Golden Title: The Omen (1976)

Let's celebrate Halloween 2019 with a classic.

The Omen (United Kingdom/USA, 1976)
Rating: *****
Starring: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, Harvey Stephens

In Rome, Robert Thorn, an American diplomat, just received word that his newborn child died at birth, a grave news that is not only distraught to him but will surely crush his wife, Katherine. Hence when a well-meaning priest offered Robert a chance to adopt a newborn child whose mother died during an operation, he is quick to accept the child as his own, naming him Damien, and his wife was none the wiser.

Five years later, not long after Robert gets appointed as the US Ambassador for Great Britain, the Thorns find themselves in an increasingly frightful predicament as mysterious deaths and events start to plague them, beginning with the moment the family nanny commits suicide during Damien's birthday, claiming it is all for the boy. In fact, all of the sudden strange happenings seem to be linked to Damien and it isn't too long before an unsettling truth will come upon the family, as well as to those who insists on aiding them against a powerful dark force.

A prime example of a quintessential title within the 70's Satanic cycle, The Omen (1976) works its apocalyptic narrative through a more subtle and realistic direction compared to, let's say, The Exorcist (1973), a similarly religiously themed horror movie that's made effective thanks to its shocking blasphemous visuals. The Omen, alternatively, focuses more on downplaying the typical onscreen demonic horror elements of nightmare imagery and underworld monsters, in its place instead is a strongly orchestrated sense of helplessness as its plot implies that the Devil's forces may have already got most, if not all of the cards played in the favor of the Beast right at the beginning of the movie, while those who choose to fight against them are doomed to die while their God remains distant or absent.

It's a particularly powerful notion and The Omen (1976) captures this quite intriguingly through its story's flow, starting everything up with good fortune falling upon the Thorns only for it to slowly crumble down as one accident and odd occurrence pressures the family to seek help from both conventional and unconventional ways, leading to either a ghastly death or a revelation that defies rational explanation and leans more on the prophetic. It's this direction that the film revels at and to a good effect, as it eventually questions how much control do our protagonists have to begin with and where exactly does the line draw in regards to what is nothing more than a phase or a pawn to a grand cosmic scheme, which in this case is the Apocalypse as indicated in the Christian Bible. This Biblical concept is justly explored, but done in a way that doesn't feel overly pretentious and still caters to a wide array of horror hounds like you and me.

One of the movie's memorable elements, for example, leans more on the exploitative side of horror as it tackles smaller omens indicated through a photographer's collection of photos they took during Damien's birthday. A lot of these results to well-executed Rube Goldberg-inspired set-pieces that executes victims in spectacular manners, pretty much a precursor to Final Destination movies. (In fact, Final Destination 3 (2006)'s idea of omens through photographs was directly inspired by this movie) Gothic overtones are also strong in this movie's cinematography, done mostly through location shots and gloomy stylized lighting. Add on the Oscar-winning score by none other than Jerry Goldsmith and the effectiveness of The Omen's dark tone is very much achieved.

In terms of talent, The Omen (1976) boasts quite a casts for a horror film with Gregory Peck bringing all he can to the table as the leading man, playing a character determined to dig out the truth yet still holding on to a grounded view to his situation. Young Harvey Stephens, playing Damien, would also become one of the most memorable horror icons to grace cinema, odd as the child barely uttered a word nor did he did anything gradually evil but his very normal appearance contrasts his grim fate as the Antichrist, unsettling at best as one could never tell, reflecting the written deceptive nature of the Devil himself.

All in all, The Omen (1976) is a classic that earned its place among horror giants. Past the religious connotations and the over-the-top deaths, it is a story that can very well transpire in real life as a possibility, questioning fate and control at a terrifyingly psychological manner, thus a true treat for all genre fans, both in and out of the horror community.

Bodycount:
1 baby died during birth, later revealed due to head trauma
1 female hanged
1 male impaled by a broken-off lightning rod
1 unborn child miscarried
1 female pushed through a window, lands on an ambulance
1 male decapitated by a projected glass pane
1 female stabbed with a fork and knife
1 male shot
Total: 8

101 Maniacs: Admin's Top Ten Slashers

Here it is boys and girls, the final ten of my Top 101 slasher movies of all time!...or at least as of 2014. As of the first 91 (and some honorable mentions) you can catch them from the beginning here:

101-91 Here

90-81 Here

 80-71 Here 

70-61 Here
60-51 Here

50-41 Here
40-31 Here

30-21 Here

20-11 Here

Honorable Mentions here

Inspired and tempted by this delicious countdown, the previous titles were in no particular order but now, the ten slashers listed here are ordered depending on their influence, style, technical ingenuity and, of course, entertainment factor as A to B-grade horror films. So without further delay, here are my final ten!

