Hit and Run (2009)

On October 26, 2001, Chante Mallard, buzzing on a cocktail of marijuana, Ecstasy and alcohol, was driving home from a friend’s apartment after a hard night of clubbing in Fort Worth, Texas. Somewhere along the way, she struck a homeless man with her car, later identified as Gregory Biggs; and so great was the impact, Biggs’ body wound up punching through the front windshield where it got stuck.

But instead of calling the police or an ambulance, a panicked and stoned Mallard just drove on home, parked the vehicle in her garage, left Biggs, still alive, where he landed, impaled through the glass, and then, essentially, patiently waited for him to bleed to death.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, April 26, 2002.

When Biggs finally died after an unknown amount of time (-- the coroner’s report estimated at least several hours after the initial impact), Mallard, a former nurse’s aide, contacted a friend, who helped her remove the body from the car and transported it to a nearby park, where it was abandoned. Upon returning home, Mallard set about destroying all the incriminating evidence, including burning parts of her car.

Several months would pass, and when no one linked her to the crime, in not the wisest of moves, Mallard began bragging and laughing about the incident -- until she blabbed in front of the wrong person, who passed this info along to the authorities.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 27, 2003.

At trial, it came to light that if Biggs had been given prompt medical attention there was little doubt he could have survived his injuries. And so, in June of 2003, Mallard was convicted of murder and given a 50-year sentence plus ten more for tampering with evidence.

This gruesome hit-and-stuck case and the gross negligence by its perpetrator made national headlines and inspired all kinds of rumors and hearsay about how it took several days for the victim to die, or how Mallard had sex with her boyfriend while Biggs was slowly bleeding to death; or how Mallard had checked on the victim several times, who pitifully asked for help only to be callously ignored until he expired.

After the trial and conviction, this notorious incident would go on to inspire episodes for several small screen police procedurals -- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (“Anatomy of a Lye,” Season 2, Episode 21) and Law & Order (“Darwinian,” Season 14, Episode 11). Then, in 2007, Stuart Gordon -- Re-Animator (1985), From Beyond (1986), brought the scenario to the big screen as a [jet] black comedy with Stuck (2007), which took a few dramatic liberties and added a few absurdist twists that resulted in one nasty little flick.

Two years later, first time director Enda McCallion’s Hit and Run (2009) mixed the Mallard case with the old urban legend where a black-out drunk driver thinks he’s hit a dog on the way home, sleeps it off, only to discover the following morning, to his horror, that it wasn’t a dog at all but an eight-year-old girl he'd hit because she was still lodged in the grill of his car!

Here, our tale begins with college student Mary Murdock (Breckenridge) being talked into one more round of shots before heading home for spring break. And so, a little tipsy, Mary fires up her Jeep and hits the road. Several dozen miles later, while tinkering with the radio, the driver rounds a curve and sees what’s left of a detonated semi-tire impeding the road and haphazardly swerves to miss it, resulting in a little impromptu and violent off-road action. Once she gets the vehicle back under control, back on the pavement, and stopped, Mary lets out a huge sigh of relief over this close call. After that, the rest of the journey home is pretty uneventful.

Parking in the darkened garage of her parent’s home (-- seems the bulb has burned out), Mary then follows some old sagely alcoholic’s advice by inducing some vomiting (– trust me, she’ll feel better in the morning). But after hitting the sack, Mary is soon awoken by some strange noises emanating from the garage. Noises that, if I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’, sound exactly like the Portsmith Sinfonia trying to pull off the theme to JAWS (1975). If this was intended as menacing or a comical homage is, well, up to each individual viewer.

Anyhoo, with flashlight in hand, Mary investigates only to discover a bloodied and mangled body stuck to the front of her Jeep! Obviously, she accidentally hit someone while running herself off the road without realizing it (-- more plausible than it sounds); and after a few quick pokes prove the man is still alive, Mary moves to help him.

