Schmollywood Babylon

The Prowler (Joseph Zito, 1981)

The Prowler is now one of the most popular films from the golden age of slashers, 1980-1982. It's also the sole reason why director Joseph Zito also got the chance to direct Friday the 13th part 4, one of the best in the series. While I can agree on some of the superlatives said about The Prowler, I still have a problem considering it to be one of the best. Even Zito agrees on the problems, and they're quite serious for a movie depending on non-stop tension. Written by Neal Barbera - the son of Joseph Barbera, the animation guru - and four or five people more, all using their talents to add dialogue, scenes and whatever made someone in the production happy, but it also made the movie suffer the terrible slow-as-hell-death. More on that later.

In 1945 a murder happens in the small town of Avalon Bay, a young couple is brutally pitchforked to death while doing some serious gazebo-smootching. This is such a traumatic experience that the mayor (later played by Lawrence Tierney in a thankless role) forbids the graduation celebration for 35 years - until 1980 when it's time again. Bad luck for everyone, because now the killer is back - ready with his bayonet, pitchfork and gun for a new night of bloodshed!

The Prowler looks so good. It looks extremely good, and the budget was quite decent for the form of film it was - one million bucks - and every dollar is on the screen. The cast is okay-ish, even if Farley Granger looks a bit uninterested from time to time and Tierney is wasted on a role so small it could have been played by anyone - but maybe it was pure charity. He probably needed the money and he had work with director Zito before. 

But the script have massive problems. It's hard to get to know the characters - even in run-of-the-mill classics like The House On Sorority Row and The Dorm That Dripped Blood has characters you actually care about, that's not so damn anonymous. Here I really never care. It just not that important who dies or live. The script also have a couple too many scenes of the young hunky sheriff and the final girl just sneaking around in dark houses, looking for clues - some of these scenes are so long I actually lost interest and took to the kitchen to fix something to eat with the knowledge I wouldn't miss anything at all. That's not good. 

Yeah I know, that's not why you watch a slasher movie... but it is! Good storytelling is the main ingredient why a movie works. A good slasher movie should have both story and gore. Thankfully The Prowler gives us some of the best kill scenes ever in slasher history, courtesy of Tom Savini. Here also Zito's talent as a director comes forward, and together they create very sadistic and mean-spirited kills, drawn-out and bloody. The shower scene and the scene right before that one is fantastic - you literary squirm becauese it feels in the whole body. So even if there's terrible boring and slow scenes in-between, be prepared for some good ol' gore to lighten things up. 

I think I might have liked The Prowler more as a young adult, but parts of it haven't aged very well. Still a good slasher with good gore and a couple of great terror scenes. That's - I guess - what we all wants in the end?

The Dorm That Dripped Blood (Stephen Carpenter & Jeffrey Obrow, 1982)

The Synapse release of The Dorm That Dripped Blood might be the ultimate proof that VHS is 100% obsolete. Without this amazing format we would never have seen this movie as it was meant to be seen. But hey, if you want to watch a version so murky it’s impossible to see what’s happening and of course censored – both by the distribution company from the beginning and then probably by some government controlled fascistoid censorship department – just do that: go Go GO VHS!!!

I would never do such a stupid thing. I’ve never been into nostalgia and that’s basically what VHS and other tape-formats are today. I just want to see the movie in as good quality as possible. To watch The Dorm That Dripped Blood now is like watching a movie you haven’t seen before – even if the film is cheaper than cheap, it still looks fantastic compared to every single release out there. But it’s not just fine quality and the – finally – totally uncut violence that’s attractive. It’s a good slasher movie at the same time, which can be quite rare sometimes.

Alright, I’m a bit whiny now –but I’ve been to the dentist this morning and I’m full of drugs – and plus that the ticking bomb called migraine. Anyway, a bunch of youths stays in the school campus over the weekend or something – I think they’re gonna fix it up. Maybe. Suddenly a very brutal killer starts killing (surprise!) them one by one. The killer even gets a chance to whack the parents of one the students! Fun fun fun!

