Tag Archives: slasher films that aren’t supposed to be funny but are funny

Every Loser Wins

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fatalgames2FATAL GAMES

3.5 Stars  1983/18/81m

“The second prize is death.”

A.k.a. The Killing Touch / Olympic Nightmare

Director: Michael Elliot / Writers: Rafael Bunuel, Christopher Mankiewicz & Michael Eliot / Cast: Sally Kirkland, Lynn Banashek, Michael Elliot, Christopher Mankiewicz, Sean Masterson, Michael O’Leary, Teal Roberts, Marcelyn Ann Williams, Melissa Prophet, Angela Bennett, Nicholas Love, Lauretta Murphy, Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens.

Body Count: 6

Dire-logue: “I’m going to have to disqualify you…now!”

Here’s a javelin-tastic flick that’d be great on a double bill with Graduation Day. At an exclusive athletics training academy, a group of promising young Olympians – known as The Magnificent Seven – are threatened with extinction by a hooded maniac who tosses a mean javelin.

Amongst the array of convenient suspects are their strict coach, their steroid-prescribing doctor and the lesbian swimming coach, who’s involved with one of her proteges. Or it could be an envious ‘friend’? The sprintin’, tossin’, bar-spinnin’ teens are eliminated for good as they find themselves alone, usually working out or relaxing in the steam room afterwards – a fate which befalls one very unlucky young lady, who runs buck naked around the entire school trying to escape from the loon!

Points are lost for shaky editing, horrible incidental music, “uneven” performances and just a total lack of credibility – especially during the killer’s exposition, which is given away in most reviews of the film, robbing it of the actually-okay mystery element it trades on. As it turns out, I love the identity of the killer and how ludicrous the motive is.

Elliot’s direction is pedestrian but adequate, shooting some action from about three miles away from where’s it’s happening. But the killer is so accurate with the stick that he could skewer a teen from the other side of the Atlantic, yet the final girl (Annie) fleeing down a corridor proves more than a match.

Likeable characters, some funny humour and a general feeling of unrewarded effort don’t mean the film is as fatal as it’s largely made out to be. Yeah, it’s crap, but it’s lovable crap. Like a manky dog. Linnea and Brinke only appear in the background briefly.

Blurbs-of-interest: Sally Kirkland was later in Fingerprints and Jack the Reaper; Nicholas Love was in The Boogeyman; Marcelyn Ann Williams, under the name of Spice Williams-Crosby, was in Dead End Road; Michael O’Leary was in Halloween Ends.

“Jason” lives

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fridaythe13th5FRIDAY THE 13TH PART V: A NEW BEGINNING

3.5 Stars  1985/18/87m

“If Jason still haunts you… You’re not alone.”

Director: Danny Steinmann / Writers: David Cohen, Martin Kitrosser & Danny Steinmann / Cast: Melanie Kinnaman, John Shepherd, Shavar Ross, Richard Young, Marco St. John, Corey Feldman, Carol Locatell, Jerry Pavlon, Juliette Cummins, Tiffany Helm, John Robert Dixon, Debisue Voorhees, Vernon Washington, Tom Morga.

Body Count: 22

The parallel universe in which Friday the 13th exists is a place where ones build, height and entire facial structure can change over a single day, and where knowledge of current events is so minimal that folks vacation in the same spot where dozens of murders have taken place a matter of hours earlier. Time jumps along at a merry old pace as well, as shown here. Boy-hero of The Final Chapter Tommy Jarvis sprouts from a weedy 12-year-old into a super-buff teen of no determinable age, but I’d guess between 16 and 18 – and only one year in real time since his last outing!

A New Beginning is just that (unless you count the presence of old characters); Tommy is carted off to the Pinehurst Institute for troubled teens with bad hair:

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Naturally, Pinehurst is in the middle of the woods (pine, I guess), affording many a place for a masked, unhinged psycho to stalk mentally unstable kids.

No sooner does Tommy arrive then a particularly angry resident embeds an axe into the back of a porky fellow inmate. Shortly after, locals begin falling victim to a psycho killer: An utterly surreal couple of leather-clad boys are first, then the requisite horny couple, local rednecks, and eventually the Pinehurst kids.