But the gravely injured and delirious man starts flailing and angrily grabs for her, causing a frightened Mary to instinctively grab a nearby golf club, which she uses to defend herself and, in her panic, promptly beats the man to death.

From there, panic gives way and self-preservation takes over as Mary pries the man loose -- and one has to wonder if those giant improbable meat-hooks on the front bumper of her Jeep were part of an extended Mad Max package from the dealership? She then wraps the body up in a blanket before burying it in a shallow grave somewhere deep in the New Jersey woods.

The next day is mostly spent destroying evidence of the crime before Mary’s parents return home from a weekend trip. And as the day grinds on, Mary begins to slowly crack-up and starts self-medicating to keep it together: a combination of booze and pills.

On the local news, she discovers the man she hit was a beloved kindergarten teacher named Timothy Emser (Corrigan), whose wife, Jane (Anderson), says he just went for a late-night walk without his shoes or medication and pleads for his safe return. This revelation doesn’t help Mary’s fragile mental state, who confesses to her boyfriend, Rick (Shand), looking for some circumstantial absolution to ease her conscience.

Sticking with this callous theme, Rick is less concerned about his girlfriend actually killing someone and more concerned that she won’t have sex with him now because of it. And as Mary’s paranoia grows ever deeper, the girl realizes she buried the incriminating blanket with Emser and convinces Rick to meet at the grave site later to retrieve it.

But when Rick doesn’t show as promised, Mary works to exhume the corpse alone -- only to find Emser gone with Rick’s dead body left in his place!

Now, while this kind of tale could’ve led to an interesting character study on the motivations of why someone would react the way Mallard or Mary did, or any of us for that matter, to this dire set of circumstances and the strange, counter-intuitive compulsion to confess, Hit and Run is ... not that film.

However! What it is was a fairly effective thriller, especially when considering its first-effort status. The film is not concerned with the “why” but focuses solely on the “how” – and the bloodier the better, as things go completely bonkers after Emser proves to still be alive, who then trails Mary back to her house, where he torments her further with Rick's stolen cellphone.

And after several twists and turns, Emser eventually turns the tables on the girl, knocking her out and binding her to the front of the Jeep, and then takes Mary for a harrowing joyride, killing a gas station attendant along the way.

This road-trip then ends in Emser’s own garage, where he has a momentarily happy reunion with his relieved wife. But Emser won’t allow her to call an ambulance for him as she tries and fails to dress his multiple wounds. We also find out that those meds he hasn’t been taking for the past few days are for a bi-polar disorder.

It’s the Emser’s son who first finds Mary still bundled to the bumper, who alerts his mom. And while his wife tries to free the captive, Emser kills her with some pruning shears. He then takes Mary back to the burial site -- his tit-for-tat intentions clear, leading to a desperate fight for survival as we breach the climax.

Honestly, Hit and Run was a lot better than I ever thought it would be -- helped immensely by a third act that goes completely off the rails with some bizarre plot twists and contrivances that keeps the audience looking at the screen in amused, cock-eyed wonder. (Parrots? Really? Parrots. Hunh.) Also, the Christmas lights for bindings the killer keeps plugging in were a nice touch. And where in the hell did that blow-torch come from?

Behind the camera, McCallion, cinematographer Olivier Cocaul, and editor Miklos Wright did enough to garner MGM and 20th Century Fox’s attention, who packaged the film as part of a glut of ‘unrated’ direct-to-video, sweaty cleavage-fueled gore-fests.

In front of the camera, Laura Breckenridge is called on to carry the film as Mary until Kevin Corrigan takes over. Breckenridge isn’t quite up to the task -- close, but not quite. Corrigan, meanwhile, is absolutely terrifying as the unhinged Emser. Kudos to the make-up department for those mangled teeth, blown pupil, and butchered scalp that resulted in a truly terrifying visage that this film exploits brilliantly.

Look, there are no likable characters here -- only Emser’s wife garners any sympathy and look where that got her? But no one escapes unscathed in an ending that sort of works and ultimately satisfied with the narrative scales even.

