The Age of Commercialism

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

"Metamorphosis" has about 20 minutes of decent work in it, but those minutes are scattered and buried in a 90 minute movie. And it's obvious that those 20 minutes are the sequences the director had in mind when he started this project - the scene where the robot arm injects the serum into the professor's eyeball, the scene where the elevator door opens and a cane falls out, followed by a mutilated cast member, the scene where the little boy hides in the lab from the mutated scientist and tries to reach a key that is just out of his reach, the rough sex/assault flashbacks, etc. And intermittently, these scenes work as well as the film stock and the lighting and the tiny budget will allow.Also, the protagonist is hypnotically good looking (which makes the initial signs of change on his face more interesting), the actress who plays his girlfriend has some chops, the rival professor gets in some neat Scrooge-ish moments, and the protagonist's two main friends are played effectively. Even the little boy manages to be reasonably unforced and natural - he's not Dakota Fanning or Haley Joe Osment, but he isn't nearly as bad as he could have been.Still, there are some really bad and really dull sequences here that pretty much smother any interest or excitement the movie is trying to generate (the director has no idea how to frame a car chase or a driving sequence or a sex scene or a lot of other standard cinematic things required to keep a movie out of Sargasso sea boredom). And the monster make up is pretty bad. And they misspell "chromosomal" on the computer read outs. And someone made the fatal mistake of all cheap movie makers and hired one guy with a synthesizer to supply the music soundtrack, and this guys is under the impression that he's scoring the background to a "Starsky and Hutch" episode.The movie is actually just good enough to make you watch it through to the end, but at the end you'll throw up your hands and say, "Ah, geez, 90 minutes of my life, wasted."

Metamorphosis is set in Norfolk in Virginia where brilliant young genetic scientist Dr. Peter Houseman (Gene LeBrock) works in a university teaching students & carrying out research in DNA, Houseman is trying to perfect a serum that will alter human DNA & reverse the ageing process. Left alone for two years the university administrators want to know where their hundreds of thousands of dollars have gone & send in Sally Donnelly (Catherine Baranov) to conduct a full audit & report back, Houseman fears his experiments are published before they are perfected. Houseman injects himself with the experimental serum & at first the results are amazing as his health, fitness & awareness improve dramatically, however soon terrible side-effects begin to manifest as Houseman's body undergoes a hideous genetic transformation into some form of pre-human reptilian life-form that must feed on human flesh to survive...This Italian & American co-production was written & directed by George Eastman who is probably best know for playing the killer in Anthropophagus (1980) & Absurd (1981), while Metamorphosis has a bad reputation I didn't think it was a total failure. As has already been mentioned by just about everyone else who has ever seen Metamorphosis the similarities between it & David Cronenberg's brilliant remake of The Fly (1986) are clear to see, the scientist conducting risky experiments on himself, a neutral love interest, the scientist slowly turning into something nasty & experiencing improved strength & senses with a climax where all traces of his previous humanity have gone. In fact the two films are scarily similar in tone & themes even if The Fly is a far, far superior film in every aspect. Good mad scientist films are thin on the ground really, there's the aforementioned The Fly, there's the Re-Animator films & that's just about it really. I liked the ideas here, some of the scientific exposition is dry & dull but I liked the story, it's based around proper people with proper motives rather than dumb teens even if they act dumb quite a lot, there's enough going on to have kept me interested & the story takes the odd turn here & there. The script takes itself extremely seriously with not one bit of humour or irony even attempted. At over 90 minutes Metamorphosis is slow going at times which hurts it & the extremely silly twist ending doesn't work at all although it might have looked clever on a written page as a script it doesn't work when filmed.The gore levels are restrained compared to some Italian horror, there's a ripped-out throat, there's a few dead bodies, a few girls are knocked around & there's a heart in a jar. The special effects are alright, the make-up is OK until the very end & the final reptilian creature is shown, director Eastman wisely keeps it's screen time down to a minimum, films from waist up & uses quick cuts to try & disguise how bad it looks, he fails as the thing looks so stiff & rubbery. Metamorphosis looks OK, it's a pretty dark film with the climax set in dark university corridors to try & raise some scares but Eastman doesn't quite manage it. I did like the look of this overall, a bit flat & static at times but with a certain atmosphere. Also known as Regenerator here in the UK when it was released back in the 90's on VHS.Filmed in Norfolk in Virginia the film is set against a Christmas backdrop for some reason, maybe it was coming up to Christmas when it was shot so had to included Santa's on the street & decorated Christmas tree's. The acting is a little dry at times but not too bad.Metamorphosis is something a little different, it tries to be a complex science fiction horror rip-off of The Fly & the basic idea is here but the execution lets it down. A little too slow, not quite enough gore, a poor looking final monster & a very silly twist ending makes me wonder why I liked it. Well, I don't know but I did for all it's faults & it has it's fair share.

"Metamorphosis" is like David Cronenberg's "The Fly" if "The Fly" had been filmed in someone's rec room.A young, hotshot scientist experiments with a serum (don't they always?) that, when injected into himself, makes his DNA begin to evolve backwards to man's most primitive state (or something like that). Now you might think that would mean he would end up as an amoeba or a speck of nothing, but boy would you be wrong. Apparently, we are descended from lizards, and I know this because the scientist in question first begins to simply decay, then makes a brief appearance as a dinosaur (I kid you not) and ends up as a little lizard in a jar.This movie isn't even in the remotest realm of good, but it's actually not horribly terrible either, at least not until its last 20 minutes or so. Those turn into a seemingly endless chase scene involving a little boy and his mother trying to get away from the monstrous scientist. But you have to stay with it to see the climactic howler of a scene in which a man in a felt dinosaur costume tries to horrify us with what the scientist has become. It seriously looks like something that would be worn at a child's birthday party -- if it were purple, it would look like Barney.Where did movies like this ever even play? Grade: D+

Meet Peter Houseman, rock star genetic professor at Virgina University. When he's not ballin' on the court he's blowing minds and dropping panties in his classroom lectures. Dr. Houseman is working on a serum that would allow the body to constantly regenerate cells allowing humans to become immortal. I'd want to be immortal too if I looked like Christian Bale and got the sweet female lovin that only VU can offer. An assortment of old and ugly university professors don't care for the popular Houseman and cut off funding for his project due to lack of results. This causes Peter to use himself as the guinea pig for his serum. Much to my amazement there are side effects and he, get this, metamorphoses! into something that is embedded into our genetic DNA that has been repressed for "millions of years". He also beds Dr. Mike's crush Sally after a whole day of knowing her. She has a son. His name is Tommy. He is an angry little boy.Metamorphosis isn't a terrible movie, just not a well produced one. The whole time I watched this I couldn't get past the fact that this was filmed in 1989. The look and feel of the movie is late seventies quality at the latest. It does not help that it's packaged along with 1970's movies as Metamorphosis is part of mill creek entertainment's 50 chilling classics. There is basically no film quality difference whatsoever. The final five minutes are pure bad movie cheese that actually, for me at least, save the movie from a lower rating. Pay attention to the computer terminology such as "cromosonic anomaly". No wonder Peter's experiment failed. Your computer can't spell! This is worthy of a view followed by a trip to your local tavern.