Census Bloodbath: It's THE Five

Year: 1985

Director: Richard Casey

Cast: Phil Therrien, Max Manthey, Irene Cagen

Run Time: 1 hour 27 minutes

Plot: I barely know what Horror House on Highway Five is about, but I'll do my best. Three college students are studying the bizarre experiments of ex-Nazi scientist Frederick Bartholomew, and find themselves in the deadly orbit of the untrustworthy Dr. Mabuse (Phil Therrien), his idiot brother Gary (Max Manthey), and a killer in a Richard Nixon mask, in and around a house that is, if you ask me, rather off Highway 5.

Analysis: Horror House on Highway Five is the reason I don't like to review films by describing the incident of the plot. It's not proper criticism to say "How can you not like a film where a killer in a Nixon mask runs around while college students fight him with rockets and there's a character randomly named after the iconic German expressionist cinema character Dr. Mabuse?" Here's how.

Highway Five is ineptly made to an unbearable degree, presenting dully lit images awash in a reprehensible soundtrack of brain-searing surf rock that doesn't do the least bit to make the film atmospheric or scary. Nearly all of the kills are offscreen or dull, and most of the characters keep refusing to die anyway. 

There are some flashes of good-bad brilliance, especially in the scenes with Gary and his captive Sally (Irene Cagen) refuse to display any level of human brain function; the sequence of him just dropping a full-ass pill into a glass of water, followed by her drinking it and exclaiming that "this beverage is delicious" deeply resonates in my bones. But then there's just a lot of shit that is both nasty and poorly executed, like a scene where a woman is tortured by having a hot iron placed against her breast, a scene that is delivered with absolutely zero foley.

Alas, it's generally a miserable slog that doesn't earn a lot of the praise it might otherwise garner from its tremendous weirdness. 

Killer: Richard M. Nixon AKA Dr. Bartholomew (credited as Ronald W. Reagan)

Final Girl: Louise (Susan Leslie)

Best Kill: If you use a rake in a kill, it's gonna be hard to top it. But Mike falling face first onto a rake is pretty fun, even on the heightened scale of rake kills.

Sign of the Times: The Nixon of it all.

Scariest Moment: The opening pair of kills is kinda OK, if you squint. The part where she is thrown through a glass table is at least squirm-inducing, if not exactly "scary."

Weirdest Moment: Dr. Mabuse suddenly starts exclaiming that there are bugs eating his brain.

Champion Dialogue: “I should be safe with all those little bombs set up around here."

Body Count: 7

1. Boyfriend is strangled.
2. Girlfriend is killed out of the frame.
3. Noo Yawk Guy dies in a car crash.
4. Noo Yawk Girlfriend dies offscreen.
5. Mike falls face first onto a rake.
6. Dr. Mabuse is beaten with a tire iron.
7. Sally is bludgeoned to death.

TL;DR: Horror House on Highway Five is full of some delirious weirdness, but it's too boring to care all that much about it.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 528

Census Bloodbath: Power Down

Year: 1985

Director: Phil Smoot

Cast: Lash La Rue, Anna Lane Tatum, Cynthia Bailey

Run Time: 1 hour 27 minutes

Plot: The Dark Power, naturally, follows what happens after a Native American mystic dies and his house is sold as dorms to local college girls. The dark forces he was keeping at bay - namely undead evil Toltec sorcerers - emerge one night and wreak havoc, attacking the house, which is now fully inhabited by girls, including Tammie (future Real Housewife Cynthia Bailey), the sole Black resident who is the target of racist ire from one of the other girls.

Analysis: It's really troubling that the Toltec killers, who are depicted almost exclusively using tomahawks and arrows to kill people and being drawn to alcohol in the meantime, is the second most racist thing about The Dark Power. But at least the racism exhibited against Tammie is meant to put us against the white girl perpetrating it. What they're doing with the Native American characters is just crass, but what else can we expect from a decade that also gave us Scalps and The Ghost Dance?

If that kind of screenplay gives you hives, the first hour of The Dark Power isn't going to offer you anything that redeems itself whatsoever. It's a devilishly long and boring setup that introduces as many characters as possible that it can cram into the house to be menaced. So many that it actually forgets to ever kill some of them and lets them wander off with their thumbs up their asses. While the music sporadically farts out 2 to 4 note stings that are then repeated ad nauseam and the camera frequently cuts to exteriors that are blown out by the Southwestern sun, you are treated to reels and reels of absolutely nothing happening, to the point that you almost welcome the racist caricatures when they show up (at the 48 minute mark) because that means something is actually going to happen.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the movie picks up quite a bit in its third act. It's mostly just unfortunate, because it would be convenient to be able to hate every element of this film and dismiss it entirely. But a lot of points in the Final Girl sequence kinda rule, down to the formula-busting fact that there are two main survivors and one of them is a Black woman. But The Dark Power makes a meal out of having two Final Girls, showcasing a siege sequence with both of them fighting off assailants simultaneously in a way I'd never really seen before.

