I put a post up on Twitter this week regarding some recent personal developments. I might write about it in more detail another time, but I really need to sharpen up these blog posts and not keep breaching 2,000 words. Where was this ability to hit word counts in school or university?! I have been going through CBT or Talking Therapy over the past 12 months for several different reasons.
It’s different for everyone but my therapist has delved into my beliefs of the world and challenged me to amend/build an alternative view that will contribute towards me improving my self-esteem up and not being as concerned by how others might perceive me. All make sense so far?
My new world belief that I am trying to build is “that if I put myself out there with a positive attitude, good things might happen”. Nothing ground-breaking but it’s essentially just the concept of engaging, keeping my head up, spreading positivity and that these basic philosophies will lead to better outcomes for me and everyone around me.
Using social media as a case in point for this, I have previously always held the belief that social media was a scourge on modern life, encouraging the worst behaviours in people and leading to a fundamental detachment from reality. This new approach to life has led to me approaching it differently. It might be the case for some people, but not everyone. I’ve been extremely lucky and blessed to meet some amazing people over the past few months through Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky etc and that just simply wouldn’t have happened if I’d not put myself out there. It’s really helping cement this belief and I can’t stress enough how much I encourage everyone to try and approach life like this. It’s had a huge change in a short time for me, and I honestly believe it will help you and others feel better. The world can be a negative place but it’s up to us on how we approach it.
So, what the fuck does any of this have to do with the ominous and bizarre picture you can see attached to this blog? Well…
Pinocchio’s Revenge from 1996 was one of the biggest challenges I faced this week to this new world view I’m adopting. Remember that stuff about “Putting myself out there” or “approaching things in a positive manner and good things might happen”. I enjoy a good sloppily made film as much as the next horror movie enthusiast, but this has seriously stretched the use and definition of “enjoy”.
I became aware of this film through a podcast and then stumbled across it on YouTube on an account I follow. I’m not providing the link because I don’t want to put myself at risk of legal action from anyone who might follow that link and accuse me of recommending this travesty to them.
The poster alone gives you some insight into this one. It looks cheap and cobbled together last minute. Within the opening frames of the film there is a “road closed” sign that backs this up completely and becomes a lovely simile for the film. This opening scene depicts a man burying a suspiciously child-sized looking bundle alongside the titular Pinocchio puppet. A man in a yellow mac discovers this and shouts at the busy digging man to “drop the fucking shovel”, his voice breaking, to ironically pave the way for the voice acting choice of Pinocchio in Shrek 5 years later.
Cutting to the present day, we find out the digging man/potential killer is named Vincent Gotto through a tv reporter clumsily shovelling (see what I did there) exposition at us live from outside the courtroom. It did have one of my favourite lines in the film though “wood sculptor and convicted serial killer”; I’m not in the news reporting game but I’d usually lead with the killer aspect before the profession.
Representing Geppetto…sorry Gotto… is Jennifer Garrick, a Monica Geller tribute act, a lawyer who seems to be as equally incompetent at her job as the news reporter. When presented with prosecution photos of the man she is defending, she seems crestfallen and shellshocked, as if she wouldn’t have been given this information prior. Anyway, more convoluted story telling ensues to set up the beginning of the “plot” with Garrick returning to her office to be presented with the most ridiculous looking puppet I have ever seen. We know it’s obviously going to end up going home with Garrick and that must mean she has a child.
Cut to a classroom and we meet Zoe, Garrick’s daughter, who is (from the get-go) one of the most troubling child characters I’ve ever seen committed to screen. This is instantly backed up by her scrapping in the playground with one of her classmates, leaving the classmate needing two stitches. This is then followed up with a display of empathy that would make Patrick Bateman blush with embarrassment. “Why does she always take everyone else’s side?” she rails, as her mother, quite rightly, admonishes her for her behaviour. This scrap all hinges on Zoe handing out invites to her birthday party. Despite this act of grievous bodily harm, the party still goes ahead the day after and gives Zoe the opportunity to pick up the wooden boy so we can maybe uncover what the “revenge” element of the title is.
