Cropsey custom on ebay.

Check out this custom Cropsey figure on ebay right now. Amazing, but damn expensive at $430.
You can see it HERE.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter - 1984

Friday the 13th part IV: The Final Chapter.

Happy 30th birthday to my favorite Friday the 13th film. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter was released on April 13, 1984.

The Slasher Film.

I review a lot of slasher films on this site. The genre is right up there with the spaghetti western in my book. I recently released my top 10 list (well, it's more of a class) and I'm always updating my BIG Chronological List of Slashers. I use a lot of made up verbiage and personal systems for ranking and categorizing slasher films. This post started out as a quick explanation of those things and evolved in to much more.

You can find a whole lot of information regarding slasher films over at this Wikipedia page. I don't buy into some of the information presented there. There are many films wherein groups of people are murdered one by one. This in and of itself, does not a slasher make. The page also reads like some sort of one-upsmanship game by slasher fans, adding comments and information about their favorite, obscure slasher film.

I have read Vera Dika's book, Carol Clover's book, Adam Rockoff's book, and  Richard Nowell's amazingly researched book, each with paragraph long titles. If you are interested in the history, finances, and cultural anthropology of the slasher genre read these books. My feeling is that they are interesting in as much as an artist's statement is at an art gallery: knowing what the production companies intentions were, how the distributor marketed films, where the markets were, where the culture was. I waver between keen interest and wanting to puke.

If you like your artwork with no explanation; to make up your own mind without context. Just go watch the films. This post is meant to provide a pinch of context, some history, a smidge of my ranking system, and a somewhat blurry definition of the genre. If it is not enough, go dive into the books listed above and learn about gross revenues and propitious cultural morays.

Like always, I encourage you to make your own lists, your own definitions, to create your own universe.  When you die, this universe ends for you. Go out and be the god you are. Go watch the slasher films you want to watch. And if I can help you decide which ones, I would be greatly honored. 

Psycho

Blood Feast

A very short history

I am not a stickler about the scores of pre-slasher, thriller films. Yes, Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians contributed, the Grand Guignol in France contributed. We know about Thirteen Women and Without Warning. I believe the genre began to take shape with Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, both released in 1960. In both films, the audience does not latch onto police detectives in search of a killer. The serial killer is the main character and the psychology of that character is explored in detail.

In 1963 Herschell Gordon Lewis and Dave Friedman released Blood Feast. The psychology of the killer was irrelevant and just about everything else took a back seat to the bloodshed and violence. This was the first gore film and contributed greatly to the visceral attention to the act of murder which helped define the slasher genre.

Blood and Black Lace, directed by Mario Bava was released in 1964. It was an early entry into the Italian giallo cycle of films and had a lot of features which later became staples of the slasher film.The single killer in a black coat, gloves, and a spooky mask. Killing without firearms, faceless and unstoppable. Bava also directed Twitch of the Death Nerve, released in 1971, which also influenced the slasher genre in much the same way as Blood and Black Lace.

While it seems like a long stretch to horror fans, film history buffs know that 1969's Easy Rider crashed through the roof and opened up independently produced films, targeted at youth audiences, to the major film distributors. These distributors scrambled to find hit films in dark corners they had never dared look before. Art films, foreign films, experimental films, even exploitation films were snatched up and taken out of the underground and into the mainstream cinema.

In 1974 all the elements came together when Bob Clark's, Black Christmas was released. This Canadian produced (as in, the Canadian government helped produce it) film is the first proper slasher film. Black Christmas failed at the box office, a spark failing to ignite.

"Did John Carpenter rip-off Black Christmas? No, he did not. The story, very briefly was that John was an admirer of Black Christmas and subsequently I was hired to direct his first screenplay, set in the mountains of Tennessee. It didn't end up happening. I had to move on. It was Warner Brothers. And John had asked me, very quickly, did I intend to do a sequel to Black Christmas? He admired it a great deal. I said, 'No, this is going to be my last horror film.' And he said, 'But if you did, what would it be?' And I simply said, 'It would be the next year. The killer would have been caught and he's escaped. He's come back to the town. No one knows he's back in Bedford, this small, North Eastern town. And I'm going to call it Halloween.'"
- Bob Clark (HERE at :47. Bob Clark goes on to make it clear that John Carpenter did NOT rip-off Black Christmas.)

