Summer of Slash: The Funhouse

The Funhouse is a light-hearted, fun little slasher film that, when held up to all of the other slashers I've watched this summer (almost 30 now), actually achieves what so many hope to accomplish: to be (at the risk of sounding repetitive) a light-hearted, fun little slasher movie. What's even more shocking is that it was directed by Tobe Hooper – who turned down Steven Spielberg's offer to direct E.T. so he could make this film (the two would of course team up in one of the genres oddest partnerships that resulted in the pretty-awful Poltergeist) – a director I have stated numerous times on the blog that I am not very impressed with (his most famous film, you know that one about the chainsaw-wielding maniac, is a tad overrated in my opinion…good, hell even insanely influential, but still overrated). There are some genuine scare moments, and some memorable instances that evoked the kind garishness of an Argento film (the ending at the funhouse is painted with bright colors and oddball noises coming from every direction). It's ultimately a silly little movie, though, but it was probably the last time Hooper was ever any good.

It almost seems pointless rehashing story summaries with this series, as you can pretty much guess as to what the general story arc is going to be based on the film's title. However, The Funhouse has some tricks up its sleeve. Specifically the opening scene: a POV of someone with black gloves getting a knife from the drawer and donning a Halloween mask, creeping up on a girl in the shower (boobs within the first two minutes, by the way...it's clear we're getting into 'slasher glut' territory now), and violently pulling open the shower curtain (with faux Bernard Herrmaan music playing in the background) and attempting to stab her until we realize it's a fake knife, and that the perpetrator is the girl's younger brothers. So, right away Hooper is riffing on the material here, while paying homage to the subgenre he is indebted to he lets us know from the onset that isn't going to be a slasher flick that plays things straight.

After that awkward moment of sibling, ahem, rivalry, Amy (our Final Girl...but more on her later) deliberately disobeys her father by leaving the house to go hang out with some friends at a traveling carnival.  Now, it's not the fact that she disobeyed her father, but consider this: in most horror films you're supposed to empathize with the Final Girl, she is usually a character of virtue, of morals ans standards...certainly most Final Girls are not so brash and flippant.  And this is where Hooper compounds upon the fun he had in those opening minuets: the characters here suck.  And I don't mean that they're poorly conceived or that they aren't fully fleshed out characters; no, I just mean they suck as humans.  You're glad they get stuck in the funhouse and get picked off one by one.  These aren't enjoyable people to be around, and it is in that decision that Hooper does something interesting with what is your basic "dead teenager" movie.

Once in the funhouse Amy and her friends partake in the usual teenage hijinks: they harass the carnies, smoke some weed, peep in on a nudie show, view a magic show, and visit the freaks-of-nature booth.  After all of the hijinks (and we're talking a good 40-45 minutes worth, here, causing me to scream at Hooper to pick up the freaking pace) one of Amy's friends, Richie, dares the group to spend the night on one of the rides that a crazed carnie who doesn't speak (and wears a Frankenstein's Monster mask) is in charge of.  As they contemplate this they find themselves peering into a room where the obviously mentally askew ride assistant (still donning the mask, so obviously something weird is under there) is trying to hook up with a prostitute.  One instance of premature ejaculation later, and he finds himself strangling the hooker because she won't refund his money.  The kids see this in a "Scooby-Doo" type moment, and the film finally commences with the slashing.

Hopper establishes the off-ness of the funhouse -- its ethereal qualities where things come alive at night, where monsters literally dwell -- with gusto.  The film, for the most part, is a lot of fun once you realize that Hooper isn't interested in playing it straight, even for a second.  There's a lot of humor in watching this group of losers wander through the funhouse, getting offed by the manager of the road show and his deranged "son" (the 'thing' in the Monster mask, who when unmasked, provides one of the film's best jolts), who in one of the film's most bizarre scenes takes his frustrations out not on one of the annoying teens, but on a wooden shelf.  Scary!

The final 30 minutes (once the horrendous plot is tossed aside in favor of fun, creepy set pieces) of the film are indeed like a really good, spooky funhouse ride. Weird mannequins, clown figures, and various animatronics pop out of all corners, and come in all shapes and sizes – all with an equally annoying, high pitched maniacal laugh. The bright colors pop off the screen as you can clearly see that Hooper knew what to do with his budget, and that this wasn't just some throwaway low-budget slasher movie, but that he was trying to do what the Europeans - specifically the Italians - were doing with their garish and ethereal, not to mention completely unsettling and off-putting, set pieces. The Funhouse showed signs of hope for a director whose horror career began with a meteoric rise unlike anything seen in the genre, but sadly, after his next couple of films he would crawl back to the film that made it him famous, make a joke of it all, and then be forgotten forever.

