Summer of Slash: Happy Birthday to Me

Note: This is the final entry for this summer’s Summer of Slash series. Thanks for following along and reading! More horror reviews will return in October with the 3rd Annual Italian Horror Blogathon. Until then…

Before I begin with the review proper, allow me to give a brief history of the Canadian slasher: Canadian slashers are a different animal – they favor character development and plot over grimy aesthetics and gore effects – so it’s no surprise when one sits down to watch Happy Birthday to Me that not only do we get a slasher that nearly clocks in at two hours (!), but we get a film that is interested in following through on all of the plot points it introduces instead of just rushing through The Meat with bloody killing after bloody killing. In fact, Happy Birthday to Me boasts "SIX OF THE MOST BIZZARE MURDERS YOU WILL EVER SEE!” on its poster, and it’s true, they are quite creative (the coverbox has always been a favorite of mine), but they’re very tame in contrast to what people were seeing from slashers thanks to the work that Tom Savini was doing in the early ‘80s. So then, it seems that the biggest difference between Canadian slashers and American slashers is the preference for tone and pacing and character development over gore and gratuitous nudity. 

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Summer of Slash: My Bloody Valentine (1981)

One of the things that make Canadian slashers stand out more than their American contemporaries is their propensity to be consistently not awful. I think the primary reason for this is their attention to detail in things like setting and atmosphere and pacing. Canadian slasher films were much more interested in evoking a mood through the settings and the towns they took place in; in addition, they also tried a little harder to establish their characters, rather than just making them "dead teenagers". The Canadian slasher film seemed to strive for more – whether they succeed or not is up for debate, of course – instead of simply moving from one bloody kill to the next. None, perhaps, did this better than My Bloody Valentine , which along with Bob Clark's Black Christmas, is one of the quintessential Canadian slashers.

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Question of the Day: Which is better, Canadian slashers or American slashers?

In the spirit of the holiday coming up ("USA, USA, USA"...I kid...) -- and the fact that even though I've been watching a TON of horror movies lately, but I just haven't had the time to write about them (for Jamie: you were so, so right about Slugs, hehe, it was wonderful) -- I was thinking of posing this question about which country had the better slasher resume.  So, horror fans, which do you prefer: the slashers of America (Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Burning, Friday the 13th, and Scream) or the slashers of Canada (Black Christmas, Prom Night, My Bloody Valentine, Happy Birthday to Me, Visiting Hours, and Terror Train)?  I think if we're talking the heyday of slashers (1978 - 81) it's pretty close, but when you start to look at when the slasher genre was getting to become overkill, the Canadians were still releasing semi-decent and innovative takes on the subgenre, so I think I prefer Canadian slashers films.

Which do you prefer?  Perhaps you're like me and you prefer a whole different kind of beast, the Italian giallo, which was the king of this subgenre pre-Halloween (and Argento and Soavi even added a few twists to it with their later, 1987 entries, Opera and Stagefright respectively).  Let me know your thoughts in the comments.  More horror reviews coming next week when work slows down a bit.

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Summer of Slash: Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film

Here's an interesting and entertaining documentary that is ultimately unsatisfying because it omits important slashers like Black Christmas or the imports from Italy. However, the film does includes great interviews with other important slasher figures besides Craven and Carpenter and Savini, which makes it a tad more interesting than I was anticipating. You get to hear from the people who created The Prowler and The Slumber Party Massacre and My Bloody Valentine and Graduation Day, and many others. And that is what makes it an engaging documentary: we actually get to hear from the people who cashed in on the success of the Craven's and Sean Cunningham's (who is a hack that got lucky…and he kind of admits that in the film). One of the things that is annoying about the documentary, though, is that the interviews are rarely stationary as the interviewees walk around talking about the genre and the camera is constantly moving with them (even if they do stop for a second). I don't need to be "entertained" during an interview…what the people are saying is interesting enough, but the makers of this documentary failed to understand that.

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Summer of Slash: Capsule Reviews, Part 2

In case you haven't noticed yet, I changed my header and the font for the blog. Why? Well, I figured since I was doing a summer series on horror films I would appropriately change the color scheme of the blog's title (not to mention find a more appropriate picture, but I promise once summer is over Hugo will return…perhaps in a new picture! Exciting, I know.) for the next few months. I also added an "archive" on the sidebar there to the left where you can see all of the films I've reviewed for my Summer of Slash series.  As I continue my push to watch as many horror movies as possible in preparation for the Wonders in the Dark horror countdown here are some more capsule reviews where I take a look at the satirical (?) The Slumber Party Massacre, the Australian monster pic Rogue, and two slashers from Canada in Prom Night and Terror Train. Reviews come after the jump…

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Summer of Slash: Visiting Hours

Visiting Hours is an odd entry into the over-satiated slasher subgenre of the 1980's. This import from Canada directed by Jean-Claude Lord feels different than other slashers. Probably because it deals with adults rather than teens, and the plot seems like something out of the type of scary scenario that DePalma made famous in films like Dressed to Kill rather than some boring stalk and slash. The film definitely feels like a Canadian production as the horror is far more cerebral here than anything being released at the time in this subgenre, and that can clearly be seen by the imprint of producer Pierre David who was the man partly responsible for the David Cronenberg horror entries The Brood, Scanners, and Videodrome. Visiting Hours may not set the genre on fire with its originality (for how different the film feels, it still relies heavily on lame slasher tropes like false scares and over-sustained cat-and-mouse chase sequences), but it's an interesting entry into an otherwise monotonous subgenre.

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