Nightmare
The origin of the American slasher movie is undoubtedly Hitchcockâs Psycho in 1960 with a handful of others in the years after (including 1974âs Black Christmas), but the quantum leap for the subgenre (and the prototype) was John Carpenterâs Halloween in 1978 and then the equally massive success of 1980âs Friday The 13th which cemented the notion that these types of films were both fun and profitable. Scores of lower end filmmakers started coming out of the woodwork hoping to make their own little franchise starting slasher / horror phenomenon but most would meet with little to no success, mostly because Halloween and Friday The 13th would ALWAYS be hailed as the true groundbreakers of the era which nobody else could ever come close to. The resulting chaos would become a bit ugly as many of the makers of these low budget films realized that in order to get themselves noticed, they would have to be nastier and sleazier and gorier (amazing considering how Carpenterâs film had almost no onscreen blood) than all the others, leading to an insane binge of films that not only would push the boundaries of human decency, but also risked getting themselves targeted by censorship boards the world over which finally resulted in the so called UK Video Nasties List, a directory of films which had been deemed as going âtoo farâ in their content and for the most part would wind up banned in several areas of the world. In many ways the nadir of the slasher film boom was this 1981 release, a proud member of The Nasty List as well as being one with a very controversial production history before disappearing off most peopleâs radar (never being seen on cable TV and rarely if ever being distributed on VHS) for almost 20 years and only recently being rediscovered where it has gained a small cult following with horror aficionados and is probably more widely seen now than it was upon its original release. As stated, the sordid production history was an interesting one, starting with the story that the legendary horror / gore FX man Tom Savini had designed and supervised the special effects on the film (a story mostly perpetrated by director Romano Scavolini), a claim which Savini would not only vehemently deny (despite photos that clearly placed him on the set obviously giving instructions) but he also threatened to sue the filmmakers if his name was put in the credits or used to promote the film. Savini DID admit to briefly working on the set as an advisory consultant (hence the photos) but as to whether or not he actually did anything involving the makeup FX or that maybe he was just ashamed of the entire project and thus wanted to distance himself and any involvement he might have had remains unknown to this day. In addition, the filmâs UK distributor was sent to prison for releasing the film despite the Video Nasty ban, and future Oscar winning director Joel Coen (of The Coen Brothers fame) was fired from the production where he had worked as an editor. How is the film itself? Well, it certainly has horrific production values, with marks and scratches all over the place that even a high definition Blu Ray release couldnât fix, itâs one of the very few slasher films to have its killer actually go so far as to murder a child, and worse, it features several scenes where child actors are present during moments of gruesome and explicit violence, good taste be damned. The one unsettingly original aspect of it all is in the idea that the killer (who we are told had already killed before having been captured) has been subject to some kind of a top secret government experiment where he was fed experimental drugs among other things in order to âcontrolâ his murderous impulses and thus make him more suitable for some kind of special âfield workâ, up to and including possibly being an assassin. Itâs uncertain if this was actually a serious consideration as the killer (Baird Stafford) appears to be a complete and total misfit, subject to spastic behavior and seizures that leave him foaming at the mouth like a dog which obviously makes him stand out in a crowd. The story kicks in when he somehow escapes The Looney Bin (which was actually filmed on location in a real, working mental hospital) and finds himself wandering in New York Cityâs Times Square, at that time still a world renowned beacon of porn, prostitution and shady, sleazy types walking the pavement at all hours. He even finds the time to take in an old fashioned peep show, a degrading, humiliating tradition for all involved where a stripper would dance in front of several men looking in through open windows and even accepting money from them before the window would then automatically close if the male viewer did not put more money in the machine in order to keep it open so that he could âfinishâ. Thereâs even a near pornographic scene with one hooker when the killer gets himself into a private booth. Eventually the killer leaves the city and starts making his way down south all the way to Florida where he begins stalking a single mother along with her family and friends. The single mother has problems of her own too, as she has a son who is a âproblem childâ, a relentless prankster and torturer of babysitters and other people whom he doesnât like which leads his mom to treat him harshly even as they now have a psycho breathing down their throats whom the boy has seen following them but nobody wants to believe him because of his own reputation as a bad seed kid. As for the gore and murders, they can get pretty intense, particularly a two victim kill with an axe where one is decapitated and the other has the axe buried in their skull. The government men trying to track down the killer also find out very late in the game (in a hard to believe plot notion) that he was known in the area where he grew up in to have committed murders as a child but that they were not aware of any of that when they had taken him in to be âreprogrammedâ because it is said that his name was a âcommon name in The Southâ. The killer is shown to be suffering from traumatic dreams from his past which causes him to have screaming fits and break out sweating even while it is obvious that he is heading for some kind of a showdown with the âevil kidâ as he goes after his babysitter (who hates the little bastard too), her boyfriend and a few other unlucky victims in the area too. As for the mother, she carries on a relationship with a ridiculous looking Tommy Chong lookalike (who appears to have a bit of money) and also receives some heavy breathing prank phone calls from the killer who apparently likes what he sees from her. There is also a ridiculous scene where the naughty little boy (who is 9 years old) is actually brought to the scene of one murder, shown the dead body of a victim and then (in front of a throng of onlookers and reporters) relentlessly questioned in public about whether or not he knows anything about it. The cast here is mostly made up of performers who never worked on another film again, not that anybody was particularly bad (Baird Stafford as the killer certainly appeared to at least go all out) but rather that nobody really seemed to stand out. At least the actress who played the babysitter possessed a sexy girl next door quality which made her watchable. The government men spend half the film sitting in front of a large supercomputer, the kind that you feed questions to which it always answers correctly (including pinpointing the exact destination of the killer!) which ironically has never even existed in the real world especially in the antiquated early 1980s. Incredibly sloppy in so many regards, this is the type of film where the attention span just drifts in and out constantly, the perfect drive in date movie where you can watch it on and off while you and your date are getting busy in the back seat. Gorehounds might have a special place in their hearts for this because of the bloody kills (and of course from wondering whether or not Savini actually engineered any of them), but the rest of us are probably just better off sticking to more acceptable mainstream horror flicks that are hailed as being all around classics instead of something like this with a very small cult followingâŚ
4/10