Census Bloodbath: 1985 Post Mortem

Well hello there! We've dragged ourselves across the finish line of another year of Census Bloodbath, my project to watch and review every slasher movie from the 1980s. And only three years after we finished 1984! 1985 brought us 29 slashers, as listed here. And we're now 57% done with the overall list of 487 titles, isn't that neat? At this rate, by the time I've watched the final slasher of 1989, you might be reading this blog via a microchip in your brain. 

Anyway, without further ado, it's time to break down the state of the slasher for this year of Census Bloodbath...

1985: Post Mortem

1985 was neither fish nor fowl, really. There were a lot of different factors that were changing the way slashers looked, what their stories were about, and how they were consumed, but none of those had really struck just yet. 

The video boom that resulted in many direct-to-video and shot-on-video slashers flooding the market wouldn't really kick in until late 1986. And while the success of 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street would shift the slasher genre's focus from meat-and-potatoes killings to more supernatural hijinks, that movie debuted in November, so the Freddy ripoffs needed more time to get off the ground.

Honestly, 1985 feels like 1979, when the genre was drawing a deep breath between the releases of 1978's Halloween and 1980's Friday the 13th. Unfortunately, this means we were mostly getting the movies from the tail end of the first slasher cycle, so they were nearly unilaterally terrible this year. To the point that I had to include a movie that I gave a score of 5/10 to on my Top 5. Woof. Regardless of the torment and misery of the year, which has now thankfully passed, we must press on and break down the best and worst of the year's movies, kills, final girls, and more!

The Five Best Slashers of 1985

#5 Terror at London Bridge

It's perhaps not quite as good as the elevator pitch "David Hasselhoff fights Jack the Ripper" would lead you to believe, but Terror at London Bridge is still wonderfully charming. It's a peculiar combination of tense supernatural slasher and boots-on-the-ground realist drama depicting the lives of townies at a tourist trap, and yet it totally works, up until the point where the Hoff rolls up his sleeves and turns the third act into a dumb action movie.

#4 The Hills Have Eyes Part II

Look, 1985 was really rough on me. That's how Wes Craven's 19th-best movie ended up here on the list. But I'm a defender of this one, nonetheless. That dog flashback? Pure camp! And I like the popcorn fun of the "BMX bikers vs. hillbilly mutants" storyline. Even though it's a total betrayal of the vibe of the original movie, I'm not a huge fan of that movie anyway. So there!

#3 Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

Wouldn't you know it, but here's another much-hated sequel that I enjoy more than is strictly necessary. I don't care that it's Roy copying Jason's M.O. A dude in a hockey mask kills teenagers, and everything that isn't dripping in mid-80s glam is dripping in mid-80s sleaze. That's a Friday the 13th movie to me, baby!

#2 Night Caller

We are very pro-Canadian slasher here at Census Bloodbath, but Hong Kong has really risen as a territory that is almost as reliable when it comes to cranking out fun, genre-bending slashers. While I have previously enjoyed 1981's Phantom Killer and 1982's Devil Returns and He Lives by Night, Night Caller blows them all out of the water.

In between gonzo, live-wire murder sequences, Night Caller has roving punk gangs, kung fu, psychosexual torture, and much more. While the A-plot leans a little harder on the "buddy cop" genre than I'd prefer, it's a delight more or less from start to finish.

#1 A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge

The remarkable lack of fealty to the Elm Street mythos is exactly why this early sequel is so compelling. You truly never know what's coming around each corner, except that it's going to be ludicrous and gay. And that's exactly the mode I like my movies to operate in.

The Five Worst Slashers of 1985

#5 Bloodstream

Bloodstream has a few nice kills and a couple good moments, but that doesn't make up for the fact that like 50% of it is made up of clips from movies-within-a-movie that are all unwatchable and have less than no bearing on the actual plot.

#4 Atrapados en el miedo

This obscure Spanish slasher is forgotten for a reason. It has a meat-and-potatoes slasher setup (two couples are vacationing in an isolated mansion near an asylum from which a homicidal patient has just escaped), and yet it squanders it completely with a series of empty, meaningless scenes of the killer puttering around doing nothing. Literally, he doesn't even manage to kill any of the four main characters. We're just forced to watch them be irritating for 90 minutes; it's excruciating.

#3 Murderlust

What's worse than being an entirely empty movie? Being filled with misogynistic tripe, that's what! The script sometimes shows sparks of life, but it's mostly a tedious trudge through a miserable character doling out bland kills.

#2 They Don't Cut the Grass Anymore

Speaking of misogynistic tripe... They Don't Cut the Grass Anymore is an incoherent mess that is literally directed by a teenager, from which springs some of the most pointlessly vile scenes you'll ever see. 

#1 Victims!