When The Funhouse was in pre-production, Hooper received a call from Steven Spielberg to see if he wanted to direct his family film about an extra terrestrial (Spielberg wanted to release an R-rated horror movie about a month apart from his PG family film, and I find it odd that he approached Hooper for the latter).  Hooper, committed to his project at the time, respectfully declined and continued working on The Funhouse all the while wanting to work with Spielberg at some point.  Spielberg, unable to direct the two films at once (at least take credit for them), because of a clause in his contract with Universal, asked Hooper to take directing duties on Poltergeist; however, as it is somewhat famously known, the cast and crew all claim that Spielberg, not Hooper, made all of the decisions during the filming of Poltergeist.  The film, of course, was a huge hit, but Hooper would instead go back to having his name attached to smaller, science-fiction collaborations with Alien screenwriter Dan O'Bannon: Invaders from Mars and Lifeforce.  However, in 1986 he would put the nail in his own career coffin as he returned to the cannibal family that helped his name become synonymous with low budget, successful horror film.  The problem was that he turned his monstrous group of chainsaw killers and cannibals into a big, drawn out joke (more on that another time...a review of that film is pending), and audiences weren't wanting that.  The film doubled its 4 million dollar budget, but failed to enrapture audiences the way the original did, a metaphor for Hooper's career trajectory post-1980's.

Back to the film in question though: The Funhouse does serve as an example of the Hooper actually giving a damn, and the film has enjoyed cult status. Even though a lot of its notoriety probably came at first from having been put on the infamous Video Nasties list, a mistake, however, by the DPP after they confused The Funhouse with another movie floating around as a bootleg that was using Hooper's title (that film was called Last House on Dead End Street), the confusion was cleared up, and I think it's pretty clear that no real major cuts were made to this film (what was there that was objectionable to cut, anyway?), altering its tone or flow. But there's no denying that during the VHS bootleg era, if your film found itself on that infamous list, interest among horror buffs immediately piqued. But that's only part of the reason I think The Funhouse is a somewhat beloved slasher film (I don't think anyone would defend its merits too passionately), as I was pleasantly surprised while the film unfolded just how tight everything was in the film.  Its running time is just right, its scared are good, its aesthetic is pleasing and creepy, and it made me smile in a good way.  It's everything a fluff, tongue-in-cheek horror movie should be. And I think it's just now starting to be rediscovered in that vein, the kind of film that belongs with Evil Dead 2 and films of that ilk.

It's not just the humorous opening sequence, or the fun monster aspects of the film, but I also liked how Hooper plays with the conventions of the already established, albeit fairly young, prolific subgenre. The Final Girl, Amy, in The Funhouse is a wimp who doesn't rise to the challenge like the prototype for the Final Girl character that John Carpenter and Jamie Lee Curtis laid out in Halloween. Amy cowers in the corner at the end of the film while the monster's buffoonery is the primary cause of its death.  She just screams and watches as he trips and blunders into a bunch of cogs and gears until he is killed. It's an interesting take on one of the slasher's most tried-and-true tropes.

I was trying to think of a modern example of the kind of feeling I had while watching The Funhouse , and I suppose I would liken it to Sam Raimi's 2009 return to horror, Drag Me to Hell, a horror film that plays by the rules and conventions of the genre, but doesn't take itself too seriously. It understands, like The Funhouse, that the audience is there to have a good time and have the pants scared off of them. Unlike another "funhouse" type slasher I watched earlier this summer, Tourist Trap, the tone of The Funhouse isn't confusing, it knows exactly what it is, what it's trying to accomplish, and doesn't strive to be exploitative or too serious (a major flaw of the otherwise enjoyable Tourist Trap). And for the better part of 45 minutes (all after the plodding set-up), Hooper's film succeeds in having the appropriate tone for this kind of slasher movie: a fun and scary trip through a funhouse of horrors. This one kind of snuck up on me, and I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Summer of Slash: Alone in the Dark (1982)

Director Jack Sholder's sneakily good little slasher is one of the more underrated and intelligent entries into the subgenre. Released during those oh-so-infamous and fertile years for the slasher subgenre, 1981 – 1984, Alone in the Dark was initially dismissed as 'just another slasher' movie; however, the film has gained quite a reputation among horror buffs for its innovative casting (Jack Palance and Martin Landau as psycho killers!) and intelligent take on the slasher film (not to mention the curiosity factor of it being the first film ever produced by the soon-to-be major horror purveyor, New Line Cinema). Alone in the Dark is a helluva a good time, an extremely entertaining and satisfying horror film (thanks to some hilariously oddball performances, specifically Jack Palance), and is now rightfully somewhat of a cult hit – considered to be one of true gems amid the over-satiated years of the slasher boom.

