‘They came, they thawed, they conquered…’
The Chilling is a 1989 American science fiction horror film directed by Deland Nuse (Return of the Boogeyman) and Jack A. Sunseri (producer of The Dead Pit) from a screenplay the latter co-wrote with actor Guy Michel Messenger.
The film stars Linda Blair (Repossessed; Hell Night; The Exorcist and The Heretic), Dan Haggerty (Axe Giant; Elves; Terror Night) and Troy Donahue (Shock ‘Em Dead; Blood Nasty; Seizure!). It is also known as Gamma 693 and The Thawing.
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Plot:
Halloween night: Dr Miller (Troy Donahue) runs the Universal Cryogenics Laboratory in Kansas City. He is secretly harvesting his patients’ organs and selling them on the black market.
Meanwhile, his secretary, Mary (Linda Blair), and the latest client grieving Joseph Davenport (Jack De Rieux), whose wife and bank robber son are being cared for by Dr Miller, are developing a fledgeling relationship. Unfortunately, an electrical storm brings all the lab’s deep-frozen corpses back to life and they run amok…
Reviews:
“The acting and production values of The Chilling are on par with such celebrated classics as Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare, Future-Kill and Troll 2 … After her initial success, Blair pretty much dedicated her life to doing nothing but low-budget, crappy horror movies and The Chilling is just one more in a long line of them.” Adventures in Poor Taste!
“It’s not entertaining. Everything is too dark, the budget was probably below $20,000 and one doctor had a giant sword in his office. You think all of that would add up to be a perfect recipe for a movie so bad it’s good, but no. Outside of a few funny Dan Haggerty moments, the entire movie was pretty tiresome.” Happyotter
“The film is belabored and obvious, but its not everyday you see Grizzly Adams fend off a horde of zombies with a forklift … Though they don’t really do anything interesting, the cryonoids do look sharp with their glowing white eyes, wearing their sleek, TV dinner foil suits.” Peter Dendle, The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia
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“Aside from looking like space zombies the makeup wasn’t very convincing and was just another tacky element in a cheap movie. The acting is almost all bad, and the script is lazy, with the story taking some implausible leaps for convenience’s sake, and I don’t just mean the cryogenic related stuff. A few unintentional laughs are to be had, but otherwise, there’s not much to this lacklustre effort.” Digital Retribution
Choice dialogue:
Sergeant Vince Marlow: Die you green bag of snot!
Filming locations:
Kansas City, Missouri
Lafayette, Oakland and Walnut Creek, California
Trailer:
