Summer of Slash: My Bloody Valentine (1981)

One of the things that make Canadian slashers stand out more than their American contemporaries is their propensity to be consistently not awful. I think the primary reason for this is their attention to detail in things like setting and atmosphere and pacing. Canadian slasher films were much more interested in evoking a mood through the settings and the towns they took place in; in addition, they also tried a little harder to establish their characters, rather than just making them "dead teenagers". The Canadian slasher film seemed to strive for more – whether they succeed or not is up for debate, of course – instead of simply moving from one bloody kill to the next. None, perhaps, did this better than My Bloody Valentine , which along with Bob Clark's Black Christmas, is one of the quintessential Canadian slashers.


What's so impressive about My Bloody Valentine? Well, on paper not much as one glance at its story (and just how damn simple it is), and you can see that it's amazing how effective the film is. You have a small town with a history, a Valentine's Day dance, a killer on the loose, and horny young people being warned by crusty old townsfolk not to take the legends of a mining mask-donned and pick-axe wielding maniac lightly. The history of the small town goes like this: 20 years ago in a small mining town a man named Harry Warden found himself trapped in a coal mine due to a gas explosion, his foreman leaves to attend a Valentine's Day dance (the name of the town is Valentine Bluff, how appropriate) leaving the him trapped in the mine. Warden goes a little nutso and resorts to eating the remains of his dead co-workers until he finally escapes the mines, kills the foreman by cutting out his heart and placing it in a heart shaped box, warning the town that if it ever held another celebration of Valentine's Day he would kill again. Flash forward 20 years as the history of Harry Warden is almost erased from the memory of the small town (with the exception of those crusty old people who constantly warn the young whippersnappers, visual examples below...) as a group of young miners and their girlfriends decide to throw a party in the mine. Bad idea. And you can guess the rest.

My Bloody Valentine won't blow you away with its originality (the story, when you get down to it, is your basic slasher premise: the return of a psychotic killer, usually on some kind of holiday night, hell-bent on killing everyone in their sight); however, what's interesting about the film is the way the film's director, George Milhaka, values pacing and character development over simple hack and slash tropes (this was a staple of the Canadian slasher film…just look at a movie like Terror Train , a pretty generic idea that focused its energy in other places that American slashers weren't interested in), which makes the killings – when they do happen – much more effective. I like how Milhaka uses the cramped space of the mine to his advantage, and lets things play out in the background (like the famous shot of the dude stuffed in the refrigerator) without drawing too much attention to the grisly images.

The film was notorious for having cuts made to every one of its death scenes thanks to Paramount's knee-jerk reaction to the backlash against the gore of their film released a year earlier, Friday the 13th; however, those scenes have been restored since the film's unrated release on DVD. The death scenes are pretty stellar in the film (nothing close to its copycat film, the American The Prowler, which posted some of Tom Savini's greatest effects) too as when a man gets a pick-axe through the jugular and his eye pops out (obviously edited out of the theatrical release), a girl has the back of her head shoved through a nozzle - later revealing water and blood coming out of her agape mouth, or when a woman's face has been set to "tumble dry low". However, despite the film's violence, My Bloody Valentine still favors atmosphere over gore (you honestly don't lose much if you watch the Theatrical version over the Unrated version, well, except the awesome gore effects...but the tone doesn't change or anything), and really the film plays out more like an Italian giallo picture than a slasher film. The killer in his mining costume is pretty creepy, and often we see the killer chasing their victims from his POV, and it's quite effective (or maybe I'm just biased towards Italian horror motifs).

What's even more impressive is how My Bloody Valentine's paltry budget (estimates vary between 1.5 and 2 million) didn't handicap the film in becoming one of the most polished slashers of the 80's. In addition to the small budget (which seemed odd considering the success Paramount was coming off of with FT13) had a treacherous and hellish shoot. In Adam Rockoff's wonderful book Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (a must read for horror fans) he describes the shoot as such:

The Sydney Mines [where they shot the film] were in use at the time and the crew only had a few abandoned mine shafts in which to film. Along with the inherent problems of shooting in a working mine, the production was fraught with other difficulties. In addition to spending $30,000 to repaint a part of the mine which an art director erroneously defaced in an attempt to create a dingy look for the set, the production was threatened with a lawsuit by an artist whose uncredited work is briefly shown in one scene. The minor fiasco cost them $15,000 to settle out of court.

