Year: 1981 Director: Joseph Zito Cast: Ian Scott, James Johnson, Judith-Marie Bergan Run Time: 1 hour 18 minutes
Plot:Bloodrage follows Richard (Ian Scott), a young man who moves to New York City to follow his dream of murdering sex workers. On his tail is renegade cop Johnny Ryan (James Johnson), the boyfriend of Richard's first victim, Bev (Judith-Marie Bergan).
Analysis: Bloodrage is one of those early '80s slashers that had a circuitous enough route to the screen that it was actually completed in 1979, though it didn't arrive at the Cannes market until 1980, in theaters anywhere until 1981, and on video in the U.S. until 1983. So while this is technically a 1980s slasher, it comes from that pre-Friday the 13th period where we were still figuring out what the hell the genre was going to be.
At the time, one of the proposed answers to that question was "a sleazy post-grindhouse hangover." This is the sentiment that gave us movies like Maniac and Don't Answer the Phone. Not my favorite slasher subgenre. But at least Bloodrage provides an additional point of interest in that it was directed by Joseph Zito, who went on to helm the iconic slashers The Prowler and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.
Unfortunately, a more inexperienced Zito without makeup maestro Tom Savini giving him something good to shoot makes for a real slog. Bloodrage evokes the crushing boredom of the third act of The Prowler rather than any of the superb gore-thriller elements of its first act or the sublime slasher filmmaking of The Final Chapter.
That said, there is at least one glimmer here. The opening sequence in Indiana is very special, showing us a regular degular day in Bev's life that is interrupted by her sudden, brutal death when Richard pushes her through a window and her neck is cut open on the broken glass (in the film's only proper gore moment). What follows is a tightly wound thriller sequence where Richard tries to clean up and hide her body before he's discovered by Johnny. The whole introduction is genuinely shocking and cleanly sets up all three characters, putting you in their heads for better or for worse.
Unfortunately, not a single scene that follows comes remotely close to hitting those heights (except maybe the final 15 seconds, which see Richard's reign of terror end in a charmingly perfunctory manner). Once Richard moves to the city, the movie gently oscillates between sequences that are tedious, irritating, or both. He's also a dismayingly passive character, just resentfully drifting through scenes like he'd really rather be anywhere else. Dude, get in line!
At least the movie effectively delivers its thesis that New York City is a grimy cesspit. Plus, the local color that spills around Richard at least offers some interesting texture (particularly the old lady in curlers who calmly stares out her window, watching as he peeps on the sex worker across the street).
And the very best thing that I can say is that the movie is slightly less misogynistic than it could have been. While it's rough to sit through Richard monotonously monologuing while he stalks and brutalizes women, his victims aren't nameless sheep lined up for him to slaughter. The women he targets are treated with the smallest glimmer of respect by the screenplay. They all have names, lives, and personalities, which makes the horror they go through feel sharper in a way that is admittedly effective.
But "it could have been sleazier" is hardly a ringing endorsement. Bloodrage is an ineptly made motion picture, for the most part. Consider the looooooong elevator scene, where Zito can't find a place to put lights, so he doesn't bother, just slathering the frame in impenetrable shadows. This is compounded by his inability to properly photograph people of color, so the two Black characters in the scene just look like floating hats.
The filmmakers also clearly failed to shoot the entire script, because a vital scene (Richard being recognized by Johnny on the street, which kicks off a brawl) takes place entirely offscreen. Fun!
Killer: Richard (Ian Scott)
Final Girl: Nancy (Betsy Ranlow)
Best Kill: The opening kill - Bev falling through the window - is by far the best, both in terms of gore and execution.
Sign of the Times: Bev writes down all her sex appointments in this cute little flipbook.
Scariest Moment: A long sequence shows Richard working at a Yoo-hoo factory and really gets across the grinding monotony involved in that job.
Weirdest Moment: Richard paints his door, carefully painting around the knob before manically spreading paint all over the knob itself.
Champion Dialogue: “You don't have anything better to do with your time, like jerk off or something?"
Body Count: 6
Bev is pushed through a window, and the glass cuts her neck open.
Man is stabbed by a mugger.
Lucy is strangled with a telephone cord.
Ruby the Dog has her neck snapped and is thrown out the window.
Candice is choked out with an elbow.
Richard is thrown out a window.
TL;DR: Bloodrage could be more misogynistic than it is, but it's a sleazy chore that is tedious and annoying.
