horror fan.
Download Natsukashi’s ‘Shocker’ podcast with star Camille Cooper here
Or, plug in to our player on this very site below:
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Our featured guest: Camille Cooper
Camille Cooper has worked professionally in film and television for a number of years, starring in five films, including Meet the Applegates and Like Father, Like Son, and television series including General Hospital and Knots Landing. She has been featured in numerous commercials and print ads (for Coke, Milky Way and Campbell’s Soup, among others). She has been interviewed and photographed for such publications as Premiere Interview, Egg, and The New York Times, and has appeared on the cover of Working Mother. Recently she was a guest on a little program called The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Cooper quit the biz more than a decade ago and dedicated herself to speaking out about the effect of media on young women and body image
Since her show business retirement, Cooper has co-chaired the Committee for the Empowerment of Young Women since 1994, and has lectured across the country, educating and encouraging young women to question what they see, to define themselves by their abilities and their dreams, and to take action to promote positive change.
She was gracious enough to share her memories of working with Wes Craven and the Shocker set, and we thank for for her humor and recollections of the film.
Pre-screening memories: I think Gung Ho might be one of the most poorly chosen titles for a movie ever. Whenever I ask one of my friends about it, no one knows what the hell I’m talking about. Yet, when I start describing the plot and listing off the stars, you can see the light slowly go on as they remember it piece by piece no thanks to the title.
New memories: I’d like to say I was compelled to revisit Gung Ho because the scope of the current collapse of the United States auto industry weighs heavily on the collective consciousness of Americans everywhere and this movie provides a prescient yet humorous look into our current situation nearly 25 years previous chronicling the plight of America’s eroding manufacturing base and de-unionization. I’d sure like to say that.
I enjoyed Gung Ho a great deal when I re-watched it recently. The movie hits all the right notes in capturing small-town, American working class psychology. The movie is loaded with familiar faces from the 80s in George Wendt, John Turturro, Mimi Rogers, and Michael Keaton who was a very hot property at the time. Wendt and Keaton in particular give excellent performances. Wendt is your typical overweight, obnoxious, bloviating meathead whom you hated in high school, and were you to see him again now, would hate even more. Keaton plays the guy who was popular in high school and tries to coast on that type of easy charm the rest of his life.
Rodney started his career on stage in San Francisco as a founder of the Asian American Theater Company, the first of its kind in the area. While in theater, he earned multiple awards as an actor, designer and director of his many performances.
When I was a kid, I would lie down to sleep and hear that pulsing in my ear..
James Woods stealing a smoke on the expressway. That stupid little pigeon pecking away on the ankle of a man walking a ledge. Image after image I began to remember why I was so drawn to this movie as a kid.
Our guest: Editor Scott Conrad
Scott has some great encounters with writer Stephen King and producer Dino De Laurentiis that he shares with us, as well as many fond memories of working with the cast on the set of the film, and we thank him for letting us look into Cat’s Eye with him.
Pre-screening memories: Every kid has a list of films they can recall that were placed near the top of their parents blacklist.
Post-screening memories:I cannot express how wildly off the mark not only my parents were, but the entire marketing department at 20th Century Fox. For it was not the Porky’s-esque romp in raunch that it was purported to be, but possessed a tenderness uncommon for films of the era. Even today, its Wikipedia entry unfairly classifies this as a “teen comedy,” noted for a “full frontal” by one of its female stars.
Doug McKeon: Breaking into show business at an early age, McKeon had worked with the a number of industry legends before he was even old enough to graduate high school.
Catherine Mary Stewart: If there was a cult-classic poster girl for the 80s, if Stewart did not have the crown, she was certainly in the running, starring in such beloved films as The Apple, The Last Starfighter, Night of the Comet, Dudes and Weekend at Bernies.
Former memories: One of the benefits of being involved with Natsukashi is the rediscovery of a film that lingered in memory as a child very distinctly, but becomes something else entirely when seen through the eyes of an adult. The Dark Crystalwas such an experience, a movie that was best recalled as a source of fear when I was a child (those creepy Skeksis still give me the wiggins). 