[B]ut perhaps the biggest threat to the production came from the locals themselves. Eventually, the actual mine workers got fed up. They worried that the powerful lights which were being used to illuminate the mine's dark shafts would somehow cause an explosion and gave the production 24 hours to vacate the premises. Since the film was not done, the production went into "triple golden time" – the film industry's version of overtime – a nightmare for cost-conscious producers and especially devastating to low budget productions. Mihalka was racing to finish and had not slept in over a day, but as [John] Dunning [producer]says, "The result is great…he did a helluva job."

Whereas most cheaply made slashers (that is, slashers made on the cheap) do indeed seem cheaply made, My Bloody Valentine looks like a (gasp) real movie. Scenes are clearly lit, competently framed and blocked, and the acting doesn't induce as many scoffs as one would expect from a low budget horror flick. That shows the skill involved in making this film, as all one has to do is point to countless slasher movies that were also limited in their budget and in the abilities of those making decisions behind the camera. There's nothing worse than watching a poortly lit horror scene and not knowing what you're supposed to be afraid of, and since most of the action in My Bloody Valentine takes place in a mine it could have been easy for the filmmakers to muck it up, showing cut-corners or shortened work days; but, they don't, and they seem to understand filmmaking 101 better than any other slasher film released in 1981 (a prolific year for the subgenre, which usually didn't showcase a whole lot of filmmaking competence).

There's a reason why My Bloody Valentine still remains a classic among die-hard horror fans: its execution of its simple formula is classic, and its aesthetic doesn't reek of amateur hour (like a lot of slashers coming out post-Friday the 13^thdid); rather, it's a well paced horror film that maintains a high level of tension throughout despite its reliance on classic slasher tropes. The film amps up the tension at the end with a chase through the mine, and a denouement that occurs on a moving mining car that is superb. It also uses its setting and spacing to great effect, with an array of scenes that are executed perfectly by having the action take place just off camera or in the periphery. The filmmakers use sound to great effect, too, as the final moments in the mine are brilliantly executed examples of how sound can amplify the horror of a horror film. It's quite impressive.

However, what I really love about My Bloody Valentine is that when shit happens, shit happens…what do I mean by this? Well, when the killer wants to kill someone, he does it. There's no padding or false tension like so many slasher films, and at the end during that fantastic chase sequence, the killer actually, you know, moves with purpose. Allow me to invoke The Prowler once again: in that movie (made the same year, 1981, as My Bloody Valentine) you have a killer donning a WWII gas mask (that looks eerily similar to the mining costume the killer wears in this film) you have a killer who stands around and lets the characters meddle with door knobs and try to get away as he slooooowly stalks his victims. It's obvious padding for a pretty bland slasher movie. In My Bloody Valentine, however, you have a killer who doesn't mess around with his victims. There's no toying with their emotions, he simply just pick-axes them to death, and that swiftness of horror makes it far more terrifying than the plodding killers found in countless slashers post-1981 (aka the Jason Voorhees syndrome). Plus, you have an ending that doesn't try to be tricky or arbitrarily ambiguous. We actually witness the killer getting away, swearing revenge on the town; an ending lending itself to a sequel (that will most likely never happen now that the film has been re-made), rather than toying with us by making us believe the killer is dead (ahem, Jason Voorhees, anyone?) and won't appear again, only to have them show up with some ridiculous reason explained to the audience in the sequel. I liked how straightforward the filmmakers were here.

I always appreciate it when slasher films don't toy with me to the point where I get bored waiting for something to happen. I also appreciate it when slasher films don't try and make the killer out to be some kind of invincible monster. Much like the owl suit-wearing psycho in Michele Soavi's Stagefright, the killer in My Bloody Valentine isn't concerned with making sure we understand how creepy and evil they are…they have one purpose and one purpose only: to kill. I don't need to see countless scene after countless scene of the killer simply standing there looking creepy and menacing while a girl screams for her life. I'm more scared by a killer that actually moves fast and kills with purpose; in addition, the design of the killer (especially if they're wearing a mask or a costume) should speak for itself without the director having to draw a lot of attention to it.