10. Final Destination (2000)

When it comes to this howdunit death porn franchise, nothing beats the original! Supposed to be an episode of the popular X-Files TV series, Final Destination follows the methodical deaths of the remaining survivors of a tragic airplane accident, which they avoided thanks to a random premonition.

Bloody Best Bits: The airplane disaster itself is the most terrifying scene I've seen in a horror movie in the sense that it is utterly realistic.

9. Psycho (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock's genuine cinematic masterpiece and the often argued Grandfather of slasher movies, wherein a thief finds a terrifying twist in her ordeal when her one-night stay at Bates Motel takes a deadly turn at the hands of "Mother".

Bloody Best Bits: The Shower Kill. Nothing can top that! Also the basement scene is the best reveal I've seen in a proto-slasher!

8. Candyman (1992)

Dream-like and very well made, the Clive Barker short-based mainstream horror pits a disbelieving woman against a deadly Urban Legend Incarnate known as the Candyman in this semi-romantic yet very atmospheric supernatural slasher.

Bloody Best Bits: Visiting the monster's lair. The rundown building housing a slumbering specter is all kinds of spooky and creepy.

7. Child's Play (1987)

While the original draft was supposed to keep us guessing longer whether the kid or the doll was doing the murders, this supernatural thriller/slasher wins a gimmicky landslide by having a sentient killer doll as it's monster, with exceptional special effects.

Bloody Best Bits: Plenty: the first POV murder for one is pretty intense, the creatively painful death by voodoo is another, and then there's that one creepy scene where a charred up Chucky slowly makes his way to knife a young boy.

6. Maniac (1980)

Depressing, very gory and infamous. Follow Frank Zito, an overweight maniac who prowls the night for women to murder and scalp. But when he meet a woman that shares some of his interest, will all hell still break loose?

Bloody Best Bits: Must we count? The first scalping scene, the shotgun decimation, the subway stalking, the graveyard scare. Take your pick.

5. Black Christmas (1976)

A chiller with a warm bodycount, this creepy proto-slasher features occupants of a sorority house getting harassed and soon murdered by a stalker that, unknown to them, already made it inside the house.

Bloody Best Bits: the Moaner experience (AKA the first creepy phone call). Not sure if everybody else will agree but I also found the rampage in the attic scene to be unnerving enough to be pointed out.

4. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

The first and original of the powertool-driven exploitation horror franchise, this proto-slasher staples many of the most well-known element in our fair sub-genre, as well as being effectively scary and unnerving itself.

Bloody Best Bits: The backwoods chase, starring one hysterically frightened final picking and one hulking slasher with a chainsaw.

3. Halloween (1978)

Slasher movies' personal "messiah", being the very title that started the 80s boom of teen-hunted-by-killer flicks, John Carpenter's independent creeper and soon to be franchise tells the classic tale of a madman's escape and return to his home town to terrorize random babysitters.

Bloody Best Bits: The opening kill is all well and intense. Plus Michael's daring escape gave a great mix of panic, action and jolts.

2. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

The first of the series and the most "slasher" of them all, Craven's immortal story of a supernatural boogeyman, armed with a knifed glove, taking his revenge against the parents of his home town by attacking and murdering their children in the place where they cannot protect them: their dreams.

Bloody Best Bits: Bed Fountain. 

And finally, my personal number one slasher of all time: 

1. Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives (1986)

Yes, I could go along with everybody and list down Friday the 13th (1980) or Friday the 13th Part 2 as my number one fave teen kill film, but something about Jason Lives clicks right for me. Could it be the fact that this is Jason's crowning moment as the indestructible revenant of pure hate? The double digit bodycount? The highly entertaining characters? A likable (if not silly) final "pair"? Or is it just because it's so cheesy that it's a perfect viewing for any fitting horror occasion?

