This movie has Bill Pullman as the lead, you know, the President in Independence Day that gives the greatest speech ever. Also, Wes Craven directed this, and that’s really why I’m here, to pay homage to him. I’ve never seen this.
This was inspired by a true story……my ass. This involves voodoo.
Haiti 1978
I see a bunch of black people doing work, and one dude in a yellow shirt with a gun just had his men take a coffin. He’s my new favorite. Now the 3 guys are led to a dude in a black tux and hat with skeleton makeup. They then burned the coffin in the street. A white doctor is checking on a patient, and he dead. The way to check was for breathing and follow by a pin under her eye. His name appears to be Christophe and he appears to be crying in the coffin.
Amazon Basin 1985
There’s Bill! His name is Dennis Alan. He is with a sweet looking Shaman. Shaman wants him to drink something. Dennis says that it’s good, then collapses. Sweet, a cheetah is chasing Dennis. Sir you are not outrunning it. He’s a playful little guy. He is rolling around playing with him. Was that all a delusion. The Sham creeps him out and now hands are pulling Dennis underground. This is pretty freaky. He falls, back to where he was.
Dennis goes looking for his travel partner, he finds him in the chopper, with bugs crawling all over him. Yup, Julio is dead. Dennis sees the cheetah and follows it. He ends up on a street with a truck coming, and they won’t stop to give him a ride.
Boston
Dennis made it home. An old professor of his has a unique job offer. OH, it was a jaguar, and that is his spirit animal. So this guy asks him what he knows about zombification. They show him the death certificate of Christoph from the beginning. So that was 7 years ago, and now that man is alive. The professor played Alfred in the Keaton Batman films. Of course, this pharmaceutical company wants to be able to bring people back to life.
He goes to Haiti and meets up with Dr. Marielle Duchamp. Lots of French here. She introduces him to Margrite. Margrite doesn’t talk well, but Christophe does. Duchamp brings him to see Lucien who runs some shit, he’s a power player there. Lucien insists that she dance tomorrow, but she refuses, and walks away all pissy. Lucien warns Dennis to be wary of Peytraud. These names, damn. Lots of dancing happening. The dancers aren’t acting right. They are falling down. The male just flung the girl, and Dennis hits the dude over the head with a bottle. It all started with Peytraud started hitting a glass with a fork. Weird shit.
They are on the hunt for Christophe, Dennis and Mareille that is. Some grave robbers scare Dennis and he falls into an open grave. Haha. Dennis is all kinda of pissy. Dennis says that he thinks this is a scam. Oh man, she gives him some funny lines, and she walks off, and then they run into Christophe. Dennis happened what happened before he died. Christophe is afraid of some group who fucked with him.
Dennis returns to his room, finds a pig pinned to a cross, and some dude with a sword was about to enter, so he hightailed it. The knife guy was part of a wedding though. Dennis and Marielle go back to Lucien. They need a name of a guy who makes the powder, which leads them to a cockfighting ring. This guy, Louis Mozart, he’s awesome. So they negotiate over money, and this guy has some stuff already prepared. Dennis wants proof that it works. So he puts the powder in to a goat’s food dish. He will stop by tomorrow to see the goat zombie. Dennis cuts the goats foot to mark it. Dennis is afraid to stay in his hotel now.
There is some big ceremony going on. I feel that this is gonna end up like Wicker Man and Marielle is going to betray Dennis in the end. Just my hunch, but maybe that’s because I have seen both Wicker Mans in the past 24 hours. Marielle and Dennis are sleeping on the ground, and there is a big ass snake, and it was all a dream. They are surrounded by candlelight. There’s Christophe and some lady in a wedding dress is creeping up on Dennis and Dennis backing up. He lifts up the veil, and it’s basically a skeleton, she lowers her jaw, and the snake strikes, and it was all a dream. I thought that modern horror used the dream technique way too much, but the 80’s are just as guilty. Dennis and Marielle get all passionate with kissing. BAM, just saw boobs, as she rides him.
So during this revolution, now the secret cops are trying to enforce curfew. Some dude demands that Dennis comes with him, like a cop. Peytraud had him come, and he is wondering why Dennis is there. Dennis is lying and doing so poorly. Not the best man to piss off as this guy is a well known torturer. Peytraud lets him go.
They come back to the awesome guy with the goat, and he presents a goat, but no marking. Dennis pays him and he then calls him an idiot. Dennis then says “You know what I think about your powder…” he pours the powder into some booze, pounds the drink “….it’s piss.” The guy tells Dennis that he’s a dead man. Yeah, no shit. Marielle is like, dude, what the hell. Dennis shows that he still has the real powder, it was all just a quick switcheroo. So our powder guys come out and says that he can get him the real shit for $1,000, but there are rules. There is no other way. Sold.
So they go to the graveyard, and dig up a coffin. So they dig up the bride skeleton that Dennis dreamed about. Dude, just bail. The go back to Marielle’s 2 guys jump then and Dennis fights hard, but gets knocked out, and now he is strapped to a chair. Peytraud has a torch, like a welding torch near his face and he is ready to spark it up. I like this guy too.Now he lights it up to light his cigar. Hetalks about how he likes his face, so he tells his guard, anything but the face, so they tie his head back, and Dennis is pleading that he will leave that night. Really dude? You should have left the first fucking time. This guy strikes me as a guy that you don’t piss off. Peytraud has a hammer. So Dennis offers money. Peytraud says he doesn’t want money. Well then what does he want? He wants to hear Dennis scream, and there is a big fucking nail. Well Dennis tries to scream, but it’s not good enough, so nail to the scrotum. What did you learn? I mean, fuck man. You don’t piss off a guy who will put a nail through your sack. The guards toss him out the back of a truck in front of Marielle’s place. His tighty whiteys are bloody. Fool.
