Review: Hallucinations (1986)

Directed by: Mark Polonia, John Polonia, Todd Michael Smith
Starring: Mark Polonia, John Polonia, Todd Michael Smith
Written by: Mark Polonia, John Polonia, Todd Michael Smith
Country: United States
Available on: DVD (SRS Home Video)
IMDb

The advent of the consumer-level camcorder in the early ‘80s enabled every insane person with a few thousand bucks, some butcher shop leftovers, and a few game friends or relatives to make their own horror flick from the comfort of their own suburban backyard. The absence of quality control, censorship, or gatekeeping of any kind ensured that large portions of this straight-to-video output would be absolute garbage that never should have been seen outside of the director’s pizza grease-smeared couch. But these circumstances also allowed mad geniuses to dump their most audacious and creative passion projects out into the world for the Hollywood-weary to feast upon.

Two such savage savants were twin brothers Mark and John Polonia, who are best known for Splatter Farm (1986), an infamously violent SOV joint. But before that, they made Hallucinations (later remade shot-for-shot and released as Lethal Nightmare), an absolute mindfuck of a thing. It’s basically just 60 minutes of brothers Mark and John (played by the directors) and their step-brother Todd (played by their childhood friend, Todd Michael Smith) hanging out in their dingy house while mom is at work. They begin experiencing violent, grotesque hallucinations when one of the brothers encounters a monk living across the street. The movie essentially plays out in real time, which includes 10 minutes or so of watching one of the brothers ineptly complete housework. (I honestly couldn’t tell the brothers apart the entire time. They both start out with awful mustaches, which one magically loses later in the movie; that didn’t help my identity crisis whatsoever.)

Once things get weird, they get real wacky. There are the usual strange noises and objects moving of their own accord, but the buffet of bizarre includes an assault by a microwaved fetus; a slow-motion shower scene featuring a naked Polonia brother (who I believe was still a teenager when this was filmed, so … illegal?) under attack by a slimy tube creature that suspiciously resembles a soiled vacuum duct; S&M sex play with a large machete; on-toilet castration via the anal discharge of a chef’s knife; blowtorch chest melting; a stalker looking like, as a friend put it, “a melted roadie of the Sugar Hill Gang”; and a smashed-face grim reaper creeper — all set to an eerie array of drones and the Polonias’ authentically nervous acting, like the distracted ramblings of escaped asylum patients fearful of imminent recapture.

Though Hallucinations is barely an hour long, it feels immensely longer, not because it’s boring but because it seems to exist in a surreal, distressing pocket of reality where time no longer has meaning. The film is a trick your diseased brain is playing on your consciousness to mask your slow drift into dementia. Though the Polonia brothers excel at capturing on screen the deranged frenzy often found in the best SOV stuff, they also add a layer of technical competence, or at least imagination, that’s pretty rare in this realm of filmmaking. The gore is primitive but effective and there are attempts at camera movement and legitimate “direction.” There’s even something resembling a thoughtful comment on familial relations at the end, though I’m not positive the thoughts are cohesive. When one delves into the camcorder-borne, dark corners of the horror genre, you have certain loose expectations — namely that you can’t truly expect anything. And Hallucinations fulfills that defiance with gusto.

Overall rating: 8 out of 10