Are You Still With Us.... Melissa?....: Sweet 16 (1983)

Sweet 16 (Sweet Sixteen, 1983)
Rating: *1/2
Starring: Bo Hopkins, Susan Strasberg and Patrick Macnee

Here is pretty much what went down in this bore-fest: Melissa is the new girl in town and her sixteenth birthday is just around the corner. Melissa is beautiful. Boys like her. Boys flirt. She laughs. Boys leave. They get killed. Local sheriff investigates. Local sheriff's kids join in. Native Americans get blamed. Local sheriff investigates further. Party happens. Killer strikes again. Confusing finale.

Now that we have that out of the way, here are the positives I can scrap out of Sweet 16 (1983); I have to hand it for trying to be different by adding a red herring concerning a Native American being harassed as the killer by racist white men. It's gratuitous, but a rightfully thought-provoking.

The rest? Awful lighting, tame kills, slower-than-slug pacing, uninteresting mystery, lack of tension, awful script, poorly developed plot that's too cheesy even for its own good, questionably poor taste of exploitation by featuring an underage character showing some skin (the actress was in her 20s, sure, but it's the idea. ew), a confusing finale and Melissa's (the main girl) own theme song.

So my verdict? If you're one of those open-minded fellows who sees a gem out of this turd then God help you good for you. The rest of us who can find a better movie, we're better off watching All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006) cuz not only is that a great flick, Sweet 16 (1983) is pretty much just that, only Lane's more mystifying in the right ways.

Bodycount:

1 male knifed to death

1 male knifed to death

1 elderly male hanged

1 male knifed to death

1 male knifed to death

1 female knifed in the gut

Total: 6