REVIEW: Meridian (1990)

- By Allan Lear

Way, way back in the mists of time, there was a month called May. It was a good month, as months go; it was before everyone fell out over Brexit and before they dug up Maggie Thatcher and nailed her to the chair in 10 Downing Street (“she’s not dead, she’s pining for the Falklands!”), the weather wasn’t too damp and Muhammed Ali was still hanging in there, keeping the reaper at bay.

Back then, when I was young and green and had only written two reviews for you all, I looked at a little film calling itself The Haunting of Alice D. That film was set in a brothel and its attitude to sex was a bit weird, and before I got into that I made a few comments about how I didn’t want to be banging on all the time about women’s issues because I enjoy horror films and I like topless women and I don’t want to be an enormous killjoy about these things, and I would only raise the issue if I thought something went beyond the bounds of the usual fast-and-loose rules that the horror genre plays by. I wouldn’t be talking about how slasher movies kill women the moment they lose their virginity (which always seemed a bit Biblical anyway) or why there isn’t as much gratuitous male nudity as female in the horror genre. Not that the last one needs much explanation anyway – female nudity is just better. Obvs.

But since then I’ve looked at The Butcher, which compared the language of the pickup artist to that of the serial killer; DickRipper, about a murderess who goes round mutilating men’s genitals; Flytrap, about a female alien seducing a human to breed an Earth-native hybrid; Dark Angel: the Ascent, in which a doctor is praised for seducing his female patients; The Price of Bones, which is about anorexia nervosa in adolescent women; and Meat, which is about marginally-consensual BDSM in a walk-in refrigerator.

It’s getting to the point where I’m really starting to regret having been Geoffrey Boycott in a previous life.

One of these days, I promise you faithfully, we’ll sit down to a lovely gory horror-comedy together, open a bottle of half-decent red wine, and shoot the shit MST3K-style while latex body parts and B-movie one-liners flow over us like a refreshing hot shower after a cold December skyburst. There’ll be no dodgy sexual attitudes, no worryingly predatory scripting, no female heroines written by men who don’t get out enough to meet women, and no more non-consensual sexual violence. Who knows? Maybe it’ll even be today…

Meridian is a film about date rape.

Sorry. Better luck next time.

An American scion of Italian nobility goes back to the ancestral homestead. In the village near her family pile she witnesses a marvellous travelling show and is entranced by the magician-slash-ringmaster who runs the company. Delighted and enthralled by the collection of oddments who make up the sideshow, she invites them all back to her castle for a slap-up feast. The magician is very gracious and reeks of olde-worlde courtesy, but then his evil dwarf sidekick spikes the punch and before you know it she’s flat on her back in a medicated fugue while the showman has his filthy way with her.

The one-line pitch for Meridian would be Dracula meets Beauty and the Beast. Our salacious showman is an immortal of sorts, cursed by some antique thaumaturge or other to transform into a beast when the female sex is around. As is traditional, only the touch of true love can save him from this curse, which one would imagine would be tricky to obtain when his first instinct on meeting a woman is to drug her and penetrate her unlawfully.

It’s annoying, really. Meridian isn’t badly written. The dialogue is a trifle flowery, but then this is hardly a hyperrealist film; if the writer was aiming for the feel of an Edwardian fairy tale – and bearing in mind that the Americans have no tradition of panto – then it doesn’t seem nearly as risible. The part of the magician is demanding, since it requires playing both the magician himself and his evil twin brother, and Malcolm Jamieson makes a good fist of it, altering expression and carriage and vocal rhythm sufficiently, and with sufficient consistency, that you always know who is whom. He also looks a bit like a young Robert Powell, which probably doesn’t hurt if you like that kind of thing. Strangely, though, he doesn’t play the showman’s bestial alter ego, so they get a separate actor in for that who looks nothing like a young Robert Powell and then put him in not quite enough makeup to hide the substitution.

Sherilyn Fenn does all right as the Italo-American prodigal, although she needs to remember to carry an onion in her top pocket if a scene demands that she cry. And the major supporting role, that of the delusional old housekeeper, is played sympathetically and with quiet skill by Hilary Mason, a prolific television actress here handling the transfer to film with no seeming difficulty.

So in the main, Meridian is a competent enough piece of fluff. In the majority, it’s like a Point Horror novel written with the Twilight audience in mind, bearing greatly as it does on the power of love to overcome or disrupt the power of the supernatural. But just once in a little while, it would be nice to see a female character who’s having sex with someone for no other reason than because it seems like a good idea at the time. Think Linda Hamilton in Terminator, not Linda Blair in The Exorcist with that goddamn crucifix.

By the way, if you’re interested to know why this film is called Meridian, then so am I. Maybe we should start an online petition.

- By Allan Lear