Census Bloodbath: A Pleasure To Have In Class

Year: 1983
Director: William Wiard
Cast: Donna Reed, Larry Wilcox, David Ackroyd
Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

You know a couple things ahead of time when you head into a TV movie slasher. You know there's going to be a bunch of random TV actors assembled for the honor of dying in order from least to most famous (the absolute most famous either don't die at all because they're just a cameo for one day of filming, or they're the killer. Or both.) And you know the kills aren't going to be what you're used to, given network censorship against violence, especially at that time. Although, given the way the MPAA was cracking down on the genre in theaters by this point in the 80's, there's hardly any difference.

So I always try to keep an open mind when approaching one of these things, and Deadly Lessons, which originally premiered on ABC, had a couple aces up its sleeve that I was keen to check out. First, it comes from director William Wiard of Fantasies, which was the best TV movie slasher of 1982 (yes, there were several. You couldn't escape the slasher film on any medium in the 80's, including NES games and 900 numbers). And it was written by a woman, in this case prolific TV movie and miniseries writer Jennifer Miller. Any time a slasher even glances in the direction of having anyone behind the scenes be female, it's worth paying extra attention.

Even when that movie is unwatchable like A Night to Dismember, which also came out in 1983.

So our story begins with young Stefanie Aggiston (Diane Franklin of Amityville II: The Possession) getting a scholarship to go to the prestigious rich girls' boarding school Starkwater Hall. It takes a while for her to fit in with the upper crust brats over summer session, but right when she starts feeling comfortable, someone starts murdering the girls one by one. Enter Detective Russ Kemper (Larry Wilcox of CHiPS!), hellbent on discovering the identity of the murderer. But can Stefanie, fueled by her Nancy Drew moxie and obsession with the Clue-esque board game Evidence! beat him to the punch?

Deadly Lessons has a shockingly huge cast of characters, almost all of whom are played by someone of note ("of note" includes the rather generous definition of people who were in another Census Bloodbath movie, but still, these names!). Let's start with the victim pool, AKA the girls of Starkwater Hall: literal Saudi princess Shama (Vicki Kriegler); the worldly - see: "horny" - Rita Armstrong (Ally friggin' Sheedy); her best friend and Token Black Character Cally (Renee Jones of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives); and shy overeater Libby (Nancy Cartwright, Bart Simpson herself).

Then we have the suspect pool, AKA the staff of Starkwater Hall: ice queen headmistress Miss Wade (Donna friggin' Reed); equestrian teacher and Wade's secret lover John Ferrars (David Ackroyd); requisite creepy groundskeeper Robert Hartigan (Donald Hotton of Freeway Maniac); handsome stable boy Eddie (Bill Paxton of Bill Paxton, but also Night Warning and Mortuary); stuffy bow-tied English professor Morgan Rank (Robin Gammell of Murder by Phone); French teacher Mrs. Grant (Ellen Geer of Bloody Birthday); and prim assistant headmistress Miss Hunt (Ruth Silveira, also of Bloody Birthday).

And the review hasn't even started yet! You ready?

I've already mentioned that we knew going in the kills weren't going to be remarkable, but they're actually even more demure than in Fantasies. There was never going to be any blood dripping around the place, but here we exclusively get either cutaway gags or people discovering the body after the fact. Luckily the filmmakers made the smart move of having the victims be strangled or drowned, so they can at least show the bodies without too much fretting. We're at least aware we're making a slasher movie here.

But what Deadly Lessons can't deliver in gruesome murders, it does in heaps of playful whodunit mayhem. The parlor room sequences abound here, as the plot thickens and two factions of sleuths race to the finish. There's a little too much cop nonsense in the movie, which you know I don't like (they needed as many scenes for Larry Wilcox as possible), but any moment where Stephanie and her Babysitters Club gaggle of Sherlocks are trying to get to the bottom of things is a delight. Unfortunately the Encyclopedia Brown sleuthing (there's a lot of material mined from whether or not people's boots are covered in mud) doesn't get us all the way to the finale, which kind of chucks murder mystery mechanics in exchange for a Big Grand Villanous Motive Explanation Speech. But it was fun while it lasted.