My Bloody Valentine continues to be one of few slasher entries that remain at the acme of great horror films of the 80's. It's a perfect example of how to do the slasher film right, and it remains exhibit B (exhibit A is Black Christmas) as to why the Canadians knew how to do said slasher film better than the Americans. If you want to see a good example of the slasher film, and you remain unsure of the subgenre, you need to check out My Bloody Valentine, a film that provides sufficient evidence that even the slasher film can be deconstructed, enjoyed as a lark, and still be fulfilling in a way that all good horror (or any genre for that matter) movies are: getting us to come back to them again and again, no matter what year it is.

Question of the Day: Which is better, Canadian slashers or American slashers?

In the spirit of the holiday coming up ("USA, USA, USA"...I kid...) -- and the fact that even though I've been watching a TON of horror movies lately, but I just haven't had the time to write about them (for Jamie: you were so, so right about Slugs, hehe, it was wonderful) -- I was thinking of posing this question about which country had the better slasher resume.  So, horror fans, which do you prefer: the slashers of America (Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Burning, Friday the 13th, and Scream) or the slashers of Canada (Black Christmas, Prom Night, My Bloody Valentine, Happy Birthday to Me, Visiting Hours, and Terror Train)?  I think if we're talking the heyday of slashers (1978 - 81) it's pretty close, but when you start to look at when the slasher genre was getting to become overkill, the Canadians were still releasing semi-decent and innovative takes on the subgenre, so I think I prefer Canadian slashers films.

Which do you prefer?  Perhaps you're like me and you prefer a whole different kind of beast, the Italian giallo, which was the king of this subgenre pre-Halloween (and Argento and Soavi even added a few twists to it with their later, 1987 entries, Opera and Stagefright respectively).  Let me know your thoughts in the comments.  More horror reviews coming next week when work slows down a bit.

Summer of Slash: Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film

Here's an interesting and entertaining documentary that is ultimately unsatisfying because it omits important slashers like Black Christmas or the imports from Italy. However, the film does includes great interviews with other important slasher figures besides Craven and Carpenter and Savini, which makes it a tad more interesting than I was anticipating. You get to hear from the people who created The Prowler and The Slumber Party Massacre and My Bloody Valentine and Graduation Day, and many others. And that is what makes it an engaging documentary: we actually get to hear from the people who cashed in on the success of the Craven's and Sean Cunningham's (who is a hack that got lucky…and he kind of admits that in the film). One of the things that is annoying about the documentary, though, is that the interviews are rarely stationary as the interviewees walk around talking about the genre and the camera is constantly moving with them (even if they do stop for a second). I don't need to be "entertained" during an interview…what the people are saying is interesting enough, but the makers of this documentary failed to understand that.

Throughout the documentary though there are interesting and amusing anecdotes about the making of seminal slashers like Halloween and Friday the 13^th – my favorite being the latter where director Sean Cunningham explains that he came up with the newspaper ad for the film before he even had a script, and that ad forced him to seriously get moving on his idea for his exploitation film. The film then moves from those two seminal American slashers (read: the first two to make money of the "silly" subgenre) to all of the copycats and money-grabs that came after. It's amazing to think about the success and the impact of Firday the 13^th, a film so bad that it still boggles my mind why people in the documentary really don't properly cite Bob Clark's wonderful Black Christmas (which gets no mention at all) or Bava's equally masterful Bay of Blood (briefly mentioned) as the templates that American slahers uses to make their money and popularized horror films which then got the studios involved in bidding wars for these films.

