The Invisible Maniac (1990).
With a Vinegar Syndrome subscription, I get a few discs hitting my doorstep every month. Sometimes, there will be a gem that I’ve never heard of, some rarity rescued from VHS obscurity for my discovery, a disc that will live on my shelf until I eventually die and pass it down to my son. The Invisible Maniac…is not one of those discs.
From the back of the box, it reads:
The film centers around a summer school physics class, which is apparently the only summer school class offered, because we never see another student in the facility. The class’s teacher died while choking on a beef sandwich, but fear not - their new physics teacher, Kevin Smith - no, not that Kevin Smith - is here to help them make the grade. Except this isn’t actually Kevin Smith, it’s a guy named Kevin Dornwinkle, a disgraced scientist who is bad at creating aliases (I kind of wished his made-up name was Kevin Worndinkle) and recently escaped from an insane asylum that he was placed in for killing four other scientists who made fun of him during a failed experiment demonstration. See, Dornwinkle was sex-shamed as a kid when his mom caught him watching his neighbor undressing with his telescope, so he leaned into science and became an incel who, with a lesser brain would simply be a modern day Call of Duty rage quitter. As luck would have it, he studied hard and developed an invisibility serum.
Obviously this kind of scientific breakthrough could be sold to the government for billions, but instead, Dornwinkle uses it to spy on women in their beds and in the showers, which is good for him because the women in this movie take showers like every fifteen minutes. Most of the film is spent watching these poor actors embarrass themselves. The women are all murdered, of course having their shirts ripped off first, and the men are all forced to fight the air like a shittier version of the bathroom fight in Liar Liar. The acting in this film is beyond atrocious, featuring several scenes that have obvious dialogue flubs that the actors just kind of power through, probably assuming the director, Adam Rifkin, would replace with a different take. Either he didn’t have another take or he just used the best takes available, the latter of which is actually pretty unbelievable. Stephanie Blake, who plays the school’s principal (and only other employee working at the school), is an especially terrible actress.
I didn’t recognize many people from the cast, so I did some digging afterwards. Debra Lamb, who plays one of the disposable females in the film, definitely needs to thank whoever wrote up her IMDB profile. It reads, “Known for portraying a variety of authority figures, Debra has worked with acclaimed directors Kathryn Bigelow, David Lynch, Paul Verhoeven, and the iconic John Hughes.” I was intrigued, as I have seen many films by those people and did not recognize her. Well, she played the uncredited extra of “Pizza Dough Juggling Girl” in Robocop, the uncredited extra of “Roller Skating Bikini Girl” in Planes Trains and Automobiles, the uncredited extra as “Fire Eater at Party” in Wild at Heart, and then the uncredited extra as “Flame Blower at Party” in Point Break. Most of the female actors are porn stars, including the notorious Savannah - credited in this film as Shannon Wilsey - in a role that would reportedly send her spiraling out of control.
Savannah was a pretty well known porn star in the 90’s, but had dreams of playing it straight in Hollywood. At the premiere for this film, every time she delivered lines, it resulted in laughs from the audience. She didn’t know if it was the character they were laughing at or her, and apparently this affected her deeply. She didn’t do many other straight acting jobs and went full bore into porn, becoming one of the original Vivid girls. Wilsey began using drugs and spending large amounts of money, and she reportedly had severe financial troubles despite her substantial income. She also garnered a reputation for arriving late to film shoots, being temperamental and acting like a diva, and sometimes getting drunk or abusing drugs during the film/video shoots. These antics eventually led to Vivid severing its association with her in 1993, and in 1994, she shot herself in the face. Some of her last IMDB credits include Summertime Boobs, Anal Secrets, Hot Holes, and Dixie Dynamite and the All-Star Tit Queens.
As the film came to a close and the credits rolled, my wife by my side, fully embarrassed by the abomination I just forced her to watch with me, there were a few lines that caught our eyes. As part of the listed crew, we’ve got credits for Invisible Research, by Steven Bing and Peter Berg. Yes, that Peter Berg, who went from decent character actor and Friday Night Lights creator to Mark Wahlberg’s personal director. I don’t know that much about Mr. Berg, but I can say with confidence his specialty isn’t invisibility, unless you’re trying to find a good review of his latest Marky Mark flop, Spenser Confidential. There was an Invisibility Coordinator, done by Creed producer Charles Winkler, two Invisibility Consultants, Dr. Brad Wyman PHD, who was a producer on films like Freeway and Barb Wire, and Dr. Benjamin Shaffer. Something tells me neither of them were doctors. There are also credits for invisible Authenticity and Invisible Supervisors. When you add in the crew credit for the “Highest Paid Member on the Set”, Fire Marshall Wayne Tanner, I think the credits were funnier than the film itself, and it sounds like Rifkin set some of his friends up with some free money for fake jobs. Rifkin would go on to direct the Charlie Sheen film The Chase and 1998’s Detroit Rock City, which is probably his biggest film.
On the good side, the film has a bunch of nice boobs and butts, someone gets killed by a Subway five-dollar foot-long, and it has an awesome theme song written specifically for the movie, but that’s about it. It’s not as fun as the premise could provide, the kills are mostly bloodless and lame, and the titular invisible maniac is more annoying than he is menacing.
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