Mother’s Day (1980)

The slasher marathon continues with Mother’s Day. This is a movie that I’ve been meaning to watch for a long time, but just never got around to cracking open the DVD. Then it showed up on the Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs and I figured this was a great way to watch the movie. Honestly, I feel a bit dumb waiting so long.

Things get rolling with a motivational speaker spewing crap at an audience who is eating it up. Afterwards a couple of hippie types ask an old lady for a ride, clearly up to no good. But before they can get up to anything the car breaks down and some guys from the nearby woods come out and kill them. The old woman is Mother, and these are her boys Ike and Addley. You want me to be interested in your flick kill some hippies!

Then we meet a group of girls who have been friends since college. They like to take trips together every year and this year they have decided to go camping in the woods. Guess who they run into! Before you know it, the girls are being assaulted, chased, and pushed to their limits as the insane family uses them as practice. I think that Mother is training her boys to be the best serial killers ever. It must be something like that with all the training montages which is a first for slasher flicks or at least the first I’ve seen.

I really liked this movie. It is a bit weird that the killers, especially Ike and Addley are the most likeable characters in the movie. They have a goofy sort of dynamic between them that is kind of appealing. Of course, they also murder and rape so that isn’t good. How writer director Charles Kaufman pulls this off I don’t understand. It shouldn’t work with the tone shifting so radically from scene to scene. And yes, Kaufman is the brother of Lloyd Kaufman and this is a Troma movie. Though it is much different from the goofy flicks we all expect from them. This is a nasty and at times brutal movie. Though again the most disturbing bit is how much it makes you like the killers. If all feels a bit greasy but in a good way.

The kills are decent for an early eighties’ movie. We get a respectable six kills with two early on and then the rest towards the end. That leaves a long stretch without any deaths, though they do make up for it with some other horrible things. Some of the kills are tame like a dude getting choked and one character that just dies quietly after being brutalized. We do get death by Drano/Television, some hatchet work, and a head lopped off. Though my favorite kill is death by plastic boobs. I can honestly say I’ve never seen that before. All this action is topped off with a twist ending that I didn’t see coming but loved. This final surprise also involved some makeup work as well, which was cool looking.

I debated if I should add this to the slasher marathon. While it has the rape/revenge storyline this also has the gore, stalking, and nudity that are all hallmarks of the subgenre. So, I figured why the hell not include it. Though I’d be hard pressed to argue with someone who thought it didn’t belong I feel like it does. Again, I really liked this one and recommend that everyone give it a chance.

 

Ó Copyright 2021 John Shatzer

Night School (1981)

Time for me to get back to basics. Night Shift is a slasher movie that I watched back in the heyday of the eighties and honestly didn’t like all that much. But then that was on beat up VHS tape in a 4:3 aspect ratio rather than the beautiful new HD Blu-Ray. I wonder if that will make a difference. Spoilers it does!

The movie kicks off with the Boston skyline. On a personal note, in the eighties, I was living in Boston so that was sort of fun for me to recognize. We see a woman sitting with a child waiting for her to get picked up. She works at a preschool and when the kid leaves she is left all alone on the playground. That is until a leather wearing killer shows up on a motorcycle complete with a tinted faceplate. The girl is attacked, killed, and has her head cut off. Not a bad way to start a movie off.

We are then introduced to Austin, the detective assigned to the case. This isn’t the first killing where the victim has been decapitated, and it isn’t the last! More and more young ladies are found murdered with their heads lopped off and placed in water. One is an aquarium, another a sink, and yet another a bucket. What is up with that? Well Austin connects all the victims to a girl’s school and more specifically a professor Millet. He just happens to teach anthropology with a focus on primitive traditions including head hunting! Is he the killer? Did they make it that obvious? I’m not going to spoil it for you because I loved Night School this time around and don’t want to ruin the fun.