The film opens with a surreal dream sequence as we see a man walking towards a diner as an eerie red haze hangs in the air.  Once inside the diner we see Donald Pleasance wielding a big ass machete with a crazed look in his eye, a look that only this King of B-actors can give.  It was at this moment, a mere five minutes in, that I knew this movie was going to great.  It just felt different.  And what follows is one of the oddest slashers I've ever seen: mixing the macabre with the classic slasher tropes, hilariously dark comedy, and moments that hint that the filmmakers were trying to sneak in some social commentary.  It's quite the mix.

The film employs a slow-burn mentality (it feels very British that way) to its horror as the story takes a while to kick into high gear.  After the dream sequence we're introduced to Dr. Leo Bain (Donald Pleasance!) and his state-of-the-art psychiatric ward. He's showing a new doctor, Dan Potter (Dwight Schultz, Murdock from "The A-Team"!) around the hospital and explaining the hospital's policies and philosophies, especially in regards to the patients on the third floor – a floor designed without bars on the windows, that is electrically monitored, and harbors the worst patients. It's on this floor that's where Frank Hawkes (Palance), "Preacher" (Landau), and Fatty (Erland van Lidth, in a really creepy performance) dwell. One night while Dr. Potter is out with his wife and daughter at a punk concert (the band they see is called "The Sic Fucks"…great name; and a funny sidebar: apparently a member of the band ran across Jack Palance years later in New York and introduced themselves stating that they worked on the same film, and that she was a member of the band The Sic Fucks...apparently Palance just looked are her and replied: "honey, we were all sick fucks working on that movie." ) the power goes out across the city, leaving the electric censors useless on the third floor of the psychiatric hospital, thus, the crazies escape and carry out their plan to kill Dr. Potter, the man they feel is responsible for the apparent death of their beloved former psychiatrist.

This set-up leads to what is essentially a slasher film (escaped psychos on the loose, armed with various weapons, looking for revenge), and even employs a lot of the slasher tropes found in more popular fare where a killer (or killers in this case) stalks the patrons of a specific location (I'm thinking of stuff like Friday the 13^th, My Bloody Valentine, and Black Christmas) as the action crescendos at Potter's house where there are numerous people inside who are in peril; however, there is really nothing banal about the film, in spite of how ordinary the film seems. Alone in the Dark is a riot, the kind of horror film that has you smiling more than it does groaning, and it's no wonder why its popularity has continued to grow over the years. What's even more impressive is that it's clear that the filmmakers had a theme in mind, and not just any kind of horror theme, but one that seems to have no place in a horror film I just describes as a "riot".

Once the patients – "Voyagers" as Dr. Bain calls them – get out of the hospital there seems to be an epidemic spreading, causing others to go crazy too, no doubt caused somehow by the power outage. What the filmmakers wisely do at this point is keep the killing to a minimum (there's an initial killing spree, but after that it's mostly implied terror), get the established actors who are acting insanely and killing people off screen (which is impressive considering that must have been one of the novelties of the film, not to mention a selling point, in having these somewhat established actors in this kind of horror movie), and move all of the primary characters in peril into one location – causing the tension to build in a subtle way. However, despite the film's success in aesthetically creating a non-banal slasher film, there's something deeper and more intelligent thematically going on here: this movie is essentially about PTSD – a term they didn't quite have yet post-Vietnam – and how these people who are relegated to being called "crazy" get to see what it is they fought for on the outside. This theme is punctuated with an ending that is pretty abnormal for a horror film as Hawkes – a paranoid POW – wanders into the same Punk Rock club that Potter and his family went to the night before. As he beats up the bouncer and takes his money, he wonders into the club and meets a woman who claims to have seen him before. She laughs at him and seems a little off herself, until Hawkes pulls a gun and sticks it in her stomach. She merely laughs, and directs the gun for him from her stomach and into her mouth. Cut to black.

Man, what an ending for a slasher movie, and what I think Sholder and his crew are going for here is essentially the theme that these people are diagnosed as crazy, but that we're all messed up. Especially the culture in the early 80's when postmodernism and irreverence (and an overall apathy for things) was sweeping the nation, I'm sure it looked weird to those who left for Vietnam in the 60's, came home later in the 70's, and were trying to get acclimated to a culture that cared little for what happened to them and why they did what they did. It's not as if taking the Vietnam War and using it as thematic template for a horror film theme is groundbreaking, though. Two years earlier Antonio Marghereti's Italian horror movie Cannibal Apocalypse (with John Saxon, no less) explicated the same themes of the effects of the Vietnam War – specifically the POW experience – on those who had to not just return home, but come back and try and return to a way of life that now seemed wholly alien to them.

