Heckling, The (1987) [short]

... aka: Heckling: An Exorcist Parody, The

Directed by:

Bryan Michael Stoller

I've spoken so many times in so many reviews about what a global phenomenon The Exorcist was upon release that I feel like a skipping record at this late stage still talking about it... and yet I'm still going to. It's almost impossible to go into this particular review (or a lot of other reviews for adjacent films and copies) and NOT discuss it, so we'll just do our due diligence here and at least dish out all the basics. First, it needs to be pointed out that The Exorcist remains the most financially successful horror film of all time. Nothing has managed to top it over the past 50+ years and chances are nothing ever will top it. When I was researching this I found all kinds of misleading charts floating around out there, but this stuff really needs to be called out as we see it. So allow me to do just that. I don't care how much of a fanboy you are of a certain big budget Stephen King remake from a few years back...

You 👏 Need 👏 To 👏 Adjust 👏 Figures 👏 For 👏 Inflation

And if you choose not to, your chart is as useless as rubber lips on a woodpecker. Just imagine thinking 1973 grosses should be stacked right up against ones from 40 or 50 years later, especially with ticket prices being anywhere from 5 to 8 times more expensive. C'mon now. In case you want an example of just what I'm talking about, here's a meme I've seen being passed around on a bunch of different websites.

After getting a chuckle from that (and how the fuck did The Nun make that much money?!), I consulted numerous websites to get the real figures and found Marcus Lu's article at Visual Capitalist especially helpful. Adjusted for inflation at the end of 2022, The Exorcist's global haul of over 428 million dollars translates to over 2.8 billion in today's dollars. That not only makes it the highest grossing horror film of all time but also the highest grossing R rated film of all time and one of the Top 20 highest grossing films of any genre of all time. Period. Jaws is the only other genre film even remotely in the same league, which bests The Exorcist in a few ways (domestic adjusted revenue, overall ticket sales) but still falls short of the adjusted global gross. So there you have it folks. The Exorcist and Jaws. #1 and #2 when it comes to box office horror royalty. Both sold well in excess of 100 million tickets apiece just domestically; over twice as many as the nearest competitor. Nothing else is even close and that's unlikely to ever change.

Now that we've confirmed just how huge The Exorcist was yet again, that leads us to the fallout. We're talkin' all of the official sequels of varying quality (including the critically panned, financially under-performing and multi-Razzie nominated The Exorcist: Believer from just last year), endless blatant copies, films heavily influenced by it, unrelated films re-titled to cash in on it and, like with anything else that's extremely popular, parodies out the wazoo. It was regularly mocked on sketch comedy shows like Mad TV, Saturday Night Live (one featuring Richard Pryor) and (in the UK) French and Saunders, animated shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy, in print (most memorably in Mad Magazine) and in films like Daffy Duck's Quackbusters, Scary Movie 2, This Is the End and this 9 minute short, which predates most of the others. I'm not sure exactly where this one ever played. Was it shown on TV? Was it used as a bumper? Was it shown as a support feature in theaters, or at horror conventions, or at film festivals? I have no clue. I actually wasn't even aware it even existed until somewhat recently.

From the beginning, you know you're at least in knowing hands when this reuses Mike Oldfield's classic "Tubular Bells" piece and emulates exact shots from its inspiration, right down to the shadow of the clergyman standing before the home prior to doing battle with the demon. Instead of Father Merrin, here we get Rabbi Herring ("Exorcism? I thought you said circumcision!"). He meets up with defeated mother Mrs. Taylor and a regular priest who's already at the home. The mom is played by a grown-up Linda Blair, whose presence here is probably the main reason anyone is going to want to watch this. Interestingly, one gets the impression that the makers of the later feature-length Exorcist parody Repossessed (1990), which also stars Blair, must have somehow seen this. In that later film, the star gets to play both the mom and the possessed, and does the exact same here.

