(1981)
Dir - Ed Hunt
Overall: MEH
This low-level slasher movie was sat on for five years after it was made, getting a limited release as late as 1986 before being mostly and deservedly forgotten about. Whether the long wait was do to its uncomfortableness which made ideal fodder for suburban soccer moms to disapprove of in the age of video nasties or just because it is a shitty movie is unclear. The concept of three kids being born on the exact same night during a solar eclipse would have been better suited for a more adventurous, atmospheric presentation. Bloody Birthday is so blandly directed and photographed with only the minimalist effort to create a cliched, foreboding mood that the only thing it can manage to do is have a bunch of horrible brats smile and murder people for fun. That said, the final showdown is a hoot as it takes place in a teenager's bedroom that has a lone Ted Nugent poster hanging up while the evil little scumbags shoot both guns AND use a hunting bow. Still though, the film is neither clever nor entertaining. It basically just makes you want to beat several children within an inch of their lives which is never the type of feeling a movie should leave you with. Even a horror one.
(1984)
Dir - Larry Stewart/Peter Crane
Overall: MEH
This textbook slasher does not necessarily do anything more incorrectly than others of its kind, but it does not offer up anything remotely unique either. It marks the second appearance and first lead one for Daphne Zuniga and was filmed on location in Dallas, Texas, through British director Peter Crane had to be swapped out for Larry Stewart early in the production, the former having fallen behind schedule. Not that this is noticeable mind you since The Initiation is too by the books to warrant any auteur qualities from whoever is behind the lens in the first place. The idea of a sorority house cruelly initiating some of its members, a bunch of horny doofuses trying to get in their pants, a reoccurring nightmare that is actually a repressed memory, an insane asylum, a disfigured guy used as a red herring, and even an identical twin sister out of absolutely nowhere makes the whole ordeal both unremarkable and silly. No one is particularly over the top in any of their portrayals and on the same token, no one is too obnoxious to anxiously await their gruesome murder. This was done possibly in an attempt to make the cliched details and ridiculous twist seem more plausible, but instead, it all just feels lazily put together in the most mediocre of fashions.
(1986)
Dir - David Schmoeller
Overall: MEH
It is a shame that David Schmoeller and his cast and crew suffered such infamous tyranny at the hands of the perpetually insane and impossible to work with Klaus Kinski, especially considering that the resulting film Crawlspace is not very good. The original and better sounding premise revolved around a battered Vietnam veteran who recreates a prisoner-of-war camp in his apartment complex, but studio heads convinced him to make the antagonist a Nazi and secured Kinski in one of the many roles he was ideally suited for. Not that Kinski was a Nazi mind you, but he was German and certainly a lunatic both on and especially off screen. Schmoeller's short film Please Kill Mr. Kinski that was shot during the production of Crawlspace shows just a smidgen of well-documented proof of how difficult Kinski was to work with, but the actor's Col. Kurtz approach here does not work on account of how underwritten the story is. The beginning is awkward, none of the characters have any definable arcs whatsoever, the ending is a snooze-fest, and Kinski looks bored when he is not rambling unexplained nonsense or putting on make-up while hailing Hitler for a reason.
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