Victims! heard we were talking about 1985 slasher movie misogyny and said "hold my beer." It doesn't even pretend that the main female characters are anything but meat puppets for a killer to manhandle. Nothing that you can make out through the muddy shot-on-video footage is worth the tremendous effort it took simply to discern it.

1985 Body Count: 266 (including 10 decapitations and 11 slit throats)

That is an average of 9.17 kills per movie, making 1985 the slashiest year yet. 1984 previously beat 1981 with an average of 8.96 kills, but we have now surged another .21 ahead. Can any future years go higher than this? Only time will tell.

Highest Body Count: Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (21)

Even without Jason Voorhees around, Friday the 13th is still ahead of the pack, far surpassing Bloodstream (18), which had a huge advantage by featuring kills that both take place in the "real life" story and in the movies within the movie.

Lowest Body Count: Nothing Underneath & Atrapados en el miedo (4)

Atrapados en el miedo is barely a slasher movie, so that body count makes sense, but the lurid giallo movie Nothing Underneath has no excuse for going this low. It was even bested by the year's big TV movie, Terror at London Bridge (6).

Five Best Kills

#5 Donuts, Atrapados en el Miedo

Even bad movies can have remarkable kills, and the quartet of survivors dispatching the killer by getting in a car and doing donuts on his prone body is a hell of a way to put an exclamation point on the end of a movie that is otherwise just ellipses.

#4 The Rake, Horror House on Highway Five

This bizarre-ass movie includes a dude falling face-first onto a rake. Sideshow Bob, eat your heart out!

#3 The Opening Scene, Night Caller

It's more about the filmmaking than it is about the kill itself, but this giallo-inspired sequence is brutal, beautiful, jagged, disorienting, and one-of-a-kind. Insult is added to injury with jarring grace notes like an apple being smashed into the victim's face as she tries to flee to safety.

#2 Dynamite, They Don't Cut the Grass Anymore

Here's another terrible movie with one redeeming moment. The Wile E. Coyote-ass kill where a stick of dynamite is placed into a victim's mouth isn't exactly worth the price of admission, but at least it's creative.

#1 The Strap, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

Where did the strap come from? Why does it tighten no matter which way Roy/Jason turns the stick he has stuck through the ends of it? Who cares! This is a wholly unique kill, combining the terror of being unable to see with the sheer torque required to crush a human skull.

Best Decapitation: The Dark Power

I mean, come on. An actor named Lash LaRue uses a goddamn whip to decapitate an undead killer. You gotta respect a man who knows his way around a lassoo.

Three Best Final Girls

#3 Amy Witherspoon, Interface

Her rat-a-tat His Girl Friday chemistry with the hero of this weird techno-thriller does a whole lot to make it delightful. Honestly, she's doing so much of the heavy lifting that without her it might not even be tolerable.

#2 Cass, The Hills Have Eyes Part II

Leave it to Wes Craven to make the hero of his Hills Have Eyes sequel a blind psychic named after Cassandra. Once an English professor, always an English professor. 

#1 Tammie and Beth, The Dark Power

While The Dark Power is incredibly racist in other ways (see: the depiction of the mystical Toltec killers), it is one of the rare 1980s slashers to feature a Black final girl. It is also one of the few slashers to have two final girls given equal weight in the story, and their combined efforts to survive do a lot to help this otherwise pretty abysmal movie deliver a solidly fun third act.

Three Worst Final Girls

#3 Pam Roberts, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

All Pam does is trip and scream and turn into a quivering puddle. Basically all the final girls who are sidekicks to Tommy Jarvis pale in comparison to his antics, but Pam suffers the most because she had so little to offer to begin with.

#2 Kate, Too Scared to Scream

Kate is one of those characters who becomes a final girl through sheer luck more than actually being an active participant in her own survival. While there are quite a few of those this year, the moments that make her stand out are the scenes where the movie decides to give her a skill, only to have her flail uselessly again right after. It's more frustrating to watch somebody almost become a good character than just watch her be bad the whole time.

#1 Laura & Co., Atrapados en el miedo

I've already said enough about these losers, so let's just move on.

Four Best Killers

#4 The Killer, Haveli

The Bollywood slashers of the 1980s have been pretty uniformly bland, but Haveli has a killer who doles out murders at a steady pace and wears a hell of a mask while doing so. Not mad about it!

#3 Barbara, Nothing Underneath

Spoiler alert, I guess. But this movie's "psycho lesbian" plot twist is as deliciously ludicrous as it is easy to predict. Points to Barbara for going out in a blaze of glory that deserves to be immortalized in the Census Bloodbath firmament.

#2 Freddy Krueger, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge

Even though his powers make no sense in this movie, we have a Robert Englund Freddy Krueger performance to chew on this year. He'd still be a shoo-in for this list even if 1985 was full of instant classics.

#1 Bobby, Night Caller

While Night Caller pretends to be a whodunit for the first half-hour or so, Bobby eventually waltzes in wearing a variety of extraordinary outfits and more or less announces that she's the killer blasting any sense of mystery to smithereens. This is worth it, because in exchange we get to spend more time in her elegant, transfixing company.

