The Pulse, Shocker, Ghost in the Machine, The Darkest Hour
The Pulse (1988)
An intelligent pulse of electricity moves from house to house. It's really a smart grid.
It terrorizes households by taking control of their appliances. The Internet of things run amok. The pulse kills some people but others wreck their house fighting it. Then the pulse travels along the power lines to the next house, and the horror repeats itself.
Shocker (1989)
Pinker is arrested after a fight with Jonathan, and sentenced to die in the electric chair. He's executed, but has given his soul to the devil. Pinker comes back as an energy source, what we might call distributed energy.
Pinker takes over people's bodies and continues committing murders. Jonathan figures out how to bring Pinker back to the real world and cut off his power.
Ghost in the Machine (1993)
Karl, a murderer, obtains Terry's address. While driving to her house in a fierce electrical storm, his car runs off the road, landing upside down in a cemetery. While Karl is undergoing a CAT scan at the hospital, a surge of lightning courses through the building.
Karl's mind is transformed into electrical energy. He uses the electric grid, undoubtedly under market-based rates, as well as computer networks to continue the killing spree.
The Darkest Hour (2011)
A blackout strikes Moscow. Small effervescent clouds descend from the sky, in a weather event worse than Hurricane Sandy.
Alien invaders soak up all electricity and vaporize everybody they find. They are invisible, except when attacking, and make no sound. But the heroes cleverly determine how the aliens operate.
Whenever they're nearby, electrical machines, appliances and devices spring to life. Some of the best scenes are of light bulb strewn battlegrounds.
The heroes meet an old tinkerer who turned his apartment into a Faraday cage (a shield against electromagnetic and electrostatic effects), to protect against the aliens. He also perfects a microwave ray gun to fight the invasion.
Did you see any of these? Did we leave out any other horror flicks featuring electricity? Tell us and we'll include them in a future column.
Steve Mitnick, Editor-in-Chief, Public Utilities Fortnightly
E-mail me: mitnick@fortnightly.com
