Census Bloodbath: It's My Party And I'll Die If I Want To

Year: 1986

Director: William Fruet

Cast: Martin Hewitt, Ralph Seymour, Elaine Wilkes

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I gotta tell you, I love slasher movies as much as the next guy. As long as I'm sitting next to a mirror and the next guy is also me. What I'm saying is I freaking love slasher movies. I mean, I'm doing this project because I desperately needed a productive reason to watch 300 slasher movies in a row. 

But 1980 is killing me. I have five movies left to finish off the year and move on into the Golden Age in 1981, but it's getting harder and harder to motivate myself to watch another crappily shot, abhorrently tedious proto-slasher. Especially because the next film on my list, Christmas Evil, is one that I have previously seen and detest with every fiber of my being.

Don't get me wrong. I love terrible movies with all my heart. But the movies I've been exposing myself to lately have reached such a nuclear amplitude of suckage (only rarely straying into "so bad its good" territory) that it's hard to approach the next couple of films with a smile on my face.

That's why I needed a shot in the arm to rejuvenate me for the long haul. And 1986's Killer Party, directed by Funeral Home's William Fruet and written by Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter's Barney Cohen was the perfect film to turn my attitude around. 

You could say it really lit me up.

Not so much a film as a collection of detritus that was dislodged from the back teeth of the 80's, Killer Party begins with a cheesy movie-within-a-movie which quickly transitions to a music video-within-a-movie in which real hair metal band performs their real (terrible) song "April (You're No Fool)" as zombies attack a drive-in theater. 

This occupies the first ten minutes of the film and is pure, unabashed Filler with a capital F. And it is gloriously 80's. I mean, look.

The frame cuts off above her leg warmers and roller blades.

This tremendously bizarre sequence turns out to be but an appetizer before the main course. You see, the parts of Killer Party that aren't obvious filler or completely drowned in 80's fashion and synthpop are few and far between. In fact, they may all be on the cutting room floor.

In the grand tradition of many a slasher film, we soon find ourselves in the middle of pledge week for Sigma Alpha Phi at Brigg's College. Three best friends make up the entire pledge class, revealing either the sorority's terrible reputation or the movie's mediocre budget. But let us not concern ourselves with that, for the girls we get are handfuls enough.

There's Phoebe (Elaine Wilkes - in a very sad turn, her IMDb trivia reads "former actress"), the most enthusiastic member of the bunch; Vivia (Sherry Willis-Burch, whose only other film role was in 1981's Final Exam), the nerdy blonde with a penchant for orchestrating cruel pranks; and Jennifer (Joanna Johnson), who is reluctant to endure the tortures of the wicked and glittery pledge mistress Veronica (Alicia Fleer), but whose firm resolve is melted once she meets the charming and handsome Blake (Martin Hewitt), a brother from Beta Tau.

Can you blame her?

For the ensuing 50 minutes, the film follows the pledge week shenanigans and romantic travails of these girls as well as the horny nerd Martin (Ralph Seymour, who we'll meet again soon in Just Before Dawn); Veronica's boyfriend and Beta Tau president Albert Harrison (Woody Brown), who is referred to by his first or last name depending on whatever mood the writer was in at the time, leading me to believe for the majority of the film that he was two different people; Big Bee-Boy (Howard Busgang, aka the chubby prankster from Terror Train), the... chubby prankster; his accomplice Little Bee-Boy (Jason Warren, who would later appear in the Canadian Dungeons and Dragons slasher Skullduggery); also there's Melanie (Terri Hawkes) and Sandy (Laura Sherman) two sorority sisters who are always mentioned in every other conversation despite having a collective 45 seconds of screentime, who I only mention here because not only was Terri Hawkes the mean girl in Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II, but she's freaking Sailor Moon. SAILOR MOON. This girl's a superstar.

The film pauses only briefly to remind people that this cheerful college romp has the word "Killer" in the title as the house mother Mrs. Henshaw (Pam Hyatt) and snooty professor Dr. Zito (Paul Bartel, who also appears in Chopping Mall and Trick or Treats - a Census Bloodbath hat trick!) - named after the director of the other big slasher by screenwriter Barney Cohen, don't think I let these things slip past me - wander into the abandoned frat house on Greek Row and meet their untimely deaths at the hands of a mysterious murderer.

Also holy crap do you see how much slasher royalty went into the making of this film? I mean, it sucks and all. But it sucks in that specifically 80's way that is so endearing. It warms my heart.

Among other things.

Nevermind that the first hour is occasionally dull, entirely bloodless, and totally unnecessary. It's so full to the brim with signifiers of the decade (including a deadpan synthcrap song that mindlessly repeats something about this being the best days of our lives for what feels like twenty minutes) that it is an ocular and aural experience not to be missed.

