Harper’s Island – Episode 6
Cumilative body count so far: 9
Nearly at the halfway point and the gore quotient is cranked up a few notches as the shock demise that occurred off screen (but not off audio) at the end of Ep. 5 is revealed in all it’s gruesome glory as a ‘head spade’ (what is this??) slices its way through the face of the father of the bride…
Hysterics ensue (not the funny sort, unless you’re watching) and Trish reveals to all that slimy bro-in-law Richard was shagging stepmom Katherine. JD discovers the body of Uncle Marty and, after convincing Henry and Abby that he didn’t rig the chandalier and taking a field trip to the Sheriff’s secret shrine to all that is John Wakefield, they resolve to digging up the body to make sure he’s really dead… They find what looks like a biology class skeleton, but they’re all convinced…
Meanwhile, Sheriff interviews the wedding party and Cal and Chloe – oblivious to the horror – make an attempt to get back the diamond ring lost in Episode 1. Today’s kill occurs at the end of the episode again, a nice grisly harpooning… It looks as if the rest of the series will be shifted into the gear of terror! Yay! …And where’s Jimmy the fisherman, eh? Hmm…
2009/15/92m
Instead, we begin with his funeral, marked later that evening by a party held by I-do-what-I-want type rich kid Bradley (Pettyfer), leader of a popular school clique made up of five utterly hateful scholars and wannabe-nice-guy Alexis, who takes a fancy to prissy head girl Justine, the unwitting object of the late Darren’s affections. The boys are of the typical playground bully mold, while the girls are slutty bitches who barely seem to like one another let alone anyone else… Justine is inducted into the in-crowd and soon begins to suspect that they had a hand in causing Darren’s suicide when they react particularly poignantly to a series of abusive text messages seemingly from Mullet’s phone. His geeky friend Jason? Justine’s high-brow friend Helena? Or somebody else…?
Yep, somebody else. Darren in fact. He’s back from the beyond to settle up and do away with the horrible kids good n’ proper. Ergo, gory deaths ensue, with decapiation, castration, a popped-eyeball (which is subsequently pushed back in), pencils rammed up the nose and hands lopped off with a paper guillotine – and it couldn’t happen to a bunch of more deserving individuals! Director Wright puts in enough comedy to offset the sometimes ridiculous setups; the trio of miserable Emos, desperate to out-depress eachother, a funny gender role reversal featuring a character attacked in the shower sprinting across campus in nothing but his pants, and plenty of sharp dialogue.
THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW
1982/18/88m
Things begin in the misty blueness of 1961, June 19th to be exact, and the birth of a child in a house. Looks and sounds painful. Twenty-one years later, the house – now the sorority of the title – is being evacuated by seven graduating sisters; Liz, Stevie, Katherine, ditzy Morgan, straight-talkin’ Diane, little girl-like Jeanie and rich bitch Vicki. Their miserable housemother, Mrs Slater, wants them out ASAP but they need to stick around to throw a graduation party…
A watery altercation between Slater and Vicki makes the girl mad enough to plot a revenge prank to really sock it to the old beeyatch. Naturally, the prank goes askew and Mrs Slater is shot dead. The girls panic, fight, scream, cry and are eventually forced to hide the body in the unused pool when all the stuff for their party arrives. Guilt and paranoia take over as the sisters attempt to keep up their facade of all being well while the party rages on… But somebody is outside and has Mrs Slater’s iron cane and wants to insert it into those responsible for her untimely death – or is it Mrs S herself?
Well, no… We knew that really, didn’t we? But the girls don’t and they begin to fall victim to the cane-toting madman, her mentally unstable son, Eric, all the time remaining out of sight. Their party continues in the background when they come to realise Mrs Slater’s body has gone walkabout and they split to try to find her, find her, and then try to get rid of her again, electing to bury her beneath an open grave in a handy nearby cemetery…
Smart girl Katherine steps up as the reluctant heroine who wanted to call an ambulance right from the start. While Vicki leads the naive ones around trying to cover up their crime, Katherine investigates the mysterious room in the attic, avoids her dorky date and is the first to second guess the disappearances of her friends. Meanwhile, the killings continue, all carried out with the iron cane but largely bloodless and possibly cut down. Rosman reportedly didn’t want much on screen gore in the film and it doesn’t really require much to remain effective.
Things begin to wrap up with a crazy scientist, Katherine getting doped up, an eerie clown and lots of hallucinations. Rosman has gone for an almost surreal approach to his tale; from the unbelievable reaction the majority of girls have to the accident to their demises, some of which feature dizzying visuals of the pulsing corridor in the sorority house as Jeanie, dressed up like a six-year-old with ribbons in her hair, runs and stumbles before her savage death. At least half of the girls poll sympathy and it’s hard to watch them tortured, something that probably won’t be an issue in the remake, but this forms the essence of the horror so is just about forgivable.
It’s rare to see a slasher film so in touch with its medium that there’s obvious effort in making it look stunning, taking what worked in its ancestors and recycling it to better visual effect. There are flaws but not many and hopefully the film will be remastered and given the special edition treatment once the remake surfaces.
SKELETON MAN
2004/18/86m
Through the medium of flashback part I, we learn what happened to the previous team, they met the Skeleton Man, and the body count reaches double figures within fifteen minutes. The group then stumble upon a blind Indian who uses flashback part II to explain that the killer once killed loads of tribal folk and is called ‘Cotton Mouth Joe’ – almost like the song. Almost. The skeleton man appears, usually on horseback, through weird little CG vortexes (that everybody sees but nobody mentions) and begins chopping and skewering the soldier dudes and dudettes, brings down a chopper with a bow and arrow and appears impervious to bullets, which doesn’t put any of the team off wasting their rounds.