SHOCK grabs another classic clip of critics Siskel & Ebert reviewing horror films.
As part of our ongoing series digging up vintage clips of lamented critics Siskel & Ebert making sport of horror and dark fantasy films on their long-running, now defunct TV series AT THE MOVIES, we look at their take on one of the most underrated – and strangest – horror films of the 1980’s.
Director Bob Balaban’s black-as-night 1989 comedy creeper PARENTS.
Balaban is known primarily as an actor, notable as everyone from the kid who blew Jon Voight in the porn theater in MIDNIGHT COWBOY to the head of NBC in TV’s SEINFELD to Enid’s old man in GHOST WORLD.
These are but a few of his dozens of credits.
But Balaban is also a fairly steady gigging director, toiling primarily in TV. His first directorial credit was helming the pilot for the George A.Romero blessed anthology series TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE but he did make a pair of genre-friendly feature films in 1994’s silly and bloody MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK and, again, 1989’s PARENTS…
PARENTS!
What a film!
Shot in Toronto, a production of the long-defunct and beloved Vestron Pictures, the movie casts Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt as picture-perfect 1950’s suburban parents whose 10 year old son (Bryan Madorsky) is almost completely at odds with the world he lives in. On top of his own growing pains and mistrust of the too-shimmering and secretive sheen enveloping his life, he begins to suspect that his meat-eating mum and dad are in fact, bloodthirsty cannibals, with dad carving up the dead and bringing home human flesh for the family to eat.
The film is allegorical, satirical, erotic, totally grim and totally hilarious. And bloody. And strange. And really, unlike any other film ever made.
Indeed, it seems the world has forgotten about this incredible film and rarely do you ever hear anyone praising either writer Christopher Hawthorne or Balaban’s deft efforts at creating a world off-balance, one that is fearless in its ambiguities and bold in its refusal to soften its hard, harsh distortion of a child’s-eye view of their parents as monsters.
Anyway, Siskel and Ebert dragged the film out back in 1989 on the cusp of its release and their take was curious.
Usually, Ebert was more embracing and forgiving of stranger cinema (he did collaborate with Russ Meyer, after all), with Siskel always the harder critic to please.
Here, however, Ebert was totally befuddled by PARENTS. Completely lost.
Siskel on the other hand even more surprisingly…loved it.
Have a flashback at that review below and then groove on the trailer for PARENTS below that, a preview that doesn’t do the film’s weirdness justice…