Seriously, what a difference a decent transfer can make. Not only can I now appreciate the way the movie is shot with things happening in the shadows, the way scenes are framed, and yes some of the more artistic camera work, but the sound is much better as well. I can hear the dialogue clearly and you also get some important musical cues that I think weren’t as noticeable before. This was like watching an entirely different movie. In the past I’ve always been sort of neutral towards Night School. I didn’t hate it, but it was easily ignored, and I never recommended it. That has certainly changed.

Love the look of the killer

The story is fun and different. Instead of following a bunch of kids getting picked off we get a lot of adult characters like Austin and Millet. The police are involved and there is more of a mystery here than just a line them up and mow them down scenario. We do get a decent number of kills with five characters meeting their end. Though be warned that most of these are offscreen and those that aren’t end up bloodless. The best part is a couple of severed heads. If you are looking for a gorefest this isn’t it. Paced well I was never bored with what I was watching and enjoyed the characters and their interactions with each other. This is a well-acted and written movie. The story also has a decent twist ending as well as another sort of funny one tacked on at the end.

In some ways this almost plays like a tamer Giallo with the killer in black, including black gloves. The subplot of the professor and his many lovers also is very important and adds that bit of sleaze that is very familiar to fans of the genre. Heck the detective and his sidekick comic relieve also would fit nicely in a Giallo. Then again, this movie makes at least one big reference to slasher movies. Early on the cops visit a peeping Tom that they suspect as the killer and placed prominently in the scene is a hockey mask. I’ve always considered this to be a slasher, but the argument could be made that it belongs in this other category.

This is a fun movie. There is the required nudity, enough kills, a couple severed heads on screen, and a mysterious killer. I also liked the connection between the murders and headhunting which gave Night School a neat spin. I was disappointed by the lack of gore, but that is my only complaint. I recommend that people check this one out. Just make sure to find the Blu-Ray in HD.

 

© Copyright 2021 John Shatzer

Wolfsbane by William W. Johnstone

This is the second book that I’ve reviewed here at the website from prolific author Johnstone who was better known for his westerns. I mention that again because I feel like some of that traditional cowboy storytelling found itself into this supernatural horror tale. More on that later.

The story takes place in a small Louisiana town and involves an ancient family of Satan worshipping werewolves and witches. A few decades earlier the locals found and killed one of the men of the family who was afflicted with the werewolf curse. His elderly wife, who is a powerful witch, has waited until the time was right to return to get revenge on the descendants of those that killed her husband. This involves bringing her werewolf relatives back to life as well as turning her victims into zombies to do her bidding. All of this is overseen by Satan himself, who apparently lives in the swamp nearby.

The granddaughter of the evil witch lady is somehow ignorant and innocent of this family curse. She ends up hooking up with a mercenary that was chosen by God to do battle with Satan. The mercenary quickly goes from “this is all bullshit” to “hey Satan how goes it?” Being the chosen one he does what a mercenary/soldier/hero does and takes the fight to them. This all leads to an abrupt and forced ending that clearly was meant to set the rest of the series up. And yes, there are many more books in this series.

I don’t think that I’m a Johnstone fan. While I was enjoying the other book I read from him, Bats, it didn’t stick the landing. Here I have the same problem. The story ends with our hero falling into the basement of the house and waking up five years later. The characters that were established have all either died or moved away. We are just left with our mercenary climbing out, meeting a priest that was apparently waiting for him, and getting ready for what I expect is the action in the second book. We don’t get an ending that satisfies this story but rather have a “to be continued” ending and that annoyed me.

Beyond the ending I have to say that for the most part I wasn’t fond of the story. First, we have werewolves, witches, zombies, and vampirism all mixed in with Satanism. This is a bit too much for the story to define and support. None of it is fleshed out and you get the feeling that Johnstone is sort of tossing stuff in because it is evil. Plus, the werewolves drink blood, the witch can only be killed with silver bullets, the zombies inexplicably can talk and aren’t killed with head shots. They never define the rules to the monsters in the story and that is annoying.

