Movies That Suck: Metamorphosis (DNA formula letale) (1990)

I have no one but myself to blame for this one. In the late summer of 2016, I was very disappointed to learn that Hastings was going out of business, as I always enjoyed going in there and scouring the movie and TV sections for stuff you likely wouldn't find at Wal-Mart. So, I decided to head down to my nearest one, which was in Tullahoma (and which is now a Planet Fitness), and grab what I could while it was still there. If this scenario sounds a bit familiar, it's because that was also when I picked up that Blu-Ray of Dogs that I mentioned in my review of it, and yeah, that wasn't the only turkey I unknowingly bought during that little shopping spree. Being a sucker for Scream Factory's double feature Blu-Rays, I was picking up as many of them as I could, even if I had no clue what the movies were. That was actually the case for most of them, including one that happened to be both this and Beyond Darkness (check in tomorrow for that one). Between the two of them, Metamorphosis was the one that appealed to me more, as it sounded like the classic story of a scientist making a bad judgement call that turns him into a monster. Even when they turn out really corny and cheesy, these types of flicks can still be entertaining, and that was all I was asking of this. Like a lot of the stuff I'm reviewing this month, I only watched Metamorphosis once before I decided to talk about it here, as that Blu-Ray immediately ended up in my personal nosebleed section, where I just stuff away junk that I plan to part with at some point. As it had now been years, all I could remember was thinking that the ultimate creature which the protagonist becomes at the end was really stupid, in more ways than one... and upon re-watching it, that's definitely still the case. But, more to the point, the best way to describe Metamorphosis is if David Cronenberg's The Fly were done really poorly and cheaply, and if the scientist ultimately turned into a dinosaur instead of a fly-human hybrid. Ho-hum characters and performances, uninspired direction, overdone music, attempts at advanced technology and science that have aged infinitely worse than in Cronenberg's film, confusing details about the character's research and the nature of his mutation, and poor attempts at suspense and thrills all add up to a film that is never scary, tense, or disturbing, and is, in fact, really dull at points. It does have some of that cheesiness you get with Italian horror from the 70's and 80's, and there are some decent technical aspects here and there, but for the most part, it is, to quote Ian Malcolm, "One big pile of shit.".

Dr. Peter Houseman is a brilliant young genetics professor at a private college in Virginia who, over the past year, has managed to accrue $200,000 worth of funding for his research. However, he becomes incensed when he learns, after requesting additional funds, that he must submit a report detailing the nature of his research. The school's head office in New York has sent Sally Donnelly to inspect the matter, and Peter, in turn, continues pushing his research further. When he submits his report to the board, he insists that he's come up with a manner to stop the aging process and, thus, defeat death. However, Prof. Lloyd, the elderly and disabled head of the biology department, who has severe contempt for Peter in general, dismisses his claims. Determined to finish the experiment before he publishes his findings, Peter is told that the board is planning to suspend his research, and that they will find a way to keep him from going to another university. When he then learns that Lloyd attempted to steal away his assistant, Willy Carson, and knowing that Lloyd will soon take control of his work, Peter sees no alternative but to test the serum he's devised on himself. He goes to the campus late one night and injects himself with it, immediately seeing results, such as heightened senses. He goes over to the home that Sarah shares with her young son, Tommy, and tells her the good news. The two of them then promptly begin a romantic relationship, although Tommy doesn't hide his dislike for Peter. Peter later finds Lloyd in his lab, boasting that he will soon have authority over it, and trips the crippled old man on his way out. He also finds bruises on his hands that he doesn't remember getting, and sees flashes of himself beating a woman in a bedroom, which he later learns was something he did after injecting himself. Soon, his body begins to degenerate, assuming the temperature of the air around him, along with other inhuman traits. An attempt to repeat the experiment in order to see what went wrong only makes things worse, and soon, Peter begins regressing and changing into a creature that stems from very far back in man's evolution.

Metamorphosis is the one and only solo directorial effort of George Eastman, aka Luigi Montefiori, after he'd previously co-directed 1983's 2020 Texas Gladiators with his frequent collaborator, Joe D'Amato (he was uncredited in that instance). Eastman is well known to genre and cult movie fans, especially those who frequent Italian sci-fi and horror, due to the many times he worked with D'Amato, be it as an actor and/or as a screenwriter, and most infamously with Anthropophagous and Absurd, wherein he played virtually the same monstrous character, despite the two films not actually being connected (and don't expect to see me review those, as I've heard about and seen enough of them to know they're not my kind of movies). He's also remembered for the many Spaghetti Westerns he appeared in, including some of the Django films, as well as 1972's The Call of the Wild, with Charlton Heston. Following Metamorphosis, which he also wrote and has a cameo appearance in, Eastman left acting behind and has since concentrated almost entirely on his writing career, working mainly in Italian television.