In 1978, John Carpenter's Halloween was independently released and slowly started a fire. Its popularity created the slasher genre.

The Burning

Maniac

The Prowler

Classes
Ezra Pound said that there are Innovators, Masters, and Imitators.

Films like Black Christmas and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were clear innovators of the genre. Halloween, Friday the 13th, and the first fifteen minutes of When a Stranger Calls are the clear Masters, with many other slasher films up for debate regarding their Master status.

The bulk of the genre is Imitators. Being an imitator is not a negative mark. Imitators are what make a genre.

Labels
There are also a handful of self-described labels to identify and categorize slasher films:
Urban Slasher
Rural Slasher
Fantasy Slasher
Teen Slasher 

I use these labels frequently. For the most part I tend to dismiss fantasy slashers. I mostly cannot stand them. I mostly try to ignore them. I mostly want them burned.

Friday the 13th part 2

Hospital Massacre

Edge of the Axe

Antropophagus

Tiers
I have a sort of Tier system set up in my skull as well. It is not as defined as I'd like but I use this system to delineate budget, production value, and distributor strength. Friday the 13th, Halloween, their sequels, My Bloody Valentine, these are Tier 1 films.

The Burning, Prom Night, Hospital Massacre, would fall under Tier 2.

Tier 3 films were usually made with great love by small crews of buddies or by fly-by-night production companies looking for a quick buck. Many released straight to video. Intruder, Don't Go in the Woods, and The Nail Gun Massacre are all examples of Tier 3 slashers.

Definition
What is a slasher?

Any time you try to squeeze a cycle of films together into a genre, you find that as they stretch the genre and flex their creativity, they puncture your sack and destroy your definitions. I will lay out some very general guidelines that I use. If you are a little shit about it, you can find films on my big list that will break these rules.

1. A killer kills. This is the primary reason this film exists. All other plot points are MacGuffins.
2. The killer is a person.
3. The killer does not use a firearm.
4. The killer cannot be reasoned with. 
5. The story does not follow the police. It follows the killer or the victims.
6. A final victim kills the killer or at least, escapes. There is a survivor.


(The screen grabs are from my Fantasti-frames site.)
Going to Pieces is a decent documentary based off of Adam Rokoff's book. However, their glossing over of Black Christmas (a quick close-up of the poster) is unforgivable.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown - 1976

The Town That Dreaded Sundown.

This almost-slasher film was based on the real Phantom Killer Texarkana Moonlight Murders in 1946. I have yet to read about the murders so I am not sure how accurate the film is. I sincerely doubt the actual killer tied a knife to a tuba slide and played the tuba behind a tied up woman, stabbing her to death. So bad.

The film had some really good qualities. The killer looked amazing and terrifying. The film came out in 1976, two years before Halloween and six years before Jason swiped his look in Friday the 13th part II. The action sequences were tense as the killer was not slick or agile, being tossed around and struggling with the victims. Mary Jane from Gilligan's Island has one particularly harrowing scene that goes on forever as she struggles and fights and flees. The victims are not teeny-boppers eager to die.

The ending was a bit anti-climactic, but after the credits ran, I was satisfied and interested in the real case. The crimes, as portrayed in the film, felt a lot like the Zodiac killings in the 1960's and 70's. The movie was essentially a Texas 1946 version of  the 2007 Zodiac film. The story follows the police investigation. The plot of the film is not the plot of a slasher film 'Who can survive the killer?' it is 'Can the police catch a killer?'

There are some extremely out of place and horrible comedy moments in the film. The director plays a bumbling, rookie cop, and just ruins every scene he's in. There is a pointless narration which runs throughout, attempting to pull the film into the hard nosed detective, film noir, genre. The tuba killing attempts to be weird and comes off as unrealistic and weak. The final scene takes place in broad daylight which doesn't make a lot of sense and hurts the credibility of the characters. I also don't understand why trains are this unstoppable moving force in films. How many gunfights start in, on, and around trains and the operators of the train don't stop?

