Pulse | |
---|---|
![]() Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Paul Golding |
Written by | Paul Golding |
Produced by | Patricia A. Stallone |
Starring | Cliff De Young Roxanne Hart Joey Lawrence Matthew Lawrence Charles Tyner |
Cinematography | Peter Lyons Collister |
Edited by | Gib Jaffe |
Music by | Jay Ferguson |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 95 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $6 million [1] |
Box office | $40,397 [2] |
Pulse is a 1988 American science-fiction horror film written and directed by Paul Golding, drawing influence from previous works of science fiction and horror, and starring Cliff De Young, Roxanne Hart, Joseph Lawrence, Matthew Lawrence, and Charles Tyner. The film's title refers to a highly aggressive and intelligent pulse of electricity that terrorizes the occupants of a suburban house in Los Angeles, California. The film was produced through Columbia Pictures and the Aspen Film Society and distributed by Columbia Pictures. The titular Pulse and its accompanying elements were designed by Cinema Research Corporation.
A highly aggressive, paranormal intelligence thriving within the electrical grid system of Los Angeles, California is moving from house to house. It terrorizes the occupants by taking control of the appliances, killing them or causing them to wreck the house in an effort to destroy it. Once this has been accomplished, it travels along the power lines to the next house, and the terror restarts. Having thus wrecked one household in a quiet, suburban neighborhood, the pulse finds itself in the home of a boy's divorced father whom he is visiting. It gradually takes control of everything, injuring the stepmother, and trapping father and son, who must fight their way out.
The film was promoted by the taglines "It traps you in your house...then pulls the plug," "In every second of every day, it improves our lives. And in a flash, it can end them," and also "the ultimate shocker."
The film was produced by Aspen Film Society, a film production company founded by Steve Martin and William E. McEuen. [3]
Paul Golding got the idea for Pulse from two unrelated events with the first being when the screenwriter Caleb Deschanel spent the night in his house and told him that at night he'd been listening to “the sounds of the house…..the house was alive and it was taking care of me“, and the second was when he heard about a computer that reprogrammed itself . [1]
Golding wrote the screenplay under the working titles of House, Tract and Currents in 1981 but couldn't get it made until Columbia eventually took it on seven years later. [1] David Morse and Tommy Lee Jones both auditioned for the role of Bill but lost to Cliff De Young. [1] Production was completed a day early and $1 million under its $6 million budget, and as a result were able to afford Oxford Scientific Films to do many of the special effects. [1]
David V. Picker, the head of Paramount Pictures at the time, was impressed by the film and intended to position it as a wide release, but changes in studio management curtailed this and it was only released theatrically in Texas and Oklahoma, while it went straight to video elsewhere. [1] The movie did however become a success on video. [1]
Pulse has a 64% approval rating at the online review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 14 reviews. [4]
The musical score for Pulse was composed by Jay Ferguson, who also composed "Pictures of You" from the soundtrack to The Terminator, and the film score to A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child .
The Amazing Colossal Man is a 1957 American black-and-white science fiction film from American International Pictures. Produced and directed by Bert I. Gordon, it stars Glenn Langan, Cathy Downs, William Hudson, and Larry Thor. It is an uncredited adaptation of Homer Eon Flint's 1928 short science fiction novel The Nth Man. AIP theatrically released it as a double feature with Cat Girl.
Lake Placid is a 1999 American comedy horror film directed by Steve Miner and written by David E. Kelley. It is the first installment in the Lake Placid film series and stars Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Brendan Gleeson, Oliver Platt, Betty White, Meredith Salenger, and Mariska Hargitay. In the film, a giant crocodile terrorizes the fictional location of Black Lake, Maine, while a dysfunctional group of police and scientists attempt to capture or kill the beast.
Project X is a 1987 American science fiction drama film produced by Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker, directed by Jonathan Kaplan, and starring Matthew Broderick and Helen Hunt. The plot revolves around a USAF Airman (Broderick) and a graduate student (Hunt) who are assigned to care for chimpanzees used in a secret Air Force project.
Silver Bullet is a 1985 American horror film based on the 1983 Stephen King novella Cycle of the Werewolf. It stars Gary Busey, Everett McGill, and Corey Haim, with Megan Follows, Terry O'Quinn, Lawrence Tierney, Bill Smitrovich, Kent Broadhurst, David Hart, and James Gammon in supporting roles. The film is directed by Dan Attias, written by King and produced by Martha De Laurentiis.
Ben is a 1972 American horror film directed by Phil Karlson and starring Lee Montgomery, Joseph Campanella, and Arthur O'Connell. It is a sequel to the film Willard (1971). The film follows a lonely boy named Danny Garrison who befriends Willard's former pet rat named Ben. Ben becomes the boy's best friend, protecting him from bullying and keeping his spirits up in the face of a heart condition. However, Ben forms an army of deadly rodents while the police attempt to control it.
The Old Dark House is a 1932 American pre-Code comedy horror film directed by James Whale. Based on the 1927 novel Benighted by J.B. Priestley, the film features an ensemble cast that includes Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Stuart, Charles Laughton, Lilian Bond, Ernest Thesiger, Raymond Massey and Eva Moore. Set in interwar Wales, the film follows five travellers who seek shelter from a violent storm in the decaying country house home of the eccentric Femm family.
