Tag: slasher

The Last Slumber Party, 1987 – ★★★

Do you want a slasher movie that somehow has a film budget, but an SOV Sensibility? Well; ‘The Last Slumber Party’ is the movie for you! This, somewhat generic, late 80s slasher piece pretty much gives you the absolute barest minimums you need in order to enjoy a slasher pic. But with the added bonus of some surrealist arty horror moments thrown in for good measure!

The plots…Well; the plots about as generic as it gets really, 3 girls are looking to let their hair down by hosting a slumber party at one of the girls parents house. the father of the house happens to also be a doctor working on a psych ward, and wouldnt you believe it! One of their more ‘Out there’ patients has escaped the ward dressed in scrubs and armed with a particularly sharp scalpel! And to confuse things a bit! There are ALSO 3 horny jocks ambling about looking to crash the slumber party for good times and beers, even though the girls are on STRICT instructions to have NO beer and NO BOYS! 

And what follows is about 50 minutes of girls idling around a small mansion in states of undress, while the dudebros randomly break in and out of the house to get fresh and the killer slowly makes his way to the house, picking off a few people along the way. with the remaining 20 or so minutes of the film being the main reason to check this one out. Some pretty decent kills, and artsy dream sequences that just about help pull this film up out of the dregs into something half decent and worth your time. 

Dont be fooled, the script for this really isnt anything special, outside of the dream sequences, this is a heavily padded feature where we spend more time watching the girls dancing in the kitchen and wandering around the house than we get ACTUAL plot setting…maybe with some more atmospheric lighting or even a jumpscare or two things could have been a bit different. But its just a hell of a lot of walking and exposition. intersperced with an ultra low body count on the ‘slasher’ front. 

The dialogue feels drawn out and overcomplicated, presumably again, to help pad the runtime. The characters are all ultra generic stereotypes of the genre…Basically if you’ve ever caught a slasher film, your likely WAY too familiar with these character tropes…and thats kind of dissapointing, because while I know these kinds of characters are a given, its really more what you do with them that makes them work to their full potential, rather than just putting the tropes in the scenario and watching it play out. 

Throw in a somewhat underwhelming ending and an act structuring that just seems to get stuck at one pace for the full runtime, and youve got yourself a horror movie thats solely flying by the tone and vibes its putting out on a script level…and thats about it. 

I will say, this feels a bit like a Horror comedy in places, and when its being more light hearted, it really lands the punches well. But this one kind of reminded me of ‘Nightmare Sisters’…But not as sharp or well constructed…and I didnt like ‘Nightmare Sisters’…So when im saying your the poor man to that…thats not great.

On every other front, its the bare minimum…the directions flat, predictable and kind of lifeless, barring the arty moments where it does get a *bit* of a bump in quality…But not enough to really fully win me over. Cast directions fairly flat and lifeless too, this is the kind of movie where you can tell the cast and film makers were excited to say ‘Fuck’ on screen, because the cast deliver their ‘F-bombs’ with a pointedness that can only come from someone being a bit *Too* excited to swear on screen…their physical presences are limited purely to scripted instructions and their dialogue deliveries are largely D.O.A. 

The cine is largely bland, mostly locked off shots in mid or close up. theres no dynamics in the setup for this one, and while I will say its pretty decent on the B-roll, there are moments where they clearly forgot to shoot coverage, because the edit will just flat out hard cut away from some scenes with no transitionary shot creating a very jarring experience. Compositions and lighting are uninspired. theres maybe a half dozen half decent shots in this thing…But otherwise its very utilitatrian in its approach, which felt a bit clinical to me…Not helped at all by the fact that the killer for the film isnt really particularly engaging or interesting to shoot, its a guy in a surgical mask…they never reveal what he looks like under it, and given large chunks of the film take place in the hospital, it just kind of all blurs together. 

Performances, as mentioned are flat, even the kills lack any kind of siginificant animation or ‘Depth’ to them…people just die in this film and noone really gives it any kind of attention. they just move on, theres no mourning, no sense that we should even really care these characters are gone, and that combined with the fact that the characters themselves just arnt given that much depth or characterization, leaves the whole thing feeling quite underwhelming.

Oh! and the soundtracks kind of D.O.A as well, a handful of tracks largely at the beginning and end of the film. and very little in the way of incidental music. Most of the film plays out to dead air or ‘on set’ audio…its quite dissapointing. 