And even though there isn't a murder setpiece around every corner, Deadly Lessons does its best to deliver overheated melodrama action as often as possible, including hay bales falling to crush Stephanie out of nowhere, and a bucking bronco triggered by an electric shocking gadget beneath the saddle. These are the moments where the thrills come, and while they're certainly not actually thrilling, they're deliciously cheesy in the way of all the best old school TV movies.

You must remember, this is back before all TV was movies.

And probably the biggest accomplishment of Deadly Lessons is making such a huge cast of characters seem unique and compelling in their own right. Sure, there are a couple of the tertiary characters I could never quite get straight, but on a whole the morass of identically clad schoolgirls is actually quite easy to parse through, thanks to a set of distinct performances that capture each girl's personality and her dynamic with the rest of the group.

The cherry on top is Donna Reed parading around as the frigid grand dame to rule them all, playing off of several saucy love triangles. Sure, it could have been better if it was a theatrical movie with the guts to include more guts. But within the narrow realm of what it is, Deadly Lessons is nothing short of a delight. I certainly wish William Wiard had continued to work in the slasher industry, because I could use a couple more sparkling gems like this to unearth coming down the line.

Killer: Det. Russ Kemper (Larry Wilcox)
Final Girl: Stefanie Aggiston (Diane Franklin)
Best Kill: There aren't any kills onscreen, but I'll say the death of mean girl Tember is the best because it's surprisingly early and means we don't have to deal with her for the rest of the movie.
Sign of the Times: You know this is pre-1985 because Ally Sheedy doesn't have the lead role.
Scariest Moment: The Obvious Red Herring Groundskeeper goes absolutely bananapants and kidnaps Ally Sheedy to tie her up and tell her all about how much he loved her mom.
Weirdest Moment: See above.
Champion Dialogue: "Who could be so barfy?"
Body Count: 3; though there is a fourth pre-Final Girl attack sequence where the victim just happens to survive.

1. Tember is drowned offscreen.
2. Althea is strangled with wire offscreen.
3. Shama is strangled with her scarf offscreen.

TL;DR: Deadly Lessons is limited as a slasher by the nature of being a TV movie, but it leans into all the other things that make TV movies great.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1214

We Were Both 16 And It Felt So Right

Year: 1982

Director: Damiano Damiani

Cast: James Olson, Burt Young, Rutanya Alda 

Run Time: 1 hour 44 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It’s rare that a sequel surpasses the original, but especially in the horror genre. Fear thrives on the feeling of the unknown, and the nature of a sequel intrinsically diminishes that. There are but a scant few Part 2’s that could even dream of considering themselves superior to their predecessors, but I would like to take this moment to herald a film that has now joined that elite group: Amityville II: The Possession. Mind you, The Amityville Horror was an exhausting bore, so it’s not like it was much of a challenge.

This is gonna be a great October, I can feel it.

Amityville II is a confusing beast. It’s generally accepted that it’s a prequel to the original film (it’s loosely based on the DeFeo murders, which occurred before the Lutz family took residence), but there’s nothing in the movie itself to suggest any sort of coherent time frame. It begins and ends with a “For Sale” sign, which could fit it literally anywhere in the Amityville chronology. And though the story allegedly takes place in the mid-70’s, the production crew didn’t make even a nanoscopic attempt to make it look that way, chucking it full of Sony Walkmen, Rocky posters, and abominable hairstyles that could only have existed in the aesthetic dark age that we called 1982.

The story follows the Montelli family, namely the kindly dishrag mother Dolores (Rutanya Alda of Girls Nite Out and the camp classic Mommie Dearest), abusive-at-the-drop-of-a-hat father Anthony (Burt Young), pious and needy teen daughter Patricia (Diane Franklin), and eldest son Sonny (Jack Magner). They move into a certain lakeside residence in Amityville, and almost immediately things begin to go awry as Sonny is seduced into murderous rages by a demonic presence. The family’s barely-below-the–surface dysfunction boils over, leading to an orgy of violence, incest, and hate that the family priest Father Adamsky (James Olson) finds himself mixed up in.

