Census Bloodbath: Christmas Stalking

Year: 1984

Director: Edmund Purdom

Cast: Edmund Purdom, Alan Lake, Caroline Munro

Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Don't Open Till Christmas takes place in London during the lead-up to Christmas day. By night, a killer is stalking the streets murdering people who dress like Santa Claus. On the case are Inspector Harris (Edmund Purdom of Pieces) and Detective Sergeant Powell (Mark Jones), though they might just be shown up by amateur sleuth Kate (Belinda Mayne), whose father was one of the first victims, and her boyfriend Cliff (Gerry Sundquist of the same year's Blind Date). Also on the case is Daily News reporter Giles (Alan Lake), who keeps getting under the feet of the Scotland Yard professionals.

Analysis: Even in a darker period for the slasher, producers couldn't resist getting those slay bells jingling.  In 1984, we got two entries in the hallowed subgenre of Christmas slashers, and Don't Open Till Christmas is rightfully the far less prominent title, behind Silent Night, Deadly Night. The film is from the same producers that brought us Pieces, and while it has every inch of that movie's general incoherence, it doesn't carry the same spark of charm that makes it a bad-good classic par excellence.

The film is narratively compromised to an almost violent degree, presenting a whodunit that lacks both viable suspects and a real sense of investigation. Most of the important facts of the case are discovered by Kate in offscreen moments that she then describes later, which robs the proceedings of any sense of fun. It doesn't fare much better as a formula slasher, failing to imbue any of the vast slate of victims with any sort of personality, batting away its Final Girl before the climactic third act chase scene, and making the fate of the killer frustratingly opaque rather than ambiguous in a "final shot of Halloween" kind of way. This may be a result of the fact that the movie changed hands between three different directors during production, and while I understand that, they could have just... not released the movie.

Fortunately, while the kills are disjointed, some of them do pack enough of a classic slasher punch to at least be entertaining to witness, and they come at a brisk enough frequency that the taste of the poorly lit and executed ones is washed out of your mouth almost immediately. It would take a person with more moral purity than I to complain about the fact that this movie contains an eyeball sliding out of its socket, a Rube Goldberg-esque car electrocution, a spear through the mouth, and a Santa getting his dick slashed off while he uses a urinal.

There are also some elements that are genuinely good, though those are much fewer and farther between. First off, the score incoporates a minor key rendition of "Jingle Bells" that works wonders to boost the holiday spirit of the story. There is also a general sense that the creators of the film saw the German krimi movies and decided they could make a Scotland Yard murder mystery even more hyperbolically British than those. The film also doesn't want for good locations (including a scene set in the basement of the Tower of London), though it does want for the lighting necessary to really make those locations pop and drive the atmosphere in a real way. Frankly, in general it's a piss ugly movie. If every frame of a film is meant to be a painting, the shots here look like they accidentally sat on a painting.

Don't Open Till Christmas is not exactly a miserable experience to sit through, but I could point you to a half dozen Christmas slashers that are far more worth your time, and that's just off the top of my head.

Killer: Giles (Alan Lake)

Final Girl: Sherry Graham (Kelly Baker), randomly. Her lack of overall importance to the story is indicated by the fact that she is credited as "Experience Girl."

Best Kill: A Santa has his face cleaved in twain backstage at a show and is sent onstage from beneath a trapdoor in the middle of the performance.

Sign of the Times: After rubbing up against a woman wearing a Santa coat, Cliff is worried they'll be mistaken for a couple of "gays" and get arrested.

Scariest Moment: A man comes to Sherry's peep show and begins to talk about his weird relationship with his mother, at which point he is revealed not to be the killer.

Weirdest Moment: The performance that was so cruelly interrupted by the arrival of a dead body was being put on by consummate slasher vixen Caroline Munro of Maniac, The Last Horror Film, and Slaughter High.

Champion Dialogue: "I am welcome everywhere. I am a member of society."

Body Count: 13

1. Makeout Santa is stabbed in the chest.
2. Makeout Woman is stabbed in the stomach.
3. Daddy Santa is impaled through the back of the neck with a spear.
4. Cigarette Santa is garroted with wire and has his face burned.
5. Alley Santa is shot in the head.
6. Peep Show Santa is stabbed in the neck.
7. Drunk Santa is stabbed in the gut.
8. Carnival Santa is kicked to death with a shoe that has a knife in it.
9. Silly String Santa is cleavered in the face.
10. Urinal Santa has his dick slashed off.
11. Kate is stabbed in the gut.
12. Powell is electrocuted by his car.
13. Mom is pushed down the stairs.
14. Ian Harris is exploded by a rigged music box.

TL;DR: Don't Open Till Christmas is incoherent and stupid, but it's mildly entertaining nevertheless.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 938

Census Bloodbath: Don't Fear The Reaper

Year:
 1984

Director:
 Tim Ritter

Cast:
 Cathy O'Hanlon, Patrick Foster, Todd Nolf

Run Time:
 1 hour 15 minutes

Plot: Day of the Reaper alternates between two timelines: one where a group of young women in Sunnyvale, Florida are murdered by a mysterious assailant in a black face covering and an apron, and the other, thirteen months later, where the only survivor of that massacre must face off against the killer once again.