There are also a couple admittedly decent special effects here, especially in the death of one of the boys, who has his face peeled apart by outstretched hands in a tremendously gooey explosion of gore. 

Also, if you didn't know that Lash LaRue was an old Western actor known for his facility with a whip, you sure as fuck are gonna know by the end of the movie. The Dark Power is wall to wall whip stunts, including an absolutely outrageous whip vs. whip showdown at the end. It's not enough to make up for the dismal slog of the bulk of the movie, but it sure is something to behold as long as you're there.

Killer: The Toltecs

Final Girl: Tammie (Cynthia Bailey) and Beth (Anna Lane Tatum)

Best Kill: Let's give Mr. La Rue his due here, because he does pull the head off a Toltec with his whip, which is fucking awesome.

Sign of the Times: When one of the girls is getting gussied up, they joke that she's acting like she's going on a date with Tom Selleck.

Scariest Moment: Holy shit the casual, virulent racism of that character who hates Tammie is bone-chilling.

Weirdest Moment: One girl sneaks downstairs to try to save the silverware.

Champion Dialogue: “As far as I'm concerned, the only gyrating around her is your big mouth."

Body Count: 11

1. John Cody dies of old age.
2. Uncle Earl dies offscreen.
3. Dallas is shot in the chest with an arrow.
4. Craig is shot in the back of the head with an arrow.
5. Alan has his face peeled apart.
6. Lynn is shot in the back with an arrow.
7. Susan is tomahawked in the throat.
8. Toltec #1 is stabbed through the back of the head.
9. Toltec #2 is stabbed through the chest.
10. Toltec #3 is stabbed in the back.
11. Toltec #4 has his head ripped off with a whip.

TL;DR: The Dark Power is racist six ways from Sunday, but it does boast a stellar third act showdown.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 766

Census Bloodbath: Goa Way

Year: 1985

Director: Keshu Ramsay

Cast: Rakesh Roshan, Marc Zuber, Aaloka

Run Time: 1 hour 59 minutes

Plot: Haveli follows an undercover policeman following four suspects of a string of murders to a luxury hotel in Goa, India.

Analysis: A Note: This movie was only available to me in unsubtitled Hindi, so obviously my review is to be taken with a grain of salt, though I have made a point of focusing only on visual styling, music, and slasher structure rather than plot or acting.

So, I haven't really found a place in my heart for the early slashers out of Bollywood, as much as I love Indian cinema in general. However, 1985 seems to be the year that they really pulled out all the stops, between Cheekh and Haveli. This entry hails from another member of the Ramsay family, Keshu, whose brothers Tulsi and Shyam previously collaborated on the largely underwhelming Sannata and Saboot.

He clearly saw what his brothers were doing and felt the same way that I did, because Haveli is the most focused, genuinely slasher-y entry that Bollywood has produced yet. For one thing, the killer is actually delivering kills at a consistent pace and wearing a mask the entire time, which seems like a low bar if you haven't seen as many Bollywood slashers as I have. But also the mask is fucking cool, showing a pale face frozen in a hawklike cry, something like a cross between a Japanese oni and the Bride of Frankenstein.

I wouldn't say there's anything particularly substantial about the kills themselves, but there is always something reasonably exciting happening in Haveli, and for an early '80s low budget slasher that's two hours long, that's no small feat. 

Killer: A Man (shocking)

Final Girl: Not applicable, or at least not really

Best Kill: This one guy is "hanged" for all intents and purposes, but the killer uses their own hands instead of a rope. It's a whole thing!

Sign of the Times: Teased hair on the beach seems like a great idea to me.

Scariest Moment: A man is in his car when the killer smashes the windshield.

Weirdest Moment: The film is randomly set at Christmas, and one musical sequence keeps zooming in on a random giant cutout of Santa Claus.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 8

1. Woman is drowned in a bathtub.
2. Car Man is garroted. 
3. Man is killed offscreen.
4. Man #2 is hanged with hands.
5. Man #3 is slashed in an elevator.
6. Constable is stabbed.
7. Mustache Guy is shot.
8. Handcuff Man is defenestrated.

TL;DR: Haveli is another solid slasher out of Bollywood from 1985.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 442

Census Bloodbath: Before You Wreekh Yourself

Year: 1985

Director: Mohan Bhakri

Cast: Javed Khan, Deepika Chikhalia, Birbal

Run Time: 2 hours 11 minutes

Plot: Cheekh opens on the cruel and dictatorial Thakur (Madan Puri) doing cruel and dictatorial things before cutting to many years later. His daughter Deepa (Deepika Chikhalia) falls in love with the sculptor Sunil (Javed Khan of 1989's Khooni Murdaa), but a killer who is clearly seeking revenge for Thakur's past wrongs is lurking around the house. Also, Deepa and Sunil accidentally murder their friend Rohit (Raza Murad), so they must keep anyone from finding the body.