I know I'm probably reading way too much into things here, but Sholder and co-writer Robert Shaye (who also produced the soon-to-be genre bending A Nightmare on Elm Street, as well as producing/taking over writing duties for Wes Craven, hiring Sholder to direct, on the follow-up A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge - another film that pushes the slasher envelope, thematically speaking) clearly seemed to be going for something "more" here, and whether they succeed or merely grasp at straws depends on whether you are willing to believe that a horror film could not only strive for something that deep, but pull it off. Sholder would later be called a hack (unfairly I might add), a director-for-hire after the critical and financial debacle that was his follow-up Freddy's Revenge. But I think that has to do more with Shaye's script changes and his reluctance to work with Craven said script.  Alone in the Dark clearly shows a director who is more than willing to try new things with an-already-tired subgenre, and I think when people call Sholder a hack they're doing in hindsight (but more on that later).

The film's acting is better than most slashers, which shouldn't be a surprise when you look at the cast. Even though Pleasance gets a lot of crap for his selection of roles, he's pretty good here as the doctor who so badly wants to believe he can fix these people (there's a great scene near the end where Potter and his family are yelling at him from within the house as they watch Bain try to reason with the maniacs from the window), and you know…you can never go wrong with Jack Palance. Landau brings some seriousness to his role as the deeply disturbed "preacher", a man who invokes God and quotes the Bible as he slashes people, and as I mentioned earlier, van Lidth is really creepy and effective as the obese child molester "fatty" (there's a creepy-as-hell scene where we see him try and lure a little girl into her upstairs room).

The music by Italian composer Renaldo Serio is very Goblin-esque (no surprise as he worked often with Joe D'Amato who always had a penchant for ripping off elements that were better than what he could afford) and pretty decent, and the cinematography by Joseph Mangine (a low-grade porn DP most of the time) is really nice in evoking that Assault on Precinct 13 type aesthetic where a certain group of people are trapped in a confined space, and you have to shoot it in a way that doesn't make it too boring with its minimal sets, or conversely, too claustrophobic by trying to cram all of the action and characters into the frame at once.

But let's get back to first time director Jack Sholder for a moment: There's real tension here, and it's no wonder that New Line pegged him to be their man to follow-up Wes Craven's hugely successful A Nightmare on Elm Street. As I mentioned before, Sholder (who edited the famous slasher The Burning before getting this gig) gets a bad rap for A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, but that film actually has an interesting homosexual subtext, and was content with keeping Freddy somewhat in the shadows and scary. Freddy's Revenge showed that Sholder was interested in playing with the genre and exploring varying themes that some may have considered taboo (homosexuality, PTSD) at the time, and themes that you certainly didn't see - or ever expect to see - in a horror movie. Sholder seemed to understand this, and with Alone in the Dark has created a great slasher film that oozes atmosphere and tension in the film's final 30 minutes (there are some great scenes once all of the characters get confined to the house, especially near the end where Potter's daughter feels something lurking outside her window in what is one of the film's most famous scenes - mostly due to the jolt provided by the effects of Tom Savini), a final 30 minutes that really showcased the director's talents. However, one look at the man's oeuvre on IMDB and you can see that the unfair panning of Freddy's Revenge really hurt the man's career (he was relegated to directing crap like The Hidden and Renegades, so no wonder people think he's a hack).

But in 1982 Sholder made what is one of the finest slasher films produced in that ever-so-prolific era – a tension-filled doozy of a thriller with all of the tropes that appease die hard slasher fans, done with panache and style to spare, and a deeper thematic subtext about the horrors of returning home from Vietnam when home no longer looks the way it did when you left. Sholder was a somewhat brave director for the genre, as you can imagine that the ordinary horror fan who is buying a ticket for the latest slasher movie or latest Freddy Kreuger movie doesn't want to see a film about PTSD or oppressed homosexuality. That's why I give Sholder a lot of credit here for creating a really fun and campy slasher movie on the surface while willing to slide in a much deeper and cerebral subtext. I think what did Sholder in as a director was lack of subtlety, the over nature of the homosexual themes in Freddy's Revenge, and that may have cost him what looked to be a promising career as a horror director. Nevertheless, in 1982, Sholder and his incredible cast created one of the best and most memorable slasher films to come out of the "era of the slasher".