Analysis: Day of the Reaper feels like it was directed by a 16-year-old. Which is a real compliment, considering it was directed by a 15-year-old. That's right, Tim Ritter, flush with $1,000 earned from his job as a dishwasher, set out to shoot a slasher movie on super 8 with his friends. The fact that this exists and has any sort of distribution, however small, is a feat in and of itself. However, it's still a slasher movie directed by a 15-year-old. I was 15 once, and I'm sure you were too. While Ritter makes up in enthusiasm what he lacks in training, it's still not something one necessarily wants to sit through for a feature-length run time.

Of course it's shoddily made. That's what you sign up for when you sit down with Day of the Reaper. First and foremost, all the dialogue is delivered in staticky post-dubbed voiceover that only occasionally deigns to resemble the shapes the mouths onscreen are making, rendering it almost impossible to parse out what face each name belongs to. Also, there are over a dozen shots where you can clearly see the actors waiting for "action" to be called before springing into motion, and even in the ADR dialogue, they frequently stumble over and/or forget their lines.

At the very least, the kills are lovingly rendered in a cheap but generally effective way that many video slashers would be delivering in the coming years, even if the scenes that contain them are universally meandering and overlong.

Really, the true pleasure of experiencing Day of the Reaper, if there is indeed pleasure to be had, is watching a group of teenagers goof off and try to get away with making a movie. From the Rugrats-esque misunderstandings about how adult life works (everything about the character Don and his "real estate convention" is hilarious, as is the pearl necklace worn by one of the female characters) to the squeaky-voiced detective and doctor characters, there is a distinct charm to the proceedings that isn't present in shitty films made by talentless adults.

I wouldn't say I recommend this movie to anyone, but it does feel like something I would have a blast watching 10 years later if I had made it in high school, and some of that feeling does rub off vicariously. If you were a creative teen with a heart full of dreams that you had no idea how to carry out, this might also be the case for you. 

Killer: The Reaper (Todd Nolf)

Final Girl: Jennifer (Cathy O'Hanlon)

Best Kill: One of the girls (whose name I think is Cheryl, though that's one of the ones I'm shakier on) has her head sawed off, and it's clear the blood is being squirted out of the saw blade, which is very cute.

Sign of the Times: One of the girls is wearing a denim skirt and a pink Lacoste polo with the collar popped.

Scariest Moment: There's a totally OK shot from above showing Jennifer hiding while the killer stalks through the woods nearby.

Weirdest Moment: Dr. Block reveals that he has programmed his own murderer to be the savior of humanity. This one wears a white towel.

Champion Dialogue: “You've come to the right place. Or person. Or both."

Body Count: 10

1. Orderly #1 is stabbed in the eye with a syringe.
2. Orderly #2 has his throat slashed with a razor.
3. Jill has her arm cut off to death.
4. Julie is chopped in the neck with a machete.
5. Cheryl(?) has her head sawed off.
6. Don is stabbed to death.
7. Don's Girlfriend is strangled.
8. Detective Rosenberg is dismembered with an axe.
9. Humanity's Savior is dismembered with an axe.
10. The Reaper has his heart cut out and eaten.

TL;DR: Day of the Reaper must have been fun for the literal teenagers making it, but it is not equally fun to sit down and watch.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 724

Census Bloodbath: Who Do? You Do

Year:
 1984

Director:
 John Carter

Cast:
 David Broadnax, Rita Jenrette, Tom Cantrell

Run Time:
 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Zombie Island Massacre follows a group of American tourists in the Caribbean who take a tour to the isolated island of Saint Marie. After witnessing a voodoo zombie ceremony, they find that their tour bus has been incapacitated. While they walk to a remote villa on the island to seek shelter, a mysterious killer who they believe to be the resurrected corpse they witnessed begins to stalk and murder them.

Analysis: Zombie Island Massacre was distributed by Troma, a company that pretty much only ever puts out a good movie if somebody's playing a prank on them. So, when their logo graced the opening credits of the film, I can't say that I anticipated much, and it turns out I was correct to have that reaction. However, the film was least a notch or two above my bottom of the barrel expectations.

For one thing, the project gets sleazy slasher cred thanks to the involvement of composer Harry Manfredini, whose shameless approach to ripping off his own music from Friday the 13th (which in and of itself was busy ripping off Psycho and Jaws) always lends an air of charm to a low budget slice 'n dice picture. For another, while the film has a severe lack of kill scenes that are in any way either bloody or effective (one decapitation depicts a machete knocking against the side of someone's neck, causing their head to go flying off), it sure has a whole hell of a lot of them. This is partially due to the fact that there are so many indistinguishable, terribly acted white people crammed into that tour bus, but part of it is due to the film's most curious twist on the slasher formula.

