Impulse (1984)

Part of me doesn't know how to rate this, because I saw it years and years ago, but it's one of those films which left a vivid impression on me. "Impulse" is the story of a town who due to an unknown chemical in the milk supply(the townspeople never know) begin to lose all impulse control.What follows are increasingly disturbing scenes, which flow into each other, blankly, as a sheriff opens fire on young delinquents, a mother watches nonchalantly as her children light one of her friends on fire, doctors turn off life support, and sexual laws and norms completely breakdown. It's a bleak film, where impulses like curiosity, the desire to save others, are spare, and sex and violence all but absolute by the films apocalyptic end, involving a government cleansing with a crop duster. One of those odd sci-fi films you watch late at night and confuse for a dream till see the box in the video one day. Be interesting to take a second look.

A fantastic idea, about losing control over animal impulses, is bogged down in simplistic thought and poorly directed scenes. The film starts out creepy, but becomes muddled in scene after stilted scene of sex and violence. There is a distinct dirty vibe in the movie that never seems to go anywhere. A man pees on a car, the sheriff tries to shoot some delinquent kids, and a mother stands by as her kids attempt to burn one of her friends. It is all so vile. Only one character, Tim Matheson, has any other kinds of impulses such as curiosity. There are a few effective scenes such as Hume Cronyn's doctor playfully cutting off the oxygen to one of his patients and Tim Matheson introducing tiny Tim Matheson to a young girl. Meg Tilly is completely wasted in a boring role as is Bill Paxton. It is really Tim Matheson's movie and he is not bad. The main problem of the movie is lazy direction that kills every scene before it has a chance to live.

I saw this movie back in 1984, we first started watching "This Is Spinal Tap" and after 5 minutes we were ready to fall asleep. So we went instead to see this movie. If you have any conspiracy theory's going around in your head, you will want to watch this one. The question you have to ask yourself when watching this movie are: Do you think the government would be capable of doing this? (In my opinion there is no doubt that they could) But I don't want to give out too much information as that would be a spoiler and I think that you should view the movie for yourself.But, just to let you know, we still talk about this movie 20 years later and trying to explain it to people is not the easiest thing in the world to do.

The idea of a town going slowly mad is not an original one, but it's cleverly handled in this disturbing little film, which eschews gruesome horror in favour of an accumulation of telling detail. Well worth viewing.