Society is a bizarre horror experience, that's for sure. It works on several levels, actually. Nowhere near perfect, but certainly a great effort and an overall amusing film. The whole thing starts out as a typical teenager movie. Almost like a TV soap opera with the handsome and rebellious Billy (Billy Warlock) as the boy who's estranged from his parents and neighborhood. But Society soon changes into a mysterious thriller (in which Billy-boy tries to discover the handling and rituals of Society) before ending in a completely gore and splatter mess. The last half hour of this film goes beyond your wildest horror imaginations
while it's making no sense at all, this fairly disgusting sequence is a pure joy to observe. Society is in fact an absurd spoof that mocks the High Society of Beverly Hills tremendously. The characters are very stereotypical and the jokes are very cliché
but it works. The screenplay contains a lot of very insane and wacky dialogues and quote material. `Who do you like your tea, Billy? Cream and sugar
or do you want me to pee in it' or even stuff like `Now now honey, you know the rules
first we dine, THAN we copulate'. I'm sure Yuzna and the scriptwriters had a lot of fun. As did special effects supervisor Screaming Mad George! Society is the first film that credits Brian Yuzna as a director, but by that time, he already had his name made in the field. He was the producer of some other, terrific horror comedies like Re-Animator and From Beyond. He obviously feels at his best in this sub genre as he continued to direct and produce several more sinister spoofs with gruesome gore like the two sequels to Re-Animator and The Dentist (which is also a parody on life in the upper class, by the way). Society is certainly worth a look if your sense of humor is a bit twisted and your stomach isn't too weak.
