Medium (1985)

... aka: Ling yu an jian (Supernatural Cases)

... aka: Mediet

... aka: Медиум

... aka: Mysteria replica di un omicidio (Mystery - Replica of a Crime)

... aka: Un misterio llamado Aleksander Orwicz (A Mystery Called Aleksander Orwicz)

Directed by:

Jacek Koprowicz

Setting: 1933, Nazi-occupied Poland. Greta Wagner (Ewa Dałkowska), the powerful psychic sister of veteran parapsychologist / occultist Ernst (Jerzy Nowak), tunes into strange visions that are actually the current activities of another unknown medium. The medium is using his or her powers to control four different people, entrancing them and leading them all somewhere to do different tasks. Andrzej Gaszewski (Jerzy Zelnik) travels from Warsaw to the autonomous city-state Sopot / Gdańsk via train and has no idea how he even got there, but vows not to leave until he finds out. Schoolteacher Luiza Skubiejska (Grażyna Szapołowska) walks right out on her students mid-class, goes to a museum, steals a turn-of-the-century dress and then ends up in a park with no clue how she got there or why she has the dress. She then immediately returns the garment to the museum. Since this hasn't been the first time this has ever happened, she's on the radar of the police and could potentially lose her job. Likewise, out-of-town banker Georg Netz (Jerzy Stuhr) keeps waking up in a strange house, despite the fact he's simultaneously paying for a hotel room in town. He has no idea how he got there, why he's there or why he's been writing gloomy lovelorn poetry while entranced.

Superintendent Selin (Władysław Kowalski) is not only in charge of investigating the above weirdness but also happens to be directly involved. Every night after work, he mysteriously ends up on a beach, where he gets drunk and goes to sleep. When morning comes he doesn't remember the evening before and then turns up at the office every day unbathed, unshaven and reeking of alcohol. His young assistant Krank (Michał Bajor) is something of a sadist who worships Hitler ("it's logical to side with the stronger," he claims) and is conspiring against Selin behind his back. He secretly goes to their higher-ups to report the superintendent's bizarre behavior but they refuse to fire him for it. At least for now.

The strange home that appears to be the centerpiece of the action belongs to a Polish man named Aleksander Orwicz, who suffers from diabetes and is later found in a diabetic coma. While in his hypnotized state, Georg had been showing up there to give him shots of insulin and claims there was another guy present at the time... a guy who looks suspiciously like Selin.

Everything links back to a love triangle (square?) gone wrong that occurred in the same house 36 years earlier. In the late 1890s, extremely rich forty-something banker Stefan Orwicz married beautiful 22-year-old Zofia. He built her a luxurious Italian-style home and the two soon welcomed a son named Aleksander. Things then took a turn for the worst when Stefan went blind due to his diabetes. A live-in doctor named Malicki moved into the home to care for him full time. Soon after, he and Zofia began an affair. That arrangement would soon came to a bloody end when Wiktor Arlt, Stefan's hunchbacked secretary and personal assistant, went crazy and murdered all three of them with an axe. See, he too was in love with Zofia, and would often write her poems about how grueling his unrequited love for her was. After the murders, Wiktor committed suicide, and history may very well repeat itself in the present day unless our heroes can stop it.

This is often cited as one of the best Polish genre offerings from this time, which very well may be true. That's not an endorsement of its quality so much as it is the simple fact that not many horror films were produced in Poland in the 80s and two of those were THE SHE-WOLF (1983) and I LIKE BATS (1986). Some of their other genre films from this time sound promising so this may even end up on the lower half of the scale for me by the time I see the rest. Nevertheless, being slightly better than the two middling films mentioned above doesn't mean Medium is inspiring or noteworthy itself. It's not. Things open well and the intrigue is maintained until about the midway point. That, combined with the competent directing, acting and production values, keep everything watchable even after it starts becoming something of a mess. The true undoing of the film is that it's never able to make its myriad plot threads work together harmoniously.

Slow and talky most of the time, this attempts to dress up its average mystery plot with various needless complications. The script makes room for psychic powers, doppelgangers, leech treatments, telekinesis, spontaneous combustion, human lives linked to sea turtles (?), immortality, physical regression to childhood, horoscopes that combine astrology and math (birth dates and times) to predict the exact time and day of death and a solar eclipse that's somehow needed to bring the bad guy's plot together. Why? You got me! There are a LOT of ideas crammed in here; too many, and this doesn't do an adequate job explaining most of them. The overcast cinematography, funeral pacing, lack of personable characters and humor and Nazi era setting also gave me bad flashbacks to Luca Guadagnino's tedious SUSPIRIA remake from a few years back.

Stripped down to its bones, what this really is is a rehash of the mediocre Aussie film PATRICK (1978), which was a big hit in much of Europe a few years earlier. Both involve a coma patient who's fully conscious inside their unresponsive body and using their telekinetic abilities to strike out against others. There a number of other similarities between it and this one, only this opts to gum up the works with numerous ill-explained supernatural detours.

