Spike

As a parody of B-picture horror, Spike rates highly, or would if it didn’t take itself so seriously. What is missing is a sense of humour, an understanding of Gothic camp and a decent script.

There is nothing wrong with shoestring budgets and ordinary effects, but without imagination they look ridiculous.

“You’ve been living in the forest for seven years,” a pretty girl in an evening dress tells The Porcupine Man. “You must be lonely.”

The dialogue is more horrific than the plot.

Four friends are driving at night through open country in a hot state, probably California. The lesbian driver is in love with the practical girl in the front seat and her brother, a soldier, has brought along his fiancée, the pretty girl in the evening dress. They have a blow out and veer off the road into the bush. One of their tyres has been pierced by a three-pronged spike. As they stagger about in the dark, feeling dizzy and half asleep, the soldier is hauled off by some creature and stabbed in the neck by – yes, you’ve guessed it – another spike. He’s not dead (yet) but gently gurgling.

The creature turns out to be The Porcupine Man, who was at primary school with the pretty girl in the evening dress and has never got over it, which is why he tried to kill the soldier.

“I was there first,” he says. “I loved you first.”

“We were kids,” the pretty girl says. ”You loved me like a stuffed animal.”

It turns out The Porcupine Man, who has spines coming out of his face and body and could have been called Chuck, ran away from the ‘burbs once his deformity became a hindrance to picking up girls.

“I didn’t ask to be a monster,” he whines. “I didn’t ask to be here.”

Well, he is and the soldier’s in trouble and the lesbians are fighting and the pretty girl in the evening dress is being wooed by The Porcupine Man.

“Marry me," he says.

“What’s for dinner?” she asks.

It gets worse. Believe me.