Analysis: A quick note: This film was only available to me in unsubtitled Hindi, so please take my review with a grain of salt. As always, I am focusing on the visual element of the film as well as how well it hews to the slasher formula, which is one that doesn't really require much script retention in the first place.

So it turns out that Bollywood was one of the quickest international cinema spaces to really hop on the slasher trend outside of North America. But after pumping out two films apiece in 1980 (Moodu Pani, Saboot) and 1981 (Sansani: The Sensation, Sannata), India seemed to have tired of the format until 1985 kicked things right back into gear. For my money, I'm glad they did, because Cheekh is the first film out of the five that actually feels like a slasher, which is very exciting.

Mind you, it's not always the best movie qua movies. There is an unfortunate reliance on shakycam when the filmmakers want to drum up some drama, there are a few quite egregious breaks of the 180 degree lines, and the shot of a man's gaze panning back and forth between a jar of poison (labelled, of course, "POISON") and his wife goes on for what feels like minutes too long. Oh, also there's a recurring gag that I believe is meant to be comedic where the punchline is that a woman is repeatedly sexually assaulted. Whee.....

That all definitely takes points off for Cheekh, but believe you me I've sat through much worse for this project. And as far as Bollywood slashers go, this is the cream of the crop. It's got a much better distribution of kills than the previous entries, keeping the pace up throughout, and even including a heaping helping of honest to God chase sequences! There may be a few too many scary moments that turn out to be pranks (including one that, if it happened in real life, would absolutely shatter the friendship between these people), but honestly that's still pretty consistent with the slasher formula. All that's missing is people doing impressions that are 30 years too old for them, and it's entirely possible that they did and I just missed it.

Finally, I'm proud to report, Cheekh is effectively scary more often than not. It's incredibly effective at drumming up nightmare imagery when it wants to, whether it's the material around Sunil hiding Mohit's body by slathering him in plaster and turning him into a sculpture, the scene where a medium accesses the spirit realm with a glowing red crystal ball, or several of the dynamic, quick-cutting sequences that blend chases with other frantic movement (especially dancing, because this is a Bollywood movie, after all). It's true that Cheekh is being graded on a scale that is heavily weighted toward 3/10 to 5/10 movies, but I had a blast with this one and that can't be discounted.

Killer: Deepa's Friend!

Final Girl: Deepa (Deepika Chikhalia)

Best Kill: I'm a sucker for any movie character in a wheelchair being dumped down the stairs, which is a real meat and potatoes murder movie classic.

Sign of the Times: Deepa's friend pranks her by dragging her into the water with her, which is not something you can do lightly in the age of cell phones.

Scariest Moment: The statue that Sunil has made of the corpse seems to come to life and chase Deepa.

Weirdest Moment: A woman takes a bath, wearing a full bra and panty set that is just getting drenched.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 11

1. Killer's Dad is stabbed in the gut.
2. Killer's Mom is stabbed in the gut.
3. Thakur has his wheelchair pushed down the stairs.
4. Man is burned to death.
5. Rohit is shot accidentally.
6. Woman is stabbed.
7. Bathtub Lady is whipped or something.
8. Doctor is killed indistinctly.
9. Karate Man super jumps and falls onto a blade.
10. Statue Man dies from various injuries sustained during a prolonged chase.
11. Deepa's Friend is shot.

TL;DR: Cheekh is far from perfect, but it's the best slasher Bollywood has put out in the '80s so far, in terms of both tension building and nightmare imagery.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 798

Census Bloodbath: Looks Like It's Me And You Again Tonight, Rosie

Year: 1985

Director: Leland Thomas

Cast: S. E. Zygmont, Suzanna Smith, Brian Burt

Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

Plot: Bits and Pieces follows Arthur (S.E. Zygmont), a mother-obsessed killer in the San Gabriel Valley, as he attempts to hunt down Rosie (Suzanna Smith), a potential witness to one of his crimes.

Analysis: Apparently, even five years after the release of Friday the 13th, we were still down to rip off Psycho occasionally, for old time's sake. The one wrinkle that Bits and Pieces offers is that it does so by way of ripping off 1980's Maniac, so I guess that's something. It at least adds another creepy mannequin to the offing, which never hurts. 

Really, there's almost nothing to Bits and Pieces. The film alternates between stalking scenes, vague Herschell Gordon Lewis style kills that indiscriminately splash red tempera paint everywhere they can rather than depicting violence with any sort of clarity, and scenes of bland police procedural that abruptly give way to a creepy age gap romance between the cop and a young woman who was friends with the first victim. 

