Communion (Philippe Mora, 1989)

Gawd bless Christopher Walken. He'll approach projects which are basically mountains of manure with such goggle-eyed relish that you can't help feeling more indulgent towards whatever hapless bungle his presence has suckered you into watching. Communion is, in this respect, one of the most seminal works in his portfolio.
Walken plays Whitley Strieber, a real-life novelist of slight renown who wrote the story based on his memories of alien abduction in the mid-'80s. Gradually his suppressed memories emerge in a succession of increasingly hilarious scenes, culminating in his dwarf-like abductors actually boogieing around him while he cracks up talking to himself. Add a stupendously inappropriate guitar soundtrack from Eric Clapton, dialogue that doesn't so much limp along as walk repeatedly into cupboard doors and to cap it all, as Strieber's wife, the presence of perhaps the most plank-like actress to have graced '80s cinema, Lindsay Crouse, and you get damn close to a classic of terrible cinema. It's particularly hard not to snigger, recalling Walken's ass-fixated cameo in Pulp Fiction, when he pretends to be anguished about rectal probes. The truth is up there!

2/10