Primal Scream (1986) — Triskaidekafiles

PRIMAL SCREAM

WRITER: William Murray

DIRECTOR: William Murray

STARRING: Kenneth J. McGreggor as Corby McHale

Sharon Mason as Lt. Samantha Keller

Julie Miller as Caitlin Foster

John Maurice as Captain Frank Gitto

Joseph White as Nicky Fingers

QUICK CUT: Things heat up for Detective Corby McHale as he gets drawn into a galactic conspiracy that he needs to find his way out of before his life goes up in smoke

THE MORGUE

Corby McHale - A private eye just trying to pay the bills, with the help of his mail order business, with a sharp tongue, an eye for the ladies, and a habit for getting into trouble.

Sam Keller - An old friend of Corby’s still working with the police, who is both fed up with his crap, and one of the few people who will put up with it.

Caitlin Foster - A rich, important woman who has ties to Thesaurus Industries, like it being run by her brother. She hires Corby to solve a murder, and is pretty much your femme fatale archetype.

Olen Foster - The CEO of Thesaurus, a cutthroat businessman, and always looking out for the bottom line.

Captain Gitto - Corby’s old boss, and your typical detective movie police captain. He can’t stand Corby, has no patience for his antics and willingness to skirt the law, but somehow they’re friends.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! It wasn't entirely intentional, but we seem to be running with a bit of a theme right now, with a little summer of scifi, and also continuing an environmental theme from Aquanoids. But better. Ahem, anyways, we have here what was once an unfinished, unreleased movie from the 80s, that finally got released in the last few years and given a real release. This is exactly the sort of forgotten little obscuriosity I love to find and pass on to y'all. ANYways, the movie this week is called Primal Scream, but personally, I prefer the alternative title, Hellfire.

The movie opens up in media res, with our hero Corby McHale aboard a craft and calling someone a son of a bitch (fantastic opening line, BTW), as the ship is shot down and crashes.

Corby gets out before the ship explodes, and is rushed off on a gurney, seemingly in bad shape. This is the point when the very noir narration kicks in, establishing him as a PI and *ahem* "all around tough guy".

*freeze frame!* So I bet you're all wondering how I ended up in a situation like this...

And no, that's not a joke, the movie literally does the whole "So you're probably wondering..." flashback movie structure, with a straight face. Oh, the 80s, before that was a cliche.

Corby jumps us back a few days to set things up, and we learn this is in an alternate timeline, what with being 1983, and I don't even think that was the future when this was made, let alone the delays. But yadda yadda, there's a government conglomerate deep space mining operation and a newly discovered energy catalyst named Hellfire.

We get a brief glimpse at some testing that makes a boom big enough to make the Mythbusters cream their jeans, and then a news conference assuring us that no really, Hellfire is 100% managable! Well, here's a suggestion, DO NOT NAME IT HELLFIRE!! Name it like...Snugglecuddles.

This naturally leads to protests about its safety, it's pollution, and of course, Jeff Bezos using it to launch himself into space. Seriously, I had no idea this was gonna be so timely.

We cut next to a starship heading towards a station built aboard an asteroid, where the Hellfire is being mined from. The craft is hijacked by some group opposed to Hellfire, the Life Militia. They dock with the station, and rig the place to blow. Hopefully with Hellfire, because I like that poetry.

And normally I'd just breeze past such a huge loss of life with a big question mark, but since the movie handily guestimates the casualties at around 87, there is going to be one hilarious jump in the body count feature at the end of this.

We watch as the lead scientist and head of Thesaurus Industries...wait, really? That's the best they could come up with? Surely there must be like, a book out there they could have consulted to come up with a better, yet similar word.

This somehow leads to a couple getting stabbed while having sex, and wow, Final Terror much? Weird coincidence to have such a similar double kill so close together.

We finally get back to Corbin Dullas, and meet a few of his people around town, including Mary the local bodega owner, and Nicky Fingers, who...I don't even know. He's a bit of a street urchin, a freeloader, always out for a bargain and a way to work around the system, and he likes to write notes to himself on himself, so he won't lose them or have them stolen. Yeah okay Mister Memento.

Corby returns home and finds Caitlin Foster waiting for him, and if you were paying even halfway conscious attention at the start of the movie, you know she was the other person on the craft causing trouble for Corby. To be fair, you should always suspect the femme fatale in a noir story so it's not a HUGE surprise, but still.

