Making Contact (1985)

... aka: Contacto con el más allá (Contact with the Beyond)

... aka: Debiru doru (Devil Doll)

... aka: El secreto de Joey (Joey's Secret)

... aka: Joey

... aka: Joey, una storia meravigliosa (Joey: A Wonderful Story)

Directed by:

Roland Emmerich

Having lofty aspirations to become Germany's answer to Spielberg or Lucas, Roland Emmerich started out in his home country with smaller scale science fiction films. His first feature length effort fresh out of film school was The Noah's Ark Principle (1984), which didn't set the box office ablaze but did manage to turn a profit due to securing an international distribution deal on a budget of around 300 thousand U.S. dollars. Next up was this effort, which took a year and a half to complete and was budgeted at around 1.5 million. Like his previous effort, this sold well internationally (to 22 markets) and made even more money due to the director's decision to shoot the film in English and keep it tame and schmaltzy enough to secure a PG rating, thus netting an even wider audience. As for the critical response to the film, it was almost universally terrible; a recurring theme for the director. Not that he cared any. Emmerich would later go on record admitting that he only makes popcorn movies for mass consumption. That attitude would end up serving him well when he later segued into his big budget Hollywood career. 

Less than a decade after he started with his modest little fantasy / sci-fi films, he was "discovered" by Sylvester Stallone and then recommended to direct the popular Jean Claude Van Damme action vehicle Universal Soldier (1992). From there he made the uneven though successful sci-fi film Stargate (1994), which at least spawned a far superior TV series, and then was on to the alien invasion extravaganza Independence Day (1996), which ended up becoming the highest grossing film of its year despite not being very good.

The formula was all pretty simple: huge budgets, huge major studio marketing campaigns, casts filled with popular actors, expensive state of the art special effects and depictions of mass destruction, all pasted together with extremely hokey human interest drama. Audiences just couldn't get enough for awhile and he'd repeat the same routine with later films like The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 BC and 2012. However, the sheen would eventually wear off. Later "event" movies like the Independence Day sequel under-performed, while his last film as of this writing - Moonfall (2022) - was a certifiable box office bomb.

As someone who's not a fan of his Hollywood career at all, I actually went into this with my curiosity piqued at the prospect of seeing what Mr. 200 Million Budget could do with only a tiny fraction of the money he'd later become accustomed to working with. I didn't expect good, but I did perhaps expect moments of interest seeing someone with such big, expensive visions facing budget constraints. How will he overcome that? Will he overcome that? Let's take a look...

Grand, whimsical John Williams-esque music swells over the opening credits and then we're whisked off to a funeral. Laura Collins (Eva Kryll) has just lost her husband, leaving her to raise their 9-year-old son Joey (Joshua Morrell) all on her own. Later that night, while Joey is mourning his father, his toys seem to come to life, lights flash from his closet and a glowing red plastic phone starts ringing. Joey answers it to find his father on the other line. Or does he? When mom catches him under his blankets talking to his deceased father, she's mildly concerned but decides to just give it some time. Maybe this is his unique way of grieving. Joey makes the mistake of telling some of his classmates that he's still making contact with his dead dad, which makes him the target of a group of bullies led by Bernie (Matthias Kraus) and William (Jerry Hall).

At a nearby abandoned house, Joey finds an old, ugly ventriloquist's dummy in the basement. He cleans it up, takes it home and puts it in his bedroom. The dummy turns out to be alive, or at least possessed by someone and being animated, and also appears to be the root cause of all the supernatural events that have been occurring thus far. Somehow through all this, Joey picks up telekinetic abilities and is gifted the ability to move objects with his mind simply by willing it to happen.

The dummy soon reveals its true nature to Joey i.e. it's not just another harmless inanimate object in his massive toy collection. It goes "Blarrrrr!" in a deep voice and shoots lasers out of its eyes. It tries to kill his mom by flinging a knife at her and attempting to run her over with a car, shows him historical clips on a TV screen and tells him he hasn't actually been talking to his father all this time. Instead, he's been speaking to a famous former stage magician and ventriloquist named Jonathan Fletcher, who's been dead since the 1920s and had brought his stage prop to life via black magic. As for their motives, the dummy chimes in and says that he and the dead Fletcher want to "control" him. As for why, and what they plan on doing once they do, your guess is as good as mine. I couldn't make heads of tails of much of this, though it's kind of revealed toward the end that the dummy is the real issue, not the ventriloquist. Or something.

