Census Bloodbath: 1980 Post Mortem

UPDATE 4/21/2022: I have since viewed an additional 6 films from 1980 that escaped my initial round of research. The body count numbers have been updated to reflect this. 

Wow, you guys. I am so excited that my first year of Census Bloodbath is finished. It's been a very long and very strange journey through a heckton of crap and now I get to do my favorite things in the world. Compiling information and sharing recommendations and LISTS. I love lists.

So far in this feature I have reviewed 45 slasher movies, 25 of which came from the first year of their Golden Age, 1980. As far as I can tell, I have seen every single slasher film released in 1980 bar none. Now inevitably in cinematic history (especially in horror) some ultra obscure little B flick will come bobbing up out of the swamp water to disappoint the completist in me, but as of today, July 11th 2014, this is every slasher film that I have been made aware of after hours of exhaustive research into the genre.

I'm just gonna go ahead and say I've seen all of them. Yay me.

Now I'm gonna stop yapping like an idiot and dive straight into the meat of things.

1980: Post Mortem

1980 was the year the slasher film began in earnest. After the massive success of 1978's Halloween, the subgenre was finally starting to coalesce into a coherent structural form. Because everything was still new and exciting, the formula and the rules hadn't been totally established at this point so legions of disparate filmmakers weren't yet ripping off each other, all coming to the genre through their own means, usually through the entry point of ripping off Halloween (He Knows You're Alone, Friday the 13th, Prom Night) or Psycho (Silent Scream, Funeral Home), some springing forth as a natural progression of the grindhouse movement (Don't Answer the Phone, Don't Go in the House).

Although there are several sterling examples of the genre to come out of 1980, the film that really made a splash was Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th, which brought Italian style gore to the American screen in a visceral way. Gore maestro Tom Savini would do much to pave the way for horror in the 80's (and in fact had already began on that path with 1978's Dawn of the Dead) but his watermark year was certainly this one - in which he turned stomachs again and again, first as Friday barreled through theaters, then toward the end of the year with the ugly and visceral Maniac.

During this year the genre was still gaining traction and getting on its feet, so the gory offerings were much less plentiful than they would soon prove to be, but horror as we know it exists because of Savini's terrific work, bringing to life the traumas he experienced firsthand as a war photographer in Vietnam.

Because of the experimentation with the genre before its ideas were set in stone, many of these films break from form, although obviously they weren't aware of it at the time. Often the merciless killers were played by actual actors instead of anonymous stuntmen, bringing a human face to what would soon become an immensely industrial genre. Not only did most killers not hide behind a mask, many of them were utterly human, reveling in their own ugliness and sin. This was in large part thanks to the last gasps of the dying grindhouse movement, but the face of 1980 slashers was a grunting, sweaty one that tends to stick in the mind just as fast as the masks of the later periods.

Another interesting break from formula is that many of the victims in these films were adults! The shift to teen victim pools would be swift and merciless, but for the time being, the stories being told were mature and at least attempting to rise above average horror fare. They were rarely entirely successful, but that's incidental. The slasher of 1980 was a strange beast, lurching toward an identity. But during this period of turmoil some very very interesting gems can be found. And a lot of crap. But let's start with the good, shall we?

The Five Best Slashers of 1980

#5 He Knows You're Alone

He Knows You're Alone is one of my favorite new discoveries of this project. It's got no gore to speak of, and it's a not-particularly-scary riff on Halloween, but the story is engaging, the gender politics are surprisingly generous, and the characters are more fleshed out than your typical slasher Meat. It's not quite one for the record books, but it is immensely charming. Also hey, Tom Hanks is in it!

Read my review here.

#4 Anthropophagus

Although the pacing is a bit clunky, Anthropophagus is the magnum opus of Italian exploitation director Joe D'Amato. It's one of the more brutally nasty Video Nasties and several of the kill scenes are so shocking and explicit, they stick in the memory far more than other slasher films. This one is harder to recommend because of some of its content, but it's a reliably atmospheric and affecting horror film.

Read my review here.

#3 Maniac

Combining traits from several genres into one ugly, appealing disarray, Maniac is blunt and forceful. Although the griminess of the film is a holdout from the grindhouse genre, which wouldn't survive beyond several months after this film, Maniac is a memorably twisted slasher with some great gore effects by our man Savini.

Read my review here.

#2 Terror Train

Terror Train is largely bloodless and the film doesn't really deliver on the campiness inherent in the title, preferring to play it straight, but throw in a blockbuster performance by scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis, a David Copperfield magic show, a killer that has more costume changes than a Lady Gaga concert, and a sly twist that hits you in the face like a wet fish and you have yourself one of the best slashers of the whole dang year.

Read my review here.

#1 Friday the 13th

As much love as I have for it, Friday the 13th absolutely isn't the best film in the world. It's shockingly terrible in terms of production values and acting, but it hit home with Savini's masterpiece gore in a way that no artistic slasher was able to do, igniting the powder keg that would be this genre. Considering I'm sufficiently devoted to these films that I'm attempting a project like this, it makes sense why Friday would be my number one.

Read my review here.

The Five Worst Slashers of 1980

#5 Funeral Home

One to miss. Although it gets a slight boost by dint of being a Canadian production (it is the general consensus that Canadian slasher films have got it going on), this dull slasher picks off its small cast in disinteresting ways and has such low stakes that the finale ends with a tea party.