Outside of its home country, this was given a theatrical and VHS release (on the Penta Video label) in Italy under the title Mysteria replica di un omicidio ("Mystery: Replica of a Crime"), but that appears to be it as far as 80s international distribution was concerned . A West German co-production, it may have also played in some other European cinemas, or on TV, as well. It's now pretty easy to find with English subtitles and is on Youtube, Daily Motion and other websites free to view, and was even available on Netflix for a spell, though I don't know if it's still there or not. Studio Filmowe Tor / Studio Blu offer region free Blu-ray and DVD versions with English subs.

★★

Making Contact (1985)

... aka: Contacto con el más allá (Contact with the Beyond)

... aka: Debiru doru (Devil Doll)

... aka: El secreto de Joey (Joey's Secret)

... aka: Joey

... aka: Joey, una storia meravigliosa (Joey: A Wonderful Story)

Directed by:

Roland Emmerich

Having lofty aspirations to become Germany's answer to Spielberg or Lucas, Roland Emmerich started out in his home country with smaller scale science fiction films. His first feature length effort fresh out of film school was The Noah's Ark Principle (1984), which didn't set the box office ablaze but did manage to turn a profit due to securing an international distribution deal on a budget of around 300 thousand U.S. dollars. Next up was this effort, which took a year and a half to complete and was budgeted at around 1.5 million. Like his previous effort, this sold well internationally (to 22 markets) and made even more money due to the director's decision to shoot the film in English and keep it tame and schmaltzy enough to secure a PG rating, thus netting an even wider audience. As for the critical response to the film, it was almost universally terrible; a recurring theme for the director. Not that he cared any. Emmerich would later go on record admitting that he only makes popcorn movies for mass consumption. That attitude would end up serving him well when he later segued into his big budget Hollywood career. 

Less than a decade after he started with his modest little fantasy / sci-fi films, he was "discovered" by Sylvester Stallone and then recommended to direct the popular Jean Claude Van Damme action vehicle Universal Soldier (1992). From there he made the uneven though successful sci-fi film Stargate (1994), which at least spawned a far superior TV series, and then was on to the alien invasion extravaganza Independence Day (1996), which ended up becoming the highest grossing film of its year despite not being very good.

The formula was all pretty simple: huge budgets, huge major studio marketing campaigns, casts filled with popular actors, expensive state of the art special effects and depictions of mass destruction, all pasted together with extremely hokey human interest drama. Audiences just couldn't get enough for awhile and he'd repeat the same routine with later films like The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 BC and 2012. However, the sheen would eventually wear off. Later "event" movies like the Independence Day sequel under-performed, while his last film as of this writing - Moonfall (2022) - was a certifiable box office bomb.

As someone who's not a fan of his Hollywood career at all, I actually went into this with my curiosity piqued at the prospect of seeing what Mr. 200 Million Budget could do with only a tiny fraction of the money he'd later become accustomed to working with. I didn't expect good, but I did perhaps expect moments of interest seeing someone with such big, expensive visions facing budget constraints. How will he overcome that? Will he overcome that? Let's take a look...

Grand, whimsical John Williams-esque music swells over the opening credits and then we're whisked off to a funeral. Laura Collins (Eva Kryll) has just lost her husband, leaving her to raise their 9-year-old son Joey (Joshua Morrell) all on her own. Later that night, while Joey is mourning his father, his toys seem to come to life, lights flash from his closet and a glowing red plastic phone starts ringing. Joey answers it to find his father on the other line. Or does he? When mom catches him under his blankets talking to his deceased father, she's mildly concerned but decides to just give it some time. Maybe this is his unique way of grieving. Joey makes the mistake of telling some of his classmates that he's still making contact with his dead dad, which makes him the target of a group of bullies led by Bernie (Matthias Kraus) and William (Jerry Hall).

At a nearby abandoned house, Joey finds an old, ugly ventriloquist's dummy in the basement. He cleans it up, takes it home and puts it in his bedroom. The dummy turns out to be alive, or at least possessed by someone and being animated, and also appears to be the root cause of all the supernatural events that have been occurring thus far. Somehow through all this, Joey picks up telekinetic abilities and is gifted the ability to move objects with his mind simply by willing it to happen.

The dummy soon reveals its true nature to Joey i.e. it's not just another harmless inanimate object in his massive toy collection. It goes "Blarrrrr!" in a deep voice and shoots lasers out of its eyes. It tries to kill his mom by flinging a knife at her and attempting to run her over with a car, shows him historical clips on a TV screen and tells him he hasn't actually been talking to his father all this time. Instead, he's been speaking to a famous former stage magician and ventriloquist named Jonathan Fletcher, who's been dead since the 1920s and had brought his stage prop to life via black magic. As for their motives, the dummy chimes in and says that he and the dead Fletcher want to "control" him. As for why, and what they plan on doing once they do, your guess is as good as mine. I couldn't make heads of tails of much of this, though it's kind of revealed toward the end that the dummy is the real issue, not the ventriloquist. Or something.