The one thing it has going for it (other than the fact that there are multiple scenes set at a male strip club, which I believe to be a first for the subgenre) is that it's fully committed to being itself. When it's doing a topless scene, it's doing a topless scene, with bared breasts that are just outrageously huge. When it's doing a kill scene (sometimes these overlap, of course), there's plenty of gusto if not any skill. It's not a horrible film to sit through, even if it has legitimately nothing to offer to a slasher-fatigued 1985 cinema landscape.

Killer: Arthur  Hill (S. E. Zygmont)

Final Girl: Rosie Talbot (Suzanna Smith)

Best Kill: After being interrogated about Rosie's whereabouts, her friend Jennifer is stabbed in the throat. No, it's not slit or slashed. Just stabbed. Like, straight in there.

Sign of the Times: When Rosie goes to write her paper, she sits in front of a typewriter.

Scariest Moment: Rosie finally looks at the newspaper that has been on her desk all morning and sees the front page news that her friend was murdered.

Weirdest Moment: Rosie's mom asks her to describe her night at the strip club and gets really horny about it.

Champion Dialogue: "Watch where you're going, apple ass."

Body Count: 8

1. Tanya is sliced down the middle with a knife.
2. Woman is killed, but the relevant weapons and body parts are offscreen.
3. Mommy is stabbed to death.
4. Jennifer is stabbed in the throat.
5. Rosie's Dad is conked in the back of the head.
6. Rosie's Mom is drowned in the tub.
7. Lt. Carter is shot.
8. Arthur Hill is shot and stabbed with scissors.

TL;DR: Bits and Pieces is just a generic Psycho riff with some added Herschell Gordon Lewis sleaze, but it's not altogether horrible.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 487

Census Bloodbath: Da Be Dee, Da Ba Die

Year: 1985

Director: Charlie Wiener

Cast: Jamie Spears, Terry Logan, Peter Brikmanis

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

Plot: Blue Murder sees a mysterious killer targeting the folks behind the production and distribution of dirty movies. The killer has been menacing investigative journalist/weekly columnist Dan Blake (Jamie Spears, who as far as I can tell is not Britney Spears' father, which is great news for him) in an attempt to get him to write a column condemning pornography, which will somehow get the theaters shut down. Blake teams up with Lieutenant Rossey (Terry Logan) to get to the bottom of this.

Analysis: Blue Murder is a TV movie from Canada. If you're thinking "gee, that's a weird thing for a slasher about the porno industry to be," well, you have more sense than the producers of Blue Murder. Rather than being the prurient slasher promised by the poster, it is instead the thing that all audiences in the mid-'80s apparently craved even more than sweet, delicious cocaine: bland police procedural.

Even though it does its slasher due diligence and features a black-gloved killer with an M.O. that involves placing a creepy crown mask on his victims, the film is deeply committed to exploring the underbelly of the city as Blake and Rossey wander around milling around with various anonymous Canadians, most of whom never appear again or figure into the story in a way that actually matters. The kills are also much more "crime movie" than slasher, focusing heavily on the use of guns, the burning of warehouses, and the like.

It's not even good at doing the procedural thing, presenting scenes of investigation in an incoherent jumble that don't seem to connect to anything that comes before or after. Somehow, in spite of this, it's practically impossible not to guess the identity of the killer within ten minutes. 

The true strength of the movie is the fact that it is absolutely bananapants. Because of its kaleidoscope of random white people, the constantly shifting landscape of characters sometimes vomits forth a truly ineffable presence, like the gay stool pigeon relaxing on a yacht with a harem of prettyboys, or the high-roller who informs us that he has been bankrolling Rossey this whole time, even though this reveal amounts to absolutely nothing.

Even though the investigation is incoherent and poorly presented, the fact that the film can only occasionally mimic real human behavior leads to some truly delightful scenes, including - I kid you not - a scene where Blake and Rossey discuss the details of the case while Blake is perched on a toilet at the head of a tub that Rossey is currently taking a bath in. It truly needs to be seen to be believed. While nothing else reaches that kind of ludicrous pleasure, there is something pleasantly delirious about how the film's narrative slips ineffably past you (for instance, the body count reported by the cops is always at least seven kills higher than what is shown onscreen, in a bit of unintentional surrealism), and it's hard not to be drawn to a scene where a farm girl you met one scene ago comes home to her father yells at him about how her mother left them years ago, only to learn that her mother never left and has just been hiding in the next room over, at which point she tells her daughter to fuck off.

It's hard not to feel like I dreamt Blue Murder, and while it is an ineffably bad movie, that is nevertheless a quality I prize very much.

Killer: Father Richards (Peter Brikmanis)

Final Girl: Dan Blake (Jamie Spears)

Best Kill: This is really like picking the best ant at your picnic, but I guess... the projectionist being hanged in the opening montage, while offscreen, provides the creepiest image and implication.

