Editorials
‘Reeker’ – Revisting the Forgotten 2005 Slasher Movie and Its Prequel
There is no forgetting the putrid and almost sickly sweet smell of human death once it has become an olfactory memory. Those unfamiliar with this hyper-specific stench should count themselves lucky. However, that odor of mortality is all the characters of Reeker have to keep themselves safe. Danger lurks wherever that fetor goes. Dave Payne’s 2005 horror film introduced a unique villain named after his most notable attribute, yet by the time that cadaverous stink has been inhaled by potential victims, the chance for escape may have already expired.
Following a silly but grisly cold-open — a random family becomes a roadside picnic for The Reeker, who remains unseen early on — director and writer Payne sets up what looks to be a garden-variety slasher: one by one, young folks are murdered in gruesome fashion, somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. No doubt that pitch sounds familiar. As straightforward as the film starts out, though, the malodorous antagonist is revealed to be only a part of the bigger picture. The story ultimately subverted expectations and reimagined a fairly common plot twist from back in the day.
The Sixth Sense can be thanked for the resurgence of the “dead all along” twist. M. Night Shyamalan picked an oldie but a goodie — 1962’s Carnival of Souls is considered to be the first film to use this technique — for his breakthrough film’s iconic ending. “It was all a dream” and “unreliable narrator” both get a lot of mileage as well, if not more so, yet revealing a character has been dead all this time has its own special shock factor. In the case of Reeker, learning Jack (Devon Gummersall), Gretchen (Tina Illman), Nelson (Derek Richardson), Trip (Scott Whyte) and Cookie (Arielle Kebbel) were involved in a life-threatening car accident prior to ever reaching their destination does not come as a huge surprise; Payne dropped enough hints along the way. What helps this practice of a now-tropey twist stand out is the delivery.
Image: Scott Whyte’s character succumbs to death in Reeker.
Although Reeker does not quite pull the rug out from under observant viewers, it makes up for its foreseeable outcome by enriching the death motif and leaning hard into the story’s limbo element. For the first two acts, Payne supplied a seemingly clear-cut slasher scenario with a supernatural veneer, then he firmly directed the audience to the film’s alleged aha moment: the aptly named Halfway Motel was, in fact, a waiting room for all the characters involved in nearby car accidents, and The Reeker served as an analog for Death (with a touch of Charon thrown in). The Reeker’s brutal kills also mirrored the real-world inflictions these motorists sustained in their roadway wrecks. Another director might downplay this certain state of flux just to avoid early detection, but Payne hides it in plain sight. A bold move for a story banking on its big reveal.
On a design note, merging 35mm and digital did wonders for The Reeker’s surreal depiction; in retrospect, these now-dated visual effects add to that unearthly quality. The characters’ fetid foe is trapped between two worlds as he convulses all over the screen, jabs and eviscerates with whatever tool is appropriate, and then vanishes into a puff of smoke. This cross between a sadistic welder, zombie and generic glitch entity is not all that imposing — for everything this film does do well, it lacks in major scares — however, The Reeker is rather uncomfortable to watch at times. For audiences, this blink-and-miss-it Grim Reaper proxy is often too much to take in during the few seconds he is corporeal. Whereas for the characters, they can never comprehend The Reeker’s rationale, or in some instances, the realization comes as an afterthought.
As unconventional as Reeker can be when propped up against other slashers from the 2000s, it slightly succumbs to tradition when deciding the fates of its main characters. In Payne’s film, those who partake in sex and drugs tend to die. This moralism in the horror genre, while neither official nor consistent, is shown enough to be accepted as fact. The lone survivors in Reeker just so happen to be the nice but jaded blind guy, Jack, and the one character who had a vocal issue with there being MDMA in her car, Gretchen. The pair never hooked up with anyone or each other, either. As for horny and high Cookie and Nelson, they each perished in due time. Jokester Trip also passed over to the hereafter, however, the motivation for his demise is trickier to nail down because he went from jerk to hero in his final minutes. In addition, Trip’s shady drug dealer (Eric Mabius) was spared and even turned out to be a good samaritan. The Reeker’s other victims, including an RV driver played by Michael Ironside, have nothing prickly about themselves that would feed into the so-called moral morass of horror.
Image: In the prequel No Man’s Land: The Rise of Reeker, both The Reeker and his two victims get caught in an explosion.
No Man’s Land: The Rise of Reeker (Reeker 2: No Man’s Land in other parts) served as a prequel to the first film, but it was also able to stand on its own story-wise. As the title suggests, this entry explained how The Reeker came to be and how he operated in that halfway realm between life and death. In place of the younger cast was a range of adults, including Maya (Mircea Monroe), a struggling food server wishing to be free of her layabout ex-boyfriend Alex (Stephen Martines) and his partner in crime (Desmond Askew), and the local sheriff (Robert Pine) hoping to retire and pass the badge on to his estranged son (Michael Muhney). These characters and others were, more or less, strangers to one another, so they had to contend with that tension on top of the otherworldly threat at hand.
Anyone who had seen the first Reeker knew how this follow-up would play out, and in many respects, No Man’s Land is a retread. That being said, there is a little more meat to the prequel’s characters; Maya and Alex’s quarrelsome relationship culminates in an affecting moment which better illustrates the series’ notion of second chances, something only touched on in the prior film, and the sheriff and son’s subplot is also somewhat fulfilling. The interactions this time around are more amusing and appreciated than the antics of bubble-headed coeds. And as indicated during Muhney’s character’s weird gallows confession — he is a secret dolphin voyeur — Payne was funny when he wanted to be. Surely the mention of the Council for the Ethical Use of Cell Phones at Gas Pumps during the film’s closing credits was done in jest.
With its high concept, the Reeker franchise could only go on for so long without eventually repeating itself. So finishing as a duology was for the best. The prequel already came close to being a rehash had it not improved on the original’s shortcomings (middle-act pacing, characters, production values), albeit marginally. Even so, these two films, which in hindsight were written off too quickly, make for an entertaining double-feature. No, they are not as smart as they would like to be, but they do put a different spin on a time-worn formula. And after watching plenty of unambitious and nondescript slasher films from the same era, the Reeker series is a breath of fresh air.
Horror contemplates in great detail how young people handle inordinate situations and all of life’s unexpected challenges. While the genre forces characters of every age to face their fears, it is especially interested in how youths might fare in life-or-death scenarios.
The column Young Blood is dedicated to horror stories for and about teenagers, as well as other young folks on the brink of terror.
Image: The namesake of Reeker appears out in the open.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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