Progeny (1998)

Too many fans seem to be blown away

Great Film overall

A lot of fun.

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

Respected horror personalities Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon team up as director and writer for this straight to video science fiction/horror flick. Unlike most straight to video output, it's a thoroughly entertaining film, which accomplishes what it sets out to do: horrify the audience. Although there are many detractors of this film, I found it to be one of the best horror films I've seen this year. The pace may be slow, yet it's steady, gradually building from a few nervous thrills to all out visceral horror at the end. Most of the terror in the film comes from the inevitability of the ending, and you just know that it's all going to end in tears. The film mainly deals with psychological horror instead of physical, but there are some gory moments in there too to balance things up.While I found the film to be very good, there are a few flaws with it, but these are not enough to ruin things. Some of the computer effects are on the low budget and fake side, especially when Sherry is levitated into the alien space ship. Also, the film veers close into unintentional comedy with the sight of Vosloo being floated through the air, naked. The plot is hardly original, and the acting from the leads is nothing to write home about, but despite these flaws, the film still works.The cast is varied and interesting. Jillian McWhirter gives a realistic if not particularly sympathetic portrayal of a woman having a nervous breakdown. Arnold Vosloo is tough and likable as the male lead, he's not an exceptionally talented actor, but I thought he was good in the role. The supporting cast is excellent. Lindsay Crouse is the ally, while Brad Dourif turns in yet another interesting, twitchy performance as the UFOlogist. Finally, Wilford Brimley plays a small but vitally important role as a kindly doctor.This film is definitely not for the squeamish, with an alien birth and a Caesarean section performed in full view of the unblinking camera. There is also a strong amount of nudity, which is somewhat off-putting. However there are some excellent alien designs in the film, thanks to the reliable Screaming Mad George. I loved the bit where we saw what the 'real' aliens looked like, and not just the fake 'grey' alien image that we commonly see. PROGENY is a good little film, something that doesn't claim to achieve much, but provokes some real tension and numbing terror as the clock ticks away and the final showdown approaches. Unpretentious viewing fun.

I had high expectations for this movie, but unfortunately it didn't live up to it.The storyline was OK, not "Oh my god, I've never seen anything like this before"-OK, but just plain OK, so if you are into these type of movies, you might like it, even though there are much better movies available in this genre.The poor acting really annoyed me and is solely responsible for my 5 out of 10 score. Unlike other movies I've seen starring Arnold Vosloo, he didn't impress me at all in Progeny: it seemed like instead of distributing the Valium to his patients, he probably ate it as candy himself... And casting Wilford Brimley as a doctor: who's idea was that??? With all due respect for the man and his acting qualities, playing a doctor just doesn't match his physique!Jillian McWhirter on the other hand did a great job!So was I glad that I saw this movie? Yes, but only because it adds another movie to my watch-list and because now I know for sure that I won't watch it a second time, except maybe to see Jillian McWirthers beautiful body again ;)