Four Worst Killers

#4 Jack the Ripper, The Ripper

Bonus points for casting Tom Savini as Jack the Ripper. However, his version of the character only appears in a single scene, and Savini clearly has no idea what's going on. He's clear slightly embarrassed about whatever it is, so the moment is a total bust.

#3 Daniel Ray, Confessions of a Serial Killer

I still haven't seen Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, but Michael Rooker's performance on the poster is already so much better than Robert A. Burns' flat, affectless drone as Daniel Ray (a character who is also based on the real-life killer Henry Lee Lucas). The only moments when Burns comes alive are the scenes where his character gets to drink a milkshake. And while I totally get that impulse, it hardly makes for a compelling villain.

#2 Alistair Bailey, Bloodstream

A guy who just sits at home and watches VHS tapes all day isn't a slasher killer. He's just a blogger.

#1 El Loco, Atrapados en el miedo

Yes, I'm complaining about this movie again. El Loco is just as generic as his name. He has no backstory, no personality, and no M.O. to speak of, unless you count aimless wandering. Boo! Hiss!

Handsomest Lad: Melvin Wong, Night Caller

Being tied up and tortured can't have been fun for you, Melvin, but it sure was fun for me.

Best Location: Blood Tracks

Maybe it's the fact that I grew up in Southern California and have basically never known a temperature below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, but I love a good "snowed in at an isolated cabin" movie. 

Best Title: They Don't Cut the Grass Anymore

It's wordy but compelling. It poetically tells you who exactly who the main characters are and begs the question "so what do they cut now?"

Three Best Costumes

#3 The Nixon Mask, Horror House on Highway Five

This killer in a Nixon mask is indeed a crook.

#2 Mud, Night Caller

Bobby wears so many incredible outfits in Night Caller, but perhaps none are so memorable as when she is wearing nothing but mud. Honestly, she could walk the red carpet at the Met Gala in this.

#1 The Circle of Logicians, Interface

Every single member of this movie's bizarre computer killer cult has a mask that is so terrifying and inexplicable that the movie can't help but have atmosphere, even though it really doesn't deserve to.

Best Poster: Blue Murder 

Does it have fuck-all to do with the movie? Not really. But there's something very graphically compelling about the disembodied clown head dangling from that noose, the way the tagline slashes through the negative space, and the ransom note-esque typeface of the title.

Best Tagline: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

A tagline so good that they said, "fuck it, just make it the whole poster."

Best Song: "His Eyes" Pseudo Echo, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

Violet dancing the robot to this terrific yet kind of sinister synthwave gem is maybe the zenith of slasher filmmaking in 1985.

Best Score: Nothing Underneath

One benefit of being a tawdry Italian giallo movie is the fact that you can just call up Pino Donaggio at any time to deliver a lush, elegant score.

Elite Champion Dialogue: “What's the matter? You seem more pathetic than usual." Interface

Word Count: 2513

Census Bloodbath: Nailed It

Year:
1985
Director:
Bill Leslie & Terry Lofton
Cast:
Rocky Patterson, Ron Queen, Michelle Meyer
Run Time:
1 hour 25 minutes

Plot: The Nail Gun Massacre follows a killer wearing camo fatigues and a motorcycle helmet targeting a group of men who were involved in a violent sexual assault at a Texas construction site. The town's sheriff (Ron Queen) and doctor (Rocky Patterson) are not quite hot on the killer's trail. Let's say they're room temperature on the killer's trail.

Analysis: We've finally made it. The Nail Gun Massacre is our last slasher movie of 1985! I wasn't sure if we'd be ending the year with a bang or a whimper, but it turns out that the movie is kind of both simultaneously.

The Nail Gun Massacre is... peculiar. As the only feature ever made by Dukes of Hazzard stuntman Terry Lofton, the Texas-based slasher is very clearly a labor of love. However, the stuntperson-to-director pipeline that brought us the John Wick movies clearly hadn't been constructed yet in the mid-1980s, because this movie is slapdash as all get out.

Essentially every aspect of the filmmaking goes wrong at some point or another, often multiple times in a single scene. The camera can never quite find the right place to view the action from, the cast seems not only untrained but completely unfamiliar with the concept of acting, and the dialogue is almost always completely drowned out in the mix.

That last one may not be a terrible thing, because the script ain't all that good, either. Plot elements float in and out and are sometimes swapped at random (a trio that is clearly a mother and her two sons is at one point referred to as a group of friends), and the screenplay swirls woozily around a few recurring characters without ever committing to actually making any of them a proper protagonist. In fact, it was looking for a while like the aforementioned two sons would become the main characters, but they vanish from the movie completely about 30 minutes before it ends.