Alright, that was the worst recap EVER of a movie, but I just can’t write more about such a thin storyline. The thing is that it’s a slasher movie that still holds up so damn well. Maybe it’s like with The House on Sorority row, it just has the great rhythm. What makes this one unique is that its very, very nasty. The kill scenes are often very bloody, drawn-out. Sadistic like few other from this time (maybe The Prowler?) and much of this suffered when Big Brother Censor Monkey took the scissors and butchered it before it even could be released properly.

The drill scene – of course – stands out, which is very graphic even if the prosthetic head used looks a big on the cheaper side. There’s also a spiked bat slamming into the side of the head that seemingly goes on forever. A hand sliced in two, bloody cuts and a very interesting cynical atmosphere – rare for such an intimate and personal project (I think it was more or less hot like a student project at some point). For a slice and dice movie it’s a lot more creative than some of the bigger-budgeted counterparts – even if it never becomes original regarding story, motive or whatever… even if the ending is a bit more edgier than usual.

Using the often very spooky campus environments, a distinct lack of light and the grittiness that comes with shooting super-cheap at a real location, Death Dorm (as it was called once) feels eerily realistic. It’s so far from glossy and sanitized as it can come, which feels very refreshing in a time when most slashers already had become slicker Hollywood-wannabe projects.

 It’s always nice to revisit this film, and if you haven’t seen this version – see it ASAP.

The House on Sorority Row (Mark Rosman, 1983)

I'm not sure if its a good or bad thing that I keep forgetting the twists and turns during the last 20 minutes of The House on Sorority Row, but I guess it's a good thing that I keep returning to this classic - and very generic - slasher just a few years after the big boom of slice and dice cinema hit the world. The legend says that after the big slasher craze created by Halloween almost 1000 typical slashers was made until the late eightes, and that might be true. Many is probably lost by now, but a few - liek this one - still keeps coming back time after time. 

So why this one? It's hardly original, the kills isn't the most spectacular ones in the genre, no superstars made their first appearance here ( just like Kevin Bacon in Friday the 13th, Jason Alexander and Holly Hunter in The Burning - and lets not forget Brad Pitt in Cutting Class). I personally think The House on Sorority Row survives because it has a good rhythm. It delivers something every five minute or so - a kill, boobs, prank, laugh. That's the magic behind it. It's just a safe movie to watch. The location looks good, the set-up is almost mindboggingly stupid  - but works because it's so stupid. 

A group of sorority sisters wants to celebrate their graduation and decides to stay in the house and let the party be there. Well, that's not okay according to their stiff house mother, Mrs Slater. So what to do? Yes, a good old prank! With a gun. Yeah, threaten the old poor lady with the gun, make her swim out in a pool - and then the gun goes of - BAM - killing her! No one of these pretty young faces wants to end up in prison and they hide the body and continue to prepare for the party! Well, well... we all know what's gonna happen. "Someone" shows up and starts killing them and their friends - one by one!

Yeah, it's retarded. But it's directed with flair and talent from Mark Rosman, has some decent kills - which could be bloodier, but still feels quite nasty - and an adorable cast of nude girls and hunky boys. Just like a real slasher should be. The suspense is actually not bad at all during the last half, when the killer takes the stalking up a notch and the bodycount rises. The cast is likeable - which not necessary means talented - and it delievers a spooky, weird twists (or a bunch of them!) during the end. Not bad at all, but enough confusing for me to forget it all the time. 

Maybe that's why I keep watching it. I'm expecting something else, another ending (probably the ending from Happy Birthday to Me!), and then when the finale is better than I expected it to be, my enthusiasm rises once again and not long thereafter I will forget it and then I can keep watching it for an eternity.

Like a damn geeky gold fish. 

Halloween: Resurrection (Rick Rosenthal, 2002)

I wonder what happen there. They had something really good going on with 1998's excellent Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), which effectivly tied together part 1 and 2 to a real saga. Then came Resurrection and suddenly Busta Rhymes was kung fu'ing Michael Myers out through a window, Tyra Banks twerking in the control room and everything set in the never-charming location of a reality show. 