If you like the ultraviolence, this has a little, not a lot. If you're in the mood for a good old fashioned crime drama, set in Texas, with dates and times and stakeouts and pushy press and weird side characters and Texas Rangers and a tricky killer, this is a winner.

(Poster courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art.)

The Initiation - 1984

The Initiation

This slasher starts out with a nightmare dream sequence, runs us through a sorority initiation ceremony, whisks us to an insane asylum, takes us to a mansion, back to the sorority house, and finally deposits us at a huge, empty shopping mall. The story really shoots for the stars, incorporating all sorts of slasher elements and when it seems too much, they are all brought together with deftness.

The Initiation doesn't twist or stretch the genre, it takes all the interesting bits and pieces of other slashers and builds a pretty decent film.

Daphne Zuniga plays a rich, but sheltered woman entering her first year in college. She's taking the initiation into a sorority which leads her to the mall her father owns. She has been plagued by the same nightmare her whole life. Someone escapes from a mental hospital and begins a killing spree. That burn victim gardener looks mean and suspicious. Her mother seems to be hiding something. A solid slasher storyline.

The acting is decent. Daphne Zuniga has a wonderful, youthful, beauty which makes it easy to like her character. The second cutest woman in the movie gets naked a few times which is always nice. The rest of the characters are underwritten and flat at first, but as the film moves along, a few of them are fleshed out.

The kills are good. A few garden fork stabbings, an axe to the head, an arrow, an off-screen throat slit. They are all effective.

The music score is dated and mostly horrible. Might be fun to laugh at.

I was genuinely surprised at the ending. Even re-watching it, I mis-remembered the ending and was surprised again. If you want a solid, by the numbers, slasher, this a great option.

Here's a trailer. Be warned... boobs.



(Poster courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art.)

My Bloody Valentine - 1981

My Bloody Valentine.

One of the stand outs of the golden age of slasher films is My Bloody Valentine. The film is a Tier 1 slasher shot in Canada with one of the best scripts in the genre.

Twenty years ago a group of miners were the victims of a preventable accident. A cave-in caused by the negligence of their supervisors eager to get to the annual Valentine's Day dance, trapped the miners for several days. Only one man survived, feeding off the corpses of the dead. His name was Harry Warden. Harry took revenge on the supervisors by cutting out their hearts. Harry Warden was sent to an insane asylum.

Now, after all these years without a Valentine's Day dance, the town is all a bustle preparing to re-instate the annual tradition. The problem is that people keep getting killed, and their hearts keep getting separated from the rest of their bodies. Has Harry Warden returned?

My Bloody Valentine is a top rate slasher. The story is expertly written. It is lean and tight and written in a small way, allowing for a smaller production to look big league. The actors are all fine at their job and likeable. There is a real sense of camaraderie, that this group has been around each other their whole lives. You really get to know them and like them. Which makes it all the more interesting when they are slaughtered.

The film could really be played as a straight whodunnit, without the slasher elements, and the VHS version that I grew up with was mostly that. In 2009 an unrated version was released on DVD with a few extra minutes of warm, delicious, gore. You can see from some of the stills that the added shots were taken from an inferior negative source. It doesn't matter, though, the kills are all good. The effects are good. As I said earlier, because the cast is so good, it can make the kills seem even more vicious.

The mine location is the central point to the film. At no time does it feel like a Hollywood set. You will feel the darkness and the cold of being below ground. The actors throw out jargon and move around like they really belong there. The killer's mining outfit is super cool. His headlamp provides lens flares and lights up his victim's faces. A cool addition.

My Bloody Valentine also works pretty well as a date movie. The kills are straight down the middle with five guys and five gals. There are a pair of mild sex scenes. There are more characters in love than in lust. The characters are a little older and are lower middle class mine workers. The love triangle involving the main characters is interesting and well written. No one is a bad guy/gal.