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: The House on Sorority Row (AKA House of Evil)

What some horror buffs consider the best of the "dorm killer" films, The House on Sorority Row is one of the most interesting slashers to be released in the early 80's, but my God is it a maddening film (just look at the poster, and then when you're done reading this look at it again and think about how misleading it is). Not because it's wholly terrible, but because the final half of the film is so well made it makes you wonder what the filmmakers were thinking with the execution of the first half of the movie. It contains some bright spots in its giallo like style and mystery, but the first half of the film's aesthetic is that of a USA "Up All Night" movie (which is alright when you've got others around to watch this tripe with, but it is hell when watching it alone). However, the awfulness of the beginning doesn't keep The House on Sorority Row from being one of the most interesting slashers I've watched so far this summer. It's definitely worth checking out.

The film opens in a horribly shot sequence that is supposed to take us back to 1961 where we see a woman being told that her child didn't survive childbirth. So, what do the filmmakers do to give us this authentic period feel? They put the world's worst blue filter on and make the scene almost impossible to view…I guess it was supposed to pass as black and white. Anywho…flash-forward to present day as there is a group of girls partying after graduation at a sorority house, but evil Mrs. Slater (the woman from the beginning) puts the kibosh on that, and plans to ruin their weekend by doing horrendous, evil things like popping water beds with her cane! Well, the girls decide to prank Mrs. Slater, the prank goes wrong, Slater ends up dead, they try to hide the body, the body ends up missing, yadda yadda yadda…you know the rest.

The film is definitely trying to be something more, though, than the other "dorm killer" movie of 1982, The Slumber Party Massacre, as the filmmakers are clearly more interested in their script and how they can evoke a creepy, giallo type mood with their story (which to their credit the filmmakers really do try to sell the viewer on the mystery of the story, and after the rough opening the movie does settle down and turn into a pretty decent slasher with a twist that is definitely an homage to the giallo).There's also more time spent on the mystery elements of the script than on random killings, and as far as slasher acting goes, Final Girl Katherine McNeil is pretty damn good here.

The movie, thankfully, doesn't contain a bunch of false scares; instead, the filmmakers go about trying to pass off their film as a Black Christmas type slasher where a house full of people go on with their business despite being stalked by a killer outside who terrorizes the house party throughout the night. The film is essentially two styles: American slasher for the first half and giallo for the last (the ending, with its bright colors, ethereal tone, and odd close-ups and cross-cutting is definitely an homage to the Italian horror films of the 70's), and this schizophrenic aesthetic (its shortcomings are obvious in the opening moments; however, at the end you can see the filmmakers do a lot with very little in the style department) sadly relegates this interesting entry into the slasher subgenre to the "could-have-been-better-if-only…" category. It does contain one shocking image that I wasn't prepared for: When our Final Girl is putting all of the pieces together near the end of the film, and she is remembering her murdered friends, quick cuts of the murder scenes flash on the screen.  One such flash-cut is that of her friends severed head in a toilet (this image is my new banner picture)...an image that shocked me because nothing that happened in the film previous could have prepared me for the ultra-violent image.  It's just one example of how the film is surprising and shocking and actually quite good in its final moments.

The first half of the film will drive you batshit insane with how awful it is, but the end is like a completely different film (and what an ending, too!) that hearkens back to the stylish gailli of Argento and Fulci (the music box scene at the end reminded me of Fulci's Murder to the Tune of Seven Black Notes) of the 70's with its use of a haunting music score as the film fades to black, and the way the film just kind of ends, without any real tidy conclusion. It's almost as if the filmmakers had to convince their financiers that they would make money with their generic first half of a slasher film, and then they were able to make the film they wanted to make all along in the last 45 minutes. What an odd film that could have been so much more had the tone of the last half of the film been present throughout. Still, despite all of its flaws, The House on Sorority Row is definitely a notch above most of its slasher contemporaries.

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: Wolf Creek

Greg McLean's homage to Ozploitation films is one of the most effective slasher films I've ever seen. The 00's gave birth to the most disgusting and schlocky subgenre – the torture porn – and Wolf Creek unfairly got lumped in with the likes of Saw and Hostel. However, when one looks at McLean's film compared to those monstrosities it's easy to see why so many horror mavens prefer McLean's unflinching snapshot of horror in the outback to the snarky tone of most torture porn. Wolf Creek blindsided me with how effective it was, and in the way McLean doesn't look upon his characters as plot devices or mere "dead teenagers" who are paying for their "sins" of youthful exuberance (they aren't just props to be severed and humiliated for our entertainment); no, there's not a drop of Eli Roth-like cynicism found in Wolf Creek, just an unflinchingly horrifying realism and seriousness to the material and the fate of the characters.

