ZC Rating 2 of 7: Fair
It was a late winter night for us in the cinematorium. Zimba stretched out on the Empire scroll sofa, already snoring away, while I prepared drinks for myself and Zombos.
"Make mine a double-espresso with lots of foam," said Zombos. He stretched out his long legs and slumped in the Chesterfield club chair. "And don't forget the popcorn."
I loaded up the skull o'popcorn and brought the drinks over.I prefer to sit in the traditional theater seats that take up the first half of the cinematorium. Zombos rescued them from the Manhattan 44th Street theater just before its demolition in 1945 to make room for the New York Times newspaper headquarters expansion. I dimmed the lights, took a sip from my frothy mocha cappuccino, and started the film.
Our film this evening, The Boneyard, is a creepy but uneven mix from director and writer James Cummins. While there are watchable elements to the script, the inclusion of drawn-out scenes, comical monster puppets, and lackluster acting by the main character get in the way of any good scares. The idea is good: a burned-out and overweight psychic investigator, Alley (Deborah Rose), takes on child-ghouls that also eat too much. But by the time we get to the demonized, gigantic Miss Poopenplatz (Phyllis Diller) and poodle-demon puppets, it all becomes ludicrous.
It starts with a drawn-out scene when detectives, played by veteran actor Ed Nelson and James Eusterman (Spaced Invaders), enter the world-weary — and really messy — psychic's house. They need her help to solve a baffling case involving a mortician and what appear to be three dead children. They draw their guns dramatically when she doesn't answer, but why they do that is not made clear. She finally turns up after an endless search of the house.
When they fail to convince her to help they leave. Later that night she has a disturbing vision involving a putrescent little girl with lots of long, stringy blond hair, who wants very much to hug and thank her for her help in a previous case. This promising scene has nothing to do with the story, but it does cause Alley to change her mind about helping the detectives. Deborah Rose's acting is flat, making her scenes ponderous and slow.
At the police station, Alley and the detectives listen to the interrogation of the mortician. He explains how his family has, for three centuries, kept the three child-sized ghouls — he refers to them as Kyonshi — from devouring living people by feeding them body parts garnered from the funeral home's cadavers. Kyonshi or hopping vampires are not flesh-eating ghouls, so the use of the term here may be a stretch.
Next, it's off to the soon-to-be-closed coroner's building where the story kicks into low gear, but not before we are subjected to a confusing flashback experienced by Alley, along with an interminable dialog between the two detectives standing in a hallway. We also meet Miss Poopinplatz. She manages the front desk along with her annoying poodle.
The script is included as an extra on the DVD. Reading it, that flashback scene made more sense on paper. It appears relatives in the mortician's family tree tried to resurrect their children three hundred years ago with dark magic that went awry. Reading the dull dialog sequence between the two detectives was as tedious as watching it. It stops the story cold and provides no important exposition. It should have been cut.
Alley has a vision of the three little ghouls awakening downstairs in the morgue with tasty attendants (including Norman Fell) in the next room. Little tension is generated as boy-this-weight-does-slow-me-down Alley clumsily makes her way downstairs to warn the lab attendants of the impending smorgasbord.
When she finally reaches the morgue dead bodies are strewn everywhere. Gobs of blood splatter the floor and the little hellions are still chewing away — especially one who gustily attacks an open rib-cage. Here is the one good scene in the movie as written in the script:
The room is in disarray. Bodies hang limply from shelves, disturbed by foraging. Sitting atop the battery operated forklift the Medium Ghoul feasts on a Pathologist while the Big Ghoul rips at Mack's lifeless form. A dead Pathologist lies behind a desk, his upper torso in view. The feet protruding at the other end of the desk have been stripped of flesh. The Small Ghoul has dragged the bloody corpse of a Pathologist atop the fifth level of the shelves. It takes turns sampling its menu. It eats an ear off and then snacks on a finger. The creature looks happy and contented, it even makes a pleasant purring sound. The creatures gaping mouth rips a chunk from a pathologist's side.
It's gruesomeness is a sudden and unexpected jolt. Mayhem ensues as survivors try to escape. They trap and kill one little bugger, but he manages to stuff part of his skin down Poopinplatz's throat. She turns into a very tall and pop-eyed puppet monster that desperately needed more money and a better designer to be convincing. The comical nature of the puppet ruins the momentum established by the morgue scene.
Poopinplatz's dog, Floosoms, licks up bubbling yellow ichor oozing from one expired ghoul and quickly turns into the man-in-a-suit Floosoms demon. A horrified girl rescued from the morgue laughs when she sees the comical poodle monster. Perhaps Cummins anticipated "resistance" to the concept and had her character reflect the incredulity?
The action is stopped cold, again, for another long and bewildering dialog between two characters. All of a sudden, Cummins decides to give the background story on the girl who survived the morgue attack.
The action finally picks up again with an Alley and Floosoms confrontation. More care went into the DVD. Included are the script, publicity kit and photos, and preliminary artwork for the monsters in PDF format. The movie is worth a view if you want a few laughs, but you will probably regret it.
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