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!
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
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!
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)
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
#3 Amy Witherspoon, Interface
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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
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
#4 The Killer, Haveli
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
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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
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
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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
#3 The Nixon Mask, Horror House on Highway Five
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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.
#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
#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.
#1 A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge
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)
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)
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
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
#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
#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
#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
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
Three Best Final Girls
#3 Amy Witherspoon, Interface
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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
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
#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
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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
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Being tied up and tortured can't have been fun for you, Melvin, but it sure was fun for me.
Best Location: Blood Tracks
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
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
#2 Mud, Night Caller
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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
#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
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
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
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
Elite Champion Dialogue: “What's the matter? You seem more pathetic than usual." Interface
Word Count: 2513
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