For me, this is the ultimate slasher movie as it has everything you could ask for; a cool killer, a sizable kill count with imaginative killings to boot, some interesting characters, a few winks and nods to the sub-genre itself, a strange sex scene (interestingly the only one in the series where they're fully clothed on the top) and one of the most epic hero vs monster finale I've seen. This film is the very epitome of the dead teen film in its simplest and funnest so yeah, more love to Jason Lives! Admin's number one slasher of all TIME!!! (or at least as of 2014)

Bloody Best Bits: The Frankenstein-esque revival of our titular killer, Jason hunting down a paintball team, the eye candy "mirror face press", Jason roaming in a room full of sleeping children (INTENSE!) and, of course, Tommy Jarvis vs Jason in a flaming lake!

***

So there you have it, 101 titles plus 40 honorable mentions of the cheesiest, bloodiest, baddest and simply the best of all slasher titles I ever lay eyes on! What say you, dear reader? An comments? Suggestions? What title do you think should have gotten in the list? Or better yet, what's YOUR 100 Top slashers?! 

Golden Title: Dressed to Kill (1980)

Dressed to Kill (1980)
Rating: *****
Starring: Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen

A Hitchcockian thriller courtesy of Brian De Palma, Dressed to Kill is one of the few titles to be bashed and burned by the uprising uptight uproars of a morally frightened public during its time of release. Quite a stir for a film that only featured a few brutal murders...

A steamy opening has us watching one married Kate Miller passionately showering and caressing herself with a soft sponge and soap water in the morning. This lengthy visage is soon interrupted when her husband forced himself to her, much to her dissatisfaction and disgust.

A murder still most squeamish for me

Apparently, Kate hasn't been happy for a while and this resorts to her into visiting a psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Elliot (Michael Caine), to try and find some meaning to her life. When one of her sessions with the doctor ends up being stale, however, she decided to be daring that day and allowed herself be stalked and seduced by a tall dark man, with eyes hidden behind a set of shades, at an art gallery. After a brief stalk-and-tease, Kate eventually finds herself love-playing with the man at his apartment later that evening, only to discover afterwards, much to her horror, that her dream lover was diagnosed with a venereal disease. Further distraught, Kate leaves the place in tears, not knowing that a blonde woman armed with a razor is just waiting around the corner to attack and slash her to ribbons.

The aftermath of this crime is witnessed by one Liz Blake, a call girl who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when she unwittingly saw the killer staring back at her. Liz is brought in for questioning no soon after, fearing that her own unfortunate chance with the blonde woman might have set herself as the next target for the killer. With no help from sarcastic cops, Liz's only hope of survival lies on Kate's nerdy son, Peter Miller, who's also on the trail to discover the truth behind his mother's murder.

Often labeled as a "slasher", Dressed to Kill is least of that and more of another Americanized Giallo, Italian murder mysteries that became monumental influences to the slasher sub-genre. Often a times, the film did dip into the bodycount territory as sharp razors are wielded with mad intent while stalked and chased victims run through the toughest spots such as elevator chambers and night trains in a gang-littered public! But unlike slasher films, Dressed to Kill focuses more on the narrative mystery on why Kate was murdered and who committed it, a plot more akin to mainstream thrillers than exploitative dead teen films.

Very Giallo indeed, Bobby

We eventually find out that the killer goes by the name Bobby and they're somehow involved with Dr. Elliot; the killer's unseen introduction not only thickened the plot but is also the source of the movie's then public outcry: you see, Bobby is a transsexual, a mentally unstable one that seemingly snapped after Elliot refused to sign papers that would have allowed their sex change operation. This homophobia-inducing depiction, intertwined with the movie's stab on the popular (and controversial) slasher element of sex-means-death formulation proved to be quite difficult to swallow by many, especially by feminists who saw Kate's murder as a form of punishment for being unfaithful. There's a bit of truth to that, as shit storm upon shit storm seems to pile up on her, strangely starting with an unsatisfying marriage, contracting a horrible disease like a slap on the wrist, and eventually getting brutally murdered by a deranged cross-dressing transsexual. It's hard to ignore that this woman might've been pushed around a bit much and it is upsetting, but the resulting catharsis is just too impressive to dislike.

The production of the film is admirable if anything; the acting is stellar (with Golden Globe winner Angie Dickinson as our ill-fated Kate Miller even winning a Saturn award in her role), the scoring is hauntingly beautiful with a right mix of emotion, majesty and depth thanks to our maestro Pino Donaggio, and there's a lot of great camera works and lighting that really remind me of works by Dario Argento or Mario Bava. Direction is filled with development and strays little from the story, despite seemingly littered with sleaze and downtown grittiness that are commonly found in cheap exploitation movies.

the famous split-screen action!