Looking remarkably like Christopher Reeve in the Superman movies (especially when he wears a pair of big, Coke bottle glasses), Gene LeBrock, an obscure actor who appeared in only a small handful of films during this period, may have a lead role similar to Jeff Goldblum's in The Fly, but he has very little of the charisma and none of the pathos or tragedy. Unlike Seth Brundle, Peter Houseman is more of the typical scientist you get in latter day sci-fi/horror flicks: young and brilliant, but also a touch arrogant and very secretive about his research, the results of which he refuses to publish until it's completed. After submitting a report about the nature of his experiments to his university's board, declaring that he's identified the genetic code behind the aging process and can impede it, he's increasingly pressured to publish his current findings. Though he should be able, per his contract, to take his research to another university, he learns that the board will find a way to stop him from doing so, as they intend to suspend his experiments together. With no other way out, and with his nemesis, Prof. Lloyd, looking to have complete authority over his work, Peter decides to go to the campus laboratory late one night and inject himself with the serum he's derived, proving that it works once and for all. And after he does so, he sees immediate benefits, as the breathing of a test rabbit in the lab becomes loud and clear. He then tells Sally Donnelly, the inspector from the university's New York-based head office, of it, that the results are better that he could've hoped and that he's beat them. As a result of this, the two of them, who were initially hostile toward each other, begin a romantic relationship. However, cracks begin to appear when Peter finds bruises on his knuckles that he can't explain, as well as a bloody handkerchief in the lab. He's also brazen enough to trip the disabled Prof. Lloyd when he finds him snooping around in there, and learns from the school's nightwatchman that he left and returned to the campus twice the first night, which he doesn't remember. He begins having flashes of attacking a woman in a bedroom, and learns that he went to a club and brutally beat on and sexually assaulted prostitute. And things continue to go downhill from there.

I know I compared Gene LeBrock to Christopher Reeve, but it only goes as far as physicality, as he has none of the charisma. His acting, especially when he's trying to come off as angry about the interference with his research and Lloyd's prodding, is often painfully stilted, and he does no better when he tries to come off as charismatic or alluring towards Sally, or when he's trying to act concerned about what's happening to him as his body deteriorates. After he goes back to the club where he assaulted the

prostitute, and is nearly beaten to death by those who work there in retaliation, Peter confines himself to his apartment for a week. Finally, unable to take it anymore, he tracks down his assistant, Willy Carson, asking him to help repeat the experiment so they can pinpoint what went wrong. This only makes things worse, as he wanders out of the lab again, and finds himself outside the home of one of his students, Patricia, who'd flirted with him before. Discovering that he'd brutally attacked her already, he tries to assure her that he won't do so again, only for this

alternate, murderous side of himself to return and strangle her to death. After being chased and run down by the police, Peter is taken to the hospital, where his condition worsens to the point where it's as though he's aged dramatically, mentally as well as physically. Then, he starts turning into a creature far down man's evolutionary chain, and goes completely mad, killing both Lloyd and Willy, escaping the hospital, taking the serum, and going back to the lab to try to save himself. But, as expected, things don't go as planned.

Initially, it's a Jekyll and Hyde situation with Peter, as he switches back and from this violent alternate personality, signified by his eyes turning this inhumanly green color, and has no memory of what he did while in that state. He also has these bouts of immense strength when he's still himself, such as when he and a friend are playing racquetball and he gets so worked up that, when he swings his racket, he smashes the ball hard enough that it tears through the netting. And when he's getting beaten at the club

where he previously attacked the prostitute, he suddenly gets a surge of strength that enables him to easily fend off his attackers. But during the third act, after Peter has begun to physically deteriorate and is put in the hospital he eventually goes completely insane but, unlike before, retains sense of himself and what he's doing. When he kills Prof. Lloyd, he declares that he will continue transforming and will never die, as long as he has nutrients to sustain himself (i.e. human blood). He escapes the hospital

and begins killing and feeding on just about anybody who's unlucky enough to cross his path. He goes to Sally's house, knowing that Willy earlier gave her the bottle containing the serum, to take it in order to stem the metamorphosis (at least, I think that's what he plans; as I'll get into later, it's hard to pin down), claiming that he will live forever in whatever form he ultimately reaches. He attacks her when she screams at the sight of him, but stops long enough for her to escape when he sees a framed picture of him with her and Tommy. But, while Peter does get a hold of the

serum and takes it with him back to the lab, he unknowingly takes Tommy with him, as he hijacks his babysitter's car while he was sleeping in the backseat. He chases after Tommy when he discovers he's there, and Tommy, in turn, is the one who apparently dooms Peter by destroying the bottle, causing his deterioration to continue until he seemingly decomposes into nothing.

That's another problem with this movie: the nature of Peter's metamorphosis. For one, it's so overly complicated and messy. It may start out like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with what feels like more than a few elements from The Incredible Hulk, particularly the TV show, thrown in, but then, it transitions into something more like The Fly, with Peter going completely insane as his condition worsens and is determined to fix his problem, no matter what. Yet, at the same time, he's also relishing whatever it is that's

happening to him, which makes you think he'd want to see it play out completely rather than try to stem it in some way. And then, on top of that, we have this sudden bout of aging he goes through in the hospital (which he already seemed to be going through when he and Willy repeated the experiment), before he begins to transition into a completely different creature altogether. Speaking of which, that's where things become completely ridiculous: according to Prof. Lloyd after he looks at Peter's notes, in blocking

