{Movie Review} All Vaccines Have Side Effects: Side Effects May Vary and the Return of Underground Horror Cinema

“Just flush it and let’s get out of here.”

“I was worried this was going to be anti vaxxer nonsense,” writes Letterboxd user DrPoop88. It’s a legitimate concern, in a world where a movie like Dashcam got regular festival play, and one that I suppose it’s possible to walk out of the theater still experiencing, depending on how you read the movie, though Letterboxd user se13an probably hits closer to home when calling Side Effects May Vary “a parody of anti-vaxxer paranoia.”

It is, after all, a little difficult to take too seriously the politics of any movie where a vaccine might make you explode, where a loathsome character wears a trucker hat that reads “I [heart] beer & titties” while watching mud wrestling, where we find out what happens to the Incredible Melting Man’s penis, and where the monster is beaten with a dildo wielded by a foul-mouthed Brinke Stevens playing peeping Tom.

“It’s too absurd to be taken seriously,” director/editor/cinematographer/many-other-things-er J. R. Bookwalter said during the Q&A that followed the roadshow screening I attended at Screenland Armour. When I asked about the decision to frame the story around COVID-19, he replied that he was riffing on the monster movies of the ‘40s and ‘50s, but “instead of atomic hysteria it’s pandemic hysteria.”

Indeed, if Side Effects May Vary is overtly critical of anything, it’s probably the incessant and inescapable drumbeat of commerce, and the way that drumbeat sets the cadence of so many of our narratives around any given subject, pandemic included. This is driven home by the fake commercial that plays at the end of the film, and by the closing credits song, which is “All Hail the Corporation” by Wall of Voodoo’s Andy Prieboy. (That the only YouTube video I could find of the song lists it sardonically as “The Republican National Anthem” probably tells you all that you need to know about it, as well.)

The fact that I opened this review with a quote from someone named “DrPoop88” is probably more telling than any hand-wringing about the film’s messaging ever could be, however. Ultimately, Side Effects May Vary is less interested in politics than it is in delightfully juvenile humor and gloppy special effects. An unofficial remake of The Incredible Melting Man, it picks up shots and lines from that film wholesale. It is also something else that is all-but unheard of in this day and age: a truly independent film, made for a miniscule budget of around $22,000.

For those who are unfamiliar, J. R. Bookwalter is something of a celebrity among a certain segment of the population. Perhaps most famous for 1989’s The Dead Next Door, on which none other than Sam Raimi was basically a stealth executive producer, the rest of Bookwalter’s CV includes films with titles like Robot Ninja, Galaxy of the Dinosaurs, Zombie Cop, Humanoids from Atlantis, and a couple of Witchhouse sequels from Full Moon. I probably don’t have to tell you that those are, pretty much without fail, low-budget, independent, often underground features.

Like a lot of indie filmmakers, Bookwalter has worked in just about every aspect of film production and distribution, and while Side Effects May Vary sees him trading in his old video camera for an iPhone, it could otherwise have been a picture that shambled onto video store shelves twenty years ago. Indeed, twenty years (give or take) is how long it’s been since the last time Bookwalter directed a film, and his return to the director’s chair brought along several of his old collaborators, including the aforementioned Brinke Stevens, as well as writer and star of Side Effects, James L. Edwards.

Since I don’t know my way around the ‘90s shot-on-video horror scene as well as some others, I’ll let another SOV director, Brewce Longo, take over, from his own Letterboxd review: “It felt like the band getting back together reuniting lots of 90s classic underground horror names,” Longo writes. “There’s something very charming about seeing this group together again. It reminded me of seeing a Black Sabbath reunion concert.”

More than the broad humor, the gooey body melt effects, or any political message that it may or may not advance, that’s the real appeal of a movie like Side Effects May Vary – a return to a kind of independent cinema that only barely exists anymore, and only does so on the fringes. Usually, this is the kind of thing you would have to stumble upon on Tubi or elsewhere, so seeing it in a theater, in a roadshow situation like this, is a rare treat in a world where even “indie” features are studio-backed affairs costing many, many times more to make, often for much, much less payoff.

On that note, I’ll leave you with one more Letterboxd review, this time from user pkazee: “No lie, I experienced more joy watching SIDE EFFECTS MAY VARY, than I did DUNE PART 2.”