6WH: Week 6 – The Slasher Calendar (Again)

I’ve done this before, so I won’t go over why so many slasher films are centered around holidays and dates, but yeah, they are. I don’t know that I’ve seen every holiday slasher, but there are certainly enough that you could create a calendar of events throughout the year, with at least one or two slashers per month. Fortunately, there are some holidays that are still open, so if I were to actually make a slasher, Flag Day is still available (perhaps I could combine it with jellyfish and crocoroids). Anyway, in visiting the calendar this year, it’s become clear that I’ve exhausted most of the good holiday slashers, and am in the distinct second or third tier. But no matter. Slashers are like cinematic comfort food. So let’s get on with it:

• Thursday the 12th (Robot Chicken)
• My Bloody Valentine (trailer)
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Murder (short)
• Mother’s Day – Made not too long after Friday the 13th, this one was still early enough in the popularity of slashers that it doesn’t strictly adhere to all the tropes the way a lot of movies afterwards did… It turns out that this was a Troma video, which basically means it’s really weird and ultra-low budget (and it’s worth mentioning that low budget in 1980 is way worse than low budget in 2011 – these movies look pretty bad these days). So pure B-movie exploitation here. The movie is basically about a trio of women who go camping every year, only this year they chose to camp near an old lady and her nefarious sons, who have a habit of kidnapping and raping girls at the behest of their mother.

  

  So there are some elements of the slasher here, but it’s arguably not a slasher. It’s also somewhat unpleasant and it doesn’t really make a ton of sense. It probably goes on too long too. On the other hand, we’ve got a little old lady in a neck brace who is pretty awesome, and I have to admit that I loved the last shot in the film, which kinda left me with a better opinion of the film than it probably deserves from any objective evaluation. Only really for genre completists, but maybe some others would get something out of it… **

• Halloween (trailer)
• Thanksgiving (fake trailer)
• Hardly Working: Slasher (Short)
• Graduation Day – Ah, now this is more like it. Another Troma movie, but this is textbook slasher material right here. We’ve got a tragedy from the past (though not quite the distant past) and a mysterious killer seemingly avenging that tragic death. The film centers around a track and field team (cue obligatory team photo, with members crossed off one by one as the killer makes the rounds). One of the members of the team died of a blood clot earlier in the year, and now other teammates are dropping like flies. The potential suspects are numerous. It seems that everyone is sporting a gray sweatsuit and black gloves (and a stopwatch), just like the killer. The weaponry tends towards the bladed variety, including that badass fencing helmet (good idea for the mask, though its only used a few times). As a whodunit, it’s not lighting the world on fire, but it gets the job done. The budget is still super low, and it shows during the kill sequences, which are somewhat creative, but which also would have benefited from some more expertise on the special effects side. They try to get around it with clever camerawork, and sometimes even succeed, but there’s only so much you can do with that. Ultimately, this hit the spot much better than Mother’s Day did, though its ending isn’t quite as great and it’s clearly not on par with the best examples of the genre. **1/2
• Uncle Sam (trailer)
• Silent Night, Deadly Night (trailer)
• April Fools Day (trailer)
• New Year’s Evil – Probably somewhere between the previous two films in terms of hitting the slasher tropes, the thing that struck me the most about this movie is how much better it looks. I’m certainly not talking blockbuster stuff here, but it clearly had a bigger budget, and you can see that in every aspect of the filmmaking. Though it doesn’t hit all the right conventions of the slasher, there are some interesting things going on here. The film takes place on New Year’s Eve, where a radio/TV host is counting down New Years across the time zones. She takes a phone call, and a guy calling himself “Evil” informs her that he’s planning to kill someone every hour, on the hour. At first, everyone thinks it’s a crank call, but then dead bodies start showing up. It’s actually pretty fun, and unlike a lot of slashers, you spend a lot of time with the villain. He seems frighteningly normal and even charismatic (and he’s a master of disguise! Look at that porno ‘stache!), again quite unusual for slashers.

  

  There’s way too much 80s rock music and the film unravels towards the end. There are some interesting twists, but I don’t think they really figured out a great ending. Well, I shouldn’t say that, as the last shot works well enough, I guess, but everything leading up to that feels kinda rushed and disjointed. Ultimately, still a second-tier film, but one probably worth watching for fans of the genre. I actually quite enjoyed it. **1/2

Well there you have it. I can’t believe Halloween is tomorrow. This whole season flew by. I’ll probably post my typical Speed Round post on Wednesday, as I’ve seen a bunch of movies that didn’t quite fit with previous weeks’ themes. And quite frankly, I’m still in the mood for horror. We may just need to make this the 8 weeks of Halloween or something. Have a great Halloween!