Dermatological Demons: Transformations (1988)

My dear readers, while I have warmed to the pleasures of shared domestic life, I still recall with great fondness the independence that bachelorhood once afforded me. In these untamed days I could stomp about as I pleased, wearing my bed-slippers well into the afternoon and smoking in whichever room suited me. On some particularly barbaric occasions, I even used my empty drinking glasses as ashtrays. Back then I could have scarcely imagined that I would eventually surrender such liberties to the decorous expectations of cohabitation. These new rules of comportment were not instinctual by any means but I eventually learned not to bring in-progress vivisections to the dinner table and to ensure that my toiletries are not just scattered about the place.

A celibate from a planet of violent criminals shares his thoughts on romance

I imagine Wolfgang “Wolf” Shadduck (Rex Smith) would would be similarly shocked to hear that he, too, would relinquish his solitude. Wolf is a classic loner, pulling intergalactic duty as a one-man transportation operation. He has nothing to keep him company in the dark yawning chasm of space but a bottle of unspecified sprits, a friendly video chat with some of his terrestrial chums and visions of making love to a deformed monstrosity. The latter has something of a detrimental effect on the man’s piloting and he loses interest in his surroundings long enough to crash into Hephaestos IV, a planet solely inhabited by a penal colony. It is in the infirmary of this galactic penitentiary that he first encounters Miranda (Lisa Langlois), the daughter of a convict. Miranda’s lineage has resulted in a lifetime of servitude and perhaps feeling starved of romantic prospects on a planet of criminally-inclined miners, she finds herself on a hurried path to love with Wolf.

Despite being attached to his unchaperoned existence, Wolf quickly sees that Miranda isn’t such a bad sort either and the two of them would be all too happy to pursue a deeper expression of their affection were it not for a growing patch of boils that turn Wolf into a promiscuous killing machine. Wolf’s unfortunate condition is revealed to be a virulent strain of sexually transmitted evil and while this fantastical contagion might be contained in a traditional correctional environment, this particular penal colony comes equipped with a bar and a host of “working girls”. The virus tears through the already morally scant ranks and soon threatens to spoil more than just Wolf and Miranda’s budding romance. Fortunately, their unconsummated affair may be the very thing that offsets evil’s dermatological designs, as a practitioner of space Catholicism informs them that Miranda’s hastily declared love for Wolf is the only safeguard against a full-blown demonic pandemic.

Though I suspect the reading public may think me rather calloused for making horror the center of my journalistic endeavors, the truth of the matter is that I am, at heart, a rather hopeless romantic and it gives me great pleasure to see so touching a film about the literally transformative powers of love. Some viewers may question the decision to focus so extensively on boil-infested fornication with prostitutes in a movie where earnest affection is the primary subject and I will admit there is some limit to the appeal of watching a man with a deteriorating skin condition thrusting purposefully into a variety of partners. But I would also argue that Transformations wades through all this grotesquerie only to deepen the impact of the film’s climax, a powerful testament to how sincere devotion and access to a flamethrower can conquer any strain of evil.

Transformations runs 84 minutes and is rated R.