The 2009 DVD re-release came at the same time as a 3-D remake was shit out by Hollywood. The 1981 version is set-up perfectly for a prequel  and/or a sequel. A remake was the wrong choice.

I normally try to stay away from the internet noise. If I don't have something new to add to the discussion of a film, even if it is miniscule, I try not to write about it. In this case, I'm just riding the wave. If you like horror films, see this movie. It is one of the best slashers out there.

(Poster courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art.)

Hospital Massacre (X-Ray) - 1982

Hospital Massacre (AKA X-Ray)

For all its faults I'm a big fan of this film. The killer's premise is laughable, the killer's movement around the hospital is quicker than The Flash, and worst of the all the film suffers from multiple personalities: from serious horror to unintentionally funny to intentionally funny to trying to be funny but just coming off pathetic, I can see how the tonal inconsistencies in this movie can drive many people to hitting the STOP button. I have always found the film to play like a story from Kafka or Sartre. Taken literally, the film doesn't work, but as an allegory or nightmare, it is effective and the unfunny humor is frustrating and stifling.

As a kid, I thought Barbi Benton was an A-List movie star. I really thought I had found some secret film she did. And when she took off her top, I just about blew mine. I was stunned. Barbi Benton really holds the film together. She keeps it straight horror, putting up with the weak attempts at surreal humor. Her character is serious and has depth. This isn't teenagers, making out and smoking dope, she is a mother, recently divorced, with a new boyfriend. She's an adult.

As far as I know, the film skipped the DVD era. My VHS copy is wretched and I complained for years not having a DVD of the film. Recently, a beautiful blu-ray was released. It is just stunning in its clarity. I noticed immediately that after the chase with the killer begins, Barbi Benton's face is covered in sweat. It gives me a warm fuzzy that she would be cool with humanizing her doll-like visage this way. My wife, not knowing her name, even said, "Her face is so perfect. She looks like a doll," when the film started.

The other actors really move around Barbi Benton. They are fine for the most part, but you will not get wrapped up in their character or mourn their deaths. This is a who-done-it and the bloodletting is really a check mark of innocence.

The sound track also plays like a surreal nightmare.

The kills are fine. Nothing spectacular, a few are goofy, but the crimson does flow. The pacing is excellent. If an enterprising slasher fan stripped out the humorous scenes and shots, I think a nice, straight horror, fan-edit could be made.

The blu-ray is extremely clean. If you can handle a little surreal humor, this is an excellent Tier 2 slasher film. It's not going to scare you or disturb you. If you watch it with a group, the nightmare insanity becomes shake-your-head-hilarious. It's a damn fun film.

I'm sorry but the stills are from a low grade copy. I'm working on pulling stills from my blu-ray. Below is the full film.

I Drink Your Blood

 I Drink Your Blood
Acrylic on canvas. 24"x18"

Daily poster: Without Warning.

 

Without Warning.
Happy 60th birthday! Without Warning opened on May 8, 1952.
Without Warning is, on it's surface, a film noir. However, I believe the film to be much more; I feel comfortable labeling Without Warning as a proto-slasher film.
Sure it has all the police procedures on display; the authoritative voice over; and the chase scene at the end has cops on the tail of the killer. However, the murders are more brutal; the police are not the protagonists of the film; there are no whodunnit or mystery aspects; there is no organized crime element; the killer fits the Psycho, Peeping Tom, and many other later slasher film molds in both personality and murderous techniques.
The film has a slasheriffic pace and the killer is just plain creepy. He is a Los Angeles gardener who had his heart broken by his blond wife. Something ripped in his mind and he kills blond ladies. Simple enough.
If you love a good slasher or are a film noir freak, but you're looking for something a little outside the box, Without Warning is a pretty good choice.
I can't find a trailer for the film, so enjoy this clip.

Daily poster: New Year's Evil.

New Year's Evil.
Hope everyone had a slashtastic New Year's eve.
I have to admit that I own this film and have yet to watch it. I will have to rectify the situation as soon as possible.
Poster courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art.

The Burning turns thirty.

My favorite slasher film, The Burning, opened thirty years ago, on May 8, 1981.

