TerrorVision (dir. Ted Nicolaou, 1986)
The Putterman family at the center of TerrorVision invite so many questions.
What were their lives like before their newly installed satellite dish intercepted an extraterrestrial energy beam that teleported an amorphous monster into their enormous mansion in the Hollywood Hills?
What experiences brought Grandpa Putterman to the survivalist lifestyle? Was it trauma from his time as a soldier? Perhaps, but that fallout shelter stocked with assault rifles and weapons grade explosives and decorated with LAPD paraphernalia and a Confederate flag suggests darker reasons in line with the trends suggested in Katherine Belew’s 2018 book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America…
What of his son Stanley (Gerrit “Franklin Sherman from The Critic” Graham) and Stanley’s wife Raquel (Mary “Eating Raoul” Woronov)? How did he make the money required to afford this palatial estate that these two swingers have covered with a staggering amount of erotic art? That pervy murder victim from the start of the second season of True Detective came by his tacky sex mansion by political corruption. Maybe something like that. What convinced Stanley to invite his elderly father to live with him? Was their relationship growing up not unlike that of so many Boomers, parents and children failing to understand each other in a postwar world? How can they be swingers and so homophobic at the same time?
What of the children, Sherman and Suzy? What was it like growing up with sexually liberated parents who bring home other swinging couples and decorate their home with so many paintings of breasts? Is Sherman’s embrace of his grandfather’s paramilitary lifestyle a rebellion against decadence? Why are Suzy’s parents so ashamed of her metalhead boyfriend O.D. (John “Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite” Gries) in spite of their unconventional lifestyle?
Anyway, we never get answers to any of these questions because the alien eats everyone.
October 14, 2018
oliveresque 