Abandon all hope to avoid spoilers, ye who enter here:

It turns out that the killer, who many of the tourists fully embrace as potentially being a zombie without a moment's hesitation, is actually a contingent of a Colombian drug cartel trying to suss out who in the tour group is an undercover DEA agent carrying their money. This is just the beginning of the wild swerves the final fifteen minutes of the plot begins to take, and it's an exhilarating roller coaster of nonsense that somewhat offsets the generally bland first hour of the film. While it lacks the verve and commitment of the finale, that first hour is at least also spiced up by the island setting, though that taste is undercut by a heavy helping of racial insensitivity, of course.

The wild plot also benefits from being played entirely straight, a concept that would soon be abandoned by Troma altogether in the coming years. At the end of the day, Zombie Island Massacre is still a bad movie, but at least it puts in the work to make itself a somewhat interesting movie, which is half the battle.

Killer: Like, a whole Colombian cartel

Final Girl: Sandy (Rita Jenrette)

Best Kill: The kill where Connie has a knife embedded in her face actually looks passable.

Sign of the Times: One of the guys has a kerchief tied around his neck every time he appears onscreen, like he's a character in a campfire story.

Scariest Moment: The corpse's fingernails start to grow in the middle of the voodoo ceremony.

Weirdest Moment: A grizzled hunter suddenly shows up and declares that his name is Eli Whitney.

Champion Dialogue: “It looks like a bird or a bear."

Body Count: 19; but don't be fooled into thinking that makes the movie interesting.

1. Eddie is bludgeoned in the back of the head with a stick.
2. Roy is killed offscreen.
3. Donna is killed offscreen.
4. Helen is drowned.
5. Jerry is drowned.
6. George is garroted with a noose.
7. Ethel is killed offscreen.
8. Barbie and
9. Matt are impaled in a pit of spikes.
10. Joe is decapitated with a machete.
11. Man #1 is beaten with a stick.
12. Man #2 is beaten with a stick.
13. Spear Thrower #1 is shot in the head.
14. Paul is speared in the gut.
15. Spear Thrower #2 is shot in the gut.
16. Eli Whitney is shot in the gut.
17. Knife Thrower #1 is shot.
18. Connie has a knife embedded in her face.
19. Knife Thrower #2 is conked on the head.

TL;DR: Zombie Island Massacre is a low-grade body count picture that is briefly jazzed up by a wild series of plot twists.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 750

Census Bloodbath: Mean Wild

[Editor's note: More concrete release date information has become available online since the time I first did research for this project, so The Prey has been adjusted to its proper 1983 date rather than 1984, and my release calendars and the 1983 Post Mortem body count has been updated to reflect this.]

Year: 1983


Director:
 Edwin Brown

Cast:
 Debbie Thureson, Steve Bond, Lori Lethin

Run Time:
 1 hour 20 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Plot: The Prey follows a group of three young couples on a camping trip at The Northpoint in Keen Wild, which is interrupted by a monstrous killer that seems to be a Romani person who survived a forest fire thirty years before even though he looks like a straight-up Funhouse mutant with monster claws (Carel Struycken, who would go on to play Lurch in the Addams Family movies). Presumably, this is the film being racist, but it's too confusing to really read. Anyway, the couples are Gail (Gayle Gannes), a blonde who is meant to be a horny ditz gold digger type but absolutely does not want to have sex with her repulsive boyfriend Greg (Philip Wenckus); Bobbie (Lori Lethin of Return to Horror High and Bloody Birthday) and Skip (Robert Wald), who are the sporty ones, or at least they are the ones who wear matching jerseys to go hiking; and Nancy (Debbie Thureson) and Joel (Steve Bond), who don't really have any personality other than the fact that he does the fishing and she cooks the fish. On the case, but not really, are the weirdo park ranger Mark O'Brien (Jackson Bostwick, who was randomly the voice of the Jinn in The Lamp) and his lazy boss Lester Tile (Jackie Coogan, AKA Uncle Fester, in his final role).

Analysis: There's actually some pretty solid stuff in The Prey, which was shot in 1980 even though it took several years to find a proper release. For one thing, the kills, while not paced particularly well, are a breath of fresh air in the anemic, MPAA-riddled mid-'80s, so the timing probably couldn't have been better. There are occasionally demure low budget murder setpieces that keep the important elements offscreen, but for the most part we are actually getting a good old meat and potatoes, over the top blood spray and intensity.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of movie around those 8 murder sequences (two of which occur in the opening 10 minutes, the rest of which occur mostly in the final 30). And most of that movie is composed of stock footage nature shots that remind you that, yes, this film is set in the forest. You can kind of get what they're going for, as the shots include much creepier and more predatory animals as the night gets deeper and darker, but it's obviously a cheap bit of filler. This is driven home by an excruciatingly long scene set around a campfire, which intercuts half-baked snippets of dialogue with random shots of, say, a centipede crawling past the camera, for what feels like 15 minutes and very well may have been. There is also an excessive use of slow motion in the climax that drastically deflates the tension even as it inflates the run time. I suppose you couldn't claim that The Prey doesn't have an abundance of style, it's just really bad style.