However, the movie's ineptitude actually does it a major service. The fact that the plot keeps shifting at random leaves you without solid ground to stand on. There are no rules to The Nail Gun Massacre, and you never know exactly what's going to happen next or which characters are going to live or die. 

That unpredictability, combined with the film's inches-thick layer of sleaziness, the cast being attractive but in a normal civilian type of way, and the fact that the unpolished nature of the footage lends it an almost documentarian verisimilitude, makes it genuinely dangerous. Your awareness of the camera and the people behind it gives it a home movie feel, like you're watching real people actually have sex and die onscreen. 

In fact, there's a sex scene that's so sleazily presented from every possible angle that it seems almost like it must be real, to the point that there is an apocryphal story that the male actor's girlfriend broke up with him after seeing the movie, even though he is gyrating his hips in a way that would probably snap his penis in half if he was actually mid-coitus. 

There are times when this unsophisticated realism is a demerit, such as the sexual assault scene that opens The Nail Gun Massacre (as in the first frame of the movie is a sexual assault, before the credits even roll). However, for the most part, it effectively makes you feel like you're being grabbed by the hair and dragged inexorably through a hillbilly nightmare.

This vibe is boosted by the two elements of the movie that are actually quite good. First, the kills are pretty decent. In addition to the nail prosthetics and stage blood looking pretty solid (give or take a wobbly rubber moment or two), a fair amount of the kills are cleverly staged. While their primary instinct (a good one) is to lean in on hand trauma, there are a lot of grace notes that make the kills feel different and freshly violent, even though the killer's M.O. basically never changes and the violence doesn't always make biological sense (one girl gets her hand nailed to her open mouth - did the nail hit her uvula, or what?).

Speaking of the killer, the Night School motorcycle helmet is a decent look, though I could have done without the constant, laconically delivered Freddy Krueger quips that are so exaggeratedly voice modulated that they're almost indecipherable.

However, the killer's voice leads us into the second element of The Nail Gun Massacre that works more often than it doesn't: the soundscape. In any dialogue-free moments, Whitey Thomas' surprisingly girthy synth score blends with Vocoder-ized evil laughs and pained moans that bathe the imagery onscreen with an enormously unsettling, surreal blanket of sheer noise that is reminiscent of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in a way that isn't merely ripping it off.

While The Nail Gun Massacre is many things (including, for a brief and bizarre moment in the final confrontation, a Dukes of Hazzard rip-off), it is also a rape-revenge movie, after a fashion. It's too incoherent to really have subtext (it's never quite clear if the victim, Linda, is the killer or not, though the final few shots imply she might be), but there is something effectively subversive about the choice of a nail gun as a weapon meaning that the men being targeted are violently penetrated multiple times before they die.

All in all, I think The Nail Gun Massacre is neither a bad movie nor a good movie. It's too slippery to be put in a box like that. But whether the good elements are intentional or not, whether it's effectively disorienting or just slapdash and grimy, I found it to be a hypnotic, transfixing movie to sit through. And I suppose that's a recommend, especially when the movie is taken in the context of 1985, which has given us dud after dud after dud.

Killer: Bubba Jenkins (Beau Leland), but I'm still inclined to believe it's actually Linda Jenkins (Michelle Meyer)

Final Girl: N/A, but kind of Doc (Rocky Patterson)

Best Kill: I am most partial to Mark's death, because he gets nailed while chainsawing a tree and the still-functioning chainsaw slices off his hand as he falls, adding insult to injury.

Sign of the Times: A young man wearing a M*A*S*H is told that he is being "bogus."

Scariest Moment: The opening sexual assault scene had me worrying that this movie was going to be infinitely more unpleasant than it turned out to be.

Weirdest Moment: A group of friends has a picnic where they talk about eating both sandwiches and hot dogs, but all they seem to have brought with them is Ritz crackers and beer.

Champion Dialogue: “Do you remember when you could sit outside and not worry about the mosquitoes and the killers?"

Body Count: 16

1. Leroy Johnson has his hand nailed to his forehead.
2. Brad is nailed in the stomach and the dick.
3. Mark is nailed in the back and accidentally chainsaws his own hand off.
4. Hitchhiker is nailed in the chest, through the hands, and (the killing blow) in the shoulder.
5. Woman is nailed offscreen.
6. Hal is nailed in the back of the head.
7. Ann is nailed in the hand and boobs.
8. Ben is nailed to a tree via the hands.
9. Rick's Friend is nailed in the face.
10. Rick is nailed.
11. Jethro is nailed.
12. Jethro's Date is nailed in the boob and the neck.
13. Dad is nailed and falls stomach-first onto a grill.
14. Curly Haired Woman is nailed.
15. Blonde Woman is nailed.
16. Bubba falls from a great height.

