Census Bloodbath: Pull The Other One

Year: 1982

Director: Greydon Clark

Cast: Joe Don Baker, Stella Stevens, George Kennedy 

Run Time: 1 hour 23 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

It makes perfect sense that 1982 would be the year with the highest concentration of slasher parodies. The boom began in earnest in mid-1980 with Friday the 13th, and reached its highest theatrical concentration in 1981 (Night School, Friday the 13th Part 2, Graduation Day, The Burning, and The Fan were all released in a single three-week period). Combine that with the enormous success of Airplane! in 1980, and you've got yourself a recipe for a glut in that very specific sub-subgenre. 

The trend kicked off with the star-studded and decent Pandemonium and the execrable National Lampoon's Class Reunion, which began John Hughes screenwriting career and somehow didn't tank him immediately (he's white). The capper of this trilogy was Wacko, a film that lands somewhere between them quality-wise, though (spoiler alert) it's much closer to Class Reunion on that very limited scale.

Maybe humor didn't get funny until 1983?

Wacko "tells" the "story" of Mary Graves (Julia Duffy of Night Warning and a million TV shows you've actually heard of), whose older sister was killed by The Lawnmower Killer 13 years ago during the Halloween Pumpkin Prom. Wouldn't you know it, now it's time for her Halloween Pumpkin Prom, and someone else has donned the pumpkin mask to kill some kids. She's attending with her boyfriend Norman Bates (Scott McGinnis), who makes lawnmower noises every time he gets horny, and boy they just weren't even trying with naming this character, huh?

The other notable teens are her best friends Bambi (Elizabeth Daily of Bad Dreams and also she's the fucking voice of Babe), Rosie (Michele Tobin), and Rosie's date Tony Schlongoli (Andrew Dice Clay in his first film role), who has a dick so huge that he bursts through his pants whenever he gets a boner. Comedy! Unfortunately we don't get to spend a lot of time with the actual characters, because the producers spent a third of their budget on the name actors playing the adults, including George Kennedy (seen similarly slumming it in Just Before Dawn the year prior) as Mary's father, Stella Stevens as her mother, and Joe Don Baker as film noir-esque detective Dick Harbinger.

Their roles are all embarrassing, but they're laughing their way to the bank.

I suppose we should talk about the comedy, because there's literally nothing to this movie other than an endless litany of gags layered over one another. Sometimes that can be successful. That structure is one of the reasons people praise Arrested Development to high heaven. But in order for that to work, the gags need to be good (see: Arrested Development season 5). 

There is some mildly amusing stuff that crops up every now and again, because out of 100,000 jokes, there's a statistical improbability that not a single one will make you laugh. But none of these successful gags (including a rope hanging out of the window of an escaped mental patient's first floor room, and a student saying of her chemistry teacher "he makes science so believable!") have anything to do with Wacko's ostensible purpose to parody the slasher film formula in any meaningful way.

There are very forced gags pointing out the tendency for these films to have unnecessary dream sequences or perverted gardener red herrings, but in a style that recalls Scary Movie, a lot of the gags feature totally unrelated horror properties (including The Omen, The Exorcist, and Alien) and scattershot cultural detritus (the West Side Story musical number that introduces Tony is both hideously staged and resolutely unfunny, and it does not shock me to find out that it was Andrew Dice Clay's idea). Wacko is so lackadaisically committed to the slasher conceit that the only death in the first hour isn't even perpetrated by the killer who is supposedly stalking around town.

That said, the film's third-best line comes when Mary worries that her father might kill someone with the replacement medical instruments he's been using because he can't find his scalpel, and her mother calmly chides her: "Your father is a doctor. He kills people EVERY day."

And once the kills kick in during the film's Prom Night-inspired final act, they prove to be entirely bloodless and starved for creativity. Even a death involving a teen's head being shoved into a garbage disposal is just an excuse for a flood of gags (the lunch lady shows up to tell the killer he needs to be running the water to turn on the disposal, and then it's randomly revealed that she is the teen in question's mother) rather than a fun, outré death. There is not one drop of blood, or even a little motion implying the jiggling of the machine. It's just static and demure in every possible way.

