The Unwelcomed (supposedly 2001, actually 1990)
I had to revise my grading scale for this movie, which is a “Value DVD” that only cost a dollar. Any curse word harsher than “asshole” is censored and presumably, so is any potential TITS or GUTS. What is left are implied R-rated activities and that is the new scale for this movie: the scale of IMAGINATION.
(on a scale of 0-5)
IMPLIED TITS: 3?*
IMPLIED GUTS: 2
IMPLIED SUBJECTIVE OVERALL SATISFACTION: 4.239483821
KILLER: Max Page (great name)
FINAL GIRL: Connie
GENERAL SUMMARY
PLOT: This plot wasn’t really that bad. It’s basically an attempt to re-tell the classic vampire story in modern times. Max Page is a 73 year old celebrating his birthday when a meteor lands on his property. Something from the meteor scurries through the land (Tremors-style) and implants itself into Max. Max begins to physically de-age so that he eventually has the face of a 20-something.
This age reduction comes at a price because he has to drink (all of) the blood from a woman who is ovulating to survive. His alien age reduction also grants him a superhuman sense of smell so he can detect when women are on their periods. He doesn’t grow fangs or anything, he just slices open the ladies’ throats with a scalpel. The plot ***SPOILERS*** reveals eventually that it is not human blood that he is after, but the chemical estrogen. He is a very specific vampire.
Eventually the police and FBI catch up with him because he is a terrible serial killer and left fingerprints everywhere. They get Connie to drug his wine with an anti-estrogen drug and then shoot him a bunch of times. He dies unrepentant.
OVERALL:
I took a bunch of notes for this movie so I think I’ll just transcribe them and try to explain why I jotted them down:
-Unwelcomed (2001) ? (The question mark was added later when I began to doubt that the film was actually made in the 21st century. It was really made in 1990.)
-most boring opening credits ever. 2:33 (This is how long the opening credits were. It was just bad music and text, very slowly. It was awful.)
-Space (The film starts out in space with a star field, then we see a horribly animated meteor passing by. See “Oh man, SFX”)
-Max Page (great name)
-Oh man, SFX (The meteor is horribly animated.)
-Asteroid=Flaming Pit (The landing site for the meteor is just a big hole obviously dug out with shovels, then soaked with kerosene and lit on fire. Bonus points for simplicity.)
-“POPS!” (See MEMORABLE QUOTES)
- Mr. Ed Doors (The Pages have a back door that is cut in half, so you can open the top half without opening the bottom half. It’s useful if you want to open a door without actually opening it.)
- Cup w/o coffee (Max Page’s son drops an empty coffee mug when he hears his dad being attacked by the meteor alien. It’s funny because he was pretending to sip at the imaginary coffee in the mug just moments prior to the dropping.)
- Tremors effect (This describes the effect of the alien entity that infects Max Page. It throws up dirt as it travels underground.)
- Hard to do Old Man make-up full body (“Max Page” was played by an actor in his 20s so he had to have Old Man make-up applied to his face for the film’s beginning scenes. This is reference to a shot when everyone thinks Max is dead. He is shirtless on a hospital bed and it is obviously the body of a 20 year old.)
- What is “Connie” short for? (Constance?)
-The University (The doctor at the hospital recommends sending Max’s lab reports to The University for further analysis. Like that’ll happen.)
- Riding Big Wheels the cool way (Riding a Big Wheels “the cool way” meant riding it like a scooter, not a tiny plastic tricycle.)
- flash of light reveals mask instead of face, glowing eyes/mouth (There’s a scene with lightning flashes that reveals Max’s secret evil tendencies where they flash a creepy looking mask over Max’s face for a fraction of a second. Effective if you haven’t figured it out yet.)
- Don’t leave your old man in the car (Just good advice.)
- Dreams = Reality (Max Page dreams about killing ladies and they end up dead the next morning. See next note.)
- Killing while asleep, the worst kind (Max has got to feel silly serial killing ladies like he does when he is not even conscious. What is worse: finding out that you’re a secret serial killer or finding out and realizing you received no pleasure from it?)
- PARROT – no cusses. “Petey’s a good boy” “Craw!” (See MEMORABLE QUOTES)
- Liquor and Deli (A good idea! This place gets robbed twice in one scene though, so it might be TOO good of an idea.)
- Case# 1A-14873 (The subtitles dramatically entered this case number on screen with “Page House…11 weeks later… Case# 1A-14873!!” Those exclamation marks are mine, but apparently the case number was very important. Maybe it’s secret code for the director’s birthday or something and during the first screening, they had a big surprise birthday for him.)
- badass leather jacket (When Max Page reverts back into a 20-year-old body, he starts greasing his hair back and wearing a white undershirt beneath a badass leather jacket. Obviously this is how 73-year-old Max thinks young people dress. I like this movie because of the attention to details like this.)
