Orifice politics
Oh what flesh hell is this... SOCIETY 1989 OUt NOW BD
Brian Yuzna’s cult body horror is most decidedly a satire of two halves. Which is fine. It’s just that its second half is more completely and utterly messed up (in the good sense) than anything the first could have possibly prepared you for. The other thing you should know about Society, where John Hughes meets Davids Cronenberg and Lynch for lunch at the Hilton, is that its special-effects honcho, a Japanese punk rocker-turned-latex wrangler, goes by the sobriquet ‘Screaming Mad George.’ And that’s a pretty big clue as to what awaits.
Simply, in Society, the upper classes really are another species – an ancient race of inbred parasites who literally feed on the lower orders. While it probably wasn’t too much of a stretch, back in the decadent ’80s, to imagine some shadowy cabal of braying Hooray Henries chomping down on a jobseeker or three, the movie seems even more furiously relevant today.
If it initially and mischievously comes on like a soapy teen melodrama – one in which Baywatch’s Billy Warlock feels increasingly alienated from his WASP family and perfect cheerleader girlfriend – it ever-so carefully reveals the maggots with each crunch of the apple to expose the rotten heart of Beverly Hills. Each subversive moment seems calculated to wrong-foot a ’80s multiplex crowd. “Cream and sugar? Or do you want me to pee in it?” Warlock’s well-heeled new girlfriend casually enquires while making his coffee; and it’s almost as startling as what comes next. Almost. Society rounds off with one of the most lunch-losing yet perversely exhilarating endings in cinema – let alone one of the kinkiest uses of latex in any medium.
Plenty to chew on in the extras, including interviews, featurettes and even a music video c/o Screaming Mad George. Meanwhile, the newly remastered transfer will make you feel as if you’re climbing right through the guts of our new shape-shifting overlords.