‘The Last Slumber Party’ has its moments, and it doesnt really do anything so horrendously that I could call it ‘Bad’ inherently…but it didnt do anything to really wow me or win me over either. It’s a true neutral. Definitely not main feature fodder, but it could play well as an appitizer, or the middle part of a triple feature bill…clocking in at just over 70 minutes. if your looking for a slasher and your in a hurry, this’ll give you everything you need in compressed form…but not everything you want…nor everything at a breathable pace.

Source – https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-last-slumber-party/

by tytdreviews

The Boogey Man (The Bogey Man) (1980)

I really wasnt expecting much from “The Bogey man” when I first put it on. The Video Nasties craze of the 1980s was a very sporadic period in the UK with dozens of titles being caught up in the frothing fever of trying to “ban the filth” and this meant that a few titles that really shouldnt have been listed as “Nasties” somehow got sweapt up in the hoopla.

I dont subscribe to the belief that the 1984 video recordings act was in anyway a good thing, I think it heavily censored creativity and drove the interest in these movies into the hands of the underground market where prices ran rampant and quality control was non existent. even if I did accept the act in some capacity (Which I most definitely do not) the consistency was all over the place, with films like “Cannibal Holocaust” and “Maniac Cop” being perfect examples of movies that quite reasonably could justify this act to a degree (They’re both very hard watches that are purposefully designed to be uncomfortable and shocking) through to movies like “The Evil Dead” and “Zombie Flesh Eaters” which while pushing the envelope a bit, were hardly going to “Corrupt the youth”. Conservative drive and a Newspaper driven campaign, only spurred on by the Mary whitehouse brigade only led to further confusion and unwarrented restrictions.

Arguably the most famous being a recurring issue in which police officers would repeatedly seize copies of “The Littlest Whorehouse in Texas” which is a PG comedy movie and copies of “Apocalypse now” which were passed by the BBFC being seized because it sounded too much like a Cannibal movie…only spurring things on and causing a rise in panic, incidents like “The Hungerford massacre” or the “James Bulger” case were sensationalised in the tabloids as being indisputable proof that violent films were corrupting people. In these incidents Hungerfords massacre happened because the killer watched “Rambo 3” (There was no proof of this…The only evidence given was that he’d worn a bandana when he committed the killings), and in the latter “Childs Play 3” was put to blame (Despite the fact that again there was no proof of this and the only evidence was that the killers father had rented the movie, not watched it, and returned it 2 days later) it was this incident that led to one of the “Last hurrah” moments of the Video nasty movement when the Sun ran with the sensationalist front page title “For the sake of ALL our kids Burn your video nasties”

Today barring a few seconds of animal cruelty here and there almost all of the original banned video nasties have not only been released but have been released officially multiple times both in standard and High definition. Theres only one video nasty that remains thats still been denied a classification, that’s “Love Camp 7” but a majority have now been released uncut. And being able to see these films for what they are and realise that a majority of them were purely on the list because of histeria is both eye opening and distressing to me.

The Boogey man is the perfect example of this. This movie has 2 graphic moments in it pretty much, and quite honestly theres much much worse out there. This shouldnt have been on the video nasties list and yet both this and the movies sequel (Which im told is a total and utter raging toxic sludge of a movie) were on the banned list with litte to no justification.

And its a pretty okay movie to boot!, its no masterpiece but I was really genuinely surprised by just how high quality it was when compared with some of the shinola on the banned list. it made it to my “Shelf of interest” as a quirky and slightly unusual oddity. One I’d reccommend you look out for.

(The Posters misleading as well…there are windows, women and shadowy figures in the movie…but not necessarily all at once)
by tytdreviews

Fade to Black (1980)

This entire review came about entirely by chance and I was very grateful for it. I love old TV ad’s not even english adverts strictly, US ones were my thing for the longest time. theres a youtube channel called “80’scommercialvault” and from about 2011 to 2017 I’d spend most evenings or lunch breaks just cycling through dozens of there videos, having them run in the background or just playing for laughs really…its amazing to see how a different country was handling things from a commercial perspective in the 80’s and 90’s.

It was on this channel that I first saw a trailer for “Fade to Black” and until that point i’d never heard of this film. it took nearly 5 years for me to finally get round to watching it but I’ll tell you this. I didnt half enjoy it!