Towards the final half hour of the 90 minute film, it suddenly remembers that it's supposed to be a slasher movie and the girls and guys host a big April Fool's party in the abandoned building, the site of an accidental pledge murder twenty years before. The movie gets increasingly frantic to create a decent body count by the time the credits roll, to the point that the final twenty minutes are just a rapid-fire series of brief (and unfortunately bloodless) kill sequences in which they cut to a random person, have the murderer waddle in encased in a bronze deep sea diver outfit and nonchalantly slaughter them, then cut directly to the next, hastening to waste not a single moment of precious screentime.

The real fun begins when it turns out that SPOILERS Jennifer has been possessed by the spirit of the long-dead pledge boy and proceeds to do Exorcist style wall crawls while making everything in the house emit smoke and rattle around. It wouldn't be a post-Nightmare without an awkwardly shoved in paranormal element, now wouldn't it?

Not that I mind.

Now, let's make this super duper extra clear - Killer Party sucks. It's too demure and mangled by the MPAA to have fun gore moments, it's too careless to tell a legitimately intriguing narrative, and Joanna Johnson can't even muster a decent "shocked" face when the movie throws her into its boo-machine. I swear, she plays every scene like she just woke up from a nap.

But the combination of random hair metal, unpredictable sorority nonsense, and lackluster acting from an enormously appealing slate of attractive slasher alumni with the never-ending catalogue of cheesy outfits and scenarios, all wrapped up with a truly magnificent poster makes me feel right at home. And I really needed that.

Killer: Alan the Dead Pledge in the body of Jennifer (Joanna Johnson)

Final Girl: Vivia (Sherry Willis-Burch), but not for long

Best Kill: A fat boy in a bumblebee costume is impaled with a harpoon through his... rectal region.

Sign of the Times: Literally every outfit, character, and song featured in the entire film.

Scariest Moment: The possessed Jennifer crawls up the wall, her tongue lolling.

Weirdest Moment: How do I even decide? It's a toss up between the full hair metal music video that opens the film and the part where Vivia is making out with Martin and she screams "OH! TOUCH ME, MARTIN!" while pointing at her elbow.

Champion Dialogue: "I gargle with musk."

Body Count: 10 people clearly die; my body count does not include a woman who dies in the film within the film or the rest of the partygoers whom Vivia claims have died, only four of which we see pointedly strewn about.

1. Mrs. Henshaw is beaten to death with a paddle.
2. Dr. Zito is electrocuted with a wire.
3. Pam is impaled with a trident.
4. Veronica is hit in the head with a hammer.
5. Albert is guillotined.
6. Virgil is dismembered and stuffed in a fridge.
7. Fat Bumblebee gets a harpoon up his ass.
8. Thin Bumblebee gets a harpoon through his mouth. Not the same harpoon, I hope.
9. Blake is drowned in the tub.
10. Jennifer/Alan is staked through the heart with a fencepost.

TL;DR: Killer Party sucks, but it's the kind of suck that makes me glad to be alive.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1478

Census Bloodbath: A Grave Mistake

If you're new to Census Bloodbath, click here.

Year: 1980

Director: William Fruet

Cast: Kay Hawtrey, Lesleh Donaldson, Dean Garbett

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

At this point do I even need to tell you that this film's quality is extremely cruddy and low-fi? Can we just take that for granted? OK. It's oversaturated, blurry, grainy, and the music sounds like it's stuck somewhere between Gone With the Wind and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

First, an anecdote. I got this DVD for about 3 bucks at Fry's because I am an extremely discriminating individual. When I popped it into Alan, my computer, Alan popped it right back out at me. As it happens, it was a Region 0 DVD. In case you didn't know, every DVD has a region code that shows which part of the world's DVD players it is compatible with. The US code is Region 1 (We're number one! USA!) and there are seven or so other codes that correspond with different sectors of the planet.

Region 0, however is a universal region. Meaning, much like Esperanto, it is useless universally. Macs are hardwired for it to be extremely tough to change regions so I had to scrounge up my old portable DVD player from home before I could even watch this film. And let me tell you, it was not really worth my time. Aw well, that's what you get for toeing the waters of forgotten 80's horror.

A saving grace: This is a Canadian film so at least it works better than its spiritual forebear, Silent Scream.

More on that later.

Funeral Home follows the "adventures" of the "character" Heather (Lesleh Donaldson, aka the girl who dies in the first ten minutes of Happy Birthday to Me) as she helps her stout and matronly grandmother, Maude Chalmers (Kay Hawtrey, who has minor roles in Videodrome and Urban Legend, both of which I'd rather be watching), convert her old funeral home into a sort of bed and breakfast. After her grandfather Mysteriously Disappeared, the business went downhill and Maude needs to rake in a little cash.

Maybe sell the dolls on eBay. I say sell the dolls.

Heather (whose only description on the back of the DVD box is "easily frightened," and I can't argue that there's any more to her than that) slowly discovers that her grandma is not all there, frequently talking about things her religious grandfather would disapprove of as if he were still alive and with her today. Almost as if he were hiding in, say, the basement, where she frequently slips away in the dead of night to have whispered conversations.