It's surprising that the kills are so underplayed, because everything else in the movie is played up to the rafters. Any running gag is repeated no fewer than one thousand times, and the jokes are so crammed into every single element of the movie that any time it stops to breathe for even a two second shot like somebody walking across the lawn, the sound designer throws in a random elephant trumpet sound... just because?

Other than the occasional, incidental laughs, there are only two things I liked about Wacko. The first is that Julia Duffy is a great casting choice, and her cartoonish baby voice provides a heightened, over-earnest register that the whole movie should have taken and run with. And the second thing is that the band that plays at the prom is a group called Avalon, who I actually quite like. So this movie has at least added to my "Slashdance" playlist of songs from slasher movies, even if it hasn't benefited me to watch in any other way.

Killer: Dick Harbinger (Joe Don Baker)

Final Girl: Mary Graves (Julia Duffy)

Best Kill: The chemistry teacher saws a woman in half to prove something about matter, and seems mildly disappointed when he finds out he's murdered her.

Sign of the Times: Andrew Clay hadn't even earned the "Dice" in his name yet!

Scariest Moment: The dad spying on his scantily clad daughters and constantly being laughed off is just... bone-chilling.

Weirdest Moment: There's a random car chase scene where one car uses a ramp to launch over another car as it explodes.

Champion Dialogue: "I'm really honored that you're still a virgin."

Body Count: 6

1. Lady is sawed in half in Chemistry class.
2. Vice Principal has his head squeezed in a vise.
3. Bambi is decapitated with an axe.
4. Tony has his head shoved in a garbage disposal.
5. Rosie is put into some sort of... meat grinder conveyor belt?
6. Dick Harbinger is impaled with an American flag, stabbed a bunch, and probably shot; frankly I'd stopped paying attention at that point.

TL;DR: Wacko is funnier on paper than it is in practice, and it's not that funny on paper.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 1174

Census Bloodbath: Into The Woods

Year: 1981

Director: Jeff Lieberman

Cast: George Kennedy, Mike Kellin, Chris Lemmon

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I hope you won't mind if I air out some personal grievances. Well I suppose it doesn't matter because, guess what, it's happening. I've been feeling a little generic lately, because every time I watch a slasher movie and come up with a numerical rating, it's inevitably within one star of the average rating out of 10 on IMDb. As a budding slasher connoisseur, it has been worrying to me that I've been hewing so close to the middle ground.

As a blogger, shouldn't I be holding some controversial opinions? Carving a pathway for people to follow instead of regurgitating how other people already feel? Well, the time has come. You see, the 1981 Jeff Lieberman effort Just Before Dawn has a reputation among those in the know as being an exemplary Golden Age slasher, but you know what? I kind of hated it.

Suck on THAT, imaginary consensus!

OK, maybe hate is a strong word. Just Before Dawn is a remarkably well-shot film with some cool moments, but that doesn't prevent it from being a plodding gauntlet of boredom.

The plot is about as generic as it gets. After two hillbilly hunters (one of whom is played by Mike Kellin of Sleepaway Camp) are attacked by a mysterious mountain man, one is left dead with a machete through the ass and the other is sent fleeing into the woods. He comes across an RV full of twenty-somethings who have come up for a killer camping trip and attempts to warn them away, but they refuse to listen. So far so Friday the 13th.

The Spam in a Van consist of Warren (Gregg Henry, who went on to have bit parts in James Gunn films, including Guardians of the Galaxy of all things), a balding, blonde nature enthusiast who is so clearly not in his early 20's that it looks like he might die of old age before the killer ever arrives; Connie (Deborah Benson), his terribly boring girlfriend who's not The Slutty One so she's obliged to be our Final Girl; Daniel (Ralph Seymour of Killer Party), a nerdy photographer who's surprisingly cute without his terrible 80's glasses; Jonathan (Chris Lemmon), his preppy douche brother who owns the land they'll be staying on and thus sees fit to litter on it; and Megan (Jamie Rose), the requisite 80's Ambassador with ginger hair crimped into oblivion and an obsession with her caramel cream make-up.

While the kiddos are having a blast camping, forest ranger Roy McLean (George Kennedy, who would later appear in the slasher parody Wacko) is alerted to the danger and spends the rest of the film chasing after the kids, Ahab-like on his literal white steed.

