Everyone knows the Drew Barrymore story, of course. Born into the Barrymore
showbiz dynasty she rocketed to fame as Gertie in E.T. in 1982 and then
went spectacularly off the rails, becoming addicted to booze and drugs
at an age when most girls still think Coke is a fizzy drink.
Her return to the celebrity A-list in the mid-Nineties, thanks to sweet
romantic comedies like The Wedding Singer and a canny cameo in Wes Craven’s
smash horror, Scream, finally put her back on the road to redemption
and with the Charlie’s Angels movies coming out of her Flower Films
production company, she’s now firmly back in place as one of Hollywood’s
most sought after stars.
But where’s the fun in that? If we rewind to the period just before
her phoenix-like rebirth, we find Doppelganger, a gory and sleazy horror
romp that – should you be so inclined – can be seen as a
meta-textual commentary on her struggle to overcome her bad girl image.
Or you could just see it as a really stupid psycho-schlocker loaded with
tits and gore. Probably the second one.
Drew stars as Holly Gooding, a damaged young filly who is convinced she’s
being haunted by her evil twin - or doppelganger. She blames this sinister
double for the murder of her father, for which her younger brother Fred
was blamed and subsequently committed to a mental institution. She and
her mother leave LA for New York and then, when her mother is stabbed
to bits by someone looking spookily like Holly, she flees back to Los
Angeles and bunks up with struggling writer Patrick.
He’s naturally overjoyed to have such a nubile young roommate,
especially as she seems quite keen on having hot sex on the kitchen floor.
He’s less pleased when she denies it even happened and reveals
that her doppelganger is the one who does the shagging – and murdering – in
her family. Hell, even her shrink from New York says that this doppelganger
is real, she insists. Holly clearly has more baggage than Samsonite.
It turns out that she stands to inherit a lot of money should the rest
of her family snuff it, and as catatonic Fred is the only one left, that
points a finger of suspicion firmly in her direction. Especially when
Fred is stabbed to bits in his hospital bed by someone looking spookily
like Holly.
Spotting a trend? Is Holly a schizo-psycho? A scheming murderess? Or
is she genuinely being haunted by some deadly supernatural double?
For at least three quarters of its running time, Doppelganger manages
to keep you vaguely intrigued by this mystery – helped enormously
by some grisly deaths and frequent nudity from Drew. In the final act,
it spills over from passable thriller into completely insane horror territory
as we discover that the murders are not the work of a ghostly double,
but the previously-peripheral character of Dr Heller, who dresses up
as Holly (with, yes, a rubber Drew mask) to murder people because he
loves her. Or something. It’s not the most well thought out motive
ever committed to screen, to be honest, and it’s made even more
alarming by the realisation that Patrick presumably shagged the doppelganger,
apparently without realising it was a bloke in a wig.
Things get even weirder when, confronted with this shocking twist, Holly
splits in two. Not metaphorically. Literally. In a remarkably messy display
of special effects, she splits into two slimy walking skeletons, one
of which is presumably Good Holly, the other Evil Holly. Dr Heller, looking
as perplexed as the audience by this point, is promptly tossed out of
the window by the Evil Holly skeleton (which hilariously still talks
with Drew’s voice) and in accordance with the first law of Falling
Out Of Windows In Horror Movies is bloodily impaled on the railing below.
The two gloopy skeletons then merge back together again, restoring Holly
to her original sexiness, right before the traditional just-too-late
movie cops to arrive on the scene.
If it weren’t for the baffling final ten minutes, it’s doubtful
this movie would deserve a mention. Apart from the gratuitous nudity
and occasionally gruesome deaths it’s a mostly unremarkable piece
of low-rent schlock. However, the final plunge into ludicrous and utterly
inexplicable monster movie, coupled with the once-in-a-lifetime chance
to see Drew Barrymore transformed into not one, but two slimy skeletons,
makes this a classic entry in the “what the buggering hell were
they thinking?” files and one that is well worth finding.
Honourable mention: Although it was E.T. that made her a star, Drew actually
made her big screen debut in the trippy Ken Russell oddity, Altered States
(see: William Hurt). She followed Spielberg’s alien tearjerker
with two Stephen King adaptations – the 1984 pyrokinetic thriller
Firestarter in which she played a moppet who could cause things to burst
into flame, and the 1985 horror anthology, Cat’s Eye, in which
she starred as a young girl caught in a battle between a stray moggy
and an evil troll. Those looking for more pre-comeback Barrymore nudity
should seek out Poison Ivy, a wonderfully tasteless erotic thriller in
which she seduces her best friend’s father (played by a predictably
happy Tom Skerrit). Drew also enjoyed a tiny cameo in Waxwork 2 as the
victim of a bloodthirsty vampire.
Need to know: The scene in which Holly’s mother is gruesomely stabbed
carries an extra kick when you know that mummy dearest is played by Drew’s
own mother, Jaid Barrymore. To describe their real life relationship
as volatile would be an understatement, so seeing daughter hack mother
to death in this context makes it rather more disturbing than usual.
This may even be one of the reasons why Drew has disowned the movie -
the other, of course, being that it really is utter shit.
Eagle-eyed film buffs may also enjoy this brief appearance by cult tough
guy Danny Trejo (Spy Kids, Con Air) as a lecherous construction worker
kicked in the nuts by Barrymore. It’s worth noting that the
sticky special effects come courtesy of KNB, now one of Hollywood’s
greatest effects houses, responsible for creating the carnage in Tarantino’s
Kill Bill, Romero’s Land of the Dead and Rodriguez’s Sin
City.