TL;DR: The Nail Gun Massacre is a poorly made movie, but its ineptitude gives it a verisimilitude that makes its nastiness really sting.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1308

Census Bloodbath: You Don't Know Jack

Year:
1985
Director:
E.W. Swackhamer
Cast:
David Hasselhoff, Stepfanie Kramer, Adrienne Barbeau
Run Time:
1 hour 37 minutes

Plot: Terror at London Bridge (also known as Bridge Across Time) is somehow neither the first Jack the Ripper slasher movie of 1985 (that would be The Ripper) nor the first movie set at London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona (that would be Olivia - by the way, that bridge really does use the exterior masonry from the actual London Bridge).

Anyway, back in 1888 London, Jack the Ripper is being chased by the bobbies after his latest bloody murder. He is shot and falls into the river, knocking one of the bridge's stones down with him. In 1985, the final stone has been recovered and Lake Havasu City is holding a ceremony commemorating the official completion of the bridge, more than 20 years after they originally acquired it and built up a chintzy Little England tourist trap around it.

When traveler Alice Williamson (Barbara Bingham of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan) accidentally smears her blood on that stone, the spirit of Jack the Ripper is resurrected and he kills her. 

Her husband Dave's (Michael Boyle of Luther the Geek) frantic attempts to find her go unheeded by police chief Peter Dawson (Clu Gulager of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, The Return of the Living Dead, The Initiation, and Hunter's Blood) and local city council member Anson Whitfield (Lane Smith of Dark Night of the Scarecrow, Prison, and Night Game), but they do catch the attention of Detective Don Gregory (Baywatch's David Hasselhoff, who at the time would have been Knight Rider's David Hasselhoff), a Chicago transplant with a tortured past.

He tries to solve the case while also flirting with local fishing boat operator Angie (Stepfanie Kramer), whose librarian friend Lynn Chandler (Adrienne Barbeau of The Fog, Escape from New York, Swamp Thing, and Creepshow) finds herself flirting with two different oddly stiff British weirdos (David Fox-Brenton and Paul Rossilli) who are new to town, and either of whom might be the Ripper. Can Det. Gregory uncover the fantastical mysteries behind this case as the bodies continue to pile up?

Analysis: As you may have been able to surmise from my unusually long plot synopsis, there are a lot of moving parts in Terror at London Bridge. This isn't terribly shocking, considering it's a full-on sci-fi-fantasy slasher. But this is also the case because it's an NBC TV movie, so they had to lard up the plot with characters and incidents in order to fill time that might otherwise have been taken up by sequences of nudity or gore in a regular degular theatrical slasher movie.

That said, it's really not a half-bad mystery thriller, especially in its first two acts. There are quite a few reasons for this. One is its weirdly pedigreed cast and crew, which also includes the composer, who is six-time Oscar nominee Lalo Schifrin (of the Mission: Impossible theme, The Amityville Horror, The Seduction, and the original rejected score for The Exorcist).

Another reason is the fact that spending time with this cast of characters is actually mostly worth your while. David Hasselhoff's limited range does not lend itself to playing such a troubled character, but everyone around him believably inhabits their roles, resulting in the movie inexplicably becoming a solid slice-of-life drama that paints a compelling picture of how the townies at a tourist trap relate to one another.

Plus, the stalk-and-kill scenes that take place before the reveal of which character truly is Jack the Ripper (which is predictable and comes probably 20 minutes too early, but happens in a scene so eerie that it almost doesn't matter) have enough shadow-drenched melodrama and squeeze enough realistic "girl walks home alone at night" atmosphere from their scenarios that they are quite satisfying.

Unfortunately, the third act sputters and stalls when it turns into a classic "Hoff wears unbuttoned shirts and punches bad guys" extravaganza that lacks the zesty campiness of some of his other television roles. His scenes are also frustrating because they mostly involve telling us he solved a clue about the mystery without showing us. 

However, even with a lead who drags down the proceedings, Terror at London Bridge is quite charming, and manages to surpass both The Ripper and Olivia as the definitive installment in their weirdly specific subgenres. That maybe wasn't the highest bar to clear, but for a TV movie slasher this late into the 1980s, it's about as impressive as climbing Mount Everest.

Killer: The Ripper (Paul Rossilli)

Final Girl: Angie (Stepfanie Kramer) feat. Det. Don Gregory (David Hasselhoff)

Best Kill: There really isn't one, but the slit throat makeup is most lovingly displayed in Alice's death.

Sign of the Times: There's an E.T. poster proudly displayed on the wall of the library where Adrienne Barbeau's character works.

Scariest Moment: David Fox-Brenton's character Mr. Latting meets Lynn at the local House of Horrors, and invites her to go for a walk to discuss the nature of good and evil. Because red flags hadn't been invented yet in 1985, she says yes. However, as she walks, the things he says grow creepier and creepier and she desperately tries to find a way to get out of the conversation, only to be rescued and then menaced afresh by a different weird British man. 

Weirdest Moment: After an ad break, there is a brief interlude where David Hasselhoff is boxing while shirtless.