the genetic code that leads to aging, Peter unlocked an ancient sequence that hasn't been active in humans for millions of years and is causing him to literally devolve. This was hinted at when Peter told Willy that his body was taking on the temperature of the air around him, meaning he was becoming cold-blooded like a reptile, and during the last act, he becomes more and more reptilian, until he's reduced to this stupid-looking, anthropomorphic, dinosaur-like thing that makes sounds akin to a barking dog (upon re-watching it, I thought there was a dog in this scene

that was off-camera). But, believe it or not, that's still not the dumbest part of all this. After being shot at by the police, Peter retreats back inside the lab and decomposes into a nasty puddle of blood and tissues. While they're looking at this, Tommy goes off on his own for a bit and comes back, holding something behind his back. At the end, when he and his mother are on their way back to New York, Sally sees that he's keeping this lizard in a plastic container. She tells him to let it go or it'll die, but Tommy insists, "No, don't worry. I won't hurt him. He won't die. He won't ever die." And after hearing this, Sally looks at the lizard in a matter that all but screams that this is what Peter ultimately became... This movie can seriously kiss my ass.

Makeup wise, while it's nothing on what Chris Walas and his team did on The Fly, the initial stages of Peter's metamorphosis don't look too bad. Initially, it consists of just those green eyes and a skin texture that becomes progressively scaly, but when he's in the hospital, looking completely ancient, the makeup is much more advanced and it looks pretty good (it kind of makes me think of how Dustin Hoffman looked in Little Big Man). However, in the scene where he kills Lloyd, the makeup starts to become harder to take

seriously, as it looks more like he's turning into a big, ugly bird rather than some kind of reptile. Following that and his actual escape from the hospital, it initially seems as though they're going to try to keep him mostly in shadow or far from the camera for the remainder of the movie, but nope. When he's attacking Sally and chasing Tommy around the lab, you see him in all his lackluster glory. And finally, there's that laughable monster he turns into, which knocks down the door leading out of the lab and the

building, only to get shot at by the police. They must've realized how bad that looked, as it's only onscreen for a scant few seconds and surrounded by whirling mist, ostensibly from a fire extinguisher that Sally used to fend him off, to obscure it as much as possible.

Even though their first actual interaction is very antagonistic, with Peter, not knowing who she is when he's venting about being forced to publish his findings prematurely, referring to the inspector from New York as a "hysterical old maid with menopause," it's obvious that Sally Donnelly (Catherine Baranov) is going to be his love interest. Not only is it because she's the loveliest woman in the movie but also, during the opening scene, when Peter is participating in a teachers vs. students basketball game, the two of them lock eyes almost immediately. Despite that initial tense interaction, after she sits in on his presenting his report to the board, she starts to see his research as quite brilliant, and soon becomes one of his few supporters at the school. She warns him, following a lunch with the other board members, that they're planning on suspending his research and will prevent him from taking it to another school. He then promises to tell her when he comes up with a course of action that will circumvent their plans, a promise that he keeps. After testing the serum on himself, he shows up at her home and tells her that it works better than he could've hoped and that they can't stop him. After congratulating him, Sally invites him inside, where he's introduced to her young son, Tommy, the product of an affair that she was a part of, although she didn't know it was an affair at the time. She and Peter end up having sex that night, and he starts spending nearly all of his free time with her and Tommy, which the latter isn't thrilled about. 

But then, Peter starts behaving strangely and isolates himself for a week, with Sally becoming concerned for his well-being, as neither she nor anyone else knows where he is. That's all she has to do for much of the rest of the movie, as she goes to his apartment but can't get him to come to the door, and later visits him at the hospital after he's injured. Not wanting her to see him in the horrible condition he's in, Peter sends Sally away. She initially refuses, and even kisses him, but he bites into her mouth, hard enough

to make her bleed, which sends her running out of the hospital. During the climax, when Peter escapes the hospital, he goes to her house to get the serum, which Willy gave to her earlier. He tells her about his ongoing mutation and that he will live forever as whatever creature he ultimately becomes. She gives him the serum but also tells the others where he is when she gets a call from the hospital. He attacks her, especially when she screams upon getting a good look at his changing form, but fortunately for her, Peter's humanity does briefly return and he stops the attack

long enough for her to get away from him. After he leaves, she discovers that Peter not only attacked and mortally wounded Tommy's babysitter, Alice, when she brought him home, but that he took her car, unaware that Tommy was asleep in the back. Sally pursues him to the university, where she breaks in through a basement window and saves her son from Peter, and the two of them manage to escape when he pursues them in his final, monstrous form. She witnesses the police opening fire on him when he bursts the door down, and after he's seemingly killed,

Sally insists to her and Peter's friend, Mike, how he claimed he won't die. But, it does seem as though that did happen when they find his remains inside. The movie ends with Sally and Tommy heading back home to New York, which is when she realizes that the little lizard he's keeping with him may actually be Peter.