Writer and Director Kevin S. Tenney has made some classic 80s horror films by my book. Witchboard, Night of the Demons and Witchtrap are all fantastic genre films and make the most of what they’re working with. This though…my god, the writing is bad. A child therapist who seems to have no understanding of his role, a priest who is introduced for no discernible reason and a child who instantaneously falls in love with the most ugly and fucked up puppet imaginable. It’s also filmed horrendously and is so far away from his previous work.
There are so many bits of this film that are unimaginably bad. I’m talking unforgivably bad. The central conceit of the child falling in love with this puppet is insane. It’s repulsive. It gives the child a splinter in their first interaction. The hilarity that Jennifer and Zoe find in Jennifer’s boyfriend David playing with the puppet. The school child that Zoe bit is ran over by one of the American yellow school buses and emerges without a scratch. An adult explains “I think she’s ok, she may be in shock”. This is barely chiselling away at the piece of rotten wood that forms the basis of this story.
I’m no scriptwriter but there feels to be a multitude of sins that have been committed here. I’ve talked about one of my favourite lines already, but we also hear Pinocchio beg Zoe to “cut my strings and I promise to be good” and then abruptly proclaiming “I’m freeeee, I’m freee. Come on, let’s go see David” who he has previously pushed down the stairs and is now on life support in hospital. At another point Zoe begs her mother to not get rid of Pinocchio pleading “first dad left me, now you want Pinocchio to leave too”. This is after the puppet has been in her life for one night. To make it painfully clear, these lines are all played completely straight. I don’t think Tenney ever intended for this to be humorous, but it hits that sweet spot of ‘so bad, it’s funny’ impeccably.
My first blog was about Theodore Rex, another rank 1990s film, but this is rank in a different way, and I can’t quite articulate it. The direction, musical and filming choices are bizarre. The story makes little to no sense and is acted out appallingly. It has all the staples you’d expect from a horror film, yet it’s just so half hearted. There’s barely any gore or real focus on the carnage (not in the way the director intended) unfolding on screen. The goriest scene in the film is seeing the remains of a squished cricket, picked up for Pinocchio, to act as his conscience. The heavy handedness of the script doesn’t name the cricket Jiminy, but they may as well have given it a fucking top hat and cane.
Following this lackadaisical mishmash of a plot and a serious test of my patience, in true 90s style, the thunder and lightening hit this part of America at the most cinematically opportune time, and we are treated to a ‘showdown’ in which Pinocchio viciously attacks Jennifer. This is done with a knife, which seems to slice through thick wooden doors like it would butter, in one of the most anti-climatic endings I’ve ever seen.
A bit of back and forth culminates in Jennifer smashing the puppet through a glass table positioned in the living room and suddenly Pinocchio has become Zoe. I’m sorry, what?? We then cut to the extremely unqualified doctor from earlier telling Jennifer that her daughter is “a psycho”. He questions her on whether she saw “the puppet move before or after you were hit on the head?” This horrendous ending feels fitting for a truly horrendous film. The cherry on top is the soft cut to credits with Pinocchio’s eyes lingering in the background of the screen as the poor gullible idiots who signed up to be involved in this film are paraded over the top.
“If you put your self out there, good things will happen”. I put myself out there and endured one of the most painfully shit films I’ve ever sat through. It was wooden in every sense of the word. I don’t think there’s really any reason to recommend anyone to seek this out other than you must see it to believe it. However, good things did happen! I got another film to write about. As of time of writing, I feel confident in saying I’ve hit the bottom of the barrel now. The only way is up. Setting up my Instagram has led me to winning an extremely cool giveaway from 88 Films, a company whose releases I LOVE. I think I might write about those next. There’s always a positive spin you can put on things and this writer encourages anyone reading to try and take that approach.
Pinocchio’s Revenge
Horror
1996
1 hr 36 mins
Trimark Productions
