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: 1984 Post Mortem

Phew! Somehow we've made it through another year of my project to watch and review every single slasher movie from the 1980s. With 1984 down for the count, we are now exactly halfway through this marathon! Here is my breakdown of the best and worst of the year that is now blissfully in the rearview mirror.

I watched a total of 28 slashers from 1984, as listed here. While there is always the chance that more research will unearth some ancient VHS tape that I missed while compiling this list, I have composed at least four rounds of intensive and exhaustive research over the years, so we can be reasonably certain I've picked up on all the ones that are at least available to the public in any real form. 

1984: Post Mortem

This is the part where I address the overall trends of the year, but 1984 is such a random grab bag it's pretty difficult to parse out. Really, all this points to is the fact that the slasher was dying an ignominious death by this point in the decade. Most of what we got was either rigorous formula films that were late to the party (like The Mutilator and Silent Madness) or bizarre attempts to graft the slasher onto another genre entirely (Evil Judgment, The Dark Side of Midnight, Disconnected, Blind Date).

We won't begin to see the effect that the release of Elm Street had on revitalizing the genre for some time, coming as it did right at the end of the year. Other than that, the only real "trend" here is the fact that, while the year lacked too many particular masterpieces, it also failed to scrape the bottom of the barrel, with most films turning out to be middling. While I wish there were more out-and-out great films here, at the very least this situation is certainly better than slogging through the muck of Z-grade video garbage for hours and hours.

The Five Best Slashers of 1984

#5 Innocent Prey

Innocent Prey was a real surprise! An Australian slasher starring iconic Halloween victim P.J. Soles, the film takes an approach that Alex Garland's Men is probably jealous of, detailing a woman's move to Australia to escape the memory of her abusive serial killer husband, only to find herself in the hands of an obsessive landlord. The first half is considerably superior to the second, but it's an excellent first half, full of intense scenes that ratchet up the sense of domestic terror.

#4 The Initiation

The Initiation is part of the hallowed "sorority slasher" tradition, and while other entries may outshine it, it is gleefully bloody and tawdry, and boasts a delectable soap opera sensibility that is lent great gravity by the presence of Psycho star Vera Miles.

#3 Silent Night, Deadly Night

Silent Night, Deadly Night is a bit of a nasty one, and far from what anyone might imagine when they hear "movie about a killer Santa." But the exploration of what makes a killer isn't entirely uninteresting, and the killings themselves are top shelf.

#2 Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is the platonic ideal of the 1980's slasher film. The dead meat teenagers' antics are engaging in an observational, John Hughes-y way, to just enough of a degree that you regret them being murdered, but not so much that you can't gaze in goggle-eyed awe at Tom Savini's excellent gore effects. It's sleazy, finding as many half-assed ways to get women to take their tops off, it's packed with incredible deaths, and it has two actors who would go on to be stars: Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover. It's not a perfect film, but it's a perfect slasher.

#1 A Nightmare on Elm Street

Well then, what could beat a perfect slasher? A perfect film, that's what! OK, "perfect" might be a strong word. Elm Street shows its seams in some of the acting, but as far as what is shown onscreen, it is both completely innovative and absolutely terrifying. Wes Craven's masterpiece brings us directly into contact with the stuff of nightmares, and deservedly changed the game by doing so.

The Five Worst Slashers of 1984

#5 Shadows Run Black

The epitome of "go girl, give us nothing." It's just an excuse to trot out naked breasts onscreen, with anemic kills and a nonexistent story. Even the pleasures of watching a young Kevin Costner slumming it pale in the face of how little he actually appears in the movie.

#4 Fatal Games

While the idea of Olympic hopefuls being murdered with their own equipment is a great organizing principle for a slasher, the execution here is pitifully bland. The kills are nondescript and while the movie is tolerable for the most part, it has the indecency to end on what is perhaps the worst trans killer plot twist in a subgenre that is replete with reprehensible examples of the same.