Champion Dialogue: “That's a theory, Gregory. That's all it is, it's a theory, and it's your theory, and I don't wanna see your theories in the newspaper!"

Body Count: 6

1. 1888 Woman is stabbed.
2. Alice Williamson has her throat slit.
3. Elaine is stabbed.
4. Kid is shot by Don Gregory in flashback.
5. Lynn has her throat slit offscreen.
6. The Ripper is shot.

TL;DR: Terror at London Bridge is surprisingly good for a mid-1980s TV movie slasher, but that doesn't necessarily get it as far as being a proper hidden gem.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1008

Census Bloodbath: If I'm Gonna Tell It, Then I Gotta Tell It All

Year:
1985
Director:
Mark Blair
Cast:
Robert A. Burns, Dennis Hill, Berkley Garrett
Run Time:
1 hour 35 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Don't be fooled by the cover art (which comes from the movie's 1992 video release, totally coincidentally around the same time when The Silence of the Lambs was at its peak popularity). The serial killer in Confessions of a Serial Killer looks more like Steve Christie from Friday the 13th than Hannibal Lecter.

Loosely based on the story of Henry Lee Lucas (who also inspired the infinitely more iconic Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which we'll be taking a look at once we get to 1986), Confessions follows the exploits of one Daniel Ray (Robert A. Burns, a Texan who is better known for his work as an art director on a few lil' projects like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Tourist Trap, The Howling, Re-Animator, Blood Song, and Mausoleum).

Daniel Ray has been apprehended by Texas authorities and is in the process of being interrogated by Sheriff Will Gaines (Berkley Garrett), which facilitates a variety of flashbacks to murders, some of which he may be lying about being involved in. This doesn't come to much, don't worry. Eventually in these flashbacks, he teams up with fellow serial killer Moon Lewton (Dennis Hill of Mongrel) and his sister Molly (Sidney Brammer). 

Daniel eventually gets a job as a handyman for the preacher Dr. Earl Krivics (Ollie Handley), where his reign of terror is isolated to a single location long enough that the people around him grow suspicious.

Analysis: I think that Confessions of a Serial Killer would very much like to be viewed as a successor to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Almost as much as it later wanted to be viewed as a predecessor to Henry. This desire is indicated by its Texas setting, its light sprinkle of Ed Gein iconography, its opening title card touting the story's connection to real-life events, the presence of Robert A. Burns (who was brought on as art director initially and took the lead role when the original actor dropped out), and the quasi-family of hillbillies that is formed when the Newtons join the fray.

However, it forgets a few important elements of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, like the fact that it is made by a confident, competent filmmaker. Or that it tells a coherent story. Or that it's a good movie.

Unfortunately, Confessions is an utterly bland affair that is hampered by the very format that gives it its title. The flatly lit, flatly performed interrogation scenes do absolutely nothing other than drag the movie out to feature length. Not that cutting the interrogation would have helped all that much, because the murder vignettes that the movie keeps flashing back to are unilaterally bloodless.

Every single kill that could have been worth a damn takes place offscreen. We are mostly just treated to scenes of Daniel hanging out with his prospective victims that then make sure to judiciously cut away at the proper moment, lest anything interesting happen. 

Not that the editing really needed to help. One of the only onscreen kills is so poorly shot and staged that at no point are you made aware of what weapon is actually being used. The whole endeavor is frustrating and hollow: basically the slasher version of those YouTube videos where they remove the laugh track from an old sitcom. 

And, regardless of the anemic kills, a worthwhile "hero killer" movie this ain't. Confessions of a Serial Killer doesn't have a single iota of insight into the mind of its protagonist, which is a terrible shame, because he yammers on and on and on, both within the flashbacks and in voiceover.

That said, there are a few tense pre-murder sequences to be had. The opening scene where Daniel's menacing a woman with car trouble and an act two moment where he's chasing a hitchhiker through a cornfield actually manage to conjure a few moments of intensity.

The best of these scenes all come during the final third, which is the only part of the movie that in any way resembles a story with forward momentum. Things eventually coalesce into a more-or-less serialized story that roughly resembles the finale of a proper slasher movie, which allows you to actually almost care what happens to the characters around Daniel.

Here, we get a barrage of reasonably well-executed slasher tropes, including a shower scene and a "victim just barely misses catching the attention of potential helpers" moment. Dr. Krivics' daughter Monica (DeeDee Norton) even gets the chance to pull together a half-decent Final Girl sequence, which sees Daniel chasing her across multiple locations and her pulling off a few clever tricks in the process.

However, even the best moments of the movie are hampered by the fact that Burns is giving a flat, affectless performance that completely fails to cover up the limitations that the character of Daniel already has on paper. Literally, the only moments where Burns truly comes alive are the ones where his character is about to drink a milkshake. Which is a method acting technique that I would also be happy to use, by the way. But all I'm saying is that maybe he shouldn't have been tasked with leading a movie with this little else to offer.

