MY CALL: This begins charmingly bad, but ends up perhaps a bit wildly, or even exhausting and annoyingly bad… which can also be really “fun bad” if you’re in the right mood. If this is for you, I think you know who you are. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Vagrant: Things like The Dentist 1-2 (1996, 1998) and Dr. Giggles (1992) come to mind.
Immediately after purchasing his fixer-upper first house, young businessman Graham (Bill Paxton; Frailty, Aliens, Near Dark, Mortuary) walks in on a wheezing vagrant who has somehow wandered into his kitchen. Perpetually sounding his presence with some bodily function, our vagrant (Marshall Bell; Tales from the Crypt, Virus, A Nightmare on Elm Street, part 2) is covered in sores and scars, and utterly terrifies Graham.
Obsessed with keeping this gross vagrant off his property, yuppy Graham financially leverages himself beyond his means for a gated fence and security system. His girlfriend Edie (Mitzi Kapture; House II) makes things worse by bleeding his credit cards to redecorate his humble abode, and defending the hungry homeless man. So as Graham’s stress mounts to madness, his finances are collapsing in this hobo-infested money pit.
Director Chris Walas (a special effects guy who directed The Fly II) comes from a special effects background, and this is the strongest suit of the movie. This lower budget flick does well on Bell’s wounds and disfigurement. His swollen scarred hand, burnt face and dead eye make him an unnerving presence. So when he behaves like a rabid Muppet, it comically fits very well. But the cartoonishness is not limited to Marshall Bell’s performance or even Paxton’s paranoid reactions. Graham’s relationship with his boss and interactions with homicide detective Lt. Barfuss (Michael Ironside; Prom Night II, Still/Born, Extraterrestrial, Scanners, Turbo Kid) are likewise wacky. Leaning into the surreal, Graham’s sexual nightmare with the vagrant is just bizarre.
This vagrant even begins to deliberately terrorize Graham. Continually tortured by this vagrant who keeps sneaking into his home, Graham is being driven mad. He finds the contents of his refrigerator hanging from the ceiling, all of the doors in his house removed, and a local murder victim’s severed fingers in his basement. Eventually, we even find severed body parts in his fridge. I was constantly wondering if these were Graham’s stress-induced delusions, or if the vagrant was actually doing these highly elaborate things to sabotage his life.
The comical tone, budget and execution comes off like a long episode of Tales from the Crypt (1989-1996) or, again, something of a cartoon. The highlight was when someone was stabbed with a chair—like, with all the legs of the chair. There’s also a “death by cactus.” And like the zany deaths and hobo antics, the plot takes a few really weird turns.
It’s not great, never reaching the comic relief of The Dentist 1-2 (1996, 1998), to which I would most closely compare The Vagrant. But it would be a very worthy Bad Movie Tuesday for those delighting in silly bad movie fare.