Sign of the Times: One of the cars in the movie has those headlights that flip up when you turn it on.

Scariest Moment: The killer sneaks into Dan's home in the middle of the night to warn him.

Weirdest Moment: As if I could ever get enough mileage out of the bathtub scene.

Champion Dialogue: "If you don't, I'm gonna cram your skull down the toilet."

Body Count: 15; not counting the various inflated body count numbers given by the police throughout the movie (and a couple of the names I'm a little shaky on).

1. Frank Cole is shot offscreen.
2. Stryker is shot.
3. Porn Actor is shot.
4. Porn Actress is shot.
5. Porn Actor #2 is shot.
6. Projectionist is hanged offscreen.
7. Linda is shot in the head.
8. Vince is shot.
9. Some White Man dies in a fire.
10. Markham dies offscreen.
11. Peter is shot.
12. Max is garroted.
13. Debbie is axed offscreen.
14. Debbie's Friend is axed offscreen.
15. Father Richards is shot in the back.

TL;DR: Blue Murder is an incoherent, bad slasher that at least has the decency to be absolutely banana pants.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 824

Census Bloodbath: In-Die-A

Year: 1981

Director: Irshad

Cast: Vinod Mehra, Bindiya Goswami, Kavita

Run Time: 1 hour 58 minutes

Plot: Sansani: The Sensation opens with two mysterious men arriving in a rural Indian village. Almost instantly, people around town start to be murdered, and suspicion falls on one of them: Ajay Sachdev (Vinod Mehra of the previous year's Saboot), who has been staying in a local boardinghouse and fallen in love with lovely local maiden Nisha (Bindiya Goswami). Ajay knows he isn't the killer, but he sets out to discover who is, and whether or not they're linked to the mysterious woman in white who drifts through the graveyard in the middle of the night.

Analysis: A quick pair of notes. First, oopsie doopsie, here is another film that I missed during my many rounds of research on Census Bloodbath. Turns out that people aren't standing in every corner of the Internet extolling the virtues of early '80s Bollywood slasher cinema, so you really gotta dig in there for yourself. Second, this film was only accessible to me in unsubtitled Hindi, so plot details will be understandably fuzzy, and my review should be taken with a grain of salt, though I focus on the visuals and adherence to the slasher formula, which transcend language.

OK. So, I do love Bollywood cinema, but either my tastes skew more modern or the slasher is fully incompatible with the style. I think it's the latter. The cheap, tawdry nature of the American slasher film refuses to be bent and ends up snapping in half, leaving the Bollywood attempts at the subgenre anemic and boring most of the time, especially when it comes to the Ramsay Brothers (Saboot, Sannata), who were seemingly obsessed with slashers and yet had no idea how to make one.

Sansani is much the same as its predecessors, making a film that is much too noble and demure to sink to the depths that the slasher requires. The killer admittedly is wearing a kind of cool gimp mask-looking thing, but there is no blood at all and every kill but one is entirely offscreen to the point that it's unclear if the characters were even murdered at all or just dropped dead from boredom. The distribution of the kills is also tremendously uneven, leaving huge impenetrable swaths of movie where nothing happens. 

Fortunately, Sansani has its share of Bollywood pleasures to alleviate the pain of how terrible of a slasher it is. It is a full-on musical, for one thing, opting for about four musical numbers and a reprise rather than the one and a half songs we typically get in an entry like this. None of the songs are particularly exciting to my Western ear, though one of the dance numbers does pull off a neat trick where a drunk observer's double vision makes it look like there are three women dancing rather than two.

There are also two heavy doses of ridiculous kick-punching action in the third act that somewhat make up for the fact that the movie has completely forgotten it's a slasher by that point. Overall, it doesn't quite crawl across the line to becoming something I would recommend to anyone other than demented completists like myself, but it is certainly a bright spot in a sub-subgenre that hasn't really produced anything but drivel thus far in the marathon.

Killer: Beast Man

Final Girl: Nisha (Bindiya Goswami), but only incidentally

Best Kill: The kills are entirely bad, so I guess I need to pick the one where you can actually see what happened, which is when a man gets impaled in the gut with some kind of spear. OK, I guess you can sort of see what happened.

Sign of the Times: I don't pretend to be an expert on Indian fashion trends through the ages, but Ajay's shirt becoming slowly unbuttoned as the movie goes on feels sartorially horny in a way that only the early '80s could get away with, at least in America.

Scariest Moment: The killer attempts to strangle a woman with a strip of fabric, though he is unsuccessful.

Weirdest Moment: The night after the bulk of the characters get murdered, the survivors get drunk and party.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 6; though the kills are so vague, the number could be higher or lower by a factor of two, depending.

1. Someone is shot (probably).
2. Man #1 is impaled in the gut.
3. Old Man dies offscreen, probably of poison.
4. Man #2 dies offscreen.
5. Beast Man is beaten with a chain.
6. Woman is shot in the back of the neck.