The story itself structurally has issues. Let’s take the zombies for example. They just sort of show up and no one is surprised by it. Some of the victims are killed and stay dead after their bodies are found. Others reanimate and stroll around… why? Also, characters go from minor and hardly defined to suddenly showing up and speaking as if they have been vital to the story all along. There were many times I had to stop and go back to try and figure out who the hell they were. That is just bad storytelling. I could give more examples of this, but I don’t feel the need to.

I know that Johnstone has a hardcore fan base who love him. Based on the two books that I’ve read from him I’m not one of them. There are so many much better written horror novels out there that I’ll not be spending any more time with this author. I can’t recommend Wolfsbane.

 

© Copyright 2021 John Shatzer

Deadly Detention (2017)

This looked like a newer slasher flick, and I suppose in a way it is. That said movies like Deadly Detention are why I have trust issues. I’ll explain that later in the review so stay tuned. Until then let’s talk about the plot.

The movie opens with some shaky camera action as people are being chased. Then we backtrack to find that a group of high school students are serving detention at a decommissioned prison. That seems odd but there is a throwaway line of dialogue about the high school having an infestation of possums. I suppose that explains it. In addition to the students, we have the principal and a bus driver. They get locked in and sure enough people start getting killed, eventually. The surviving students are led thru the prison by a mysterious voice over the intercom who locks and unlocks doors herding them towards something. Stuff happens, there is a twist, and mercifully the movie ends. Though not without flipping the bird to the audience one last time.

This is a bad movie. The pacing is terrible as they take way too much time establishing the characters that are nothing more than typical stereotypes. The angry loaner, the weirdo, the nerd (this time a religious kid), the jock, and the super vain horndog. We have all seen these before and don’t need twenty minutes of filler establishing them. Yeah, it takes twenty minutes for anything to happen. When things finally do get rolling it is disappointing, but I’ll talk about the kills later.

In addition to being slow Deadly Detention has a very predictable plot. I recognized the killer and their motivations the second they were mentioned. The fact that during their big rant they brag about how they manipulated the situation by planting the possums didn’t help make things any more believable or fun. Maybe it is because I’m a jaded old horror fan but there was nothing interesting or engaging about the story as it was so easy to figure out. There is one attempted twist at the end, but I found it dumb.

I do want to acknowledge that the tone of the movie sort of feels like it is supposed to be funny. Are they attempting to play this one for laughs? Well, if they are, they failed at that too. There are a couple times where I was a little amused, but Deadly Detention isn’t all that comedic. I think it is possible that the filmmakers didn’t know what they wanted to do and managed to fail at both horror and comedy.

Last thing I want to mention are the kills and special effects. Every kill happens offscreen and there is very little gore ever shown on the screen. We only get to see a bit of blood after the fact. Top it off that there are only five kills in the entire movie, and you have a slasher that doesn’t measure up. But then there really aren’t five kills. As I mentioned above, I think that this was being played for laughs. That is cemented in my mind when a character that was clearly stabbed to death suddenly returns and, in a toss away line of dialogue right before the end credits lets on that all the other victims are still alive. Including the kid that clearly bled out and the girl whose head was repeatedly smashed until a cell door was able to close on it! What the hell movie?

This is a bad one that I’d recommend everyone skip. I have no idea what they were thinking other than toss a bunch of ideas on the screen and see if any of it worked. Well, nothing did and I can think of many better options to watch when you want some teenagers picked off by an angry killer bent on revenge.

 

© Copyright 2021 John Shatzer

Sweet Sixteen (1983)

This is the first movie in this summer’s marathon that I hadn’t seen before. It is getting increasingly rare for me to find a slasher that I’ve not seen yet, so I was excited to check this one out. It has an amazing cast including Bo Hopkins, Patrick Macnee, Don Stroud, Michael Pataki, and Larry Storch. That is a whole lot of acting experience right there. The fact that I hadn’t heard much about this one sort of scares me. Well might as well dive in. 

