Directed by Andrew Jordan
Cast: Barry J. Gillis and Amber Lynn
Intervision Picture Corp. / Region 1 / Unrated / 1.33:1 Fullscreen / ENGLISH: Dolby Digital Stereo / 85 minutes / BUY FROM TLACULT
Extras: Audio Commentary with Director Andrew Jordan and Stars Barry J. Gillis, Jan W. Pachul, and Doug Bunston / Audio Viewing Party with the Cinefamily / Testimonials on Things: All-New Interviews with: Tobe Hopper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Jason Eisener and Rob Cotterill (Hobo with a Shotgun), Canuxploitation.com creator Paul Corupe, Joseph A. Ziemba and Dan Budnik of Bleeding Skull and more! / Things 20th Anniversary Cast and Crew Reunion / Behind the Scenes with Amber Lynn / Vintage Barry J. Gillis TV Appearances / Original Trailers
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I have a confession to make. I was feeling pretty cocky going into Things. I’d just had the thrill of watching two of Intervision’s other D-I-Y horror ’80s classics Sledgehammer and The Burning Moon. So I was confident throwing out the cabbage for another title from Intervision. Fans of Things are going to disagree with my review, but seriously, this movie sucks.
The awesome trailer for Things is very deceiving. What I gathered from it, Things is about a group of middle-aged, balding guys, taking on funny looking bug creatures in their home with chainsaws. Fun enough, right? Fake out! Sure, those little creatures appear a few times, but this is really a psychological movie. The makers of the film were shooting for post-modernism mind fuck territory. The characters go from room to room freaking out, going psycho during scene after headache inducing scene until we reach an unsatisfying conclusion. Mind fuck is fine, but for a movie with limited funds, limited creativity, and absolutely horrid camera work, even for D-I-Y standards (I’ve seen better from Todd Sheets and his Zombie Bloodbath movies), the attempt is ill-realized and onerous to watch.
The question I have to ask, did director Andrew Jordan and his crew really shoot for mind fuck, or did they simply not know what the hell they were doing? The extras prove that the filmmaker takes themselves fairly seriously. And it’s nice fans of the film give Andrew Jordan and Barry Gillis some props on the DVD extras, yet I can’t help but feel like the proponents of Things are reaching way too far to give this film compliments. My opinion, a bunch of guys tried to make a monster movie, realized how hard it was pulling off the special effects, so they culled a bunch of footage together and realized if they put strange synthesizer music to it, it could be a psychological feat of genius. An argument can be made on either side of the fence, but if you ask me, this movie isn’t enjoyable or engaging. It’s just shitty.
The extras are very interesting on the DVD package. They helped me commiserate the terrible film experience. My favorite was the 20th Anniversary Cast and Crew Reunion, where the filmmakers and actors sometimes have a hard time pleading their case of quality. Even better was the testimonials for Things, where fans who talk about their viewing experience and why Things is better than most people give it credit for. The vintage Barry J. Gillis TV appearance reveals how much the movie was made for, and it shocked me because of how much money they really did have to make Things. Incredible! Maybe they spent that big chunk of change on adult-film star Amber Lynn. The audio and image are cruddy, but that’s not Intervision’s fault. There’s not much you can do to make this situation any better.
The final word, there are people out there who love Things. I wanted to be in that club so bad, but I can’t dig it. The movie sucks on any interpretive level. So I’m going to go watch Sledgehammer again and try to forget Things ever happened.