Cast: Vicky Dawson, Christopher Goutman, Lawrence Tierney
Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes
MPAA Rating: UR
I'm graduating in May. This is the first week of my final semester of college. Actually, this is my final semester of any school ever. In just five short months, I'll have to start pretending to be an adult as I face the vast unknowable expanse that is my future. Sometimes real life is more terrifying than the movies. At any rate, I've decided to celebrate the end of my educational odyssey by bringing back a personal favorite feature that has proven to be an educational odyssey in and of itself. It's time to return to Back to Skull, where we will be celebrating a new college-themed slasher every day this week!
First up on the chopping block is The Prowler, which isn't quite as eminently college-sounding as last year's entries like Cornell Sorority Babes in Explosion at the Bra Factory, but nevertheless revolves around a local college's denizens on the eve of their graduation as they prepare to begin their lives.
Or not.
The Prowler has a reputation for being of relatively high quality for the slasher genre, and its opening doesn't do much to refute that claim. We see some black and white news footage of the Queen Mary bringing GI's home from World War II, a lovely looking letter with a voiceover about how a girl named Rosemary (Joy Glaccum) just can't keep waiting any longer for her soldier beau, and her subsequent murder at the graduation dance by a man in army fatigues as she attempts to get it on with smug prick "My Dad Is Richer Than Your Dad" Roy (Timothy Wahrer). This prologue, set in 1945, is competently shot, sets the era in a satisfying and historically accurate manner, and features costumes that actually attempt to mimic the period instead of just hide the blown-out hair and perms underneath frilly hats.
The plot then skips to graduation day at that same nameless New Jersey college in 1980. Pam MacDonald (Vicky Dawson) has a problem. Her boyfriend, Deputy Mark London (Christopher Goutman) - who looks like Sandy Frink from Romy and Michele after his face transplant surgery - has to work the night of the dance because the Sheriff (Farley Granger) is spending the night out of town on his annual fishing trip. Oh, also a murderer dressed in WWII fatigues is murdering her friends, but she's a little slow on the uptake on that one.
Who can blame her? It's hard enough to keep track of all your friends' throats without dealing with boy drama.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's meet our Meat before they're slaughtered, shall we? Pam's friends who shall soon be graduating from this mortal coil include Sherry (Lisa Dunsheath), her BFF in the world and an unfortunate sufferer of Mare Winningham In Miracle Mile Hair Disease; Carl (David Sederholm), Sherry's boyfriend, a man so horny that he's willing to take off his 18,000-piece tuxedo just for a little shower play before the dance; and Lisa (Cindy Weintraub), the kind of 80's slasher girl who will flash the paraplegic man across the street for funsies.
As the night wears on, dates are snatched, drinks are drunk, and epidermises are punctured. This forms first half of the film, in which it functions as a typically generic slasher flick. There's music that sounds like a kettle boiling, an allergic-to-doors victim who runs up the stairs, couples who sneak away from a building on lockdown to bang, and so on. At least it's easy enough to keep their names apart.
It is this portion of the film from which The Prowler derives its magic. Director Joe Zito and gore maestro Tom Savini (who would later collaborate on Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter) work in tandem to create some of the tensest, most finely crafted slasher work to date. Zito handles his lighting with great care, using cast shadows and dark corners to great effect.
Although maybe we could have used a little more shadow over here to highlight those Frinky cheekbones in a non-offputting way.
Likewise, he utilizes swift cross-cutting to marvelous ends, at one point switching between two separate scenes of people wandering off into the darkness, actually manufacturing tension from one of the most hoary tropes of the genre. We all know from experience that whoever wanders off from the party will inevitably come a cropper in an amusing way. But by showing us two similar scenes simultaneously, it raises doubts as to where the killer actually is. When he finally strikes, it surprises the audience in a meaningful way through subverting the trope and their expectations.
There are several moments like this that actually inspire emotions in the same family as fear, which is startlingly uncommon for the parsimonious slasher subgenre. Combined with Savini's excellent gore (he believes it to be the best work in his career and I'm not inclined to disagree with him), in which blood oozes like a broken dam, The Prowler is actually quite affecting.
In fact, the gore is so powerfully realistic and brutal (Savini keeps the first kill light to get the audience complacent, then hits them with a set of marvelous, oozing, grinding prosthetics with multiple moving parts that challenge everything you've ever seen in the practical effects game*) that it almost feels a little too raw. The kills are challengingly misogynistic when women are on the receiving end, which occurs more often than not. Especially in moments like Lisa being kicked in the face and a topless Sherry being speared in the shower, the brutality is truly overwhelming.
