Meridian review
An interesting curse with a much less interesting resolution.
Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.
Meridian
Directed by Charles Band
Written by Dennis Paoli
Starring Sherilyn Fenn, Malcolm Jamieson, Hilary Mason, Charlie Spradling, Alex Daniels, Phil Fondacaro and Isabella Celani
Meridian Review
This is our first Full Moon Feature to come from the actual production company Full Moon Features! Well…kind of. At the time of Meridian’s release, it was known as Full Moon Productions. It went on to be called Full Moon Entertainment, Full Moon Studios, Full Moon Pictures…and for the last 22 years Full Moon Features. Whatever you call it…it’s the Charles Band production company responsible for series like Puppet Master, Dollman, Subspecies, Trancers and, of course, Evil Bong. The studio was still new when Band’s werewolf feature Meridian was released in 1990. Only the original Puppet Master preceded it. Band directed a screenplay by Dennis Paoli who had previously written From Beyond and co-written Re-Animator for Stuart Gordon. It stars Sherilyn Fenn…and released the same week that Twin Peaks (also starring Fenn) took the country by storm.
Meridian has gone by many names. Meridian: Kiss of the Beast is what Amazon Prime Video lists it as to this day. Tubi goes with the short version we’ve used here. You also may have found it under the titles The Ravaging or Phantoms…though I’ve never actually seen it listed under the latter. The Ravaging is probably the most fitting title of the bunch. Meridian is a silly title that tells you nothing about the movie whatsoever. The Ravaging, unfortunately, does.
The story here isn’t as conventional a werewolf tale as we usually look at when the full moon is out…but it does have an interesting idea on the subject. In truth, it takes a full thirty minutes to find out that Meridian even is a werewolf movie. One just…shows up mid coitus giving us the rare but not unheard of werewolf-human sex scene. How we get to that point is…well…pretty awful.
Catherine (Fenn) returns to Italy to live in an inherited castle. Her friend Gina (Charlie Spradling) comes by for a quick visit amidst restoring a painting that will turn out to be very connected to Cat and her castle. The pair take in a magic show and invite the troop back to the castle for dinner. The charismatic leader of the group Lawrence (Malcolm Jamieson) drugs the girls and rapes Gina. He first undresses Catherine and then his twin brother Oliver (also Jamieson) takes his place with her. The movie posits that Oliver is the “good” twin…even though we are introduced to him taking sexual advantage of a drugged woman. That should give you some context for how seedy Meridian is in its first act. We’re supposed to root for this guy. We’re supposed to be into his relationship with Cat moving forward.
If you can get to a place where that works for you…Meridian has a love story at its center. Oliver is the man who transforms into a werewolf during his rape of Cat. I don’t know any other way to write that. I wasn’t rooting for him after this introduction regardless of how sorry he claimed to be. Cat forgives him though. She wakes up unsure of what happened until Oliver comes clean. He’s fallen in love with her and…despite this opening…she falls in love with him. It’s a messy way to get to a necessary plot point regarding the nature of Oliver’s curse. He can only be killed by someone who loves him. That’s right…we’ve got ourselves a good old fashioned suicidal werewolf!
There’s a big subplot with a ghost that Cat sees in the castle and how she ties to the history of the place…and it’s all perfectly fine. There’s a neat twist in that story that works pretty well. But this is a Full Moon Feature so we’re going to concentrate on the werewolf story. Oliver’s werewolf form looks surprisingly decent for a low-budget B-movie like Meridian. We don’t see a real transformation until late (the first switch is an editing trick). That late transformation is done practically with make-up and cuts and it’s also fairly decent. There isn’t a lot of werewolf carnage…this is a weird love story after all. It basically turns into Beauty and the Beast after a certain point. You know…if Belle got it on with the prince in his Beast form.
The real highlight of Meridian’s wolf story is the curse itself. Or, at least, the rules of it. Oliver wants to die…and he needs someone who loves him to kill him and free his soul. That’s good stuff. That has the makings of a solid werewolf curse. Unfortunately, Meridian doesn’t follow through with any of it. Instead of a heartbreaking (though deserved…he’s a rapist) ending for Oliver…it’s his brother Lawrence that dies at the hands of his own brother. This ends the curse because, Oliver tells Cat, they were both cursed and now he’s free. It was at this point that my eyes rolled so far back into my head that I had to wait for them to remerge before writing this Full Moon Feature.
I can’t express what a cop-out this ending is. A doomed romance with a rapist saved by a technicality with no build. If Oliver was so desperate to end his curse why didn’t he just kill his brother centuries ago? Instead, he accompanied him on date rape weekends, and we’re supposed to be happy that he gets to live on without his curse? I beg your pardon if that doesn’t work for me. Merdian had one good idea, took a bad road to get there…and then drove it off track altogether. If you’re into seedy B-movies you’d find on Skinemax at 2am…Meridian is oddly watchable. If you are looking for a good werewolf story…find one that doesn’t drop the ball this hard.
Scare Value
I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t something oddly watchable about Meridian…in that late 80s/early 90s late night Cinemax kind of way. That shouldn’t be confused with calling it a good movie. It’s sluggish and visually too dark too often. It also walks away from its most compelling idea with a frustrating cop-out resolution. But it does have a semi-interesting werewolf curse until then. It’s better than nothing.
2/5
Meridian Link
Also streaming for free on the Full Moon Features YouTube channel
