Society: A Half Forgotten Socialist Horror Classic
It’s the era of the great think piece and re-examination of previous work. Anyone could do it, look just look at me and this article. Hell despite nostalgia despite being supersaturated in the market place, it is still one hell of a deep well to draw from. And to a point, who could blame idiots like us? Films have become safer as time has gone on. Studios were more confined to a local market and willing to take chances to milk the capital of the demographics of it before the other guys did. We are also so more willing to forgive whatever faults they had because we were young, dumb, and didn’t have the anxiety of a 9–5 job or the lack thereof to demand purer escapism. Now with the global market demanding the same four or five types of blockbuster each year, it’s kinda easy to sit back, dig , and look at what did and didn’t influence what this or that genre. What could have launched a new niche or what film embodied that time, place, or type of movie if random factors had panned out oh so slightly differently.
Films haven’t really become any more apolitical or radical despite multitude of think pieces that could and should fill a landfill however. Things are about were they always have been, no matter how many articles there on buzzfeed about how we don’t give enough of our money to female ghostbusters or threads on Reddit moaning that a film makes the bold stand that libertarian fantasies about forced child labor on trains is immoral. There certainly have been periods in film history that played it safer on a political messaging level and plenty of eras that pushed the film makers ideology and messaging on the forefront even more, but there isn’t a wasteland of arthouse back clapping or Batman spin offs. Society kinda explains what is lacking in modern films, sincere and unabashed directness and belief in delivering that message.
The basic outline of the plot, like all gags, is simple. The popular, athletically and academically gifted son of a very wealthy family feels increasingly alienated from them and their circle society at large. He just can’t seem to get along with the fellow rich kids in his high school, both he and they seem to know he isn’t really one of them. When he voices these concerns he’s told essentially to suck it up and get used to it by his shady psychiatrist and self absorbed, society climbing girlfriend. He needs to become a contributing remember of society after all. A lot of pressure for something he feels is hollow, constraining, and a little pointless.
Eventually he stumbles upon a potential dark secret about his family and his sister’s Coming Out Party. There is a build up of a mystery who’s answer we already know (most) of the answer too. A fellow, poorer and ostertrized nerd classmate goes missing. One or another student seems to know more than he lets on. Our intrepid hero begins to sees the cracks in the facade of the upper class life he inhabits, the little gross bits he knew was there but fooled himself into not seeing. Much like many send ups of the rich and fabulous, the Dark Secret seems to suggest a rite of incest, murder, and the tired standard debauchery, but is revealed to be an even darker ritual of cannibalism, incest, and ludicrous debauchery of the “higher class”. At the Coming Out Party the high society folks tout their imagined superiority by literally feeding on the poor and melding together their wrinkled, slimy bloated bodies together into inhuman shapes and positions during a pseudo orgy in a grotesque, horrifying, and yet frankly pathetic spectacle. At the end of the day, they eat a kid just so they have the distinction of keeping up their ostentatious lifestyle of becoming a giant communal living pile of flesh on a nice carpet in a well furnished big room.
As the tag line of the poster stated: It’s Not What You Think It Is. The upper crust of society’s dark underbelly is sick and dangerous to all of us, but also just plain sad. It exists solely through the suffering of the least among us, to the benefit of no one, and to satisfy rich weirdos delusions. As the end tells us there is no simple ending. Billy kills his vapid rich foil, by forcing him to eat and morph his own guts out, and then knocks his fake father on his ass. The ultimate symbolic victory. The Society stands around in horrified silence and deep shame as Billy leaves, only for their leader to sigh and then remind a colleague a position opened up in D.C if he’s interested. Billy won his freedom and life, but both matter less than the lint of their thousand dollar suits to the super rich. There are million more like him and they won’t all won’t get lucky like him Symbolic victories mean squat.
The special effects are fantastic on technical level and beyond riveting on a conceptual one. When the bodies start shifting together and melting, it as nauseating as you could possibly imagine it to be. But there are small little details little gags always in frame you can and will appreciate. A man’s head on his ass is always a laugh, but so are little details like a women who appears to have a mixture of an ant eater and penis shaped appendage dangling from her mouth A little laughter to cut and maintain the tension. The acting, like a lot of B films, is mixed. Billy Warlock does a decent job of getting us to like a character that isn’t that hard to sympathize with. Others are played like and with as much as their narrow cartoonish stereotype allow without becoming too obnoxious or risk evolving past caricatures that they are need to be for this type of picture. The love interests’ actresses do little to help already paper thin characters.
Society, while earnest, doesn’t have any pretenses or illusions of what it is, which is political cartoon. The common eighties comedic tropes are there. A dopey nerd in framework glasses is a foil to the main character and hanger on of the “real” rich kids, a obese dim witted horny older woman pops up now and then as both a one shot gag and for plot resolution purposes, the head of the titular society smokes an obnoxious cigar and wears boxers dotted with hearts. In the middle of the otherwise serious and disgusting climax the main character’s father shifts his face to his ass, smugly informing his son “Well, son you were right. I am a butthead!” the director Yuzan realizes after the shock of plastic molds and prospective in the shape of human limbs lumping together is going fade after a first screening, the film is going to be all laughs and cheers for repeat viewings and works with that.
But just because at the end of the day it’s just a pie in the face doesn’t mean the film half asses everything or not care about what it’s trying to say. This film has a heart and it bears it out bare like an arthouse film, along with the guts, the spleen, and liver like a in a typical Hard R horror film. In fact there is a deliberate slap in the face to much of the rest of genre and it’s spiritual siblings like Science Fiction and Fantasy that become to self absorbed in it’s lore or with winking at the audience. “Alien scum” Billy, our main character insists and says while being held down by his captors, the society he never really fit in with. “No son, we didn’t come from outer pace or another dimension. We came from here just like you. We’re just a special breed, a species….a better class.” The metaphor will not obfuscate the target, like so much chickenshit pop art nerd films like to do. The villains are the is the millionaire class and you will never have the chance to believe differently when you drink your beer or grab a handful of popcorn.
Society still is a cult and body horror sub genre classic. The director Brian Yuzan, worked with beloved B film director and Lovecraft aficionado Stuart Gordon for some time on more recognized horror films like the Re-Animator, so the film was never destined to be to be truly left in the sands of times like so many others. Hell there is no doubt the last thirty minutes of the movie are still remembered as being one of the biggest gross outs in cinematic history in film buff circles. Greasy elderly men and women in a near nude state, merging together like clumps of sexual play doh is an image that tends to stand out. But in an era of progressive reassessment of the genre, it’s odd people tend to half forget that’s just the punchline of a 90 minute joke about America class politics in the tail end of the Regan era. Maybe because it’s rare for any film to be that direct about wealth inequality in American cinema, especially in horror genre which has a rather unfair reputation as a place were reactionary garbage is spilled out. Maybe it’s because such discussions are only supposed to belong in films the average person doesn’t have the desire to see.