In a way, this is a good thing. Horror films are actually supposed to be, you know, horrifying. But the kills cross the line too far into reality for the lighter thrill ride tone of the slasher genre to truly function properly.
*Carl's death is especially detailed, involving his eyes rolling back into his head and the knife penetrating his skull pulsing beneath the skin. It's an exquisite piece of work that practically belongs in an art gallery.
At least the Prowler brings flowers to honor his victim's deaths. It's kind of sweet, really. You don't see Jason Voorhees holding no wakes.
Unfortunately all of this hesitantly good, legitimately tense buildup is chucked to the ground by the middle of the second act, in which the film becomes a desultory mystery about Rosemary's father Major Chatham (Lawrence Tierney) and an assembly line of wan potential suspects. The identity of the killer is both predictable and nonsensical, revealed with nonchalant regard and entirely divorced from the clues we have been forced to watch Pam and Mark dutifully collect over the previous half hour.
During this time, we have watched Mark call his boss at his lakeside cabin, only to be tricked by a lazy office worker who keeps him on the line while he plays solitaire, just to mess with him. This is in real time, mind you, and the audience gets the special privilege of sitting through two full minutes of this claptrap. A character literally taps his pencil in boredom and I wish he'd at least have the decency to shove it into his own skull and save us the trouble of having to wait for the Prowler to show up again.
This dull section is marked by a sore lack of death, especially considering that many loose ends (including a couple that blatantly disregards slasher conduct by sneaking into the basement to bang) are never properly tied up. There's only two deaths in the final third of the film, and they are both perfunctory gunshot wounds. Apparently the filmmakers expended all their effort in the early going and were too bored to include scenes in the third act that aren't "Mark and Pam wander through a dark house blowing dust off of things."
Spending time with Pam is not the movie's strong suit, especially since Dawson's performance inevitably trails more toward "sleepy" than "scared," although I suppose running will do that to you. At least this gives us a chance to reflect on the film that came before and just how wonderful the Prowler's getup is, removing his face with green cloth to dehumanize him in a cleverly organic way, much in the vein of Michael Myers and other masked killers.
Evil lies in the faceless unknown. It also lies in the case of plastic army men in your toy chest, but don't tell Joe Zito.
The Prowler is one of the most decidedly uneven slasher movies that I've seen thus far, and Census Bloodbath might as well be called The Uneven Film National Championshp, so that should tell you something. But the first 45 minutes are some of the best slashcraft I've seen in a good long while, so as far as these things go, you could do a mite worse than this Savini-fueled bloody nightmare.
Killer: The Prowler (Peter Giuliano) [Sheriff George Fraser (Farley Granger)]
Final Girl: Pam MacDonald (Vicky Dawson)
Best Kill: Carl is stabbed through the top of the head and the knife emerges clean through his chin.
Sign of the Times: The band at the party can sing topical New Wave songs about wanting to see girls bleed and nobody bats an eyelash.
Scariest Moment: Pam has to run toward the Prowler in order to escape down a side hallway.
Weirdest Moment: That Final Shot [Carl's corpse reanimates itself in the shower and grabs Pam for no discernible reason.]
Champion Dialogue: "I don't want to swim. You're all I want."
Body Count: 8
Roy and
Rosemary are pitchforked together while they canoodle.
Carl is stabbed through the skull.
Sherry is pitchforked in the abdomen.
Lisa's throat is sliced.
Miss Allison is stabbed in the throat.
Otto is shot with a shotgun.
The Prowler has his head blown off with a shotgun.
TL;DR:The Prowler is stunted by an outrageously dull third act, but features Tom Savini at the top of his game and sidles up to achieving actual tension. Rating: 6/10 Word Count: 1688
Here we are at the end. The MPAA had just about had enough of Jason and his exploits and the parental dissent turned from a grumbling to a roar. Theaters began to close their doors to slasher films and the great splatter tentpole of the decade, Friday the 13th, made the announcement that this next film would be their last.
Of course we all know that's a crock of sh!t now, but it was a big deal, I'm telling you.
In a grand explosion of effort, the forces of slasherdom pulled together to produce the quintessential Crystal Lake film to say goodbye to the now beloved hockey masked antihero. Tom Savini returned, reportedly so he could kill his the monster of his creation. He hated the sequels and wanted to be there personally to oversee the death of Jason. Regardless, the presence of Savini and the filmmakers' desperate awareness that this was going to be their last chance to make a splash in the horror genre combined to form the most exploitative, goriest, and most fun entry yet.