As a young boy, I was terrified of the beaked Skeksis, the Garthim, creatures existing somewhere on the evolutionary ladder between a beetle and a crab, and the horrible fates of the Podlings as their life essence is drained for the use of the warped Skeksis civilization. These are the perceptions of a child, one who has grown accustomed to fears, now, but was rattled by these images when first exposed to them. 
New memories: As a grown-up, what I found upon a return to the world of The Dark Crystal was something I not only didn’t remember clearly, but was amazed by: the beauty of this film. In a world dominated by CG imagery, The Dark Crystal is a deep and satisfyingly real movie experience, and I was reminded of how a movie could create such an authentic experience while wrapping itself in imagery that is decidedly authentic while remaining imaginative and unique. 
Dave has had the kind of career that most sci-fi/fantasy geeks dream would sever an appendage for. Learning a craft of on-screen puppetry under the caring eye of Jim Henson, starting your career by bringing Yoda to life. Working with Roger Rabbit, Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors, Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, as well as the much-anticipated Spike Jonze adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, Dave’s work reads like a laundry list of movie lovers’ desert island features.
Dave is living the dream, quite literally, as it was his desire as a young child to pull the strings as a puppeteer. The Dark Crystal was one of his earliest gigs (after assisting in a couple of small films called The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) and, as the first Brit to do so, he perfected his craft in the house that Muppets built, the Jim Henson Company.
Pre-screeening memories: Rockula doesn’t exactly fit in neatly with the other movies I’ve covered for Natsukashi – they all represented formative experiences in my developing love for film, while I first saw Rockula when I was already out of my teens.
The strange part about the movie is that, living in Canada, where the film was apparently never released, I’d never heard of it when it just sort of turned up one day. My writing partner and I had just started working together, and we had a habit of renting a few odd movies and brainstorming as we watched them. One time he came over announcing that he’d found my “favorite film that I’d never seen.” Since that’s essentially a challenge, we watched the film immediately, and I discovered that he was completely right. It wasn’t just that the movie was delightfully absurd, or the fact that I’m always impressed by original screen musicals, what captivated me most about the film was how confident it was. Almost as if the film had no idea how crazy it was. The premise is so odd that it’s nearly impossible to imagine it being presented without constant winks and nods at the audience, but there aren’t any to be found.
New memories with recent screening – I’d go so far as to state that every bad thing the internet has given the world has been equally weighed, if not outbalanced, by the boon that is Youtube. Essentially operating as an internet nostalgia repository, I can’t count the number of childhood memories it’s managed to refresh (although, to this day, it fails to offer the theme song from Captain Redbeard)
Rockula, on the other hand, succeeds at everything it sets out to do. Not only is it a wonderfully fun vampire romantic comedy, but in the part I’d completely forgotten, the songs are just great. They all fit the period and tone of the film perfectly, and are hummable in their own right. I can’t remember the last time I wanted a soundtrack this badly, but one was never released. Luckily there’s the internet, where the songs can be found in their film versions, but it’s a poor substitute for a studio soundtrack.
Luca
By 
I wanted to be like Buffy, a strong female saving all the men from vampires. Of course, my skill and coordination at the time had other ideas, but I was still a little sad when I never got to try to protect my school from the undead. Oh well. Other than that, I didn’t remember much else from the movie.
New memories: After watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer again, it was somewhat different from what I remembered as a little kid. So it was not nearly as full of action as I thought it was; however, it was a lot more focused on empowering women that I’d ever realized. For instance, there’s a part where a guy grabs Buffy’s butt in the hallway at school and she totally takes him to the floor and tells him to not ever do that again. He was shaking in his awful 90’s sweater. How many times has this happened in a movie and the woman wasn’t able to do anything about it? There were a lot of little things like that that I really enjoyed this time around. 
