SYNGENOR (1990) Review
When I watched William Malone’s 1980 monster movie, Scared to Death, one of the main takeaways I had was that the film failed to properly capitalize on its pretty decent monster. While it’s an undeniably low-budget, schlocky production, there’s little doubt that Malone’s creature — known as a ‘Syngenor’ — is pretty impressive given the restrictions. Moreover, while Scared to Death has a tendency to waste time with uninteresting and flat non-monster-centric bullshit, it does, at the very least, feature some creative and ‘fun’ sequences involving the creature that suggested there was a) some level of skill from the director to deliver on decent horror set-pieces, and b) that the monster itself had potential. So, when I discovered that a belated sequel not only exists, but was put together by producer Jack F. Murphy after he saw the original flick and had pretty much the same ‘I’d like to see more of this’ attitude, I figured it was probably worth checking out. Released a full decade later, and forgoing absolutely any connection to its predecessor beyond the now titular monster, George Elanjian Jr’s 1990 creature feature, titled simply Syngenor (apparently in an effort to avoid alienating new viewers by connecting it to the little seen 1980 outing), is a pretty perfect realization of the sentiment behind the phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’.
While the movie most definitely does feature much more of the now titular H. R. Geiger inspired creation (in an Aliens-esque turn, there are now multiple monsters running about), it appears to miss absolutey every other factor that made Malone’s original grisly creature sequences remotely effective in the first place. Gone is the gloopy, weird, imaginative approach of the original, replaced with a sort of late-80s/early-90s generic-ness that sees the monster itself robbed of almost any mystique or threat it did have. Malone was reportedly asked if he’d like to return as director, but dropped out to helm 1985’s Alien knock-off, Creature, and instead only stuck around to help out with the effect of the titular being itself. Whether or not he would’ve been able to bring some of that creativeness to the screen here is debatable (his filmography post-Scared to Death doesn’t exactly fill one with confidence), but I can’t help but wonder if this is a factor. After all, the original may have been shite, but there were moments of skill hidden in the kills. Strangely enough, considering Murphy was supposedly so taken in by the monster’s potential that he went out of his way to produce this flick, there’s a noticeable lack of blood or action, and instead the movie seems more preoccupied with its unoriginal and fairly dull human characters… I’m sure there’s a story here, but I’m fucked if I know what happened.
That the monsters here actually look worse than they did in its 1980 predecessor is also weirdly impressive, since the movie so obviously has a lot more resources at its disposal! Whereas Malone was at least able to hide the obvious ‘man-in-a-suit’ aspects for some of his movie, Murphy and Elanjian Jr don’t even seem to want to try. In fact, the creatures are so clearly just poor stuntmen lumbering around inside big rubbery clothing, that the entire film can’t even begin to recover. The best scene, by far, is the opening — which at least hints at something fun, even if we are very much in B-Movie trash territory — but the remainder of the movie simply squanders any and all potential goodwill that may have instilled in the audience by choosing to make every wrong decision you can imagine. The whole thing is over-lit, meaning that atmosphere is almost entirely absent, while the dialogue for our human characters is bloody terrible, and most of the cast are nowhere near up to the challenge of keeping us engaged.
I say ‘most’ of the cast, because if the film does have a saving grace, it comes in the form of Re-Animator’s David Gale. Gale is essentially the sole reason to watch, and he appears to be having an absolute blast in his role of antagonistic and selfish businessman, Carter Brown. Ridiculously enough, so fantastically hammy and over-the-top is Gale here — relishing the opportunity afforded to him by the awful script to spit and scream atrocious lines of dialogue with all the panache of a pantomime villain — that the movie winds up kinda suffering from the exact opposite problem to its predecessor; whereas Malone’s flick suffers drastically every time the monster isn’t on screen, Murphy and Elanjian Jr’s simply isn’t able to match Gale’s presence and winds up falling flat every second he’s absent. I was pleasantly surprised to see Gale pop up here, and while he is basically just rehashing his most iconic and memorable role (Re-Animator’s evil Dr. Carl Hill), as I said, he seems to be having so much fun performing that it’s hard not to just enjoy his gleefully silly delivery.
That’s about the only nice thing I can say about the film, mind. It looks fucking ugly, the sets are sparse and uninventive, the rest of the acting barely qualifies as acting, the script is rubbish, unoriginal, and poorly put together, it’s badly lit and shot conventionally and without any real style or substance… I really don’t like it when a movie makes me criticize it to such a level, but here we are. I guess you could chock this one up to my expectations failing to be met, but I can’t honestly sit here and say they were all that high, anyway. Sure, I did have a certain level of excitement going in, hoping — on the basis of Murphy’s reasoning behind making the movie to begin with — that this would lean into the better facets of the original, but even then, it wasn’t like the original was some underrated masterpiece. The introduction of a sorta hybrid Syngenor late in the movie does go someway to energizing the finale somewhat (and it does look pretty decent all things considered), but that’s hardly worth anything when you’ve wasted my time for most of acts one and two. This is really one for completists alone, because I can’t even rightly claim it’s ‘so-bad-its-good’. Gale makes it at least bearable, but then if you’re looking for a manic, villainous performance from him, when Re-Animator and Bride of Re-Animator exist, I’m not too sure you really need Syngenor to give you your fix. 2/5.