Joey does have a couple of helpful allies, including a friendly, pigtailed neighborhood girl named Sally (Tammy Shields), his dog Scooter and a super-intelligent miniature R2-D2 style robot named Charlie that can think for itself and even has feelings (!?) Concerned teacher Martin (Jan Zierold) starts showing up periodically to check on the boy and is set up as a potential love interest for the widowed mother, though nothing ever comes of this. Just like in E.T. where a huge swarm of government agents and scientists basically take over the family home, here a huge swarm of paranormal investigators, police officers and scientists take over the family home. While they're running tests on Joey, his bullies convene at the former ventriloquist's home and make elaborate plans to "rid ourselves of this menace." (What do they plan on actually doing? Killing him?) Instead, they become trapped inside while a supernatural manure storm hits, which somehow includes a toothy monster, a mummy and a giant fanged cheeseburger (!?)

This is a prime example of a filmmaker putting nearly everything he has into the technical aspects of a film whilst neglecting every other important thing in the process. This is a delightfully colorful and handsomely shot (by Egon Werdin) film, with expensive-looking art direction and special effects. It's actually impressive how the director and his crew are able to almost completely pull off the look and feel of a big budget 80s Hollywood production with meager means. That said, the visuals are about the only good thing going on here, unless you can have fun counting the endless blatant ways the director tries, and fails, to copy Spielberg's brand of "heartwarming" family friendly fantasy entertainment.

Undoing nearly all of the polish is an absolutely terrible screenplay, which is completely unable to generate any sympathy for its cardboard protagonists, fails to establish any kind of compelling, coherent plot, fails to come up with a satisfactory conclusion (there basically ISN'T a conclusion) and is filled with laughably awful dialogue, including giving the dummy a bunch of lame "funny" one-liners. Everything here feels soulless, heartless, charmless and derivative, as if every prior popular PG fantasy film was fed into some kind of malfunctioning computer and this got spit out.

Making matters even worse, the acting is horrendous. His decision to cast mostly amateurs simply because they spoke English results in across-the-board stone-faced performances and stilted delivery of nearly every single line of dialogue. Apparently all of the young "talent" were completely inexperienced kids that were plucked from a U.S. military base / school to take part in the film, though they don't really come off any worse than most of the adults. Not sure where they found the rest of these folks at but most never appeared in anything else ever again. I'm also not sure why they even bothered shooting in English since most of the actors ultimately got dubbed over anyway. The woman playing the mother, for instance, looks like she can actually act based on her reactions to various events but then she's given a monotone dub that ruins her entire performance.

You'd be hard pressed to find another film filled with as much product placement as this one, though I don't believe there were any kind of paid licensing deals going on here either. The director seems to have basically just used whatever he wanted to give this a more American appearance. The young star's bedroom is filled to the rafters with name brand toys and merch; Sesame Street, Star Wars, Smurfs, various Disney characters, Garfield, Pac Man, E.T., you name it. If kids were into it at the time, Joey definitely has it. This goes even further than that with a perplexing cameo appearance from Darth Vader himself. The kitchen is filled with products like Skippy peanut butter and Heinz ketchup. Their dog eats Alpo. All of this makes Mac and Me, which infamously features an entire musical number set inside a McDonald's and an alien sustaining itself with sips of Coca-Cola, look restrained by comparison.

In addition to directing, Emmerich also co-wrote the script, produced, did a lot of the special effects and even operated the camera at times. Most of the film was shot in Germany, but exteriors were shot in the U.S. because this is supposed to be taking place in Virginia Beach, which somehow also means we get gratuitous shots of Southwestern Bell pay phones and a Krispy Kreme shop.

From Cinemafantastique Vol. 16 #3 (July 1986)

There are a number of different versions available. The first is the original 101 minute version released in Germany under its original title, Joey. This same version appears to have been released throughout Europe. And then there's the heavily-cut, English language release called Making Contact. Over twenty minutes have been removed (having browsed through the longer version it doesn't appear you're missing out on much) and it features a different, inferior score. The cut U. S. release was briefly distributed theatrically by New World Pictures in 1986, then turned up on home video courtesy of New World Video later that same year. Anchor Bay distributed it on DVD and then Blu-ray duties were handed off to Kino Lorber. The latter includes both the original and cut versions of the film.

A little note here, my rating is entirely a reflection of the craftsmanship of some of the crew people, not a reflection of my enjoyment of the actual film. I actually hated this with every fiber of my being. It grated on my nerves nearly the entire time. It's obvious. It's insulting. It's dumb as hell. It's offensively cynical in how stupid it assumes its target audience is going to be. And it actually just pissed me off.