The real question is: Is any of this actually funny? While I know humor can be subjective, all this did for me was annoy me and make me cringe. The evil spirit that inhabits the daughter (also Blair) is basically a terrible comedian so desperate to get a laugh it will "try anything; puns, insults, prop humor, even fat jokes." We're then hit with a barrage of awful jokes (which are supposed to be awful, but still...) Everything from knock knock jokes, your [fill in the blank] is so ugly jokes, lousy imitations of famous comedians who were popular at the time like George Burns, Rodney Dangerfield, Joan Rivers and Steve Martin and, yes, fat jokes. Also throw in some Pee Wee Herman, Woody Woodpecker and belching. While that's going on, there are the expected Exorcist nods (the tongue, bodily fluids, floating in bed, a teddy bear's head spinning...) while the exorcists chant things like "Cast out his one liners!"

This also includes rubber chickens, a guy turning into a clown, a laugh track, a squirting flower, cymbal clashes, watermelons (probably a nod to Gallagher) and some scenes of another terrible (non-possessed) stand up comic doing a routine in a club and getting heckled. Blair and the actors playing the priest and rabbi (whose identities aren't known since this doesn't have credits) are actually pretty good but there's absolutely nothing they can do to make terrible jokes, especially intentionally terrible ones, land as anything other than what they are.

Stoller, who hails from Canada, had previously directed an episode of Tales from the Darkside ("The Bitterest Pill") and another short (2 minute) horror spoof called A Canadian Werewolf in Hollywood. His later work includes the feature-length spoof Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls (2004), which is notable for featuring a bizarre cameo from Michael Jackson (!!) and a bunch of family friendly dog-themed stuff like The Amazing Wizard of Paws (2015) and Santa Stole Our Dog: A Merry Doggone Christmas! (2017). If you want to torture yourself for 10 minutes, this is on Youtube.

★

Sa init ng apoy (1980)

... aka: Hellfire

... aka: In the Heat of the Fire

Directed by:

Romy V. Suzara

Young newlyweds Laura and Emiliano Cruz (Lorna Tolentino, Rudy Fernandez) decide to spend their honeymoon in Baguio aka "The Summer Capital of the Philippines." After striking out finding a hotel in the city due to busy Holy Week festivities, the two get a flat tire while driving through the country and stumble upon an old, fogbound, seemingly abandoned home called Casa Morteja. There are both "For Sale" and "Room for Rent" signs out front, so the couple decide this would be as good a place as any. After meeting old, peculiar-acting caretaker Pedro (George Estregan - CRAZY), they should have decided otherwise. The caretaker likes sitting near the fireplace despite the sweltering hot summer temperatures outside yet keeps the home pitch dark otherwise. Though the home has electricity, he never uses it because he claims his eyes are sensitive to bright light. Not only that, but he has no set price on renting a room there and lets the couple decide all of that on their own. Not that it matters any. After they go to look at their surprisingly clean room, the old man has seemingly vanished into thin air and can't be found again. Regardless of that strange introduction, the two decide to stay there for what they hope will be a romantic, relaxing next ten days.

Long before their trip, Laura had been plagued by terrible recurring nightmares of someone trying to strangle her to death in the shower. These caused her to regularly wake up a sweaty, shrieking mess with blood on her hands, presumably from clawing at her own neck trying to remove the hands that were strangling her in the dream. Somehow, she and her psychiatrist determined that if she goes to bed after midnight, she doesn't have the dreams, so she tries to force herself to stay up late every single night. After just one day in the home, Laura starts behaving even more peculiarly than usual. She seems completely familiar with the home despite never having set foot inside it before, keeps seeing a shrouded figure lurking around outside and is drenched with blood while showering but then the blood disappears when she tries to show her husband.

Emil hunts down an orange-haired former classmate of his, Tony Fuentes (Joey Padilla), and his wife Vina (Janice Jurado), who put him in contact with Zacarias (Dick Israel - MAGIC OF THE UNIVERSE), who self identifies as "the best fortune-teller in Baguio." He later reads Laura's tarot cards, which spell death in her near future, so he and Tony decide to help their friend out.

