Popping the Horror Cherry

Tonight I watched The Guardian (1990) for the second time in my life.

I should really get that mole checked out…

The first time I saw it I think I was about eight years old. It was the first horror movie I’d ever seen. I’m not sure how it got picked out at the movie store, I suspect my parents thought it was this:

Maybe just a smidge more family friendly

What I recall of this film, from the hazy memories of childhood are waking in the night being certain there were wolves roaming outside my door, cloaked in mist. I was certain that the woods were hiding trees full of baby souls. When I found it on TV the other night, I was psyched. I recorded it, waiting for a quiet moment to immerse myself in nostalgia. The movie began with opening credits informing me that this was a William Freidkin film. WHAT?! William Friedkin, of The Exorcist fame? That guy’s like my freaking hero, he sure seemed to be influencing my cinematic character. Maybe this movie was better than I recall!

Nope. My fuzzy childhood memories have some semblance of accuracy.

The Guardian is something of a modern fairy tale, an odd, fantastical Hand That Rocks the Cradle. It centers around a couple with a young baby and their brand new English Nanny with her piercing wolfy blue eyes. As the film’s opening prologue (?) explains, throughout history, druids have worshipped trees, even sacrificed lives in their honor. It’s pretty clear right from second one that Camilla, the eerie nanny is an odd duck and is more than likely some sort of tree druid. Naturally.

We get to watch some happy family scenes involving Mom and Dad and giggling baby, Camilla creepily bathing with the baby, unconcerned about being watched by Pop, played by some sort of offspring of Bill Pullman and Bruce Campbell. Camilla takes baby to the woods (where else?) to giggle and fart, or whatever babies do in the woods, and is accosted by a trio of ridiculously animated rapists. These guys might as well have sound effects like boink! and sproing! emanating from them, they are so cartoonish. None the less, Nanny scuttles off with baby, towards her favorite tree, complete with faded baby crying sounds in the air and weird baby faces in the bark. She climbs on up and watches as the tree goes Evil Dead all over them and rapes them right back.

Well, not exactly, but there is some very poorly executed gore and one of the goofy rapists explodes into flames. At least, a straw stuffed dummy wearing his clothes does, anyway.

The Guardian falls flat all over. The acting is mediocre at best, and the most effective acting certainly comes from our villain, though she gets on the nerves pretty quickly. The dialogue is weak and unnatural, Mom tends to be squeaky and ridiculous when she does bother to speak. The effects are downright laughable, I actually, literally laughed out loud. William Friedkin apparently rewrote a good deal of this story, and as much as I support his directing skills on The Exorcist, I hang my head in shame at this festering wound of a film. It’s positively ridiculous, and has so few redeeming qualities.

What would those few redeeming qualities be? There is one glorious scene near the film’s end when the father (Dwier Brown) heads into the foggy, jungley woods with a chainsaw and a look of Ash-like determination. He then promptly sets about slicing and dicing the tree as it writhes and squirms, attacking him with its roots and branches. Blood gushes from the slices in the tree, splattering over the poor guy’s face. The tree gives off distant baby wails into the night.

There is a glorious Evil-Dead-ness about this scene that is hilarious and amazing. Scary? God, no. Not even a little, but it is highly amusing and entirely preposterous.

Ah, seven year old me, you were so afraid that the nanny’s magic wolves would get you and eviscerate you and take you to the land of baby trees. Oh, in the days before The Exorcist, this is what served as scary in the days of my adolescence.I had so much to learn.

 

P.S., Anyone else ever catch the copy of Stephen King’s It in the suitcase, or the radio announcer talking about the band The Triffids? Nice horror nods.