Sally's son, Tommy (Jason Arnold), doesn't have many lines (probably because this kid can't act whatsoever), but it's clear from the moment he meets Peter that he doesn't like him and isn't happy when he begins spending time with him and his mother. During one scene where they're at a zoo and having their picture taken together, Peter asks Tommy, "You don't like me too much, do you?", and he bluntly answers, "No." Peter, in turn, says, "That's okay. I don't like you, either. But, you know, some of the best friendships are born this way." That doesn't happen, as it's no skin off Tommy's nose when Peter suddenly disappears. Tommy is also kind of a little brat, as he refuses to turn the TV volume down in one scene where Sally is on the phone, and also nearly breaks the bottle containing the serum. While he has no way of knowing what's in it, he did seem to know it was important to Peter somehow, given the look he gives Sally after he nearly breaks it. This is a prelude to the climax, where Tommy ends up at the university because Peter unintentionally kidnaps him. Unable to escape the parking garage, he wanders into the building itself and finds his way into the laboratory, where the key is. He's chased around by Peter, intentionally breaking the bottle with the serum, and then having to escape with his mother when she arrives to save him (at no point does this kid look at all scared). After Peter has disintegrated completely, Tommy sees and takes something that he keeps hidden from his mother, until they're on their way back to New York. That's when she sees it's a lizard, and what Tommy says makes her realize it might be Peter, as it's similar to what Peter declared about himself, which he heard her say to Mike. (I don't know why he'd want to take the lizard if he knows it's really someone he disliked but, whatever.)

Among those on Peter's side at the university is Mike Lester (Henry Cason), another professor, one who also happens to be friendly with Sally and attempts to date her at one point, though it goes nowhere. He meets Sally when she arrives during the opening basketball game, explaining to her that Peter isn't popular with the higher-ups on the board but that he's brilliant and that was enough for him to secure a large amount of funding for his research. Peter trusts Mike enough to where, when he's frustrated upon first learning how the board is planning to corner him, he goes to him for help. That's when Peter unknowingly insults the inspector he's ranting about as she's standing beside Mike, prompting him to cringe. Regardless, he's not derisive when Peter describes the nature of his experiments, realizing what it could mean if he's correct. And when he and the other board members are talking about it over lunch, Mike suggests they objectively examine what Peter is trying to do, adding that it could reflect badly on the university if he were to take his research elsewhere and it proves to be accurate. However, when things get going, Mike fades into the background, being among those who worry about Peter's well-being, especially when he ends up in the hospital. There, Mike watches, along with the other professors, as Peter's metamorphosis continues, with Mike himself realizing that he's undergoing an "organic mutation." Absent from the climax, Mike does show up in time to witness the monster that Peter becomes before disintegrating, and assures Sally when she mentions how he went on about his living forever that he actually is dead. But, after he sees Sally and Tommy off at the end, he's proven to be wrong, in the dumbest way possible.

Prof. Lloyd (Stephen Brown), on the other hand, is nothing less than Peter's archenemy. More than just thinking his research is unsound or even dangerous, Lloyd openly despises Peter and, according to Peter himself, has been out to get him for a long time. It really seems like he's interfering with his work for no other reason than because he simply doesn't like him, likely out of jealousy of Peter's youth and vigor, whereas he's a disabled old man. In the scene where Peter submits his report, Lloyd, who's already dismissive of his theories, tells him, "You are not only arrogant and megalomaniacal, heh. You're also stupid." Afterward, Lloyd tries to lure Peter's assistant, Willy Carson, away from him, he's caught snooping around in his lab, enraging Peter, who yells that he has no authority to be there. Lloyd responds, "Oh, it's only a matter of time... At times, they're a little slow and one is tempted to go around them. I'm sure you know how it is... If the commission decides to continue this experiment, it will be under my constant and total control. You won't be able to blow your nose in here without my permission." It's not surprising that Peter then deliberately trips him while he's walking out on his crutches. The next time we see Lloyd after that, he's complaining about Peter's behavior to the others, demanding that his access to the lab be taken away, insisting, "He's cooking something up... I believe that arrogant bastard is trying to trick us!" During the third act, following Peter's hospitalization, Lloyd gets Willy to tell him exactly everything that he's been doing, which leads him to understand what's happening to Peter. Eager to see what he'll become, and not caring that he may die as a result, he goes into Peter's room and tells him as much, as well as about Willy's betrayal and that he's going to continue his experiment "in memory of your sacrifice." He adds, "Now, however, you must hurry up and die. I want to dissect you to find out what the devil you've become." Peter decides to show him firsthand, then bites into his neck and feeds on his organs before escaping.

The extent of Willy's (David Wicker) seeming betrayal is left ambiguous, as he spends most of the movie coming off as Peter's biggest supporter, aiding him in his experiments and backing him up in his decisions, despite how rash he may personally think they are. When Lloyd first approaches Willy about coming to work for him, Willy calls Peter up and tells him about it, as well as asks what this means and what can be done to stop it. Moreover, though he's appalled that Peter would deliberately trip a crippled man, Willy pleads ignorant about it, saying he couldn't see it very well. Later, he's just as concerned as Sally when Peter disappears for a week, and when faced with him in his deteriorating condition, he's both shocked and frustrated with him for taking such drastic measures. He agrees to help him figure out what went wrong, sneaking him into the lab at night in order to do so, and also tells Sally, without his knowledge, just so she knows that he's shown back up. But then, Peter wanders out of the lab, kills again, and is placed in the hospital after being hit by a police car. Willy entrusts Sally with the serum, while he goes back to the laboratory and tries to complete the experiment in order to find a way to help Peter. That's when Lloyd steps in again, demanding that Willy tell him everything, as his career is on the line. What happens next is left unseen, and though Lloyd tells Peter that Willy told him everything and agrees with him, it's possible this was another example of Lloyd being the devious slimeball that he is. More than likely, Lloyd threatened him in some manner and Willy had no choice but to cooperate. Either way, after Peter kills Lloyd, Willy falls prey to him as well, as he's leaving the hospital.

