Slaughter High

Slaughter High was released as part of LionsGate's Lost Collection, boasting the dubious subtitle, "the best movies you totally forgot about."  Odds are, most people have never seen this one, but somehow Slaughter High gained itself a nice little cult following over the years, and someone borrowed a fan's old VHS copy, transferred it to DVD, and released it to the masses.

Slaughter High was released during the slasher frenzy of the 1980's, and it has all the ingredients for a cheesy, low-budget slasher.  There's a token black character who's the first to die, actors who are far too old to be playing high school students (I think the youngest was 29), gratuitous nudity, a masked killer, a high school prank gone awry, and an insane amount of plot holes (including a mind-boggling twist-within-a-twist ending).

It's April Fool's Day, and nerd Marty (Simon Scuddamore) is about to get it on with the sexy, popular Carol (Caroline Munro).  Of course, it turns out this is nothing more than a setup for the cool "kids" to get Marty naked, hose him down, dunk his nude body in the toilet, and capture the events on film, until the coach shows up to drag the bullies off to detention in the school gym.  Unfortunately, the gang plays one final prank on Marty, one which culminates in Marty being splashed with nitric acid and horribly burned.

Now, it's some time later (the film never says how much later, but the trailer reveals it's five years, though the actors look the same age they did in high school: OLD).  They've been invited to their high school reunion.  Never mind the fact that the only attendees are those who bullied Marty.  And the fact that the school's locked, run-down, and abandoned doesn't raise any red flags.  The group, after sitting for hours on the grass outside the building, decides to break into the school, where they start getting picked off one by one by a killer in a jester costume.

Has Marty returned to seek payback?  Or is someone else to blame?  Is it all an April Fool's Day prank?  How is the killer able to predict when and where his intended victim will be, and stage elaborate traps for them?  When more than one victim is in more than one designated death area, how does the killer manage to be in both places at the same time?

Most, if not all, of these questions will remain unanswered.  Slaughter High is definitely a leave-your-brain-at-the-door kind of experience.  Plot holes and inconsistencies abound, with even the setting being questionable.  What high school includes lounge areas, bathtubs, garages, and beds, yet has no lockers or classrooms?  The acting is always bad, sometimes hilariously so.  Perhaps some of the actors were speaking so slowly and awkwardly in an attempt to hide their British accents, which crept through more often than not.  I don't think he was trying to hide an accent, but the best moment is provided by one guy who falls off his bike (a gleefully awful bit of acting there, as the actor throws himself to the ground), then delivers the line, "Man, that. bike. has. to. go.", with slow, deliberate pauses between each word, as if he has no idea what word will come out of his mouth next.  It's that bad.

One good thing I can say is the death scenes are actually reasonably memorable.  The low-budget effects include a gut-busting explosion, a mid-coitus electrocution, and some other cool stuff I don't want to spoil.  Unfortunately, the film's low budget is also apparent in its DVD transfer.  I wasn't kidding when I said it looks like someone copied it from a VHS.  The audio quality suffers as well; I watched it with the subtitles (surprisingly, there are English or Spanish subtitles, a rarity when it comes to low-budget slasher DVDs).  It's not a huge deal, though; Slaughter High is not one you're going to want to watch on your wall-size HDTV anyway.

I simply must mention the soundtrack.  The score was done by Harry Manfredini, so there's a nod to Friday the 13th, complete with the distinctive "Ki-ki-ha-ha" sound.  I don't know if Manfredini was responsible for the theme song of sorts, a hair-metal/synth-pop hybrid with some nut cackling madly and screaming, "April Fool's Day!", but, if so, I must thank him for the hearty laugh I got out of that one.  Even better, it begins and ends the movie, in addition to playing at different points throughout.

Slaughter High is an absolute mess, but it's so bad it's almost good.  Those who are entertained by bad movies should definitely get a kick out of it.  I enjoyed it because of (not in spite of) its flaws.  Die-hard (and I mean die-hard) slasher fans could certainly do worse than this one.  It's hard to call Slaughter High "the best" anything, but, to a certain audience, it's entertaining in its ineptness.