Again, this obviously wasn't the end, but nobody knew this wouldn't the final film of the series. And in a way, it kind of is. After this, the sequels become considerably less airtight in regards to continuity (which is shocking for such a continuity anorexic franchise) and many consider the first four films to be the "real" essence of Friday the 13th.
So. The fourth and last of the core Friday films. Here we are at the end.
As represented by the 80's, in which it wasn't considered a movie if something didn't explode.
The film opens with a much more competent recap than the stock footage unceremoniously thrust into the beginnings of the previous two entries. With clips from the previous three films set to Paul's campfire story from Part 2, this sort of "previously on Friday the 13th" segment is a relative masterpiece of coherence simply by not being immensely tedious (Especially at a marathon where you're forced to watch the films back to back).
This film opens the morning after the climactic events of Part 3 (which took place a day after the climactic events of Part 2, meaning this film takes place on Sunday the 15th, which I think is worth noting) as Jason is carted into the local morgue. Seeing as he's got a huge axe wound in his head, this would be a reasonable mistake.
Slimy autopsy technician Axel (Bruce Mahler) flirts with sexy Nurse Rose (Lisa Freeman) and thus begins a verbal ballet of epic proportions transcribed in dutiful detail in the Champion Dialogue section. Despite her initial objections, Nurse Rose hops on Axel the first chance she gets - when he's watching a steamy aerobics video next to the covered corpse of one Mr. Voorhees.
The combination of inexplicably porny workout videos and the imminent threat of premarital sex prove too much for the poor corpse and Jason leaps back to life, performing a brief showcase of Tom Savini's work as he hacks Axel's neck with a surgical saw and twists his head around before stabbing Nurse Rose with a scalpel.
That Jason. What a pain in the neck!
With those two out of the way, he makes his merry way back home to the shores of Camp Crystal Lake which by this point is more like a sea considering the amount of property that lies upon it. This time we arrive at the Jarvis household, a secluded woodland hideaway inhabited by Mrs. Jarvis (Joan Freeman), a doting mother; her teenage daughter Trish (Kimberly Beck); and her young son Tommy (Corey Feldman), who is an expert maskmaker, a skilled handyman, and also is Corey Feldman.
See?
Obviously that's not enough people for Jason's fourth and final outing, but there's a huge tray of Meat being delivered to the house next door. Although the film doesn't bother to name them until about half an hour in, I (being extraordinarily committed to y'all) have compiled them here.
There's Paul (Alan Hayes) and Sam (Judie Aronson), the requisite couple who seem even less necessary than usual because they're one of the few pairs of teens who don't actually bone (this film is notorious for containing the most nudity in a film franchise notorious for gratuitous nudity); Sara (Barbara Howard), Sam's best friend and Grade A virgin who'd be a shoo-in for Final Girl if it weren't for those pesky Jarvises; Doug (Peter Barton, who got to play opposite Linda Blair in the future Census Bloodbath entry Hell Night), the object of Sara's affections who has no objections to being such; Ted (Lawrence Monoson), the prankster and they couldn't even try to hide the fact that he's transparently named after the prankster from Part 2 (Whose name is stolen from Ned in the original. It's all very incestuous.); and Jimmy (Crispin Glover, proving that it's impossible for this movie to get any more 80's), the lovable and lonely (read: horny) nerd.
So that's 3 Jarvises, 6 randy teens, and to top things off we get two sexy twins (Camilla and Carey More) and Rob Dyer (Erich Anderson), the brother of Sandra from Part 2 (about whom I remember nothing) who's on a Jason hunt in the woods.
Now that's a party!
Come party with us.. Forever and ever and ever...
Basically the teens get freaky, go skinny dipping (legs and boobs akimbo), and swap partners faster than a square dancer on crack.
Although the teens can be hard to get track of, they're bumped off at a pretty steady pace that makes things much easier as time goes on. Between the mercurial teen relationships, Crispin Glover's rock steady and immensely sweet performance as the bumbling Jimmy (his death is the most heartbreaking - and don't pipe up about spoilers, this is Friday the 13th), and the most vibrant and fun character moments in the entire franchise, this does seem rather like what would happen if John Hughes decided to write a slasher film (seeing as this one seems to have been swept under the rug).
Really I have nothing groundbreaking to say about these sections because for once the disparate elements work in perfect harmony. The teen drama is alternately cheesy and sweet and outrageously raunchy in the best possible way and meshes weirdly perfectly with the darker register of some beautifully realized gore sequences. Tom Savini really pulled out the stops here and ironically, his massive success in this movie perpetuated the studio churning out more Jason vehicles than ever (the next film would follow this one by less than a year).
