The Eleventh Commandment (1987)

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

GENRE: REVENGE, SLASHER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

I am low-key fascinated by the mid to late '80s slashers that were seemingly made for no one in particular. The sub-genre wasn't exactly lucrative at the box office anymore since most fans were moving on to monster/supernatural driven fare like The Fly and the Elm Street sequels, yet there was still a steady stream of movies like The Eleventh Commandment (aka Body Count - and both titles are offered on letterboxd as if they were separate films, weirdly) that I can't imagine anyone involved was thinking "This will be the one to bring the slasher genre back to box office glory!" Instead, these films tend to be a bit weird, almost as if they were daring body count aficionados to bother with them since they often went out of their way to avoid the things we liked (Slaughterhouse and Berserker come to mind as notable examples of the type).

Indeed, the one line summary for this one sounds very much like a standard bit of slasher mayhem: a guy escapes from a mental institution and leaves a trail of bodies as he makes his way home to get revenge on the person who sent him there in the first place. But it's quickly apparent that this isn't some Halloween/Terror Train hybrid, as the killer, Robert, is a religious freak who thinks he's a priest, quoting from the Bible and punishing those who break the commandments, though I'm not entirely sure where he drew the line there. The main impetus for his revenge mission is going after his uncle Charles, who killed Robert's dad (so, his own brother) and took the man's wife AND his fortune as his own - very much against "Though shall not covet...", right? But... he's killing everyone, and that's a commandment too? Also, one of the only ones he directly quotes: "Though shall not lie" isn't a commandment, so maybe that's the 11th one the title mentions?

Weirder is that for a revenge quest, he kind of sucks at it (spoilers ahead). You'd think after escaping from the hospital and murdering someone there in the process, he'd know that people will be looking for him and he should probably beeline for his uncle before it was too late, but nah. Instead he kills the totally innocent family chauffeur (Maybe there's a 12th commandment? "Thou shall not wear a stupid hat?") and picks up his 9 year old cousin from her ballet class, taking her out on a fun day around Los Angeles that includes a stop at the beach and serving dinner at a soup kitchen, which she legit loves. Then he takes her to a shitty hotel where he is seduced by the lady at the front desk, kills her, takes the kid to sleep in a parking lot somewhere, and then finally - a day and a half later! - heads over to his uncle's place.

And (spoilers continue here, for the record) even then he dilly dallies, practicing a play with the niece in the basement and such. But the real "come on!" moment is a scene where he kills the house butler, who has been far and away the most unlikable character in the film (and yes, I'm including the murderer). He looks like a Charles Gray stunt double, so he's already sort of antagonistic looking before he even opens his mouth, but throughout the movie he's just a total jerk to the film's lone sympathetic adult: the maid, who is also the only one who seems to notice that the little girl never came home from ballet. He's the kind of character you can't wait to see offed, but the movie makes it weird by having Robert show remorse about killing him (he came around a corner and got stabbed by Robert, who was expecting his uncle), denying us the sort of "Good, he had it coming!" reaction by treating it like the only time in the movie where Robert was unjustified.

Also, I won't spoil the particulars, but neither Robert or the uncle are a factor in the film's final ten minutes, which is just awkward af. Instead of a big showdown, we get an overlong prologue about the niece and some last minute exposition from a pair of supporting characters, giving the audience time to contemplate how we just spent 85 minutes watching this guy bungle the one thing he set out to do. The two characters never even share a scene! It's kind of amazing in its own stupid way, admittedly, but it also means you have to be in a very tiny cross section of "I am starved for a new slasher movie" and "I do not want a film that is well done in any aspect" to get the most out of this one.

Or, I guess, you could be the type of person who loved Dynasty but wish it had more stabbings. Robert's family (save the niece) is populated exclusively by rich jerks who all seem to hate each other; even his own mother uses him to further her own evil schemes, which she carries out in between attempts (some successful) in sleeping with just about every male character in the film, occasionally with the knowledge (and consent?) of her former brother-in-law/now husband (who, by the way, is played by Dick Sargent). This stuff borders on sleazy at times, but keeps pulling back; unless I'm forgetting F bombs the movie might even get a PG-13 today since the killings aren't notable in any way, nothing worse than is allowed on basic cable anyway.

I never saw it, but the team of Paul Leder and William Norton also made I Dismember Mama, which has a similar plot except the guy is going after his own mother instead of an uncle, and - far as I can tell - isn't a wannabe priest. And (icky alert!) the murderer actually forms an attraction to the little girl in that one, which thankfully isn't the case here as he merely wants to protect her from his awful family so that she doesn't end up being like them, which is admirable. It's weird that they were ripping themselves off (the girl's age is even the same), but sounds like it'd be an interesting double feature, since the two movies have similar setups but go in very different directions at a certain point.

Vinegar Syndrome's disc has a first for me: bonus features produced in the Covid-19 era! Or at least, the first to acknowledge them as such - there are two interviews (with the actors who played Robert and the little girl) and both begin with a disclaimer that they were produced by the talent themselves (via Zoom or whatever) and thus aren't up to the usual technical snuff. But they're fine, the recordings are clean and it's easy to hear them, plus the casual nature of it is kind of interesting. Otherwise they would be in the studio with the usual nothing background and canned replies, but there's a certain laid back quality that kept them a little more engaging than they might have been otherwise.

Like I said, you really gotta be slasher starved for this one, but there's something kind of endearing about how they seemingly refuse to satisfy the part of your brain that wants to see a revenge carried out, regardless of circumstances. If the body count was a little higher it might qualify for SNDN 2 kind of campy WTF-ery, but it's too low key in that department to qualify, so it's just kind of stuck in the middle of a bunch of bad movie extremes, never topping its first 20 minutes where Robert faces off against a Nurse Ratched type who is played by an abysmally wooden actress, as well as James "Uncle Phil" Avery as an orderly. I hate when a movie peaks early!

What say you?

P.S. IMDb says the movie was released in March of 1986, but that seems to be impossible as there is a noticeable Beverly Hills Cop II poster behind Robert as he walks down the street, and that movie didn't even begin production until November of that year (released in May of 1987). I hereby declare this to be the first and hopefully last time I ever read something incorrect on the IMDb. But I can't find a trailer for this movie so here's one for Axel's sophomore adventure.

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