The person whom Peter attacks after he wanders out of the lab while working with Willy is Patricia Kelly (Anna Colona), a lovely student of his who's had her eye on him since the opening, as she was watching him play basketball. During the first scene in his classroom, she attempts to get his attention by sitting up front and showing off a lot of thigh. He does notice and comments about it, and while it doesn't go any further for the time being, this only emboldens her. Later, after class ends, she gives him her home address and tells him, "I'm having a party at my house. I'd like it if you could come." When he asks when, she seductively answers, "Any day." Well, he does eventually take her up on that offer, as when he regains his senses after wandering out of the lab, he finds himself at her home and wanders inside to find her bloody, bruised, and frightened to death of him, brandishing a small knife to keep him away. He manages to disarm her, assuring her that he won't hurt her, but while he's helping her calm herself, he regresses and kills her.

I have something of a love/hate relationship with the look of Metamorphosis. On the one hand, the daytime exteriors of the location, which was Norfolk, Virginia, do look nice, and you can tell it was shot during the winter, as they have a fairly chilly feel to them. Also, there are some well done nighttime interior scenes, like when Peter and Sally first have sex, when he wanders out of her house late at night, and when he shows up to get the serum, that are done with stylistic blue lighting and the characters in either partial or complete silhouette. I especially like the look of the

scene when Sally sees Peter at the hospital, with the softness of the image combined with the orange glow of the setting sun coming through the window, making it come off as dream-like. And I also can't help but enjoy the tacky red look to the club, the Isle of CaPri, when Peter goes back to it and realizes it's where he attacked the prostitute. However, a lot of the interiors, especially those set inside Peter's lab, have an unappealing look to them, often with an ugly green in the color palette, and are sometimes much dimmer than they should. In terms of technical filmmaking,

George Eastman does some things quite well, such as some overhead shots of interiors like Peter's apartment and Patricia's home when he comes in on her, long panning shots, how he draws out the approach of the uncomfortably long syringe that injects the serum directly into Peter's eye (which is effectively wince-inducing), and nice traveling shots of Peter's POV during the climax, when he's stalking Sally and Tommy. However, there are other times where he uses slow-motion in an attempt to make

things more dramatic, only for it to come off as silly, and the action scenes are shot in a rather tepid manner, which I'll go into detail on later. The editing is also a bit off, sometimes feeling way too sudden and jarring, such as Peter's flashes of attacking the prostitute, which would've been more effective if, like with Patricia later, he doesn't realize what happened until he suddenly finds himself drawn back to the club, with the sight of its name suddenly triggering a memory. Also, the implication at the very end, that

the lizard that Tommy has is Peter, is achieved through a short montage of still closeups, going back and forth between Sally's expression of realization and the lizard. It's just as dopey as it sounds. And this is another movie that doesn't do a good job of getting across that a certain amount of time has passed. When Peter isolates himself for a week, for instance, you don't realize that much time has passed until he shows up in the back of Willy's car and Willy says as much. Before that, you just see a montage of people talking about him, going to his home, and him secluded within, in pain and going through an apparent psychotic breakdown, and you could easily think this happening over the course of one day or two at the most.

Staying on the subject of the editing, sometimes there are moments thrown in that have no relevance to what's going on. After he turns in his report to the board, we get this random scene that turns out to be a dream, where Peter is pumping blood directly from a human heart in a jar that's set up like an IV bag, into a human test subject (an elderly man whom I think is meant to be Lloyd, representing Peter's frustration with him). Then, something goes wrong, as the man begins moaning in pain, and Peter removes a tube from his torso. His computer tells him that the cellular

mutation is out of control and the heart bursts inside the jar, which is when he jumps awake. In the long run, it's nothing but a random instance of weirdness that doesn't relate to his experiments (this scene alone could be why, in Spain, the film was marketed as a sequel to Re-Animator). Later, when he's isolated himself, there's a part where he's freaking out inside his bathroom and you see very quick flashes of a forested area, with shots very low to the ground, moving through bushes and tall grass. This makes a

bit more sense, given what he's becoming, and you could say that it's flashes of his primitive form out in the wild, millions of years ago, but it's still quite random and sudden. It's not helped by how silly and over-the-top some of his movements and gyrations are (which are also sped up), like when he gets down on the floor on his belly and slithers around like a snake, an action possibly meant to correspond with those low angle shots.

