Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Produced and directed by Charles Band
• Written by “August White” (reputedly Domonic Muir)
• Starring
  • Roark Critchlow
  • Jessica Lancaster
  • Osmon Soykut
  • Kimberely Pfeffer
  • Chris Bergschneider
• Executive produced by Dana Harrloe

Once upon a time — way back around 1980 — there was a sci-fi horror flick called Time Walker. It concerned a mysterious mummy, revived on a college campus, that eventually turned out to be a killer alien. It wasn’t a very good movie, but I’ve always been unjustifiably fond of it. And every reviewer of Petrified who has seen Time Walker must perforce mention the earlier movie, because how many killer-alien-mummy movies are there? Also because Petrified reminds us that Time Walker was, while bad, still rather entertaining. Unlike Petrified, which is simply lazy, lackluster, and perfunctory in just about every possible way.

The object of interest — the star, if you will (with FX man Chris Bergschneider wearing the alien mummy costume himself) — shows up in a crate at a mysterious midnight rendezvous. Three shady antiquities dealers — Buzz (Roark Critchlow), Reggie (Nick Stellate), and Lin (Elena Madison) — have a couple of packages to deliver to collector Eldridge (Darrow Igus of The Horrible Dr. Bones (2000)) in exchange for a suitcase full of cash. The smaller of the packages contains a mummified hand; the larger, well, we don’t get to see what’s in there until after Reggie decides to kill their client because “he was annoying.” That’s certainly a good way for professional antiquities smugglers to build their client base. Then, because Reggie is demonstrably nasty, he decides that Buzz is one person too many with whom to split the loot, and starts shooting at him too. Buzz grabs the smaller crate and runs, evading bullets with ease. And then, before the other two can give chase, the larger crate breaks open as the alien mummy bursts out! Pretty exciting, huh? The mummy proceeds to turn his red glowing eyes on the two thugs, who petrify. (Which is something you only really find out later. At the moment, all you can really tell is that their faces are overlaid with a murky digital effect of some kind.)

You can never have too many “Visine” punchlines. Honest.

Buzz runs off to the nearest structure in the isolated environs where the exchange took place, a largish house with an unlocked front door. He wanders in like he owns the place, finds no one on the first floor, and uses the phone to call for a pickup, which should be there in about an hour. While it’s not revealed until later, the back of the DVD box introduces him as a federal agent working undercover with the smugglers, so I suppose it’s no sin to tell you that about him right now and save time.

Eventually, Buzz runs into Helen Noel, who insists (unconvincingly) that she’s the doctor running the place, which is a clinic to treat nymphomania. And just to prove to us viewers that she’s at least being honest on that point, we immediately get to meet two nymphos (lesbian nymphos, even) who’ve let themselves out of their rooms to spread a blanket in the untended woods behind the clinic. You know, the kind of woods in which an alien mummy would lurk, waiting for nymphos to come out for some privacy. The mummy watches while the girls engage in some verbal foreplay and start to get nibbly, then lumbers out and petrifies one of them, then gores the other up with his claws.

Meanwhile, two MORE nymphos are… Oh, let’s skip it, shall we? I mean, this thing was shot for rental at Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, so you know that there’s not going to be an overabundance of hot girl-on-girl action, and Band’s manner of shooting such supposedly exploitative fare will make you long for the days of Dave DeCoteau’s reign as Band’s go-to softcore director. So let’s start tossing out chunks of plot:

“And then I had to get THIS drunk just for the audition!”

Helen is in fact there to “rescue” her sister, Suze (Kimberely Pfeffer), a willing patient. Helen’s got her suspicions about this place, since it seems more geared for ramping up carnal urges than calming them down. Helen, Suze, and Buzz soon meet Garth (Tim Murphy), the general maintenance/watchman, who answers the burning question for us: “How creepy and unattractive can a guy be and still get his fill of action from horny bisexual nymphomaniacs?” As the three characters we’re obviously supposed to like generally wander around in a way that’s supposed to stand in for actual plot, Garth frees Dr. Von Gelder (Osman Soykut), whom Helen had tied up in the basement. Oh, and the mummy comes in from outside and starts hunting people down and a glowing his eyes at them.

Lest I forget, there’s also a couple of government agents, Tanner and Shelly (Robert Buckley and Stephanie Gentry) who investigate the scene of the smuggling-gone-wrong and start tracking the former occupant of the crate through the woods.

In many ways, Petrified is the epitome of what’s wrong with recent Full Moon movies. With barely more than a single hour of real movie, the plot suffers from the almost complete absence of a second act. More than that, though, the script exhibits a common problem for Full Moon productions: the idea that throwing more underdeveloped ideas into the mix will make the result more interesting. (Not that this is a new problem - even the early, better-funded Full Moon pictures concentrated on “high concept” often to the detriment of solid stories.) What we get, instead, is a bunch of questions about what’s supposed to be going on, because no one ever bothered to connect the dots.

Ooh. Air ducts. How original.

Let’s start with the alien mummy. As Shelly opines on examining the broken crate, it appears to have revived when exposed to blood (like, a bare thimbleful of Eldridge’s that leaked into the crate after he was shot). Does the alien then go around seeking more blood? No, mostly he petrifies people. Why? Does petrifying others let it suck their “lifeforce” or something? Why does it only petrify one person when it finds two people together (a common occurrence in this movie), instead ripping the other one apart? Is there a point to anything it does?

The second crate contains an alien hand, one which we’re later told probably belonged to the superior officer to this alien mummy, who crashlanded in Libya five thousand years ago. The mummy spends much of the movie trying to regain the hand. Why? And why does the hand also reanimate, though not exposed to blood or anything?

It turns out that nymphomania clinic (which seems to specialize in gorgeous lesbians) is really Dr. Von Gelder’s front for experiments into immortality. What, because a garden-variety nymphomania clinic just isn’t interesting enough? Apparently not, though the whole immortality angle really only exists to give Von Gelder the opportunity to give a surprisingly low-key rendition of the standard “They all say I’m crazy but I’m doing it for science!” speech (right down to the “playing God” reference). In a better script, the mummy would be attracted to the clinic specifically for the erotically-charged immortality energies. As it is, the mummy spends far too much standing in the shadows, watching the R-rated frottage because there’s nothing much else to do.

Ancient evil, stymied by modern bra clasp!

Then there are the two other federal agents. They are the backup that Buzz called for a pickup, but I don’t see how much picking-up they’ll do: We never see the vehicle that brings them to the original crime scene, but they then follow the trail of the mummy through the woods on foot to the clinic, arriving after the “action” is all wrapped up.

I could unload at length on the script and its perfunctory attempts to find a reason why a houseful of people simply won’t make for the exits when a murderous alien mummy invades the clinic, punctuated by a couple of the most laughable discrete chunks of “characterization” dialogue ever committed to film. But I don’t want to leave out the thudding direction. I lost count of how many times the mummy showed up suddenly from just outside the frame to attack, even though it would have to have been clearly visible to its victims from where it stood. None of the actors seem terribly excited about anything (and you can interpret “excited” any way you like), and the few moments of action are staged so limply that you’d swear they accidentally used the run-through in the final edit instead of the real take.

It’s enough to make you wonder whether Charles Band has somehow forgotten the whole point of exploitation cinema - the “exploit” part. I mean, if you can’t make an interesting movie on the cheap about an alien mummy in an nymphomania clinic…

You call THAT a grope? Sheesh!

As Band points out in the making-of footage, what this movie will mostly be remembered for in the future is the fact that there are over three hundred “executive producers” listed in a credits, an honor gained by anyone who bought more than $100 of merchandise at one of the “Full Moon Road Show” events. However, I don’t think it’ll be considered as ground-breaking and record-setting as Band seems to think, unless you can argue convincingly that the listing of thousands upon thousands of Lord of the Rings fanclub members in the credits of the Special Edition of The Fellowship of the Ring was completely different.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 7
• breasts: 2
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0 (”Dr. Helen Noel” and “Dr. Von Gelder” are names right out of the classic episode “Dagger of the Mind,” but it’s not as if I can really count that)