But the biggest crime here is that Busta Rhymes probably is THE worst actor ever to have signed up to do a slasher movie. I mean, the man CAN'T act! He's really trying, but ends up like a ten year old playing with his friends in the backyard, making their own homemade action movies. Oh, the horror. 

I really don't mind the setting. I work with reality TV myself, so it's a familiar place and it's fun to laugh at how they're doing it - often totally the opposite how it's done and seemingly with no planning at all (which sometimes happens in real life to, but that's another story). Here Busta is the owner of Dangertainment, a web-based entertainment channel who have rented the old Myers house to do their own, one-night, reality show with a gang of stupid, horny youths and Busta himself dressed like Michael Myers. Of course old white face shows up and kills them after another. 

Damn. This is bad. And I can't blame it on Rick Rosenthal. He's doing alright, keeping the energy going, trying to have fun with the retarded script. But the rest... nah. Except the pre-credits sequence - while far from perfect, it's still a nice and suspense-filled part with Jamie Lee effectivly killing off her old character (which I've heard was the reason why she even agreed to do the part), a good beginning. The last scene, with the body of Myers at the hospital is also good. A nice, freaky shock ending.

But more or less everything in-between sucks. Which is a damn pity, because it delivers some gore and he bodycount is quite high. The biggest mistake is that the producers and writers tries SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO hard to make Halloween a young, hip, cool slasher movie for a generation that would appreciate internet, webisodes, reality shows and everything else that seemed fresh at the time. It just doesn't work. 

I was more entertained by it when I was younger, but now... especially after comparing it to H20, it's a disaster in the franchise. Hey, even Rob Zombie's two movies that came later on is superior compared to this one - and they're far from perfect. 

Interestingly enough Rick Rosenthal "suffered" the same destiny here as with Halloween 2, being forced to reshoot the death scenes to make them gorier and stronger. And yes, that's a correct decision. They're not making art here, they're making slasher movies. Part 2 is still one of my favorite slashers ever made, and it wouldn't be the same without the extra gore - here... it kinda doesn't matter,because not even the deaths can help this movie elvate from crappy to bad.

I would lie if I said it was boring. It's not. It's fun in the same way as Jason Takes Manhattan or Hellraiser: Hellworld... or Critters 4 or Leprechaun in Space. Not good, but it works as easy watching for the moment.

Then it's forgotten. And should be for the rest of eternity. 

Friday the 13th (Marcus Nispel, 2009)

First of all, I'm sorry for the few updates, but hey... I'm working like never before and I rarely have energy to just watch a movie and then review it. I hope it will calm down a bit sooner or later. This morning - in one hour - I will be on my way to the (slightly) north of Sweden to do a short stint as a reporter on a big reality show. I did it a lot earlier this summer and now they want me back for two more days. Fun fun fun, but that means even less time to watch movie.

I've been trying to watch more radical, less mainstream flicks - but my brain can't handle it. Remember that I wrote a long and pretty enthusastic review of Texas Chainsaw 3D? That's the form of movies I can watch right now and I might continue, just for the hell of it. I like to revisit good reboots, remakes and glossy sequels to old horror movies. True story. Most of them are actually damn fine and gives a lot of new energy to the old story, and some of them sucks - like the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Not good, even I can agree on that!

First of all, I think Marcus Nispel and Platinum Dunes did a stellar work with this sequel/reboot of the Friday the 13th franchise. Really. I'm totally honest. It's not a remake, like some people still continue to claim, even if the movie actually starts with the ending for the first movie (shot with new actors) and then establishes that there's been a lot of disapperances in this area since then - even including a corny pre-credits story with stupid, horny youths looking for a marijuana farm out in the woods near Camp Crystal Lake. That sequence is violent, silly and colorful - and when that's over they go over to the main storyline, which is a brother looking for his sister and gets involved with some partying city kids in a nearby luxury cottage. 