***SPOILERS*** Trying to have a baby for over a year Dr. Craig Burton, Arnld Vosloo,gets the good news from his wife Sherry, Jillian McWhirter, that she finally got pregnant and the two look forward to the blessed event. It's later when Craig starts to have a number of self-doubt if he's in fact the father and if the baby that Sherry is carrying is in fact human at all. Something about Sherry's conception and pregnancy just doesn't seem to be right to him.Getting a test on his sperm count it reveals that it's impossible for Craig to have children and later Sherry, with under two months into her pregnancy, begins to suffer violent spasms as if the baby is about to be born. Craig is also a bit worried about what happened when the union between him and Sherry happened that resulted in her pregnancy September 20. It was on that very evening that he had strange experience of being paralyzed and Sherry abducted with two hours of his life completely erased from his memory.One of the many alien abduction movies that were inspired by books like the very first reported alien abduction story of Barney and Betty Hill in 1961 in the ground-breaking book "Incident at Exeter: The Interrupted Journey" and followed by scores of other books on the subject like "Commmunion" and "Missing Time". The movie "Progeny" takes the story-line of what happened to both Craig and Sherry Burton in what seems like a sitting on the fence direction where you don't know for sure if what Craig, and later Sherry, believe happened to them really happened? We get to see in a number of flashbacks with Sherry being abducted and lifted into the air and on to an alien spaceship.It's there where she's examined and impregnated by the alien's, who look like a bunch newborn tadpoles. Every time were about to have some proof if this really happened and if Sherry's baby is an alien we get sidetracked with the evidence evaporating into space, due what were lead to believe alien interference and manipulation. In one case the only person who could confirm Sherry's unusual condition Dr. David Wetherly, Wilford Brilmey, suddenly goes into cardiac arrest and eventually dies on the operating table never regaining consciousness!Craig starts to go mad as he feels that Sherry's life is in danger and in desperation gets in touch with alien abduction specialist Dr. Bert Clavell (Brad Dourif) who you would think would be the the person, with the big build up that he gets in the movie, who finally brings Sherry back to normal but the exact opposite happens.Before Dr. Calvell could really do anything Craig takes charge of what to do with Sherry and just uses Dr. Carvell as a gofer to get a camcorder and videotape an operation he has planned, an abortion, for Sherry. Dr. Calvell quickly realizes that Craig is crazy as he commandeers the comatose Sherry out of her hospital room and takes over the operation unit in the hospital. It's there that Craig preforms one of the sickest and most gruesome hatched or cut-up jobs that you'll ever see in a movie. With blood gushing all over the place even splattering the lens of Dr. Carvell's camcorder with him nauseated at what's going on he just about had enough when Craig, who's by now completely off his rocker. Craig now decides to flat-line Sherry, or put Sherry into some kind of simulated death trace, in order to get the alien fetus to leave her womb! That has the now sick scared and disgusted Dr. Carvell, at what the crazy Craig is doing, runs out of the operating room and out of the movie in a total state of panic.Craig's insane plan to save Sherry turns into a disaster with her dying on the operation table and him ending up in jail for the rest of his life in her, what else could you call it, murder. Were given another surprise at the end of the movie with Craig doing a disappearing act in his prison cell; was he also abducted by the aliens to be experimented on like his late wife Sherry was?The movie never makes the point if Sherry was indeed abducted and impregnated by aliens. After a while all that what were given to believe about her experience with aliens from outer space seems to be just a figment of her husbands wild and insane imagination. With the mind-blowing cut-up job that Craig did on her at the end of the movie you just lost all sympathy for him and felt like everyone else in the film that he deserves everything he gets by getting the book thrown at him in a court of law.

As a big fan of Brian Yuzna and the majority of the movies he's been involved in, I guessed I'd enjoy Progeny. I didn't, although in ways it has it's moments. However, if you're expecting something of the calibre of Society or Beyond ReAnimator, you could be in for a shock. In a way this is similar to Society, being a tale of a seemingly ordinary world with a horrific supernatural underbelly...but that's where it ends.I'm not covering for Yuzna when I say that the fault doesn't really lie with him, as bad direction is bad direction, but the direction is sound. What trips the movie up is both script and acting. Stuart Gordon (ReAnimator, Dagon) has written an intelligent script, but one that doesn't really work with Yuzna's style of direction, leaving him paused on actors delivering lengthy dialogue when really he wants to throw that camera around and get down with his bad self. This matter makes the movie awkward enough as it is, but there's worse.If the movie had been made with great actors, the movie would have probably held it's own. Unfortunately this is very far from the case. The acting is wooden, shockingly so even for a low-budget B feature. The inexplicably successful and renowned Arnold Vosloo wrecks every damn line with near pinpoint precision, handing in one of the worst performances I've seen in a long while. The man manages to turn every line of well considered dialogue into the kind of ham-line you'll be throwing drunkenly at mates next time you're in the pub. 'Hey Bob! GOOD GOD, AM I GOING MAD! WHAT'S...COME OVER ME! NOOOO!' In fact I may try that one myself next weekend. The last minute addition of genre veteran (and personal favourite) Brad Dourif, instead of enriching the film like it should, almost seems to hand Dourif the movie in a last ditch effort to stop Vosloo from hamming, but quite frankly Dourif looks deeply uncomfortable (possibly waiting for the next assault of bad acting) next to Vosloo, and even an eccentric turn from him fails to resuscitate the film.If the acting was better, this movie would have been okay. Hell, it might have been pretty enjoyable, but the lack of character makes the movie a soulless affair, and makes the horror element seem tacked on and tasteless instead of an organic part of the film. I found the alien torture/rape scenes a little difficult to stomach already, but the fact that the characters were so lacking made them seem gratuitous as well as unpleasant, leaving a nasty taste in the mouth.So, if you really like Sci-fi and don't have a problem with bad acting, pedestrian pacing and a really garish, nasty rape scene, Progeny will probably be your cup of tea. But since I do, I'm probably never going to watch it again. Once was enough. On the plus side, this is the only Sci-Fi movie Yuzna ever bothered to make, so he obviously wasn't really that pleased with it himself.