Read my review here.

#4 Christmas Evil

It's dreadfully dull, but at least it's festive. One of my more regretful decisions in life was to show this film at a holiday party I was hosting. No wonder nobody ever came to the ones I held after that. Another film that squanders a camp premise (a killer Santa) by playing it straight. Playing it straight isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it takes a lot more talent to pull that kind of thing off, something which the filmmakers must have left at home on the kitchen counter.

Read my review here.

#3 Don't Answer the Phone

This is the first film I watched for this project and it's a testament to my perseverance that I didn't just stop there. Tawdry and nasty, this is a pristine example of mean-spirited exploitation, shifting bluntly between crude exploitation of female flesh and repetitive and cruel rape scenes. Anyone who considers this a "fun" movie should be put on a watch list.

Read my review here.

#2 Silent Scream

Sinfully boring and poorly lit, Silent Scream is a one two punch of not caring what happens onscreen and not actually being able to see it. Its most dreadful sin is dragging genre veteran Barbara Steele down into the muck with it. Rebecca Balding is a decent Final Girl, but the film is too parsimonious with its kills to make up for the plot, which is spread woefully thin.

Read my review here.

#1 To All a Goodnight

1980 was a mixed-bag year for holiday horror. It had the highest concentration of holiday-themed films of any year in this retrospective, but of the three Christmas films, two New Year's films and one Mother's Day film, only two (Maniac and Terror Train, both of which have less to do with the holiday than just being solid flicks) rise above the muck. And our absolute worst film of the year is this rancid Christmas goober, which despite a massive body count never once features a scene engaging on any level other than "I exist."

Read my review here.

1980 Body Count: 239 (9 slit throats, 8 decapitations) - an average of 7.03 bodies per film


Highest Body Count: 15 (tied between To All a Good Night and Night of the Demon)


Lowest Body Count: 2 (Moodu Pani)


Five Best Kills

#5 Auto-Cannibalism (Anthropophagus)

One of two scenes that earned Anthropophagus its "Video Nasty" status, the part where he begins to devour himself is at once bone-chilling and thematically relevant. I kind of adore this movie, it's just so bonkers.

#4 Scissors in the Throat (The Boogeyman)

This death was certainly one of the most creative in the more-or-less lackluster The Boogeyman. A woman is propelled by an unseen force to jam scissors into her neck in a scene way more satisfying and terrifying than The Happening ever managed to be.

Read my review here.

#3 The Exploding Van (Prom Night)

Prom Night was a supremely average slasher film, but this death just comes out of nowhere and is executed in such a hilariously over-the-top manner. I can't help but giggle every time this scene comes onscreen. It's like some bizarre action movie was spliced onto a typical stalk-and-kill routine.

Read my review here.

#2 Arrow Through the Neck (Friday the 13th)

One of the most well-choreographed sequences in the film, I'd suggest you skip ahead if you haven't seen it. Just let this one present itself to you with a minimum of foreknowledge. Let me just say that it is a prime example of misdirection and one of the best gore effects in a film chock full of them.

#1 Dick Torn Off (Night of the Demon)

Another film that earned its "Video Nasty" status if I've ever seen one. It's too explicit for me to show here, but let me just say Bigfoot ripping this biker's penis off does not disappoint.

Read my review here.


Best Decapitation: He Knows You're Alone

This year saw some great decapitations with the Machete Heard 'Round the World in Friday the 13th and Jamie Lee's friend's head rolling down the catwalk in Prom Night, but my personal favorite is He Knows You're Alone, in which the killer shows a little bit of flair.

Three Best Final Girls

#3 Alice Hardy (Friday the 13th)

She's not the most inspiring female heroine, especially considering some really terrible decision-making she performs in the third act, but Alice paved the way for so many more capable Final Girls that she is worth a mention here. Also Adrienne King is a sweetheart.

#2 Amy Jensen (He Knows You're Alone)

One of the most fully-developed female characters of the year, Amy has goals, dreams, and motivations that drive a full character arc, a rare feat for a subgenre typically filled with paper-thin stereotypes and screenwriters more focused on upping the gore ante than telling a terrific story.

#1 Alana Maxwell (Terror Train)

Jamie Lee Curtis will always be the reigning Scream Queen for bringing a gravity and Everyteen believability to a wide variety of roles in the horror genre. Her final sequence in Terror Train is one of the best such scenes committed to celluloid.

Three Worst Final Girls

#3 Dr. Lindsay Gale (Don't Answer the Phone)

All Dr. Gale does throughout the course of the movie is spout incorrect psychiatry (usually more damaging to the patient than helpful - at one point she expounds upon the virtues of drugs to an addict) and get captured. Her survival is only incidental, never at any point procured by herself. Useless.

#2 Terry (Motel Hell)

Terry is the type of girl to just stick around an old motel because her boyfriend died and she's suddenly without a rudder. It's a complete mystery what forces compel her to make decisions and she has no internal drive or motivation, except to bang whatever dude is in closest proximity, in this case the 70-year-old Farmer Vincent.

Read my review here.

#1 Marilyn O'Connor (Fade to Black)

She's beautiful and she does a grand Marilyn Monroe impression. But Marilyn O'Connor willingly shows up at a sketchy modeling job, asks a transparently creepy man to give her a ride, and happily takes a pill proffered to her by the aforementioned transparently creepy man. Girl, you've got to wise up if you want to keep living (and stay alive) in LA.