The always entertaining Tom Savini's is interviewed throughout (since he was really more responsible for Friday the 13^th's success than Cunningham was) and he shares an amusing piece of advice he got from George Romero when working on Dawn of the Dead about how you begin thinking about a film: Romero's advice was to think of ways to kill people first, then you have your film. As mentioned earlier the chronology of the rise of the slasher film appropriately begins with Halloween, but I can't reiterate enough how disappointing and frustrating the film is in how it refuses to acknowledge the influence and importance of Black Christmas, instead giving all of the credit to the commercially successful examples like Halloween and Friday the 13^th.

After spending a good chunk of the film on the importance of Carpenter and Cunningham's films, the documentary then begins to turn into nothing more than a TV special (it reminded me of those awful countdowns Bravo use to do) as it moves too quickly through important slasher subjects like the Final Girl (perhaps because they couldn't get interviews with any of the actresses), but it would have been interesting to hear about those roles affected their lives and careers (something Craven broached in his New Nightmare) , especially actresses like Amy Steel (my favorite, and the most bad ass, Final Girl from Friday the 13^th: Part 2) or Heather Langenkamp (again, her plight is well documented and fictionalized in Craven's New Nightmare). The documentary only briefly discuss the influence of Italian and Canadian slasher films. My Bloody Valentine (Canada) and Bay of Blood (Italy) rightfully get a lot of the attention, but what about oddities like Visiting Hours or Stagefright, from Canada and Italy respectively? It's interesting how they talk about the reaction to people from other countries cashing in on the American subgenre, but what's ironic is that those American slashers would have never been profitable had it not been for some of these films that they cribbed from.

Silly slashers like Happy Birthday to Me and He Knows You're Alone and April Fool's Day are mentioned. Also The Prowler – which is one of the most flawed slashers, but amazing to look at (both in set design and gore effects), gets some mention before they delve back into the The Friday the 13^thfranchise and how Paramount wanted to kill off Jason thanks to the backlash against the slasher genre (which is funny, because Friday the 13^th: Part 3 is one of the goofiest and least violent slashers), and then the birth of the "sophisticated" slasher A Nightmare on Elm Street (which of course devolved into one of the silliest franchises ever, further destroying the already decaying and over saturated subgenre) – a film I still think holds up exceptionally well.

Other tidbits I enjoyed, even though they only received a passing mention: The importance of the biggest "Holy Shit" moment in the subgenre from Sleepaway Camp, as one interviewee states his hypothesis that Neil Jordan saw that film and decided to rip it off for The Crying Game. The "dorm killer" spoof The Slumber Party Massacre and how its feminist writer and director actually thought the film wasn't perpetuating the female stereotypes often found in slasher movies. All of this is punctuated nicely with an interesting clip shown from an old Siskel and Ebert show where they accost the genre for its treatment of women (Siskel attributes it to the growth of the woman's movement). This is the most interesting part of the documentary as people involved in the genre talk about its biggest critics just not understanding what they're doing. I do agree with Siskel and Ebert on some of their arguments – especially in the hack-directed/starred, exploitative films – but I do think they stack the deck a bit as in the clips from the show we them discussing advertisements for low rent slashers like The Bogeyman and Don't Answer the Phone, rather than focusing on some of the better made slashers.

The film then moves on to the big controversy surrounding the rather terrible and banal slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night in which a psycho in a Santa suit rapes and kills a woman. This caused a grassroots campaign by oversensitive mothers to get the film removed from theaters. Really, the film had little effect because it was such a lousy movie, but the marketing guys were geniuses covering up the blemishes of their movie with a great ad campaign that made the movie seem a lot nastier than it really was. The film concludes with the mention of Scream, and how Craven is a genius, and then moves on to mentioning some of the new voices of the slasher genre like Rob Zombie and Greg McLean.

It's an interesting documentary for any fan of the genre, and if you're a die-hard fan then you'll be able to fill in the obvious pot holes in the film's chronology of the slasher film and its most important films. For novices of the genre it does a decent job of showing how the slasher film became so popular, what films were primarily responsible for its meteoric rise, and how the glut of slashers released from 1981 – 1985 killed the genre for good. Huge omissions aside, it's a fun and entertaining, if not disappointingly short, documentary.