Is it Jason, who Tommy seems to keep seeing all over the show? The Sheriff seems to think so too, much to the chagrin of the dreadful actor who plays the mayor.

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Murders continue and when only staff member Pam and cook’s grandson Reggie remain, the killer is revealed to be the hockey masked, machete bearing legend that is JV. Can Tommy save them and stop his arch-enemy all over again? And here comes the spoiler…

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No.

Because it’s not Jason, just some schmuck donning a hockey mask (complete with different design), taking revenge on Pinehurst and all who dwell there for the axe-murder…of his son!!!

This is flawed for many reasons: if Dad was so local, why was there no relationship between them? Porky’s killer was already arrested and carted off – why kill everyone but the assailant? Why have a random photo of yourself in your wallet? Oh right, in case the audience are so fucking stupid they can’t put it together.

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A New Beginning is commonly known as the worst of the Friday crop; which is a fair assessment on some levels – it’s one of the laziest films, with a body count so stupidly high (including dream sequences) that the killer virtually teleports his way around town, perfecting the chess game of slasher movie killers’ ability to always be hiding behind the right tree or picking the right bedroom to stalk a victim into…

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According to the wonderful Crystal Lake Memories book, ex-porno director Steinmann’s intense paranoid moodswings made for a tense set and some questionable sequences: Are the leather boys supposed to be gay? One of them does get a phallic road flare rammed into his mouth… There’s a vicious streak to some of the homicidal dénouements, which personify abject cruelty as the troubled teens are brutally wasted without any care for their individual stories. They’re just wastable problem kids.

As with most of the earlier instalments, the MPAA insisted on several cuts, with the BBFC advising further shots removed.

It also has the worst score out of all the movies, a swirling attack of strings that belongs in a made-for-TV hurricane movie.

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In the ‘for’ arena, Friday V showed a jump forward in terms of production quality; much of the grainy, underlit scenes of The Final Chapter have been replaced by clearer visuals. The pure 80s-ness of it all is irresistibly amusing and Kinnaman makes for a gutsy heroine with the help of Ross, of Diff’rent Strokes, and Shepherd is suitably traumatised as Tommy, even if he only utters about 20 words the whole 87 minutes.

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Probably the cheesiest Jason venture (in spite of his absence) but definitely a fun ride if you don’t care about that minor fact.

Blurbs-of-interest: Juliette Cummins appeared in Deadly Dreams, Slumber Party Massacre II and Psycho III; Debisue Voorhees was in Innocent Prey and Appointment with Fear; Tiffany Helm is the daughter of Brooke Bundy, who was in A Nightmare on Elm Streets 3 and 4; Dominick Brascia was in Rush Week and directed Evil Laugh; Mark Venturini (Victor) was in Mikey in 1992. Bob DeSimone (Billy) is the brother of Tom DeSimone, who directed Hell Night. Danny Steinmann directed The Unseen under the pseudonym Peter Foleg.

DEVON’S GHOST: LEGEND OF THE BLOODY BOY

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devon2 Stars  2005/18/83m

“Only his victims know why…”

A.k.a. Sawed (UK DVD)

Directors: Koichi Sakamoto & Johnny Yong Bosch / Writers: Karan Ashley, Ron Day & Tim Grace / Cast: Karan Ashley, Johnny Yong Bosch, Reza Bahador, Jonathan Cruz, Kristy Vaughan, Matt Moore, Paul Taylor, Allyn Carrell, Aleisha Force, Joel S. Greco, Jana Edele, Chip Joslin.

Body Count: 11

Dire-logue: “First day of school and we have a double homicide. How’s this going to look to the school board?”

“Only his victims know why…” – I think I might have a clue too. Could it be that the two leads, who also wrote and directed, are secretly Power Rangers? Laugh at me not, both the Green (Turbo?) and Yellow Rangers of olde lead this merry oddity of a slasher film, which calls itself “a young adult action thriller,” which is, y’know, like when snobby directors insist they’re making more than a body count film. Yes…you are. You really, really are. Ooh look, tits and blood 4 minutes in!

