Friday, October 23, 2015

13 Days of Hallowe'en Day 5

My Boyfriend's Back

plot: While trying to get up the courage to ask out the girl he's in love with, Johnny Dingle gets shot when a robbery goes wrong. Seeing him bleeding to death, the girl agrees to go with him to the prom. Three days later, after his funeral, Johnny rises from his grave not aware he's really dead, with only one thing on his mind, getting to the prom on time. He's warned that if he leaves the graveyard he'll start to decompose but doesn't believe the cemetery guard. Before long, Johnny finds himself fighting not just the usual teenaged fears, but the urge to eat the flesh of the living.

This is the 1993 comedy starring Andrew Lowery and Traci Lind

This is a very slapstick, goofy over the top movie that never really got the cult status it could have. Very much a product of it's generation, it's comedy factor sanitizes it to the point of almost being too tongue in cheek.

I haven't watched this in twenty years, and honestly had forgotten how quick some of the one liners are, such as Johnny's dad saying "Your mother and I, and the ambulance driver and the embalmer were all pretty much convinced you were dead"  or  his mother having gotten him a dead body to eat; "I got it at the morgue. They were practically giving them away."
This movie almost; should have taken itself a bit more seriously. I do however love the nod to Frankenstein, with the insane doctor looking out his apartment building window down at the angry mob of townspeople, as they are demanding the zombie/the dead kid with torches. The angle that it is shot makes it nearly black and white, with the dark skyline giving away to the idea of the castle on the hill.

Okay, and I have to say it...the list of actors in this that have done vampire films include the two leads Lowery (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) Lind (Fright Night 2) Edward Herrmann (Lost Boys, Here Comes the Munsters {yeah Herrmann played Herman})

The big theme that gets the most notice is the metaphor of teenaged sexual tension, but the bigger theme is prejudice in all forms.

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