Summer of Slash: Capsule Reviews, Part 2

In case you haven't noticed yet, I changed my header and the font for the blog. Why? Well, I figured since I was doing a summer series on horror films I would appropriately change the color scheme of the blog's title (not to mention find a more appropriate picture, but I promise once summer is over Hugo will return…perhaps in a new picture! Exciting, I know.) for the next few months. I also added an "archive" on the sidebar there to the left where you can see all of the films I've reviewed for my Summer of Slash series.  As I continue my push to watch as many horror movies as possible in preparation for the Wonders in the Dark horror countdown here are some more capsule reviews where I take a look at the satirical (?) The Slumber Party Massacre, the Australian monster pic Rogue, and two slashers from Canada in Prom Night and Terror Train. Reviews come after the jump…

The Slumber Party Massacre – A rather ordinary slasher film that runs at a tolerable 77 minutes actually has some nice touches for such a low budget affair. Slashers always get points in my book when they don't hide the identity of the killer (who we see within the first few minutes of the film) and when the action takes place during the day (part of what made Carpenter's Halloween so effective). The opening 10-15 minutes is actually pretty decent (sans a terrible basketball game the girls play, and the required gratuitous nudity in the subsequent locker room scene) for this type of movie as the killer (with a big ass drill) stalks his prey during the day and right in front of other people. Now, that either makes him the dumbest criminal in the world (especially when he disposes his first body in a dumpster right next to where his van is parked!) or really smart because he's getting away with the drilling holes in people's heads in broad daylight and a mere 100 feet from the school he's picking off girls from! Now that takes balls (to the film's, ahem, credit there is a creepy scene as students walk by the dumpster with a corpse in it as the we get a high angle shot showing semi off-putting scene). The film then ventures into your typical slasher territory as night falls and the girls have a slumber party…and well…you know what happens. I will say that there was one inspired scene during all of the ordinariness: a character watches a horror movie on TV as a woman is being stalked and eventually stabbed to death. This is cross cut with a male running from the killer outside the dorm and being stabbed in the same fashion. It's an interesting piece of editing (whoa, what did I just say!) in an otherwise banal film.

What makes the editing of that scene even more intriguing is when one stops to consider that this film was written (Rita Mae Brown) and directed (Amy Jones) by women. Are they riffing on the material, or merely perpetuating gender roles in slasher films (that particular issue was a big to-do around the time this film was released in 1982)? What's even more interesting about this piece of exploitative trash is when you consider that Brown was a feminist activist, which tends to shed a different light on the film; however, I still have to wonder what she thought of all the gratuitous nudity and violence towards women in the film…even if she did write it. Again, was this supposed to be a joke, a parody of slasher clichés? I don't know if the film is that smart, or even aspires to be, but I found this piece of news interesting: Brown has basically written (or I should what was filmed of what she wrote) a generic slasher that contains a checklist of all the elements that would piss off feminists in regards to horror films. Sure the Final Girl gets out alive, and sure the killer's weapon is a drill – a euphemism for the deadliness of the penis as the killer utters lines like "you know you want it" when referring to the drill, and at the end the filmmakers make it a point to show the Final Girl cutting the drill in half – but please, there's nothing here to suggest that this isn't just another lame slasher relying on the same old tired tropes. The only thing that kept The Slumber Party Massacre tolerable (the film contains a number of blasé false scares, a horrendously soggy middle where literally nothing happens, and lame death scenes) was that it only lasted a mere 77 minutes. This is the epitome of one of those films that sat on the back end of triple feature. Even it was intended as a joke it's still a pass.