Anyway, in the small town of Canyon City, famed only for the unsolved disappearance of a child a decade or so earlier, there’s a body count problem occurring. Devon’s parents were the main suspects until they were found slaughtered a year later… His childhood friends saw a bloody boy wandering around at the same time. They’re now high school seniors, confoozled by a razor-lined baseball bat toting killer who beats the shit out of amorous couples about town. Nightmare-plagued heroine Symphony (!) and her buddy Josh (the Power Rangers – yeah!!) end up becoming the ones who face off with Devon and use their inexplicably last-second gained martial arts abilities to save the day – with a little help from their friends Freedom, Genesis and, uh, Craig.

Flashing MTV editing does little to counter balance the dismal looking picture quality but the action sequences are well choreographed but remain wildly out of place like a cactus on an iceberg or, as Icelandic crooner Anggun had it, like Snow on the Sahara… It does serve to remind us that nobody’s really tackled a chop-socky slasher flick yet, that could be cool. A fallen Kung Fu protege on a Ralph Macchio mission of DEATH for those who beat him at the crane or whatever it was.

Devon’s Ghost isn’t a total loss, it’s just weird. Really weird. I half expected that evil witch thingy from the Power Rangers to appear, spouting dubbed lines while the Rangers try to organise a bake sale or something. The UK re-titlementization – and its box art – was undoubtedly some half assed attempt to pass it off as a member of the Saw family.

X-RAY

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xray3 Stars  1981/X/78m

“You have nothing to fear… Until they operate!”

A.k.a. Hospital Massacre / Be My Valentine…or Else! / Ward 13

Director: Boaz Davidson / Writers: Boaz Davidson & Marc Benim / Cast: Barbi Benton, Chip Lucia, John Warner Williams, Jon Van Ness, Den Surries, Gay Austin, Karyn Smith, Elizabeth Hoy, Billy Jacoby.

Body Count: 10

Like most of the slasher films from this era, X-Ray with all its aliases, the massacre to be is born out of the childhood trauma that opens the film. Gorky Harold gives his neighbour Susan a Valentine’s Card, which she laughs at and her brother David tears it up. Subsequently, Harold (having seen this through the window) sneaks in and murders David while Susan is out of the room.

Nineteen years later, Susan (now played by Playboy model Barbi Benton) stops by at the city hospital to pick up some test results, unaware that said results have been swapped for some really bad ones!!! The hospital staff, all demonstrating as much competence as a first-day McDonalds trainee, practically imprison Suze in the building, telling her she needs an operation now. Now! NOW!!!

Elsewhere, doctors, nurses, receptionists and custodians are being stalked and murdered by a looney-doc, resulting in syrupy blood squirting all over the place. There’s a decapitated head in a candy box, a corridor-sized sheet that envelops a woman, and a murdered administrator rolled hilariously into a closet on a wheelie chair.

Meanwhile, Susan’s doctor skulks about with a couple of slutty nurses, looking like an early Human League video gone askew, and eventually enough people are dead so that only Susan and nice doc Harry remain. Are they seriously trying to fool us with that cunning cover-up? Was that the most subtle clue they had working for them? I kind’ve expected a championing twist but there… just… wasn’t.

As far as Halloween clones go, Israeli-shot X-Ray is hopelessly inept. Everything about it sucks and yet it was so much fun and never got boring, which is always a good sign for these flicks (Visiting Hours take note). That said, the version I watched may have been heavily cropped for the UK release, which was awarded an X-rating and never resubmitted.

Blurbs-of-interest: Kid actors Hoy and Jacoby were two of the homicidal sprogs from Bloody Birthday; Jon Van Ness was in Tourist Trap; director/writer Davidson primarily works as a producer for Nu Image, who make cheaper-than-chips Sci-Fi DVD films with such imaginative titles as Crocodile, Octopus and Spiders as well as crud slasher flick Skeleton Man.

SILENT BLOODNIGHT

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silentbloodnight1.5 Stars  2006/18/84m

“The terror is everywhere!”

Directors/Writers: Stefan Peczelf & Elmar Weihsmann / Cast: Vanessa Vee, Mike Vega, Robert Cleaner, Alexander E. Fennon, Markus Schlotti, Andrea Stotter, Christine Dune, Christina Conti, Andy Freund, Julia Melchor.

Body Count: 13

Dire-logue: “Daddy, the waitress was allergic to bee stings. Why did all the bees sting at the same spot?”