Unfortunately, the revelation felt a bit too drawn out and it lost most of its effectiveness by the time we get to know who did it. The only thing I can say about it, without spoiling much, is that it took a stab on recreating the twist reveal in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, minus the shock. Not a big drawback as it has a reasonably explained reveal and the last jump scare was pretty good.

Perhaps one of the best slasher-influenced thrillers of its decade, on which rides upon on its own controversial reputation; whether you hate it or love it, Dressed to Kill is undeniably one of De Palma's best works and, for the right audience, it's the an must-see for all fans of bodycount films!

Bodycount:
1 female slashed to death with razor
1 female strangled (dream)
1 female had her throat cut with razor (dream)
Total: 3

Golden Title: Maniac (1980)

Maniac (1980)
rating: *****
starring:  Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro and Abigail Clayton

No slasher fan is complete without a single viewing of this prime splatter classic. I mean it, if you hadn't seen Maniac yet, my young prodigies, then you had yet to learn the true meaning of disgust, sleaze and grittiness.

Before I start my review, let me first share you my struggles on seeing this movie for the first time, which was one of my first early 80s addition to my collection; I was fresh out of high school and new to college when I was patching up my way back to slasher movies. My collection was small, mostly modern slashers, and hunting down 80s classics was a task since my country never imports such titles due to very little people interested in them. I was too young to have a bank account, nor do I have the knowledge to do online purchasing, so I had to crawl in the deepest underbellies of my city to find rarer and rarer titles.

Only one shop had a copy of Maniac, but by the time I found out about it, I ran out of spending money so I had to come back some other time. But that other time had the stall raided once again, thus forcing the shop to close. Though I'm aware It'll come back, little hope came to me that time.

It wasn't until one Summer in 2010 that I finally had my copy. I walked pass a street vendor who was stopping by at my street, and there, in his stash, was one, single, bootleg copy of Maniac. By luck, I had loot (my ice cream loot), I bought it, made myself a sandwich instead and popped it in my player straight when I got home. So half of my collection is made up of bootlegs from these underbellies, as pathetic as it is, but I'm willing to go through it all just to see a true classic. Little do I know was that not only Maniac hard to get hold on to, but it's also hard to watch.

The story is simple enough to understand; Frank Zito (the late Joe Spinell), a middle aged, overweight New Yorker lives alone in an apartment complex where he work as a landlord and secretly collects mannequins. Unknown to everybody else, Frank is mentally unwell after years of verbal, emotional and physical abuse from his prostitute mum. He prowls the night for women to kill and scalp in order to decorate his mannequins, which he then will have one-sided conversations with before growing tired and go hunting for another.

His life seems to be going through this single direction everyday, as much as he wants to stop, but it all changes after meeting a fashion photographer named Anna (The fabulous Caroline Munro) whosephotographs impressed Zito enough to start dating her. However, Frank's grip on reality is still deteriorating as the days pass; the need to kill, the voices in his head, the scalps, all of it still beckons to him and further deranges his view on the world. Can Frank overcome his inner suffering? Or will he damn himself to a lifeless cycle of murder?

The untamed power of Maniac stands as one of the most powerful and recognized slasher titles to be released in the 80s. Many a times people tried to capture the same strengths and grittiness as the title had exposed to the world but sadly, most of them fell flat a few more steps as they tried to cover weak stories with grue and shocks. The latter two might be Maniac's technical high lights, but it's performance and character that drives it into full horrors.

While the plot is easy on paper, watching the entire film is an entire challenge for those with a faint of heart; while there is a bit of story going on in between the slayings, the film mainly focuses on Joe Spinell's character and his inner demons which mainly consists of scenes with him talking to himself or his mannequins while nailing bloodied scalps into them.

The first half is actually where most of the slayings occurred, starting as early as the opening when we watch our titular maniac voyeurs, stalk and kill a couple sleeping at the beach, a scene which turns out to be a flashback-nightmare. No soon after, we watch Zito take a stroll out in the night, to "process" a mannequin by strangling a prostitute before scalping her for her hair, all the while crying as if a child who knew he'll be in trouble. Not long after, again, we then get treated to yet another double murder, a scene which many slasher fans, or horror fans in general, would know as one of the best head shots in horror cinema. Special Effects maestro Tom Savini handled makeup and special effects on this film, and made a small, yet unforgettable, cameo; an effort that's quite impressive given to the minuscule budget and the realistic look in them.