The most unique setting in the film is definitely Peter's laboratory on the university campus, which is full of computer equipment, some specimens, books on shelves, and the machine that he uses to inject the serum into a test subject, which involves an apparatus that keeps the specimen's head secured. Like I said at the beginning, as archaic as Seth Brundle's "advanced" supercomputer for controlling the Telepods may seem by today's standards, the technology here is even worse, with how the text of the relevant data appears onscreen; the sound effects

they make, such as the digitized alarm when something goes wrong; and the crude imagery of the test subjects' skulls when they're being injected with the serum, which make me think of that Microsurgeon game for the Intellivision. The rest of the building looks like a typical college campus, although it does become somewhat dark and menacing during the climax, especially in the hallways and basement corridors, when the mutating Peter chases Sally and Tommy throughout the building. A runner-up for the

most noteworthy location would the Isle of CaPri for its aforementioned tacky red-colored lighting, as well as overall sleazy vibe. Every other place is pretty ordinary, although Peter's apartment, which has something of a loft-like feel, does look quite nice, as does the house where Sally and Tommy stay during their time in Virginia.

While the basic plot of a scientist performing an experiment on himself that unexpectedly transforms him into a monster is one as old as the hills, Metamorphosis does feel like it specifically wants to be David Cronenberg's The Fly. This is true in terms of both broad strokes, like how Peter slowly mutates over time, and details, as the apparatus at the center of the experiments is controlled by advanced computers, whose screens are often shown in close-up, displaying a lot of significant information; the first onscreen test subject, which ends up dying, is a primate akin to a

baboon (the movie calls it a monkey but I think it looks like a baboon); Peter begins a relationship with a woman who initially has her own professional interest in his work, and with whom he didn't have the best first interaction (while Seth and Veronica's first meet-up and scenes in The Fly aren't as contentious as Peter and Sally's, there is still that initial tension from her planning to write about his experiments without his consent); Peter goes to a dive and gets involved with a woman there, which ends up going badly; and

he isolates himself for a time, as his body starts to deteriorate. Even the opening credits are akin to The Fly, as they play out in front of a mosaic of indistinct, moving images that are revealed to be people; in this case, it's the opening basketball game. Weirdly, as I touched on before, there are parts that also make me think of the Incredible Hulk TV show with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno, chief among them being Peter's eyes turning green when his violent self comes out,

and how the fateful experiment is conducted with him at his lab late at night and involves him strapping his head in place while the machine does its thing. The scene at the club, where everyone attempts to beat on him as revenge for what he did to the prostitute, only for him to have a sudden burst of strength and fling everyone off, is like a classic Hulk-out!

Not being an expert on genetics in the slightest, I couldn't begin to tell you if this film is at all scientifically accurate (somehow, I doubt it is, especially on the human evolution side of things) but I know one thing: it sure is hard to grasp, even on repeated viewings. While I got that Peter was looking to stem the aging process the first time around, the manner in which he's able to do so remained a bit hazy to me. I got that it involved identifying and impeding a genetic code believed to be behind it, but I wasn't sure how the serum he devised was an

extension of that process. All they say at first is that it's the result of years of hard work on Peter's part, and even when Prof. Lloyd explains that the serum consists of cells with modified DNA, which awoke the ancient genetic code that turns him into a reptilian, I still couldn't figure how it tied in to his experiment. I guess those cells are what impeded the aging process, but during the first act, it seemed like Peter had only identified the genetic code, rather than having found a manner of blocking it. I thought that

was what the additional experimenting was for. Maybe I'm coming off as an idiot who couldn't recognize something that was being made very blatant but, from where I'm standing, it wasn't explained very well. And even then, I don't know how, after he gives Sally the serum, Willy intends to complete the experiment in order to save Peter's life without it, what Peter expect to do with it during the third act if it's what began his metamorphosis in the first place, or why there's suspense around its bottle being destroyed before he can use it.

It doesn't help that the sound mixing isn't the greatest, as there are moments (some in crucial dialogue scenes, no less), where the ambient sounds and the music blot out certain words and phrases, some of which I'm still not able to identify (and no, the rip I'm using as my source doesn't have available subtitles). And in some cases, the writing is just off, specifically in how the word "organism" is sometimes used. For instance, when Mike is telling Sally what's happening to Peter in the hospital, he says, "But... his organism. It's, like..." I have never heard "organism" used in that manner before. Maybe it's due to George Eastman not having the best grasp on English, but the rest of the dialogue doesn't come off as that awkward.

While the makeup work on Peter isn't bad, for the most part, those hoping for some graphic Italian exploitation violence are going to be fairly disappointed. Aside from the dream sequence with the bursting heart, the most gruesome moment is the quick close-up of the syringe going into Peter's eye, which was actually the eye of a dead pig. Also, his memory of attacking the prostitute is effectively unsettling, as you see him bashing her face against the wall until she's bleeding all over the place. And when he attacks Alice, you find that he ripped her left eye

out, which is quite gruesome, and also slashed her up in general. The rest of the killings, however, while certainly bloody, aren't much to write home about. There is, however, that feeling of sleaziness you often get in these flicks, mostly in those flashbacks to the prostitute's assault, as it's heavily implied that he raped her as well, given how he's seen ripping her clothes off. You can also very much feel that implication with the aftermath of his initial offscreen attack on Patricia.