Also on hand are Billy (Stephen E. Miller, who we will later revisit in The Stepfather), the mentally handicapped and sexually frustrated groundskeeper, and Rick (Dean Garbett of literally nothing else), the young swain who lives nearby and inexplicably finds Heather interesting. Let me commend the filmmakers for not turning Billy into a hideously grotesque stereotype, opting to keep him as a mildly uncomfortable one.

So with the religious and unstable Maude, the lonely and confused Billy, and the angry whispers from the basement, we can get the ball rolling! But first, some nothing.

I'd much rather watch this scene than somebody getting cleavered in the face. Totally.

Heather wanders around the funeral home like Dorothy in Oz (another character aptly compares her to Alice in Wonderland) being scared by black cats and coffins and leering groundskeepers. When a door-to-door salesman and his mistress (Harvey Atkin and Peggy Mahon) come to town, they liven things up  by being uniquely acidic and horrible people. They go around being mean to everyone (except for one scene where the mistress goes apesh!t over some flowers and squeals like a little girl) until Maude discovers they've been "living in sin."

This word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

She asks them to leave but they refuse. They won't leave, and Grandfather would definitely not approve of this. To add the cherry on top, the mistress teases Billy in ways that only a sociopath could dream up, so there's enough ire to go around for all three of the potential killers. It doesn't help that she's Fran Drescher's evil twin.

But that mystery will have to wait so we can watch a brawl at a barn dance.

Eventually, they are killed when their car is shoved into a quarry.

This is half of the body count right here.

Back to the barn dance thing. The plot of Funeral Home is not so much a sustained narrative as a collection of events, like colorful glass beads on a bracelet. Whereas in a real person story, the situations rise from the characters and their reactions to the world around them, the plot demands that the characters bend and twist to its demands (insofar as this film has "plot" and "characters"). Rick gets the brunt of it, teleporting across town at will to be there when important events go down.

Combine this with a bumbling cop narrative straight out of the weird hillbilly subplot from Last House on the Left and you've got, well, a fairly typical 1980 slasher film. Rick's brother Joe (Alf Humphreys) is new on the police force and doesn't get the respect he deserves as a native son of the small town. As he stumbles into cow pies and fumbles around interrogations, I can't help but wonder if David Arquette's character from Scream might be a little bit based on him.

Things trundle along and a black cat attempts to be symbolic.

Hi!

Another tenant, Mr. Davis (Barry Morse) is suspicious of Mrs. Chalmers and he is bumped off quietly in the night as he investigates his wife's disappearance in that very same funeral home.

Things build to a climax as Billy is murdered during a basement investigation and Heather whimpers in a corner as Maude goes a little axe-crazy. This is actually pretty boring save for one shot in the end. Oh, also guess what. Surprise of the century! Maude was the killer! The grandfather in the basement was....

Norman Bates' Mom!

Evidently Grandpa was sleeping around with Mr. Davis' wife and Maude quite rightly took an axe to them both and kept her husband in the basement so she wouldn't be lonely. So here we have a bland slasher film with a paucity of deaths that's really just another riff on Silent Scream which was just a riff on Psycho.

It's all there. The deranged matronly caretaker of a run-down guest home. The corpse in the basement. The killer pretending to be somebody else due to... Psychosis. 

It's not really that interesting.

The Final Girl is a damp dishtowel who whimpers behind a coffin in the basement as her boyfriend is beaten and resigns to her fate, just burying her face in her arms as the axe is raised above her. Disgraceful. Heather is one of the few Final Girls that lends credence to the hard-to-dispute theory that slasher movies were intensely misogynistic.

Luckily Donaldson got something more interesting to do in Happy Birthday to Me, another Canadian product, so she could redeem herself from this travesty of a character. 

Let me say though that Kay Hawtrey actually gives a pretty delightfully hammy performance as Maude Chalmers.

So there's that.

One to miss.

Unless you want to check out this sexy swimsuit scene.

Killer: Maude Chalmers (Kay Hawtry)
Final Girl: Heather (Lesleh Donaldson)
Best Kill: Billy is stabbed with an embalming needle.
Sign of the Times: Rick's shorts are even shorter than Heather's.
Scariest Moment: Maude raising the axe as a hanging lamp swings wildly - the only even slightly scary or off-putting moment in the film.
Weirdest Moment: After Maude snaps and destroys everything in the basement with an axe in her pursuit of Heather, the police run in, calm her down, and they all go for a cup of tea.
Champion Dialogue: "He was just playing mean... and he had a bad drinking problem too."
Body Count: 4

1. A man is pushed into a lake inside his car.
2. A woman is pushed into a lake in a car.
3. A man is beaten in the head with a shovel. 
4. A man is stabbed with an embalming needle. 

TL;DR: Funeral Home is just another thin manifestation of the ghost of Psycho.
Rating: 3/10
Word Count: 1404