Even director, Tony Maylam, said of The Burning, "This is a formula horror movie, in it's time." That being said, I feel that The Burning is the perfect slasher film.

A campground worker is seriously burned by a group of kids. Five years later, he returns to the camp and murders his way through the current crop of kid campers. It's pretty simple. The basic foundation of the story was based on the Cropsy maniac legend from the north-eastern part of the U.S.

A documentary was released a few years ago briefly detailing the legend and going in-depth on it's possible origin. The documentary is simply titled, Cropsey. (If you have Netflix, you can watch it online.)

The film was the first project of Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Miramax Films. Director, Tony Maylam had directed Genesis in Concert and attracted the eyeballs of Harvey Weinstein who ran a company that put on large concerts. The Weinsteins knew that the film was going to be based on the Cropsy legend.

Friday the 13th came out in May 1980. A large part of the film's success was the realistic gore effects created by Tom Savini. Harvey Weinstein and Tony Maylam flew to the Pittsburgh home of Tom Savini to woo him for their film. Lucky for them, Savini had some reservations about the upcoming Friday the 13 part two story. Weinstein and Maylam were able to recruit Savini for The Burning. Savini set to work, thinking of new ways to murder teenagers.

Maylam knew that the killer would use garden shears as his main weapon. "I just thought it was a cool idea," Maylam said on the commentary track for The Burning DVD.

Savini created the Cropy make-up in four days. In his make-up effects book, Grande Illusions, Savini wrote, "I sculpted Cropsy's face remembering the pictures I'd seen at the burn unit at Pittsburgh's Mercy Hospital and a beggar I'd seen on the streets of downtown Pittsburgh when I was a kid, and the book Nursing the Burn Patient by Feller."

Cropsy's look is horrifying and perfect. He does not look like a typical burn victim, but a melted, twisted man. Less a victim and more a monster.

Ezra Pound said that there are Innovators, there are Masters, and there are Imitators. Many slasher fans cry out that The Burning is one of the many fine imitations which make up the slasher genre. I disagree. I believe the Innovators of the American slasher genre are films like Blood Feast, Black Christmas, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The Masters, the films that embody the genre to perfection, are Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Burning, Friday the 13th part 4, and, if I can cheat a bit, the first fifteen minutes of  When a Stranger Calls. The rest of the films are Imitators, which is not a derogatory statement in and of itself, with varying degress of greatness.

Why is The Burning a masterpiece within the slasher genre?
The film is part of the wilderness slasher sub-genre (as opposed to the urban slasher) it takes place at a campground for teens. The teenagers in The Burning are a big part of why the film is a masterpiece. They are interesting characters and they are ultimately sympathetic. You do not want them to die. Early 1970's and 1980's slasher films relied on audience projection. Teens were watching teens. The teenage audience was expected to walk in the shoes of the teenage characters and be horrified by their deaths. Later 80's slasher characters were typically unsympathetic. Fans went to watch them die. Killers like Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger were cheered as their bodycounts grew.

The film is helped along with the young charisma of future stars Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens, and Larry Joshua. Emmy Award winner, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High star, Brian Matthews is the final boy. Even Holly Hunter cutes up the screen and has one line of dialogue. The kids act like kids. Larry Joshua aside, this is not a group of 30-somethings parading as teenagers and acting like they are above it all. These ARE teenagers and young adults. They have the energy and chaos of kids and not one of the actors phone it in.

There are a ton of kids. There are not six kids and five murders with a final girl. You're not really sure who is going to be killed. It is not cut and dry.

The final girl is a boy! Cool turn of events. He has dimensions to his characters. He's a peeping tom and a bit creepy. Do you identify with him? Do you pity him? Want to cuddle his little, troubled head? Hate him? You will feel something for him.

The other kids are loose stereotypes. There is a tough guy but he is not so tough that you can't imagine him off the screen.

The way the actors move and talk in the scene pictured above is just perfect. I would swear that the girl with her shirt pulled down, revealing her shoulder went to my high school, she's a pre-sexual goofball. This film could be Meatballs or some other campground film until the campers begin to be slaughtered.