The film is based on true events about a serial killer who stalks the outback. And there ya go. It's that simple. There are no contrivances in the film and no swerves at the end. It's simply a tale about three young people – to no fault of their own – in the wrong place at the wrong time as they experience a series of horrifying events placed against the ironically serene and beautiful Australian outback. And that's where McLean immediately gets points in my book for two things: one, he establishes these characters. For 40+ minutes we're essentially the fourth person in the threesome that includes Liz, Kiristi, and Ben as they embark on a road trip and stop off at Wolf Creek for some hiking (of course, things go wrong when they come back to find their car won't start). The other thing McLean scores points on is his reluctance to fall into the trap of overusing his handheld camera. In the beginning of the film I was dreading the camera work, but it made sense as it placed us within the circle of friends and gave the viewer a sense of intimacy with these characters. However, McLean wisely switches his aesthetic once the characters are in peril and wisely juxtaposes the expanse (and beauty) of the outback with the intense violence hounding the characters. I was thankful that McLean – who was obviously influenced by Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – didn't go for the claustrophobic, shaky-cam aesthetic, and that's one of the primary reasons I found Wolf Creek to actually be more effective than something like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: it's unnerving the way everything is out in the open…there's nowhere to hide, and instead of forcing us to watch the action up close throughout the entirety of the film, McLean emits a sense of false hope as his characters are often surrounded by beautiful sunset backdrops and wide-open spaces. It's unique for a horror film of this ilk (the serial killer/torture porn film) to understand that shoving our faces in the ugliness is not the best way to be horrified by what we're seeing.

As the film wore on I kept thinking that the film was going to have some kind of ironic twist or sardonic touch by McLean; however, to my delight (as much as one can be "delighted" by a film like this) McLean refrains from these kind of artistic choices that plague the likes of the Saw films, or the snarky tone of Eli Roth, and instead simply focuses on the events in front of the camera with an unflinching, non-judgmental eye. It's quite powerful and effective. Wolf Creek is, dare I say, better than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I'll let that sink in so all of my horror readers can tell me how crazy and stupid I am. But I've always felt like Hooper's film is a bit overrated. There's no denying its power in certain scenes, but I felt like it was a 45 minute premise stretched out over 80 minutes. Wolf Creek, though, gives us character development and an unconventionally beautiful backdrop to juxtapose the horrifying actions that are taking place. In short: it actually looks good, whereas TCM just reminds you of its ugliness throughout.  It reminded me of the way Cormac McCarthy (I only invoke his name because I've been immersed in his work lately) also used the setting of wide-open expanses as the setting for his stories of bloody violence. Obviously McLean isn't doing anything on par with what McCarthy does, but for a horror film the lo-fi cinematography is quite a triumph.

I kept waiting and waiting for that winking-at-the-camera moment, but it never happened, and because of that McLean is telling his viewers that this isn't like those other horror films that use women being tortured and splattered with blood as away to titillate…he's daring us to watch the events unfold, with the film's open spaces, music, and minimalistic mise-en-scene it's almost as if he's telling us that this isn't a movie at all. McLean challenges his viewers to not just watch the horrifying events unfold (I've read reviews that liken it to being hit in the face with a shovel), but to consider why it is we watch horror films to begin with. There's nothing on display in Wolf Creek that would ever make me want to watch it again (another thing it shares in common with TCM) , but I can't deny its power, its effectiveness in making me feel terror and keeping me hoping that the characters would make it out alive. I wasn't exhilarated by the events of Wolf Creek (who the hell would be?) in the same way that some people are probably exhilarated by the gore of the Saw films or the cynicism of the Hostel films, and that's one of the reasons the film is so good at being an effective horror film. The violence isn't visceral; rather, it's just there, in all of its unmitigated horror. It's rare for a horror film to offer up the violence in such a detached, non-exhilarating way.

Sure it's not the type of horror film that transcends the genre and ushers in new or lukewarm fans of horror (it's far too unrelenting for that) as evidenced by the zero star review the film received from Roger Ebert. And that's completely understandable. I can see how those who are not horror fanatics view the film as nihilistic, pointless, and an absolute nightmare to sit through, but I think that's what McLean is going for, and he succeeds in doing without making the terror or violence pornographic, because there is nothing entertaining about the bloodshed in this film. So yes, the film is a chore to get through, and I don't know if I would ever sit through it again, but I can't deny the experience I had which made me think that McLean is someone to keep an eye on in the genre.

