It’s the 1980’s and the place is Belgium, where the young upcoming filmmaker Johan Vandewoestijne had the rebellious desire to show the government and the strict censor board the middle finger with his slasher film Lucker. It’s the similar premise that the like-minded Jörg Buttgereit and Andreas Schnaas did in Germany some years later. And with that being said, you would already know by now what kind of territory this is. This is also the one and only horror film made in Belgium during the whole 1980s, and it’s a product that shouldn’t even exist after the film’s unnamed producer destroyed all the negatives. The only surviving material was a VHS copy that was bootlegged to shreds in the underground horror circle throughout the years – and the only source for director Vandewoestijne to make a Director’s Cut for the 2007-DVD release by Synapse Films.
In Lucker (also known as Lucker the Necrophagous), or a more fitting title which could’ve been Lucker The Corpse Fucker, we follow the morbid journey of the serial killer John Lucker (Nick Van Suyt) – a middle-aged, bulky guy with a double-chin, thin hairline and overall the perfect look for a deranged homicidal madman. After ending up unconscious in a clinic after a suicide attempt to escape from the police, one of the nurses asks (with a cheesy and stiff, cartoonish dub) while standing over his bed:
– Hmm..? Who is this guy ANYway?
– His name is John Lucker. A few years ago, he murdered eight girls. Raped them afterwards. And when I say afterwards, some of the corpses were decomposing.
– A guy like that should be in a MENTAL institution.
Huh, no shit, Sheri Holmes! Anyways … he wakes up, sneaks out of the clinic, body counts two people on the way, steals a car and heads out to the nearest town. He tails one of the first women that appears on his radar and kills her in some…weird way. The filming is too inept to really see what’s going on, but her entrails get spilled out of her stomach, or maybe a fetus if we use a little morbid imagination. He later hooks up with a young chick from a bar, ties her up in a bed in some apartment and … well, while she gets aggravated and deliver a line such as: Untie me … I hate creeps like you … Untie me … Lucker sits on a rocking chair next to her, swinging back and forth like an old demented doofus, while he gives her the silent treatment, only to drag out the running time. After he finally kills her, we jump four weeks later where her body has been decomposed to a slimy maggot infested corpse and fuckable enough for lucky Lucker to finally give us Jörg Buttgereit’s favorite scene of all time.
So … where do we go from here? To get the run time going forward to at least the 45 minute mark, Lucker gets his eyes on one of his former victims, a walking trophy, that got away from him, and of course he can’t have any of that.
There’s two versions of Lucker, the VHS version and the Director’s Cut version, and both of them are available on the Special Edition DVD from Synapse Films. The VHS version, with its runtime on 74 minutes, is a tedious slog of a chore to sit through. There’s an endless scene with Lucker just walking on an empty road. After he hitchhikes to a town, there’s more walking. And … even more walking. Lucker The Walking Man. There’s zero pace and you’ve already dozed off when something interesting is about to happen.
Then we have the Director’s Cut version presented in 16:9 ratio and cut down to 68 minutes. It’s still trash, but better edited. And I have to give director Vandewoestijne some credit for at least for trying his best to stitch together a barely watchable film from the VHS material. He’s also filmed a new opening title for the occasion. Even though there’s less mindless walking and more pacing, there’s still a lot of drawn-out scenes. There’s especially this shot where Lucker ties up a woman, then sits down and just stares at her while she screams like she’s faking an orgasm, which is copy-pasted to make the running time reach its milestone of 60 minutes.
And yeah, both versions contain the corpse fucking scene, so don’t you worry ’bout that.
Director: Johan Vandewoestijne
Writers: Johan Vandewoestijne, John Kupferschmidt
Also known as: Lucker the Necrophagous
Country & year: Belgium, 1986
Actors: Nick Van Suyt, Helga Vandevelde, Let Jotts, Marie Claes, Martine Scherre, Carry Van Middel, John Edwards, Tony Castillo
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0091446/
Sometime in the late 80s, George A. Romero was invited to Italy to eat pasta and sip red wine with Dario Argento. The result of that meeting became Two Evil Eyes, an anthology of two films, one hour each, based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe. The original idea was an anthology of four segments in which also John Carpenter and Stephen King was considered to make the other two. However, Carpenter was busy with other stuff while Stephen King, still and forever traumatized by the experience with Maximum Overdrive, had no desire to call himself a “moron” a second time, and thus Four Evil Eyes got reduced to Two Evil Eyes.
