Fungicide (2002)

 

Director: Dave Wascavage

Screenplay: Dave Wascavage and Mary Wascavage

Cast: Wes Miller as Major Wang; David Weldon as Silas Purcell; Mary Wascavage as Jade Moon; Loretta Wascavage as Mother Purcell; Edward Wascavage as Father Purcell; Dave Bonavita as  "Titus" Ignitus; Antoinette Cancelliere as Lenny; Dave Wascavage as Jackson P. Jackson

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Fungicide is a ridiculous film, my introduction to the micro-budget world of Dave Wascavage, a Pennsylvania based figure who has been chugging away with his own independently made genre films since Fungicide itself, founding his own company Troubled Moon Films, and with this production the cinematographer and editor as much as the director and co-writer. Fungicide, about homicidal giant fungus, came as a surprise for how woozy and unapologetically its own weird thing, where the opening is intense, all harsh noise and a man in his family, in almost a trance, experimenting on a chemical composition which will have unfortunate consequences he will be happy about when it brings forth the nightmares of the title.

It is scored like a Playstation One game, atmospheric drum and bass, which knowing this is about killer sentient mushrooms, with the limited special effects at hand and CGI valley shots like a late nineties game, makes this almost befitting like you have wandered into an obscure American role playing game as a result, one set at a mountain hideaway, a resort to rest at which is doomed to fungus related terror. Ran by a nice hippy woman who however has a bad tendency to use the wrong choice of words, and turns into a Sarah Connor Terminator killer when enough is enough, it also sets up very early on in the film the eccentricities on display here. Fungicide is really peculiar, an automatic writing of a genre film at times, which is not going to be for everyone. You get this with the characters placed into the scenario: our female lead even in the face of regular grocery store mushrooms attaching themselves to people like leeches reacting to them with a blissful tranquillity, a real estate agent who is there to try to get her to sell the house, and eventually just becomes a third wheel, the scientist who starts speaking like he is actually an alien, and a random army man who appears, having wandered off a reality TV show he was a contestant of, named Major Wang. Then there is the professional wrestler, who is written like a stereotype of one and needs to unwind from his temper at the hideaway. He also has to take pills prescribed to him by a medically cleared doctor to prevent spontaneous combustion, which is now a sentence I can write and does become a major plot point eventually.

Simply tripping up a wooden step unleashes a serum capable of inhuman biological growth, and between the scientist speaking like the aforementioned alien, the music choices and stock scream effects, and the homemade psychedelic visuals, and this film became far weirder in tone than I had presumed of it even before the homemade mushroom puppets with giant teeth appear. In-between the leads just hanging out in the house in the woods, for prolonged periods which would-be frowned upon in most horror films for padding, this becomes a cavalcade of peculiar sights, where briefly a puppet literally plays a mushroom victim and is so obvious it becomes surreal. Obvious computer effects are layered onto the film in place of what Dave Wascavage could not practically pull off, be it the breaking of a glass door, to the panning shots of the valley, or the larger mushrooms, who drift around using spores to grow more, seen spawning out the graveyard at one point. The regular ones, not either the baby mushrooms as played by real store bought ones, are the puppets, which are cool and quite cute, and the actors in white sheets with a homemade toothy mouth and mushroom cap, armed with silly string projectile with acidic properties, using regular silly string, and able to grow arms.

The film knows its absurdity and guns for silly, as Wascavage filmed a scene of a mushroom attempting to eat a garden gnome, or as they learn human abilities as they eat people, one being able to drive a car and pick up a female sex worker to eat her. There is an entire dream sequence, as the scientist is delighted by the possibilities of being King of Mushroom Men, where he images himself playing video games and Go Fish with one of the puppets, which is hilarious. Mantango (1963) by Ishirō Honda this is not and you have to accept the logic is its own, alongside the padding that leads to an extended cast versus mushroom fight scene involving extensive obvious CGI and no one with clear combat technique. It does not detract from its charms, if you have basked in this region of micro-budget cinema, a film where balsamic vinegar is the solution, and is apparently more volatile and explosive than nitro-glycerine. You need to come with expectations that Wascavage's work, created visibly with his own times and resources, as his first attempt in his career is a film you could see having to be shot on weekend where the cast could get together, with members of the cast including the female lead (and co-writer) related to him. It is its own work to befuddle, admire and get a few belly laughs from, and as of yet, the threat of a sequel involving killer apples as the film ends on has yet to happen.