Read my review here.

Four Best Killers

#4 Bigfoot (Night of the Demon)

It's certainly not the best movie, but come on! What a creative killer! This isn't a genre known for its creative thrust so any murderous being outside of the norm is a plus in my book.

#3 Mrs. Voorhees (Friday the 13th)

Mrs. Voorhees is a delightfully unexpected presence at the end of a mystery that never quite succeeds in being a mystery. Her sudden appearance in the final reel is mystifying, but Betsy Palmer sells the role with hammy delight, chomping the scenery into dust with her dazzling pearly whites.

#2 Kenny Hampson (Terror Train)

At no point is the identity of Terror Train's murderer in question, but his tendency to switch costumes every scene keeps the audience on their toes and ramps up the tension about a thousand notches. And his final reveal is one for the ages.

#1 The Mirror (The Boogeyman)

Again I must give kudos to a deliciously creative premise in a lackluster film. In The Boogeyman, the murderer is a mirror possessed with the spirit of a man who died in its sight. The presence of the mirror later causes anyone around it to murder themselves or die under deliriously strange circumstances.

Four Worst Killers

#4 Richard Sullivan (New Year's Evil)

Richard Sullivan's motive (to kill one person every hour at midnight in different time zones) is unique and compelling, but his execution and performance are lacking. His final scene is interestingly banal, but he simply can't carry a movie on his own.

Read my review here.

#3 Ike & Addley (Mother's Day)

This Troma film was supposedly a comedy, but this backwoods duo put way too much emphasis on brutal rape to keep the tone light in any way. A total wash of a film that puts a bitter taste in one's mouth.

Read my review here.

#2 Kirk "The Strangler" Smith (Don't Answer the Phone)

An utterly disappointing killer to match with an utterly disappointing Final Girl. His MO is always exactly the same and always brutal in an infinitely disgusting way rather than any level capable of reaching an audience and provoking any reaction other than mild disgust.

#1 Victoria Engels (Silent Scream)

Of the five people that die in her film, the killer only manages to claim two of them. If you want to enter the big leagues, you've got to work for it, my darling.

Handsomest Lad: Richie (Fade to Black)

I'm probably only enthralled by Mickey Rourke in Fade to Black thanks to his startling resemblance to one Louis Tomlinson, but I likes what I likes and there is too much late 70's hair in these films to provide another standout.

Handsomest Lass: Jennifer Fast (The Unseen)

The only Final Girl to have also been a Bond girl, Barbara Bach is ethereally beautiful and a terrific choice.

Read my review here.

Best Location: The Greek Island (Anthropophagus)

Setting this moody slasher on an abandoned Greek island allows the film an extra edge of tension thanks to its claustrophobic whitewashed corridors.


Best Title: Terror Train

Come on, who wouldn't want to see a movie called Terror Train? Unfortunately, the answer seems to be "a lot of people." But I urge you to check it out.


Three Best Costumes

#3 Pig Head (Motel Hell)

It lands a lower spot thanks to its immense impracticality and the fact that it's only used in one scene of the film, but the image is still striking today as one of the more memorable slasher improvisations.

#2 Santa Claus (Christmas Evil)

Although Christmas Evil was a tedious slog, the idea of a killer Santa still stings, and the increasing disheveledness of his outfit as the night wears on is one of the more chilling elements the film has to offer.

#1 Murder Clown (Terror on Tour)

Simultaneously hilarious and a mean bit unsettling, the costumes are the only memorable part of the slack Terror on Tour.

Read my review here.

Best Poster: Maniac

There are a lot of terrific horror posters in the 80's (because of the glut of slasher films, promotional materials really had to bring their A-game), but this poster is a perfect depiction of the brutal nastiness of the film while at the same time being a striking and unforgettable image.

Best Song: "Prom Night (Everything Is Alrite)" (Prom Night)

I love myself some cheesy 80's synthpop and this original song by Paul Zaza is so shrilly, gratingly cheesy that it elevates the film above being a tepid genre piece to being a solid hunk of cheese.


Best Score: Friday the 13th

Although it's a well-worn riff on the horror score tropes invented by Bernard Hermann and John Williams in Psycho and Jaws, composer Harry Manfredini provided one of the single most stunning musical cues of all time - the dissonant CH-CH-CH HA-HA-HA sound that would come to represent our boy Jason for decades to come.

Elite Champion Dialogue: "You castrated me. And that is not nice." (New Year's Evil)
Word Count: 3052

Census Bloodbath: 1981

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

I did it! I made it through my first year of Census Bloodbath! It only took me almost an entire year! Now we can get into the Golden Age, far enough away from the proto-slashers that To All a Goodnight and Silent Scream almost feel like a distant dream.

Now I know you're all excited for my all-encompassing closing thoughts on 1980, but due to their all-encompassy nature, it will take a bit for me to get it all down properly. In the meantime, please enjoy this preview for the next stage of Census Bloodbath! As I review each film, I will link to it from this page.

Also - notice the instant jump in the number of titles available. 1981 wasn't messing around - it's known as the prime year for the subgenre for a very good reason.

Census Bloodbath: 1981

Movies in bold are films I have already seen but will review again. Once I write each review, I will link to it from this page.