Black Sheep

Unique villains in horror movies are becoming increasingly rare.  All the classics - vampires, zombies, werewolves, ghosts, masked madmen - have dominated countless films.  Even killer sharks, alligators, dolls, snowmen, and plants have made their appearances.  But one thing the genre was lacking was an army of killer sheep.  Fortunately, writer/director Jonathan King realized this, and gave us Black Sheep with its genius tagline "There are 40 million sheep in New Zealand... and they're pissed off!"

Henry (Nathan Meister) returns home to find his brother Angus (Peter Feeney) has been experimenting with genetically-engineered sheep.  Of course, the experiments go awry, resulting in a flock of mutant sheep who are hungry for human flesh.  It's up to Henry to save the day, an intimidating task since Henry's been suffering from ovinophobia, or, as he puts it, "just a completely unfounded and irrational fear that one day this is gonna happen!"

The effects are done by WETA Workshops, known for their work on the films of Peter Jackson; Black Sheep, in fact, is reminiscent of some of Jackson's earlier work, like Dead Alive.  Blood and guts and limbs all fly freely, literally at some times:  a man throws his own severed leg at an approaching sheep.  The gore is well-done and fun in its over-the-top way, and it leads to more laughs when you think about the fact that sheep are causing this mayhem.

In one intense sequence, a sheep attacks the driver of a vehicle, with a fierce battle ensuing before all the passengers escape onto the back of the still-moving truck; one character belatedly wonders, "Who's driving?".  Cut to a shot of the sheep behind the steering wheel.  To top it off, as the sheep is about to drive off the cliff, the people jump off the truck and into a field; supposedly, their dog does as well, though he is obviously thrown into the shot.  Other highlights include "menacing" shots of a single sheep, ominously shadowed and bleating, staring down its potential victims, and a vegetarian hippie, the first human to be bitten by the sheep, who tries valiantly to resist his urge to eat flesh.  There are also fart jokes and sexual innuendos ("Fuck the sheep!"  "No time for that, bro!"), but not enough to be tiresome.

Black Sheep is immensely funny and entertaining, succeeding in balancing its horror and comedy elements.  The film does run out of steam a bit, relying mainly on its ludicrous premise for laughs, but it's still a fun ride.  Black Sheep is a silly, knowing send-up of horror films and clichés, never taking itself too seriously, but providing good laughs and splatter.

Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman

Marla:  Oh, come on, Sam, we don't even know if it's Jack Frost.
Sam:  No, Marla, it's probably some other walking, talking snowman that everybody's talking about. 

A title like Jack Frost 2:  Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman offers viewers all the information they need to know whether they'd even consider watching such a film.

The first Jack Frost saw a serial killer coming back from the dead as a mutant killer snowman to terrorize the policeman who caught him.  Fortunately, good triumphed, and Jack is dead and gone.  Now, Sam Tiler (Christopher Allport, returning from the first film) is having trouble getting over last year's massacre, and, with Christmastime approaching, fears Jack's return.  His wife Anne (Eileen Seeley, also returning) suggests a vacation to a tropical island to take Sam's mind off things.  Even if Jack were coming back, a snowman couldn't survive in hot weather anyway, right?

Well, thanks to some shady experiments by government scientists, Jack's been genetically modified so that antifreeze and hairdryers no longer work against him.  Jack is also now somehow psychically linked to Sam, so he makes his way to the sunny island and starts disposing of the vacationers in rather odd ways.  A bikini model's head explodes after sucking on an ice cube with essence of Jack, a cameraman is stabbed to death with a carrot nose, and a boy has his frozen tongue ripped from a pole, with Jack yelling, "Cowa-tongue-a, dude!"

Things really get dangerous when the islanders realize Jack's not alone; he's spawned a whole bunch of baby snowballs who are just as hard to kill as he is.  Even mixing one of the babies in a blender doesn't harm it; instead, the little guy chirps, "That was fun!"

There's actually quite a bit of blood, as limbs are hacked off by deadly snowballs.  The effects are cheap-looking; the baby snowballs are obviously puppets that were purchased at the nearest thrift store.  The purchase price of the DVD is probably larger than the film's budget (check out the "Snowmonton International Airport," quite clearly nothing more than an average home with an open front door).  But this is not a movie that's trying to break new ground in effects work; this is a completely silly movie that never takes itself seriously.  Neither should its viewers.