TL;DR: Sansani: The Sensation is a bland, barely there slasher that is at least better at being a Bollywood movie than many of its early '80s counterparts.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 798

Census Bloodbath: 1985

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

Can you believe we're actually finally past the halfway point of this project? It hasn't been easy, believe you me. But now that we've officially exited the first Golden Age of the slasher film, we're entering a particularly interesting period. According to accepted slasher wisdom, A Nightmare on Elm Street was the project that kicked the slasher back into high gear, with a new boost of supernatural inspiration driving the storylines. 

This is true, but it takes a little longer than average to make an effects-heavy movie like that, even a cheap, shitty one. As such, those films wouldn't really start showing up until a bit later, so the period between 1985 and 1986 felt more like the genre was drawing a deep breath before really going full throttle in 1987,  speeding directly into a Silver Age spurred on by the increasing popularity of direct-to-video and shot-on-video offerings.

What we're left with in 1985 doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Yes, we've got Friday the 13th revving back up after its first alleged "final chapter" and Elm Street 2 already cementing the franchise's long reign of terror over the back half of the '80s. Other than that, however, it's a real grab bag of random holdouts that couldn't quite muster up the energy to make it to the market by 1984, when they were already past their sell-by date. 1985 saw 29 slashers in total, the exact same amount as the previous year. It's a slim year when compared to former years and upcoming years, but that's still so goddamn many. Let's take a gander at what's coming down the pike, shall we?

Census Bloodbath: 1985

Movies in bold are films I have already reviewed at the time this post was published. Once I write each review, I will link to it from this page.

Too Scared to Scream (January 4)
Caught in Fear/Atrapados en el miedo (March 15)
Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (March 22)
Blood Cult (May)

Eternal Evil (May 1)

When Dreams Come True (May 28)

Bloodstream (June 6)
Cemetery of Terror/Cementerio del terror (July)
The Hills Have Eyes Part II (August)
Phenomena (August 2)
Formula for a Murder/7, Hyden Park: la casa maledetta (August 10)

Interface (September 11)

Pursuit of a Killer/Kong woo liu duen (September 20)

Appointment With Fear (October 25)
Blood Tracks (November)
The Ripper (November)

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (November 1)
Nothing Underneath/Sotto il vestito niente (November 7)

Confessions of a Serial Killer (November 14)

Terror at London Bridge (November 22)
The Nail Gun Massacre (December)
Bits and Pieces (unknown)
Blue Murder (unknown)
Cheekh (unknown)
The Dark Power (unknown)

Deadly Intruder (unknown)

Haveli (unknown)

Hong Kong Butcher/Xiang Gang tu fu (unknown)

Horror House on Highway Five (unknown)
Murderlust (unknown)
Night Caller/Ping an ye (unknown)
They Don't Cut the Grass Anymore (unknown)

Victims! (unknown)

Word Count: 480

Census Bloodbath: 1984 Post Mortem

Phew! Somehow we've made it through another year of my project to watch and review every single slasher movie from the 1980s. With 1984 down for the count, we are now exactly halfway through this marathon! Here is my breakdown of the best and worst of the year that is now blissfully in the rearview mirror.

I watched a total of 28 slashers from 1984, as listed here. While there is always the chance that more research will unearth some ancient VHS tape that I missed while compiling this list, I have composed at least four rounds of intensive and exhaustive research over the years, so we can be reasonably certain I've picked up on all the ones that are at least available to the public in any real form. 

1984: Post Mortem

This is the part where I address the overall trends of the year, but 1984 is such a random grab bag it's pretty difficult to parse out. Really, all this points to is the fact that the slasher was dying an ignominious death by this point in the decade. Most of what we got was either rigorous formula films that were late to the party (like The Mutilator and Silent Madness) or bizarre attempts to graft the slasher onto another genre entirely (Evil Judgment, The Dark Side of Midnight, Disconnected, Blind Date).

We won't begin to see the effect that the release of Elm Street had on revitalizing the genre for some time, coming as it did right at the end of the year. Other than that, the only real "trend" here is the fact that, while the year lacked too many particular masterpieces, it also failed to scrape the bottom of the barrel, with most films turning out to be middling. While I wish there were more out-and-out great films here, at the very least this situation is certainly better than slogging through the muck of Z-grade video garbage for hours and hours.

The Five Best Slashers of 1984

#5 Innocent Prey

Innocent Prey was a real surprise! An Australian slasher starring iconic Halloween victim P.J. Soles, the film takes an approach that Alex Garland's Men is probably jealous of, detailing a woman's move to Australia to escape the memory of her abusive serial killer husband, only to find herself in the hands of an obsessive landlord. The first half is considerably superior to the second, but it's an excellent first half, full of intense scenes that ratchet up the sense of domestic terror.

