Revenge of the Revenant Review 6: The one with zombie kids and a giant poodle

 

Title: The Boneyard

What Year?: 1989 (filming)/ 1991 (release)

Classification: Anachronistic Outlier/ Mashup

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

With this review, I’m finally getting to the first of the movies I had in mind when I thought of this (revived) feature. From here on in, most of the really bad ones are out of the way, and the good ones should be coming closer together. However, this one has presented its own challenges, because it happens to be among my favorites, and I’ve done way too many reviews not to know that reviewing your favorites is as risky as meeting your heroes. With that, I’m diving in to The Boneyard.

Our story begins with two cops going to the house of a reclusive woman. It’s revealed that she is a psychic who has worked with the police and doesn’t want to do it again. The senior detective wants her help with what looks like an open and shut case: An undertaker has been caught with the bodies of three children that were fed with the bodies of the dead before their own demise. But he warns that they are really kyoshi, half-demonic ghouls that feed on the living and the dead. (The term is otherwise used for a form of Japanese poetry.) There are further hijinks when they go to the morgue, including obstruction from the administrator Ms. Poopinplatz (seriously) and the discovery of a would-be suicide who isn’t quite dead. As the psychic unravels the mystery, one of her premonitions comes true as the three undead kids come to life. The psychic, the police, and the civilians are trapped in the morgue with the kyoshi, Poopinplatz and her poodle Floofsums, and only time will tell whose company is worse.

The Boneyard was written and directed by James Cummins, previously known as an effects/ makeup guy for movies like The Thing and Enemy Mine. The cast was led by Deborah Rose as Alley the psychic, Ed Nelson of Peyton Place as the cop, and Phyllis Diller as Poopinplatz. Denise Young was featured as Dana, the civilian of the group, in her only noted screen role. The movie was filmed in 1989 but not released until 1991, reportedly as a “direct to video” release. A number of aspects of the production have become mired in mystery, included its run time, which has been “officially” reported as 1 hour and 38 minutes but is really about 93 minutes in every version to come to my attention. Accounts have popped up in online forums of alternate versions and significant censorship, including a possible shot of the infected Poopinplatz crushing the head of a victim. In 2018, the movie was released on Blu Ray. It differs from a previous DVD release mainly in presenting the movie in a “widescreen” format.

As I have already acknowledged, this is one of my very favorite zombie movies. I first watched it online, probably about 2012, and picked up the DVD in 2015. It feels first and foremost like a movie that “should” have been made at least 5 years earlier than it was. The effects and visual style look very much early ‘80s, a fact which can be put down to the background of the director. The TV/ character actor heavy cast adds to the “old school” feel, along with a strong police procedural influence (also noteworthy in Night of the Creeps). An extra bit of randomness comes from the almost histrionic score, which frequently seems to imitate that of The Thing. At the same time, there are moments that feel prescient. Many scenes feel like echoes of Die Hard, which was in fact released the year this one was made. It’s also notable for some rather candid discussion of suicide, delivered well enough by Young that there’s good reason to wish the actress had had a career beyond this movie.

Most of the further weaknesses of the movie and some of its strengths come out in the first half. The movie up to that point is almost entirely exposition, another move toward “old school” horror. For the most part, the long buildup is sustained by good acting and dialogue, with a little livening up from an unnerving dream sequence. At the same time, there are certainly misfires and random moments, conspicuously a very early jump scare that is too overacted to feel scary or funny. I have suspicions that these issues were at least aggravated by re-editing and censorship, which is further attested by quite audible discontinuities in the audio (including a “jump” in the music during a notorious later scene). A delicious bit of extra grue comes when Alley considers the task of feeding the ghouls from a mortuary. “There would be an endless supply of protein,” she remarks. Then she further muses that bodies meant for viewing would be off limits, “above the waist, anyway”.

Of course, things get in gear once the kyoshi come out. These are easily among the most nimble, ornery and durable undead on record, realized with topnotch effects and makeup. There are only 3 of the diminutive monsters, but they are anything but easy to handle. Only massive damage to the upper body seems to affect them; by comparison, a very clear shot to the head barely slows one of them down. It is eventually revealed that others can be infected through direct ingestion of their visibly gooey flesh and bodily fluids, but this does not come into play until even later. They can still be held off in close combat, if they don’t get in the decisive blow by surprise, allowing Poopinplatz to fight one of them to a draw. Their most distinctive trait is their completely indiscriminate diet, to the point that the living cast seem to receive what breathing space they do while the ghouls forage in the morgue’s cold storage. Their habits lead to a very effective scare when Dana and the younger cop emerge after finally killing one, only to find another already feeding.

What is absolutely and uniquely unnerving are the hints of personality and perverse naivete, especially from a redheaded creature that appears to be female. She/ it is the most aggressive and inquisitive of the trio, though not the last to fall. She persistently carries a doll, leading to another surreal moment when the doll’s head peers around the corner in place of the approaching ghoul. Infected victims are seen to grow to giant size, which is never reconciled with the kyoshi. This leads to the noted scene with the infected Poopinplatz, which I find effective and well-paced. A seemingly unchanged laugh from Poopinplatz adds an unsettling touch, balanced by an upbeat twist as Dana springs into action. Unfortunately, the animatronic rig used is uncharacteristically mechanical in both appearance and motion, with an inexplicable set of oversized eyelashes that could just as well be batting an SOS. This is followed by the appearance of a mutated Floofsums, but the less said about that, the better.

For the “one scene”, however, my pick is an early scene, when we get our only direct view of the undertaker. On a tape played for Alley, we see a close-up view of his face as he answers questions from an off-screen interrogator, by turns shameful, resigned, and seemingly amused. He speaks vaguely of his ancestors’ dealings with unnatural things they “did not understand”. When asked why he feeds the ghouls, or believes he needs to, he replies bluntly, “If they are not fed, they will feed.” Finally, when the questioner remarks that the bodies appear quite dead, he responds, “When they are full, they are very good at playing possum,” adding with what is surely a smile, “very good, indeed.”

In unfortunate hindsight, this movie is most significant as the literal end of an era. It came right at the tail end of the 1980s zombie movie wave, and its troubled and delayed release made it all too clear that the glory days of the genre were coming to an end. Still, there were certainly worse things to mark the end of the era, including some even sketchier 1990s releases I’m probably going to be getting to. It was weird, it was creative, and if it was flawed, it was all the more interesting for it. Let it be a further reminder, there are always better days ahead.