It's a simple frame from drama, nothing special really, but what the hell - that's what Friday the 13th is! It's really back to basic, it's back to where the original story somehow started - at least with the four first movies. I camp, a forest, a crazy fucking killer chopping his way through over-grown teenagers. I like that. A lot. It's unpretentious and gritty, violent (way more violent and gory than the first two movies, which some people seem to forget in their constant whining) and with some decent acting. The highlight there is the chemistry between goofballs Aaron Yoo and Arlen Escarpeta, far from the main characters but stealing the scenes without any hesitation. And they're both cute, which kinda makes it easier for the eyes also.

Derek Mears as Jason is a nice touch also. He reminds me of Richard Brooker in part III, big and hulking, like a dirty old man lurking around in the woods. Far from the absurdity and crappiness of Kane Hodder, the most overrated Jason-actor EVER. Derek also takes a different path from Ken Kirzinger (Freddy vs Jason), who did his Jason more spooky, like a ghoul wandering around looking down at people and then kill them off with a nice, clean machete chop. Kirzinger was great to, but very different. He really had is own, original take on the legend himself.

Another fine thing with this film is the splendid cinematography by Daniel Pearl, where he manages both to channel the old-school slashers AND the new glossier look. It's not as saturated and arty as the stuff he did for the 2003 version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, for example. This is more classic style - but like Jason himself in this movie, dark and brooding.

It's a fun movie, it delivers what it's suppose to deliver. It became a huge success... so I honstly hope there will be more adventures from Jason Voorhees and his "friends" in the future. 

Friday the 13th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980)

I hate nostalgia. Really. I loathe it. I leave it to nostalgic VHS-collectors who whine on their forums looking back on a time that never will come back. It’s just a waste of time and makes you stay in a constant bubble, never learn anything, never evolve as a human and most of all, never discover something new. The only time nowadays I get that awful sense of nostalgia is when I start to watch a movie about our favorite Down’s syndrome serial killer Jason Voorhees. Yeah, according to the original backstory he has Down’s, a fact I guess even the owners of Friday the 13^th kinda wants to be forgotten by now. Anyway, I think it’s cool, in the sense that he represents a strong, awesome mentally challenged person.  Anyway, the nostalgia comes over me because Friday the 13^th (and its sequels) represents in many ways my first meeting with real horror. Not the classic, black & white horror, but the gritty, gory, brutal stuff that never stops – everyone is in danger (except the virgin of course!). Those dark nights when I was sitting (which means “hiding under a blanket”) in front of our big, fat TV, watching Jason chop his way through horny teenagers was truly inspiring moments. No, I didn’t go out and kill people – but I realized horror is so much more than the accepted “classics”.

So at least once a year I try to watch one, two or several Jason flicks and remember the days when I still was scared while watching movies. The first one is weird enough one of those I’ve seen least times. Not sure why, but doesn’t Warner own the first movie in Europe and the rest is owned by Paramount (up to Jason Takes Manhattan at least)? I remember watching part 2 to 4 many, many times on Swedish television – 5 to (partly) is harder to keep apart even if they all ever very specific storylines and gags – but feels less personal and gritty. Like Jason (not Voorhees, but of Cinezilla) said yesterday during our screening, after part 4 they’re becoming more meta – and that’s part of the fun I think – and less scary. But that was probably the only way for this series to survive so long. We need to laugh at it – until someone decides to fuck around with our minds again.

After watching the first film again – in our company’s cinema together with pals – it’s even clearer that it’s a damn fine movie. It’s also absurdly straight forward, very generic – except the twist at the end, it never really goes away from the format it establishes in the beginning and stays there. And it’s awesome. It’s so cool. It’s like smoking a joint and letting yourself getting drawn into a very macabre home video of idiots doing idiot things and at the same time just wanna fuck each other senseless. Friday the 13^th is the most sexually charged episode in this long-running saga. There’s one quite graphic sex scene (where Kevin show’s his bacon, nudge nudge…) which ends in a cum shot – OF BLOOD! Not sure if that was the meaning, but it feels a lot more sexual than it should have probably. All the young actors looks good and are very charismatic – from the Virgin Mary of the bunch, to smooth hottie Kevin Bacon. It’s a fine cast, inspired – and most characters have hardly any clothes on after just 10-15 minutes. Now wonder it became a huge success among the teenagers of the world.

