Census Bloodbath: Nude Moon

Year: 1983
Director: J. Lee Thompson
Cast: Charles Bronson, Lisa Eilbacher, Andrew Stevens 
Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

In the mid-80's, the slasher genre had ensconced itself so securely in the cinema firmament that just about every genre had to get in on the fun and throw a knife-wielding maniac into the mix. An early adopter of this practice was another genre that was pumping out movies like there was no tomorrow: action. We'd already seen a genetically modified maniac thriller grafted onto a Chuck Norris "romantic" actioner with Silent Rage in 1982, but you know a trend has legs when The Cannon Group tosses their hat into the ring.

The iconic shlock production company, then under the loving care of producers Golan and Globus, had already produced a half dozen slashers by the time 10 to Midnight came out in 1983, but this would be the first time they mixed their action peanut butter with their horror chocolate. They paired a fresh-off-Death Wish 2 Charles Bronson with Happy Birthday to Me director J. Lee Thompson and hoped they could make magic.

Sorry, that was a typo. Money. They hoped they could make money.

Where should I even begin? I suppose with Charles Bronson, who's as close to a protagonist as this movie gets, even though he's offscreen as much as humanly possible. He plays one Leo Kessler, a hard-nosed cop who is irritated by his new erudite yuppie partner Paul McAnn (Andrew Stevens, who had his turn as a stalker killer in the execrable The Seduction). You can probably guess where this is going, and you would be wrong, because if they made this a buddy cop movie, they'd have to get Bronson out of his trailer. 

We also get the privilege of following the exploits of Warren Stacy (Gene Davis, of The Hitcher and Cruising, so his homoerotic cinema bingo card is pretty complete), an absolute creepo incel who aggressively flirts with women and flies into a murderous knife-happy rage when they quite reasonably reject him. He has now set his sights on Laurie Kessler (Lisa Eilbacher), who has the supreme misfortune of being the progeny of Leo. Paul and her develop a little bit of a flirtation because it's not an 80's action movie if a cop isn't overstepping ethical boundaries with a case. Now we have all the pieces in place, watch them run around! Oh, and when Warren is killing people, he walks around completely naked.

Oops, did I forget to mention?

10 to Midnight is an odd duck. If you take a step back and look at the thing, it's really not successful as either a slasher or an action film. On the one hand, you have a series of kills that are largely concentrated in the beginning and ending (the second act has a pace that is murderous, and not in the good way) and all follow the same M.O.: A little bit of stalkin', a lot of stabbin', and home before dinner gets cold. On the other, you have an action film that doesn't depict much action. The cops walk around and ask people questions and file reports, but they hardly break a sweat. You'd hardly even know it was trying to be an action flick if not for the parts where the cop who plants evidence and wants to act outside the law is meant to be the hero of the movie.

And though Charles Bronson could hardly be blamed for not giving this particular project much respect, he's not phoning in his performance. He's telegramming it. What we're seeing onscreen isn't Bronson in any meaningful sense of the word. It's the flesh his consciousness usually occupies, but the true Bronson is somewhere sunny and warm where he doesn't have to recite dialogue at a naked man. Every line is delivered in a flat monotone, except for the ones where he randomly injects some excitement by emphasizing the wrong syllables ("he was on mor-PHINE").

And yet, despite being an abject failure on paper, why is 10 to Midnight so goddamn fun?

Don't look at me like that.

What it lacks in, well, almost everything, 10 to Midnight makes up for with a healthy portion of 80's sleaze and cheese. This is a film that is unembarrassed to plumb all the weirdest corners and most clandestine impulses of the brain of screenwriter William Roberts (the creator of The Donna Reed Show, somehow). This is a film that asks a disaffected Bronson to complain about how much he hates quiche one moment, then scream at a young man about jerking off the next. 

The film can't find its identity in a genre, so it just commits to being whatever the hell it wants to be in this particular second, existing in an effervescent, eternal Now. This Now also happens to be 1983, so we get a heady synth score while all this is happening, and you know I'm never gonna complain about that. And maybe I finally get why all those straight teenage boys went to see the shittiest slashers in droves, because sending a naked Gene Davis to wander around a third of your movie is certainly a way to capture my attention (this film is obsessed with nudity from any gender, so it's nice and equitable although it's just skittish enough to never go full frontal on Davis - in this moment I can't quite recall if there is female full frontal, but there may well have been some while I was distracted).

