Bob's Quick Look: Chillerama (2011)

The best way I can categorize this movie is to say it’s a retro cult cinema spoof horror satire.

*Spoiler Alert* It’s the final night of operation for the local drive in theater, and as a final hurrah, the owner/operator screens a marathon of films that have not been seen since their initial screenings. The movies within the movie play out as follows:

Wadzilla - A man submits himself to an experimental drug to help improve his low sperm count. But instead of growing in number, his sperm grow in size to the point that he shoots one out that grows to be ten stories high and begins eating the city.

I was a Teenage Wearbear - In this horror/musical, a high school boy falls in with the “wrong crowd;” a group of hoodlums who at first resemble the T-birds from “Grease” but are soon brought to light as the “queer” crowd. Not only are they gay (which was a huge taboo in 1962, when this movie was “made”) but when they are aroused, they transform into half men-half bears, complete with leather bondage clothing. The young teen is bitten by one of the crowd and feels himself changing.

The Diary of Anne Frankenstein - We find out that the Frank family who were immortalized in young Anne’s diary were descendants of Victor Frankenstein and had his journal among their possessions in the attic. When they are betrayed to the Nazis, Hitler takes the journal and uses it to create a seven foot Jewish monster. While this is going on, a mysterious substance has been leaked into the popcorn butter that, when eaten, turns the crowd into ultra horny zombies.
Thus ends the Chillerama.

I tend to like bad horror movies, and movies that are so bad they are funny. Those are the kinds of films that this movie is satirizing in a way. There are movies like the ones described that were made back in the sixties and played only in the dingiest of drive-ins. In today’s terms, these are the straight to home video releases. The humor of this movie is rooted in the “it’s so bad it’s funny” philosophy. The problem with that is it’s funny for a while, but it’s quick to grow old, and the humor in this movie loses it’s effect pretty early on. Then the humor just becomes cheesy. And for a spoof of exploitation style horror, there was a surprising absence of gore and nudity. Deep rooted horror fans or people into bad humor might get a kick out of this one. Like I said, I like bad horror and I laughed a little.