One of the interesting things about starting this website is that it’s pushed me into watching some movies that I’ve heard about in the past but never tracked down. I started watching a few of these – Blue Sunshine, Just Before Dawn, Remote Control… hang on! Those are all by the same director!
For whatever reason, the name of Jeff Lieberman had passed me by. I was vaguely familiar with his feature début Blue Sunshine (about a group of ex-hippies who start having homicidal adverse effects from the acid they dropped in college) and Squirm (a small town besieged by thousands of flesh-eating worms) but otherwise his name had escaped me.
Now that I’m a little more familiar with his work, I can see that he’s one of those director who simply fell through the cracks for whatever reason. Though often obviously hampered by their low budgets, his movies were consistently original and full of ideas. So, here’s a quick article as a preview to my promised review of his 1987 movie Remote Control.
Selected filmography
Satan’s Little Helper (2004)
Doctor Franken (1980) (TV movie, aka Dr. Franken (USA))
Squirm (1976)
Blue Sunshine (1976)
From Lieberman’s IMDB filmography, it’s a little saddening to see that the credit most familiar to mainstream moviegoers is a screenplay credit on The Neverending Story 3. However, his occasional work as director is very interesting.
Following a short film entitled “The Ringer”, Lieberman’s début feature was an interesting little thriller called Blue Sunshine. The movie follows a bunch of people in their early 30s – parents and businessmen – who had taken acid in their college days. Soon, it becomes apparent that there was a bad, experimental batch (named Blue Sunshine), and anyone who took it starts to develop similar symptoms. Their hair falls out, and they start killing people… From this intriguing premise, the movie could have gone either way. Despite the fact that one of the main characters is played by future soft-porn mogul Zalman King (producer of The Red Shoe Diaries), all of the characters come off as fairly sympathetic. The killers are effectively creepy looking when they lose their hair, and the whole thing builds to an interesting climax. It’s a flawed movie, but a very promising first feature.
In the same year, Lieberman directed Squirm, a movie that has the dubious distinction of having been a target for the movie mocking series Mystery Science Theater 3000. Despite that, it’s not a bad movie exactly, just over-long and a little lacking in the gore and departments. The film follows people in a small town in the aftermath of a storm. The storm pulled down some power lines, which have drawn a bunch of works to the surface and made them hunger for human flesh…
It sounds silly, and for the most part it is. However, Lieberman does a good job of making the worms menacing. This is especially true in the climax, where a house is besieged by thousands of the things. The main problem for me was the pacing of the movie. I found the early parts of the movie almost intolerable, the characters were just boring to me albeit more fleshed out than most horror movies. I was also disappointed by the lack of gore, my expectations maybe being raised by the DVD cover (above right) and the fact that the VHS cover (above centre) made me feel uncomfortable as a kid for some reason. The effects aren’t bad at all when they happen, but it’s a long slog to get to them.
I haven’t watched Dr. Franken yet (I’ll track it down before this article is updated for the main site). This brings me to two movies that fit directly into this site’s remit so i won’t say too much here as there will be full reviews of both. Just Before Dawn is a fairly decent slasher movie containing some elements of The Hills Have Eyes and Friday The 13th. It’s competent up until the twist partway through that makes the movie a lot more interesting.
Remote Control stars Kevin Dillon, brother of Matt and star of the 80s remake of The Blob and the TV series Entourage, as well as an early role for Jennifer Tilly. It follows a video store worker who stumbles across an alien plot to destroy humanity through a mind-controlling videotape. Not quite as demented as it could have been, but a minor flawed masterpiece.
Lieberman made a belated comeback in 2004 with Satan’s Little Helper. I’ve misplaced the copy of this I had before I could watch it, so ‘ll update this article when find it. Word has it that, like all of his other works, that it’s a decent if flawed tongue-in-cheek horror.
Lieberman is one of those guys who I would really like to meet and find out what happened. He managed to get several movies financed, most of which seem to have had decent reviews, but many of which have fallen into obscurity. It’s next to impossible to find video copies of Remote Control from what I’ve seen (I watched it via a downloaded rip from Swedish TV(!)), and Satan’s Little Helper was a £1.50 purchase from Woolworths last time I was in the UK. However, his movies are far more interesting than many of the movies made at the times he was working. What happened, I wonder? Either way, I’m glad to have made his acquaintance during these movies, and I hope that Satan’s Little Helper will not be his feature swansong.
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