“John Doe has come to visit.”

Justin’s rating: Can we acknowledge what a legend James Hong is? And he obviously wasn’t picky about genre or quality.

Justin’s review: When you think about it, dreams are freaky. You never know what you’re going to get when you fall asleep, whether it be spooky settings, romantic encounters, or Cookie Monster running a tax audit on your bakery. Despite dreams being a universal human experience, few movies have made them their central premise — and usually those are scifi-horror of some degree (such as 1984’s Dreamscape or, well, any Nightmare on Elm Street).

Full Moon took a stab at incorporating the dream world into a story with Shadowzone, a surprisingly imaginative and well-made B-movie. NASA Captain Hickock (David Beecroft) arrives at a remote underground government testing lab to investigate a mysterious death.

Everyone’s a little off-kilter in this subterranean structure (as is the base itself, which suffered an earthquake and never rebuilt). The project leads — played by veteran actors Louise Fletcher and James Hong — clearly aren’t that pleased to have an outsider poking around, but they give him a tour nevertheless.

Hickock learns about the project, which was meant to explore extended sleep cycles but somehow broke through into another dimension entirely. While this is objectively cool and all, one shouldn’t open doors if one isn’t prepared for what’s on the other side. In this case, a terrifying alien decides to vacation on earth and arrives through an exploded head of a dream test subject.

The isolated outpost full of weirdo scientists who become prey for a largely unknown foreign creature smacks of The Thing, which was clearly the influence here. The alien is a shapeshifter, which gives the filmmakers plenty of opportunities to create various creepy (or, more usually just plain odd) creatures.*

With the facility on automated lockdown, the humans and their pet monkey Bingo play some cat-and-mouse with the alien. Hickock gets to be Standard Action Hero, alongside Black Computer Techie, Cute Scientist, Scientist Who Was Nurse Ratched, Wayne’s Girlfriend’s Dad, Crass Lunch Lady, and Discount Richard Dryfuss.

I was hoping that we’d get people running into dream worlds with machine guns or something, but this movie keeps most all the action in normal space so that people can be picked off one by one. The only real connection to dreamland is that the monster seems to take on the form of everyone’s personal nightmares, such as a giant rat to torment the lunch lady.

This film also dips into the peculiar, which helps to make it more memorable. There’s a bonafide monkey hunt and two fully naked people in comas who need some privacy blankets and a hillbilly spraying imaginary threats with shotgun blasts. Oh, and in case you were anticipating that our main character would be the paragon of virtue, nope, he’s kind of a creep who keeps scoping out the nude coma lady and uses her survival as a sign that they were meant to be together or something.

Shadowzone is a generic knock-off in the way that a lot of Full Moon products are, but “generic” can still be enjoyable. The base exudes a claustrophobic, run-down atmosphere, while the moody lighting and above-board talent help sell yet another bug hunt. Probably its biggest flaw is unsteady pacing that involves a lot of filler, but fans of B-movie creature features shouldn’t be let down too much.

*Fun fact: One of the SFX guys on this, Mark Shostrom, also worked on the effects for Evil Dead 2.

Intermission!

• “Jackass Flats Proving Grounds” doesn’t sound very professional
• Does that guy have a band-aid on his glasses?
• Dead rat for dessert!
• That is one very messy autopsy
• Monkeys like to play with brains
• Always a clever trick to cut out a beating heart
• 31F? 31F? YOU MADMEN!
• Spontaneous veins all over your body is not a good sign
• Identify Fifth Life Form? John Doe
• Freaky lumpy lady is not a good look
• Time to split up and check on the monkey!
• Death by giant rat
• “He’s sitting right here stuffing his ugly face with grapes!” MUTANT MONKEY ATTACK
• When you’re freaked out, just start spraying the room around you with endless shotgun fire
• How many times do they say the name “Shivers?” And how often the doctor uses chapstick?
• Hey, it’s an alien *hacker*, he’s cool
• “There’s thousands of the–“