Enter...If you dare!

Enter...If you dare!
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Sunday, January 24, 2016

Entry 98: Remote Control (1987)

Remote Control (1988)

Dir: Jeff Lieberman

"As close to home as your VCR."

In need of a good Saturday night rental?  Join me down in the Basement of Sleaze for Remote Control (just don't watch the video TOO closely)!


   

"Remote Control" is the hottest new rental title at Village Video.  Problem is, the folks renting it wind up dead!  When four renters are discovered brutally murdered, slacker clerks Cosmo (Kevin Dillon, The Blob, TV's Entourage) and Georgie (Christopher Wynne, Cop, Back to the Future Part III) are blamed.  The real killer, however, is the tape; turns out it broadcasts an alien signal designed to program humanity to wipe itself out!  On the run from both the cops and asshole customer Victor (MN native and "Looking Glass Wars" author Frank Bedor, who looks a shitload like a young, thin Gary Busey), who was the signal's first programmed killer, our heroes team up with Victor's sexy girlfriend, Belinda (Deborah Goodrich, Just One of the Guys, April Fools' Day) and track the tapes to their source, a video manufacturer run by aliens disguised as Japanese scientists.  After Georgie is killed, it's up to Kevin (and his sweet, Snake Plissken-esque steel-plated boots) to destroy the tapes, win Belinda's heart and save mankind!

Remote Control explores the same narrative territory as Cronenberg's Videodrome and Carpenter's They Live, but writer-director Lieberman eschews the cerebral philosophizing of the former and the social commentary of the latter to craft a lighter film that's interested only in showing it's audience a good time.  If there's very little of substance in Remote Control, it's still a helluva good time, with likable characters, quotable dialogue and a few genuine laughs.  In fact, with it's appealing teen leads and refusal to take it's end-of-the-world situation seriously, it reminds me very much of Thom Eberhardt's underrated Night of the Comet.  The scenes from the "Remote Control" video, which were filmed in black-and-white and have a great, Republic Pictures serial look, are worth watching for alone.  Like the toy store scenes in Silent Night, Deadly Night, one of the most enjoyable aspects of Remote Control is it's frequent video store setting.  I recognized quite a few old VHS boxes whose artwork I'd forgotten about, as well as great vintage posters for Mountaintop Motel Massacre, Nomads, The Manitou, Missing in Action, Re-Animator and MANY more (even a Jane Fonda workout series standee!).  If you hail from the pre-internet age and remember spending countless (dateless) Friday nights in high school renting an armload of tapes, this'll definitely hit you with a wave of nostalgia.  Lieberman also made the underrated 70's psycho/drug/hippy thriller Blue Sunshine, the mocked-on-MST3K revolt-of-nature flick Squirm and the above-average slasher Just Before Dawn.  Jennifer Tilly (Bound, Bride of Chucky) has a small, pre-fame role as an early victim.  


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