We’re in Ireland, and the year is 1905. Two carnies, Angus Shaw and his infertile wife Lily, runs a fake mermaid show where Lily plays the role of a beautiful and enchanting mermaid. One evening, during one of their shows, a mysterious fellow named Mr. Woolrich appears and privately calls them out on their act, while at the same time appearing strangely relieved that Lily was, in fact, not a real mermaid. They offer him a ride home, where it’s revealed that he’s got a mermaid captured. A real one. Naturally, Angus wants to use this creature as part of the freak show, but Woolrich strongly warns against it. Not easily deterred, Angus later brings a few colleagues back with him to abduct the mermaid, and smuggles her aboard a ship in order to take her to America. Lily tries to object to this idea, but to no avail. And onboard the ship, the mermaid soon reveals her darker side…
A group of happy passengers on a cruise ship is having a jolly good time, until they suddenly gets hit by another ship. The outcome is, of course, fatal. The few survivors gets aboard a lifeboat, and gets picked up but a mysterious black ship that emerges from the fog. When they all get on board the mysterious and eerie ship, they quickly notice that there’s not a single person there except themselves, and they realize something is terribly wrong on this creepy ship. That feeling gets confirmed when they find out that this has actually been a Nazi-torture ship that’s been sailing the seas for years, controlled by the Nazi-ghosts who are tricking people aboard. And when one of the survivors from the cruise ship, the captain, gets possessed by the Nazi-captain that once ruled this death ship, they all seem to be doomed…
Georgia Perry (Radha Mitchell) is a stubborn and strong-willed young woman: she’s decided to travel around the world in her 44-foot sloop, all by herself (well, almost…she’s got her cat for company). Being used to spending time at sea, and also spending time alone, it goes pretty well at first. She’s used to enjoying her own company, and the cat provides just enough social comfort. Then, the solitude starts taking its toll…while starting with small and insignificant things like starting to talk to her cat…which isn’t uncommon…I mean, who doesn’t talk to their feline companion once in a while? Except, of course, the cat starts talking back to her. A big red flag for her mental well being there, all right. But when she also starts hearing strange noises, and a mysterious fog appears which brings with it a whole array of deceased family members who have suddenly decided to drop in for a visit, it’s time to take it seriously. Is this just a severe case of cabin fever, or is something else happening at sea?
We meet Sir Hugo Cunningham who is an amateur scientist, and the time period is the end of the 1800s. He’s taking photographs of the dead, and have an interest in supernatural phenomena. Through photographing the dead with his newly invented camera instrument, he discovers strange spots on the photographs, that he later thinks could be an Apshyx: a ghostly entity that supposedly shows itself right at the moment when a person is about to die. Through several more experiments while having his macabre photo shoots with the recently deceased, he also gets to witness and film an execution through hanging. Through this it is revealed to him that the Asphyx can be captured by the light rays that emits from his camera invention, and when a person’s Asphyx is captured, this person becomes literally immortal and unable to die. His first test is done on a guinea pig, and when he discovers that it works, the temptation of achieving eternal life becomes too great and he decides to capture both his own and his family’s Asphyxes. But will this really lead to the bliss of immortality, or will there be dire consequences?
The year is 1978, and the streets of a seemingly sleepy Denver suburb is prowled by a serial killer nicknamed The Grabber, who mockingly leaves black balloons in the places of abduction. We follow the daily life of siblings Finney and Gwen, who lives with their abusive alcoholic father. School is tough on the timid boy Finney, where he is frequently bullied and harassed, only occasionally getting saved by his badass friend Bruce. However, one day Bruce is abducted by The Grabber, and Gwen starts having psychic dreams regarding his kidnapping. Only days later, Finney encounters what at first appears to be a clumsy magician who needs his help, but when the boy notices the black balloons inside the magician’s truck, it’s already too late and he becomes another abductee. When Finney wakes up, he finds himself trapped in a small soundproofed basement, with a disconnected black phone hanging on the wall. His abductor is the terrifying mask-wearing “Grabber”, who appears to be playing some kind of game which Finney knows will eventually lead to his death…just like with all the other kids that were kidnapped and murdered before him. Unexpectedly, help comes from the ominous, disconnected black phone which starts ringing and gives Finney phone calls from the world of the dead…
Ellison Oswalt is a true crime writer who moves into a new home with his wife and two children. What he has not told his family prior to moving into the house, however, is that an entire family was murdered there by hanging, and his intention is to write a book about this case. This is something he does in the hopes of regaining his lost fame, as his latest works weren’t very popular and he’s desperate for a new success. There was also a little girl who disappeared following the murders, and he hopes to learn more about her fate so he can include this mystery in his novel. Upon exploring the attic of the house, he finds a box with several reels of Super 8 footage, which are simply labeled as “home movies”. Using the projector which was also located in the attic, he discovers that the films are footage of several families being murdered, all of them filmed by an unseen camera operator. Upon investigation these cases he finds similarities that makes him suspect that both the murders in the house he now inhabits, and the ones from the Super 8 footage, are connected in a sinister way, and dates all the way back to the 1960’s…
Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) is a book dealer who specializes in rare items. He is hired by a wealthy collector named Boris Balkan, who has acquired “The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows“: a 17th century book that is rumored to be able to summon the Devil himself. It is said that the author of the book, Aristide Torchia, wrote the book in collaboration with the Devil, and that only three copies survived. Balkan suspects that only one of these books are authentic, and that’s the reason he’s hired Corso: so he can inspect the other books and determine which one is the real deal. Corso accepts the job, and begins his travels to check out the other books. Soon, he comes into contact with a mysterious woman who appears to be following him…and he’s getting more and more drawn into a supernatural conspiracy.