The Johnsons

By

Rudolf Van Den berg 

My friend Heider Turnarossa suggested that I should start writing about more obscure cult films. Since the heat refuses to abate, why not? The Johnsons was released in 1992 and is that rarest of animals, a Dutch horror film. Dutch Directors have produced some very interesting horror films, De Lift and Amsterdamned by Dick Maas, The Vanishing by George Sluizer, and one of my favorites The Fourth Man by Paul Verhoeven. Despite all of these wonderful products the Dutch film community has a very poor few of locally produced horror. Few directors therefore are able to really grow as horror director. The Dutch have a dark sense of humor that is well suited for horror films. However these impulses towards darkness are directing towards the traditional Dutch genres of melodramas, period films, and surrealistic comedies. When this sense of darkness is channeled into making a film like The Johnsons the results are far from perfect, but a lot of fun.

The film tells of Xagandix a demonic fetus in a crystal womb(yes really) from Suriname(a former Dutch colony in South America) trying to be reborn in The Netherlands in order to bring about the end of the world. Dutch icon Monique van de Ven(Turkish Delight, Amsterdamned) stars as Victoria a photographer. Her daughter Emalee has been suffering from recurring dreams in which bald children covered in blood are coming to capture her. Kenneth Herdigein plays Professor Keller an expert on Suriname who is recruited by the government to help investigate the link between his research and a group of psychopaths being held by the government. When the psychopaths escape from jail they come after Emalee in order to return Xagandix, and destroy the world. The film was written by future SVA professor Roy Frumkes and like his über-offensive Street Trash, this film has a lot of tone shifts, subplots, and un-explained ideas.

What you get from watching this film is seeing what happens when you filter a genre from one film culture through the eyes of another. The template the filmmakers used is based upon horror movies of the 1980s like American Werewolf in London and Re-Animator. This means that the film features some over the top gore, but also a large amount of bad-jokes and one-liners.  It’s from this attempt at comedy that some of the film’s biggest problems emerge. The character of Professor Keller has a father meant to be comic relief but is just offensive and annoying. The father is a ladies’ man despite his advancing age, which according to the filmmakers is funniest joke in history. There are also multiple culture clash jokes since the father grew up in Suriname. One of the other recurring gags is multiple characters saying HOLY SHIT or other profanity in English not Dutch. There are scenes of comedy that might be unintended. Midway through the film Emalee experiences her first period. Mother and Daughter embrace, and the movie becomes that video they showed all the girls in 6^th grade after the boys had left the room.

This movie is really a cult hit waiting to be rediscovered. The version I watched was the old Anchor Bay dvd from 1999. The subtitles were fine, but this film really needs to be cleaned up. There are a lot of scenes which are too bright, and many in which all the blacks have muddied together. If you are able to watch this film it’s either from this dvd or a torrent of it. Somebody should really restore this. Synapse, Blue Underground, Criterion, I’m looking at you guys. This film might not make a lot of sense, but it is a lot of fun.

Shawn Barron

07/03/2012