Mikey (1992)

SEPTEMBER 4, 2020

GENRE: KILLER KID
SOURCE: STREAMING (AMAZON PRIME)

I remember reading about Mikey in Fangoria (Dr Cyclops, if memory serves) when it came out in the early '90s, but despite my affinity for the evil child sub-genre I never got around to seeing it until now. But I'm kind of glad; after seeing so many underwhelming ones over the nearly thirty years in between, I could fully appreciate how trashy and demented it was. Given the respectable cast I figured it would be something more like The Good Son (i.e. violence-free) or, at best, maybe a Bad Seed kinda deal where only one or two minor characters are offed, but nope! Our boy (Brian Bonsall) racks up an impressive body count of seven, including those among the top billed performers!

And one of his weapons of choice is a bow and arrow, so it would pair nicely with the equally sublime Bloody Birthday, another one where the makers were too crass to allow for those aforementioned films' lack of carnage. In the first five minutes, Mikey has wiped out his entire family (including a younger sister), already topping those other kids' entire body counts just in the damn prologue! That said, as the movie proceeded I couldn't help but wonder if the opening was a late addition, because he gets a new family and acts like a normal kid for a while after, having fun with his new bestie (Whit Hertford from Elm Street 5) and being a good son, while Ashley Laurence's character spends a chunk of the movie trying to find out what happened to his previous family as if it was something we were supposed to be discovering as well?

If so I'm glad they did, because it told me right off the bat that he wasn't messing around, buying the movie some goodwill as it went through the routine: meeting the new family, trying to adjust, showing the occasional cracks, finally snapping. The plot is said to be about Mikey falling in love with the neighbor girl (Josie Bissett), but she doesn't even enter the movie for over a half hour and then they have to bond for a bit, so a little patience is required. That said, the final 20-25 minutes are just kind of insane as he wipes out a chunk of the cast, including a character I didn't think would get as much as a scratch, so if the middle sags a bit, the bookends more than make up for it.

It's got a pretty interesting cast, starting with the unusual distinction of John Diehl playing the most normal and wholesome character. He's one of those character actors that excels at playing hardasses and/or weirdos, but he's basically Ward Cleaver here, constantly being optimistic and smiling and trying to quell his wife's growing concerns that "something isn't right with Mikey" (one parent always has to be more aware than the other, it's evil kid movie law). And the wife is Mimi Craven, another Elm Street vet (the nurse in the original), as is Lyman Ward (Elm Street 2), which made me laugh when Mikey explains (to Ward, in fact) that Freddy is his favorite horror character. Well shit, if that's the case aren't you weirded out by how many people in your life resemble the characters from those movies?

(As a bonus, screenwriter Jonathan Glassner wrote a few episodes of the Freddy's Nightmares TV show.)

Another good thing about waiting so long to watch it was that it functioned as a fine time capsule. A character owns one of those clear phones that were so popular in the late 80s/early 90s, Mikey is able to kill someone with a boom box tossed into a pool (nowadays it'd be a portable bluetooth speaker that wouldn't harm anyone), and when a character gives another one a gun, they both take great pains to hide it from the other people around, because once upon a time having a gun in America wasn't so normal (indeed, the film's Arizona setting makes it even more ironic - as of 2010 you don't even need a permit there). It also displays some of the stranger home design choices of the era; at one point Mikey approaches his adoptive mother as she bathes in what seems to be a tub that is placed in the middle of the living room, with carpeting all around it for good measure. She scolds him for not knocking, but I can't for the life of me figure out what he was supposed to knock on since there was no door or sectioning of any kind. The '80s!

No matter when I saw it I'm sure I would have laughed at one of the death scenes due to what appears to be a miscommunication between the filmmakers and the actors. Mikey fires a ball bearing from a slingshot, and the ball flies toward the camera like a shot of one of the Phantasm spheres. I'm thinking it'll hit the victim and he/she will be momentarily stunned enough for Mikey to rush over and finish the job with a deadlier weapon, but nope! They cut to the actor slamming full force into a wall and then dropping to the ground, leaving a huge blood smear on the wall.If you were to just watch this shot on its own, you'd assume at the very least they were pummeled by a 50 lb weight or something, but when it's the result of a damn slingshot pellet it becomes high comedy.

Let's face it: the sub-genre is one where a bit of schlock is a requirement. Some are made with more class than others, of course (Joshua comes to mind as an example), but at the end of the day you have to have a twisted sense of humor to enjoy them. And with that in mind, there's nothing wrong with just going for broke in that department and making them as gonzo as you wish. When the 11ish Mikey drags an adult body across a room, you're either gonna be the kind of person who says "Oh come on, no kid could do that, this is stupid", or the the kind of person who is possibly still laughing from how ridiculous the murder was in the first place. I am, obviously, the latter, and if you are too then there's no reason to think you won't enjoy this B-grade junk.

What say you?

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