At the end of the day, I have watched many many many slashers that are worse than 10 to Midnight, though that's probably more of a slight toward myself than it is praise for the film. With the exception of that dreary middle 30 minutes where it makes feint toward being a legal thriller that it graciously doesn't commit to, it's easy to be entertained here (I almost forgot to mention the banter between Laurie and Paul, which is warm and sweet, if inexplicable). What the hell, I say check it out! Maybe?

Killer: Warren Stacy (Gene Davis)

Final Girl: Laurie Kessler (Lisa Eilbacher)

Best Kill: They're all pretty much the same M.O., but there's a fun gag at the end of Betty's roommate's death where the toast she was making pops up out of the toaster at the second she expires.

Sign of the Times: Laurie's "going out" outfit involves a one-molecule-wide headband that couldn't possibly be doing anything meaningful to her hair, so it must be for fashion.

Scariest Moment: When Warren is trying to break through Laurie's bedroom door, the mirror on the other side shatters.

Weirdest Moment: Charles Bronson confronts Warren with a sex toy discovered in his bathroom, which resembles the snout of the "Mahna Mahna" muppet crudely grafted onto a salad spinner hair dryer.

Champion Dialogue: "Don't do anything I couldn't do better."

Body Count: 7

1. Dale is stabbed.
2. Betty is stabbed in the gut.
3. Karen is stabbed.
4. Blonde Roommate is stabbed.
5. Shower Roommate is stabbed in the gut.
6. Bunny is stabbed offscreen.
7. Warren Stacy is shot in the head.

TL;DR: 10 to Midnight is a bizarre slasher-actioner hybrid that is well served by an exceptionally sleazy presentation. 

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1213

Census Bloodbath: From Birth To Death

I'm turning 19 today! Because I'm me, why not celebrate by reviewing a birthday themed slasher film (And give y'all a sneak peek of Census Bloodbath 1981)? You're so lucky to have me around.

Happy Birthday To Me

Year: 1981
Director: J. Lee Thompson
Cast: Melissa Sue Anderson, Glenn Ford, Lawrence Dance
Run Time: 1 hour 50 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Hailing from the inimitable slasher year of 1981 and the inimitable slasher realm of Canada, Happy Birthday To Me is one of the most highly regarded slasher films of the day (the fact that it has a 33% on Rotten Tomatoes should speak to the consistently low critical perception of the subgenre). Only the idea of how cool it would be to watch it at my birthday party could staunch my unquenchable desire to watch this film the second I got it on DVD.

The film opens promisingly with the credits in blood red print on a pitch black screen as moody piano music swells underneath. Thus begins 110 minutes of one of the most quintessentially slashery films the 80's had to offer (never mind that the filmmakers insisted it was a "psychological thriller"), full of branches being pulled back by gloved hands, people saying "Oh, it's you" to the killer, and plenty of bad impressions, which had been a staple of the genre since Friday the 13th.

The fact that I allowed this film to be 110 minutes long without once complaining (all good slasher films are more or less exactly 90 minutes on the dot) is a testament to its quality and its captivating power, which held myself and several other slasher veterans in its thrall the entire time.

HBTM opens as Bernadette O'Hara (Lesleh Donaldson) sets out on her way to meet her friends at the Silent Woman Tavern. She is rudely interrupted in this task by a stranger intent on strangling her to death. In a bizarre moment of chutzpah for an opening scene death, she plays dead and manages to escape the killer's clutches, only to stop just feet away (for... reasons) and be summarily sliced by a shadowy figure in a striped scarf and black gloves.

Her screams fade away into the night and we shift our attention to her friends (all decked out in the exact same scarves as the killer - evidently it's school colors) at the Tavern, the so-called "Top Ten" of Crawford High. As this is a self-named group, we quickly learn that they are snobby, popular, and entitled. We yearn for their deaths more or less immediately.

The group is comprised of Etienne (Michel-René Labelle), a French foreign exchange student who is also an accomplished motorcycle racer; Steve (Matt Craven), a merry prankster; Greg (Richard Rebiere), a cocky jock; and Alfred (Jack Blum), the group's punching bag (but still an accomplished goalie) who is into rodents and taxidermy, just like all regular high school boys. He looks a little like what would happen if a young Woody Allen had a love child with himself.

