(1980)
Overall: MEH
Another deliberate Canadian cash-in on Halloween, (which also scored Jamie Lee-Curtis who looks more like a soccer mom than a high school girl), Prom Night is just as mediocre and unremarkable as any other such film of its ilk. As usual with a slasher movie, silver linings are few and far between. The kill scenes are mostly presented over no music and the masked murderer is a bumbling boob, routinely getting bested by his eventual victims or even botching his own axe swings. While it is nice for the killer to not have superhuman ninja powers for a change, the scenes that show him being normal and occasionally incompetent are unintentionally funny, while the rest of the movie is deadly serious. Premise wise, it is another boring variation of the "kids were mean and now I want revenge" cliche. There are plenty of other tired tropes utilized throughout, such as anonymous phone calls that are logically unnecessary, high-schoolers that are either bullies, bitches, dorky virgins, or unfunny hornballs, and women getting chased by lunatics who run away from them into unlit and deserted locations instead of where dozens of people are at who can help.
(1982)
Overall: MEH
Director Paul Lynch followed up the formulaic Prom Night with Humongous; another lackluster slasher movie that is problematically paced and full of nothing but unlikable assholes. The sub-genre was in its heyday here and on paper at least, William Gray's script makes some unorthodox choices, namely holding everybody up on an island inhabited by an old recluse and her viscous, unseen canines. Structure wise though, it is the same ole boring nonsense, opening with a rapey flashback and then settling into one horny and obnoxious young adult slowly getting picked off after the other. POV shots, an incessant keyboard score, the woods, a creepy house with creepy stuff inside of it, a dead phone line, a foreseeable plot twist, the token final girl, boobs, bimbos, macho dickweeds that you want to punch in the face; it is all here to be bored with. While Lynch does everything with the material that he is supposed to, his attempts at creating suspense and atmospheric dread fail to land, simply because of the routine nature that he is trapped in. Some creative kills or unintentional comic relief could have helped punctuate things if not distinguishing the whole film from its boatload of peers, but it instead just comes off like a stock cash grab and ergo a waste of ninety-three minutes.
(1986)
Dir - Paul Lynch/David M. Robertson/John Sheppard
Overall: MEH
An obscure, possible failed TV pilot, Mania, (Mania: The Intruder), cobbles together four unrelated stories with no linking segment and is in-line with various other small screen Canadian horror series' from the time period. We have a schlub who witnesses a murderer in action, another schllub who is afraid of dogs, a woman whose daughter is kidnapped, and yet another schlub and another woman getting terrorized by a knife-wielding guy from the subway. Along with Paul Lynch, screenwriters David M. Robertson and John Sheppard handle a segment each from behind the lens, and they manage to shoehorn a scumbag criminal into each story, even the dog one. Though void of star power, not without some narrative doofiness, formulaic, and failing to pack any surprises into any of its twist endings, it is not the worst of the genre's many anthologies. The aforementioned kidnapping one "Have a Nice Day" is genuinely suspenseful and the most agreeable of the bunch, as Lynch handles a familiar premise with a Hitchcockian attention to details. Elsewhere, the film has its moments, but there is hardly enough here to stick with the viewer once it is all wrapped up
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