This turgid, punishing pacing and editing is unfortunate, because there is a lot of likable material scattered around The Prey, in addition to the kills. For the pruriently minded who swing that way, there is an excellent extended sequence where the men (including Steve Bond, who was a Playgirl centerfold) take off their shirts and frolic about in a swimming hole. The score is also surprisingly excellent, swinging at will from a more classical 1930s horror orchestral feel to a dissonant Bernard Hermann klaxon wail. And none of the cast is particularly terrible, with Thureson even delivering some top notch emotional reactions to the horror she encounters.

The Prey also has a nasty streak a mile wide. Bobbie's kill in particular is brutal and comes absolutely out of nowhere, especially considering she's in the running to be a Final Girl because of her androgynous name and the fact that she's being played by consummate survivor Lori Lethin. And I won't spoil the ending, but dear lord is it downbeat and grim, maybe more so than any other movie of the year. I surely wish the multiple cuts on the film's Blu-Ray release (evidently there is an international cut involving reshot flashback footage, as well as one that combines the two cuts) had included a shorter one that tightens up the pace, because then this movie might have really been cooking with gas.

Killer: The Predator (Carel Struycken)

Final Girl: Nancy (Debbie Thureson)

Best Kill: Bobbie's kill, which comes completely out of nowhere: she and Nancy are running from the killer, her foot is caught in a snare trap, and she is suddenly lifted into the air and bashed brutally into a tree trunk. Wild!

Sign of the Times: Gail puts about an hour of work into achieving the perfectly teased side pony.

Scariest Moment: The boys discuss how they're going to seduce their girl friends by "slipping it to" them.

Weirdest Moment: Right after the first body count kill, the film randomly cuts to a two minute scene of the park ranger just sitting at home playing a banjo.

Champion Dialogue: “I think I'm getting a blister on my blister."

Body Count: 8

1. Frank is decapitated with an axe offscreen.
2. Mary is axed to death.
3. Gail is smothered with her sleeping bag, though later she has burns all over her face.
4. Greg has his throat clawed out.
5. Skip has his neck snapped.
6. Joel falls from a cliff when his rappelling rope is cut.
7. Bobbie has her face smashed into a tree trunk.
8. Mark O'Brien is strangled so hard that blood explodes from his mouth.

TL;DR: The Prey is a movie with some great parts that are connected by long stretches of absolute misery.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 961

Census Bloodbath: I Loathe New York

Year: 1984

Director: Abel Ferrara

Cast: Tom Berenger, Billy Dee Williams, Jack Scalia

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Fear City follows an ex-boxer named Matt Rossi (Tom Berenger), who is haunted by memories of accidentally killing an opponent. He is now a promoter for exotic dancers, and a killer is hunting them down one by one. He attempts to solve the murders while actual detective Al Wheeler (Billy Dee Williams) attempts to find the evidence pinning the crime on Matt. Also Matt wants to get back together with his ex, exotic dancer and drug addict Loretta (Melanie Griffith), who is currently in a relationship with another dancer, Leila (Rae Dawn Chong).

Analysis: Well, this movie sure is star-studded! At least to the degree that the TV movie slashers of the era were, and that's not meant to be damning with faint praise. It's even got a name brand slasher director in Abel Ferrara, who had previously helmed The Driller Killer in 1979. Unfortunately, it's merely content to be a sleazy movie that alternates slayings with long scenes of strip performances and not in the "gee, isn't this artistic and fun" approach that the later Stripped to Kill would take.

And honestly? The slasher elements are pretty shit in this entry. It's much more committed to being a psychological portrait of an ex-boxer than it is to be a movie about murder, and while I suppose that's a fine impulse, it's executed poorly and really saps the energy away from the slasher element. Like many slashers that don't have a killer picking off a group of people one by one in an isolated location, it doesn't give the victims much time to establish themselves with the audience before they're taken out, and the kill scenes are mere flashes that sometimes last no more than three seconds.

I guess I'm not advocating for this already misogynistic film to revel in the mutilation of women, but the allegedly gritty urban stories they choose to prioritize over the murders are a real bummer to sit through. While I can see some cult film audiences finding camp enjoyment in, say, Billy Dee Williams spouting off ethnic slurs like he's entering a bigotry contest, it just didn't deliver anything I really hoped I would be seeing. 

The one saving grace of the movie is the fact that its killer is fucking weird. Between killings, we see brief glimpses of him at home, writing his manifesto and practicing karate moves naked. It sure isn't a film-saving element, but Fear City is in desperate need of anything remotely interesting outside of the vague inherent charms of watching a bunch of actors who know they deserve better bumming around a sleazy movie.

Killer: The Killer (Neil Clifford)

Final Girl: Loretta (Melanie Griffith)

Best Kill: One of the victims gets hit with nunchuks while walking through the park, so that's neat.