★1/2

976-EVIL (1988)

... aka: Dial the Devil

... aka: Força Demoníaca (Demonic Force)

... aka: Horrorscope

... aka: La ligne du diable (The Line of the Devil)

... aka: Llamada siniestra (Sinister Call)

... aka: Maníaco nocturno (Night Maniac)

... aka: 976: Chiamata per il diavolo (976: Call for the Devil)

... aka: Puhelu helvetistä (A Call from Hell)

... aka: Super Evil

Directed by:

Robert Englund

Talk about titles that didn't age well. Actually I'm not sure if this was ever a good title. Though I may be mistaken, I believe the exchange code 976 (just like 900) was only used in North America and only for additional pay telephone calls. Since 976 had no real significance to most international audiences, that meant this film basically had to change its title to something else in nearly every other country it was ever released in. The working title was the much snappier sounding Horrorscope, a moniker it retained for its Japanese release, and probably one it ultimately should have stuck with. Apparently this was also called Dial the Devil at some point, which isn't as good a title as Horrorscope, but still better than 976-EVIL.

The title is perhaps even more problematic these days since almost nobody still uses these lines. I can see some Millennials and the entirety of Gen Z looking at this title and being like "Huh?" So, for some of our younger folks in the audience, dialing 1-900 or 1-976 for certain services offered could really set you back. We're talking 3, 4, 5 or even more dollars per minute here. Imagine talking, or even just listening to someone else talk, for twenty minutes and then being slapped with an additional 100 dollars on your phone bill. Now imagine staying on the phone for an hour. And doing it a couple of times a month. Now that I'm thinking about it, and remembering how much phone companies also charged for long distance calls, even ones within the same state, this really was insane! How did people even afford to keep their phones turned on back then?

The most popular of these pay lines were undoubtedly the phone sex / dating lines and psychic hotlines. What these companies were really doing was exploiting and preying upon lonely, vulnerable people who were desperate enough to run up a huge phone bill just to have someone to talk to or confide in. The predatory nature of these pay lines also extended to teens and children. Commercials were frequently aired during children's programming to entice kiddies to talk to their favorite celebrity, or teen idol, or cartoon character, or Santa Claus, followed by a quick disclaimer to "Ask your parents permission..." How many children do you think ignored that and just called anyway, to hell with the consequences? Millions!

976-EVIL does get a few things right just with its general concept. It features lonely and / or desperate people using a pay phone service... only this time it's a Satanic "horrorscope" line and there are some major consequences for using it outside of getting a 1000 dollar phone bill at the end of the month.

"Out of the darkness and into the light comes your horrorscope on this dark and stormy night. Push 666 for your horoscope now."

Lucy Wilmoth (Sandy Dennis), a religious fanatic, child abuser, cat collector, televangelist junkie and all-around hypocrite, heads a very dysfunctional, very unpleasant family. It's obvious this role was meant as a tribute to Piper Laurie's psycho mama in Carrie (though given a Tammy Faye aesthetic with a bunch of crazy wigs), but it's done entirely wrong here. Dennis, who can act, and has Oscar and Tony awards to prove it, gives a grotesquely unrestrained performance here that can only be described as incredibly annoying. She's loud, shrill, overwrought, spits her lines out very awkwardly and there's zero positive to say about this awful part. Dennis has clearly been coached to just let 'er rip by Englund and (I think) she's supposed to come off as funny and campy but her mean-spirited, venomous dialogue and delivery of said lines is anything but. Sadly, this would be one of her final screen performances before he death from ovarian cancer four years later. On the bright side, she left behind a strong well of earlier performances to draw from so what she does here can be forgotten.

The poor teenagers forced to live with this hideous woman are her son, Arthur aka Hoax (Stephen Geoffreys), and her nephew, Leonard aka Spike (Patrick O'Bryan); two polar opposites. Hoax is nerdy, awkward, idolizes his cooler cousin and has been smothered and controlled to the point of still acting like a little boy. He wears child-like pajamas to bed and thinks eating on the sofa when he's not supposed to is the epitome of rebellion. Spike, on the other hand, actually is a rebel in that cliché movie way the includes wearing a leather jacket, riding a motorcycle, drinking, smoking, gambling, hanging out with a bad crowd and flunking out of school and not really giving a damn about any of that. The only reason he hasn't taken off yet is that Lucy is controlling the purse strings. Though he's been left an inheritance by his late mother, auntie's been put in charge of it and won't be forking it over until he turns 21... granted there's anything left by that point.

While everyone's outside bickering one evening, Lucy starts shrieking to the heavens and it suddenly starts raining fish (?!) Curiously showing up on their doorstep the following morning is Marty Palmer (Jim Metzler), who claims to be a writer for "Modern Miracle Magazine" and wants to do an article about the strange phenomenon they experienced. Little does he or anyone else know but the fish-storm wasn't a sign from above; quite the opposite actually! After finding an advertisement tucked away in a magazine, Spike has been using the demonic 976-EVIL line for advice about what to do with his life. After he almost gets himself killed in the process when a driverless car attempts to run him over, he stops calling. Good thing too because up to this point we've already seen a guy go up in flames and a woman killed by shattered glass for calling one too many times.