Prom Night – Boring, if not essential, Canadian slasher that is another example of Friday the 13^th
not being the film to set the trend for slashers, just the trend for making money off of the genre. Prom Night contains every trope that would become tired and cliché, yet clearly aspires to be more than just your generic Friday the 13^thtype stalk and slash gore fest. For starters the film is more interested in establishing its mystery. Characters don't start getting knocked off until well into 2/3 of the film's running time, and even then the action is rather boring and generic as a killer (whose identity really isn't that much of a mystery) goes around offing teenagers who were the catalysts at a young age for a girl falling to her death. There's nothing really more to say about Prom Night. It's one of the most cookie-cutter of the slashers, but really, that's only because hindsight makes it so. Prom Night, like the other major Canadian slashers (Black Christmas, My Bloody Valentine) were responsible for creating a lot of the tropes that became so cookie-cutter. The film's director almost certainly agrees, though, that Prom Night was just a so-so film saved by the presence of Jaime Lee Curtis and Leslie Nielson (he credits the film's box office success with Curtis' presence). They certainly bring an air of credibility to the story, but the film's mystery is un-engaging and the look of the film (not to mention the non-stop presence of disco music at the end) is too tame to be visually arresting. It's an interesting slasher solely for its historic place in the subgenre as the first real film to cash in on the success of Friday the 13^th (despite being made at the same time the film was released just months after).

Rogue – Greg McLean's follow up to Wolf Creek is a fun, tense monster movie that is heavy on atmosphere. A tourist group (filled with all of your expected horror movie character types) explore the outback in a boat headed-up by tour guide Kate Ryan (Radha Mitchell), but as they drift off course into the territorial grounds of a pissed off croc, the tour group fights throughout the night to stay alive. McLean's film is a seemingly rudimentary horror film where things go bump in the night, and the real horror is in the unseen. However, like McLean did with Wolf Creek, there is an amazing amount of tension for a "nature vs. man" type horror film (based on a true story, of course). This is due to two key aspects of the film: one is the cast. Like McLean's previous film he gives more than enough time for his cast to develop their characters and make us care about their plight. Here we have a pre-Avatar Sam Worthington and a post-"Alias" Michael Vartan, both giving some depth to what could have been nothing more than generic horror character types. The addition of Mitchell as the tour guide also gives the film a sense of depth as these actors know to do more than merely scream, swear, and grunt. These characters are thoughtful in their execution of how to get out of their situation (being stranded after the croc capsizes their boat) alive. The other thing Rogue has going for it is McLean's competence as filmmaker. McLean has a real understanding of how to frame a shot, how long to hold it, and when to just let the mood be the most terrifying thing about the scene (there aren't copious amounts of blood, here, which was a pleasant surprise). McLean's understanding of how to shoot a scene creates a beautiful opening as he establishes the beauty of the Outback (much like he did in Wolf Creek), and then by the end McLean films the night scenes with just enough clarity so that we can see what's going on, but still feel like we're out there in the dark not knowing where or when the croc will show up. We feel the uneasiness of the characters in these night scenes because of the way McLean shoots the film. It seems like a small thing, but so often with horror films directors don't know how to light their night scenes. Overall Rogue is a throwaway horror film, and I mean that as a compliment as I think McLean was trying to go for something like the Ozploitation films of the 70's and 80's (some of this film made me think of Razorback, a film I just reviewed last week). I've never been too keen on these "true stories" where people face adversity in the water, but Rogue is pretty decent at establishing its characters and ratcheting up the tension at just the right moments so the film doesn't feel like a repetitious cycle of croc attacks. It's a fun, harmless little horror movie, and it clearly establishes McLean as someone who is not just a one hit wonder, but a horror director to seriously keep an eye on.

Terror Train – Another Canadian slasher movie that is essentially Prom Night on a train as we have a group of people paying for the crimes of a prank gone horribly wrong. Oh, and we have Jamie Lee Curtis popping up again. The film, directed by Roger Spottiswoode (longtime Sam Peckinpah editor and director of the brilliant, masterful farce Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot), and shot by John Ascot (who worked with Kubrick on The Shining) is actually pretty decent looking and does a good enough job of maintaining some tension throughout. However, the film is so one-note (much like Prom Night) that even though it barely runs over 90 minutes, it's tedious because it goes from being a lark (I mean magic is one of the driving forces behind the movie, complete with a cameo performance by David Copperfield) and rather cheesy, to being a seriously viscous slasher during its final 30 minutes. The change of tone didn't bother me so much as the final half-hour actually made Terror Train more interesting than it had any right to be, but the whole idea of the killer hiding behind costumes, and the failed attempts to develop these characters (there's a lot of dialogue for a slasher film as I think they were trying to make a legit mystery, but it just came off as boring padding) adds about 17 minutes (there are countless moments where conductor Ben Johnson checks and re-checks on people he thinks are dead) of film that could have been trimmed. This trimming of the fat could have made the movie a nice little slasher in an interesting location (the train does lend itself to some creepy set designs) and would have focused more on Curtis' great performance. I liked her here more than I did in the boring Prom Night because Terror Train actually gives her a bit of a challenge as the Final Girl, and boy does she ever kick ass at the end of this movie. It's fun to watch. Terror Train isn't the most original slasher (like Prom Night it's obvious who the killer is the whole time, despite the film's incessant need to hide their identity until the final "shock" ending), and its pacing is terrible, but it's still a pretty fun experience…and helluva a lot better made than Prom Night.