Sign of the Times: Loretta's queerness only exists in service of her relationship to Matt and not an actual thing that seems to be coming from within her personality.

Scariest Moment: One of the victims tearfully describes her fingers being snipped with scissors, intercut with shots of the previous night's incident.

Weirdest Moment: Any time the movie cuts to what the killer is up to.

Champion Dialogue: "Bad things have been happening to me. I need some money."

Body Count: 8

1. Silver is stabbed.
2. Mafioso #1 and
3. Mafioso #2 are shot in a drive-by.
4. Leila dies in the hospital.
5. Stripper is nunchuked to death.
6. Cindy is slashed with a sword.
7. Jorge is hanged offscreen.
8. The Killer is boxed to death.

TL;DR: Fear City is a sleazy exploitation movie that doesn't offer enough interesting material to redeem itself.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 627

Census Bloodbath: The Line Is Dead

Year: 1984

Director: Gorman Bechard

Cast: Frances Raines, Mark Walker, Carl Koch

Run Time: 1 hour 22 minutes

Plot: Disconnected follows Alicia (Frances Raines of that same year's The Mutilator), a video store employee in Waterbury, Connecticut who is being haunted by strange noises on her telephone as well as the fact that her twin sister Barbara Ann (also Frances Raines) always sleeps with her boyfriends. After one such indiscretion causes her to break up with Mike (Carl Koch), she begins to go out with the cute nebbish Franklin (Mark Walker), though unbeknownst to her he is in the middle of serial sex murdering his way through half the beautiful women in town.

Analysis: Gorman Bechard is probably the best director with the least aptitude for making movies. Between Disconnected and his 1987 effort Psychos in Love, he has certainly proven that he should definitely procure and maintain a day job and yet both films are nevertheless limitlessly compelling. His existence is meant to provide an imbalance to the "so bad it's good" scale, because his movies are so bad they're bad, but there is a vim and vigor to them that can't be dismissed.

I suppose the right word for his work here really is "interesting." Because of his lack of skill behind the camera (at least in the mid-80's; I cannot speak to the cavalcade of documentaries he has directed in the interim), he keeps falling ass-backward into unusual setups that he would know better than to include if he, well, knew better. His bumpers-down approach to the medium results in scenes that you couldn't possibly have ever seen before, or at least executed in quite the same way, including the bizarrely meta series of documentary confessionals with Carmine Capobianco's (also of Psychos in Love) cop character that are interspersed throughout the project to catch viewers up on the plot. Disconnected actually has quite a similar plot to Psychos in Love, only with one fewer psycho, come to think of it. It also has a lot of its bizarre feints at style, with excess crammed into every frame.

Naturally, there are some elements here that are just bad, including the audio recording in which dialogue is frequently drowned out by the motors of passing cars. There is also one utterly indefensible shot where the sun streaming through the blinds drowns out everything in the frame so strongly that you begin to suspect the film was shot somewhere on the planet Arrakis. However, as I've said, the best moments thrive in that liminal space between "was this intentional?" and "holy shit, what am I looking at?" like the scene that randomly becomes a series of still black-and-white images before abruptly returning back to regular color and motion.

One thing it can't quite capture, unfortunately, is being a proper slasher, but I take what I can get with this project. Another bummer is that Disconnected is only interesting up to a certain point. That point is when the plot ends, but alas the film continues for a solid 22 minutes beyond it. The aggressively needless wheel-spinning of this stapled-on fourth act, which add nothing and conclude nowhere, makes this a considerably less easy film to recommend than Psychos in Love, unfortunately. But if you just brush that under the rug, it's a mighty fine time at the movies.

Killer: Franklin (Mark Walker)

Final Girl: Alicia (Frances Raines)

Best Kill: I guess it's the death of the second victim of Franklin, who is stabbed in bed, but that's because it's the only murder that's actually onscreen.

Sign of the Times: The video store where Alicia works is intoxicatingly early '80s, and I had a lot of fun scoping out the covers on the VHS tapes behind her, which included previous Census Bloodbath productions Mother's Day, Visiting Hours, and Halloween II.

Scariest Moment: The scene where Alicia first meets Franklin is an appropriately creepy moment that any retail person can relate to, where a customer is being weird and absolutely refuses to leave.

Weirdest Moment: After Franklin kills a woman, the camera pans up to a crucifix on his wall, as if we're supposed to be shocked that a Catholic is capable of doing something bad.

Champion Dialogue: "It's a pity those four girls can't eat grinders anymore."

Body Count: 4

1. Woman #1 is killed offscreen.
2. Woman #2 is stabbed to death.
3. Barbara Ann is killed out of frame.
4. Franklin is shot offscreen.

