Saturday, April 6, 2019

THE IMMORTALIZER (1989) **


A quartet of friends out for a night on the town take a shortcut down a dark alley and get kidnapped by a pair of bulky, rubbery-faced henchmen.  The deformed degenerates take the teens to an illicit clinic where the demented doctors put the brains of the rich and old into the bodies of the young and stupid in exchange for big bucks.  One of the teens manages to escape and tries to free his friends before it’s too late.  

The Immortalizer is a typical, no-frills My Friends are in Great Danger and Nobody Will Believe Me movie.  The make-up on the henchman is pretty cool (they kind of look like extras from Neon Maniacs), but the rest of it is fairly standard stuff.  The scenes of our hero trying to convince the cops the clinic is ran by mad scientists are humdrum and are pretty much devoid of tension.  

A lot of this will be overly familiar for anyone who’s ever sat through an ‘80s horror movie.  There are moments here that crib almost directly from Fright Night and Re-Animator (the doctor’s serum glows green, which makes me think Herbert West forgot to patent his rejuvenation methods).  Despite an effective set-up (the reveal of the henchmen works well enough), director Joel Bender is unable to inject any life into the proceedings.  One amusing subplot has the main teen turning to a nosy old neighbor for help.  This leads to a fun scene where she dresses up like an old rich lady and goes to the clinic posing as a prospective client.  Needless to say, it does not end well.  

As far as Joel Bender movies go, this ain’t no Gas Pump Girls.

AKA:  Dr. Immortalizer.  

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