Plastic Nightmare | Cinema Sojourns
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During the early years of the VHS boom movie lovers were suddenly able to access hundreds of films they had always wanted to see but weren’t available on TV or had never played movie houses in their town. Many were titles they had only read or heard about from fellow movie buffs. So it is no wonder that VHS became the dominant format in the home entertainment industry for awhile. I certainly credit VHS with introducing me to countless B-movies, forgotten Hollywood pictures and genre films but also introducing me to movies from outside the U.S., especially those from Canada. Among some of my favorites are Circle of Power aka Brainwash aka Naked Weekend (1981), a disturbing drama about a corporate retreat weekend for employees led by a dominatrix-like motivator (Yvette Mimieux); Siege aka Self Defense (1983), in which a small group of people are trapped in an apartment and attacked by crazed vigilantes; Family Viewing (1987), Atom Egoyan’s hypnotic drama about alienation; and Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988), Guy Maddin’s bizarre debut feature. These were all surprising revelations to me but the one that still haunts me is Pin aka Pin: A Plastic Nightmare (1988).
Directed by Sandor Stern, this low-budget indie production was often lumped in with other horror films during the VHS craze but the film doesn’t really fit easily into any specific genre. On the surface, Pin unfolds like a psychological thriller but it could be more accurately described as a perverse portrait of a truly dysfunctional family. How screwed up are they?
Dr. Linden (Terry O’Quinn) has some very strange ideas about sex education for his children which warps them for life in PIN (1988), directed by Sandor Stern.
For starters, the head of the Linden household is a family doctor (Terry O’Quinn) who keeps an anatomical dummy with transparent skin in his office for educational purposes. Nothing weird about that….except he gives it a name – Pin – along with a personality and a voice – his own – in the manner of a ventriloquist and his dummy. (Pin looks a lot like the famous Visible Man models created by the Renwal Toy Corporation in the late 1950s and could be ordered from ads in the back pages of comic books and fanzines like Famous Monsters of Filmland).
Dr. Linden uses Pin as a sex education instructor for his two children, Leon and Ursula. The doctor is so good at throwing his voice that his kids actually think Pin is real. The dummy is not easy on the eyes but it has a calm, soothing voice and personality which is less abrasive the kids’ strict, authoritarian father and their anal-retentive mother (Bronwen Mantel), who is obsessed with cleanliness and household rules (she wraps most of the chairs and couches in plastic covers). In one of the more memorable dialogue exchanges between the brother and sister, Ursula wonders if her parents have sex before joking, “I bet before they do it mother washes his penis with Spic and Span.”
The Linden children witness the doctor’s nurse having sex with a plastic model as they hide behind a screen in PIN (1988), an offbeat indie thriller from Canada.
Flash forward several years later and Leon and Ursula are teenagers in high school where they stand apart from the more normal students. Leon (David Hewlett) is teased and bullied by other boys in his class because of his neatnik appearance, repressed manner and overly protective concern for his sister (Cynthia Preston). Ursula has her own issues due to a lack of love and affection at home so she tries to find it by having sex with any interested male classmate. She gets a reputation as the local slut but panics when she learns she is pregnant. The situation is soon resolved by Dr. Linden giving his daughter an abortion but it also forces him to confront his woefully misguided efforts in using Pin as a sex ed instructor and surrogate parent.
Ursula (Cynthia Preston) and Leon (David Hewlett) are scarred by their upbringing in the psychological thriller PIN (1988).
[Spoiler alert] The film ventures into even darker territory when Dr. Linden and his wife exit the narrative and Leon and Ursula are left on their own…except for Pin who functions as the third family member. It becomes increasingly evident to Ursula that Leon is retreating more and more into a fantasy world as he alternates between being himself and an alter ego who gives Pin a new voice and personality. When Ursula tries to exert some freedom and independence from Leon by getting a job at the local library and dating Stan (John Pyper-Ferguson), a former high school acquaintance, he becomes more sinister in his behavior.
The paperback cover for the novel PIN
Most of Pin takes place in the doctor’s office and the Linden home with only a handful of scenes taking place in the outside world such as the high school scenes or Ursula’s job at the library. But the hermetically sealed world of Leon and Ursula is so suffocating and...