TL;DR: Disconnected is a poorly made, incoherent film, but in a way that is somewhat compelling.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 761

Census Bloodbath: Father Knows Best

Year: 1984

Director: Michael Winner

Cast: Rachael Kelly, David Brooks, Marie Masters

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Scream for Help follows Christie Cromwell (Rachael Kelly), who believes that her stepfather Paul Fox (David Brooks) is trying to murder her mother, Karen (Marie Masters). She teams up with her friend Janie (Sandra Clark) and Janie's boyfriend Josh (Corey Parker, who played one of the weird greasers in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning) to investigate his comings and goings including his liaisons with his mistress Brenda (Lolita Lesheim), who is married to his other accomplice Lacey (Rocco Sisto).

Analysis: "Isn't that just the plot of The Stepfather?" you ask. Well, you're right, but this one came out first, motherfuckers! Not only that, but it was birthed from a peculiar conglomerate of B-movie royalty, including director Michael Winner (of Death Wish, The Sentinel, and Appointment with Death), producer Irwin Yablans (of Halloween, Tourist Trap, Hell Night, Fade to Black, and The Seduction), and screenwriter Tom Holland (who directed Child's Play, wrote Psycho II, and did not star in the Spider-Man movies).

It's a slasher movie about as much as The Stepfather is as well, which is to say it's not really much of a slasher at all. It has enough of a body count to allow for its inclusion here, but where it really shines is the fact that it exactly resembles a made-for-TV movie until the scenes where it very much doesn't. The plucky girl detective protagonist provides the sense that the thrills and spills will be as wholesome as they come, which does not prepare one for the film's obsession with sex and all its down-and-dirty trappings, including the lead character winding up with her hand covered in blood from her torn hymen. It's a real experience, let me tell ya. 

The thriller aspect of the film doesn't hold much water because the stepfather completely fails to hide the fact that he is pure evil, but that allows Scream for Help to sink into the mire of sleaze as quickly and painlessly as possible, ending on an extended, Home Alone-esque home invasion that is full of bonkers shenanigans. 

This is a mean movie, and while that might not be a compliment for some, it certainly adds flavor and texture to what otherwise could have been a rote Lifetime movie of the week. The acting is banal at best and shriekingly terrible at worst and the filmmaking is nothing to write home about, but the movie's pure balls-to-the-wall approach will earn it whatever fans it could possibly hope to boast.

Killer: Paul Fox (David Brooks)

Final Girl: Christie Cromwell (Rachael Kelly)

Best Kill: I mean, how can you beat Janie announcing she's pregnant and getting hit by a speeding car in the same breath?

Sign of the Times: I suppose the digital speedometer readout on Christie's mom's car was ahead of its time, but it's light years behind our time, good God.

Scariest Moment: Christie and Josh are driving in her mother's car when they realize the brake line has been cut.

Weirdest Moment: Josh and Christie begin making out basically the second they have a moment alone after Janie dies.

Champion Dialogue: "Not only is he an incompetent writer, he's a total asshole."

Body Count: 5

1. Power Company Man is electrocuted offscreen.
2. Janie is struck by a car.
3. Debra is electrocuted.
4. Paul Fox dies in a gas explosion.
5. Lacey is stabbed in the gut.

TL;DR: Scream for Help is a surprisingly sleazy quasi-slasher with a premise that would be improved upon in The Stepfather.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 603

Census Bloodbath: Pieces Of April

Year: 1984

Director: Claudio Castravelli

Cast: Pamela Collyer, Jack Langedyk, Walter Massey

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Evil Judgment follows young waitress Janet (Pamela Collyer) as she begins to experiment with prostitution, following the lead of her friend April (Nanette Workman). On her very first job, a ménage à trois with the rich and mysterious Ron (Walter Massey of Happy Birthday to Me, Zombie Nightmare, and Eternal Evil), she begins to get a bad feeling and tries to back out, but not before a shadowy assailant murders both April and Ron. When the police, particularly Special Inspector Armstrong (Roland Nincheri of Terror Train, Visiting Hours, and Eternal Evil) insist that the attack was brought on by a drug stupor, she decides to take the investigation with her own hands, enlisting help from her mercurial, mobbed-up boyfriend Dino (Jack Langedyk).

Analysis: So between Evil Judgment and American Nightmare, mid-80's Canada really was obsessed with making films that were surprisingly forward-thinking when it comes to sex work. It's not like films that depict the murders of sex workers can be called feminist tracts, but positioning the lead characters as sex workers (or, in this case, someone who dabbled in sex work) and not specifically punishing them for that is a super fascinating choice for the time period. This particular entry holds up less well under the scrutiny of a modern lens, but it earns points by first and foremost telling a story about how the police actively support the rich and powerful rather than defending the poor or disenfranchised, especially women.

It's less focused as a slasher than as a conspiracy-lite thriller, though it does have more than its share of solid enough kills. They're all the same M.O., which does get a little repetitive, but when the slit throats are shown onscreen, the prosthetics that bring them to life are quite well done, with multiple gushes of blood coming from a single wound rather than the de rigueur "knife makes red line on neck." Luckily, the non-slasher parts of the movie sing in their own way, with snappy dialogue that watching over 200 low budget slasher films has not led me to expect. It's especially charming whenever it's delivered by Nanette Workman.

