The Being (1983)    New World/Horror-Sci-Fi    RT: 82 minutes    Rated R (graphic violence, language, brief nudity, drug use)    Director: Jackie Kong    Screenplay: Jackie Kong    Music: Don Preston    Cinematography: Robert Ebinger    Release date: November 18, 1983 (US)    Cast: Martin Landau, Jose Ferrer, Dorothy Malone, Ruth Buzzi, Marianne Gordon, Rexx Coltrane (Bill Osco), Murray Langston, Kinky Friedman, Johnny Dark, Kent Perkins.    Box Office: N/A

Rating: ***

 A horror movie from the makers of Night Patrol, director Jackie Kong and producer Bill Osco; that’s how I would bill The Being if I owned a revival theater that specializes in grindhouse fare. Had I realized this fact, I would have seen it sooner. The sleazy, cheesy, queasy cop spoof is one of my top guilty pleasure comedies. It’s so corny, so cheap, so stupid, so low brow, so low class, so low quality I can’t help but like it. If only I felt as strongly about The Being.

 I had ample opportunity to view the 1983 monster movie back in the days of The Video Den. It was always right there in the horror section. It’s a mistake I’ll have to live with. In any event, I rectified it by adding it to this week’s grindhouse package. I made a good call with The Being; it’s actually pretty good despite some artistic flaws. One of its most interesting facets is a cast that boasts three Oscar winners (Landau, Ferrer and Malone), two Gong Show regulars (Buzzi and Langston) and a Hee Haw Honey (Gordon). How cool is that?

 The title creature in this tale of terror in the Heartland is a hideous mutated being born of radioactive nuclear waste at a dump site in Pottsville, Idaho. The recent disappearance of several citizens catches the attention of local cop Mortimer Lutz (Osco billed as “Rexx Coltrane”). He’s convinced something is amiss in Pottsville. It has to be the puddles of green slime left behind at the crime scenes, you think? The town mayor (Ferrer, Cyrano de Bergerac) orders him to keep a lid on it lest the bad publicity should affect his potato business. He takes it a step further by bringing in a corrupt safety engineer (Landau, Ed Wood) to assure everybody the dump site poses no threat whatsoever. We know that’s a lot of BS. Obviously, the disappearances are the work of The Being, a nocturnal creature who lives to mutilate, behead and kill.

 For whatever reason, The Being is set around Easter. In fact, its original title was Easter Sunday. It was changed after it took three years for Kong to find a distributor. Although the holiday setting is pretty much incidental, there is a good scene of a toddler spotting the monster in a hole during an Easter egg hunt. BTW, she’s played by the same little girl who beats down Murray Langston’s hapless patrol officer in Night Patrol. She’s also the daughter of Kong and Osco. Talk about nepotism, right?

 Let’s see, what else have I got regarding The Being? Malone (Written on the Wind) plays the grieving mother of a young victim who walks around town looking for her missing son. Buzzi plays the mayor’s wife, an awful nag leading a campaign to prevent the opening of a massage parlor in downtown Pottsville. Langston, better known as The Unknown Comic, ditches his paper bag to play a picketer who has an unfortunate run-in with you-know-who. Gordon (Mrs. Kenny Rogers at the time) plays Laurie, the waitress who serves as Lutz’s love interest.

 Although it’s normally pointless to comment on the acting in silly grade-Z horror movies like The Being, I have to point out the terrible performance turned in by Osco/Coltrane. Simply put, the guy can’t act though not for lack of trying. Inspired by the hard-boiled dicks of 40s noir, he provides voiceover narration that abruptly disappears at about the midway point. He does it completely without inflection, the same way he delivers the rest of his dialogue.

 At this point in his career, Landau specialized in B-movie trash like Without Warning, The Return and Alone in the Dark. He takes things to a campy high in The Being. Who would have predicted he’d go on to win an Academy Award a decade later? Come to think of it, all four leads really camp it up. They get it, they know they’re appearing in garbage and run with it. There’s fun in watching respected actors get down and dirty in exploitation movies, don’t you think?

 I have one MAJOR problem with The Being, the lighting! It’s too bloody dark to see anything especially in the kill scenes. There’s a good amount of gore. One guy gets his head torn off. Another has his torso punched through from behind by the monster. That’s in addition to all the mutilations. I wish I could have seen them better. Same goes for the Being. You never get a good look at it. It kind of looks like a C.H.U.D. but that’s about it. This is a real letdown.

 The operative word when it comes to The Being is campy. It never aspires to be more than that. It has a warped sense of humor about itself especially the closing titles explaining the fate of the survivors. It’s a goofy little touch that works. And now that I’ve seen The Being, I’ll be checking out the third Kong-Osco collaboration Blood Diner soon. If it’s as fun as this one, I’ll be happy.