When held up to its contemporaries and the ugliness of the genre it unfairly is akin to, Wolf Creek feels like a masterpiece, and when thinking about the film in the context of exploitative horror, it's so well shot and directed and acted that it's easy to see – should you ever muster up the courage to sit through the film – why I consider it one of the great horror films (alongside The Descent) of the last decade. But be warned: the film is for die-hard horror fans only.

Summer of Slash: Sleepaway Camp (AKA Nightmare Vacation)

One gap in my knowledge of the American slasher film has always been the 1983 entry Sleepaway Camp. I don't know why I always skipped watching this when the opportunity came up (I vividly remember the cover box from days as a youngster perusing the horror aisles at the local video store, and wanting to watch it), maybe it was because it's reputation solely rested on one element and one element only: its shock ending. I didn't really feel like slogging through a below mediocre slasher just to get to one scene, but hey, I did a few years ago with The Burning (whose gore effects were more than worth wadding through the mediocrity of that film) and this year with The Prowler (ditto), so I figured what the hell…I'd finally give Sleepaway Camp a shot for my horror project this summer. What I found was a film that was exactly the opposite of the aforementioned gore-effect classics: here's a film that is far more cerebral, a film that for 1 hour and 18 minutes seems like a nice little entry into the slasher subgenre with its unwillingness to rely on stupid teenagers running into the woods to get slaughtered and other tired genre tropes; however, all of those "nice" qualities are heightened by the film's final two minutes that more than lives up to its reputation. Usually twist endings don't do anything for me, but every once in awhile a twist ending gives new context to a film, it lingers in your mind for days and makes it nearly impossible to forget not just the image, but the film as a whole. Sleepaway Camp has this type of ending.

Is Sleepaway Camp's twist grounds enough to call it one of the best slasher films, deserving a place among the pantheon of great slashers like Black Christmas, Halloween, Bay of Blood, and ANightmare on Elm Street? That's a question I'm not sure I can answer quite yet. In fact, the film doesn't even really feel like a slasher other than it takes place at a summer camp, there's a killer on the loose, and we know someone at the camp is responsible. There aren't any "dead teenager" moments where stupid people do stupid things, and that's a HUGE relief. What we do have is a horror film that deals with issues that usually aren't broached in slasher films, and even if the film isn't one of the most original of the genre you can't deny the effect that the twist has on the rest of the film.

There's no way I can really talk about the film without really talking about it…so consider this your SPOILER WARNING. The film opens with an interesting, and somewhat surprisingly restrained pan of Camp Arawak as we hear the muffled voices behind the boarded up windows of the abandoned camp. Flashback to a lake where Angela and her brother Peter are boating with their father until a reckless driver decapitates the father and kills Peter. Flash-forward 8 years and we see Angela (Felissa Rose) living with her cousin Ricky (Jonathon Tierston) and his mom (Desiree Gould who does some of the film's best overacting). From the onset we can tell that something isn't quite right because of how bizarrely the mother acts (she's a little too enthusiastic about camp acting as the catalyst for Angela's coming of age). And from this point on Ricky and Angela are off to summer camp where we meet an array of classic, half-shirt wearing male counselors and side-pony-tailed female counselors, as well as pedophile cook and a cantankerous old camp director

What's so interesting about Sleepaway Camp is how the summer camp setting is a very tangible thing. In most slashers the camp setting (or the school or hospital or whatever it may be) is solely designed to displace you, to make you the feel the nightmarish qualities of the location as a madman with an axe or a knife or a chainsaw chases hapless victims around. In Sleepaway Camp, however, is different in that Camp Arawak really does feel like the hell so many people describe summer camp as being (I was lucky enough to never have to go to one) if you were even the slightest bit different or underdeveloped or unusual as a tween or early teen. It can be a humiliating experience where fragile psyches are sent to a place run by horny and immature teenagers who probably do more damage than good. Sleepaway Camp understands this notion and makes the Hell-on-Earth feeling of summer camp palpable in a way few other (if any) slashers have. It's one of the film's qualities that makes it stand apart from its contemporaries.

Another element that makes the film stand apart is how it deals with themes seriously whereas most slashers have their tongue firmly planted within their cheek. We are treated to flashbacks of Angela and her brother spying on her father sleeping with another man, as well as her and her brother perhaps getting ready to play "doctor" in their bed. And then, well, then there's the ending. (Just for good measure I'll throw in another SPOILER WARNING here) It's one of the best and most effective endings I've seen in a slasher film, and perhaps in any horror film. Counselors and a pedophile cook have been offed throughout the film, and as the film brilliantly builds towards its shocking climax (the pacing of the film is great, lingering when it should – giving the feeling of endless summer days – and picking up the pace near the end) we begin to see why Angela has been so reserved over the summer. A quick note before we discuss the ending: I loved how the film was nuanced and seamless in its observations on teenage sexuality. Often the characters in the film fumble their way through their sexual advances, and even the more "experienced" counselors have an air of ignorance to their limited sexual expertise. So it was quite refreshing for a slasher film that takes place at a camp to not having any nudity or ignorant moments of false sexual bravado.