Scream/The Outing (January 1)

My Bloody Valentine (February 11)

Murder Syndrome/Follia omicida (February 24)

The Nosy One/Il ficcanaso (February 28)

Delusion/The House Where Death Lives (March)

The Demon (March 1)

The Funhouse (March 13)

Love Massacre (March 26)

Bloody Moon/Die Säge des Todes (March 27)

Eyes of a Stranger (March 27)
The Phantom Killer/Fen ku lou (April 2)

The Black Cat (April 4)

Night School/Terror Eyes (April 24)

Bloody Birthday (April 28)

Friday the 13th Part 2 (May 1)

Graduation Day (May 1)

The Burning (May 8)

The Fan (May 15)

Happy Birthday to Me (May 15)
Corpse Mania (June 3)

Final Exam (June 5)

Road Games (June 26)

Bloodrage (July 12)
Sannata (July 31)

Bloody Sex/Sexo Sangriento (August 1)

Student Bodies (August 7)

Deadly Blessing (August 14)
Evilspeak (August 22)

Hell Night (August 28)

Don't Go in the Woods... Alone! (September)

Lady Stay Dead (September 10)

Absurd/Anthropophagus 2 (October)

Just Before Dawn (October 14)
Strange Behavior/Dead Kids (October 16)

Cold-Blooded Murder/Yuan yin (October 23)

Nightmare (October 23)

Dark Night of the Scarecrow (October 24)

Tik Tik Tik (October 26)

Halloween II (October 30)

The Prowler (November 6)

A Day of Judgement (unknown)

Home Sweet Home (unknown)
Madhouse/And When She Was Bad (unknown)

The Queen of Black Magic (unknown)

Sansani: The Sensation (unknown)
Wolf/Srigala (unknown)

Word Count: 338

Census Bloodbath: The Italian Whack Job

Year: 1980
Director: Gianni Martucci
Cast: Gaetano Russo, Domitilla Cavazza, Roberto Posse
Run Time: 1 hour 12 minutes
MPAA Rating: N/A

This is it, folks. The official final film of my first year of the decade-long Census Bloodbath project. Hopefully it won't take me a decade at the rate I'm going (although I have skipped back and forth reviewing films from other years so it's looking closer to one-sixth done rather than one-tenth done, thank goodness.)

With my mental block about the back quarter of 1980 finally lifted, it should be a breeze getting amped up to cover 1981, the only issue being actually acquiring said films. But don't worry, for I have a plan. An... absolutely legal plan.

But none of what I'm saying is relevant to this particular final film, is it? Not much that can be said is relevant to this particular film, unfortunately, for you shall shortly see why it provided such a tremendous road block for me. What's that? Stop beating around the bush, you useless bastard? If you insist. Try not to be so rude next time.

You see, Trhauma is an Italian film. One that is so rare that, with my meager spending budget, it is not available with subtitles. Luckily it's barely over an hour long so at least I didn't have to sit through upwards of 120 minutes of a language I can only barely comprehend, but it's a tough hurdle to clear nevertheless. But, slasher films being slasher films, it's not like the script is particularly important. Especially in a country with such a keen eye for horror visuals, it was a treat to be forced to focus on the way the film is telling the story rather than the ins and outs of the story itself.

This is one of the only screenshots I could find without boobs. ...Visuals!

It's going to be an interesting puzzle getting through some of the normal elements of a review, but stick with me here. I'm the one who had to watch this thing, not you.

So, apparently a group of slightly-too-old Italian friends has gathered at a secluded house in the forest, probably because it has a pool. One of them, Lilly (Domitilla Cavazza), has a tendency to make loud speeches in Italian when literally anything happens. A frequent recipient of her pontifications is her poisonously douchey boyfriend Andrea (Gaetano Russo), who I would dearly like to hit with a hammer.

The house is probably owned by a rich man whose name I never caught. He is so cartoonishly, grotesquely overweight that it seems unlikely all these hot young thangs would want to pal around with him otherwise. I'm not being elitist here, it's just this is a group of people in which spontaneous nude photo shoots are seemingly commonplace.

Our model for the time being is Olga (Anna Maria Chiatante), who later happily tromps through the woods buck naked. Maybe it's just an Italian thing. Also in accompaniment are Carlo (Roberto Posse) and his wife, who has almost no scenes until an inexplicable lesbian blackmail sequence in the final 20 minutes. This is all pure gold.

All that's left is a killer and Trhauma's is a pretty good one, considering that he has zero backstory or motive or pertinence to the plot. Known only as The Being (Per Holgher), he is missing one eye and looks exactly like someone stretched Peter Dinklage, made him Italian, and kept him in a trash can for 90 days.

Go on. Tell me I'm wrong.

The story beats are unerringly familiar - The Killer pulls the branch back while girls swim, one of them dies early on after a sexy scene, Lilly is the only one who notices she's missing, she organizes a search party, the phone is dead. It's a classic cabin in the woods scenario, really. And it just goes to show that the Italians, what with all their tremendous success in the genre, were still capable of producing workaday cash-in slashers just like the rest of us.

