Yesterday afternoon Jack and I watched a good piece of a horror movie on the Chiller channel.  The title of it was REEKER (2005).  Both a title and a review in one.  “Teenage travelers stop at a closed desert resort after a car accident and are hunted by a foul-smelling creature,” was the program information on the tube.  We came to the movie a ways in, so we might have missed something crucial for ultimate enjoyment.  I baled when a girl got pulled down a floor hole in an outhouse after having havoc reeked on her by The Reeker.  The first actor I saw when I turned it on was that guy Michael Ironside.  No, not Raymond Burr in a wheel chair.  The guy who was in Cronenberg’s Scanners and was the colonel or captain or something in Starship Troopers.  Big, bald, with a square jaw.  He’s gotten pretty old.  He was kind of hunched over and scrabbling along through the night.  Ironside plays the heavy in these Indie Creepers a lot, so I said to Jack, “10 to 1, Ironside’s the Reeker.”

            We watched the old actor cross a dirt parking lot and climb into a Winnabego.  Once inside, he took off his jacket and hat. 

            “Looks like he’s getting down to business,” said Jack. 

            But instead of heading for the can, Ironside spends some time staring out the window.  All of a sudden, there appeared this disturbance of the air, very subtle, like the rippling of a mirage, and Ironside made a face like he just realized there was a 3 pound deuce in his pants.  He started choking.  The mirage ripples moved around him, he got Reeked six ways to Sunday, and then he dropped over dead.  All this happened without the slightest shred of suspense.  You know how it goes – what followed was a relentless reeking spree.  One cool thing was that once the Reeker killed someone, he traveled up their nose.  No lie, up this winding tunnel that was their nose to their brain.  An image of a brain flashed and then there’d be this crazy montage of images --   kids playing, a bird, an old house, a car – all flashing past quickly in yellow. 

            As it turned out you did get to see the Reeker.  He wore a black robe and hood like the Reaper, only this was The Grim Reeker.  He had a weapon that looked to me like a giant pair of electric hedge shears.  You learn along the line that the foul-smelling entity can take many forms.  The best part of the movie was the faces people made when they first smelled his presence. 

            Later, I went out on the internet to read some reviews of the movie.  One reviewer rated it “Silent But Deadly” and gave it three stars out of five.  I read the Wikipedia page on it and apparently there is a whole metaphysical, existential, puzzle involved that had to do with the reeking and the after-death-up-the-nose-montages.  I won’t give it away.  The basic conception of Reeker is obviously sheer genius, and from what I read the secret puzzle part is pretty complicated although I’m not sure it makes much sense, but the actors, ooh boy, – he couldn’t reek them fast enough for me.  Their deaths seemed foreordained and that’s the way they transpired -- a lot of stink and little passion.  I do want to remind you again that I didn’t see the entire film.  The fact that it could possibly be better than I’m giving it credit for intrigues me.   And just this year, 2008, a sequel has hit the screens, No Man's Land -- The Rise of Reeker.  You ain't smelled nothing yet.