Summer of Slash: Visiting Hours

Visiting Hours is an odd entry into the over-satiated slasher subgenre of the 1980's. This import from Canada directed by Jean-Claude Lord feels different than other slashers. Probably because it deals with adults rather than teens, and the plot seems like something out of the type of scary scenario that DePalma made famous in films like Dressed to Kill rather than some boring stalk and slash. The film definitely feels like a Canadian production as the horror is far more cerebral here than anything being released at the time in this subgenre, and that can clearly be seen by the imprint of producer Pierre David who was the man partly responsible for the David Cronenberg horror entries The Brood, Scanners, and Videodrome. Visiting Hours may not set the genre on fire with its originality (for how different the film feels, it still relies heavily on lame slasher tropes like false scares and over-sustained cat-and-mouse chase sequences), but it's an interesting entry into an otherwise monotonous subgenre.




Ever since I was a little kid I can vividly remember the poster art for this film, with its lighted-up hospital building in the shape of a skull, and thinking that Visiting Hours would be a pretty cool horror movie to watch one day. I'm surprised it took me nearly 10 years to watch it. The film was released in 1986 on the tail end of the slasher craze.  At this point it was overkill (sorry for the pun) as Jason and Michael and Freddy were well into their fourth or fifth installments.  The only interesting thing to come out of the genre at this point was being produced in Italy.  In 1987 both Dario Argento's Opera and Michele Soavi's brilliant Stagefright would stand as the punctuation mark as the last worthwhile entry into the subgenre (until Wes Craven would get all postmodern on us with New Nightmare); so, it seems odd that Visiting Hours, a film not really a slasher in the sense that it wasn't gore-focused like what the Italians were doing, and it's not really dumb enough to be considered a wholly American slasher, would attempt to Canadianize this particular genre.  Oh, the Canadains have walked these halls before (most notably Bob Clark's uber-influential slasher Black Christmas), but Visiting Hours is more Cronenberg than Craven, dealing partly with the psychological horror of the killer while placing its characters and their situations amidst the most cliche of slasher tropes.

The film opens with Jeffrey Goldsmith's minimalist score reminding one of the simplistic, eerie qualities of Carpenter's Halloween theme. We're introduced to Deborah Ballin (Lee Grant), a feminist news reporter who chastises, on air, a lawyer who fails to see her side of the argument on the issue of an abused wife who murdered her husband. Her producer and lover (William Shatner!) is concerned about her disregard for what the station obviously cannot air. However, she has bigger problems as her outburst incites a crazy janitor named Colt Hawker (Michael Ironside) who takes it upon himself to stalk Deborah and attack her in her home, leading to a tense scene that is a rare example of the director Lord understanding the logistics and logic in what makes a "stalk and slash" scene suspenseful.

At this point we have what seems to be just your basic thriller with some slasher elements; however, the film – and especially the aesthetic seen in the film's opening attack in Deborah's home – turns into a full-fledged slasher once Deborah is taken to the hospital and finds that Colt is still stalking her. Of course, like any good slasher, Colt must make a few detours, terrorizing and killing innocent women on his way to finish off Deborah. These detours – and the way they completely drag the film down and make no qualms about being scenes of obvious padding – are so horribly constructed that for slasher fans we feel right at home, but for fans of creepy, psychological giallo-like horror films, these detours distract form what is obviously meant to be something more than the glut of slasher flicks that littered theaters and video shelves throughout the 80's.