There is also an appealingly scuzzy nature to the side characters and the settings of Evil Judgment. The interstitial scenes involve people, say, turning the bar TV to the porn channel, or trying to solidify deals with various members of the mob. It's deeply peculiar, but if you like a grotty deep dive into what Canadians imagine are the sordid dealings of the American metropolis, it's something of a blast.

I think I ultimately would have liked the film even more if it had any sort of intentional aesthetic style. It's a blandly mounted thriller with only one deep focus shot (of Janet hiding around a corner from the killer) that's doing anything remotely interesting. And even that is compromised by a piss-poor color palette that makes the shadowy corner blend in too much with the beige tiling of the background. However, in spite of everything, it's an entirely charming little scuzzy movie that could, and I kind of had a blast sitting down with it.

Killer: Robertson (Walter Massey)

Final Girl: Janet (Pamela Collyer)

Best Kill: The nurse at the institution is almost fooled by the killer's doctor disguise, but notices that he's barefoot. She panics and tries to hit the emergency alarm but is killed before this can happen.

Sign of the Times: When Liz is closing the diner for the night, she has to use an adding machine.

Scariest Moment: Janet spies a sliver of a hulking figure reflected in the mirror in front of her.

Weirdest Moment: A disgruntled customer hates how the soup at the diner tastes so he unzips and pees in the bowl.

Champion Dialogue: "I know this great surgeon who'll give you back your virginity."

Body Count: 8

1. Doctor is strangled.
2. Nurse has her throat slit.
3. April has her throat slit.
4. Ron has his throat slit offscreen.
5. Cop has his throat slit offscreen.
6. Housekeeper has her throat slit offscreen.
7. Liz has her throat slit.
8. Robertson is shot to death.

TL;DR: Evil Judgment is a weird, scuzzy little movie, but in a way that is entirely appealing.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 722

Census Bloodbath: Knife To Meet You

Year: 1984

Director: L. Scott Castillo Jr.

Cast: Tom Bongiorno, Stephanie Leigh Steel, Elisa R. Manilovitz

Run Time: 1 hour 22 minutes

Plot: *takes a deep breath* Two sexy women are shot at a bank that apparently requires its tellers to dress like Hooters waitresses, and later it is revealed that the robbers are also sexy women. They hightail it to a secluded cabin in the mountains where they hide the loot and are summarily stabbed to death. Then two different groups of vacationers descend upon the cabin as well as the one next door, ignoring the warnings of the locals about a mysterious mountain man who stalks these here woods.

One of the vacationing groups consists of two married couples - Lil (Janeen Lowe), who is recognizable only because she's of Asian descent, and Al (Thomas Cue, who also wrote the screenplay, from a story by Castillo Jr.), who is the Jughead of the slasher genre because every single line either spoken by or about him is about how he loves to eat; and Lisa (Elisa R. Malinovitz), a jealous shrew, and Tony (Tom Bongiorno), who is celebrating having just passed the Bar. The other cabin contains 5 absolutely indistinguishable women, only two of whom matter at all: Sue (Ramona Andrada), whose father used to take her to these mountains; and Stephanie (Stephanie Leigh Steel), who has the hots for Tony. Eventually (by this I mean after like a full hour), a mysterious madman begins to tear through this huge platter of Meat with a knife. 

Analysis: The primary interesting thing about Satan's Blade is the fact that it seems more interested in being an adult drama than a slasher movie. Its exploration of a new marriage that is being significantly tested for the first time is far from the stuff of an award-winning indie darling, but it's more layered and interesting than I had any reason to expect. 

Unfortunately, basically everything around that plot line sucks, including the actors who are bringing it to life. For good reason, nobody in this film has more than 2 additional credits to their name (unless you count Castillo Jr. himself, who is loaded up with juicy credits including writer, director, executive producer, and actor... all for Satan's Blade, of course). The performances are uniformly stilted and wobbly. During the scene where two of the characters get drunk, you'd think their performance would finally match the page, but they just sloooooow eeeeeevery wooooord down, merely making their line readings miserable for more seconds of screen time.

Satan's Blade sucks as a proper slasher too, of course. As I already pointed out, the killer takes forever to actually get started, and when he does, it's in a variety of straightforward kills involving a nice little stab, a bit of Caro syrup, and calling it a day. The most terrifying thing about the entire affair is the boom mic that lurks in the corner of every frame in a particularly sinister manner. There is some blood to squeeze from this stone if you're into the whole "so bad it's good" angle, especially when it comes to the actors milking their dying moments for all they're worth (which isn't much). 

I suppose I can spare a kind thought toward the score, which is brought to life by a shitty, tinny synth, but has a more robust musical arrangement than was strictly necessary. At the end of the day, Satan's Blade isn't entirely unpleasant, it's just a methodical slog through plot points and characters that really should be more interesting than the execution allows them to be.

