MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK (1993)

I was around 12 years old or so when Bob Balaban’s 1993 film MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK came out in theaters (and then quickly moved to video). I recall watching the trailers and, upon seeing the movie myself, being really enthusiastic about its goofy, lovable vibe. It was also this great gateway horror moment as, at the time, I dug zombies a lot and I loved Ducky in PRETTY IN PINK. It turned out that MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK was a nice cocktail of those two worlds. It was a VHS that I wore to ribbons and, thanks to Kino Lorber, it’s now a Blu-ray that gives me worlds of kooky comfort, occasionally on repeat.

MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK revolves around hopeless romantic, Johnny (Andrew Lowery). He is a sweet and well-meaning teen with a huge crush on the high school love of his life, Missy McCloud (Traci Lind). But our protagonist is invisible to the massively popular McCloud who is too busy dating a very young Matthew Fox to pay any attention to the lovesick Johnny.

In order to win the love of Missy, Johnny stages a robbery at the convenience store where she works. As it always happens, during the staged robbery things get very real and Johnny ends up shot and killed.

Before dying, he does manage to ask her to go to prom with him. Of course, out of kindness, she says yes.

The same logic that drives the resurrection forces behind 1986’s THE WRAITH must be at work here as well. Because, despite there being no rhyme or reason to it, Johnny comes back from the dead (as the title would imply), hellbent on keeping that date to the prom with Missy.

There is a really bizarre sweetness from there on out because Missy is truly into Johnny. She is smitten after he saved her life and, while at first she isn’t exactly sure that he is dead-dead, learns to accept his cadaverous ways.

MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK has a lovely charm to it. It’s sincerely pleasant while also carrying this goofy through line that nails the whole horror-comedy balance, which isn’t always easy to do. I also like that the film takes place out of time—it has this ‘50s doo-wop vibe but placed firmly in a ‘90s aesthetic.

On top of there being plenty of body horror concerning Johnny’s rotting visage, the film also turns to a parable against close-mindedness, practically verging on all out bigotry. The entire town is prejudiced against Johnny and consistently seeks to judge and harass him, culminating in the extreme point of bringing out all of their pitchforks and torches.

The mob is depicted with tongue placed firmly in cheek but there is still the underlying lesson of acceptance…even if that means loving a well-to-do zombie.

I’m a huge fan of the nonchalant playfulness that MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK carries with it. Things feel just outside of reality. There’ll be a moment where the world feels a little too grounded in its depiction of prejudice but it’s not long until a lovely scene where Missy kisses Johnny’s ear leading it to fall off of his head—because he is, indeed, a rotting corpse. But the film approaches those moments with this “aw, shucks” attitude that is really endearing.

Leading that nonchalance and goofiness is Austin Pendleton who plays Johnny’s Doctor. The relationship between these two is solid gold. On one side you have Johnny trying to visit a small town doctor to diagnose and fix him and his decomposing body. On the other hand you have Pendleton playing this aloof and slightly evil doctor who sort of wants to “fix” Johnny…by cutting pieces off of him to study like some sort of suburban mad scientist.

MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK’s director, Bob Balaban, is mostly known from his acting collaborations with Christopher Guest. But it turns out that he is a secret agent horror aficionado: he directed the pilot episode of Tales From the Darkside (the delightful Halloween-based “Trick Or Treat”) and the twisted 1989 Randy Quaid vehicle, PARENTS. These are good indicators of the type of horror that Balaban evokes: creepy but with a dash of the off-kilter.

The bizarre zomcom screenplay is by Dean Lorey who has the sort of writing career I’m going to follow attentively given his work penning JASON GOES TO HELL: THE FINAL FRIDAY, iZombie, and Harley Quinn (the animated series). I mean, it was Dean Lorey who wrote Creighton Duke in JASON GOES TO HELL. Let that sink in: He also wrote the very real truth that is, every time Duke thinks of Jason Voorhees that he simultaneously thinks of “a little girl in a pink dress sticking a hot dog through a donut.” We still don’t know what that means. But, we now know that JASON GOES TO HELL was just misunderstood brilliance. The writing in Harley Quinn is fully evolved Lorey, with outsized absurdity and a dark bend that gleefully delights in the wrong. MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK is a perfect demonstration of all the things to come from Lorey: a special blend of being whip smart and yet silly goose comedy.

Up until very recently, MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK was sort of a “lost-in-limbo” underseen title. It wasn’t well-received by critics or audiences during its initial release. Now that Kino Lorber has put out a Blu-ray, I’m hoping more people check it out. I still feel like it was a victim of ahead-of-its-time-itis. It had big ideas on its decaying mind. Honestly, I believe it succeeded in achieving them, but didn’t succeed in getting folks to show up to watch it. Balaban and Lorey gave us a charming little gem of a horror-comedy with a big old soft, sweet spot…albeit one with a rotting corpse at its center.

I highly recommend everyone heading over to Kino Lorber and ordering a copy. I guarantee a really bizarre, really fun time.