The character of Colt Hawker seems like something out of a more sophisticated, cerebral horror film as the director Lord decides to keep him clearly in site for the length of the film. This isn't like your typical slasher film killer where we are left to guess who is doing the killing; no, Lord and co. are more interested in the terror of knowing who is coming after you, and the filmmakers do a great job of keeping the chase scenes taut and intense. However, one of the film's major flaws is its absurd pacing. For some reason the film felt the need to ratchet up the pace during scenes that needed more establishing shots than they did frenetic music and cutting. Often there will be a character being chased and we won't have any idea where they are, and other times we'll see a character running around a building or a house and the pace of the scene will have about ten different peaks…it was just so confusing because for a lot of the film – especially with the film's villain – everything seemed to be executed as well as one would expect with a film like this.

Horrible editing aside, Visiting Hours is worth checking out if you're in the mood for something that isn't wholly awful and predictable like most slasher films tend to be. It has an interesting aura surrounding it as it's more of a tweener film, teetering between slasher and psychological thriller. There's a couple standout chase scenes, one at the beginning of the film in Deborah's apartment, and one tense-as-hell scene at the end that takes place in the bowels of the hospital.  These scenes are well paced with their scares (they are the exception) and know when when to drown out the hokey slasher music, allowing the silence to loom over the scene and create great tension through minimalist effects.  It's moments like these that reminded me more of the aforementioned Stagefright rather than the tired old retread of another slasher that takes place in a hospital (read: Halloween II).

The acting is really good here for a horror film as Academy Award winner Lee Grant gives depth to the characterization of Deborah.  Grant plays her role as someone who is not just a one-note feminist character that is begging for her comeuppance (which is amazing for a horror film from the 80's since most of these directors loved to lash out against women); instead, Deborah is a strong character who understands the peril she's in and must overcome her pacifism to kill her enemy.  Rarely do you get a legitimate actress acting in a horror movie, and Grant plays terrified better than most. Shatner does his Shatnerisms in a pretty limited role, and Linda Purl is quite good as the Final Girl (really she shares that role with Grant), Sheila Monroe, a nurse at the hospital who is a big fan of Deborah's views and asks to specifically care after her, which of course only leads to her and her children being put in harm's way. The real star here, though, is Michael Ironside as Colt. Colt is your typical killer in a film like this – a man who was abused by both parents and takes out his disturbed rage on women – and Ironside plays the character with the kind of maniacal gusto that makes movies like this somewhat memorable. It's really a creepy performance, and it's one of the main reasons to see this movie.

Despite the popular Canadian cast, Visiting Hours is a mostly forgotten slasher, really only being remembered for being one of the later editions to the infamous "Video Nasty" list. Cuts were made (two minutes worth) to the original version Lord's film, and I honestly have no idea whether or not the DVD by Anchor Bay (which is a damn fine transfer) is the full uncut version.  I don't think it makes a huge difference as this isn't something like The Burning or The Prowler that relies on its gory infamy for a reputation; no, Visiting Hours is just proof that the DPP was going batshit insane with power when adding movies to their "Nasty" list. Visiting Hours will most likely disappoint gore hounds (the most violent image of the film is where Colt smashes a beer bottle on a kitchen counter and rubs his arm in the shards) as there are some brief stabbings and some life support machines being unhooked, but that's really the only kind of onscreen killing you see.

But the deaths aren't what make Visiting Hours a worthwhile viewing...what makes the film so appealing is the unseen horror and terror and the way the film can sustain a sense of unease throughout when its editors aren't mucking the whole thing up with bizarre cutting and sequencing choices. Yes, the editing is horrible and often you have no idea logistically where you are during certain scenes (which can also be blamed on the direction by hack filmmaker Lord, who would later go on to make the awful sci-fi/horror film The Vindicator), but the performances and the way the screenplay by Brian Taggert seeks to elevate the material above most of the average slashers being released at the time makes Visiting Hours a pretty good, and somewhat forgotten, horror film of the late 80's.