Some people say that Halloween (or even Black Christmas or Bay of Blood) created the modern slasher. In a way they’re correct, but Sean S. Cunningham and Victor Miller took all these ingredients, mixed them together and created the first PURE slasher film ever. This film establishes every cliché in the book and does it very well. It’s grittier and gorier than Halloween, more streamlined than Bay of Blood and took an even cooler day than Christmas and used it for a perfect setting in a horror movie. I like the primitiveness of the story. I don’t need any surprises, I just want entertainment. Alright, you could say that about ever boring retro-slasher made the last five years, but they didn’t create the story – Friday did that. It’s also a gorgeous-looking movie. Together with My Bloody Valentine (who also shares very likable and interesting characters with this one) it’s one of the most well-shot slasher in history. It perfectly captures the magical terror of forests, the sparkling rain falling down on the darker-by-the-hour Camp Crystal Lake. You don’t see shit, but it’s still so well-lit you see exactly what you want to see.

Isn’t it interesting that Friday the 13^th with its legendary graphic violence isn’t especially violent? Well, it have three scenes of quite nasty carnage, but compared to other later slashers it’s tame – but I also think it gives us likable characters, a good (yes) script and a scary setting – which in the end wins us over.

It’s deep in our DNA, forests are scary and dangerous. Darkness is evil. We should stay by the fire and pretend there’s nothing out there watching us. But we all know we could be dead any second. That’s the power of Friday the 13^th. 

Death Valley (Dick Richards, 1982)

Aha. Yesterday I had a revelation. That's not a blow-up doll on the cover of Death Valley, it's a very androgynous drawing of a little boy looking scared. I think the ugly cover might be one of the reasons I've avoided this movie my whole life. It looks cheap and ugly and tacky and doesn't really ooze horror the way I want it to ooze horror. It just looks odd. Anyway, I'm happy I finally fell for the hype and bought it, because Death Valley is a fine, fine slasher-esque thriller with a lot more ambitions than I ever could imagine. And it might be the only genre movie from the eyes of a small kid that I actually think is worth watching! Yes, believe it or not, a non-annoying smart child character!

Little Billy (Peter Billingsley) is going on a road trip with his mother Sally (Catherine Hicks) and her new boyfriend Mike (Paul Le Mat). He reluctantly leaves his father in New York for the chance to see the desert. It doesn't take long until he, after wandering away from his mother, finds an empty RV standing in the middle of nowhere. He steals a necklace, a golden frog (it looks like), without telling about it. Hours later they see the RV crashed by the side of the road, all three passengers killed - well, that's the official explanation anyway. They're all been brutally butchered by a serial killer and now this killer is after Billy and his family! 

I would say Death Valley is a pretty unique thriller, it feels like - to quote horror queen Hollie - a "family-slasher", and that's very correct. Imagine Goonies... or The Monster Squad, or The Gate... maybe Gremlins, but set in a very adult slasher-environment. Amazingly enough it works, mostly because a very likable cast and the genius of a good child actor who plays smart - but not too smart. He's like boys are most, curious - too curious - and not always totally honest. Death Valley is also far from being family-friendly. We're not talking extreme violence like The Burning or some of the early Friday the 13th's, but it has graphic and bloody violence and nudity, stuff taken directly from something more aimed at an adult audience. It's pretty well-made also, without going Tom Savini-detailed. 