I mean, it's still more literate in film language than your average American bottom-of-the-barrel work, but that's not a particularly difficult achievement. Babies could make a better slasher film than the dregs of the 1980's slasher movement and they haven't even been exposed to Godard yet! It sticks in the memory thanks to its Italian focus on ridiculous sensuality (the musical score - I kid you not - incorporates erotic moans into its instrumentation), but this is definitively not a good film.

The effects are generic (victims are smeared with blood so indiscriminately that the only conclusion I could come to was that they were "killed in the neck") and a hound attack is clearly just a man cuddling with a dog while growls are layered onto the soundtrack. And a good half of the shots have a small bit of fuzz stuck on the top of the camera frame.

Ow? I guess?

The finale is absolutely stultifying, sucking all the air out of an hour long film with female victims more wandering away from the killer instead of running. And The Being alternates between staggering around like a zombie or teleporting whenever he's offscreen. He's less consistent than a Ryan Murphy character.

But for all the folly of Trhauma, it still has some terrifically solid visuals to lean on. There's a lot of close-up focus on eyes, which certainly isn't accidental considering the killer's cyclopean infliction or the voyeuristic use of the camera. And for once a slasher director knows how to do something with blacks other than drown the frame in them.

Trhauma's shadows are immaculately composed, a quality it has over even my beloved Friday the 13th. And - oh my god, you guys, this is what I live for - one of the deaths is awe-strikingly Italian. A secretary is strangled to death.

Does that not sound mind-blowing? Let me add some layers.

1) The killer has to punch through a car window to get to her.
2) Her boss is feet away from her and can't hear her over the rattling of a lock he's trying to open.
3) She was smoking when it happened, so when she falls back to her seat, smoke trails out of her dead mouth.

Glorious. So, all in all, Trhauma was not an egregious waste of an hour of my life. I wouldn't jump at the chance to watch it again, but then again I wouldn't say no to a midnight screening with a rowdy crowd. ...And subtitles. Definitely subtitles. See you guys soon for my wrap-up of the entire year! I'm so excited!

Killer: The Being (Per Holgher)
Final Girl: Lilly (Domitilla Cavazza)
Best Kill: The Secretary is strangled while smoking and smoke rises from her corpse.
Sign of the Times: I can't really speak for the 80's in Italy, but in terms of the genre, this film depicts how far the mighty gialli of the 70's had descended. A slasher this ramshackle would never have been tolerated in Bava's heyday.
Scariest Moment: Andrea almost rapes Lilly in their bedroom.
Weirdest Moment: The killer is building a Lego house in his secret lair.

I'm trying to come up with a great Ed Sheeran joke here, but I can't. I guess I'm not in the class A team.

Champion Dialogue: "..."
Body Count: 8; including one that is implied immediately after the film's end but not including the dog.

1. Some Dude is decapitated with a scythe.
2. Olga is killed in the neck.
3. Secretary is strangled through a car window.
4. Grotesquely Fat Man is probably killed offscreen.
5. Photographer is slashed with a blade.
6. Carlo is slashed with a blade.
7. Secret Lesbian is strangled to death.
8. Lilly is slashed offscreen after the ending. 

TL;DR: Trhauma is better than its American counterparts, but that's not saying much.
Rating: 4/10
Word Count: 1309

Census Bloodbath: Dances With Ghosts

Year: 1980

Director: Peter F. Buffa

Cast: Julie Amato, Victor Mohica, Henry Bal

Run Time: 1 hour 32 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

Guys, I'm so excited! I only have one 1980 film left after this! I mean, it's all in Italian with no subtitles but still! 1980 is so close to being done. It's been quite a ride just to get this far and the slasher genre will only grow more twisted and gnarly as the decade goes on. Thank you for sticking with me this far! Census Bloodbath is one of my favorite projects that I've done, it's been a lot of fun sitting through these crappy-ass movies for both personal enlightenment and for the power and insight to recommend some hidden gems once I reach the end.

One of these lower tier hidden gems is the topic of today's review, The Ghost Dance. It's no masterpiece and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody but the most hardcore slasher fans (not hardcore as in gorehound, hardcore as in "I can sit through hours of murky cinematography because that's how much I love this genre."), but it's certainly a unique supernatural entry a couple years before this kind of stuff was in vogue.

Strike a pose.

The Ghost Dance follows anthropology professor Kay Foster (Julie Amato) as she attempts to deal with the consequences of her dig at a Native American reservation. On the one side, she fights protests from the locals and her whitewashed boyfriend Tom Eagle (Victor Mohica, who had a small part in the same year's Don't Answer the Phone). On the other, the body she recently unearthed is that of murder cult leader Nahala, who possesses the body of local medicine man Aranjo (Henry Bal) to resume his reign of terror over the land.

This being a 1980 slasher film, the rules of the game were still falling into place, so there isn't a lot of Expendable Meat lying around that exists for the sole purpose of being offed in unusual ways. Fortunately there are still plenty of characters to toss at our Native American warrior spirit, they just generally have more narrative thrust than your typical slasher victims. Not that this is a complaint, I suppose. It just muddies up my structure a bit.

First we have Paul (James Andronica), one of Kay's coworkers and a very helpful source of information about the history of Nahala and his crimes. Then there's Ocacio (Frank Salsedo), a reclusive old man who is believed to have mystical powers. And finally there's Carol (Patricia Albrecht), Kay's secretary, and Rick (J. Christopher Senter), Carol's exotic photographer lover, two of the most expendable cast members who get the most typical (and enjoyable) slasher scene of all - Bang in an old car, die one by one in a museum.