#3 Blood Theatre

An absolutely incompetent film, from audio recording to cinematography to acting and all the way down to foley. The "plot," which consists of three blank-faced teens wandering through an old theater, fails to be livened up with a heap of unoriginal kills, only one of which is visually interesting in any way.

#2 The Dark Side of Midnight

The reason this film isn't at #1 is the fact that it's ever so slightly on the right side of good-bad. It's an absolute bore, following a variety of mustachioed men sitting in offices discussing brutal slayings that the audience doesn't get to see. However, the lead character is an extremely obvious self-insert role for the director-star, positioning him as a cross between James Bond and Fabio, and I love the sheer audacity of the whole thing.

#1 Satan's Blade

Satan's Blade certainly tries to do something, folding a surprisingly adult drama into its bifurcated slasher plot. However, that's not enough to overcome the terrible acting and slew of boring stabbings.

1984 Body Count: 251 (including 9 decapitations and 13 slit throats)

This is an average of 8.96 kills per movie, a staggering number that is .71 higher than the previous leader, 1981. 

Highest Body Count: Zombie Island Massacre (19)

This is more a side effect of the movie having a cabal of killers than it actually being interesting in any real way.

Lowest Body Count: Calendar Girl Murders (3)

That's about what you can expect from a TV movie, though when you're grading on that scale it's a pretty solid body count, all told.

Five Best Kills

#5 The Weight Room, Silent Madness

Don't tell me you thought "woman hanging upside down having a rope attached to a barbell tied around her neck before the barbell is thrown out the window" wasn't going to make it. This is some Happy Birthday to Me-ass shit.

#4 Santa at the Urinal, Don't Open Till Christmas

What's a bit of holiday dick trauma among friends? The gag where a Santa's penis is cleaved from his pelvis, causing blood to spurt in the urinal, is in such delirious bad taste that it's irresistible.

#3 The Motel Bathroom, Innocent Prey

One of the most perfectly shot murder sequences of the year. It places you resolutely in the perspective of PJ Soles as she witnesses her husband's bloody secret. She thinks she's spying on him cheating on her in the bathroom as he has sex with a prostitute pressed up against the window, but she can spot him grabbing a straight razor in the mirror behind them, the bloody result of his actions being displayed when the woman's body drops into view in front of her. It's an excellent and chilling bit of deep focus composition that allows you to discover information at the exact second the character herself does, in a dastardly elliptical way.

#2 Doug's Shower, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

It was hard to choose just one from this movie, but that foley. Yowza.

#1 Tina's Bad Dream, A Nightmare on Elm Street

The murder that kicks of Elm Street is also the one that provided the shot of adrenaline into the arm of the slasher that kept it alive through the end of the decade. The surrealistic imagery of this kill (achieved with a marvelous in-camera effect) clashes with the perfectly visceral nature of the gashes that appear on her body. In addition to the sequence being a gorgeous display of pure terror, Rod's presence in the foreground highlights just how impotent the people Tina loves are in the face of this unknowable nocturnal enemy.

Best Decapitation: Silent Night, Deadly Night

Now that's just some Christmas fun. God bless us, every one.

Three Best Final Girls

#3 Janet, Evil Judgment

Canada was just really into positioning sex workers as slasher leads in the mid-'80s, and I am here for it!

#2 Cathy Willis, Innocent Prey

PJ Soles proves that she has the chops to go toe to toe with her Halloween co-star Jamie Lee Curtis in the Final Girl department. 

#1 Nancy Thompson, A Nightmare on Elm Street

Clever, driven, and only thwarted by the idiocy of those around her, Nancy is iconic for a reason. Also, the grey streak she acquires later is a look!

Three Worst Final Girls

#3 Pam, The Mutilator

Now, she's certainly not as annoying as the awful people who populate the film around her. But Pam takes the Uptight Virginal Survivor trope one step too far towards annoying, literally arranging a chore wheel for her friend group's beachside getaway.

