Mindkiller (1987)

 

Director: Michael Krueger

Screenplay: Dave Sipos, Curtis Hannum and Michael Krueger

Cast: Joe McDonald as Warren; Wade Kelley as Larry; Shirley Ross as Sandy; Kevin Hart as Brad; Tom Henry as Vivac Chandra; Diana Calhoun as Mrs. Chandra; George Flynn as Mr. Townsend; Crystel Niedle as Connie

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

The way things are going, I should try to screw a turtle!

Among the many horror films made in the eighties, Mindkiller definitely exists because of the whole issue of how, in society, the concept of falling in love and romance exist, but if you are a socially awkward person, the ways of yore to go about intimacy are far more difficult. This is unfortunately where incels came into being, the negative downward spiral in this position, which Mindkiller shows a prototypical example of in Warren (Joe McDonald). The set-up emphasises the horrific nature under its surface, a strange (i.e. perfect) atmosphere of fog machine, gel lighting over cold purplish-blue lights, jump cuts, and a mother angry about her adult son killing hamsters again. Yes, it is absurd in tone but aesthetically, before you get to the main story and Warren himself, it stands out. The son is non-human in look, but once he was a man who believing psychic ability could be honed and improved, the manuscript from his work finding itself in Warren's hands at his work as a library clerk.

Warren is the kind of guy without self-esteem, who is trying to watch The Art of Seduction starring Rex Hunter to get dating tips, without much luck with women in the same way a blind squirrel attempts to get nuts in a live mind field. Warren unfortunately has a temper, and shows the worse aspects of how people just struggle with the interaction presumed to be needed in human society, and in needing to interact and date, which even a cheesier horror film like this can depict well. This is an issue when a new employee at the library, a woman named Sandy (Shirley Ross), comes into Warren's world and he falls in love with her. Naturally, he finds in the archive this manuscript which involves mind control. A silly concept, but with the insidious nature of the seduction artist, it gets into how, in the struggle with socialising with others, the lure of controlling others for love and sex fantasies becomes the immediate downfall of Warren.

Films dealing with these types of archetypes, the male character who is weak and crawls towards violent power with horrible consequences, does become a metaphor for how many exist in horror cinema of how society makes a mistake of not designing itself to help the lonely and desperate, to prevent real life examples of Warren coming into be or preventing them from being drawn to have control in violent ways, here a research text which offers a key to greatness and mind expansion, that however ends in tears. At first, Warren is actually nice, as it has nothing to do with mind control, but to expand the mind, improving in his work and confidence, cook awesome food, and psychically cause vending machines to spit out candy bars at a whim. When he gets to women as a possession to have, including Sandy, is when absolute power corrupts, fixation and rage corrupting him. More so here if you attempt to brainwash the woman, Sandy, you have a crush on, and if something is going wrong with your newly acquired powers.

Mindkillers is a more silly genre film despite the more serious themes I can reach for in its plot, personality to be found in the film, a goofy streak of humour despite aspects of its content being far more uncomfortable in the future after due to how these themes of men reaching for more extreme ways to be with women have become a subject of greater concern, such as the incel concept itself. It follows the expected plot life of many films like this, as his experiments in mind expansion lead to Warren becoming colder and meaner, mind controlling a paper cutter blade in his friend's hand to go onto his other fingers the first signs he will lash out. The film returns to the tone its prologue has, when molecular manipulation by a machine is the final stage of the manuscript, which has unforeseen body horror consequences. A film like this does not really reinvent the wheel, but without any context for this, Mindkiller was very entertaining, a goofy tone which does not stop these more serious ideas to come into play. Even when it escalates with this plot turn, usually a film plot like this suggests one should not tamper with powers beyond what we should access; instead, truthfully, it is more the morality which fascinates me with this theme from even before cinema came into being for the horror genre. If mental expansion was possible, would we have Warrens brainwashing women to love them and hurting people, which is unfortunately the likely scenario. There are also the unforeseen health risks, such as deformation of the head with the brain trying to adapt to the ability to hear all thoughts.

The turn into body horror and the unnatural helps a slow burn and silly film, where his friend's use of the manuscript just causes him to start baying at imaginary moons between his growing confidence, like he is a pretending to be a werewolf, a film with personality which does bring some practical effects and mind bending content into the finale to escalate the tone. It gets into phantastical layers, as people are terrorized in their dreams, even monster tooth phones being brought in, and Warren's transformation fully embraces the spectacle of this era. By the end, someone looks like a Dick Tracy villain named Big Head, or people can be possessed by giant heart blobs that transfer the original person's mind. It is sad that director/co-writer Michael Krueger did not do a lot more than two films in the directorial role, and a few scripts, but sadly, the reason was that he passed in 1990¹, not long into the beginning of his career in genre cinema. This is an obscure film I tracked down in itself, one which I came to appreciate due to an absolute lack of expectations.

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1) The British Film Institute's page on Michael Krueger.