site's consensus reads: "With an intriguing enough premise and horror legend Wes Craven on writer-director duty, the real Shocker here is just how lame the end results turned out to be". Later Wes Craven said: “I’d like to redo Shocker just to get the special effects right because we had a real special effects disaster on the film. The guy who was doing all the visual effects kind of flamed out, had a nervous breakdown because he was attempting more than he could actually do. When he told us towards the end of the movie that not a single one of the special effects was actually working, he was working on a new technique, my son’s job specifically became just to find all the negative. It was all around town in unmarked boxes and under people’s editing [benches]. It was a nightmare itself. We pulled every favor in town to get all those special effects done very quickly, and some of them are pretty sketchy.” Metacritic scored Shocker 51 out of 100, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Home media The film was released on DVD by Universal Studios in 1999. It was subsequently re-released by the studio in 2007 as a double feature, alongside Craven's The People Under the Stairs. The film's first Blu-ray edition was released by Shout! Factory on September 8, 2015. Literature Shocker received a novelization written by Randall Boyll in 1990. Music Original musical contributions included songs by Alice Cooper (who would later play Freddy Krueger's abusive foster father, Mr. Underwood, in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare'') and Megadeth, who covered Alice Cooper's 1973 hit "No More Mr. Nice Guy", among others. The movie's title song was written by Jean Beauvoir and Desmond Child and recorded by The Dudes of Wrath, a supergroup composed of Paul Stanley of Kiss and Desmond Child, both on vocals, Vivian Campbell and Guy Mann-Dude on guitars, Whitesnake's Rudy Sarzo on bass guitar, and Mötley Crüe's Tommy Lee on drums. The band also included backing vocals by Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony and Kane Roberts. The soundtrack was released on Capitol/SBK Records in 1989. References External links 1989 films 1989 horror films 1989 independent films 1980s slasher films American slasher films American independent films American serial killer films American supernatural horror films Carolco Pictures films Films about capital punishment Films about television Films directed by Wes Craven Films set in Ohio