{"id":18050,"date":"2025-10-28T22:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T02:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=18050"},"modified":"2025-10-27T18:08:35","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T22:08:35","slug":"special-effects-1984-larry-cohen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/18050","title":{"rendered":"Special Effects (1984, Larry Cohen)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having a very Larry Shocktober. This one’s not as good as It’s Alive III<\/a><\/em>, more like Murder a la Mod<\/a><\/em> without the mods, but it fits in nicely with the meta-slasher Scream<\/em> movies. And despite a lower budget, crappy music and some shady editing tricks, it’s a much more lively doppelganger movie than Enemy<\/a><\/em> turned out to be.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Enemy would burst into flame if exposed to this much bright color:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Zoe Lund (Ms .45<\/a><\/em> herself) plays two characters with at least three names. First she’s an aspiring actress working in a nudie club, pushy but not smart, getting herself into the apartment of famed\/troubled filmmaker Eric Bogosian (the Talk Radio<\/em> guy), whose kink is murdering girls on camera (see also: Dangerous Animals<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Bogosian in his Freddy Krueger sweater:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

He can’t be that bad, he’s got a cockatoo<\/a>:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Now things get twisted, as the detective (the cabbie killed in opening scene of Island of the Alive<\/em>) is convinced the girl’s estranged husband killed her, so the director offers to help by making a film in which the murderer husband will relive his crime on camera, casting a lookalike (Zoe Lund again, as a do-gooder with a His Girl Friday<\/em> voice) as his\/their victim. The cop is offered a technical advisor position, gets obsessed until the director bars him from set for interfering. Happy ending: New Zoe falls for Dead Zoe’s husband even though he’s a dick, and they electrocute the director in his own pool.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having a very Larry Shocktober. This one’s not as good as It’s Alive III, more like Murder a la Mod without the mods, but it fits in nicely with the meta-slasher Scream movies. And despite a lower budget, crappy music and some shady editing tricks, it’s a much more lively doppelganger movie than Enemy turned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[357,91,30,61,265,2755],"class_list":["post-18050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1980s","tag-filmmaking","tag-identity","tag-larry-cohen","tag-meta","tag-parrots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18079,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18050\/revisions\/18079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}