While snooping around in his cousin's room, Hoax stumbles upon the number and decides to give it a call himself. It immediately recommends he go to a movie theater, where he'll meet the woman of his dreams. The woman? Spike's pseudo-girlfriend Suzie (Lezlie Deane), who's frustrated he prefers gambling with punks over spending time with her. The two go out for pizza and, surprisingly enough, hit it off, but the evening is spoiled when the punks, led by ringleader Marcus (J.J. Cohen), show up to humiliate him. After his evening is topped off by getting thrown into a dumpster, a defeated Hoax returns home and calls the number again and again. Next thing we know he's drawing pentagrams on the floor and plotting his supernatural revenge.

The more Hoax calls the number, the more crazed and evil he becomes, and there are physical changes to go along with that. Soars form all over his body, hair starts sprouting from his face, he grows long black fingernails and eventually changes into something that looks less than human. He also becomes saddled with some rather unfortunate one-liners because 80s. As the bodies start piling up, it's revealed that Marty isn't really a writer at all, but instead a private investigator who's looking into recent deaths tied into the hotline's parent company, After Dark Enterprises, which is owned by the enigmatic Mark Dark (Robert Picardo). Marty eventually teams up with school guidance counselor Angela Martinez (Maria Rubell) to get to the bottom of things.

I'm not sure how the inexperienced Englund, who'd been on countless film and TV sets but never written, produced or directed anything prior, was handed this assignment aside from the fact he was hugely popular at the time and probably just asked for it. Unsurprisingly, he proves to not be up to the task. While this has acceptable production values and some well-done sequences, it's also a structural mess. I'm not sure what part the screenplay, co-written by Brian Helgeland, who also co-wrote A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4 prior to moving on to bigger things (1998's L.A. Confidential), may have had to do with that, but I doubt what ended up on screen was the completed script as written. There are just too many obvious flaws.

Characters are severely underdeveloped or unnecessary, and sometimes disappear for long intervals, which causes the lack of a central focal point and thus dramatic indifference. Spike is set up early on as the hero but then disappears for most of the second half. And what exactly was the point of wasting so much of the first half hour showing Spike using the telephone line, only for him to just say "Not for me!" and be done with it. That wasted time should have been spent on Hoax's transition from wimpy nerd to full-fledged, super-strong demon instead, which happens far too abruptly.

The detective character Metzler is stuck playing doesn't even need to be in the movie since he reveals no important information and this opts to keep the origins of the phone line pretty ambiguous. They did have something good with Deane, who's charming while she's around. Sadly, she's not around for very long and they kill her off way too soon. It feels like the only reason the poorly-written guidance counselor character was thrown into the works was because they killed off Deane and still needed a female to put in jeopardy at the finale. Other than that, the poor actress has almost nothing to do! Much of my time watching this was spent picking out the various things that should have never been in the movie to begin with.

Though clearly riddled with issues, this does at least have a few good things going on. The Kevin Yagher make-up effects, with assist from Howard Berger, Robert Kurtzman and others, are pretty solid. Aside from the Hoax transformation, we get hearts ripped out, a hand cut off, death by electrocution, a cat eating a corpse, death by spiders and more. There are quite a few visual effects as well, especially toward the end when gateways to hell (one icy and one fiery) open in and outside the home, and these are also well executed. There's some handsome photography, nice use of color and neon, a few good stunts and intentionally ugly art direction filled with so much dirt, grime, graffiti and garbage it makes Rob Zombie's white trash cinematic universe look cheery by comparison.

The biggest plus here turns out to be the star, who didn't even have to audition and was just offered the lead thanks to his scene stealing performance in Fright Night (1985). Even though he can be manic, cloying and irritating at times, Geoffreys turned out to be a wise casting decision because his offbeat presence and animated facial expressions have a way of commanding your attention. And, when it comes time to be intense and scary, he can do that, too. One thing he's not able to do is generate much sympathy for this character (who's basically an annoying perv), but that's more on the script than on him.

After playing select theaters in late 1988, this had its wide release in March 1989. The reviews were mostly poor but the film did fair business, matching its 3 million production budget in grosses. It then made even more money on home video and TV. There have been many DVD and Blu-ray releases over the years from companies like Columbia TriStar and Sony, but it's the 2020 Blu-ray release from UK label Eureka Classics that has the most special features. It comes with a commentary track from Englund and set decorator Nancy Booth (who met on this set, got married and remain a couple to this day) and interviews with Yagher, Berger and producer Lisa M. Hansen. Two cuts of the film are included, the original theatrical release version and the longer, extended home video version, which runs 14 minutes longer and is mostly dialogue (scenes with Dennis, Metzler and Rubell primarily).

O'Bryan returned in the Jim Wynorski directed 976-EVIL II: THE ASTRAL FACTOR (1991), which was much cheaper, much schlockier and has nowhere near the same polished production quality of the original... yet is actually still more enjoyable to watch.

★★