Killer: Daniel Ray (Robert A. Burns)

Final Girl: N/A

Best Kill: Uh... none? Or, bar that, the one where Daniel and Moon are chainsawing a victim in their garage while Monica spies on them. Which is offscreen, of course. But the scene is noteworthy because Monica is spying on them, and she is discovered because she somehow forgot to turn off the radio she always carries around with her, which was previously drowned out by the chainsaw noise.

Sign of the Times: Monica has a huge Wham! poster on her bedroom wall.

Scariest Moment: The opening scene, where Daniel tampers with a stranded woman's car and gives her a ride, where he spends an alarming amount time clearing off the middle console (the better to reach her) before actually going in for the kill.

Weirdest Moment: When Monica heads upstairs to take a shower, she grabs a donut, which she is still munching on as she turns on the shower. It conveniently vanishes right before she actually steps in. 

Champion Dialogue: “If I can keep them young girls from hitchhiking, I'll know my life has important meaning after all."

Body Count: 11; not including a client named Pauline, who is presumably killed offscreen, but we never even see her onscreen to begin with.

1. Stranded Motorist is killed with a switchblade offscreen.
2. Prostitute is bludgeoned with a stick.
3. Louisiana Hitchhiker is killed offscreen by Moon.
4. Karen Grimes is killed offscreen, presumably by Moon.
5. Convenience Store Clerk is shot by Moon.
6. Convenience Store Customer is shot.
7. Carjacking Victim is chainsawed offscreen.
8. Doris is stabbed in the back with... something by Molly.
9. Cop is shot in the back by Molly.
10. Molly is shot.
11. Monica is presumably killed offscreen.

TL;DR: Confessions of a Serial Killer is a bland, scattershot affair that at least has a few solid slasher scenes nestled inside it.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1204

Cardboard Science: Siri, How Many Fathoms Are In A League?

Year: 1953
Director: Eugène Lourié
Cast: Paul Christian, Paula Raymond, Cecil Kellaway
Run Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

Happy Halloween, everybody! It's time for the final leg of the annual Great Switcheroo with Hunter Allen of Kinemalogue, in which I task him with tackling three 1980s slasher reviews and in exchange he assigns me three 1950s/60s B-movies. Last time, we covered a film from Cardboard Science stalwart Bert I. Gordon. This time, we're tackling The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, which brings us another legend of the genre, in the form of stop-motion legend Ray Harryhausen. Also, it was directed by Eugène Lourié of The Colossus of New York, but I hope nobody will blame me for finding that fact a touch less exciting.

We've seen Harryhausen's work many times before as part of this project and others, in titles including Mysterious Island and It Came from Beneath the Sea. But you know what The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms has that they don't? The distinction of being a direct inspiration for a Cardboard Science Hall of Fame title, 1954's seminal Japanese masterwork Godzilla. 

Comparing The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms directly to Godzilla is a fool's errand, and we're gonna do it anyway. But first, the plot.

That is, if you really need a story hook other than "big monster go aargh."

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (which, for good measure, is based on the Ray Bradbury short story "The Fog Horn") follows Atomic Energy Commission physicist Tom Nesbitt (Paul Christian of The Day the Sky Exploded). After he witnesses a bomb test in the Arctic freeing an ancient, still-living Rhedosaurus from the ice, he tries desperately to get anyone to believe his story as a series of mysterious and deadly incidents take place along the Atlantic coast, heading south.

He, and eventually the lovely paleontologist Lee Hunter (Paula Raymond) and her mentor Professor Thurgood Elson (Cecil Kellaway of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and, more importantly, 1959's The Shaggy Dog), are the only ones who know that a giant monster is the reason for these attacks. That is, until the monster surfaces and stomps around in Manhattan for a bit.

Honestly, he's doing the neighborhood a favor. What's knocking over a couple buildings if it lowers the rent?

Let's cut right to the good stuff: the monster. Ray Harryhausen's work is a perfect encapsulation of the best of 1950s science fiction filmmaking. You're never at any point unaware that you're watching a stop-motion creature interacting with composited shots of humans running away screaming. However, at a certain point the magic of cinema takes over and you stop caring about any of the flaws (which include the fact that Lourié keeps trying to shoot the monster through ugly distorted lenses).

That's because, no matter how jerky the frames got, Harryhausen simply got how to breathe life into a stop-motion model. The second the Rhedosaurus stops hanging around and attacks, its muscular physicality is absolutely captivating. Your disbelief has gone weightless. No suspension is required.

I also think that there is one advantage to this being a dry run for Godzilla, which is that the monster is rather smaller than you might expect for a kaiju movie. He is not city-stomping size, which requires him to pummel buildings and rip them apart instead of merely squishing them beneath his sheer bulk. 

