Freddy's 31 Days of Horror Day 5: Wes Craven's Shocker
There will be a nice mix of Craven's career on my list this year as he was a maestro who should be honored for all he's done. Especially with conquering three decades of horror. After the success of a Nightmare on Elm Street and the myriad of other slasher fanfare that audiences were craving in the eighties, Wes Craven was tapped to give the world another slasher franchise. In Craven fashion of course it couldn't be just any idiot with sharp objects hacking away at people. Nope it had to be something super insane, supernatural and something that can give him the ability to play in his dreamlike realms he dabbles in so much. He delivered us Shocker!
Starring Mitch Pileggi of X-Files as the new horror villain and in the role of horror hero we have now big time director Peter Berg! The dude who made Battleship started in a Wes Craven movie I kid you not! 
Take the opening of A Nightmare on Elm Street where Freddy is constructing his instrument of doom and add eighties hair metal combined with horrendous sounding grunts and profanity, this let's you know this is a new kind of slasher with a new set of rules! Mitch Pillegi plays Horace Pinker, a family murderer who stalks the street at night in his television repair van killing any family he sees fit! Our hero Johnathon (Peter Berg) has some kind of link with Pinker where he can sleep and astral project himself to the scenes of Pinker's grizzly murders as they happen, witnessing the death of his mother and siblings! Through this ability Jonathan helps the police track Pinker down to his television repair shop where they discover all kinds of black magic practices! It is Jonathan himself however that through his anger chases and apprehends Pinker and sends him to jail. Pinker is sentenced to the electric chair but not before he can complete a strange ritual through his television in his cell. Jonathan witnesses Pinker's execution as Pinker reveals some startling information to Jonathan about their psychic connection. Then the switch is flipped and that's when the flick goes into overdrive to the tune of Megadeth's cover of No More Mr. Nice Guy!
Pinker cannot be put down as the place goes insane and Pinker becomes living energy jumping from body to body draining the life force out of the bodies he inhabits in an attempt to finish his work in killing Jonathan! This leads up to an epic show down where Craven let's his imagination fly as Pinker inhabits not just people but objects and we are treated to a hilariously awesome and heavy metal fight between Jonathan and Pinker as they flip between different television stations!
This movie is ridiculously awesome, it has so many cheesy eighties moments mixed with genuinely frightening imagery and an amazingly horrific performance from Mitch Pileggi that chills you to even look into his eyes! It also has some great heart as the souls of Jonathan's deceased loved ones come to his aid to help him fight in some beautifully lit paranormal scenes that can tug at your heart strings. I also very much appreciate the fact that against this super powered villain we have a somewhat supernaturally powered horror hero, which you don't see too often. Jonathan also is a nice change of pace as he is a football player with a heart of gold as opposed to the usual dumb meat head and his connection and love with his football team plays heavily in his fighting Pinker. 
I don't know what happened to do this but this movie's soundtrack will have you headbanging left and right! It's like Craven took a cue from all the Italian horror directors that decided they needed a Motorhead or Motley Crue song every five minutes. He puts them in the perfect scenes to get you pumped but not overshadow anything going on in the movie. Don't worry we still get our ominous score throughout the film and the sound cues work perfectly for some of the scares, especially when they first discover Pinker's TV repair shop of horrors!
Sadly we never got the franchise the studio wanted but we got a great flick with a good combo of everything we love about horror and Horace Pinker will always be a name revered in the annals of horror as a legend! Rest in Peace out brother Wes, may we Scream forever. 26 Days til' Halloween Halloween! 26 Days til' Halloween! Silver Shamrock!