Classic Nahala.

So Kay begins to have visions of Nahala that slowly drive her mad as she and Paul desperately try to unearth the ghost's motives and Tom just kinda hangs out in the background. For the first two acts, he's offscreen for the bulk of the scenes but feels everpresent because Kay literally won't shut up about him. It's always "Oh, I just got off the phone with Tom" or "Oh, Tom is gonna pick me up" or "Oh, I need to wait for Tom to show up before I investigate." We need a spinoff about Tom. Why is he always late? Where is he? What is he doing there? Who is he wearing?

I say this because unfortunately Kay is an aggressively bland protagonist, despite Julie Amato's above average performance, somehow grounding a casual realism in a character who actually has to speak the words "I've never been so frightened" aloud. Readers at home, say that sentence out loud. Now ignore the people looking at you like you just grew horns and focus on how stilted it sounds. Trust me, swallowing that line is a massive accomplishment.

The mythical Tom in his natural habitat.

Aside from Julie there are few good things about The Ghost Dance, although the parts that are good are startlingly solid and there's enough elements that are intriguing merely for their presence in the subgenre that the film just barely manages to stay afloat.

First things first, I'm the realest.

Second things first, this film does some tremendously interesting things with Native American representation. I mean, it's still a film about a white woman being chased by a tribal warrior possessing the body of a medicine man, but it is surprisingly keen on teaching the viewer about Native American mythology even when it has nothing to do with the plot at hand. This is a flaw cinematically, but a real plus in a thoroughly whitewashed genre. And I've never seen a film with a higher ratio of truly Native American actors. The fact that the film plays it straight and never descends into camp makes it a less entertaining watch, but treats the culture with the seriousness it deserves.

Man, the more I think about it, the more the film's strengths seem like weaknesses.

The one inarguably good scene in the entire film is the Final Girl sequence, the pivotal scene which can make or break a slasher movie. Although it takes place long before the film's natural ending, it is deliciously tense and contains what I can unambiguously refer to as imagery, when possessed Aranjo stands before a display of birds of prey and the wings appear to spread from his back. It's a terrific scene and most of the points this film got from me are predicated entirely on that one section.

That and her glorious 80's hair.

And luckily the kills are halfway decent, just bloody enough to be worth the effort but not so involved as to expose the flick's feeble budget. Unluckily, the film crawls along at a snail's pace after a brief barrage of nasty kills in the opening half hour. And with that we move into my favorite part of reviewing any slasher film - the bad.

This film is intriguing, but man oh man is it just full of terrible decisions on every level. Film tip: Nighttime shots aren't moody if the entire frame is black. That's not a mood. That's just the void. There are no emotions in the void. Fun Fact: Cinematographer Fred Murphy would later shoot Freddy vs. Jason. Make of that what you will.

Like I already said, the use of Native American mythology doesn't go anywhere, but perhaps even more damaging is the fact that in not a single scene does Dr. Foster use her knowledge of anthropology to help her out in any capacity. She's just your typical hapless horror victim who happens to teach a class relevant to her tormentors but handily forgets that any time Nahala shows up. She's like Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates if Adam Sandler was played by an angry tribal priest (I would watch that movie).

The film's attempts at backstory and universe-building fall flat (a black cat that the camera places heavy importance on only serves as an introduction to a shower scene, Tom's half-remembered backstory is a truckload of nonsense) and the mummified corpse looks oddly like Tommy Wiseau on a hot day.

So maybe I should backtrack a bit. I don't recommend this movie to anybody. But if you're forced at gunpoint to pick a random slasher from 1980 to watch to completion, The Ghost Dance is at least palatable rather than actively rancid.

Killer: Nahala/Aranjo (Henry Bal)

Final Girl: Dr. Kay Foster (Julie Amato)

Best Kill: My favorite is probably the abrupt dog mauling that occurs almost instantly after another kill, catching both myself and Lena's poor friend off guard.

Sign of the Times: Despite being a professed expert in the field, Dr. Foster still resolutely calls the Native Americans "Indians."

Scariest Moment: The final chase in the museum still packs a punch.

Weirdest Moment: Ocacio attempts to banish the spirit by hissing at it.

Champion Dialogue: "She will take your life and put it in the basket on her back."

Body Count: 9; including the human vessel used by the killer.

1. Some Dude is bitten by a snake.
2. Lena has her throat slit.
3. Lena's friend is mauled by a dog.
4. Carol is impaled on a spear.
5. Rick is stabbed in the abdomen with glass.
6. Paul has a knife thrown into his back.
7. Ocacio is stabbed in the gut.
8. Aranjo burns to death.
9. Tom is stabbed with a scalpel offscreen. 

TL;DR: The Ghost Dance is a murky slasher film but has some points of genre interest.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1439

The City Of Love

Year: 2011

Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard
Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

Sergio and I have a sort of deal worked out. Whenever I force him to watch one of my idiosyncratic movies (most recently, the superbly deranged American Gothic) he gets to pick one of his. Call it cinematic karma. It's also a great way for me to catch up on films that I missed that I never might have seen otherwise. This Fourth of July's pick was Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.