Courtesy of Mommy, What Will I Look Like? Photo Simulation Services

There's also Ann (Tracy Bregman), a fun-loving and careless girl and her best friend, Ginny Wainwright (Melissa Sue Anderson), who is new to the school. She's just moved back into her old house after recovering from What Happened. See those capital letters! We've just met our Final Girl for the evening!

In case you're a mathematician, you may have noticed I did not just list ten names. There are, oddly enough, ten people in the Crawford Top Ten, but the rest of them are interchangeable and eerily similar looking. I dare you to try to keep them apart.

The kids frolic and prank and generally cavort about until one of their games goes wrong.  Ginny is shoved into a car as her friends drive it Evel Knievel style over an open drawbridge, which triggers repressed memories from The Accident.

As she slowly pieces together what happened to her That Fateful Night, her friends begin to disappear one by one. And here's where the poster tagline kicks in. The film promises "six of the most bizarre murders you will ever see," and wow does it deliver. Although a salivating MPAA was eager to hem back the gore, the kill scenes were one and all clever, surprising, and relevant to the characters.

What other slasher movie can say that? Even Jason Voorhees, He of A Thousand Sharp Things, can't claim to bring that level of quality and creativity to each of his kills. Of course we all can predict that a kid dies by kebab, but could anyone have guessed the death by whirling motorcycle tire or the gleefully brutal weight lifting scene?

Happy Birthday To Me has a lot to bring to the table with a slate of great kills, a solid central mystery that builds in a manner that is actually suspenseful, and a slew of suspects including Mr. Wainwright (Lawrence Dane), Ginny's doctor, David Farraday (Glenn Ford), their creepy taxidermist friend Alfred,  their other friend Rudi (David Eisner) for reasons I can no longer remember, and even Virginia herself as she slowly begins losing her mind. The movie keeps us guessing and even though the final twist is a bit off the wall (a true mark of a great slasher film), the buildup is genuinely diverting and gripping and the pieces fit together astonishingly well once it's all said and done.

Never mind the fact that a birthday isn't even mentioned until an hour in. Never mind that the cameraman was a little shaky and markedly obsessed with having people get really really close to the camera before fading out. Never mind that Ginny has a weird mouth-kissy relationship with her father. Never mind that apparently shish kebabs are sexy.

It's a slasher flick, not a freaking arthouse movie.

With moments that are actually chilling and intense, death scenes that can only be described with the word "awesome," and a brief performance by Sharon Acker as Ginny's mom, taking supremely hammy dialogue and eating it alive, Happy Birthday To Me is a classic for the ages.

Killer: Highlight for spoilers [Ann Thomerson (Tracy Bregman)]
Final Girl: Virginia "Ginny" Wainwright (Melissa Sue Anderson). It is no accident that her name has the word "virgin" in it, although the film is mysteriously absent of sex scenes.
Best Kill: Greg is pumping iron when the killer drops a weight on his crotch, causing his barbell to fall and crush his neck.

Sign of the Times: The word "nimrod," which has not fallen upon living ears since the fall of the Berlin Wall; The killer wears white Converse; Ginny's room is decorated with those flowing lacy white curtains every girl in the 80's seemed to have. Also a Genesis poster.
Scariest Moment: A car teeters on the top of a drawbridge as it opens.
Weirdest Moment: Ginny invites her doctor to her birthday party and lets him spend the night.
Champion Dialogue: "Come along Winston, give mummy head!"
Body Count: 9; 8 murders and one death in a flashback.

1. Bernadette's throat is slit with a straight razor.
2. Etienne's scarf drags his face into a spinning motorcycle tire.
3. Greg has a weight dropped onto his groin, which makes him drop a barbell onto his throat.
4. Alfred is gutted with pruning shears.
5. Steve gets a shish kebab shoved into his mouth.
6. Mrs. Wainwright is drowned in a car crash.
7. Dr. Faraday is hit in the head with a coal holder.
8. Mr. Wainwright has his throat slit with a cake knife.
9. [Ann is knifed in the stomach.]

TL;DR: Happy Birthday To Me is a slasher classic with clever deaths and moments of real suspense.
Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 1288