And what slaughterings they are. This is Tom Savini at his slashing finest. Cropsy's garden shears cut, slash, and stab their way through young flesh. I'm a throat slitting fan (Annie's death in Friday the 13th is slashtastic perfection) and Savini delivers.

"The scene on the raft," as it is known, garnered the film a spot on the UK's Video Nasty list. The scene is less a stereotypical slasher scene and more a mass murdering, jet fueled, massacre. Cropsy ambushes five of the teens from a canoe (Cropsy must have the balance and agility of a feline ninja.) and within ten seconds he has cut through them.

Forget CG garbage effects, these are practical special effects with the Karo syrup blood flowing.

The music in The Burning is also excellent. Rick Wakeman wrote the music with Alan Brewer handling some of the musical score. Alan Brewer is listed as the Musical Director and was also the arm of Cropsy in the early hospital scene. The music is just 80's enough to remind you of the period, but not so 80's as to alienate younger audiences and turn off those of us that had been there, done that.
Like Halloween and Friday the 13th part 2 (which began shooting four days after The Burning wrapped) the killer is known. We know Cropsy is the murderer and, for the most part, we know why he's killing the kids. He's pissed. Unlike the original Friday the 13th, where the killer's identity is a mystery, and Black Christmas, where the killer's identity is confusing and irrelevant, you see Cropsy in the first scene of the film. You see his face and learn who he is. Only after he is horribly burned does he become a serial killer.

Interestingly, Halloween, Friday the 13th part 2, and The Burning all hide their respective killers face until the end of the film. There is a flash of Cropsy's fried mug earlier, as he walks past a window, but the full reveal of his face is held until the end of the film. So, the film is shot like a suspense film, hiding the killer's face, not because of his identity but because the filmmakers wanted to shock the audience with Cropsy's horrifying visage.

Another aspect that I love about The Burning is that Cropsy is utterly destroyed at the end of the film. There will be no part two.

A curious scene in the film has Cropsy, recently released from the hospital, kill a prostitute. The motivations of the scene are unclear. Is this personal? Does Cropsy have a psychological hatred of prostitutes? Are we missing a piece of the Cropsy puzzle? I always think of the scene as the event that drives him over the edge. That turns him into a serial killer. Cropsy starts the scene unarmed. Only when the prostitute balks and panics upon seeing his face does he move in and attack her. Is murder on his mind when he enters the room? It looks like it from his giallo-like outfit (see pic above) but perhaps the assumption is incorrect. He's a burn victim with raw, exposed, nerves. Perhaps the black gloves are necessary. Perhaps he knows he is physically damaged and sex is impossible but needs a little sympathy and caring for fifteen minutes. For whatever reason, he moves in on her when she attempts to kick him out. He begins strangulation. When she goes for a pair of nearby scissors, he takes them from her and murders her with them.

It's a strange scene but adds a level of mystery to the film. It's like seeing the original Star Wars and just imagining what the Clone Wars were. Why does Cropsy kill the prostitute?

The Burning only played in a few theaters and did terrible. A 1982 rerelease did better and coincided with the VHS release but the film soon disappeared. An official DVD release wasn't available until 2007. I first heard about the film from Tom Savini's Grand Illusions book in the mid-80's. I read about the make-up effects and pined over the gory photos before I was allowed to see rated-R films. I finally got my hands on a VHS bootleg as a teenager in the late-80's. The official DVD is a thing of beauty with a short documentary featuring Tom Savini, a commentary track with director, Tony Maylam, and the picture looks fantastic. Sellers on Amazon.com have the film for about $7. Get it.

Above, my daughter kissing my Cropsy mask.
(There is an incredible article on The Burning here. Be sure to scroll to the bottom, the article is multiple pages. It is also full of spoilers and images of Cropsy, BEWARE!)

UPDATE:
Not only did this cool poster from Mondo come out last year, but The Burning is now available on Blu-Ray. It looks and sounds beautiful.
You can read more about my thoughts on slasher films HERE.
My top ten slasher films of the 70's and 80's can be found HERE.