There are times when things aren’t quite real to me, like the time I ate Space Cake in Amsterdam and my brain seemed to be firing so fast I thought it would short out and explode, then I was convinced I’d be run over by a tram. Bad times.

Self-induced trips aside, when watching Silent Bloodnight earlier today, I was struck by a sort of whatthefuckishappening vibe as the events of this supremely weird Austrian export unfolded before my eyes, which is quite possibly the weirdest film I’ve seen in recent memory, and said recent memory includes both Mr Halloween and Ax ‘Em.

The film begins with a girl wandering aimlessly down the middle of a road in the dark, chanting the lyrics to Mockingbird. She hears some splashing and spies on three guys and a girl skinny dipping in the lake and sits there nibbling the corner of a chocolate bar. Skinny dippers emerge from the water and we see something you don’t oft get in slasher flicks: FULL FRONTAL MALE NUDITY!

silent1The girl then finds two naked people having sex and is approached by two clothed guys (possibly the skinny dippers but who knows what’s going on in this film?) She offers them chocolate. Another couple drive up and begin having sex in their car. A different girl goes to the bathroom and finds blood. Whose? Dunno. Her boyfriend staggers in and is then killed with a spade by a dungaree wearing farmer type.

Back in the sex-car, the girl – Sabrina – sees a terrified girl at the window but doesn’t stop the sex for now. When she chooses to, her boyfriend Matt thinks her screams are climactic and continues humping her. The terrified girl hides in some reeds but spade-farmer comes and kills her. Another guy called Jacob appears and asks Sabrina and Matt – done with sex-car – if they’ve seen a girl called Nina. No. He goes to the lake and cries “nooooooo” for some reason.

The mysterious transvestite-eiderdown killer!

The mysterious transvestite-eiderdown killer!

Sabrina, we learn, is the local news anchor who presents her show in only a bikini. There’s some blah about a discovered piece of jewelry and Sabrina wants to investigate the girl-at-the-window but nobody else cares, including her cop dad. Some more teens turn up to stay at a house or help open a boy scout camp (I couldn’t work it out) and a couple of them die by spade when they go off somewhere. Meanwhile, after being attacked by a clodding transvestite, Sabrina investigates Jacob’s sister Nina, who has escaped from an institution and she and Jacob discuss it over the world’s biggest jug of OJ.

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Jacob confided in Sabrina the truth about his Vitiman C deficiency.

The killer eventually comes to the house where the teens are staying a kills some of them, including another frontally nude guy, whose frontally nude girl ran down the hall straight into a knife… Sabrina’s dad appears to save the day and we learn something to do with Nina being raped and dying somehow. In a handy flashback, mid-rape, one of the guys just says she’s dead and leaves… How did she die? Chocolate intolerance? What? Help! To make matters worse weirder, the killer appears almost straight away at the scene and spins with his spade in hand as if competing for Gold at The Hammer in the Olympics and takes the guy’s head off!

silent3Silent Bloodnight makes little sense and two of the girls look exactly the same so I had no idea who I was dealing with at any one time. Also, the film stock may well have been left out in the rain for a fortnight as it’s so damn blurry, giving it an early 80’s look akin to trash like Satan’s Blade or Honeymoon Horror. It’s actually better than those films though, mainly because the Austrian cast all talk in English. Better than subtitles? Well…yes and no. I respect anyone who can master a language as we English-speaking natives are just too damn lazy to most of the time, but both pronunciation and choice of adjectives constantly had me smirking as Sabrina would try and make points during her terror: “something unexplained has happened!” she caws. Elsewhere, a cop assigned to protect her suggests she order a pizza, to which she responds: “what a mouth! I will complain about you!”

Bless them for trying but I had little to no idea what was happening, who most of the cast were, what they were doing there and why dungaree-farmer killed most of them. Or who the tranny-killer was. Or what became of dungaree-farmer at the end.

If you like tons of mixed-gender nudity, incomprehensible plotting, incidental stingers that sound like you’re receiving a text message, translations assumedly advised by Google and slightly blurry visuals then Silent Bloodnight is for you and nobody else. Stick it in the box under your bed with your porn, it’ll be happy there.

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