Now I'll admit this film isn't catering to my tastes but Sergio, ironically being a better film student than Yours Truly despite studying Econ, does know how to pick 'em. Only the second Woody Allen film I've seen (See? I'm a terrible film student), Midnight in Paris does an excellent job of creating a mood of lush romanticism even if it isn't equally good at anything else it does.

It's hard not to make Paris look stunning. You could literally just point your camera at a trash can for 40 minutes.

Opening with a solid three minutes (About 3% of the total run time) of Parisian scenery, the film exposes its loyalties at the outset. Midnight in Paris is first and foremost a love letter to Paris, France, only reluctantly operating as a narrative out of a sense of duty, being a 90 minute feature film and all.

It tells the tale of one Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), a successful Hollywood screenwriter who is visiting Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her bourgie parents. He falls in love with the city and wants to move to Paris while he works on his novel about a man who owns a nostalgia shop (a wafer-thin analogue for himself, a self-professed adorer of Paris in the 1920's).

Inez and her parents object, largely because they view Paris as a tourist destination where one can shop and lord their pseudo-intellectualism over one another, as embodied in the outrageously smarmy Paul (Michael Sheen), a friend who runs into them during their stay and acts as a sort of tour guide / permanent douche installation.

An unfulfilled Gil goes out walking one night and discovers an old fashioned car that comes by every night at midnight, transporting him to the city's heyday in the 1920's where he can cavort with such grand historical figures as F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston - a strange choice but he does a good job of it), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll -all glowering menace), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates - terrific, but hardly reaching), and a rhinocerous-obsessed Salvador Dalí (Adrien Brody - who absolutely delivers in what hardly even amounts to a cameo).

I know it's authentic, but is that hair really necessary?

Every night, Gil returns to the Roaring Twenties as he grows increasingly detached from the shrewish Inez, who is such a one-note harpy that it's ridiculously difficult to believe that their relationship could have even sustained itself this long. Don't shoot the messenger, blame the screenwriter. He begins to fall in love with a girlfriend of Picasso's, Adriana (Marion Cotillard) whom he meets when delivering his book to Gertrude Stein to be proofread.

Thus begins a cross-dimensional love triangle with the singular theme that, no matter where or when you are, it's easy to become fixated on the past and romanticize bygone eras out of proportion of their actual merits. This is certainly a valid theme, especially when applied to this narrative structure, but the meandering plot supports no structure but the creation of mood.

Now, a solid mood is a great thing for a film to have, but without much more to back it up, Midnight in Paris won't be ending up on my DVD shelf anytime soon. It's a tremendous accomplishment, but one that doesn't resonate with me personally as much as it would with others. Myself, I prefer a film to provoke more precise responses in the audience rather than a general romantic blanket, as visually represented by the copious yellow filtering thrown over the entire project - a quick peek through my Instagram indicates that the cinematographer was most likely using "Kelvin."

This is the kind of in-depth cinematic insight that keeps you coming back for more.

A brief glimmer of conflict flashes across the screen at the one hour mark, but flits away as quickly as it appears. Because this film isn't about conflict. It's about love. Love for a person, love for a city, love for a bygone age. And in this respect it is tremendously successful.

It is my personal opinion that the screenplay is a tad self-indulgent and messy (Including an excerpt from Gil's book that is supposed to impress us - always a risky move for a screenwriter, trying to come up with something profound and literary. Because Woody Allen is Woody Allen he thinks he can do whatever he wants. It falls short. Turns out, writing books is hard.) and falls apart a little when you stop to think about why Gil's car takes him 90 years in the past, but Adriana's only takes her 30, or how Gil professes to come from the 2000th millenium.

But those are all cruel nitpicks of a film that, overall, isn't about any of those things. It's not about the mechanics of the time travel or the intricacies of the story. It just wants to present gorgeous Paris in all its splendor over as many eras as it can, and at that it is an unparalleled work in this decade.

TL;DR: Midnight in Paris is a solid mood piece and an endearing love letter to Paris.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 947

Came, Saw, Conquered

Year: 2004

Director: James Wan
Cast: Cary Elwes, Leigh Whannell, Danny Glover
Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

It's a bit uncouth in the film criticism community to share personal stories along with film reviews, but I've never been particularly couth to begin with, and the story of how I came to Saw is a very important part of my development as a horror fan.

You see, I have long denounced the Saw franchise for moral depravity and pointless gore, parroting an opinion I received in abundance during my formative years, during which there was a new Saw movie dropped on the world's stoop every year like a grisly present from a deranged cat. I learned from 22 Jump Street that there is a principle called "embedding" in which your brain sticks with the first idea it is given about a subject (see, movies are good for something), and that's exactly what I've been doing with this franchise.

Every criticism I leveled against the franchise and genre (moral bankruptcy, outrageous gore, trashy sensibilities) has been leveled against my own beloved genre, the slashers. The hypocrisy was getting so strong Courtney Love could have used it as a nightcap. And I was saying all this about something I'd never even seen and thus inadequately understood. You could say I was the One Million Moms of torture porn. Except actually successful.

But recently I decided to make an effort to turn this "blogging" thing into something more resembling a career. And my obstinate refusal to view the Saw franchise was inhibiting my path to becoming a successful analyzer of the genre for an utterly stupid reason. So no, I'm not throwing my morals away. I'm just realizing how misinformed they were. Over the next couple of weeks I will be visiting the Saw movies for the very first time, finally able to mock them for their real flaws instead of their perceived ones.

