Shocker(1989)

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

SHORT VERSION:
The spirit of Alison eventually informs Jonathan that, since Pinker has become pure electricity, he is bound by the laws of the real world. After Pinker integrates himself into the realm of television, Jonathan comes up with a plan to trap him there for good.

He first has his football teammates agree to go to the local power station, access the central unit, and destroy it at midnight in order to disable all power in the city, then he asks a news reporter and his cameraman to come to his foster family’s home and set up their TV camera in the bedroom where Pinker murdered his foster mother and sister earlier in the film. Once they do, he explains to the reporter that he wants him to go live at five minutes to midnight, and if he does, he will find the guy responsible for the recent murders and bring him right here. He then returns to his house, and later, Pinker comes into his house through his TV and fights him. Using Alison’s necklace (which is powered by her spirit and is able to keep Pinker at bay), Jonathan sends Pinker fleeing back into the TV realm, and then he uses the necklace’s power to enter the realm himself and chase after him.

Jonathan and Pinker duke it out across several TV programs, and along the way, Jonathan exits the realm and takes a TV remote control from a random family’s living room before going back in. He then uses the remote to switch to the live broadcast in the aforementioned bedroom, and Jonathan eventually gets the better of Pinker there just before his teammates cut the power. Pinker tries to flee through the TV in the room, but Jonathan pulls the plug on it before he can. Jonathan ends up escaping back to the real world by putting Alison’s necklace around the TV camera lens and then jumping into the camera, and he comes out through the TV back in his house. His escape destroys both his TV and the camera, and then the power outage reaches the bedroom, leaving Pinker trapped where he is. Pinker’s voice comes in through the busted TV, growling for Jonathan to come back in here before vowing to get revenge on him one day, but Jonathan just hits the Power button on the remote control to silence both the TV and Pinker.

Jonathan exits his house and soon walks off for elsewhere.

LONG VERSION:
One night, Jonathan (Peter Berg) faces off with Pinker (Mitch Pileggi) – who is in possession of his football coach, Carter (Sam Scarber) – in the bedroom of his house (sometime after Pinker has killed the assistant coach, Pac Man [Ted Raimi], in the house), but before Pinker can stab him with a knife, the spirit of Alison (Camille Cooper) shows up to protect him. She and Jonathan plead with Cooper to will Pinker out of him and not let him take his soul, and Cooper regains control of his body for a moment and tells them that he can’t do it because Pinker is too strong for him. After Cooper tells Jonathan to get Pinker, Pinker makes him fatally stab himself in the chest. Pinker then emerges from his body, but just as he moves towards Jonathan to possess him, Alison gets in his way and shoots a ray of heavenly light at him to get him to back off, and he collapses in the living room. She then informs Jonathan that she has something very important to tell him and he must listen carefully, but what she tells him is left unknown to the viewer.

Around this time, Jonathan’s foster father Lt. Parker (Michael Murphy) shows up at the house to talk to him about how six witnesses saw him being chased through a public park by (a Pinker-possessed) Officer Pastori (Vincent Guastaferro) earlier in the day, and he breaks the door open just after both Alison and Pinker disappear from view. He tells Jonathan about the eyewitness reports as well as the fact that there is an APB out on him and that Pastori is dead, but he also mentions how peculiar Pastori’s death looks because his body didn’t have a mark on it. He also tells Jonathan that, despite how the situation looks for him, he just can’t see him as a killer, especially since Pastori’s body is now just a husk like Pinker’s was after he was executed. Just then, Parker takes notice of Cooper’s and Pac-Man’s bodies in the bedroom, and thinking that Jonathan murdered them along with Pastori, he has him placed under arrest by other cops that he had called to the house for backup. After Jonathan is put into Parker’s car, he watches Parker walk out of the house and notices that he is limping, and he quickly realizes that Pinker has taken possession of him. Suddenly, his friend and football teammate Rhino (Richard Brooks) – who believes Jonathan’s stories about Pinker’s ghost and what he has been doing – appears and breaks one of the car’s windows to get Jonathan out, and Jonathan runs off while Parker/Pinker gets in the car and chases after him. Jonathan ends up retreating all the way to the top of a TV station’s transmission tower, and as Parker/Pinker closes in on him up there, he yells for Parker to fight Pinker and expel him from his body. Parker soon tricks Pinker into thinking that he has a bad heart by faking a heart attack, then falling over the edge of the tower’s satellite dish. He keeps himself from falling all the way to the ground by grabbing the frame of the dish’s feed horn, and soon, Pinker leaves his body. Although Jonathan manages to pull Parker back up to safety, Pinker takes this opportunity to use the dish’s signal to escape them and transmit himself into the realm of television.