Melissa moves into town with her father, an anthropologist doing research nearby, and soon runs afoul of someone. She is a rather “friendly” girl and being as pretty as she is there is a lot of attention coming her way. The boys that pursue her end up dead, so something is wrong with that. We are given several suspects, including her overprotective father, but nothing is set in stone until the very end of the movie. Along the way we also get to see some racist locals going after the “damn Indians” whom they blame for the killings. This leads to some non-slasher drama that I wasn’t expecting.  

In theory Sweet Sixteen is a slasher flick. You have the mysterious killer knocking off victims while the sheriff tries to figure out who the killer is. There is also a cool supernatural vibe where the killings appear to be done with some sort of ancient ceremonial knives, thus tying both the Indians working on the dig as well as the Melissa’s father to the crimes. Having some suspects and keeping the audience guessing is a key for one off slashers where we don’t’ have an established character. There is the requisite nudity, which is expected in a slasher flick. But what is weird is how many of the characters are much older adults. Normally in a movie like this the adults are at best supporting characters and at worst something to be sent off on vacation or a business trip so that the teens can get up to hijinks and the killer can get to murdering them! 

I did find the story to be very slow at times. There are long stretches where nothing much happens on screen. The kills are spaced unevenly with three of the meager six we get happening in the last fifteen minutes. The special effects work is lame and the kills mediocre. The first is okay enough as a drunk kid gets stabbed, but after that most of it is offscreen. What we do see are quick glimpses. I was left wanting more. To top things off when they finally resolve the plot it doesn’t make a lot of sense. We do get a few lines of dialogue trying to sum up what happened, but it feels forced and didn’t work for me. 

I know in the past that I’ve mentioned some movies that were repackaged and presented as a slasher flick when they were really a thriller or just a murder mystery. This movie feels like one of those, but I think it was actually shot to cash in on them. Either someone didn’t get the memo, or they just did a bad job on the script. One more thing I wanted to mention is that the movie is very dark, but to be fair that might be the VHS copy that I watched but I wanted to mention that in case there was a better copy out there you would know to look for it if you were so inclined. I’m not going to recommend spending your time watching Sweet Sixteen, but if you must try to find a copy where you can at least see the action. Really though I’d recommend passing on this one. 

© Copyright 2021 John Shatzer

Wrong Turn (2003)

I struggled with whether I should put Wrong Turn into the slasher movie marathon. An argument can be made that it doesn’t follow the formula and is more of a Hills Have Eyes type of flick. But then again it does have a Just Before Dawn vibe. I might overthink these things… In the end I decided to include it in this year’s marathon so let us dive right into the plot.

After watching a couple of rock climbers meet a grisly fate we are introduced to Chris, a newly minted doctor on his way to a job interview a week after the rock climbers are killed. Due to a traffic jam he decides to take some backroads and ends up running into the other characters, literally. His vintage Mustang is trashed when he rear ends an SUV that was stopped in the middle of the road due to some tire damage. Damage we soon find out was caused by some barbed wire on the road. Staring off ominous, aren’t we?

No one is hurt in the accident, so they head off in search of help leaving a couple at the cars to keep an eye on things. First thing that happens is that couple is picked off by some unseen killer or killers. The rest of them end up at a shack in the woods that is disgusting and freaky. There is a container of something in the fridge that the doctor realizes is bad, but before they can leave the owners come home. Here is where we meet our cannibal inbred mutant hillbillies. Some bodies are butchered, there is a big chase thru the woods, arrows are shot, heads are lopped off, and basically a good time is had.

Great creature design on the mutants

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed this movie. While far from perfect Wrong Turn has enough going for it that it is a solid horror flick. The story is paced well and the movie clocks in at a tight eighty-four minutes. This makes for a very entertaining experience where there is always something interesting happening on screen. This is the case even before the killers show up! While the character are being introduced, they are simultaneously setting up the environment and creating a spooky atmosphere. Having grown up in the country I know how creepy the woods can be and they capture that nicely.