And unlike Rod Steiger previously, Olson is actually in this movie.

Only two films in, the Amityville franchise had already changed hands. The original film came from American International Pictures, which died a painful death shortly after the release, despite its phenomenal box office take. So  he sequel landed in the hands of infamous Italian schlock producer Dino De Laurentiis. Say what you will about the man, but this was the best thing for the nascent series. Whatever the sequel was going to be, it couldn’t’ help but be stupid, and De Laurentiis knew how to make stupid movies fun.

And Amityville II doesn’t mess around. Practically from minute one, the rubbery 80’s effects are flowing in full force. Just like in the original, the shock gags slowly boil into a crescendo, but here we start with bonkers mayhem like paint brushes flying around the room and whole dish racks exploding. This is a full-on effects spectacle, at the expense of anything but the most broad-strokes characterizations, but the trade-off is well and truly worth it for a film that isn’t so boring you’d want to crack the disc in half and stab it into your leg just to feel something.

It’s more of a campfest than anything, as cemented in by Burt Young’s over-the-top, belt-slinging greaseball character and Rutanya Alda’s reliably demented, bug-eyed performance. Plus, it’s just plain weird, casually introducing an incest plot line between Sonny and Patricia that’s more or less calmly accepted or ignored by the world at large. There’s also this tendency for the blocking to constantly arrange the characters like they’re posing for a family portrait. It attempts to drive home the impact of their family unit shattering, but it’s mostly just hilariously awkward.

Live, Laugh, Loathe

But really, Amityville II is pretty well put-together. The roving camera makes use of the house (and especially the creepy eye-like windows) in an actually spooky way, and there are a smattering of images that remind you that directors can do more than just point the lens at action if they really want to. There’s also a tremendously clever bit of sound design involving a ticking clock that I found genuinely chilling.

For an hour or so, Amityville II chugs along, amiably delivering silly effects showcases and Sonny’s theoretically disturbing descent into madness. Then it abruptly slams on the brakes, grinding to a halt with the late, unfortunate decision that what people really wanted to see was more of this Father Adamsky fellow. For forty grueling minutes, we’re forced to watch James Olson being put through the aces of a horrifyingly transparent Exorcist rip-off. The movie never regains its footing after that, forcing viewers through a crushing gauntlet of boring scenes of characters we’ve never met and couldn’t possibly care about. It fails to be redeemed by the allegedly showstopping effects of the final ten minutes because of how grotesquely detailed it is in mimicking the plight of one Father Karras.

The power of Christ compels you to shut this movie off!

The ending of this movie is so imbalanced and tedious that I very nearly forgot every last scrap of enjoyment I gleaned from the genuinely charming opening hour. My advice would be to eject the DVD at about 71 minutes, then use that extra time to rearrange your sock drawer, a task that I promise you’ll find more interesting than the third act of Amityville II.

But still, it does clear that low, low bar of improving upon The Amityville Horror when you average it all out. I wouldn’t call that a recommendation, but if you had the stomach for the first one, you can certainly brave wading at least one film deeper into this alarmingly sprawling franchise. Why this series felt the need to continue I’ll never know, but if the films all improve upon the last at this rate, Amityville Dollhouse will be a flat-out masterpiece.

TL;DR: Amityville II: The Possession is a fun 80's effects spectacle until it launches into an excruciatingly boring third act.

Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1014
Reviews In This Series
The Amityville Horror (Rosenberg, 1979)
Amityville II: The Possession (Damiani, 1982)
Amityville 3-D (Fleischer, 1983)
Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes (Stern, 1989)
The Amityville Curse (Berry, 1990)
Amityville 1992: It's About Time (Randel, 1992)
Amityville: A New Generation (Murlowski, 1993)
Amityville Dollhouse (White, 1996)
The Amityville Horror (Douglas, 2005)
Amityville: The Awakening (Khalfoun, 2017)