#4 The Initiation

The Initiation is part of the hallowed "sorority slasher" tradition, and while other entries may outshine it, it is gleefully bloody and tawdry, and boasts a delectable soap opera sensibility that is lent great gravity by the presence of Psycho star Vera Miles.

#3 Silent Night, Deadly Night

Silent Night, Deadly Night is a bit of a nasty one, and far from what anyone might imagine when they hear "movie about a killer Santa." But the exploration of what makes a killer isn't entirely uninteresting, and the killings themselves are top shelf.

#2 Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is the platonic ideal of the 1980's slasher film. The dead meat teenagers' antics are engaging in an observational, John Hughes-y way, to just enough of a degree that you regret them being murdered, but not so much that you can't gaze in goggle-eyed awe at Tom Savini's excellent gore effects. It's sleazy, finding as many half-assed ways to get women to take their tops off, it's packed with incredible deaths, and it has two actors who would go on to be stars: Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover. It's not a perfect film, but it's a perfect slasher.

#1 A Nightmare on Elm Street

Well then, what could beat a perfect slasher? A perfect film, that's what! OK, "perfect" might be a strong word. Elm Street shows its seams in some of the acting, but as far as what is shown onscreen, it is both completely innovative and absolutely terrifying. Wes Craven's masterpiece brings us directly into contact with the stuff of nightmares, and deservedly changed the game by doing so.

The Five Worst Slashers of 1984

#5 Shadows Run Black

The epitome of "go girl, give us nothing." It's just an excuse to trot out naked breasts onscreen, with anemic kills and a nonexistent story. Even the pleasures of watching a young Kevin Costner slumming it pale in the face of how little he actually appears in the movie.

#4 Fatal Games

While the idea of Olympic hopefuls being murdered with their own equipment is a great organizing principle for a slasher, the execution here is pitifully bland. The kills are nondescript and while the movie is tolerable for the most part, it has the indecency to end on what is perhaps the worst trans killer plot twist in a subgenre that is replete with reprehensible examples of the same.

#3 Blood Theatre

An absolutely incompetent film, from audio recording to cinematography to acting and all the way down to foley. The "plot," which consists of three blank-faced teens wandering through an old theater, fails to be livened up with a heap of unoriginal kills, only one of which is visually interesting in any way.

#2 The Dark Side of Midnight

The reason this film isn't at #1 is the fact that it's ever so slightly on the right side of good-bad. It's an absolute bore, following a variety of mustachioed men sitting in offices discussing brutal slayings that the audience doesn't get to see. However, the lead character is an extremely obvious self-insert role for the director-star, positioning him as a cross between James Bond and Fabio, and I love the sheer audacity of the whole thing.

#1 Satan's Blade

Satan's Blade certainly tries to do something, folding a surprisingly adult drama into its bifurcated slasher plot. However, that's not enough to overcome the terrible acting and slew of boring stabbings.

1984 Body Count: 251 (including 9 decapitations and 13 slit throats)

This is an average of 8.96 kills per movie, a staggering number that is .71 higher than the previous leader, 1981. 

Highest Body Count: Zombie Island Massacre (19)

This is more a side effect of the movie having a cabal of killers than it actually being interesting in any real way.

Lowest Body Count: Calendar Girl Murders (3)

That's about what you can expect from a TV movie, though when you're grading on that scale it's a pretty solid body count, all told.

Five Best Kills

#5 The Weight Room, Silent Madness

Don't tell me you thought "woman hanging upside down having a rope attached to a barbell tied around her neck before the barbell is thrown out the window" wasn't going to make it. This is some Happy Birthday to Me-ass shit.

#4 Santa at the Urinal, Don't Open Till Christmas

What's a bit of holiday dick trauma among friends? The gag where a Santa's penis is cleaved from his pelvis, causing blood to spurt in the urinal, is in such delirious bad taste that it's irresistible.

#3 The Motel Bathroom, Innocent Prey

One of the most perfectly shot murder sequences of the year. It places you resolutely in the perspective of PJ Soles as she witnesses her husband's bloody secret. She thinks she's spying on him cheating on her in the bathroom as he has sex with a prostitute pressed up against the window, but she can spot him grabbing a straight razor in the mirror behind them, the bloody result of his actions being displayed when the woman's body drops into view in front of her. It's an excellent and chilling bit of deep focus composition that allows you to discover information at the exact second the character herself does, in a dastardly elliptical way.

#2 Doug's Shower, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

It was hard to choose just one from this movie, but that foley. Yowza.

#1 Tina's Bad Dream, A Nightmare on Elm Street

The murder that kicks of Elm Street is also the one that provided the shot of adrenaline into the arm of the slasher that kept it alive through the end of the decade. The surrealistic imagery of this kill (achieved with a marvelous in-camera effect) clashes with the perfectly visceral nature of the gashes that appear on her body. In addition to the sequence being a gorgeous display of pure terror, Rod's presence in the foreground highlights just how impotent the people Tina loves are in the face of this unknowable nocturnal enemy.