When I sit down to watch a movie like this, I want to enjoy the special effects work. We get a respectable seven kills in the movie with most of them being onscreen. If I have one complaint about Wrong Turn it is the use of CGI to bring the kills to the audience. We do get some decent practical effect work with a couple of arrow hits and a fun gag with barbed wire, but a majority of the most creative stuff is digital. This includes my favorite kill that involves an axe to the face and a neat gag with the life going out of a victim’s eyes. I hadn’t seen anything quite like this before and enjoyed the ingenuity of the kill, but was a bit bummed it wasn’t done with practical effects work. Though I suppose I’m being a bit picky about it and should probably cut them some slack.

I have no complaints with the design of the killers. We get three different inbred mutant hillbillies and they all look great. Even without dialogue they seem to have different personalities and are a lot of fun to watch on screen. The creature design allows the actors to give a performance with just enough latex to make them look twisted without being cartoonish. These are clearly well thought out and for me are the highlight of the movie.

Wrong Turn is a good movie that unlike many of its contemporaries holds up well almost twenty years after it was released. If you want to see a “newer” slasher with an old school feel this is one of a couple that I’d recommend checking out. Stay tuned as you are going to see even more newer slasher flicks on my list this year.

 

© Copyright 2021 John Shatzer

The Demon Crown by James Rollins

I read a lot of books that don’t fit nor get covered here at the site. The Sigma Force series is one of those that really doesn’t fit. That is until I read The Demon Crown, which is filled with the normal globe-trotting adventure stuff but also has a horrifying plot that got under my skin.

We are introduced, or re-introduced if you are familiar with the series, to our cast of characters quickly. There are a lot of them but basically, they break down into a couple of teams. There is a group centered around spy couple Seichan and Gray. They are at the end of a long vacation and are present in Hawaii during an eco-terror attack. A swarm of huge wasps are unleashed on the islands and go on a rampage. Soon they are on the trail of those responsible for the attack which has its origins in the Second World War as well as an organization called the Guild.

The second group is made of other agents, lead again by a couple, Kat and Monk. Very quickly they realize that the wasps that attacked Hawaii have an unexpected connection to the Smithsonian and American history. This leads them to follow the journey of the man who donated his money and collection to create the Smithsonian, James Smithson. One of the items in his collection or at least one that eventually was recovered, is the key to the mystery and hopefully can provide a solution to the plague of the wasps.

The idea with this story is that the wasps do what they normally do. They lay eggs in living victims who then give birth to the next generation. See where the horror comes from? Our characters are in a race to find a solution before all the people and animals infected by the nasty bugs sudden burst and fill the air with more! Rollins hammers away at this idea with the character of Seichan, who is infected and whom we follow as she works with the others to solve it. This includes some spots where it is explained what is going to happen to her at each phase, the final one being the critters burrowing into bone. This freaked me out, but in the good way that horror fans can understand.

Some other observations. The pacing of the story is perfect as there is always something going on to move things further down the plot arc. The action plays out nicely and I thought that the mystery they had to unravel was also compelling. Tying the fictional in with the historical is something that Rollins has done quite a bit in this series and has become very good at it. The idea that the events laid out here have their beginnings in the early eighteen hundreds and also reference the Second World War and the attack on Pearl Harbor was a nice touch. I’m a history nerd and love when this is pulled off well.

I was surprised that this far into the series, I think Demon Crown is the thirteenth book, that Rollins was able to write something that is accessible to a new reader. If you picked this book up without knowing of the others it would still make sense. The references are kept to a minimum and in the case of the reoccurring characters the author spends just enough time fleshing them out without boring those not new to the franchise. Don’t be scared off from The Demon Crown because it is part of such a long series.

This is an excellent read that I highly recommend. If you are interested in reading the entire series the place to start is with Sandstorm, another great book. Give this or really any of Rollins’ other books a chance. You won’t be disappointed. 

 

Ó Copyright 2021 John Shatzer