Back to the ending: Once we figure out that it is indeed Angela doing the killing – this revelation occurs about 45 minutes into the film for any astute horror fan – we're ready to pack it up and call it an okay slasher with elements not found in most horror movies of the time. However, the ending changes everything, and I think the filmmakers (writer/director Robert Hiltzik) understood this fact because they don't simply rely on the fact that it's a teenager doing the killing being shocking enough; no, instead we get one last flashback that turns the entire film – and the events that took place at the camp – on its head. In the final flashback we see Ricky's mother talking to someone we presume to be Angela, as she talks about the tragedy that befell her father she begins to explain that once her husband left her she could never fulfill her dream of having a daughter, so when Angela's father left her with Ricky and his mother she thought, of course, that two boys was too many, so why not have a girl…she then begins to explain that Angela is a perfect name…much better than Peter. Then we cut back to two counselors who happen upon Angela and her love interest (Paul), and as she hums to herself and cradles Paul in her arms the counselors make a horrifying discovery: Angela is really a boy. Jesus. I knew from the reputation of the film that the ending packed a punch, but I wasn't expecting that, and even though I knew pieces of what the surprise ending was I wasn't expecting it to be executed so well. It's just so damn unsettling.

So, with the revelation that it was Angela in the lake who was killed with her father, and not Peter, we understand now why Angela was so reserved all summer, why she refused to take showers with the rest of the girls, and why Ricky's mother was acting so freaking bizarre at the beginning of the film. It's not only a crazy ass ending, but it's somewhat poignant too, because here is human who has been completely effed up thanks to a crazy aunt. That final image of "Angela" standing there naked with blood over "her" body is one that will stay with me for some time.

The gore is pretty tame, though, despite the shock of that ending, and really the tameness of the gore points towards the film's biggest (almost so big it sinks the entire film) flaw: the amateurish direction.  Hiltzik wrote a great screenplay, but he can't direct a scene worth a damn.  Compounding upon the awful lighting throughout some of the film's pivotal scenes is the fact that the deaths are so clumsily blocked and executed that it's hard to decipher just what the hell it is we're even looking at.  One such example is when the killer unleashes a horde of bees on a character.  All we're privy to is off-camera noises, which would be fine as non-implicit violence is often the best way to do horror (although it comes of as tacky in a slasher film, a subgenre whose sole purpose is to titillate and give the audience a visceral charge with its beheadings and stabbings and impalings), and awfully shot close-ups of a bathroom door.  When the scene finally climaxes we get a REAL shaky pan across the floor on a mangled arm and a face full of bees.  It's pretty lame.  However, there is one shot that is genuinely jarring.  The killer has trapped a prankster under his capsized canoe, and the dead teenager doesn't show up until the next day.  When the canoe is turned over to reveal the dead body I have to say that the image (and the only instance of good make-up) startled me and kind of creeped me out.  It was a pleasant change from the hokeyness of the deaths (a the pedophile cook dies by getting hot water poured on him...seriously) that litter the movie and almost bog it down to a point where the audience forgets the film's strongest asset: its script.

Sleepaway Camp has your basic late-era (relatively speaking since a shitload of slashers were released from the time Friday the 13th was released in 1980 to the time of Sleepaway Camp's 1983 release) , cheaply made slasher aesthetic as the camera is basically stationary throughout, again making it feel very personal and introspective, a film that focuses more on the inner horrors and turmoil rather than slashings and stabbings and false scares (thankfully there are none here, the killer kills in a methodical, Michael Myers type way). So, yeah, it's not as interesting to look at as other early slashers (Hiltzik only directed this one film, but continued to pen the inferior sequels, which shows that he was never able to parlay those "skills" as a director into other directing gigs), and in some cases the film just looks incredibly cheap and amateurish (as mentioned above), but what the film lacks in style it makes up for in how much it affects the viewer, and it has an ending that not just makes the film memorable, but makes it an essential entry into the horror genre. I can't believe it took me this long to see Sleepaway Camp, but it's definitely one of the best examples of how effective the slasher film can be. It's one of the best, and most important, horror films of the 80's.

On a lighter note...just look at the fashion in this film!  Ah, the 80's!