MURDER LEGENDRE

Ahhhhhh Slaughter High, a slasher flick through and through! This is a flick that really took me back. Here is the setup, Marty ( Simon Scuddamore) is a high school kid that has no luck. His nerdy appearance makes him an easy target for a group of popular teens at Doddsville County High. One April Fool’s day, brunette bombshell Carol (Caroline Munro) comes onto Marty in the girls locker room. Marty of course falls for it, but soon finds himself naked in front of his tormentors as they video tape and chant “Where’s the beef?” and dunk him head first into the toilet. The torment doesn’t stop there, later they give him a spiked joint in which he smokes and then leads to a horrible accident in which the school lab goes up in flames, leaving Marty severely burned.

Ten years later, invitations are sent out for a high school reunion with everyone to meet at the old school, the only thing is, the ones who use to pick on Marty are the only ones invited. After waiting around too long for others to arrive, the restless group breaks into their old abandoned school where they party and reminisce about their glory years. It doesn’t take long for them to realize that they are not alone and it was no coincidence that only they were invited. Soon, they begin to drop one by one at the hands of a vengeful Marty.

Slaughter High is a vastly over looked film but not for good reason: I remember this being hard to track down actually. Well, amazon.com aside, it still kinda is. With inventive kills like the one I call the “beer drinking gut burst” or the “electrocuting orgasm bed” and with a decent amount of gore for it‘s time, this film could find a whole new audience if re-released today. It may be a tad too slow at times and the ending is sure to leave you with more questions than answers, but the fun factor never fades, making this flick worth your time!

The past couple of weeks I have taken it upon my self to watch an absurd amount of slasher flicks. I will be posting a couple of noteworthy ones here in the next couple of days.  But to start it off, I want to mention this lost classic I found call Initiation. This film really does take in every aspect of a classic slasher flick.

Take a central female character (Daphne Zuniga) with a dark and mysterious past, put her in a college with a load of fellow sex-starved students and then take those students and lock them in a shopping mall for the night with a madman on the loose. That’s pretty much the scenario of this film, if you’re looking for something more profound then you’re in the wrong genre. What you have here, to cut it down to basics, is lots of teens having sex, goofing around and getting slayed one-by-one. There are better examples of the genre, but this is enjoyable. There’s really nothing new here, but the ending caught me out, I have to admit. I really hadn’t figured that one out, not that I’m going to give anything away, you’ll just have to find out for yourself!

Oh, there’s plenty of gratuitous nudity, bad dialogue and reasonable gore (though not excessive) to keep most trash fans happy. Though watching this flick will only make you appreciate the other classics even more. It is pretty hard to find on the dvd shelfs now a days, but if you do manage to see a copy. It’s worth the five dollar pick up.

George A. Romero, whose career has now spanned more than 40 years, is much more than just “the godfather of zombies.” He’s an overtly political filmmaker whose films comprise a veritable scrapbook of the times in which they were made. But I don’t want to spoil your fun. He’s also a pulpy, subversive madman who delights in giving us blood and gore to make the real-life horrors he feeds us more visual. The horror of racism goes down easier when hungry zombies ease the pain; the horror of war goes down easier when hungry zombies ease the pain; the horror of a consumer driven society feeding on itself goes down easier when, well, hungry zombies ease the pain. His 1973 film The Crazies contains echoes of horrific events such as the Vietnam War, and the betrayals of the Nixon presidency. But, here, Romero’s not in a giving mood. There are no zombies, or anything else, to soften the blow

Thinking about government soldiers breaking into your house at night while you are asleep while wearing specter white hazmat suits and World War II esk gas masks is creepy enough to get your skin to crawl, but thats just one visual Romero shows in this underrated movie. The simple, pastoral life in Evan’s City ( Which is mention in Night of the Living Dead, remember that Evan City was five miles from the farm house in NOTLD 1990), Pennsylvania, is totally destroyed when a government-engineered biological weapon is accidentally detonated outside of town. An extremely contagious virus, code-named Trixie, has been released. When a person catches “the bug,” as it’s called, the best-case prognosis is incurable, violent insanity. Before the townsfolk know what’s happening, their sleepy little hamlet has been invaded by the army and martial law has been declared. Though the government hopes to find an antidote, it’s quietly understood that the whole town will most likely be destroyed to contain the contagion. As the public panics and begins to fight back, it becomes harder and harder for the occupying troops to tell who is and isn’t infected.

Normally, movies so “of their time” seem dated when viewed decades later, but The Crazies manages to sidestep this hurdle because its themes still hold true today. Romero seems one director who’s medium truly hold true with the passing of time. Let’s just hope he can’t see into the future, a world run by zombies is one thing….a world run by scary dressed government agents with engineered biological weapons is another. Wait…….

Some films develop cults around them and some films wash away in the tide of film history so quickly that they never have time to develop a proper following. Directed by Gary Sherman and written by Dan O’Bannon (who directed one of my all time favorite flicks Return of the Living Dead), the low-budget chiller Dead & Buried probably should have been more popular than it was. However, now is as good a time as any to get acquainted with this minor masterpiece. Dead & Buried was largely ignored during its original theatrical run and it’s a shame it isn’t more widely known today. The film has so much going for it including some atmospheric cinematography and some grisly gore effects by the late and great Stan Winston. The storyline is also an interesting and original concept especially considering the slasher film was all the rage at the time. Sherman’s movie has quite a lot going for it and the performances only reinforce this notion. The three main principle leads are all very good here and bring with them an air of believability to the creepy supernatural shenanigans permeating the plot.

Potter’s Bluff, Rhode Island: a quiet little New England burg where everybody knows your name, where going out to eat invariably means the greasy spoon on Main Street, and where you’re likely to meet the most eccentric personalities. Of course, if you’re an outsider, you’re also likely to meet your untimely demise. Sheriff Dan Gillis (James Farentino) has two grisly murders on his hands, and the pieces just don’t add up. With the assistance of local coroner (Jack Albertson), Gillis finds himself inexorably drawn to questions with deeply unsettling answers.

Dead & Buried is a film that, thankfully, no longer reflects its title. It’s alive and out there, waiting to thrill the next unsuspecting viewer. After sitting down and watching this film again, it truly is a great piece of celluloid. Such a quaint and enigmatic film is rare and should be appreciated now in case it falls off the radar once again. Please check out this flick, and once you do, send me an email and let me know what you though about the ending!