Sweet Sixteen (1983)

I used to assume that if there was a slasher movie that I had yet to see then it must be one of the lesser entries in this overcrowded subgenre. Now I know that is not the case. It just so happens that a) I have still to see half of the films that I really should, as a big horror fan, and b) there are SO many "lower-tier" slasher movies that are still hugely entertaining. Which brings me to Sweet Sixteen, a film I decided to take a gamble on, having not heard of it before, and one I am now glad to have seen.

The basic plot revolves around a young girl named Melissa (Aleisa Shirley, making her film debut). Melissa is new in town and she's a couple of weeks away from her sixteenth birthday. She also gets the attention of one or two boys. So it's not too long until young boys start turning up dead. The murders perplex Sheriff Dan Burke (Bo Hopkins) and his teenage children (Dana Kimmell and Steve Antin), and they also give some of the locals an extra reason to be suspicious of, and abusive towards, some Native Americans who live nearby.

Although very tame by the standards of many other slasher movies from this time, Sweet Sixteen still manages to tick a lot of boxes for fans of the subgenre. It has the whodunnit element, it has a historic trauma that feeds into the motivation of the killer, and it spends one or two moments lingering for an uncomrfotably long time on the physical form of Melissa (Shirley may have been about 19 or so when this was made, but let's not forget that the character she is playing is supposed to be just about to turn 16).

It also has a decent cast of core characters, played well enough by the performers. Hopkins is a likable authority figure, Kimmell and Antin manage to avoid being too annoying as the kids who don't listen to their father when they really should, Don Stroud is an entertaining asshole, Don Shanks does just fine as Jason Longshadow (a Native American who becomes a main suspect), and Patrick Macnee and Susan Strasberg are fun as the parents of Melissa. Shirley isn't that great in her main role, but she's not terrible either.

The script by Erwin Goldman does well when it comes to the characters and their interactions, although it might disappoint people wanting a higher bodycount. Director Jim Sotos does a perfectly acceptable job, keeping everything restrained until we get to the inevitably busy grand finale (like so many other slasher movies, a reveal that wouldn't feel too out of place in any Scooby Doo cartoon).

I doubt this will be on any list of favourite or best slasher movies, and I am not sure why I ended up enjoying it as much as I did. But I did really enjoy it. And I'll recommend it to other horror movie fans. Even if they come back to me and tell me they were disappointed.

7/10

You can buy the blu here.

Taste Of Fear AKA Scream Of Fear (1961)

An interesting psychological thriller from Hammer, this film has been recommended to me a number of times and I'm glad that I finally got around to seeing it.

The plot sees young, wheelchair-bound Penny Appleby (Susan Strasberg) returning to her family home after the recent death of a friend. She wants to reconnect with her estranged father and is also willing to find out more about her new step-mother, Jane (Ann Todd). There's a friendly young man named Robert (Ronald Lewis), a concerned doctor named Pierre Gerrard (Christopher Lee) and her father. Well, her father doesn't seem to be alive when Penny sees him, but everyone else claims that he's just fine. And his body is surprisingly mobile for a dead man. What's going on?

Directed by Seth Holt, and with a script written by the talented Jimmy Sangster (who also wrote the excellent The Nanny), Taste Of Fear may have many elements in place familiar to fans of psychological thrillers, but they're all executed pretty perfectly. In fact, the big finale earns it a whole extra one or two points thanks to how entertaining and nicely constructed it is.

The cast all do a decent job, with Strasberg particularly good as the vulnerable and frayed lead. Christopher Lee puts on a slightly clumsy accent, but he does very well with a role quite unlike most of his other work for the studio, and both Todd and Lewis are fine.

With a nice feeling of unease from start to finish, some moments of genuine tension and a couple of impressive jump scares, Taste Of Fear is a superior example of this kind of film. It's a film, along with the aforementioned The Nanny, that I wish we'd seen a lot more of from a studio that made so much money from vampires, Frankenstein's monsters and other supernatural creatures.

8/10

http://www.amazon.com/Icons-Horror-Collection-Hammer-Mummys/dp/B001B9ZVVC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374774432&sr=8-1&keywords=scream+of+fear

Bloody Birthday (1981)

Bloody Birthday is bloody brilliant. Directed by Ed Hunt, who co-wrote the script with Barry Pearson (is it just me or do those two sound like typical used car salesmen?), the movie is a hugely entertaining slasher that delivers the goods and keeps you smirking in all the right ways. The premise is preposterous but it's all played out in such an enjoyably cheeky way that it gets away with everything.

Horror fans will rub their hands with glee when they realise that this is a movie all about killer kids. Three children were born during an eclipse and this means, of course, that they are born with something missing. It's all to do with the moon and the sun blocking Saturn. The kids are psychopaths ot sociopaths or something-paths. Basically, they're little shits who spend as much time as possible killing people and often making the deaths look like freak accidents.

A few of the leads are just fine in their roles (Lori Lethin is the older girl who starts to put the pieces together and K. C. Martel is her younger brother, also suspicious of the killer kids) but the most fun is had while watching Elizabeth Hoy, Billy Jayne and Andy Freeman be so obviously evil in almost every scene. Melinda Cordell and Bert Kramer play a very unfortunate mother and father, Julie Brown is the older sister of one of the evil kids and spends a lot of time dancing in front of her mirror while getting dressed, oblivious to the fact that her little sister is charging small boys a fee to peep through from her room to see what an '80s woman looks like in the altogether. Jose Ferrer plays a doctor and Susan Strasberg is a strict teacher who puts the little killers in a bad mood.

It starts off as pretty far-fetched and gets more and more implausible as it continues but Bloody Birthday just wouldn't be half as much fun if it tried to make itself a serious look at children with murderous thoughts. The fact that I haven't heard much praise for the film before now is quite shocking, considering just how deliriously entertaining it is from start to finish.

Deaths range from strangulation with skipping rope to someone shot with a bow and arrow, there's fun with a birthday cake and a big bottle marked "Ant Poison" and the very last scene is as twisted and funny as anything else in the film. I recommend this as essential viewing for anyone with a love of '80s horror.

8/10

http://www.amazon.com/Bloody-Birthday-Lori-Lethin/dp/B004VQRCJG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353412221&sr=8-1&keywords=bloody+birthday