The men pay a visit to Vina's grandfather (Paquito Salcedo), who's been around long enough to remember the entire long, sordid and blood-soaked history of the home. The original owners - Ignacio and Sylvina Morteja - were both found dead in the attic covered in bite marks (supposedly from a dog) and with their hearts ripped from their chests. When the dead couple's adult son, Silvestre, inherited it, a grim fate also befell him and his family when they tried to move in. The wife went crazy and had to be locked up (a skeleton found hidden inside a closet is said to have been her) and both Silvestre and their young daughter, Editha, also reputedly died. But, of course, these are only local legends and, as is usually the case, a detail or two may not be so accurate. These events also explain why the home has remained unsold and vacant all these years later.

As Emil and his buddies try to get to the bottom of things, glutton-for-punishment Laura stays behind by herself to be repeatedly terrorized. Invisible forces bust her mirror and then throw her on the bed and spin her around. She's entranced and starts sleepwalking, seeming particularly interested in going into another small building on the property. One the plot's dumbest points is why the couple insist on even staying there in the first place when it's merely a temporary, week-long vacation rental and they could just pack their bags and leave at any time! It isn't until the night before their scheduled trip back home that Laura finally goes to her husband and asks to leave. Her reasoning? Well, because it was so weird she knew that a key was in a drawer their first day there. With all of the other freaky shit that's been going on, that's what she's weirded out about the most?!

The other character of interest is a nameless old woman (Estrella Kuenzler) who's lurking around everywhere and seems to be stalking the couple. She repeatedly tries to give them a package but keeps getting rejected. When she finally gives up and just leaves it in their jeep, they find a piece of bamboo and a small doll arm made out of ivory inside.

While watchable and not bad overall, this falls just shy of being solidly good thanks to some truly dumb and / or muddy plot points and poor pacing. For some reason, this is dragged out for nearly two hours and there's definitely stuff that could have wound up on the cutting room floor without losing anything of value in the process. The worst bit by far is a bunch of dissolve shots of the couple making out by the fireplace that goes on for three minutes just so the corny love theme song, "Apoy" ("Fire"), can be played in its entirety. There's also quite a bit of travelogue footage thrown in, though at least it's nice to look at.

During the final half hour, this throws a lot of what came before right out the window and opts to go the standard Exorcist route with our female lead becoming possessed, turning green, laughing in a maniacal deep voice, saying crude sexual things (though nowhere near as crude and vulgar as its inspiration or most of the other knock offs!) and puking up green slime. Oh yeah, and she also shoots the same stuff out of her nipples (!), which I suppose is at least something a little different. This also tosses some Omen into the mix with a demon / ghost Doberman prowling the property, which chews out a guy's throat and traps the protagonists on the property when they finally do decide to try to leave.

The two major highlights here are the fantastic supporting performance from Estregan, who's really creepy in his enigmatic role though he unfortunately disappears from the entire last act, and the cinematography from Ernesto Dela Paz, who does an especially great job shooting and lighting the indoor night scenes, which all look really dark but have nice pops and slivers of color a la Bava.

Stars Fernandez (who apparently was popular in his home country at the time but gives a wooden, dopey performance here) and Tolentino (who's much better) would marry in real life just a few years later and stayed married until his death in 2008. The director (who passed away in 2022) has over sixty films to his credit, including a couple of other genre films: Anak ng asuang (1973), which involves a female vampire and appears to be a missing film, and the cheap-looking, digitally-shot Sigaw sa hatinggabi / "Scream at Midnight" (2014).

After its initial theatrical release in its home country, this pretty much vanished (I can't even find evidence of an older VHS or VCD release) until a heavily-damaged 35mm print turned up. It was then digitally restored by ABS-CBN (who have done a commendable job) and given a limited theatrical re-release in its home country in 2018. Amazon, Apple TV and a few other websites now offer this for rent. 

Seeing how film elements from many older Filipino genre movies are probably gone forever, another discovery like this getting a second lease on life through restoration is always reason to celebrate, regardless of the outcome. This one has enough good things working in its favor to merit a look.

★★1/2