And so, there it is, and here we are. And while I enjoyed Hit and Run for all the wrong reasons, odds are good your own viewing mileage may vary. Ah-lot.

Originally published on October 15, 2015 at Micro-Brewed Reviews.

Hit and Run (2009) Ithaka Entertainment :: Maverick Films :: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) :: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / EP: Guy Oseary, Benjamin Sitzer / P: Brent Emery, Mark Morgan, Braxton Pope, Scott Reed, Ron Singer, Andrew Weiner / D: Enda McCallion / W: Diane Doniol-Valcroze, Arthur Flam / C: Olivier Cocaul / E: Miklos Wright / M: Mateo Messina / S: Laura Breckenridge, Kevin Corrigan, Christopher Shand, Megan Anderson, Michael Gell

Time Walker (1982)

While touring the excavated tomb of the young Pharaoh Tutankhamen (circa 1981), a visiting American archeologist marvels at what’s left of the ancient burial site that hasn’t been pilfered by graverobbers or museums over the years; when suddenly, a violent earth tremor opens up an undiscovered chamber adjacent to King Tut’s tomb that hasn’t been disturbed for nearly 3,000 years.

Calling dibs on the entombed sarcophagus he finds inside, Professor Douglas McCadden (Murphy) arranges to have it and all of its pristine, never-removed-from-the-box contents shipped back to California with him, where he teaches at the State’s eponymous University of Sciences. And once there, he will officially break the seal and reveal what’s inside to the whole world.

Now, McCadden’s discovery is a huge coup for the University, explaining the ginormous press conference planned for the artifact's grande unveiling the following day. This was arranged by the school’s president, Wendell Rossmore (Karen), and his ever-present toadie, Bruce Serrano (Chew) -- who have huge alumni and booster-fed dollar signs spinning in their heads. 

Meanwhile, McCadden and a group of grad students, including his TA / girlfriend, Susie Miller (Axelrod), begin the slow and methodical process of opening the stone coffin to help preserve and catalog its contents, and then examine the mummified remains of whoever was entombed within. As she translates the hieroglyphics on the outer shell, Susie identifies the occupant as Ankh-Venharis, which translates loosely as “noble traveler." 

With that, the seals are removed and the sarcophagus is opened, revealing a large mummy covered in a strange green dust -- most likely a dormant mold or fungus of some antiquity. And while some samples of that are taken, McCadden quizzes his students on what they see. And what they all agree upon is that it appears whoever this Ankh-Venharis was, he was obviously buried in a hurry sans the usual mummification process -- therefore, the body should be completely intact. 

More answers for this puzzle will be found once the body has been x-rayed. Unfortunately, the clumsy x-ray tech, Peter Sharpe (Brophy), fails to check the settings before he starts shooting plates; and thus, accidentally bombards the mummy with multiple massive doses of radiation.

This is finally noticed too late by Jack Parker (Random), an engineering professor and a friend of McCadden’s, who at least pulls the plug before the mummy starts glowing in the dark. Here, Sharp offers to start over, but McCadden feels their “patient” has eaten enough roentgens for one day. 

Later that night, as he develops the plates he did get, Sharpe notices five jewel-like objects near the mummy’s skull. Returning to the darkened lab, he finds the compartment they’re secreted in, assumes these crystalline spheres are diamonds, and pockets them. He then covers his tracks with one more x-ray at the highest setting to replace the incriminating original, which he must quickly secret behind some electrical equipment when Parker spots him loitering around.

The following morning, Sharpe tries to pawn those jewels but is told they’re worthless. And so, to try and salvage at least something from this criminal boondoggle, he arranges to sell them off to a few of his gullible frat-brothers as gifts for their respective girlfriends, including his own, unwittingly putting them all in harm's way for reasons we’ll get to in a second.

Meantime, at Rossmore’s big press conference, the gathered reporters anxiously await the mummy’s unveiling. But things get off to a rocky start when one of McCadden’s students notices a slimy green substance exuding from the seams of the sarcophagus’ lid that wasn’t there before; who then does something really scientific by sticking his bare finger in it -- only to find out the viscous substance is extremely caustic. (Well, at least he didn't try to taste it.)