Jonathan is arrested, but while he is in jail, another family is killed in their home in the same fashion as the other recent victims, and a grisly threat is left for him at the scene that is signed by Pinker. This, combined with a testimony that Parker makes in favor of him as well as Cooper’s and Pac-Man’s deaths being ruled a murder-suicide, causes all of Jonathan’s charges to get dropped. The day he is released, Jonathan summons Rhino and the other guys on their football team over to his house, and he goes over a plan with them that he thinks will put an end to Pinker. After he gets a promise from them that they will do their part of the plan at midnight tonight, the team departs. Jonathan then contacts a reporter for the WPIN 8 network and tells him that he will deliver the guy responsible for last night’s “copycat” killings to him, but only if he brings himself and his cameraman over to the bedroom in Parker’s house where Pinker murdered Parker’s wife and daughter earlier in the film and do a live broadcast there starting at five minutes to midnight. Though skeptical of all of this, the reporter decides to take him up on his offer, and he and his cameraman drive over to Parker’s house, meet Jonathan there, and set up their camera equipment in the bedroom. Jonathan eventually leaves the house, telling the reporter that he is going out to find the killer and bring him right here.

Rhino and the other guys break into the Maryville power station and find and open the central unit, intending to break it at midnight and knock out all power in the city. Meanwhile, Pinker switches on Jonathan’s TV in his bedroom while he is sleeping and having a dream about Alison, then steps into the room so he can kill him in this vulnerable state. Thankfully, Alison’s spirit – along with the spirits of Parker’s wife and daughter, Cooper, Pac-Man, and Pinker’s other victims – force Jonathan to wake up to prevent this, but not before Alison assures him that she will always be with him. While sitting in his massage chair and collecting his thoughts, Jonathan notices that he is wearing Alison’s heart necklace, which is powered by her spirit and is able to keep Pinker at bay (and which he thought he had lost when Pinker took from him and threw it into a lake during their chase through the park). Just then, Pinker attacks him via his chair, having taken possession of it, and he soon gets out of it and electrically tortures him. Eventually, Jonathan takes his necklace off and holds it in front of Pinker, halting his assault and making him flee back into the TV realm. Jonathan jumps in after him, thanks to the power of the necklace, and he and Pinker duke it out across several TV programs, including a news broadcast at WPIN 8 while it is announcing the reports of their appearances on said programs. Jonathan and Pinker’s fight soon takes them out of the TV realm and into a random family’s living room, and Jonathan grabs their remote control before he and Pinker head back into the TV.

Moments later, as Pinker is about to stab Jonathan with a knife that he took from one of the TV shows, Jonathan uses the remote control to change a few of the channels until he comes across the reporter’s TV camera broadcasting live from the bedroom in Parker’s house. They resume their battle there until the remote falls out of Jonathan’s hand, and Pinker manages to overwhelm Jonathan and knock him flat, causing Alison’s necklace to get separated from him. The reporter and his cameraman run out of the house after the cameraman focuses the camera on both Pinker and the active TV in the room, and then Pinker walks up to Jonathan and kicks aside Alison’s necklace so he can’t use it on him. However, before he can finish him off, Jonathan grabs the TV remote and presses its freeze-frame button to immobilize him.

Pinker demands to know what he is doing, and Jonathan basically replies that, since he has made himself part of the TV, he is now bound by its rules (which is what Alison’s spirit had told him about; because Pinker is pure electricity, he is bound by the laws of the real world). He then uses the remote’s buttons to throw Pinker around the room and make him hit himself repeatedly as a means of getting revenge on behalf of all of his victims, then he freeze-frames him again before picking up the knife and threatening him with it. Pinker challenges him to use it on him, but Jonathan throws the knife out of the window and tells Pinker that that just isn’t his style. He then informs Pinker that Rhino will be shutting down the Maryville power station at midnight, three minutes hence, and when that happens, the town’s power will go out, the TV in this room will go out, and anybody in this room that the camera is filming is going to go right with it, and he intends to jump through the TV set back into the real world just before it shuts off and leave Pinker trapped here.

Pinker then informs him that his watch is broken because midnight has actually just arrived, and Rhino disables the power as planned. This causes Pinker to regain his mobility earlier than Jonathan anticipated, and Pinker immediately attacks him. After dazing Jonathan with a hard punch to the face, Pinker attempts to escape through the TV, but Jonathan is able to come to his senses and pull the plug on it in the nick of time, resulting in Pinker smashing his head into the device. Just as Pinker is about to attack him again, Jonathan grabs hold of Alison’s necklace, and he gets the better of Pinker and punches him while holding the necklace, knocking him down onto the bed and disorienting him. Jonathan then gets the idea of putting the necklace around the TV camera lens and then jumping through that, and he escapes the TV realm just before Pinker can grab him and comes out through the TV back in his house. This act destroys both his TV and the news camera, and then the power outage reaches the bedroom, leaving Pinker with nowhere to go. Pinker’s voice comes in through Jonathan’s TV and growls for him to come back in here and face him before vowing to get revenge on him one day, but Jonathan presses the Power button on the remote to silence both the TV and Pinker.

Jonathan steps outside just as all of the neighbors are coming out to question each other about the citywide blackout, and they marvel at the starlit sky. As Jonathan looks at the sky himself, he asks Alison’s spirit if she sees the stars, and she replies that they are absolutely beautiful. He then wanders off down the street for elsewhere.