After a while, the movie slows down to focus more on Frank's ramblings and his attempt to juggle his moonlight serial killing, evenrtually getting out of hand to a point of macabre. These scenes are dreadful, intense, and very gritty, almost unbearable and unsettling as Spinell rocks back and forth in front of his mother's grave and later gets attacked on a gore-out revenge assault that only a truly sick mind can thought up, giving new boundaries between cliched horror to psychological nightmare.

In the end, I just couldn't explain the intensity and goriness Maniac had shown me; it's depressing, raw and very messy. At some angle, the controversies surrounding the film's misogynistic tone can be considered true as majority of Zito's victims were women and his killings mainly revolve around the fact he was traumatized by an abusive mother.

There's also the ultra violent content, which aggravates the mob even more, much to Joe Spinell's sensitivity to the issue (The same sensitivity that pushed him to try and make a sequel to this movie, known as Mr. Robbie: Maniac 2, where he stars as a popular TV kid show host who murders abusive parents. Sadly, only a promotional short was shot and the movie never got full green-lit due to Spinell's passing) but many people appears to fail to understand that Maniac was a one-man show that never intended to have heroes, just a character study. Yes it focuses solely on our killer in is lowest and yes he's a sympathetic monster beckoning for longing and understanding even from himself, but we need not to clamor for his crimes. There was never anything to clamor about as he was meant to be feared. This was made more effective by giving very little focus on the victims, making them just as random and ordinary as the guy or gal sitting next to you in the bus way home. (though, same can be said for Zito. He is just a landlord, right? I mean, nobody seems to notice these crimes except for the cops. People just go on with their lives.)

A true slasher classic, with a formula and presence so uneven, it's depraved. Tastes may vary but one cannot dismiss Maniac. Whether you're a fresh neophyte to the genre or not, you're not complete if you hadn't experience this movie. You heard me. You don't watch it. You don't read it. You don't take in the words you just hear. In fact, you can dismiss this review if you like, cuz words cannot describe it.

You Experience it.

Bodycount:
1 female had her throat slit with box cutter
1 male garroted with piano wire
1 female strangled, scalped with box cutter
1 male had his head decimated with a shotgun
1 female shot on the face with shotgun
1 female gets a sword ran through her chest
1 female had a switchblade pushed into her chest
total: 7

Golden Title: Happy Birthday to Me (1981)

Happy Birthday to Me (Canada, 1981)
Rating: *****
Starring: Melissa Sue Anderson, Glenn Ford and Lawrence Dane

From the director of the original Cape Fear (1962), J. Lee Thompson, comes one of the grandest and most shocking entry in the 80s slasher boom.

Virginia "Ginny" Wainwright is one of the Top Ten of Crawford Academy, a group of young, rich and well connected students who frequently meet at a local pub known as the Silent Woman Tavern near Crawford's campus. Ginny, though beautiful and smart, shares a handful of repressed memories involving a harrowing drawbridge accident with her on-call psychiatrist Dr. David Faraday, who attempted to save her life by putting her through an experimental medical procedure involving surgery to restore brain tissue. 

Still, that doesn't stop her from enjoying life as one of the popular girls in school; in fact, she shares her happiness with her late mother night by night by stopping by her grave before walking home. But as Ginny resumes her life, her fellow Top Ten members start to get picked off one by one in vicious ways. As her 18th Birthday draws near, Ginny's lost memories begin to resurface and her psychosis dwells deeper into dementia as she goes through each episodes. When she's left on her own this one night her father leaves for a business trip, could she be next on the cutting board? Is someone after the Top Ten with a grudge so strong that it leads to murder? Or could she be the one responsible in the end?

True enough, Happy Birthday to Me is pure on slasher panache but what sets it apart from the rest of the simplistic thrill rides that mostly dominated these years is that, plot-wise, the film is engaging all through out.

First, when it comes to doing what a slasher film does, it does well; the murders (stated here to be six, but we all beg to differ) are generous when it come to the red stuff and more. Bizarre is a word used with a stretch as only three of these murders are done off with unusual murder weapons, including barbells, motorbike wheels and the now infamous kish kabob skewer. The rest are general routine kills but nonetheless bloody enough to let lots of the red stuff fly off the room and well built enough to be enjoyed by any fan. What makes them intriguing is that the victims knew the killer, a good set back to have us wondering who could be committing these murders. We can tell it's someone close to them, as these unknowing kids wouldn't even hesitate to strike a casual conversation with them, but among those surviving, it's not too soon that Ginny's the only one left. So could she be the one killing her friends behind her demure looks, or is there something bigger scheme behind it all?