Joey does have a couple of helpful allies, including a friendly, pigtailed neighborhood girl named Sally (Tammy Shields), his dog Scooter and a super-intelligent miniature R2-D2 style robot named Charlie that can think for itself and even has feelings (!?) Concerned teacher Martin (Jan Zierold) starts showing up periodically to check on the boy and is set up as a potential love interest for the widowed mother, though nothing ever comes of this. Just like in E.T. where a huge swarm of government agents and scientists basically take over the family home, here a huge swarm of paranormal investigators, police officers and scientists take over the family home. While they're running tests on Joey, his bullies convene at the former ventriloquist's home and make elaborate plans to "rid ourselves of this menace." (What do they plan on actually doing? Killing him?) Instead, they become trapped inside while a supernatural manure storm hits, which somehow includes a toothy monster, a mummy and a giant fanged cheeseburger (!?)

This is a prime example of a filmmaker putting nearly everything he has into the technical aspects of a film whilst neglecting every other important thing in the process. This is a delightfully colorful and handsomely shot (by Egon Werdin) film, with expensive-looking art direction and special effects. It's actually impressive how the director and his crew are able to almost completely pull off the look and feel of a big budget 80s Hollywood production with meager means. That said, the visuals are about the only good thing going on here, unless you can have fun counting the endless blatant ways the director tries, and fails, to copy Spielberg's brand of "heartwarming" family friendly fantasy entertainment.

Undoing nearly all of the polish is an absolutely terrible screenplay, which is completely unable to generate any sympathy for its cardboard protagonists, fails to establish any kind of compelling, coherent plot, fails to come up with a satisfactory conclusion (there basically ISN'T a conclusion) and is filled with laughably awful dialogue, including giving the dummy a bunch of lame "funny" one-liners. Everything here feels soulless, heartless, charmless and derivative, as if every prior popular PG fantasy film was fed into some kind of malfunctioning computer and this got spit out.

Making matters even worse, the acting is horrendous. His decision to cast mostly amateurs simply because they spoke English results in across-the-board stone-faced performances and stilted delivery of nearly every single line of dialogue. Apparently all of the young "talent" were completely inexperienced kids that were plucked from a U.S. military base / school to take part in the film, though they don't really come off any worse than most of the adults. Not sure where they found the rest of these folks at but most never appeared in anything else ever again. I'm also not sure why they even bothered shooting in English since most of the actors ultimately got dubbed over anyway. The woman playing the mother, for instance, looks like she can actually act based on her reactions to various events but then she's given a monotone dub that ruins her entire performance.

You'd be hard pressed to find another film filled with as much product placement as this one, though I don't believe there were any kind of paid licensing deals going on here either. The director seems to have basically just used whatever he wanted to give this a more American appearance. The young star's bedroom is filled to the rafters with name brand toys and merch; Sesame Street, Star Wars, Smurfs, various Disney characters, Garfield, Pac Man, E.T., you name it. If kids were into it at the time, Joey definitely has it. This goes even further than that with a perplexing cameo appearance from Darth Vader himself. The kitchen is filled with products like Skippy peanut butter and Heinz ketchup. Their dog eats Alpo. All of this makes Mac and Me, which infamously features an entire musical number set inside a McDonald's and an alien sustaining itself with sips of Coca-Cola, look restrained by comparison.

In addition to directing, Emmerich also co-wrote the script, produced, did a lot of the special effects and even operated the camera at times. Most of the film was shot in Germany, but exteriors were shot in the U.S. because this is supposed to be taking place in Virginia Beach, which somehow also means we get gratuitous shots of Southwestern Bell pay phones and a Krispy Kreme shop.

From Cinemafantastique Vol. 16 #3 (July 1986)

There are a number of different versions available. The first is the original 101 minute version released in Germany under its original title, Joey. This same version appears to have been released throughout Europe. And then there's the heavily-cut, English language release called Making Contact. Over twenty minutes have been removed (having browsed through the longer version it doesn't appear you're missing out on much) and it features a different, inferior score. The cut U. S. release was briefly distributed theatrically by New World Pictures in 1986, then turned up on home video courtesy of New World Video later that same year. Anchor Bay distributed it on DVD and then Blu-ray duties were handed off to Kino Lorber. The latter includes both the original and cut versions of the film.

A little note here, my rating is entirely a reflection of the craftsmanship of some of the crew people, not a reflection of my enjoyment of the actual film. I actually hated this with every fiber of my being. It grated on my nerves nearly the entire time. It's obvious. It's insulting. It's dumb as hell. It's offensively cynical in how stupid it assumes its target audience is going to be. And it actually just pissed me off.

★1/2