Wes Craven's supernatural slasher Shocker was meant to launch a franchise in the vein of A Nightmare on Elm Street, but those plans didn't succeed. The late, great Craven is a surefire member of the horror genre hall of fame, and would be even if he had only directed seminal slasher classics A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream. But Craven's filmography is quite varied overall, and while not everything he made is great, even the worst entries usually qualify as interesting misfires.
One movie a lot of people would put in that latter category is 1989's Shocker, although it certainly has amassed its share of fans over the years, somewhat due to retroactive recognition from fans of The X-Files. Mitch "Walter Skinner" Pileggi stars in Shocker as brutal serial killer Horace Pinker, a TV repairman by day who spends his nights slaughtering entire families. When police lieutenant Don Parker gets too close to catching him, Pinker responds by murdering HIS family, minus foster son Jonathan (Peter Berg), who wasn't home at the time.
Pinker is eventually caught due to an odd psychic connection he shares with Jonathan, but not before killing the young man's girlfriend Alison. Pinker is executed via the electric chair, but thanks to a deal he made with Satan, he lives on as electricity, traveling through power lines, and able to possess people. If that seems like a lot to absorb, keep in mind that's only about half the film's plot. Craven set out to do a lot of world building with Shocker, in the hopes that it would be his next hit horror franchise. Sadly, he backed the wrong slasher.
Shocker Was Meant to Launch a Franchise - Why It Didn't
One of the first things fans tend to notice when watching Shocker is that the tone, look, and feel of the film greatly resembles the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. This was no accident. After creating Freddy Krueger, Wes Craven had been basically pushed out by New Line Cinema boss Bob Shaye, due to creative differences. While he did contribute some ideas to A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Craven wasn't fully back in control of Freddy until helming his 1994 meta reboot New Nightmare.
In the meantime, Craven wanted to get his own piece of the darkly comic slasher franchise pie, which is why Horace Pinker cracks jokes, and there are other moments of bizarre humor. Where things really feel like Elm Street is in the dream sequences that see Jonathan witness Pinker's crimes, and later allow him to commune with Alison's ghost. Craven clearly put a lot of work into Shocker's script, but in the end, critics hated the film, as did most horror fans of the time, leading to a lukewarm box office reception.
Shocker's critical and commercial failure killed Craven's plans for the next slasher franchise dead, although it's worth exploring why that happened. For starters, there was just way too much plot stuffed into Shocker, leading to Pinker not even being executed and supernaturally resurrected until the half-way point of the film. Secondly, the tone is all over the place, with Pinker's kills being extremely vicious and blood-soaked, and almost all the attempts at jokes feeling forced and falling flat. Perhaps if Shocker was completely serious or completely silly, it would work. In the end, it remains a creative, but highly flawed effort.