The finale of the movie is perhaps the best I've seen, wherein a macabre birthday party of rotting corpses (both fresh and not) propped up as guests in ala There was a Little Girl (1981), with a clever twist put into it. No one saw it coming and it's not exactly out of the bloom; it's cheesy, yes, but I wouldn't want it any other way.

Likewise, the whole whodunit angle made Happy Birthday to Me easier to adore for me. Yes, this angle is flawed as it gave up cat and mouse thrills, save the opening murder, for steady tension and building kills prolonging the movie to almost two hours. (Which is really too long for a slasher flick.) A general slasher is almost stale without a good stalk-chase-kill scene, not in Happy Birthday to Me's case; what it lacks in stalkings make it up with story and that uplifts this from the cliche-ridden runs and into something more of a mystery thriller with gothic horror elements, such as thunderstorms and, yes, the macabre party. Adding to this is the melodrama take on Ginny's life, both present and past, where we learn in each episode what really happened the night she lost her mother, giving us some possible hints to who is, or are, the murderer/s in this story and what perhaps motivated them.

Casting have us a group of young thespians filling out shoes of well written and likable characters. Unlike most slashers that had us rooting for the killer to end the lives of well deserving teens and their dumb choices, the Top Ten, as snobbish as some maybe, ate not completely archetypal and you can easily tell that they're chummy with one another and generally supportive in their own ways. The murders are there to thin down these casts and provide lots of shock for the audience for both on the heavy gore and the sudden, unreasonable deaths cast upon them. Melissa Sue Anderson was a fine lead, whether she maybe the killer or not, and she is well supported by another excellent name, Sharon Acker.

In a more technical view, Happy Birthday to Me is beautifully shot with a stylish camera work and I really love the movie's haunting and child-like score. Also deserving of a good recognition is this movie's ending theme, a song written by Molly-Ann Leikin and performed by theme song performer Syreeta.

Shocking, mean spirited and all through out thrilling, Happy Birthday to Me's reputation as a Grand Guingol example of a slasher flick with class is well deserving. One of the best there is for the 80s.

Bodycount
1 female had her throat cut with a 'cut-throat' razor
1 male had his face dragged and shredded against a motorcycle wheel
1 male had his neck crushed by dropped barbells
1 male stabbed in gut with garden shears
1 male had his throat punctured with skewer
1 female drowned
1 male bludgeoned to death with fire poker
1 male gets a throat cut with knife
1 female stabbed in gut with knife
Total: 9

Golden Title: The Funhouse (1981)

The Funhouse (1981) (AKA Carnival of Terror)
Rating: *****
Starring: Elizabeth Berridge, Shawn Carson and Jeanne Austin

Opening the film with a room adorned by horror posters and monster toys, a figure picks up a mask and begins to talk a girl in the showers. Unknowing of the danger that watches her, she finds herself soon stabbed to death by the masked assailant. Or so she thought.

Meet Amy, who not only is pranked by her younger brother with a fake knife and a mask, but is also planning to spend a night out of town and into a traveling fun fair with her friends and boyfriend, much against her father's wishes. Once they reach the fair, the rebellious youngsters check out one carnival attraction at a time, namely a 21-and-over strip show, Madame Zena the fortune teller, an freak exhibit, and a magic show. But all's easy fun and games until one of them decided to spend the night in one of the fair's bigger attractions, a dark ride known as The Funhouse after closing hours. 

Packed with so much weed to smoke and their spirits in high hopes, the group reluctantly settles inside the ride and witness the frenzied attack of Gunther, a silent, Frankenstein Monster-disguised ride assistant against the prostituting Madame Zena after sexually insulting him. 

Out of fear, the two couples try to leave, but find themselves locked inside the ride and are now in a dire situation once the ride barker and the assailant's father, Conrad Straker, becomes aware of their presence. Now out to hunt them down to silence them completely from telling anybody of the murder, Conrad sic his son at the teens, revealed to be a deformed freak with a sharp maw and piercing red eyes. Stuck in a labyrinth full of ghoulish figures, traps and two murderous figures out in the shadows, can these youngsters survive the night and make it to daylight?

Thus settles everything you need to know and love about Tobe Hooper's next masterpiece after his infamous Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Though underrated and often regarded as another slasher in the 80s, The Funhouse is exactly that, with a few good tricks of its own.

