Thursday, November 1, 2018

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: THE CHANGER (1993) ** ½


(Halloween may be over, but I'm going to keep the horror reviews coming at a semi-regular pace throughout November with a little column called Halloween Hangover.  Enjoy!) 

Joe (Carl Zschering) is a nose-picking, dogfood-eating loser who gets frustrated when young high school girls won’t give him the time of day.  One day, he meets a homeless wino (Horace Grimm) who gives him a mystical incantation to change himself into a young girl in exchange for a sip of booze.  Once he’s transformed, Joe enrolls himself in a nearby high school and sets out to stalk and kill a clique of teenage girls.

Like Memoirs of an Invisible Man, we mostly see Joe as his “normal” self, and (for a while anyway) it’s quite funny seeing this aging perv hanging out with goodie two-shoes high school girls and trying to blend in.  Other times, we see the girl he’s become, “Jo” (Ann Flood) when he looks at himself in mirrors or for a handful of random shots.  These scenes are better than most body-swapping comedies of the ‘80s.  (The montage of Joe trying to fit in at school set to the toe-tapping tune “Schoolin’” is rather hilarious.)

Unfortunately, The Changer isn’t nearly as successful when it turns into a full-on horror movie.  It’s here where Joe uses his good looks to lure, rape, kill, and partially eat his victims.  Near the end, he also begins to see visions of his victims who appear to him and say shit like, “Was it good for you?”

Despite being a tad clunky in the second half, the twist ending is decent enough.  The short running time (76 minutes) certainly keeps things moving along at a steady clip, and the pacing is fairly brisk.  Overall, The Changer may be an uneven experience, but there’s an endearing goofiness to the whole enterprise that makes it memorable.

AKA:  The Nostril Picker.

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