Retrospective Film Review

Shocker (1989) • 30 Years Later

After being sent to the electric chair, a serial killer uses electricity to come back from the dead and carry out his vengeance on the football player who turned him in...

Wes Craven’s Shocker is the most divisive of his many horror offerings. It didn’t cause much of a stir at the box office and reviews at the time were mixed, to say the least. I confess right away, I love this film more than you hate it and would place it up there with late-1980s classics that share its cyberpunk sentiments like RoboCop (1987), The Hidden (1987), and especially John Carpenter’s They Live (1989), which shares its theme of manipulation through mass media. These films also have a punk flippancy in common that helps make them fun whilst attacking some serious subjects.

They Live and Shocker were both made with Alive Films, a short-lived production company founded on a novel idea that should be commonplace. It was the brainchild of film producer and music industry maverick Shep Gordon, who believed that filmmakers should be given creative…