You have to be a special kind of awful to really be able to enjoy this photo but it's enough to bring tears to one's eyes to watch a master at work.
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is the quintessential slasher movie. Teen partying. Future stars slumming it. Copious nudity (spread across two skinny dipping scenes, two shower scenes, a changing scene, various sex scenes, and we're just getting started). And plenty of Karo syrup, just for good measure (and to give a hearty middle finger to the MPAA).
Now the things that go into making it a great slasher don't necessarily make it a great movie, which by no means this is. But as a slasher connoisseur it's hard not to expect a certain level of outlandishly exploitative cheese. Slashers being what they were (namely, cheap ripoffs and quickie cash grabs) and the MPAA being what they were (terrible, deeply unhappy people), this is ultimately hard to come by (especially in the post-VHS Hell we now live in) so to find a movie that meets and exceeds expectations is a dream come true.
Allow me to linger on the death scenes for two more paragraphs, because these are what set the movie apart. Forget what I said about the characters, delightful though they are, because they clearly only exist so we can watch them be brutally murdered. Friday the 13th had that figured out by this point so they weren't even trying to give them any sort of depth beyond the basic archetypical characterizations already established within the confines of the franchise.
The creative deficit of Part 3 seems like a distant memory as we see a hitchhiker stabbed through the back of the throat while eating a banana, Paul gets a harpoon gun in the crotch, Jimmy gets a corkscrew in the hand and a machete in the face, one of the twins is thrown through a freaking window, and now this is just a laundry list but it's really just the best sort of gleefully gory mayhem. And Doug's death (his face is crushed against the shower wall) holds up tremendously well both as a shocking gore moment and as a tiny miracle of sound design.
Also an instant classic line. This movie's full of those.
The teens get inevitably whittled down as Trish and Tommy hole up in their home. Jason bursts through the window, but they fight back with the force of a thousand hurricanes. For you see, this is the first film where Jason really and truly dies. And boy does he die. Savini makes good on his promise to destroy his creation and the final sequence is just one long gore setpiece and magnum opus for the massively talented maestro of violence.
Oh, also Corey Feldman shaves his head so he can remind Jason of what he was like as a child or something and that doesn't make sense but it's still alright because everything about the scene is freaking awesome. I can only describe it in fanboy terms because this movie is impossible not to love if you're in any way a Jason enthusiast.
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter honestly would have been a great note to close on, but boy am I happy to carry on with the rest of this journey.
We'll follow Jason through Manhattan, into the bowels of Hell, and up into the vast reaches of Outer Space.
And Tommy Jarvis?
You ain't seen the last of him.
Killer: Jason Voorhees (Ted White)
Final Girl: Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman) feat. Trish Jarvis (Kimberly Beck)
Best Kill: Jason himself. He gets a hammer in the shoulder, a TV in the kisser, his hand is split in half, he gets a blade to the chest, and there's a sickening sequence of his face sliding down his own machete. Then he gets ruthlessly machete punched by Corey Feldman. What a way to go.
Sign of the Times: I have it on good authority (my notes) that Sara's shirt is very 80's. Unfortunately I remember exactly zero things about what it looked like. And this is the only picture I can find.
I'll just have to trust Past Me on that one.
Scariest Moment: I'm gonna stick with Doug's death on this one.
Weirdest Moment: THIS
Champion Dialogue: The entire exchange between Axel and Nurse Rose. Ranked in order from least to most hilarious:
4. "For you I always have a headache."
3. "You are the Super Bowl of self abuse."
2. "Axel, I'm not going to fake any more orgasms for you."
1. "Holy Jesus jumping Christmas shit!"
Body Count: 14; for once including Jason himself.
Axel gets a bone saw to the throat and his head twisted around.
Nurse Rose is scalpeled in the abdomen.
Hitchhiker gets a knife through the back of her neck while eating a banana.
Samantha is knifed through the torso while laying in a raft.
Paul is speared in the groin.
Terri gets a spear in the back.
Mrs. Jarvis is killed offscreen.
Jimmy gets a corkscrew in the hand and a meat cleaver in the face.
Tina is thrown out of a window.
Ted gets a knife in the back of his head through a movie screen.
Doug's head is crushed against the shower wall.
Sara gets an axe thrown through her chest.
Rob is stabbed in the throat with a garden harrow.
Jason Voorhees is macheted in the face, among other things.
TL;DR:Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is the most perfect iteration of what the Jason saga could be.
