Unrelated to the Kafka tale of the same name, Metamorphosis (1990) stars Gene LeBrock as Dr. Peter Houseman. Despite Dr. Houseman's teaching contract that he thought protected his research, a rival researcher on the college board of directors is attempting to take over the department. Backed into a corner, our hapless hero feels he has no choice but to test his immortality serum on himself. Therefore he injects himself through the eyeball.
For the rest of the film he threatens to go through some sort of metamorphosis into a more prehistoric being. But the storyline basically has him occasionally in cheap aging make-up being violent then forgetting he was violent. He beats the crap out of a hooker & when a few days later he tries to retrace his steps to find out what happened that night, her pimp & some pals in the bar beat the crap out of him, which he well deserved.
For a while it seems this might've been a telefilm & the director doesn't want to show anything actually brutal that'd be censored. But eventually it gets rather gorey, so no tv film this
It's somewhat interesting but also disappointing because the viewer is led to expect science fiction & gets mainly a psycho killer sort of thing. However, the last fifteen minutes are rather tense, as the psycho's girlfriend's little boy (Jason Arnold) is stalked through the laboratory. But this time Dr. Houseman's face has indeed transmogrified into a hideous mask, plus he seems to have turned into some kind of neck-biting bloodsucker.
The "surprise" climax provides such a great laugh that I have to praise it, though I hazard it wasn't supposed to be so funny. There's another "surprise" behind the surprise, but it's even dumber without being funny, & the script should've stopped when it was ahead.
I liked this dumb film, which was sufficiently retro it felt like it was made in the 1970s rather than 1990, & needs as much forgiveness as most of the cheeze from '70s needs.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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