The Car is a 1977 American supernatural horror film directed by Elliot Silverstein and written by Michael Butler, Dennis Shryack and Lane Slate. The film stars James Brolin, Kathleen Lloyd, John Marley and Ronny Cox, along with real-life sisters Kim and Kyle Richards. It tells the story of a black unmanned self-driving mysterious car that goes on a murderous rampage, terrorizing the residents of a small town.
Motel Hell is a 1980 American comedy horror film directed by Kevin Connor and starring Rory Calhoun, Nancy Parsons, and Nina Axelrod. The plot follows farmer, butcher, motel manager, and meat entrepreneur Vincent Smith, who traps travelers and harvests them for his human sausages.
The Man They Could Not Hang is a 1939 American horror film directed by Nick Grinde from a screenplay by Karl Brown. It stars Boris Karloff as Dr. Henryk Savaard, a scientist who develops a procedure for bringing the dead back to life. When he is arrested and sentenced to be executed for murdering a young medical student who volunteered to be killed to test the procedure, Savaard vows retribution on the individuals responsible. Alongside Karloff, the film's cast includes Lorna Gray, Robert Wilcox, and Roger Pryor.
The Amityville haunting is a modern folk story based on the true crimes of Ronald DeFeo Jr. On November 13, 1974, DeFeo shot and killed six members of his family at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, on the south shore of Long Island. He was convicted of second-degree murder in November 1975. In December 1975, George and Kathy Lutz and their three children moved into the house. After 28 days, the Lutzes left the house, claiming to have been terrorized by paranormal phenomena while living there. The house became the subject of numerous investigations by paranormal researchers, journalists, and skeptics, including Ed and Lorraine Warren. These events served as the historical basis for Jay Anson's 1977 novel The Amityville Horror, which was followed by a number of sequels and was adapted into a film of the same name in 1979. Since then, many films have been produced that draw explicitly, to a greater or lesser extent, from these historical and literary sources. As Amityville is a real town and the stories of DeFeo and the Lutzes are historical, there can be no proprietary relationship to the underlying story elements associated with the Amityville haunting. As a result of this, there has been no restriction on the exploitation of the story by film producers, which is the reason that most of these films share no continuity, were produced by different companies, and tell widely varying stories.
Evil Toons is a 1992 American live-action/adult animated comedy horror B movie written and directed by Fred Olen Ray. The film is a light spoof of traditional haunted-house films.
Rec is a 2007 Spanish found footage horror film co-written and directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. The film stars Manuela Velasco as a reporter who, with her cameraman, accompany a group of firefighters on an emergency call to an apartment building to discover an infection spreading inside, with the building being sealed up and all occupants ordered to follow a strict quarantine.
Oh, God! You Devil is a 1984 American comedy film starring George Burns, Ted Wass, Ron Silver and Roxanne Hart. Directed by Paul Bogart and produced by Robert M. Sherman, the screenplay is by Andrew Bergman. Oh, God! You Devil is the third and final installment in the Oh, God! film series, following Oh, God! (1977) and Oh, God! Book II (1980), based on the 1971 novel of the same title by Avery Corman.
Leprechaun is an American horror comedy film series consisting of eight slasher films. Beginning with Leprechaun (1993), the series centers on a malevolent and murderous leprechaun named Lubdan who, when his gold is taken from him, resorts to any means necessary to reclaim it. None of the films in the series are presented in chronological order. Warwick Davis plays the title role in every film except for the 2014 film Leprechaun: Origins, and the 2018 film Leprechaun Returns, in which the character is respectively portrayed by Dylan Postl and Linden Porco. On St. Patrick's Day, all Leprechaun films are played on Syfy.
Grown Ups is a 2010 American comedy film directed by Dennis Dugan, written by Adam Sandler and Fred Wolf, produced by Sandler and Jack Giarraputo, and starring Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, Rob Schneider, Salma Hayek, Maria Bello, and Maya Rudolph. The film tells a story of five lifelong friends who won their junior high school basketball championship in 1978. They reunite three decades later for a 4th of July weekend after learning about the sudden death of their basketball coach.
Gone is a 2012 American thriller film written by Allison Burnett, directed by Heitor Dhalia, and starring Amanda Seyfried. The film earned negative reviews from critics and was a box office disappointment.
Fury of the Congo (1951) is the sixth Jungle Jim film produced by Columbia Pictures. It features Johnny Weissmuller in his sixth performance as the protagonist adventurer Jungle Jim. The film was directed by William Berke and written by Carroll Young.
Animal is a 2014 American horror thriller film directed by Brett Simmons and starring Elizabeth Gillies, Keke Palmer, Jeremy Sumpter, Eve, and Joey Lauren Adams. The film follows a group of friends that find themselves terrorized by a bloodthirsty beast. The film was released in a limited release and through video on demand on June 17, 2014.
The Blackout is a 2009 American science fiction horror film directed by Robert David Sanders and starring Barbara Streifel Sanders, Joseph Dunn, Ian Malcolm, Michael Caruso, Caroline Rich, Anthony Tedesco, and James Martinez. The film is about the occupants of The Ravenwood as they try to escape the building during a citywide blackout, all the while being stalked by terrifying creatures.
Crowhaven Farm is a 1970 American made-for-television supernatural horror film and folk horror film directed by Walter Grauman and starring Hope Lange, Paul Burke and John Carradine. It originally aired as the ABC Movie of the Week on November 24, 1970.