I am you. And you are me. And we are here Yo. I am the dreamer and you are the dream. Deez nuts.
Whitley Strieber woke up on a December night in 1985 in a little room surrounded by what he calls “nightmare creatures“. A needle was put into the side of his head and he was raped by a machine. He then woke up, again, this time in his bed, as if he just had a wild fewer dream after eating too many mushrooms. Happens to us all. Although Strieber had already, at the time, reached success as a horror writer with The Wolfen and The Hunger (both made into films), his nonfiction Communion: A True Story, based on his bizarre abduction experience, would be the bestseller. The book was released in 1987 and was adapted two years later to the silver screen by schlock filmmaker Philippe Mora from a script by Whitley Strieber himself. Christopher Walken was cast to play Strieber. What could go wrong?
Well, from the get-go, Strieber already acts like an eccentric and unpredictable goofball, and maybe the last person you’d believe was kidnapped by aliens in track pants. No I’m not kidding. Strieber lives in a New York apartment with his wife and son where he writes his books while wearing a wolf mask and cowboy boots with no pants, like the best writers do. Where he hides the cocaine is no one’s business. Whitley’s nightmares starts during a weekend at a remote cabin far in the woods where a bright light shines over the area. No one can explain what happens, and after they head back to New York, Whitley acts more strange and erratic, as if he wasn’t already. After he sees visions and snaps at a Halloween party, Whitley’s wife, Anne, is concerned about his mental state and their marriage, and sends him to a psychiatrist to do some hypnotic regression therapy. And, well, get ready for something really special, where we get to see funny-looking aliens and creatures that could be from the puppet warehouse of Charles Band.
Yes, this is what you could call a weird-ass movie. Whitley Strieber had a friendship with Philippe Mora that went way back to the 1960s, but it would soon be clear that they weren’t much on the same page after all. Mora focused way more on Strieber’s mental collapse, as if he was just gone ko-ko while he tried to balance a normal family life as a frustrated writer. And he didn’t like that, and was not a fan of how Christopher Walken portrayed him. Can’t really blame him, even though Christopher Walken is the highlight here. The film plays more as a humiliation ritual for Strieber, if not a parody of American UFOlogy, where he only comes across like a super pretentious nutcase where even Fox Mulder would roll his eyes. Or maybe that’s just the price for having the director of Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf to make your biopic about getting ass played by aliens.
Christopher Walken got complete freedom to do whatever he wanted with the role and improvise whenever he felt like it. And his performance here can be described as schizophrenic at best. He shows his real reaction by laughing because of how funny the aliens looked. Director Mora kept it in the film as he thought it made it more disturbing. And we laugh as much with him as at him. The scenes with the aliens are pure comedy and bizarro hour where you have the classic cinematic moment of close encounters of the fourth kind, which on paper should be terrifying, traumatic and disturbing but, well…not here. Christopher Walken doesn’t even try to look scared, even when he’s about to get analprobed where he randomly says It looks like you’re gonna sing White Christmas. Yeah, sure. Bruh. Whatever. And if dancing with aliens wasn’t enough, he also sees himself cosplaying as Gomez Addams. Weird, Weird, to quote R. Zegler. Communion is open to endless interpretations, if you even manage to take this seriously.
Director: Philippe Mora
Writer: Whitley Strieber
Country & year: UK/Australia/USA, 1989
Actors: Christopher Walken, Lindsay Crouse, Frances Sternhagen, Andreas Katsulas, Terri Hanauer, Joel Carlson, John Dennis Johnston, DeeDee Rescher, Aileen Fitzpatrick, R.J. Miller
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097100/