She's five seconds out of hiring him, when someone cuts the power to Corby's house, and in a nice change of pace for him, he's probably surprised it wasn't the power company.

He skulks around the place to see who else came to visit, and gets shot in the face with a dart. Corby wakes up the next day, moved from the floor of his apartment, to his bed, and sleeping next to Caitlin.

We get some exposition from Caitlin, and learn that the head of Thesaurus is her brother, her sibling, a member of her family with the same parents. And I guess the reason she hired Corby is because she believes Olan murdered her lover.

Corby heads to the police station, and we meet the chief, and if you've seen one detective story in your life, you know the relationship they have. Still, the dude does a great job with the role.

He fills the chief in on the night before, steals a note from the double homicide, and somehow starts talking about the accident in space. Somehow this all ties together, and I wish the movie would tell me. I guess the guy who got backstabbed was Caitlin's lover?

On his way out, we meet a female officer, probably his ex partner on multiple levels, and they have about as friendly a relationship as Corby and the captain.

The captain made a brief mention of the two dead people not being 'infected' and we find out what this means shortly, when a pilot of a spacecraft carrying a shipment of Hellfire comes crashing to the ground because he's burning up thanks to contact with the substance. At least, I assume that’s what’s going on.

As I'm sure you can imagine, following your mining operation going boom, and now another craft going down thanks to Hellfire infection, things are not going well for Thesaurus, and Olan is struggling to keep things together Oh, and they keep mentioning a missinbg "S37 canister" just to add moire plot.

The next day, we meet Corby's secretary who he narrates he hired to 'stay on top of things' just as she sits on him. I see what you did there.

Corby gets a call from Nicky who gives him some information on the crashed ship being taken to a facility upstate, and maybe the pilot is still in there! So our zero heads there to check out the situation.

He also got a note from Cat telling him to never mind, but I guess after an attempt on his life, he's still in it. That, and we wouldn't have much of a movie otherwise.

Corby sneaks into Ortech, steals some doctor's scrubs and mask, and sneaks into the operating theatre where the scientists there are looking over the crispy remains of the pilot.

This is where we get our infodump on what Hellfire is (And a pretty creative chemical name of H3 L1 F7.) It at least fills in those blanks, and illustrates the true dangers of this fuel.

Also, Captain Gitto is there, and asks if he can ask a question of "Doctor McHale" because he instantly recognises the thorn in his side, even under all the disguise.

Gitto reads him the riot act for trespassing, and sends him home with Keller. On the way there, however, they get attacked by a drone that tries to kill them. The car blows up, and for half a second the movie expects you to think Corby is dead. And I would have given this all the points if they pulled that trigger.

Meanwhile, Caitlin is giving a bunch of money to her brother so she can be done with all this, and leaves after Olan insinuates he just killed Corby.

He then kicks back to shoot up with some stuff, but gosh darn it, wouldn't you know it, he just injected Hellfire right into his veins.

Anyways, Corby is alive and being interrogated by the captain, who thinks he might be a suspect. But with no evidence, lets him go.

For some reason, this leads Corby to Anton Kirar, who drags him into the backroom of his club, pours booze all over Corby, and offers no answers of much substance.

Corby spots Caitlin, and that's when the cops show up and toss him in the drunk tank. Someone pulls strings to get Corby out though, and he heads to Nicky's place. Unfortunately, the guy has disappeared.

After Corby narrates that he's just as clueless as I am, Sam shows up with dinner, and she's on leave after the drone destroyed her car and she was injured.

They spend the night together, and while they're banging, Nicky is being beaten up in the woods. No one deserves to die in Jersey...

Meanwhile, the weasly guy that led Corby to Kirar finds the captain and leads HIM to Kirar, who is the latest victim of Hellfire. He's still alive, however briefly, but can't get out any information before he crackles up.

The Hellfire Gala did not end well for Christian Frost

Corby gets woken up from a phone call from a friend, saying she found a beaten up Nicky, and he rushes off to help his friend.

Sam wakes up a bit later, and finds Corby's place being ransacked by a goon. She then gets shot with the same sort of dart that got Corby earlier. We find out it was the doctor in charge of Hellfire.