Hank Carlson: Hank was the man who literally added bite to all the background characters in Buffy, as we was responsible for vamp-ing up the cast at a lightning speed. It is a skill he has honed over the years in various independent films, such as 
My cousins introduced me to a lot of great movies. A few years older than my sister and me, they would come babysit and bring West Side Story, or Adventures in Babysitting. They took me to the movies to see The Witches (which terrified me and I resented them for it for a long time). And one special Sunday long ago, they introduced me to Mary Martin’s Peter Pan. 
art of that might be the record we had with some of the songs on it. My parents were no lovers of music, so we owned a whole three records that my sister and I played to shreds. One was the Brigham Young University choir doing their renditions of musical hits. And both Tiger Lily songs were on there. I’m sure we coordinated dances…because we always coordinated dances. And even on this rewatching of the film, I remembered all the words. Ugga-wugga-wig-wam. Racist. So racist. So fun.
s a theatre producer, Mr. Gaynes’ Off-Broadway productions include the current hit Danny and Sylvia: The Danny Kaye Musical, as well as the recent hit plays 
It was Cujo and I picked it up from around the house after my mother had finished reading it. I was intrigued by the cover: a snarling snout with teeth bared emerging from a dull beige background. I was nine, I was terrified, and I loved every minute of it. In these post-PMRC days, when parental warnings air even before shows on the Family Channel, some Natsukashi-readers might be horrified by the idea of an elementary school student reading Stephen King novels cover to cover, one after the other (or, given that you’re a fan of this site, maybe you aren’t!).
Some of my earliest cinematic memories are thanks to King as well. Despite the appellation of the label “misogynist” to the horror genre, King often wrote about strong female characters a young woman, especially one who didn’t quite “fit in” could identify with. There was the intensely sad, yet satisfying, prom scene in Carrie, there was little Drew Barrymore, just about my own age at the time, in Firestarter. Amidst this mini-King storm of my childhood was Christine, a novel and a film in which the strong female character is imagined with a hemi-sized twist: “she” is a car, and one hell of a car. I really don’t remember the particulars of my first viewing of Christine. It was just a part of my “King phase,” and the details have blurred together with all the other King films I saw around the same time. I wouldn’t be surprised if, at that age, I preferred Maximum Overdrive to Christine: the evil car in that film was almost cartoon-like, which I am sure would appeal to children more than the Detroit muscle car beauty of Christine. Besides, I was going through a bit of an Emilio Estevez phase back then as well, so I am sure his presence in Maximum Overdrive appealed to me on a completely different level.
New memories: In some ways, Christine is the male version of Carrie. The nerdy, effeminate, and consistently bullied Arnie (Stuart Gordon) undergoes a transformation as a result of his relationship with Christine that allows him to become the coolest guy in school, to get the girl, and to avenge his enemies, but all of this comes at a tremendous cost. Christine is a possessive lover, and she makes it difficult for Arnie to take full advantage of his new-found popularity by killing anyone who garners even the slightest of Arnie‘s time and affection. 
In addition to the complex gender issues in the film, the other thing I will take away from my recent viewing of Christine is how beautifully made it is. Christine is a exquisite car, she is the kind of car any exploitation film fan dreams about at night (eat your heart out, Quentin Tarantino), and she is photographed beautifully throughout the film. The camera angles early in the film render familiar scenes, of high school hallways and family living rooms, uncomfortable and hint at the horror to come, suggesting to viewers that terror is always lurking at the edges of the familiar. One scene in particular, of Christine, engulfed in flames, running down one of Arnie‘s tormentors, is one of the most beautiful sequences of film I’ve seen in a long time. And I couldn’t help but wonder, as I watched this moment, if it was the inspiration for Radiohead’s ethereal “
(Ed. note: I was extremely happy to re-view this, as the first car I ever owned had an appearance in the film, briefly. It was a canary yellow 1975 Honda Civic with a pull choke. And yes, she had a name: Charo, for she shook when she got really excited.)
Our featured guest: Alexandra Paul
Pre-screening memories: 
Our featured guest: Charlotte Stewart