- HOT Lesbo threeway. Cut. “Wanna join us?” fade black, cut to watching TV. (See IMPLIED TITS)
- White noise (Max likes to pass his time while watching static on the television. I guess it’s just another thing to let us know he’s crazy.)
- SHOWER (One of the lesbian chicks takes a shower but we don’t see anything. This is either an edit or just poor filmmaking.)
- Didn’t like sex. (See IMPLIED TITS)
- not the greatest serial killer (The narrative reveals that Max stayed with a girl for one solid week before killing her, leaving fingerprints everywhere and actually getting his picture taken with her. Not the best MO, Max.)
- VAMPIRES (I was excited that this was turning into a pseudo-vampire story)
- Don’t help bums (Max is lying in, literally, a pile of garbage when a lady stops and asks if he needs help. The dramatic transition leads us to believe that he kills her. Don’t help bums, they might be estrogen vampires.)
- blood dripping down screen (This is the dramatic transition.)
- Feeds on estrogen (Max is an estrogen vampire)
- Beast = “Ugly Dorko” (Connie is a nurse at a hospital with little kids. She’s explaining the story of “Beauty and the Beast” to the kids, about how beauty can be inside someone who is physically deformed. A little fat kid replies with the statement that Beast is an “ugly dorko.” I thought this was funny.)
- Leather for flannel (After Max meets up with Connie and starts romancing her, he starts wearing a flannel shirt underneath his leather jacket instead of just the plain undershirt. I think this is part of Max’s “old guy” thing resurfacing.)
- sniffs ladies to find them on their periods (Max only likes ladies on their periods and he can apparently smell this.)
- roller skates v. blades (During one of the scenes in the Connie Romancing montage, they are roller-skating; Max is wearing skates but Connie is wearing blades. Again, I think this is Max’s “old guy” surfacing.)
- truncated sex scene (Man, who knows what happened here.)
- Science Symposium “This isn’t a science symposium. You want out? Now’s the time.” (The main FBI agent says this to one of his lackies when they question his ethics regarding Max’s capture. The FBI agent names a “science symposium” as something that one could not ever back out of, a tie that’s forever binding. Maybe his dad was a scientist?)
- Killed in Oklahoma (Just a little hometown pride here. They show a big map with the states outlined where Max has killed people, and apparently he started in Kansas and came down through Oklahoma, then went on to California. We never see the Oklahoma lady he killed.)
-Leather jacket (See “badass leather jacket”)
- gigantic walkie-talkies (The FBI and police used gigantic walkie-talkies.)
-drugged wine (See PLOT)
-overturned table (Right after Max is drugged, the Authorities rush in and surround him with guns. What makes this scene strange is that the coffee table is overturned for no reason, but we’re lead to believe that Max did that. Apparently the action of turning over the table was too hot for Value DVD and that scene had to be edited.)
-“where I come from” (Max says this with his final breath, implying that an alien entity has been influencing his actions the entire time. An alien estrogen vampire.)
- 1990 (I was totally right when I thought the movie was “1992-ish.” I forward-fasted the ending credits.)
*IMPLIED TITS: This factor is difficult to quantify. At one point, Max Page is hitchhiking and manages to get a ride from two women, who turn out to be lesbians. There is a scene when the two ladies are in bed pawing each other and say seductively to Max, “Wanna join us?” and then the scene abruptly fades to black. The scene resumes when Max is sitting calmly in the same chair and the two ladies are calmly sleeping in the bed. Max later kills one of the girls and the surviving girl tells the police that Max “didn’t like sex.”
This leaves the viewer unsatisfied. The abrupt fade to black is an obvious post-production edit, so we have no idea how hot the lesbian action got before the girls decided that Max didn’t like sex. It could have gone on for as long as five to ten minutes and it was probably really hot and now we’ll never know.
Also, the surviving lesbian chick took a shower but we never saw anything. It was probably all cut out.
IMPLIED GUTS: There actually wasn’t a lot of guts in this movie, implied or otherwise. Max killed the ladies by slitting their throats and then drinking their blood.
MEMORABLE QUOTES (with context)
“What are you doing here, POPS?!” (Spoken to the elderly Max Page when he is investigating the meteor landing on his walker. Funny because the actor says “POPS!” like he’s never actually heard anybody call an old person “Pops.”)
“Petey is a good boy!” (Spoken by a parrot. The parrot’s only other lines are “Caw! Caw! Caw!” but his owner reacts to this by saying that Petey has a dirty mouth. Later, police investigators hear the bird saying “Caw!” and react by saying that the parrot is very interesting. Apparently, the parrot was cussing but Value DVD saw fit to edit that out. They ended up turning a mildly amusing scene into a hilarious one.)