What I like the most is probably how classy the production is. This is made by someone who clearly knows how to point the camera. The angles, the tension created by the rhythm in the editing - everyhing smells quality. It is suspensful, it's not just victims wander in and out of the frame, it's something more. It reminds me - in atmosphere - of Richard Franklin's Roadgames, from 1981 (you know the one with Jamie Lee Curtis and Stacy Keach). Anyway, in the last 10-15 minutes the movie gets weaker. There's a twist, which seems pretty pointless, and the final feels a lot more generic than the rest of the movie. Like the screenwriter gave up a little bit and hurried to finish the script. This doesn't take away the entertainment value of the whole movie, or the overall quality, but it's sure a small let-down when comparing it with the high class of the rest of the production.

I'm happy I finally saw it. It's one of those flicks I will revisit again... and again. 

The Ripper (Christopher Lewis, 1985)

It's hard to deny that eighties shot-on-video horror movies  has  a very "special" charm. I actually love the quality, the cheapness - close to how a porn movies once looked (not that I've seen any...), but maybe most the enthusiastic idea of making something as "big" as a movie, with a budget consisting of ten dollars. To be fair, Christopher Lewis The Ripper looks like it had some kind of budget. Not much, still enough to have a cameo from Tom Savini, lots of extras and some okay-ish locations and impressive gore. But still... it's one helluva cheap, trashy, crappy SOV movie - but oh so entertaining. 

It begins in Victorian London 1988. A prostitute gets her throat cut in gory fashion while modern traffic lights enhances the atmosphere in the background. It's all a story told by a sweater-loving professor (Tom Schreier) to his class of over-aged students. The course is about film crimes (what the hell that's about?) and most of the lessons seems to be the professor saying something generic and lame about Jack the Ripper and then call it a day. But wait! There's something sinister going on in this sleepy small town, a killer is loose and he's after young pretty ladies - often the students we've learned to know and love - and he behaves exactly like good old Jack! Who is it? What has his tacky ring to do with it? And why is there an aerobics-themed dance number during the first twenty minutes?

The Ripper is slightly too long, there's some truly awful performances and some times you just expect a plumber to knock on the door and mount one of the ladies. It's even slightly boring, but in-between the sadness and incompetence there's a couple of very violent and gory killings and the fashion (especially on the professor) is like watching a car crash in slow motion. Most of the time it actually has a good pace and from time to time fun scenes, not only the kills. My favorite part is without a doubt Fred, the psychology professor played by a guy named Randall White (which sounds like a rich drug-dealing serial killer in Miami Vice rip-off). He has one single scene and he f**king rules that one with a bizarre, over-the-top and hammy-in-a-good-way performance - including product placement by Coca Cola (a drink that turns up way too many times to feel like a coincidence). Fun fun fun!

But most of the time we spend on watching crappy actors talking crappy dialogue, watching even more disastrous fashion kill most of hour senses. Some if it so ugly it's easy to go deaf just because it screams so loud. If you get my point. And I love it. I LOVE it. It's shit. It's tripe. But it's so much fun. And compared to Sledgehammer (another fun SOV movie), The Ripper visually feels like something bigger and bolder... but still, it never leaves the dimension of cheap shit. 

And yeah, Tom Savini. He's in the movie for like four minutes. He's actually quite okay, better than in some later movies and seems to be enjoying himself doing one of the hammier Jack the Rippers so far. But no, if you expect a typical good eighties horror movie this is not for you. If you want entertaining crap, this is definitely something for you. 

But don't blame it on me later on when you're starting to recover from your post-traumatic boredome syndrome. 

Girls Nite Out (Robert Deubel, 1982)

I saw Girls Nite Out on ZTV, a now defunct channel, for the first time a long, long, long time ago. The print was so dark it was hard to see what happen on the screen. Hal Holbrook was in it, a very good actor, but the rest of the movie kinda disappeared from my mind and only fragments was left for me to bring forward during slasher-themed discussions since then. When a buddy, Jason at Cinezilla, oddly enough started to write Facebook-posts about it a while ago (it feels like  very unlikely movie for him to put his energy on) I decided I needed to go back in time and revisit it.

