In short: My Boyfriend’s Back (1993)

Teenager Johnny Dingle (Andrew Lowery) has been silently pining for Missy McCloud (Traci Lind) since they were little children, so when Johnny dies because he heroically jumps into a bullet for Missy but comes back as a zombie, he’s finally going to do what he never dared when he was alive. Missy did after all promise to go to the prom with him – when he was dying in her arms.

Turns out the whole saving her life business and coming back as a slowly rotting corpse is a bit of turn-on for Missy, so the prom situation does look indeed promising. However, being a zombie isn’t all it is cracked up to be. There’s a whole load of troubles coming with undeath: body parts that just might fall off during an even mildly heated make-out session, the special appetites of the living dead, mad science, jock boyfriends and torch-wearing mobs. Getting to prom with one’s beloved turns out to be rather on the difficult side.

As frequent (long-suffering) readers of this blog know, I’m not the greatest fan of horror comedies in general, and teen horror comedies are usually even more difficult for me to cope with. Bob Balaban’s My Boyfriend’s Back however, did charm me from the very start with its witty mix of the clever, the cynical, the sweet, the goofy and the heart-warming. Even better, it’s actually funny throughout, taking detours in all kinds of bizarre directions, suddenly pretending to turn into a kind of anti-prejudice afterschool special for five minutes, or spending valuable time on insane side-characters just because they are funny, or deciding to finish its plot very much like a supernatural screwball comedy. The male teenage wish fulfilment fantasy elements of the plot are more thoughtfully used than in many comedies of this type, too.Missy sometimes even feels like an actual character, if one of dubious mental health. Here specifically but also in general Balaban clearly prefers to give surprise twists to popular tropes until they become funny to not using or loudly decrying them, suggesting much more control over the material than the distractible nature of the plot would hint at.


Star spotters will be happy finding Matthew Fox as Missy’s jock boyfriend, Philip Seymour Hoffman as his hilariously angry (and very excitable and tasty) best friend, and Matthew McConaughey as “Guy #2”. Also, it’s really just a very funny movie.

Three Films Make A Post: One Man's Quest is Another Man's Destiny

Innerspace (1987): Remember when they were still giving Joe Dante quite a lot of money to make his films? In theory, this one’s a pretty mainstream SF comedy starring the always excellent Dennis Quaid and the surprisingly un-annoying Martin Short and a pretty wasted in the role Meg Ryan, showing off a lot of neat effects. In practice, Dante lets things increasingly drift from mild wackiness into outright insanity (with slapstick) until an incredible scene of Kevin McCarthy and Wendy Schaal being shrunk to half size and trying to operate a coin phone becomes rather par for the course. It’s also so well timed most of Dante’s flights of craziness (of course all swathed in a big yet never intrusive dollop of movie quotes and film love because this is Dante, after all) are outrageously funny, and I say that as someone who has only a marginal tolerance for slapstick.

And by the by, hidden under what looks like a film that’s about an effeminate guy finding his inner macho, this is rather a movie about a guy breaking out of a grey life to find what he loves. Among other things.

Fright Night Part 2 (1988): At the time, Tommy Lee Wallace’s sequel to the rightfully beloved horror comedy didn’t get too much love as far as I can remember, but from my chair in 2017, it does look rather good. I like how much it works as an actual sequel that often cleverly plays with elements of the first film instead of just repeating them; I also love the cast with William Ragsdale and Roddy McDowell returning to their roles with relish, guys like Brian Thompson and Jon Gries getting space to do their respective things; how Traci Lind’s girlfriend character actually turns into the heroine of the piece for half an hour or so; how bizarre – and probably totally normal for the late 80s Julie Carmen’s outfits and hair are; how many silly and fun ideas are packed into the film. And last but not least, how good the film is at being funny (and damn, is it ever funny) while still keeping the horror parts of the film exciting.


Mind over Murder (1979): This is a very neat little thriller/horror film made for US TV in the prime era for this sort of thing. It starts like an Eyes of Laura Mars style clairvoyant versus killer movie, with vision sequences that make creative and pretty trippy use of slow motion and frozen images but turns into something that feels as close to a 70s exploitation horror movie as you probably could get away with on TV in this era, with secret horror hero Andrew Prine making great, creepy use of his experience playing crazy people in some of said exploitation films, suggestions of a nice bit of depravity (with charming moments like Prine asking the heroine if she wants him to “make love” to her or kill her first while shirtlessly preening in front of her). It’s tight, features the obligatory asshole boyfriend for our heroine Deborah Raffin, and shows its director Ivan Nagy as doing really inventive work in the aesthetic framework of a 70s TV movie.