Although if he'd left well enough alone, we might have rid the world of awful 80's fashions that much sooner.

Here's the thing about Just Before Dawn. It has the perfect slasher setup. Sure, it's been done before, but the sideshow slashers tend to be at their best when they're shamelessly derivative. But absolutely nothing happens for the first 40 minutes or so as the actors half-heartedly improvise Fun conversations and wander through the admittedly breathtaking forest locale. And when the slicin' and dicin' begins in earnest, most of it's offscreen and anticlimactic. Also the movie is far more impressed with its mid-film twist than I am: [the killer turns out to be two twin killers, who are revealed in the least emphatic way in the least interesting kill scene, used to no valuable ends, and foreshadowed with all the subtlety and nuance of a game of Centipede.]

There is an absolute dearth of good gore in this film, which isn't by itself an inadmissible sin. A goreless slasher can be amended by strong characters or tense sequences, but Just Before Dawn has neither. The characters are hopelessly generic, though performed with a mite more vigor and talent than the average splatter ensemble. And don't even get me started on the "tension" sequences, which squander a series of interesting set-ups with a resolute refusal to go to close-up and radio silence on the part of the composer.

It's like watching a concert from the back row while wearing earmuffs. You understand that you're supposed to be excited about something, but it's hard to be sure exactly why.

Ah yes, see, the blob is in danger of falling into the larger blob. Quite.

Other moments are so drawn out that they feel like you're watching the film in slow motion. One chase sequence in particular is so unbelievably wrought that my 12-year-old nephew could have outrun the massive rampaging mountain man without breaking a sweat.

There are some good moments in the film, but none of them relate to the horrors at hand. At any rate, the killer, with his incessant wheezing laugh and wacky Fourth Stooge hairpiece, renders his every appearance a farce with his deliriously unfunny antics. His full figure is shown far too early and far too often for there to be any amount of terror surrounding his scenes.

Everybody run! Run from crossing guard Paul Bunyan!

Anyway, about those good things. As I said earlier, the scenery is beautiful, and that doesn't amount to nothing. The setting is never creepy, but it's rendered with a great deal of actually talented cinematography, which is never something to discount in an 80's slasher film. Also, there are two (and only two) truly great kill moments. One, the very first in the film, is described in detail in the Best Kill segment. The other is so very special that I'll have to put it in spoiler bars, because it is the only thing that makes the film worth watching to any meaningful degree.

[When the carbon copy killer grabs Connie and attempts to bear hug her to death, she straight up shoves her fist down his throat and chokes him to death with her own knuckles. It's hardcore as hell and it's utterly delightful.]

There's also some feeble slaps at a theme, with the idea that nobody can truly own nature and that the forest will fight back against any attempts to control it. Also there was enough in the budget to afford Blondie's "Heart of Glass," so it can't be all bad.

But as reasons for watching a film go, these are all still pretty weak. Just Before Dawn is better-made than a lot of the crap slashers I have to watch, so I'll give it that, but it's so unimaginative, that I had to use a thesaurus to come up with more words for how bored I was. It's lackluster. It's mundane. It's banal. It's jejune.

But watch it if you want, I won't stop you. 

Killer: [The Mountain Twins (John Hunsaker)]

Final Girl: Connie (Deborah Benson)

Best Kill: Vachel is stabbed in the groin with a machete and it comes out of his ass on the other side.

Sign of the Times: Although this girl lives in the forest with her crazy inbred family, she still has hair feathered out into the stratosphere.

Scariest Moment: When Megan is swimming topless in the lake, the killer's hand reaches out to touch her. She sees her boyfriend on the shore and realizes that it's not him touching her.

Weirdest Moment: While Connie and Warren have a conversation, Dan pees in a bush behind them, his splashing urine overtaking the entire soundscape of the scene.

Champion Dialogue: "I told you to skidoot!"

Body Count: 6

1. Vachel is stabbed in the butt with a machete.
2. Jonathan is knocked over a waterfall. 
3. Dan is stabbed in the gut.
4. Megan is killed offscreen.
5. Killer is shot to death.
6. [Killer's Twin chokes to death on Connie's fist.]

TL;DR: Just Before Dawn has one or two classic slasher moments, but otherwise it's the bare minimum of what a teen splatter flick could be.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1332