THE BONEYARD
1991
Written and Directed by James Cummins
A.K.A. Poodles shouldn't play with dead things (sorry...)
PlotWe begin our tale with Jersey Callum, a veteran cop, with his rookie partner in tow, at the house of Ally Cate, a shut in with psychic abilities. Jersey means to recruit her to help him on a particularly gruesome case: A local mortician turned himself in to the police, revealing three children's corpses in a vault in the back of his buisiness. The coroner found human remains inside the children's stomaches. The mortician identifies the children as in fact being "Kioshi", ancient Chinese ghouls that his family have been charged with keeping from the outside world for generations as punishment for some unspoken sin. Of course, no one believes his story, and if they did, we really wouldn't have nearly as much of a story. Ally has doubts about working on the case, agonizing about cases she's worked on in the past. Then she has a vision in which she's visited by the zombie of a little girl, and changes her mind. She NEEDS to work on the case. The cops take her to the morgue where the corpses are being held. There, we meet the standoffish secretary, Miss Poopenplatz, played shockingly by Phyllis Diller, sans wig! Poopenplatz is accompanied by her poodle, Floofsins, who seems to hate everyone. Probably because it was named "Floofsins". I know I'd be pretty bitter about it if it were my name. After the beauraucratic mess of getting into the morgue is taken care of, the group meets up via closed circuit television Shepard (Norman Fell with long hair and a beard!) who's currently in "The Bone Yard", which is the area they keep the corpses in. It's kind of illegal for civilians to go down there in person. Shep sends up a hair sample for Ally to channel her powers through ala Johnny Smith. It's explained that apparently she gained her powers as a byproduct of chemotherepy. Don't ask me how that'd work just on her, but it does. Meanwhile, we get more beauraucratic wackiness from Ms. Diller, as the corpse delivery guy comes in the main entrance, due to the service entrance being broken. Corpses aren't supposed to go in the front door. Eventually the cops make Poopenplatz let the guy in, and they help him to get the body, that of a young woman who commited suicide, down to the boneyard. About this time Ally has gathered up enough nerve to touch the hair directly, and channels the memories of the badly decomposed child. Turns out the mortician wasn't lying, and that these corpses really ARE demons that don't die! She then gets a flash of them waking up inside the Boneyard, and starting to stir. Also at that moment in the boneyard, the docs all start preparing the corpse of the young woman for autopsy. As soon as they set the scalpel to her, she comes alive. Guess they forgot to check vital signs back at the crime scene. Ally, however, has been spending her time trying to get the keys to the elevator from Poopenplatz, which is far from an easy thing to do. Eventually she succeeds, but ends up taking Floofsins downstairs with her.
When she gets to the boneyard, she finds the place in ruins, with bodies everywhere, some being munched on by the Kioshi. They spot Annie, and start chasing her down, until Jersey shows up and rushes her into an office with a lockable door. Inside, are the rookie, Shep, and the girl that wasn't as dead as they thought. Now the five of them are trapped in the basement with these creatures (who are obliquely revealed to have the ability to convert people into more Kioshi by making them eat their tissues,) and must figure out how to escape. Also, Miss Poopenplatz, unaware of the situation at hand, goes downstairs to seek out her poor little pooch. What a unique movie this turned out to be for me. For one thing, this is one of the very few movies I've ever seen to mix comedy and horror without becoming disjointed, or unbalanced. As a fun fact, the movie actually was released with two video boxes, depending on where the store wanted to display it, with one box for horror, and the other for comedy. I believe that if this film had had a bigger budget for distribution, or some sort of advertising campaign, it would be a cult hit today. As it stands, it's a true diamond in the rough worth finding. One of the film's strong points to me, is the fact that it doesn't use glamourous actors for the roles. Instead, the cast feels perfectly mundane. Ally, as one of the protagonists, is a remarkably human, suffering character, and that they got an actress who is of a larger weight than the average thespian only adds to humanity. You end up feeling like you know these people.
The Kioshi, meanwhile, are a unique tread on the zombie genre, and are genuinely creepy. Unfortunately, in the last 15 minutes of the film, the special effects department must have gotten a hold of some good acid. I don't feel I'm spoiling things by saying there's both a giant Kioshi-Poopenplatz, and a giant Kioshi-Floofsins, and they are both too ridiculous for words. Poopenplatz looks suspiciously like Large-Marge from "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure", and I can't even begin to describe the insanity of Kioshi-Floofsins. |
RatingI give The Boneyard: 
Three and One Half Rotting, Shambling Corpses |