(1981)
Dir - George Mihalka
Overall: WOOF
One of the gorier Canadian slasher movies to come out of the gratuitous wave of them in the 1980s, My Bloody Valentine is part of the lazy, horrendously uninspired trend of Holiday-themed horror films that were exploited mercilessly by every two-bit producer looking to make another quick buck off of morons who find this stuff entertaining. Morons or just people with questionable taste, either/or. This particular snore-fest is particularly irksome. Things collapse right about the time that we get the single most forced, exposition-dropping flashback sequence in any of these stupid ass movies. In it, a "I'm warning you kids" bartender right out of the cliche book interrupts all of his drunk guests by telling them a story everyone in the town has long memorized, just so us viewers can hear it. Isn't that nice of the screenwriters? Elsewhere, every character sucks, they are all idiots, there is a twist and blah, blah, blah same shit different slasher movie. If you condense this film down to the handful of hilariously violent death sequences and get it over with in a couple of minutes then great, but otherwise what another colossal waste of nintey-ish minutes.
(1982)
Dir - Eckhart Schmidt
Overall: MEH
This intentionally cold and very low-key thriller from Eckhart Schmidt, (who adapted it from his own novel), stews a little too long in its eccentric juices to be as satisfying as it could be. The premise for Der Fan is amazingly simple, though Schmidt takes it into unforeseen territory halfway through which is good in that it refocuses the viewer from the rather one-note beginning. Things continue to drag though even from there and it is a relatively simple matter of editing a number of scenes far shorter to get the pacing to a point where it stays both captivating and nail-biting. While this is the only unfortunate attribute one can find here, it is still an impossible one to look past. Seventeen year old Désirée Nosbusch is miles away from reality in every nuance of her excellent performance, ignoring all of the activities and men who are openly interested in her besides her Kraut-pop obsession R, (Bodo Steiger). Still, she grows even more aloof and unsympathetic once their inevitable meeting takes place. Which is not a bad thing. The strange fate of both of them plays out just as deliberately as the rest of the film and no one can accuse Schmidt with making anything crowd-pleasing here. That is ultimately just a more interesting route to take than an altogether good one though.
(1984)
Dir - Russell Mulcahy
Overall: MEH
Serving as the non-documentary debut from future Highlander director Russell Mulcahy, Razorback suffers from the usual ailments of other nature horror outings as well as offering up further outback genre cliches such as wild, kangaroo murdering yokels who are portrayed as just a hair above Neanderthal-level savages. Usually with these movies, the best case scenario is that the animal monster looks cool and poses a believable threat while the characters and subplots do not bore you too terribly and Razorback more or less delivers in this low-expectation capacity. The film is benefited from moody cinematography which frames rusted factories and the desolate Australian deserts in many ominous shadows, while the soundtrack features the morphed screams of its titular wild boar that is honing in on its victims. Mulcahy had the good sense to mostly show his giant, animatronic hog in quick and dark flashes or closeups, which makes it appropriately menacing and convincing enough as it rips walls out and bulldozes through every structure it can. The actual humans here are either pretty bland and somewhat underwritten though, while others are so unlikable they become obnoxious to watch. Story-wise, it does not equal anything more than "giant animal is killing people so let's stop it" so the premise cannot help but feel stretched due to how generic it is.
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