It's not like me changing my mind will actually alter the quality of these films, but nevertheless this is what my TV screen will look like for the foreseeable future and - who knows - maybe some surprises are in store.

As (flippin' A) pretty much everybody in the charted landmasses knows by now, the first Saw is actually really good and surprisingly un-gory, at least relative to its reputation. Except for the scene, the film plays more like a mystery thriller than an all access pass to Human Body: The Inside Story.

And on the relatively miniscule budget (about $1.2 million as compared to the sequels' mammoth budgets ranging between $4 million and a heart-stopping - for horror at least - $17 million), it would have been difficult for the green filmmakers to push it any further than they already had, especially with some of the well-known talent they had signed onto the project.

It all starts with a bathroom. Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) and Adam (Leigh Whannell, the film's writer) wake up in a dingy tiled space, chained to pipes on opposite sides of the room with a corpse lying between them leaking enough blood to feed a low-income family of vampires for a week.

How uncharitable.

Like Cube before it and Nine Dead (among dozens of other clones) after it, Saw's plot hinges on victims with hidden pasts trying desperately to find connections, discover why they're here and who put them there, as well as hide the dirty truths that inevitably play important roles in their predicaments. It's a plot style that has received an enormous workout in the decade following 2004, but Saw's inventive visual style and intricate plotting (to a point) absolutely hold up in a big way.

It turns out that the two men were brought here by the notorious Jigsaw killer (Tobin Bell), a deranged madman who puts his victims - all people he feels are either immoral or not appreciating their lives enough - in elaborate traps forcing them to either go through terrible mutilation and learn a new respect for life or die in a terribly gruesome manner.

If you're one of the two people (it used to be three before this week) who hasn't seen this movie, I'll let the flashbacks throughout the film clue you in on why these two particular men are here (Of course there's copious flashbacks. This film couldn't survive as a one room drama, the flaws in the writing and dialogue would shine too strongly if they weren't diluted across different places and times.).

Although many one-room dramas could be improved with the implementation of a reverse bear trap,

Now it's not perfect. Saw definitely has its fair share of flaws, as tends to happen with lower budget indie films. Or, you know, anything made by humans. Some of the props are a little cheap-looking, especially the chains that bind our heroes. The locations tend to be a little spare, although their dinginess is tied into the tone of the film so it's not necessarily damaging to the film.

What is damaging, and the reason Saw rings a little hollow at times, is the dialogue and the acting. Side character Detective Tapp (Danny Glover) gets a sense of the hamminess present and has fun chewing out lines like "We'll strike under the cover of darkness," but Cary Elwes gets swept away in the current of his arch dialogue and swiftly drowns.

When his accent isn't busy popping its head out like a timid groundhog, he's spitting out lines like one would spit out teeth - with a vague sense of nausea and a hint of pure terror, unable and unwilling to comprehend what's going on. And I'm not speaking about the character. That would actually be a great choice. I'm speaking of Elwes specifically. He seems faintly mystified by this whole "acting" business, perhaps unmoored by the absence of Robin Wright.

When you're out-acted by the man who wrote the film, there's a serious problem. When you're out-acted by not just one but several corpses, perhaps it's time to call it a night.

Well, at least he was trying.

Luckily, Saw has just as many things go right. The visual style is impeccable, especially considering that director James Wan wasn't the supernova presence he is today. With only one feature under his belt, 2000's Stygian, he still had a lot to prove.

The camera work, especially around Adam's youthful and unpredictable character (Dr. Gordon is shot with much more long, careful takes, mirroring his character) is vivid and brisk. Compounded with rapid-fire MTV style editing, it shakes you out of your seat with its dynamic electricity. Especially memorable is series of fast motion scenes in the middle of the film that detail Jigsaw's handiwork in other scenarios.

And though the dialogue is off, the plot itself is dense and engaging with every new piece of information clicking into the old. Perhaps one of the best indications of this style is that every single item in the bathroom proves useful to some degree or another, whether it be the obvious items like the corpse's handgun and cell phone, or the other artifacts discovered among the assorted rubble. It's rather like a game of Myst, a lot of the fun comes from discovering how all the disparate pieces fit together. (Like, say, pieces of a... Jigsaw. BOOM! Metaphor'd!)

Sure, a third act reveal is pretty dumb if you decide to pull at threads, but when you're in the moment everything is gold. And that puppet is hella creepy.

You'd think tricycles wouldn't be scary. You'd be wrong.

So that's that! My very first Saw movie. Hold the applause. All in all, I really enjoyed it and I'm glad to be proven wrong, at least by this installment in what was soon to be a booming franchise. Please don't be too mean to me for taking so darn-tootin' long to do it. I'm here now and that's all that matters. And now I have six more films to complete my education in one of the most important horror series of the past decade.

I hope you'll stick around longer than most of Jigsaw's victims tend to.

TL;DR: Saw suffers from some dialogue and performance issues but is nevertheless a thrilling puzzle.

Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 1376
Reviews In This Series
Saw (Wan, 2004)
Saw II (Bousman, 2005)
Saw III (Bousman, 2006)
Saw IV (Bousman, 2007)
Saw V (Hackl, 2008)
Saw VI (Greutert, 2009)
Saw: The Final Chapter (Greutert, 2010)