I feel like I've said this a bunch of times this month but, regardless, another major strike against Metamorphosis is that it's not a very fun movie to watch. For the most part, it's a very talky affair, with a lot of technobabble and scientific jargon, and the filmmakers try to make it feel more exciting through the use of fairly quick editing and the very big and loud music score, which really swells during the scenes when the experiment is being conducted. Even though Peter injects himself with the serum early on, before the 25-minute mark, it still takes a while for

things to really get going. As I've said, those sudden flashes of him attacking the prostitute are initially jarring and confusing, and the moment where he first discovers that he's become abnormally strong, when he and Mike are playing racquetball, starts out intense enough due to the sound and editing, but is made cheesy when they use slow-motion for the moment where he destroys his racket. Not long after that is when he finds himself drawn to the Isle of CaPri, and after the scuffle he gets into there, he isolates himself for a week, during which we see him freaking out,

and also which, as I said, gets to the point where it looks more funny than disturbing. He then goes to Willy so he can take him to the lab late at night to find out what went wrong, only for him to wander out of it, again assault somebody offscreen, and go back to them when he's more in control, only to kill them in the end. During all of this, we also go back and forth from scenes of his friends worrying about his well-being, and Prof. Lloyd trying to destroy him. It continues at this lethargic pace into the third act, with

scenes like Peter breaking out, killing people, and heading back to the lab, offering little in the way of any real excitement. Granted, The Fly is quite leisurely-paced itself, but it benefited from great characters and truly disturbing body horror, neither of which Metamorphosis has in the slightest.

A number of the moments and scenes that are meant to be impactful in some way come off as pitiful. When Peter spitefully trips Lloyd when he catches him in his lab, he doesn't fall or hit the floor with an impact that makes it feel as though he could've been seriously hurt, despite his being an old man on crutches. The scene at the Isle of CaPri does start off brutal, as Peter is restrained and beaten, but then, it not only comes off like a Hulk-out but the action is about as awkward as it sometimes was on that Incredible Hulk TV show (I love that show, mind you,

but, still, I have to be honest). Peter simply tosses two of the assailants to either side, with the cutting hurting any effectiveness it could've had, and he pins a third one to the floor, punches him in the face a few times, and strangles him to death, but the action of it comes off as lackluster, more like he's softly gripping the guy's neck. Later, when Peter finds himself at Patricia's home, and goes inside to find that he's already been there and attacked her, the implication of what we didn't see, as well as how frightened and frantic she is, screaming at him and wielding a knife,

works better than what ultimately happens. It is, admittedly, unsettling how Peter manages to calm her down, assuring her that he won't hurt her again, and takes her into the bathroom, putting water to her mouth when she gets a little sick, only to suddenly turn bad and attack her again. However, the way he kills her is ho-hum: he grabs her by the throat, lifts her up, and slams the back of her head against the wall, leaving a trail of blood on it as he slowly drags her down it. Following that, he runs out of the home

and gets the attention of some cops on patrol, leading into an okay sequence where they chase him into this parking garage, although the music and editing, again, do most of the heavy lifting. At one point, they lose him and they drive out of there very quietly, with their lights and siren off, and he goes for it, only for them to come back around and "slam" into him. I put slam in quotation marks because he actually very softly rolls across the hood and then the windshield.

After killing Lloyd (by very quickly and softly nipping at his neck, after which he bleeds to death; you later learn that Peter ripped his heart and liver out), Peter uses his coat, hat, and crutches to slip out of the hospital (the one sleepy security guard on duty is seen reading Michael Crichton's The Terminal Man). On the way, he attacks Willy in the elevator, tearing his throat out with his claws and taking the floppy disk housing the experiment's program. While shuffling down the street, there's a part where he walks by a sidewalk Santa and the sight of him causes

the guy to drop the stack of presents he's carrying and run off. At Sally's house, Alice arrives home with Tommy, who's asleep in her backseat. She goes to the door (inside, Sally is in the shower, playing really loud music on a record at the same time), but before she can unlock it, she hears some rustling nearby. Cut to inside, where Sally takes the serum that Willy gave her and prepares to leave with it, when she opens her bedroom door to find Peter standing there in the dark. Shielding his face when she momentarily turns the light back on, telling her to turn it off, he then

approaches her, demanding the serum, as well as telling her about his ongoing metamorphosis. The phone rings and she answers it to find it's Mike at the hospital, and he tells her of Peter's escape and how he's killed two people (he seemingly tried to call earlier, when Sally was in the shower). Sally quickly tells Mike that Peter is there, when he grabs the phone and tosses it aside. Again demanding the serum, he nearly gets it, when she suddenly screams, becoming frightened when she realizes just how monstrous he's

become. He throws her onto the bed and attempts to kill her, when the sight of the photo of the two of them and Tommy at the zoo stops him. She's able to kick herself out from under him, run down the hall, and lock herself in Tommy's room. She listens at the door, and hears him leave the house. But when she turns the light on, she's frightened when she sees Alice, who's been brutalized by Peter, with her eye left eye gouged out. She asks where Tommy is but Alice is unable to speak, so Sally runs out of the room

and around the house, yelling for him. She then, again, asks Alice where he is, and she manages to get out that he's in her car, which Peter has taken in order to get to the lab. Sally attempts to follow in her own car, but in a darkly comic way, she has trouble getting going, thanks to the garage door coming down behind her and then the car itself struggling to start.