Best Decapitation: Silent Night, Deadly Night

Now that's just some Christmas fun. God bless us, every one.

Three Best Final Girls

#3 Janet, Evil Judgment

Canada was just really into positioning sex workers as slasher leads in the mid-'80s, and I am here for it!

#2 Cathy Willis, Innocent Prey

PJ Soles proves that she has the chops to go toe to toe with her Halloween co-star Jamie Lee Curtis in the Final Girl department. 

#1 Nancy Thompson, A Nightmare on Elm Street

Clever, driven, and only thwarted by the idiocy of those around her, Nancy is iconic for a reason. Also, the grey streak she acquires later is a look!

Three Worst Final Girls

#3 Pam, The Mutilator

Now, she's certainly not as annoying as the awful people who populate the film around her. But Pam takes the Uptight Virginal Survivor trope one step too far towards annoying, literally arranging a chore wheel for her friend group's beachside getaway.

#2 Jennifer, Blood Theatre

The vacant acting and poodle haircut aren't enough to distract anyone from how absolutely useless this Final Girl is at actually getting the job done.

#1 Kate, Don't Open Till Christmas

I guess I'm just mad at Kate for being withholding, because she keeps solving major segments of the mystery offscreen and only tells us about it later. Why, Kate?

Four Best Killers

#4 David, Blind Date

Did I only include him because he wears a Speedo in his final confrontation with our hero? Yes, yes I did. Picture unavailable, tragically. Buy the Blu-Ray.

#3 Pera Mitic, Strangler vs. Strangler

The Yugoslavian Norman Bates is an absolute riot, and his oddball energy does wonders toward buoying the film's comic tone throughout the runtime.

#2 Freddy Krueger, A Nightmare on Elm Street

Long before he became a villainous stand-up comedian, Freddy still played with his food. The way he relishes how terrifying he is just makes his inexplicable M.O. even creepier.

#1 Jason Voorhees, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Look, Freddy won Best Kill and Best Picture, rightfully, but you gotta hand it to the big lug. Jason is an iconic figure of the slasher genre, and he executes some of his best work here, along with gaining the iconic nick in the corner of his signature hockey mask.

Four Worst Killers

#4 The Cartel, Zombie Island Massacre

Even though the fact that the killer is a cartel seeking an undercover DEA agent is a wonderfully ludicrous twist, the faceless emissaries of said cartel just don't have any personality.

#3 Philip, Innocent Prey

The second killer in Innocent Prey can't help but suffer from diminishing returns. He's basically an Australian Phantom of the Opera with access to a Sliver's worth of hidden cameras, and it's goofy as hell.

#2 Howard Johns, Silent Madness

While the film ain't half bad, Silent Madness' weakest link is the look of the killer, who looks like he fell asleep while wearing his reading glasses on the beach and got a gnarly sunburn.

#1 Diane Paine, Fatal Games

We all know the '80s were transphobic, but having her voice suddenly get deeper when she reveals her identity is some evil Ace Ventura nonsense.

Handsomest Lad: Doug, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Look at those cheekbones! I'm jealous. I totally get why Jason would want to smoosh them against the shower wall.

Best Location: The Inititation

The massive, insular high rise mall has everything: A variety of locations for our Meat to be menaced within, an inherent sense of still being trapped in a single space, and just a super cool look that can't be denied.

Best Title: A Nightmare on Elm Street

OK, maybe I was kind of at a loss for solid contenders. However, I love the fact that the title here is foregrounding the suburban mundanity of the world it takes place in, highlighting the film's creeping insistence that the trappings of middle-class society can't save people from having their sins fall on their heads.

Three Best Costumes

#3 The Penis Suit, The Initiation 

Shantay, you stay.

#2 The Crop Top, A Nightmare on Elm Street

Look, the less we talk about Johnny Depp, the better. But a look is a look.

#1 I <3 My Dentist, Blind Date

Delightfully baffling. Do I love Blind Date? I think I might.

Best Poster: The Initiation

Such a good tagline! Such a good combination of incoherent images into something inherently menacing. Also this is probably the single movie poster that's easiest to read as someone masturbating, so there's that.

Best Tagline: The Mutilator

That's good shit, The Mutilator.

Best Song: "Beogradski Davitelj" Strangler vs. Strangler

The New Wave apparently hit Yugoslavia hard, and I'm so grateful for that. This song is actually genuinely quite good, like I'm not being ironic even a little bit.

Best Score: A Nightmare on Elm Street

Thank you Charles Bernstein for providing Freddy with his iconic cue, but also for coming up with creepy incidental music that would be equally at home in a Pet Shop Boys instrumental break.

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