The films effectively “Scream” before “Scream” was “Scream” its well written, eloquent and quite well put together…apart from 1 or 2 overly padded shots and a random masturbation scene this movies got a very broad and impressive knowlege about it.

Now it’s by no means a perfect movie. but it’s a fun little film that im very glad I’d had the privilage of landing upon. While I dont tend to watch US ad’s as often as I used to  (It’s all about 80’s and 90’s Itallian Adverts these days Home boy!) Its one of the few gems I’ve found during my trecks through the swamps of bad movies. it’s most definately shelf worthy 🙂

(His Dracula sequence is my personal favourite of this movie…though I also liked his “White heat” finale)
by tytdreviews

Christmas Evil (You better watch out!) (1980)

This episode was uploaded “Christmas week” meaning it landed literally days before Christmas day itself. Its quite normal at this time that youtube enters a period of low traffic. Logically you’d think the opposite would be the case as everyone is cooked up at home for the holidays (Which havent even begun at this point) you’d think everyone would be clambouring for distraction on sites like youtube. But you’d be wrong.

Rather surprisingly (And it was a bit of a shock to me) the week christmas happens on and the subsiquent 2 weeks after it are some of youtubes quietest times of the year. I have to assume this is because people are out at parties, enjoying time with the family or just plain too busy to watch stuff. But it kind of caught me off guard and was a bit of a learning experience.

“Christmas evil” would mark the end of my 2nd season. And I really wanted to send the year off with a bang. I’d ummed and ahhd about what movie would be the best one to act as a send off to 2017 and to round my 2nd season off, and I settled with “Christmas Evil” because quite by chance I stumbled on it at random and it actually seriously impressed me at how deep and unusual it was for what is effectively a christmas themed slasher film at it’s heart.

Having thoroughly enjoyed the film writing the script for it was an absolute joy. and at the time I thought it was one of my best pieces (As I work to a schedule i’d planned and edited this episode in late october/early november time ready for it to go live on the 22nd of December) I scheduled an upload for it as I was going to be away from my house from the 22nd to the 24th and went out to spend the run up to christmas with my partners inlaws.

And then…Nothing. And I mean absolutely nothing. The video went live on the 22nd of December and it wasnt until the 26th that it gained it’s first “view” and that was me just checking the video to make sure there wasnt some glaring issue that was preventing it being played…It currently stands as my least watched video review on my channel as of May 2018  it has a grand total of 9 view (3 of which were me as a result of adding end screens and info cards and again a few months later to add translations)

I genuinely dont know why this video just failed immaculately out of the gate but there could be any number of reasons why it failed to pick up. I’ve read in some places that if your video doesnt make 20% of the number of subscribers you have in views within the first 24 hours that it can be dumped by youtubes SEO Algorithm. I’ve also read that youtubes SEO is less favourable to content with trigger words in the titles and descriptions (Words like “Evil” are trigger words) equally it could have been just left too late. uploading a christmas video on the 22nd of December is leaving things a bit to the last minute and it could legitimately be the case that people were just fed up of anything christmassy by that pont.

In either case i’ve thrown everything I can at this video and nothings seemed to have done the trick. I’ve changed the tags, I’ve edited the description, I’ve shared it and shared it and shared it, I’ve tweaked the titles (And tried them in all caps and without caps) I’ve changed the thumbnail…literally short of re-uploading it I’ve done everything I possibly can with it and nothing has changed its status.

It’s “Delisted” it didnt meet its expected targets and because it’s been shown to be an underperformer youtube have effectively taken it out of there search engine. go and try to find it in a youtube search. you wont be able to. it’s only with overly specific search terms like “Christmas evil TYTD Reviews” or  “Christmas evil Red triangle reviews tytd” that anything will pop up…even “Christmas evil TYTD” brings nothing up.

Im not angry about this mind; im just a bit sad about it more than anything (as I imagine many people would be if they put a week of evenings into assembling an edit only for automation to decide its not relevent within 24 hours) Im more upset that the film itself is as underrated and relatively unknown as it is rather than the fact people cant hear me tell them why they should go and see it.

At some point in the future I’ll probably cut my losses and re-upload this one wholesale just to see if it helps it get re-listed. but in the mean time here it is the last TYTD Reviews/Red Triangle episode of 2017…and things only seemed to pick up from here on in.

(I’ll let the review do the talking about this underrated classic. but I seriously cant wait for a good UK Bluray of this one)
by tytdreviews