Corby finds Nicky, some information gets passed along, and he runs back home. He notices the signs of a scuffle, and then Caitlin shows up, and they rush off.

The captain next arrives, tracks the last number Corby called to Mary's place, and we cut to there. Mary gives Corby the keys to a VTOL she illegally has stashed in her garage.

Following a series of events, the craft crashes, Corby meets up with Mary and Nicky, all while the cops are in pursuit, and Corby finds the place where Thesaurus are holding Sam prisoner, their hostage, keeping her captive.

Corby drops in, saves the day, and Sam gets in a great nut shot on one of the goons holding her.

The scientist gets in a craft, the same one from the start of the film, so we're closing in on wrapping this up, and Corby comes along for the ride.

But someone else is on the ship and murders the not-so-good doctor, and the ship takes off on autopilot.

And surprise! Caitlin is still alive, killed the doctor, and apparently part of the Life Militia trying to take down Thesaurus and stop Hellfire. So this was all an elaborate plot to destroy the company piece by piece. If you say so!

Oh, and that cylinder of Hellfire that keeps being mentioned, we find out it was implanted in McHale's neck when he was knocked out towards the start of the movie. So that's why everyone was after him.

This is one of those mystery conspiracy plots that works if you take a very broad look at the ideas, and you can see what they were going for, but not when you dig too deeply into the details. There was too much of trying to push Corby away, not enough motivations, why was Caitlin giving away her side of the company (I presume just to have an excuse to poison her brother), who were the couple that was murdered really, and why?

I don't wanna harp on the movie too much because of its journey to get released, and maybe if the movie had been able to be finished properly when it was originally made, we could've had the necessary connective tissue, but there's a bit of a jumble here.

ANYways, that catches us up with the start of the movie, and I do appreciate the twist that he's not in dire straits and about to die like the movie implied, but instead they need to get the implant out, what with that nasty little Hellfire side effect. So, I guess still “about toi die” just from different reasons than injuries.

Following all this, I guess the Life Militia got what they wanted, as Vice President Clark announces there won't likely be a continuation of the project. And I'd be very wary of approaching any jumpgates near Jupiter’s moon Io anytime soon.

So they get the implant out, Corby lives, and he and Keller team up as PIs, since I guess she quit because of the police's involvement with Thesaurus.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Pretty good, nice and clean, feels a bit more 70s than 80s, but that’s not necessarily bad.

Audio: Sounds pretty good, although the music sometimes overwhelms the dialogue. Fortunately, it’s not important stuff when it does rarely happen.

Sound Bite: “You’re cheap.” “Competative.”

Body Count: Even not counting the 87 lives lost at the mining station, this has a nice body count to it.

1 - Seven minutes in and a space copilot gets shot

2 - A dead body is found on the space station

3 - Surely someone went boom along with the station. They mention 87, soooo.

90 - Man gets sworded in the back

91 - And then the woman underneath him.

92 - Pilot melts

93 - Olan Foster gets hellfired

94 - Foster's assistant dies off screen finding the body

95 - Kirar gets hellfired up

96 - Kesselman gets killed by Cat

97 - Caitlin blows up with the ship

Best Corpse: Surprisingly, maybe, I’m going with Kirar’s death. It’s basically the same prop as Foster’s, but we spend more time with it, get a better look at it, and both are well done.

Blood Type - B: There’s not THAT much blood, but the hellfiring effects are great, and unique, and we get to see it repeatedly.

Drink Up! Every time Corby wakes up somewhere he didn’t pass out at.

Movie Reviews: I really enjoyed this movie. Yes, the plot is very dense and messy, and even though I’ve now seen it three or four times, I still don’t quite have a grasp of the entire story, that that harms things a bit. I enjoy the acting, Corby is a great character, Olan is actually fantastic with great presence, and surprisingly he did nothing else. I love this mix of detective and scifi, and it works very well. If the story was fleshed out more, made more clear, this would be a fantastic cult classic waiting to be discovered. Even with its flaws, it’s still pretty good. Three out of five crispy corpses.

Entertainment Value: Things get a bit corny, there’s a few too many characters, and seeing this alternative view of history is a fascinating take on things. It’s just futuristic enough. I enjoy the characters, and Nicky is a standout, as well as the movie as a whole having a decent sense of humour about it. Three out of five Hellfire cylinders.