The Carrier

Now this is a flick you need to track down. It's such an odd & entertaining mixture of things, it easily gains some extra points for sheer originality. Now dig this: The little town of Sleepy Rock's teenage social outcast - Jake, who lives in a ramshackle wooden shack and has to bear the trauma of having burned down his parents' house, killing them in the process - gets attacked by a mysterious black, hairy creature one night. He manages to shoot it and the thing just dissolves in the nightly rain. But, having sustained injuries, Jake now is infected with something and becomes the carrier and instigator of a plague the likes you've never seen before. The infection spreads through inanimate objects only - literately anything you can imagine, from books to trees and what not else - and people who touch such an infected object get consumed by it. And that's basically just the backdrop (main threat) for the whole plot. Because while a fierce storm has isolated the whole town, all its inhabitants pretty much go crazy and turn onto one another. What all happens next, you'll have to witness for yourself. All I can say is that there's a lot going on in this film, often pushing the boundaries of common sense to a ridiculous extent. For instance...: People go on a cat hunt to collect as many cats possible for testing if or not inanimate objects are infected (yes, that includes throwing some innocent kitten against a wall to see if the poor thing dissolves or not). Some priest preaches religious madness, gathering a flock of believers. Some doctor tries to save the town while protecting the carrier. Two clans set off an all out war against each other as if they were the sole survivors in some imaginative post-apocalyptic world. Children are hunted down & killed. A naked woman gets consumed by a mirror. And you haven't seen the end of it yet. There's some blackly humorous ways about this film, yet it's hard to pinpoint where all it might have been intended or not. There's some strange symbolism of various sorts spread throughout the film and allegedly the whole 'infection' can be interpreted as a metaphor for the AIDS virus (at the time uprising as the most dangerous disease of the '80s). Although I imagine it can be as easily interpreted as a reference to the medieval black plague. "The Carrier" seems a pretty obscure and forgotten film and naturally it doesn't have the best of production values. As much as the whole story might get ridiculous on numerous occasions, it's also very original & tense. Pretty much unlike any other movie you've ever seen before.

I first saw this in the late 80s on a vhs n found it to be boring but aft revisiting the extended cut recently, i am surprised. This is indeed a very different horror film n a very creative one too.

They say this movie was an allegory for the 80s AIDS epidemic but this movie is still relevant with todays pandemic and paranoia.

It explores the themes of mob mentality n helplessness.

It doesn't fall into the virus, zombie or crazies category n it doesnt have any scary stuff but the scenes of human flesh being consumed by poles, trees, mirrors, books, etc is creepy n very well done.

The poster is misleading though.

My review was written in December 1988 after watching the movie on Magnum video cassette.

Shot about four years ago in Michigan, "The Carrier" is an amateurish horror film that treats a serious subject -contagion - in ludicrous fashion.

Yet another of the recent horror allegories about the AIDS epidemic, Nathan J. White's indie feature, unconvincingly posits the spread of an unknown, fatal disease in a small community, just when it's been cut off from civilization by a rainstorm flooding a nearby gorge.

One touch of a contaminated object or by a person carrying the disease causes the victim to sizzle away as if by acid (though special effects here are chintzy, lacking the goopiness of "The Devil's Rain"). Paranoia quickly takes hold on the community, as a single human carrier (who survives without being consumed) is sought for extermination.

Young hero Jake (Gregory Fortescue) is early on shown to be the carrier, robbing the film of much suspense. The whole farrago turns self-destructively into low camp when everyone in town wraps himself up in plastic (as if artist Christo had visited the set) to prevent accidental contamination. A wise guy yells "Go out there and get me cats! And everyone scurries around trying to catch the crittrs to be used (rather distastefully) to test objects.

Veneer of civilization wears off fast; with film aping horror expert George A. Romero in a showdown between two rival groups at a barricaded house. A subplot attempting to link the murder of Jake's parents to some of the rowdies is extraneous.

Silly treatment submerges some okay ideas in a backyard film. Acting is weak, with poorest performance by heroine Stevie Lee as Treva.

In defense of this movie, it is completely original. But don't you have questions about who and how it was produced? It seems like a whole town got together and pooled their limited resources to produce this film that must have been written by a local who had waaay too much acid in the 70's. But for some reason I find this movie affecting. Who can't relate to the main characters loneliness and isolation? But to all those complainers out there: People are always criticizing movies for being the same bland formula over and over-now here's one that's way different than most without being totally incomprehensible. My hat goes off to the people who made this movie. You tried, and sometimes that's enough.

Although this film is ineptly-made and totally ridiculous, it should at least receive kudos for being completely original. It reminded me of another obscure 80's film called The Pit. Like that earlier movie the filmmakers actually tried to do something different than a. have a psychopath carve up a bunch of nubile, underdressed teenagers; b. have a bunch of untalented "scream queens" bounce around a haunted house fleeing something or another; or c. shamelessly rip-off or "remake" some horror classic from the past. Most low-budget horror product from the late 80's unfortunately falls into one of these categories. Of course, the plot is jaw-droppingly ludicrous. What kind of virus spreads via inanimate objects and causes people to instantly melt? It does, however, make for some good black comedy and satirical commentary on small-town folk. Norman Rockwell must be spinning in his grave! Like The Pit it's also incredibly misanthropic--even the hero is incredibly selfish and unsympathetic--yet it's just too off-the-wall to be taken too seriously. Pretty alright overall.