Another part of what makes this particular monster so convincing are the little touches. Its eyelids are blinking, and its tongue is flicking out, smelling the air. In addition to stomping around town, it is doing all of those little unconscious, barely noticeable things that living creatures need to do in order to stay that way.

Thanks to Harryhausen's delicacy and attention to detail, when his Rhedosaurus looks toward the camera, you feel like it can see you. And that makes every second spent with the monster absolutely worthwhile and dazzling. Alas, there is a larger number of monsterless seconds than just about anyone would prefer.

Oh yeah. Them.

I'm a seasoned veteran of Cardboard Science, so I knew not to expect 80 jam-packed minutes of monster mayhem. They simply couldn't have afforded that. We had to have a human plot in there somewhere. 

While The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms' human characters could certainly have been worse, they mostly just rattle around the frame, reenacting various sci-fi tropes until the screenplay can finally dispense with them in the third act. Yes, the movie itself clearly resents that it had to have people in it, too, to the point that it has the most perfunctory finale, both in terms of the conclusion of its romantic arc and its literal final frame.

That said, the bland human story does have its bright spots. Its requisite "stirring narration about the progress of science" opening sequence is a particularly good one, running through a roughly hourlong countdown in the space of just a few minutes to ratchet up the tension, and kicking around the movie's most dramatic lighting in the process.

None of the rest of the human plot can live up to those moments. Though Lee and Tom do parade around in some pretty nifty coats throughout the movie that prevented my attention from ebbing entirely.

But really, the most interesting way to watch The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is one that was not available to audiences at the time: comparing it to Godzilla. It was fascinating to see how differently a Japanese film handled the idea of a nuclear monster as opposed to an American movie (though with a Russian-French director and a Swiss lead, Beast is hardly the most flag-waving American motion picture there ever was).

It should be no surprise that Godzilla handles things better, tapping into its premise in a more potent and impactful way. Its nuclear monster is a stand-in for the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rather than The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms' approach involving a nation's fear of its own power growing too great (which, come to think of it, is also a thematic motif in Godzilla that is handled better). 

Beast is best represented by its final sequence, which takes place on a flaming roller coaster. It's meant to be a thrill ride that deposits you safely on the ground at the end. It's not its fault that Godzilla sought to be something more complex and interesting and devastating than that. And we should thank Beast for being one of the many reasons that Godzilla exists in the first place. But it's hard to completely admire The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms knowing what was soon to stomp its way through global cinemas just over a year after its release.

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

*The most fantastical moment of all in this monster movie was the fact that they expected us to believe Professor Elson could climb through a hatch in a diving bell that was clearly about half his size. You can't trick me with a judicious cut, editor Bernard W. Burton.
*Yes, the best place to store those barrels of flammable materials is at the base of the wooden roller coaster, why do you ask?
*I can't even come up with a joke that roasts the name of the top secret research project harder than just telling you what it is: "Operation Experiment."

The morality of the past, in the future!:

*About 25 minutes in, I noticed that Tom Nesbitt hadn't gotten a standard-issue sci-fi movie love interest, and I wondered out loud if he was going to just stay single the whole movie. The movie then answered my question by more or less immediately cutting to the door of the university's Paleontology department, which reads something like "Professor Thurgood Elson, Assistant: Ms. Lee Miller." They quite literally hung a sign on it.
*The duties of said Lee Miller would lead me to believe that she only minored in Paleontology while majoring in Making and Dispensing Coffee and Sandwiches.

Sensawunda:

*Seeing Times Square bedecked with posters for Clark Gable and Judy Garland movies is such a lovely time capsule.
*One less delightful time capsule is the absolutely arbitrary underwater sequence where a shark and an octopus fight to the death, presumably to entertain us without adding to the special effects budget. Boo.
*I must praise the Manhattan sequence for being unusually brutal for a sci-fi movie of its vintage. Sure, we see the monster munching on a person or two, but where the movie really kicks things up a notch is a harrowing sequence of a blind man being trampled as the people around him try to escape the destruction. This is a much more effective "the horror, the horror" moment than the knocked-over mailbox from The Spider.

TL;DR: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms rocks some excellent Ray Harryhausen effects, though the material that surrounds them is understandably a bit drab.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1479

Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture 

2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

2020: The Colossus of New York (1958) It Came from Outer Space (1953) Rodan (1956)

2021: Robot Monster (1953) Queen of Outer Space (1958) The Cyclops (1957)

2022: Tarantula (1955) The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

2023: Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
2024: Attack of the Puppet People (1958)

2025: X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963) The Spider (1958) The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)

2020: Night School (1981) The Fan (1981) Madhouse (1981)

2021: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986)

2022: Hell Night (1981) Return to Horror High (1987) Cutting Class (1989)

2023: Blood Rage (1987)

2024: Sleepaway Camp (1983)

2025: Superstition (1982) The Carpenter (1988) Visiting Hours (1982)