Killer: Ski (Ski Mark Ford)

Final Girl: N/A, but for structural purposes it's Stephanie (Stephanie Leigh Steel)

Best Kill: Lil has a knife thrown into her back, at which point she slides down a snowy hill on her stomach like a penguin.

Sign of the Times: The fact that the film is lightly supernatural, but not in the rubber reality way that A Nightmare on Elm Street would popularize just a few months later.

Scariest Moment: Lil, trying to escape, finally succumbs to her injuries right before she reaches the road, where there's a truck passing.

Weirdest Moment: The fact that Sue is killed with no fanfare, meaning that all the script's hints at a dark backstory for her that is tied in with the killings just... didn't matter.

Champion Dialogue: "I'm afraid you're going to have to take your bath in the lake."

Body Count: 13

1. Bank Teller #1 is shot.
2. Bank Teller #2 is shot.
3. Ruth's Accomplice is shot.
4. Ruth is stabbed in the back.
5. Dishwashing Girl is drowned in the sink and also a knife goes near her neck, which makes blood happen.
6. Shower Girl is stabbed in the back.
7. Rita is stabbed in the boob.
8. Sue is stabbed in the chest.
9. Al is stabbed in the throat.
10. Lil has a knife thrown into her back.
11. Tony is stabbed to death.
12. Lisa is killed offscreen.
13. Stephanie is stabbed in the side, among other places.

TL;DR: Satan's Blade is a poorly made slasher movie that doesn't have a lot to offer except the basic pleasures of formula.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 864

Census Bloodbath: Sure Is Dark In Here

Year: 1984

Director: Howard Heard

Cast: Elizabeth Trosper, William J. Kulzer, Shea Porter

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

Plot: Local cop Morgan Cole (Shea Porter) and hotshot ringer Rydell King (William J. Kulzer) try to solve a series of murders of women who all go to the same college. Morgan's sister Judy (Elizabeth Trosper) is also being targeted by the killer. The most prominent suspect is Jimmy Scott (Kevin Costner, somehow), though Morgan suspects Judy's Black boyfriend Billy (Julius Metoyer) because he is an enormous racist.

Analysis: Shadows Run Black starts off at a deficit, because it's a police procedural slasher. Over the course of this project and the (holy shit) 240 slasher films I've watched before this, it has been extremely rare that a police-centered entry has risen above its peers, because they actively sideline the crop of victims and make it difficult to care about them when they are murdered.

This particular film doubles down on that angle by not viewing women as human beings. The sheer amount of unmotivated nudity in the film would be hilarious if it wasn't such an obvious symptom of this film's approach to female characters; ie. the first woman onscreen has so little dialogue I legitimately thought it was a plot point that she couldn't speak, until she says one or two lines in between a sex scene and a striptease in front of a broken car. It's also wildly racist, like Holy Shit racist. When Morgan breaks into Billy's house to beat him to a pulp for consensually kissing Judy, she offers the excuse "he didn't mean any harm, he was just trying to protect me." What the fuck, Judy?

Anyway, the movie is also bad for reasons that have nothing to do with its incredible lack of social justice capital. It's boring as fuck, shunting any and all kills offscreen. Save for one kinda OK gore gag of a meat cleaver bashing through a door into someone's face, there is nothing these kills have to offer other than the chance to watch naked women perform mundane tasks, usually in front of a stove. Not the first place I'd choose to be naked, but cheers to them.

If you don't have a prurient interest in the naked cis female form, this movie has literally nothing to offer. It at least lives up to its title in its frequently underlit sets. That's about the best I can say about the film, which is a boring, horny (borny?) slog. To sum up, the characters we get are evil cops, nameless personality-free naked women (we never even see the college they ostensibly go to), and Kevin Costner, who is in a combined 45 seconds of the film. It's not a thrilling prospect, no. I'm not even a big Costner fan!

Killer: Rydell King (William J. Kulzer)

Final Girl: Judy Cole (Elizabeth Trosper)

Best Kill: I wish I could just opt out, but I guess I'll go with the one where the lady gets stabbed right between the boobs, which at least has some Jess Franco bad taste zest to it.

Sign of the Times: The racism and misogyny in this movie aren't casual, they're full suit, tie, and tails.

Scariest Moment: A woman is setting the table and the killer can be glimpsed in the mirror behind her.

Weirdest Moment: A magician performs at a college-aged girl's birthday party while he is accompanied by a finger-plucked cello.

Champion Dialogue: "I was trying to scare you off your fat ass into getting a job."

Body Count: 7; not including two characters (Carol and Georgy, for the record) who I'm 99% certain are dead but whose deaths are never explicitly shown or implied onscreen.

1. Hank is killed offscreen.
2. Lee Faulker is strangled in the pool.
3. Cheryl is stabbed between the boobs.
4. Naked Lady #1 is strangled.
5. Sandy is killed offscreen.
6. Morgan is shot offscreen.
7. Rydell is shot off a roof.

TL;DR: Shadows Run Black is a useless slasher unless you're very interested in naked breasts and can't just Google them.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 679