Thursday, December 26, 2024

80's American Horror Part One-Hundred and One

NIGHT SCHOOL
(1981)
Dir - Ken Hughes
Overall: MEH
 
British filmmaker Ken Hughes ended his career across the Atlantic with the formulaic slasher dud Night School, (Terror Eyes).  Shot on location in Boston, this is the only screen credit for producer/screenwriter Ruth Avergon who sticks to a tired police procedural/masked killer framework with most of the predictable twists and turns in tow.  A detective gets called in on his day off, two different college educators engage in affairs with their students, (one of them, the administrator, being a woman), the murdering psycho obscures their face with a motorcycle helmet, the cops make constant wise cracks while uncovering severed heads and talking to upset bystanders, and all of the kills lack suspense due to their drawn-out nature as well as every victim having a big red target on their back as soon as the scene starts.  Even with one or two tweaks scattered about, the killer reveal is predictable and ergo anticlimactic, plus the dialog is exclusively made-up of things that only people in hackneyed screenplays would say.  Most of the people on screen act like dumb-dumbs, but there is not an extreme enough level of stupidity to either be insulted by or laugh at.  In other words, it is just dull.
 
THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER
(1982)
Dir - Albert Pyun
Overall: GOOD
 
The debut from schlock-peddler extraordinaire Albert Pyun arrived during the early 80s post-Conan the Barbarian/Excalibur boom, and it has endured longer than most, basking in its cornball sword and sorcery charm with a level of proper production values that other cheaper offerings of its kind lacked.  Apply titled The Sword and the Sorcerer, it is a shameless pastiche of barbarian fantasy the indulges itself in misogyny from both sides of the good and evil spectrum, one-note characters, ham-fisted scenery chewing, incessant champion music from David Whitaker, sweaty violence, an aesthetic made up entirely of reds, browns, and gold, dialog that a child would be embarrassed by, some sparse yet wonderful make-up effects, and a story that is endlessly predictable in its adherence to juvenile Dungeons & Dragons cliches.  A large assortment of character actors know the assignment and one could argue that Richard Lynch was born to play a power-hungry throne-usurper, to the point where he would do so again five years later in Ruggero Deodato's even more childish The Barbarians.  Popcorn silliness that no one could possibly take seriously, (least of all anyone involved in the production itself), it is both as dumb and fun as such movies get.

I MARRIED A VAMPIRE
(1987)
Dir - Jay Raskin
Overall: WOOF

Some regional SOV hogwash from Massachusetts, I Married a Vampire is the first of only two movies from director Jay Raskin.  It is also one that frequently begs the questions "Wait, is this supposed to be funny?" as well as "Wait, where's the vampire?".  An answer arrives for that second question fifty minutes in when our poor frumpy protagonist Rachel Golden meets her coworker's brother and suspects that they are members of the undead because she sees a broken mirror in their bathroom.  This is after a string of miserable events are suffered by Golden when she moves to the big city with big dreams and gets taken advantage of by every last person that she meets until she is raped by a guy who gives her a gig cleaning floors and computers in an office building.  This is followed by even more of the universe shitting on her until the last twenty minutes when Golden and her new blood-sucking friend unleash some comeuppance.  So in other words, comedy!  The film is painfully awkward and unprofessional from top to bottom, played so dryly that its tone is impossible to decipher.  Is it a noble cautionary tale?  A contemporary feminist empowerment fable?  A humble satire of arthouse cinema?  A piece of shit that has no idea what it is doing?  Yeah, lets go with the latter.

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