#2 Jennifer, Blood Theatre

The vacant acting and poodle haircut aren't enough to distract anyone from how absolutely useless this Final Girl is at actually getting the job done.

#1 Kate, Don't Open Till Christmas

I guess I'm just mad at Kate for being withholding, because she keeps solving major segments of the mystery offscreen and only tells us about it later. Why, Kate?

Four Best Killers

#4 David, Blind Date

Did I only include him because he wears a Speedo in his final confrontation with our hero? Yes, yes I did. Picture unavailable, tragically. Buy the Blu-Ray.

#3 Pera Mitic, Strangler vs. Strangler

The Yugoslavian Norman Bates is an absolute riot, and his oddball energy does wonders toward buoying the film's comic tone throughout the runtime.

#2 Freddy Krueger, A Nightmare on Elm Street

Long before he became a villainous stand-up comedian, Freddy still played with his food. The way he relishes how terrifying he is just makes his inexplicable M.O. even creepier.

#1 Jason Voorhees, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Look, Freddy won Best Kill and Best Picture, rightfully, but you gotta hand it to the big lug. Jason is an iconic figure of the slasher genre, and he executes some of his best work here, along with gaining the iconic nick in the corner of his signature hockey mask.

Four Worst Killers

#4 The Cartel, Zombie Island Massacre

Even though the fact that the killer is a cartel seeking an undercover DEA agent is a wonderfully ludicrous twist, the faceless emissaries of said cartel just don't have any personality.

#3 Philip, Innocent Prey

The second killer in Innocent Prey can't help but suffer from diminishing returns. He's basically an Australian Phantom of the Opera with access to a Sliver's worth of hidden cameras, and it's goofy as hell.

#2 Howard Johns, Silent Madness

While the film ain't half bad, Silent Madness' weakest link is the look of the killer, who looks like he fell asleep while wearing his reading glasses on the beach and got a gnarly sunburn.

#1 Diane Paine, Fatal Games

We all know the '80s were transphobic, but having her voice suddenly get deeper when she reveals her identity is some evil Ace Ventura nonsense.

Handsomest Lad: Doug, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Look at those cheekbones! I'm jealous. I totally get why Jason would want to smoosh them against the shower wall.

Best Location: The Inititation

The massive, insular high rise mall has everything: A variety of locations for our Meat to be menaced within, an inherent sense of still being trapped in a single space, and just a super cool look that can't be denied.

Best Title: A Nightmare on Elm Street

OK, maybe I was kind of at a loss for solid contenders. However, I love the fact that the title here is foregrounding the suburban mundanity of the world it takes place in, highlighting the film's creeping insistence that the trappings of middle-class society can't save people from having their sins fall on their heads.

Three Best Costumes

#3 The Penis Suit, The Initiation 

Shantay, you stay.

#2 The Crop Top, A Nightmare on Elm Street

Look, the less we talk about Johnny Depp, the better. But a look is a look.

#1 I <3 My Dentist, Blind Date

Delightfully baffling. Do I love Blind Date? I think I might.

Best Poster: The Initiation

Such a good tagline! Such a good combination of incoherent images into something inherently menacing. Also this is probably the single movie poster that's easiest to read as someone masturbating, so there's that.

Best Tagline: The Mutilator

That's good shit, The Mutilator.

Best Song: "Beogradski Davitelj" Strangler vs. Strangler

The New Wave apparently hit Yugoslavia hard, and I'm so grateful for that. This song is actually genuinely quite good, like I'm not being ironic even a little bit.

Best Score: A Nightmare on Elm Street

Thank you Charles Bernstein for providing Freddy with his iconic cue, but also for coming up with creepy incidental music that would be equally at home in a Pet Shop Boys instrumental break.

Elite Champion Dialogue: “You've come to the right place. Or person. Or both." Day of the Reaper
Word Count: 2305