Shocker : Very Underrated.

Anyone else agree?

FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS! "Charlton Heston"

Most certainly. And Horace is Mitch Pileggi's best role... Interestingly enough, Wes Craven admitted that he was planning - or, anyway, hoping - to make Pinker into a new horror icon, his new Freddy Krueger, with his own series. Unfortunately - or perhaps fortunately, considering how quickly most horror series degenerate with every bad, glued-on sequel - "Shocker" did not earn enough to warrant a followup at the time of its release...

Oh well, it's a small cult classic for horror afficionados. And both of its soundtracks, score and song album, remain as great as they were in '89...

shocker friggin rules! who can't appreciate a horror movie about the electric chair?!?!

I saw this film when I was a kid
and I saw again 4 or 5 months ago
it was good not great
but worth to watch

On it's own legs, I think the movie is a terrific horror adventure (not too scary mind you, but some great visuals and scenes). But because Craven is essentially remaking A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET with the cheesy wisecracking villain of it's sequels (apparently in hopes of creating a new series) it kind of hampers my views of the film.

But believe me, I do love this movie a lot.

I agree,I add Cool soundtrack,Great cinematography, and great Acting by Pileggi and Berg
Wes Craven here was still a good director.... I think with The Serpent and The Rainbow,Scream is one of his best

I can't believe that Cursed;Scream Sequels been yours

I don't agree at all. While Shocker isn't the worst horror movie I've ever seen, it's still a dud. Very boring in parts too.

Not all the music is great either, especially from Anthrax. Those guys are so washed up.

-L31

I agree the movie was a dud. I liked the soundtrack though.

People are way too hard on this movie. Its a fun horror flick.

Yes. Very underrated. And I think it's the same reason that Lake Placid is so underrated: most of the people who watched it were after typical horror movie stuff: blood, mayhem, scares, etc.

I'm not into typical (which also means low budget) horror films. But this, for me, is just a very funny comedy. Not as good or funny as Lake Placid, but very enjoyable. And presented several original ideas, too.

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them ...well, I have others.
-Groucho Marx

I know, taste is a big factor here, and I'd consider myself outside of the general horror audience, as well. Sure, I like some NOESs, some Halloween and Ft13, but a lot of my favorite horror flicks happened to be ones panned by the majority of mainstream horror fans. I love Freddy's Revenge. I love Halloween 3. I love Deadly Friend. I also love b-horror flicks that are utterly cheezo to the 10th degree(movies like The Kindred, The Brain, Basket Case, and such). I've been told that I have no taste, but yeah, I'd like to think it's more of a unique taste than anything. And yes, I LOVE Shocker. It's probably one of my most watched horror DVDs, actually, with Fright Night being second.

I agree, it's very underrated and one of my favorites from Wes Craven.

I agree. Definitely underrated, and one of the best Craven films I've seen (just wish Heather Langenkamp had a more impactful role in the film).

I just re-watched it (I had watched it on videocassette when I was 12 or something) and this time around I thought it is actually is overrated. The concept is ridiculous, the rules of how this "TV demon" works don't make any sense (that mess is Wes Craven's trademark tbh, RIP BTW) and the final fight scene where Jonathan is controlling Horace's body with the remote control gave me a good laugh, the most anticlimactic scene in a horror film ever. Not to mention the whole thing about being sucked in TV programmes and changing channels. The whole film was too ridiculous to be horror and too unfunny to be comedy.

The only thing I mildly enjoyed is how it cinematographically captured that late 80s atmosphere (the whole demon in the TV concept helped with that).

I go back and forth. I really love the concept and the brutality of the killings, but then the whole jumping in and out of bodies and electrical current thing kinda killed all of it. I like it otherwise. I wasn't expecting the girlfriend to die at all. Or even the family. Very gruesome.

A bit of the old ultraviolence...

I think this film gets less credit than it deserves. People tend to take it seriously and then say that it's a stupid film. I think it's a clever film that does stupid things on purpose, which is entirely different.

Craven always had a sense of humor and a penchant for inverting the genre's tropes. And he made this film after spending the latter half of the decade watching New Line produce garbage sequels to his own franchise (ANOES) without his involvement. Just as New Nightmare was a meta-rumination on hacky sequels, so too does Shocker play out like a satire of the genre and its habit of producing increasingly ridiculous sequels. It just isn't on the level of Craven's ANOES finale.

The film starts out about how you'd expect, then just gets progressively more absurd. The first act had more than enough plot for most horror films. A young football player loses his family to a serial murderer to whom he is mysteriously linked, and then uses his ability to find the killer in dreams and supernaturally sense his presence in the real world to help the police track him down. That's a whole movie right there. But that's just one third of the film and each subsequent act plays out like its own mini-sequel. By the time they end up on TV in the finale, it should be rather obvious to anyone watching that Craven was having a bit of fun.

In that light, I think it's much easier to enjoy Shocker. It's an intentionally ridiculous horror movie that, despite its flaws, is still quite entertaining - even more so if you appreciate the genre commentary within.

I love to champion underrated movies and i like most of Craven's films but i can't defend Shocker, it's pretty bad. That's not to say it isn't entertaining. As far as underrated Craven films go I'd say Swamp Thing is underrated. I'd even say the first two Scream films are underrated now because it's become so in vogue in the last decade or so to say they're crappy films that they don't often get recognized for how good they are.

What are words for when no one listens anymore

Yes. Extremely underrated.