Sunday, April 13, 2014

Science Crazed (1989 or 1991)



Horror is a genre that many people use as a place to begin their movie careers.  Whether acting, directing, writing, or doing effects work, horror is a starting point.  That’s because it is easy to make a horror film for cheap.  Good horror?  Perhaps not.  But cheap horror flicks are a good way to show the potential that a person can have when it comes to making movies.

When it comes to cheap horror, nothing gets cheaper than the movie Science Crazed.  Made in either 1989 or 1991, Science Crazed is a Canadian horror movie about a mad scientist who creates a monstrous serial killer through artificial insemination.  Ron Switzer directed this movie that was made for next to no money.  He cast Tony Della Ventura as The Fiend, and many other actors and actresses as nameless characters.  The movie was so cheap that they couldn’t even afford character names.

If you’ve seen a few of these so-called “No-budget” horror movies, you might have noticed one thing that many of the older ones try to do.  By older, I mean from the 80s and early 90s.  The pre-digital era of this style of filmmaking.  The common thread through many of them is a want to extend the movie to a running time of approximately an hour and a half.  Science Crazed is no different.  It may, in fact, be one of the worst offenders I’ve seen when it comes to lengthening the movie.  There are many sequences that use repetition of shots to add time.  From repeated workout scenes to recurring instances of The Fiend shuffling through hallways, the movie does its best to be longer than it needs to be.  Ron Switzer knew what he was doing when he kept playing certain bits of the movie over and over again.

The thing about all of the repetition is that it is difficult to look away from the screen.  There’s a feeling of awe that keeps your eyes glued to Science Crazed.  It is hard to believe that the movie would be as repetitious as it is.  I’m using variations of repetitious a lot, but it’s true.  The movie is unbelievable in how many times it repeats itself.  If all of the runtime padding moments were taken out of the movie, Science Crazed would be a good thirty minutes shorter than it is.  This would be a relief to the viewer.  At the same time, however, it would take away the magic of the film.

There is not much behind Science Crazed in terms of directing and acting talent.  No potential can be seen in the film.  But the inept nature of how over-extended the movie is transfixed me.  I could not stop watching because I wanted to know when the scenes will end.  Surely that was not the intention that Ron Switzer had when he wrote the film.  Surely it was not his intention when he directed the film.  Nobody wants their audience to sit through their movie waiting for it to end.  Switzer probably expected people to be invested in what was occurring on screen.  The magic of Science Crazed does not come from good characters or interest in the happenings of the people.  The magic is in the amateur repetition of the editing and direction.  That is what the viewer watches this movie for.

It is not often that I would recommend a movie that is as poorly made as Science Crazed.  Yet, there is something about this movie that makes me want to recommend it to anyone and everyone.  It’s similar to driving down a road and seeing a serious car accident on the opposite side.  You slow down and casually look toward the wreckage.  You cannot look away.  That is what Science Crazed is.  It is a movie that is so poorly put together that you just can’t look at anything else.  It is a must see no-budget film.

If you are interested in seeing Science Crazed, keep an eye out on YouTube.  The movie periodically gets updated to the video site in full.

There are some notes that I have to put in here, like I always do:

  • Science Crazed was suggested by @Doug_Tilley, cohost of the No-Budget Nightmares podcast.  This is the second movie that podcast has covered that I have watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  The other movie was Rock, Paper,Scissors: Fall of the Original Six.  The movie featured Doug in a small role.
  • Other Canadian movies that I’ve covered include Ice Soldiers and Repeaters.
  • If you want to see a movie covered in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, leave the suggestion in the comments or send them at me through Twitter.

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