And as the screaming student is quickly hustled away, McCadden tries to postpone the unveiling until they can figure out what that gunk is; but the impatient Rossmore won’t hear it. And so, McCadden orders the tomb to be opened -- revealing an empty receptacle!

Thus, the press conference is a complete disaster. And while an embarrassed and outraged Rossmore feels this was nothing more than an ill-advised fraternity prank, for which the culprits will pay dearly for running off with his prized mummy, the truth is a little more sinister than that -- and extremely dangerous.

For you see, while that first dose of x-rays managed to reactivate the dormant dust into a lethal flesh-eating fungus, that second blast has apparently awakened something far more worse...

There was an old axiom floating around Roger Corman’s New World Pictures in the 1970s, where the wizened producer would offer these sage words of advice to his underlings whenever they came looking for more money: “Make two successful pictures for me, and you’ll never have to work for me again.”

To translate this, what he meant was if his filmmakers could make a profitable picture on one of his shoestring budgets, the major studios would soon come knocking. And this they did, causing a bit of a brain-drain at New World as the 1980s got to rolling.

Gone were the likes of Ron Howard, Jonathan Demme, Jonathan Kaplan, Joe Dante, and Allan Arkush, who were now all making Corman-flavored movies for the majors. Hell, even the second tier talent from Corman’s special-effects crews were starting to get pilfered as James Cameron went from doing FX and production designs for Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) to directing The Terminator (1984).

And as the grindhouses and drive-ins dried-up and disappeared, Corman also faced a dwindling venue for his first-run product, forcing him to shift gears and focus more on making features for the direct to video market. And so, it was during this weird period between 1980 and 1985, when New World was kinda in its death-throes, theatrically speaking, where Corman started looking outside his own studio for product to make and distribute, which is how he came to be involved in the production of Time Walker (1982); a delightful little creature feature featuring a rampaging mummy with a Sci-Fi twist.

The movie began as a story idea concocted by Jason Williams and Todd Friedman. Williams was an actor, whose main claim to fame was starring in a couple of Bill Osco’s demented softcore porn spoofs, Alice in Wonderland (1976) and Flesh Gordon (1974), where Williams had played the title hero.

I will assume these two met during the production of Flush (1977), a pretty turgid It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) knock-off that Friedman wrote and Williams had a bit-part in. After, the two would concoct a tale about an alien that crash-landed in Egypt some three thousand years ago and is severely injured. The radiation the alien emits is also lethal to the touch and wound-up killing anyone who tried to help him, including Tutankhamen.

Thus, when the alien died, the Egyptians carefully wrapped the body and hastily buried it. Only the alien didn’t die; it just went into some kind of hibernating stasis until it was accidentally revived in the present by those x-rays. And like any stranded alien on Earth, the creature needed to phone home for a ride -- only someone ran off with the energy crystals he needed to power his communication device.

And so, the space mummy goes on a campus-wide rampage -- and I do mean rampage, as this mummy doesn't shuffle along but glides around at a pretty good clip; all in an effort to retrieve the parts he needs, crushing all in his path or spreading some of that toxic fungus to all of his victims, leaving McCadden, the University’s hospital staff (Stoker, Bower), and the police (Joston), scrambling to unravel what’s really going on, and hopefully, put a stop to it.

Williams and Friedman then took their idea to Dimitri Villard. Villard was a Harvard man, who had served as an editor on the Harvard Lampoon, which would later morph into the National Lampoon. Upon graduation, he started his own record label and co-founded one of the first pay-TV companies in California before selling it off around 1980 to get into the movie production business.

Here, after a brief internship with producer Edward Pressman -- Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Villard was ready to produce something on his own, cobbling together a quartet of investors, including Corman, who got the U.S. theatrical and home video rights, to bring Time Walker to life.