On her way to the campus, there's a moment where Sally suddenly does a very sharp U-turn and goes the other way, though I can't figure out why she does it. Meanwhile, Peter arrives at the campus and parks in the garage, which wakes up Tommy. He lays low when he sees Peter shamble by outside, and when he goes inside the building, Tommy gets out of the car and attempts to escape the garage through its large, heavy door, but he's unable to lift it. Finding another door there locked as well, he realizes he has no choice but to go through the same one as Peter. Outside,

Sally arrives and runs into the security station, only to find that Peter has killed the guard. She then tries to find a way inside the parking garage, as she sees Alice's car parked there, while Tommy wanders the school's dark hallways and happens to find his way into the lab. He has to hide from and avoid Peter when he shambles into the room, when he finds himself in front of a door whose key is hanging on a latch on the wall. Unable to reach it, he stacks a couple of books but, even standing on them and stretching to his tiptoes, he still can't get it. He then

spies a jar and stands it on the books to give himself that little extra boost, but as you can guess, it becomes wobbly when he stands on it. While he is able to reach the key, he loses his balance and falls with it. This gets Peter's attention, and while Sally, outside the door, yells for Tommy, and finally opts to smash a basement window and get inside that way, Tommy, after crawling around in the room, finds himself seemingly cornered. But when Peter lunges for him, he grabs the bottle with the serum off a

counter and throws it, shattering it on the floor. Peter limps over to the spot, while Tommy runs out of the lab, through the halls, and heads downstairs. Two security guards in the building hear Peter howling in anguish, and one of them goes to check it out, while Tommy runs through the basement, with Peter not far behind. Tommy's mother finds him, grabs him, and pulls him into the dark, watching for any sign of Peter. Instead, the security guard wanders into that room and asks if anyone is in there. Sally responds to him, but their cries attract Peter, who rushes in and kills the guard, with Sally and Tommy running for it.

The two of them run back down the hallways to the lab, with Peter in hot pursuit. They close the door to the lab behind them and run to the rear door, searching for the key that dropped earlier. But then, they hear Peter enter behind them, and hunker down and try to stay quiet as he approaches. Sally spies a fire extinguisher, grabs it, and when Peter, having now really mutated, rounds the corner in front of them, she blasts him. They're able to keep him back until they get out the door, where Mike is waiting, along with another scientist and the heavily armed

police. She warns them that he's inside and they point their guns at the door, as Peter can be heard banging on the other side. The door falls and that's when we see his stupid-looking reptilian form standing there, barking like a dog. They immediately open fire, pumping him full of lead, until the chief yells for them to stop. He retreats back through the door, as a detective, Hopkins, asks, "What was it?"; the other scientist melodramatically answers, "A nightmare, from the past." That's when they go inside and, beyond the lab, they find what is seemingly all that's left of Peter. But, again, that's, very stupidly, revealed to not be the case.

Luigi Ceccarelli, who'd previously scored Italian B-movies like Rats: Night of Terror, Strike Commando, and Nosferatu in Venice, scored Metamorphosis (in the opening credits, the music is attributed to "Pahamian,"; if anyone knows the significance of that, let me know). During my introduction, I described the score as "overdone." That's not to say that it's bad music, because it actually isn't, but it's often really big, much more so than you would expect for a movie like this, and it feels like it's trying to make a lot of it seem more meaningful than actually is. As I said, there are sequences where the music is the only thing keeping everything from becoming a total slog, like the tepid "car chase" back to the campus during the climax. In any case, the two pieces of the score that stand out the most are this grand, electronic theme that you hear whenever the experiment is conducted, as well as when the monster is seen at the end (it doesn't help that thing come off as any cooler), and this energetic, driving synthesizer theme that does the heavy-lifting for what are supposed to be big action moments, like that aforementioned sequence during the climax and others like when Peter gets beaten up at Isle of CaPri, as well as during the ending credits. On top of that, the music that plays when Peter goes nuts in his bathroom is about as crazy as the scene itself. And there are also bits of music that have a cheesy sensual nature to them, which definitely feels like something left over from the 80's.

Metamorphosis is a movie that I really wanted to like, given my affection for these kinds of flicks, but it was a major dud for the most part. It has some good makeup work and gore effects, instances of well-done cinematography, location work, and overall filmmaking, and a score that, while over-the-top, is certainly memorable thanks to its electronic cheesiness, but, otherwise, there's little to like here. The characters are forgettable and most of the actors are pretty bad; the concept proves to be ridiculous and impossible to take seriously, especially when you see the final monster; the nature of the title metamorphosis is much more complicated to wrap your head around than it should be, and the writing and audio looping sometimes make it even harder; the editing and direction often make watching the movie a real chore to get through; and at the end of the day, it's a terrible ripoff of David Cronenberg's The Fly, with a bit of The Incredible Hulk thrown in! That may sound entertaining but, trust me, it's not.