The general build of the movie is one thing that makes The Funhouse a unique slasher; the mood and pacing early on the movie give us the time to know and enjoy our pecking order and while they are as thin in character as a walking stick, they're, nonetheless, reminiscent of the usual Hooper style of character direction, which are usually a colorful bunch that dons their own respective good and bad traits. Of course, the rest of the casts, usually adult figures and carnies, are more thinner than the main cast, which made the four more relatable by comparison, though one almost can't say the same about the two main bad guys here, the Straker family.

A few months ahead before Friday the 13th Part 2 debuts adult Jason, Hooper already fueled his own man-monster mongoloid that is Gunther and his body language spells a creature in turmoil; though his stepfather beats him up in for his mistakes and wrong doings, he also yearns for acceptance and even go as far as siding with the same man who abuses him out of longing. In return, his father accepts him and in his own twisted way, tries to protect him from any danger that would expose Gunther's true nature, which just so happens to be the four unwilling teens who are a dumb enough to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

The build-up to Gunther's reveal and killing spree lasts for almost an hour, which maybe a turn off for many impatient viewers but it may all be worth it as the last act have the stalk and kill gag going and done with ravishingly great effect.

Another of Hooper's creative innovation for the movie is the premise itself; the dark ride features a random number of automatons and mannequins, colored lightings that would make Dario and Bava proud, and eerie music that taunts and shackles the hapless victims into falling prey to the two killers. Hooper actually made a menace out of a seemingly ordinary, and what would have been a safe and fun location, perfectly captured in a stylish cinematography, can now be treated as a  threat taking full advantage against its lost victims. All of this is put to a full example during the film's ever tense finale, where the final girl wanders cautiously around the gears and pumps, experiencing one lunging mannequin to another, flashing lights intensifying the situation and mechanical laughters mocking her damaged persona and weary anticipation of an awaiting danger ala Grand Guingol.

Though some of the kills aren't as powerful as those found from other slashers of its time, the scripting in need of more work and some viewers might find the film lacking the same rawness as that of Hooper's true chainsaw-related masterpiece, The Funhouse still delivers what slasher films deliver the best: good kills, good scares, good build-up and a terrifying villain. Dishearteningly scary? Not much. Fun to watch? Heck yes.

Bodycount:
1 female strangled to death against a live fuse box
1 male strangled with rope, later gets an axe buried into his head
1 female clawed to death
1 male pushed to a sword, impaled
1 male shot
1 male crushed to death between gears
Total: 6

Golden Title: Jaws (1975)

Jaws (1975)
rating:*****
starring: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss

Typical sex=death formula

Daybreak, a young woman had left a party on the beach in favor of skinny dipping into the open waters of New England's Amity Island. Her boyfriend playfully, yet in drunkenness, follows her until he passes out, leaving his gal to go into the waters alone. But a simple tug, and a sharp pain, had her viciously thrashed back and forth into her death.

Amity's police chief, Martin Brody and Deputy Hendricks later finds her remains on the beach, easily regarded as a shark attack. In hopes of preventing any further attacks, Brody asks Mayor Larry Vaughan to close the beaches until they got the waters cleared, a suggestion overruled in favor of tourist income from the upcoming Fourth of July and dismissed the death as a boating accident. But it wasn't for a moment when another shark attack occurs, this time taking the life of a young boy, the film's most gutsy scene, which enraged the mother into staking a bounty for the animal.

The bounty attracted hunters, including one professional shark hunter Quint, and forced marine biologist Matt Hooper to re-examines the early victim's remains and unarguably concludes that it was a shark attack, not a boat accident, that killed her. When a shark was caught by the hunters, the town felt relief believing this was the shark that killed the young boy, though Hooper begged to differ. After being refused to do an open autopsy of the shark, Hooper asked for the aid of Brody to take the shark's remains and found out that the shark hadn't eaten any human remains. A spotted shipwreck with a larger bite mark was found later, indicating an altogether different animal from what was caught earlier.

As the Fourth of July came, another shark attack estuaries, killing a man and left Brody's son, a witness, in shock. Seeing that the shark problem had gone too far out of hand, Vaughan was persuaded to agree in hiring Quint to catch the shark, who in turn reluctantly had Hooper and Brody tagged along to help him in his vessel, the Orca, with the chum line and hooks.