The DVD surprisingly offers some bonus features.  These include an audio commentary, behind the scenes feature, interview with the director, trailer, and a ludicrous "music video" featuring the cast singing, with no musical accompaniment, what must be an improvised song about Jack (the best part is a rap about the snowballs, culminating in the line, "Not even antifreeze can take the suckas out").

Suspiria

Suspiria doesn't waste any time in getting started.  American ballet student Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) arrives in Germany to attend a prestigious dance academy.  When she arrives at the academy, she witnesses a frantic young woman screaming and fleeing from the school into the deep darkness and pouring rain.  The young woman finds refuge at a friend's place - or so it seems, until someone or something tracks her down, brutally stabs her, hangs her, and throws her body through a stained-glass ceiling window.  And all this before Suzy even arrives at school!  Things only go downhill from there, and Suzy begins to suspect that her new school may be more than just a simple dance academy.

The plot is interesting, but hardly developed.  The film plays out like a nightmarish journey in which no one - the characters, the viewer, perhaps director Dario Argento himself - knows where they're going.  Odd scenes involving maggots and bat attacks are included without explanation.  The death scenes are implausible and don't hold up well under scrutiny.  After the fact, questions like, "Why would a school have a room dedicated entirely to housing nothing but barbed wire (which looked surprisingly free of barbs anyway)?" will surely pop up, but when you're in the moment, those questions will be far from your mind.  Suspiria is more about the visual impact anyway.

Much has been said about Argento's brilliant use of color.  Many of the school's long and winding hallways and rooms are awash in bright reds, strong greens, and deep blues.  This adds a whole other dimension to the film, making it a feast for the eyes.  And ears; it's impossible to discuss Suspiria without mentioning the soundtrack by Goblin, which consists of creepy, chanted "La la la la"'s over a background of sinister bells, punctuated by growls of "Witch!" and bursts of synthesized keyboards.  It adds much to the film; I doubt it would be as effective without the music.  As for the spoken audio, I know it was the norm for films of this type, but the English dubbing is somewhat distracting.

Suspiria is very light on plot development, and the character development is pretty much nonexistent.  Instead, the film is a progressively over-the-top build-up to a somewhat rushed and tacked-on conclusion.  Suspiria is certainly not without its flaws, but the visuals and audio make for an eerily atmospheric, surreal experience, one which you surely won't be able to forget.


The DVD from Anchor Bay contains a good amount of extras, including theatrical trailers, TV and radio spots, biographies of the major players, a still gallery, and a rather entertaining Daemonia music video.  The biographies are more in-depth than the usual DVD bios, which consist of nothing more than a list of film credits, offering some interesting information; for example, Harper turned down a role in Annie Hall to star in Suspiria.

 

Deadly Friend

One of director Wes Craven's lesser-known films, 1986's Deadly Friend is the story of Paul Conway (Matthew Laborteaux), a teenager who moves to a new town with his mother Jeannie.  He's studying brain surgery at a local college and seems to know more than the professor, teaching the class at one point.  He's also built BB, a talking, artificially intelligent robot.  When he's not busy doing genius stuff, Paul is making new friends in neighborhood kids Tom and Sam (Kristy Swanson).  Paul and Sam like each other, but their romance never really gets started thanks to Sam's abusive alcoholic father.  When Sam shows up on the Conways' doorstep, bloodied after taking a punch to the nose, both Jeannie and Paul do nothing to stop the abuse. 

Eventually, Sam ends up dead at her father's hands, and BB ends up blown to bits after a Halloween prank goes wrong.  Tom blames himself for BB's demise, as he was the one who handed BB the basketball, which the poor robot then tossed into the yard of the shotgun-wielding neighborhood crazy Elvira Parker (Anne Ramsey).  To redeem himself, he agrees to assist Paul in drugging his mother (apparently saying they were hanging out at Tom's house wasn't a good enough excuse), stealing Sam's body, and implanting BB's microchip into her brain in order to bring her back to life.  Tom is perhaps the truest friend in the history of cinema.  After the surgery is completed, and the zombie/robot Frankenstein monster has been unleashed, Tom actually asks Paul if they're even now.  Paul confirms that they are.

