Director/Screenplay – Brian Peck, Producers – Gary Depew & Brad Southwick, Photography – Tom Ingalls, Music – Randy Miller, Makeup Effects – Kenny Myers, Creature Effects & Transformations – Tony Gardner’s Alterian Studios, Creature Design – William Stout, Production Design – Daniel Bosler & Michael Perry. Production Company – Force Majeure Productions.
Cast
Camping Out:- Sean Astin (Michael), Jason Horst (Kyle), Joshua John Miller (Josh), James Karen (Uncle Henry). Tennessee Frickasee:- Marilyn Pitzer (Chicken Lady), Evan Arnold (Counter Guy), Dana Ashbrook (Tough Dude), Kathy McQuarrie (Tough Chick). Haunted Estate:- Bill Erwin (Old Man), Kimmy Robertson (Ride Operator). Bad Apples:- Ian Fried (Danny Hollister), James Karen (Mr Jenkins), Kathleen Freeman (Mrs Titmarsh), Rocky Giordano Jr. (Rudy), Jeremy Miller (Brad), Shawn Donahue (Lance), Clu Gulager (Greeley Principal), F.J. O’Neil (New School Principal), Patrika Darbo (Mrs Walters). Flyboy:- Michael Bower (Gordy Belcher), Ralph Drischell (Farmer Spivey), Suzanne Goddard (Mrs Belcher), Michael Pniewski (Mr Belcher), Ari Smith (Jenny)
Plot
Three kids are camping out in a tent in the yard and tell each other gross stories that they swear are true. Bad Apples:- Danny Hollister is a bullied kid as Greeley High School. One day, following a cruel bullying, he leaves class to go into the bathroom only to find a monster in one of the stalls. His story of a monster is ridiculed by the teacher Mrs Titmarsh. Danny takes her to see for herself – only for Mrs Titmarsh to be devoured. Danny then takes his bullies to see the monster too. Flyboy:- Gordy Belcher is a bullied fat kid. His passion in life is flies and he collects them to make model dioramas in the basement. Danny keeps trying to steal Farmer Spivey’s fertiliser. One day, Farmer Spivey gives Danny the gift of his new formula for super-fertiliser.
Brian Peck is an actor who gained attention with his second film role as one of the punks in Return of the Living Dead (1985). Since then, Peck has floated around Hollywood with minor acting roles and assorted voicework, nothing major. The Willies was his one and only outing as a director.
The Willies was made at a time when the Horror Anthology was making a comeback. The genre has been popular in the 1960s and 70s after the films made by UK’s Amicus Films beginning with Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1965). There had been successful big screen revivals not long before this with George Romero’s Creepshow (1982) and the multi-director Twilight Zone – The Movie (1983). This had led to revivals of most of the major anthology tv shows of the 1950s and 60s with The Twilight Zone (1985-9), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1985-9) and The Outer Limits (1995-2002), as well as original series such as Tales from the Darkside (1983-8), The Hitch-Hiker (1983-91), The Ray Bradbury Theater (1985-92), Monsters (1988-90) and Tales from the Crypt (1989-96).
Around the same time as these, there had been a spate of children’s horror or children-fronted horror films such as Gremlins (1984), The Gate (1987) and The Monster Squad (1987). In a similar vein, The Willies tells several horror stories with a child-fronted focus, although the sensibilities throughout are very adult. The film opens as a quintessential campfire horror story with three kids, which include a teenage Sean Astin, sitting around telling each other gross-out Urban Legends. There are a couple of negligible brief pieces that start the film – Tennessee Frickasee about a fried chicken outlet and Haunted Estate where aging Bill Erwin takes a fairground haunted house ride and sees exhibits come to life, before emerging from the ride to be found dead of a heart-attack.
(l to r) Jason Horst, Sean Astin and Joshua John Miller tell campfire tales
The best and most substantial part of the film consists of its two main stories. The first of these is Bad Apples, a rather funny variant on The Boy Who Cried Wolf with Ian Fried as a bullied kid who insists there is a monster in the school bathroom. This comes with some okay effects for the era courtesy of the Alterian Studios. The episode comes with a series of appealing twists as Ian Fried takes the mean-spirited teacher (a good performance from Kathleen Freeman) and his bullies in for the creature to devour. The episode has a perfect twist ending that reveals the monster as one that wears a human skin – it is not particularly difficult to guess the identity of the monster. All of this comes with tongue considerably planted in cheek. There is a callback to the story later with the twist that comes at the end of the wraparound sequences.
The Flyboy episode also takes the ostensible perspective of a children’s film but then proceeds to push the material for considerable grotesquerie. Michael Bower gives an unnervingly convincing performance as a bullied fat kid. What gives the episode its element of the grotesque is seeing him obsessively collecting flies and then pulling wings off them and building miniature dioramas in the basement – mock-ups of mediaeval castles, churches and diners – with flies glued there as the attendees. This seems to be heading in the direction of a teenage underdog gains a nasty comeuppance fantasy – and does at one point where Bower befriends a nice girl at school only to give her a cookie with flies baked inside it. Instead though, the piece takes a left-field tangent with some Giant Bug scenes (some so-so effects from Alterian).
