PopHorror Let's Get Scared
1. Gore-phanage: Adoption Day (1987)
Directed by Charles E. Sellier, Jr.
Written by Larry Cohen
Starring: Stuart Danger, Diana Rigg, Stephanie Goof, Jim Swish
Finally, the pièce de ré·sis·tance of this Dead Sea Scroll of long lost slashers is Charles E. Sellier, Jr.’s inexplicable return to the slasher genre after the controversy of Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984). Stranger still is the fact that, after the controversy of his first slasher that frightened so many children, this is the movie he decided to make. This is a movie where a clan of unadopted children murder hopeful, soon-to-be parents. This movie is a 90 minute middle finger to the censors in sixteen millimeter. Gorephange: Adoption Day might be the best movie you’ve never seen.
Like I said, the plot of Gorephange: Adoption Day follows a happy childless couple (again, but this time played by Stuart Danger and Diana Rigg, so at least there’s that) on their way to a secluded orphanage for an annual adoption event. Immediately, they discuss their lost child and their desire to adopt a daughter for a second chance. After mingling with the crowd of couples wishing to adopt, they decide to adopt a girl who is one of two fraternal twins. This is a mistake, as we soon discover the boy twin (played by the chilling and talented Jim Swish before he became a Mickey’s Clubhouse member and way before he got into porn) is wildly disturbed. He vows (in the cutest little voice) to stop the adoption and have his “weevenge.”
The couple make for the door with their new daughter only to discover that they’ve been snowed in and are forced to wait out the blizzard (which looks suspiciously like potato flakes and white confetti – you’d think a director of the best Christmas slasher could handle convincing snow).
The children who were not adopted take this as an opportunity to get their revenge on the parents that abandoned them. Led by Swish, the mob of children grab croquet mallets, tennis rackets, lawn darts, and every other toy that got banned in the nineties and go to work. That work, in a merciless spree of Rube Goldberg level set pieces, lasts the lion’s share of the film, and thank God it does. Where else would I get to see a man killed by a giant lollipop to the neck?
It then becomes a standoff between the surviving couple, the orphanage’s Mother Superior (is…is that Helen Mirren?), and the vengeful children. The parents who came to save a child with adoption now have to murder a dozen of them or be murdered themselves.
Guys, this is what it’s all about. This is the long, loud battle cry of a slasher genre that isn’t going anywhere and wants blood, guts, and your ticket money.
Gorephanage: Adoption Day is a disjointed symphony of violence that I could watch for the rest of my life, if only I could find my bootleg VHS…wherever it is.
So there you have it, these are the movies the world decided were too good, too bad, too bloody, or too nude for you to see. To be honest, they’re too much to even be real, so they’re not. Don’t forget – this is April Fool’s Day. None of these movies exist, but today, in your dreams and mine, they do. And they’re awesome.
