The weekend is upon us, so it's time for Movieline's Halloween 25 to get messy. The slasher-movie edition, which includes electric guitar drills and the only horror movie (to my knowledge) where the killer uses a flamethrower, will make Freddy and Jason look like kid's stuff. Once the screaming is over and the killer has died for the fifth and final time, chime in with your own picks.
· Bay of Blood AKA Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971)
Italian horror master Mario Bava influenced decades of slasher films with this whodunit about friends and relatives of a wealthy heiress getting murdered one by one. In fact, the method of kills and structure is almost identical to Friday the 13th and all of its clones. Only this one is more violent, erotic and stylish than any of those films; the oft-copied spear-through-the-mid-coital-couple tradition began here. And the psychedelic trailer below is a work of art on its own.
· Don't Go in the House AKA Pyromaniac (1980)
At a special screening once, Quentin Tarantino declared this to be the most disturbing film he had ever seen. That should give some indication of how insane and totally demented this forgotten '80s film is. The film follows a young, geeky guy whose mother abused him with fire as a child. Naturally he grows up to become a sexually repressed psycho who burns women with a flamethrower and then talks to their corpses. The film veers between a pop-psychological horror movie that owes more than a little to Psycho and a slasher movie with fire. Some parts are so silly you want to laugh while others may make you feel sick and a little angry at yourself. This one will scare you, but it's for adventurous viewers only.
· Slumber Party Massacre 2 (1987)
The ultimate Halloween party movie. As with all of the entries in this franchise, this one is about an all-girl slumber party where the guests get, well, massacred. But in this tongue-in-cheek installment, death is dealt by a singing, dancing Elvis impersonator who kills his victims with an electric guitar drill. Also... what's that? Why yes, there is and out-of-nowhere song-and-dance number that ends in a murder! I've embedded that clip below! Also, if the misogyny of most slasher films gets you down year after year, take comfort that this film was directed by a woman (Deborah Brock).
· Opera AKA Terror at the Opera (1987)
Director Dario Argento is more renowned for '70s classics like Suspiria and Deep Red, but Opera is the film I keep coming back to. As the titles suggest, the film concerns people getting murdered during an opera production. Also, in a diabolical twist, the protagonist is forced by the killer to watch every murder, Clockwork Orange style. Argento's stylish, subjective camera techniques are on full display here (I'm actually not sure that the camera ever stops moving), and the playful way Argento mixes high and low art is more fun here than in any of his classics. Most of the scenes stay true tonally to the high-class origins of opera, but then every single murder is accompanied by over-the-top metal courtesy of the rock band Goblin. The trailer below captures the juxtaposition perfectly.
· <Evil Dead Trap (1987)
Pay no attention to the derivative title -- anyone bored with the standard stalk-and-kill formula should take a look at this wild Japanese film. It begins as a stylish slasher film, with a TV crew getting killed off in brutal, inventive ways as they investigate a warehouse where a snuff film was made. But it soon travels into seriously weird territory and just gets crazier from there. You will feel like you just watched three amazing horror movies by the time this one ends.
PREVIOUSLY IN MOVIELINE'S HALLOWEEN 25
Monday: Vintage/B&W
Tuesday: Terrible Children
Wednesday: Vampires
Thursday: The Devil