After repeated brief attacks from the shark in early encounters, it all leads to the very day the shark decided to rear its raw nature at them. After a long chase, Quint harpoons a barrel to the shark and had it tied to the stern, but the shark drags the boat backward, breaking water unto the deck and flooding the engine. But in an attempt to suffocate the shark in shallow waters, Quint overstalls the boat.

Now stuck in the middle of the ocean with a shark waiting to eat them, the group attempted to spear the shark with a hypothermic spear filled with strychnine, inside a shark-proof cage but failed when the animal unexpectedly attacked and forced Hooper, who volunteers, to drop the spear. Hooper managed to escape  to safety, leaving Quint and Brody to face the animal when it leaps to the boat's transom. The attack tipped the boat and slid Quint straight into the shark's maw, eating him. Now alone, Brody took one last shot to kill the savage; finding a pressurized scuba tank, he managed to shove it into the shark's mouth and aimed at it with Quint's rifle. Climbing to the sinking ship's mast, he took a clear shot to the tank, which explodes and blew the animal's head to pieces.

Bigger boat? How about Bigger GUNS?

Now with the shark dead, Brody, and a surviving Hooper emerges, to paddle back to Amity Island, both had faced their fears and shortcomings, as seagulls begin to flock on the shark's corpse, pecking at the once great beast.

Jaws is the movie that made Steven Spielberg's directorial career after his cult fave Duel, showing how much of a phenomenally skillful and artful director he is. The changes from the novel actually seems wise enough to entertain his audience; taking the novel's primary plot and did all the necessary tweaks and timing to make his movie all the enjoyable.

Based on Peter Benchley's bestselling novel, which arguably darker in comparison to the film, Jaws can be best described as a movie of two halves, which mainly be the reason, too, why Jaws happens to be a fitting review here; the first half is where the gruesome turns had its fill. One at a time, innocent people are munched alive by a preying shark, dubbed "Bruce" in production, in a manner not to different from this blog's main entre', the slashers. The shark's repeated attacks added notoriety, as well as class, brought flair in the film's construction as it slowly evolves into an ocean adventure that is the second half, wherein the masculinity of the three men are put to the test. (Brody's fear of drowning, Hooper's inexperience with water)

As far as it is going for as a thriller, Jaws's build for suspense is a high note that had brought success to it; the film's famous score, for one, had acted as a suspenseful doomsayer on its own of sorts, warning the viewers of the approaching danger that is the animal. Attentive viewers would notice that, during the prank scene, the motif is absent, hinting that the danger is far from it, but devilishly turning as yet another man is killed no soon after the prank. The theme is widely recognized as a raw-natured, yet wildly provocative tune.  Other than that, due to some budget restrains, the shark had enough time to be openly present around the bridge to the second half, spending most of its time around the first half visually obscured through point-of-view shots underwater, as well as violent flails of the attacked, tapping sorts of primal fears of the unseen and the unstoppable. It is terrifying without the need of visceral effects and delightfully entertaining without the need of hammy one-liners. (though "We're gonna need a bigger boat" is catchy as it is) More to add the effectiveness of the climax where the trio had to face the shark.

Hooper and Quint

The three main men of the film are a likable bunch; Roy Scheider took the role of  Brody as a everday everyman, who finds himself in an extraordinary predicament, forced to fend off his fears to rises to the occasion. Dreyfuss as Hooper had his character as brash enough for a scientist to not come off as wimpy or as self-righteous as he was in the original novel, a change I'm more than happy to see on the big screen as he changed from antagonist to Brody's trusted friend, the very backbone of the movie. Lastly, we have Robert Shaw's Quint, one of the most memorable modern-day Ahab, whose background as a survivor from a sinking USS Indianapolis warship during the War in the Pacific in 1945, making him a foe most formidable against ole' "Bruce".

I like to see Jaws as a film best fitting my taste for high class movies meet my taste for bodycount horror, just as Psycho or Dressed To Kill did. Stephen Spielberg sure had a long way since his mega-success today; with a mega franchising, the film had stray much away from the modern day Moby Dick story in its sequels, theme park rides and yes, the merchandising; its legacy as a Summer blockbuster horror flick that warped a simple story to a cultural phenomenon is a tad too big to not be impressed about, bringing that much fear to the waters as Psycho did to warm showers.

Speaking of showers...cover up, man!

Bodycount:
1 female ravaged by shark
1 bot eaten by shark
1 shark speared to death
1 male found dead underwater
1 male ravaged by shark
1 male bitten in half by shark
1 shark had its head blown off by a shot air tank
total: 7