The potential for a good story is there, but it fails for a number of reasons.  First of all, there's really no sense of romance between Paul and Sam, just a feeling that they're good friends.  In fact, Paul seems more upset about BB's "death," hysterically sobbing and wailing, than he does about Sam's demise.  The makeup is laughable, with Swanson sporting blue eye shadow around her eyes to show the audience that she's dead.  Interestingly, she still has a full head of hair following the brain surgery.  Even though he's a marvel of modern science, BB knows only one word - his name; the rest of the time, he splurts gibberish, sounding like a robotic Tasmanian Devil.  Naturally, he speaks almost the entire time he's on screen.

Furthermore, and reportedly due to studio interference, the tone is all over the place; it's a tragic love story with a few Nightmare on Elm Street-lite dream sequences, random comical murders (including a basketball which shatters a woman's head as if it were a bloody piñata), and a baffling final shot which seems to set up a (thankfully, never-realized) sequel.  The tacked-on finale is doubly disappointing because, had it ended a scene earlier, it would have been predictable, but effective.

Ultimately, Deadly Friend's biggest flaw is that it just can't decide what it wants to be.  Is it a warning against the dangers of technology, a sad tale about child abuse, or a hilariously campy cheesefest?  Um... yes?

Slashers

Released in 2001, but originally conceived in 1998, Slashers' premise was ahead of its time.  An extreme Japanese reality/game show called $la$her$ invites contestants to compete for fabulous cash prizes.  The only catch is, they have to elude the masked murderers trying to do them in.

This time around, there are six contestants, all Americans, and three killers:  wild redneck Chainsaw Charlie, twisted priest Preacherman, and psychotic Dr. Ripper.  The contestants include law student Megan (Sarah Joslyn Crowder), level-headed Devon (Tony Curtis Blondell), preppy Michael (Kieran Keller), model Brenda (Sofia de Medeiros), tough guy Rick (Jerry Sprio), and tough girl Rebecca (Carolina Pla).

Slashers' biggest flaw is in its characters and acting.  The contestants are clichés; most are grating and annoying, while some are okay - not well-developed or interesting, by any means, but relatively inoffensive.  The worst is Megan; Crowder whines, scrunches up her eyes, and delivers each line, taking deep breaths in between words as if it pains her.  The killers, though, fare better.  They're introduced as celebrities, with throngs of cheering, banner-waving fans welcoming their arrival.  Each has their own distinct personality, especially surprising considering that two of the three (Chainsaw Charlie and Preacherman) are played by the same actor (Nick Napier).

Slashers is shot on video, but this works in the film's favor, adding to the feeling that the audience is actually watching a cheesy reality game show on TV.  Adding to the effect are the sugary, upbeat theme song, with its cheery refrain "They're never gonna last!" and the peppy, perky host Miho, who wears a Statue of Liberty get-up, complete with headdress and torch.  The action even pauses for commerical breaks - literally, as the contestants and slashers must freeze in place until the break is over.

It's also worth mentioning that Slashers is filmed in a way that makes it seem like one continuous shot with no cuts, adding to the illusion that cameraman Hideo is traveling with the contestants.  Because there are only six contestants, most of the blood and guts are displayed in the show's opening montage.  The effects are low-budget, but there is plenty of blood splattering and spurting, spilling guts, and even a body sawed clean in half.

Writer/director/editor Maurice Devereaux comes up with some great ideas and seems to have a real love for filmmaking.  Budget constraints prevent Slashers from being as legitimately good as it could have been, but, as it is, it's a very fun guilty pleasure, a brilliant premise with a flawed execution.


The DVD is loaded with special features, including an in-depth making of documentary, deleted scenes, director's commentary, trailers, and some oddities, such as an Inside the Actors Studio-style interview with Chainsaw Charlie and an interactive soundtrack that allows the viewer to pick and choose which tracks they want to listen to.