3 days recuperating, and she tells him to leave, but he sucks it up. He can barely walk. We learn some of the ingredients for the powder: poisonous sea toad, Stinging sea worm, pufferfish, plus herbs and minerals. This is awesome. The process takes 3 days and 3 nights. The cool guy’s name is Louis Mozart. Of course it is. They are wearing burlap sacks for shirts and bandannas. Louis knows that Dennis stood up to Peytraud. He says that he hopes to use to poison to heal people.
They are staying at a beach house. Dennis wakes up to see a flaming boat approach. Another dream? There’s the dead bride. There’s the jaguar. All the doors shut, and he’s now in a coffin being buried alive and the coffins fills with blood. He wakes up and he touches his head and it’s all bloody. He is sleeping next to somebody who has been beheaded. It’s Marielle. All the guards are, and they bring them to Peytraud. Peytraud says that he knows about his dreams and how he was in the last dream. Nice. A guard forces Dennis to board a plane. Louis is on the plane and wants his $1,000. Dennis tells him that they took all of his money. Louis still gives him the powder and wants them to know his name, and takes Dennis’ watch.
Back to America. He explains that you can see, hear, feel, but can’t do anything about it and still be alive. The powder wears off after 12 hours, which by then, you’d possibly be buried in some countries. They want to call the anesthetic, zombinol. Dennis has tried calling Marielle 3 straight days, and wants to go back, but Professor is like, if I was you, I’d stay as far away from Haiti as I could. Dennis just saw a creepy dead hand go into his soup. The rich pharmaceutical guy, his wife, and Prof are having dinner with Dennis. She gets up and lunges across the table like she possessed to slash at Dennis. Nice.
We see a plane, and yup, Dennis says that Peytraud will stop at nothing to get him, even in a different country and may get Marielle as well. Sir, this is a bad idea. As soon as he gets off the plane, he is apprehended. There’s other guards up higher looking pissed. Ahh, Lucien had the guards and got Dennis into the car and drove off. Nice. Marielle was safe, but Louis wasn’t. Lucien is trying to give him some voodoo protection. Louis is restrained and tied up. Louis just got beheaded. Lucien gives Dennis a hug and a necklace. Dennis knows something is fucked. Peytraud is drinking blood. Lucien tells Dennis that death is not the end, and he starts choking.He’s dead, and a scorpion just came out of his mouth. Some dude just blew powder or dust into Dennis’ face. Dennis is looking for help, but he keeps falling. He is barely able to walk at times. He collapses and asks people surrounding him not to let them bury him.
We see a doctor now looking over, and they have a time of death…..supposedly, but we know that he’s not dead. Peytraud says that they will take care of him. He is in the coffin and they have Marielle. They put a big spider in there with him to keep him company. They lower him in the ground and start burying him. The spider is on his face. Ugh.
He finally comes to, but it’s at night, nobody is around. Christophe hears his screaming and digs him out and helps him out. Back at Peytraud’s and they have Marielle tied at the wrists. The people in charge of the country are fleeing and everybody is celebrating. The executioner is the same guy in the tux and skeleton face paint. Just as he is about to lower the sword, news reaches him about the people fleeing. Everybody is pumped, and police are out in the streets. Marielle talks shit to Peytraud. The people take out Peytraud’s cops, and people are tearing apart his little palace. There’s an explosion. Peytraud says that Dennis’ soul is his, as he has a soul jar, and says that he is controlling his thoughts now. He ends up in the torture room and gets chased by the chair. He thinks that he sees and hears Marielle, but it ends up being a controlled Lucien, who rips his own head off. Dennis is trying, but so many hands are reaching for him. Gravity is shifting, he is tumbling downstairs.
He makes it to Peytraud’s room and Pey is tossing Dennis around and burning him with his hands. Marielle gets up and breaks a soul jar, which hurts Pey and now the jaguar is in Dennis. Now the soul jars are breaking and Peytraud is losing his power and is scared. The souls engulf Peytraud and he is engulfed in flames now. He then vanishes. He tells Marielle to wait there, but then the dead bride shows up and Peytraud comes through the wall. Now we have a brawl. Dennis is wrecking him. Dennis controls the chair and the restraining straps and he wants to hear Peytraud scream. Nail to the sack. Marielle checks on Dennis and says that everything is OK now. They walk out, everybody is celebrating. On screen, it reads: “The zombie powder and its active ingredient, Tetrodotoxin, is currently under intensive scientific study both in Europe and the United States. To this date, the process by which it works remains a mystery.”
End film.
Wait, I have to look up that Tetrodotoxin. It has been used in other pop culture shit, I am positive in other horror films, but also in Captain America: Winter Soldier on Nick Fury, as well as Law Abiding Citizen. I knew it.
Well, I admit, I feared that this would be some boring bullshit film and wind up complaining. Nope, I liked it. I didn’t love it, I probably won’t ever love a film in this particular genre, but this was really well done, well-executed, well-acted. It had a lot of silly, cheesy parts to it, but that is what Wes did. And I applaud that. I’m not saying these positive things because Wes is dead or because I’m a fan, I just genuinely thought that this was a fun 100-minute movie. It didn’t bore me or cause me to go in lulls. I was very wrong about the outcome. I like being wrong sometimes because sometimes I am too predictable. The music was good. Louis and Peytraud were great. The visuals were fantastic as well. I can actually see myself watching this with a friend down the line.
Final rating: 6.0, it’s not the greatest genre for my tastes, so this is about as high as I will go for voodoo stuff
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