What I experienced this time is a very fragmented movie, split into several stories - and after according to the normal geek-sites on the net it was a troubled production. It took several years for it to be released - it got a new trailer with materialet not even in the movie, Hal Hoolbrok was edited in later on, in a storyline that fits in the movie - but also acts like a seperate little movie. Hal is always good, but even he looks a bit bored in this story about someone dressed in a bear costume killing of female student in and around a campus - during the annual scavenger hunt (hosted by a silly local radio station). Quite a lot of time is spent on the drama, the typical sex-jokes, some romance and added one red herring after another, and then - for the last half hour or so - the killing starts.

I've seen so many slashers my brain began to rot a long time ago and Girls Nite Out (or "The Scaremaker" as I've known it for years and years) isn't the best slasher made. No Siree, it's quite far from the best slasher ever made. But the thing is... there's very few brilliant slashers (My Bloody Valentine, Friday the 13th, Halloween etc) and the rest often mingles around that middle border of quality. Girls Nite Out is slightly under that infamous quality border and I think we can blame the production problems. And maybe the director, but a slasher have never been that difficult to make. 

But sure, it have a couple of great scenes. The kills are bloody - not really graphic - but intensive and freaky. The final revelation of the killer is quite eerie also, but the twist is also quite boring and prejudiced and we've seen it many times before, even today. It could be a good twist, but I never seen it been done well. It's just... often very stupid. Many of the actors doesn't seem to be there, if you understand what I mean. It's like they experiencing difficulties to communicating with the filmmakers and just goes for their remote control of acting, doing what they can do but nothing more. 

It's a pity, 'cause the idea of a scavenger hunt around a campus is a good set-up for a slasher and the killer is quite cool in that silly bear costume. If it hadn't been so damn forgotten it would have been a good contestant for a better and bloodier remake, a production that would dare to go a bit further with the good ideas trying to get out in this movie. 

But hey, it has a great soundtrack at least. Not bad, not bad at all.

The Boogey Man (Ulli Lommel, 1980)

After revisiting The Devonsville Terror the other night I felt I needed to give The Boogey Man another try. I never really enjoyed it to the fullest, mostly because I think it's quite lame compared to other slasher-esque movies from the same time - and it feels obvious like Lommel just made it to make money, and absolutely nothing else. 

Of course I have no idea what his purpose was, but after watching the first scene - a very shameless rip-off on John Carpenter's Halloween it feels like Lommel only was out trying to get back some money after a couple of more arty (and not really good) experiments in the United states. 

I've always said - more as a joke - that the best thing with Lommel's movies are that they're often shorter than 80 minutes, but I'm serious. It's a good thing. Too many productions goes on forever and it's better to just make an entertaining movie and skip the more serious ambitions until next time - or never again. The Boogey Man is a very simple cash-in on the slasher-craze and have a pointless cameo by John Carradine. He's so underwritten his character is forgotten the same the left the screen. I know, I seem every negative here - but I'm not. I just like to point out some of the flaws before going to the positive words.

Lommel seems to have no clue how to make a horror movie and therefore he throws in everything he's seen recently. It has the same atmosphere as Halloween (and a couple of identical scenes...), uses a house very similar to The Amityville Horror, includes a Exorcist-like possession scene with a priest waving a cross + horny teenagers getting killed down by the lake. The Boogey Man have everything and it's a very entertaining mess. 

Forget about gore. It have one really graphic scene - the famous scissors... still the best shock in the movie and it holds up quite well even today - but the rest is just splashing blood (which is not gore, something American reviwers should learn!) and very cheap effects. Lommel included different versions of the head-impalement in several of his movies after this one. He must have liked that a lot. Or just felt everyone should be reminded of his first big success.

The acting is okay-ish, Suzanna Love is alwasy good - so is Llewelyn Thomas as the priest. Suzanna's real brother Nicolas plays her brother here, not bad - but he delivers a very broad performance, something very hard to fail with. 

You know, there's not much to say about The Boogey Man. It's very generic, slightly mad - very much Halloween (it even borrowed the title from what Dr Loomis says in Carpenter's classic) and 100 % mainstream. It's lame, but lame in a nice cozy way.

I didn't get bored. That's something.