DVD review (region 2)
Directed by Brian Yuzna
Starring Billy Warlock, Connie Danese, Ben Slack, Evan Richards
Release date Out now

Teenager Bill Whitney (Warlock) has the nagging feeling that he’s different to his well-connected parents and sister. After the suspicious death of his sister's ex-boyfriend, Bill discovers the shocking reality behind the society that surrounds him…

Society is such an inventive, gloriously over-the-top shocker that you can easily forgive director Brian Yuzna for never making another decent movie again.

In the film's early scenes Yuzna skilfully builds up an atmosphere of weird paranoia to rival any conspiracy thriller, as Billy begins to question everything and everyone around him. When the truth is finally revealed it’s quite unlike anything ever seen before, even in the ‘body horror’ genre; the final half-hour, which is stuffed full of Screaming Mad George’s bonkers special effects, manages to be disgusting, disturbing and utterly hilarious all the same time.

Society may be sick but it’s never stupid. The film works as a clever satire on the ‘greed is good’ ethos of the 80s, while Yuzna also appears to be sending up the conventions of daytime soap opera – it’s no coincidence that it is Days of Our Lives star Billy Warlock in the main role. Warlock isn’t the greatest actor in the world, but here he brings a sincere, ordinary quality to the role of Bill that seems to fittingly contrast with the grotesque characters elsewhere in the picture.

Witty, surreal and highly original, Society is a minor classic of the decade. Matt McAllister

VERDICT: 8/10
Disgustingly good fun.