Corman would also serve as kind of a ghost producer on the project, offering all kinds of frugal advice to the fledgling filmmaker; like how to skirt around the unions to keep production costs down by shooting the majority of the film on location at Cal-State Northridge, where campus security kept the teamsters at bay. And how when the film was completed, laying down a content-be-damned edict to cut the running time by ten minutes so it would all fit into one film canister to save money on shipping -- explaining away a few jarring edits, and some quantum leaps in plot logic.

To direct the film, Villard hired Tom Kennedy, a graduate of New York’s School of Visual Arts. From there, Kennedy worked as an editor on Joe (1970) and Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972) -- not to be confused with the later Silent Night, Deadly Night slasher franchise of the 1980s, before moving to Los Angeles in 1977, where he helped found Kaleidoscope Films, which quickly became one of Hollywood’s go-to places for audio-video ad campaigns and theatrical trailers.

There, Kennedy supervised the campaigns and trailers for the likes of The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), The Terminator, and the Star Trek franchise, running from The Motion Picture (1979) through The Voyage Home (1986). And while Time Walker would be Kennedy’s only time in the director’s chair, he does nothing to embarrass himself that couldn’t be rightfully blamed on the film’s low budget, rushed production schedule, and the script’s sketchy material outside the alien mummy rampage.

Still, despite all these hiccups -- like that asinine frat-party interlude, and Rossmore's blundering attempts to frame McCadden for this cock-up, Time Walker still qualifies as one of my most favorite mummy movies of all time because I just love the ancient alien angle and the flesh-eating fungus wild card, which is actually exacerbated by all attempts to stop it, which only makes things worse!

And the unknown components of the fungus is just one of the many clues that McCadden eventually pieces together to reach the improbable conclusion that Ankh-Venharis was not of this Earth. And after the “noble traveler,” who's actually kind of a dick, manages to retrieve all of the crystals, leaving several dead bodies in his wake, we get one helluva whackadoodle climax, where the mummy makes the call home and reveals his true form before his intergalactic-Uber driver arrives. 

And the fact that he winds up taking someone home with him leaves the film open for a possible sequel that, alas, had nowhere to go, which explains why we never, ever got one.

Like a lot of folks, I was personally introduced to Time Walker through Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988-), when they savaged it under the alternate title, Being from Another Planet (Season 4, Episode 5). And it’s a fairly under-appreciated episode in my book.

I just love it when the ‘Bots freaked-out whenever the screen turned green to represent Ankh-Venharis' perspective, an ersatz “Mummy-Vision” if you will -- especially the extended stalk ‘n’ chase sequence, where Ankh-Venharis runs Susie in, around, and off a building; and the constant chants of “the fungus is among us.” And I enjoyed the episode so much I tracked down the film on VHS, watched it unadulterated, and still enjoyed the hell out of it. 

Today, Time Walker is currently available on a stupidly expensive Bluray from Shout! Factory but is also available at a much more reasonable price on the "Vampires, Mummies and Monsters" 4-Pack Collection as part of the same company’s "Roger Corman’s Cult Classics" line. The MST3k version is also available to buy in the Volume XXXV box set, but at last check shows it’s streaming on YouTube on a couple channels.

Either way, the film comes highly recommended from me, Fellow Programs, as it seems to strike just the right balance between sincere earnestness and monumental stupidity, which then bloomed into just plain bonkers. 

Originally posted on December 8, 2017, at Micro-Brewed Reviews.

Time Walker (1982) Byzantine Productions :: Wescom Productions :: New World Pictures / EP: Robert A. Shaheen / P: Dimitri Villard, Jason Williams / D: Tom Kennedy / W: Jason Williams, Tom Friedman, Karen Levitt / C: Robbie Greenberg / E: Maria DiGiovanni, Lucile Jones / M: Richard Band / S: Ben Murphy, Nina Axelrod, Kevin Brophy, Robert Random, James Karen, Sam Chew Jr., Austin Stoker, Antoinette Bower, Shari Belafonte