The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)

Serial killers have become such a part of the collective consciousness that they're a cultural institution, aren't they?  Compared to Hannibal Lecter, the serial killer wasn't quite as sensational in the 1970s.  I can think of earlier films where serial murderers were treated as characters, but the 70s saw a different approach: an anonymous serial killer who suddenly appears like the shark from "Jaws".  Although there wasn't a full blown slasher craze yet in 1976, there were a few prototypical examples of what would eventually morph into the 80s splatter genre.  "The Town That Dreaded Sundown" carries with it a bleak, doomy tone that was a few years away from "Friday the 13th", yet foreshadowed the grisly scare tactics of that series.

In case this is the first time you ever heard of this film, it's based on a real series of murders that occurred in Texarkana in the 1940s, where an unidentified assailant struck several times over the course of four months, claiming eight victims, five of whom died.  The film loosely dramatizes the events, although it pads the space around the attack scenes with the attempts of law enforcement characters to stop the murderer.  If you're at all familiar with the real case, then you already know the killer will not be caught, and there isn't much more to it than that.  There's an amateurishness that's hard to deny, and the director makes a grave error in heaping on too much comic relief in the form of bumbling police officers.

It's that same low budget quality that helps the film muster up what little dread that it does. The killer is menacing, wearing a white sack over his head with the eyes cut out. The murder scenes are mostly frightening, except for one sequence where a female character is stalked through a wooded area and can't quit screaming long enough for the killer to lose her trail. Her boyfriend, who has been clubbed but not killed, revives and tries to get away, but she keeps screaming at him "RUN! RUN!!", which conveniently alerts the killer to the fact that a) he's still alive, and b) he's escaping. He dies, and so does she...after the killer straps a knife to her trombone (don't ask) "plays" her to death by stabbing her in the back.

But the most shocking moment of the film for you is probably not going to be when you realize the makers of "Friday the 13th Part 2" dressed Jason to look exactly like the killer in this movie.  It's not going to be the ending, when you realize the murderer gets away with his crimes and could be OUT THERE, even today!  No, the most shocking moment of "The Town That Dreaded Sundown" is going to be when you see the killer attack none other than Dawn Wells, aka Mary Ann from "Gilligan's Island".  Not only does he shoot her directly in the face, he chases her through a cornfield with a pick axe.  Poor Mary Ann!!!  (She lives, but at what cost, I ask?)

Otherwise, I'll be honest with you, this movie is really dull.  The attack scenes deliver some chills, but the film has the atmosphere of a 1970s TV movie (despite the fact that it's a period piece set in 1946).  The bitter waters through which the viewer must wade to reach the sweet will probably not seem worth it to you, unless you're a true crime buff or a total horror geek like me.

Black Christmas (1974): It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

At a snowy Canadian university, a Christmas party is underway in a sorority house. While the girls entertain their boyfriends inside, nobody notices a shadowy figure that lurks outdoors, peering in through the windows. The unseen man scales the building using a trellis, and enters through an open attic window, and spies on the girls. After the boyfriends leave, the intruder makes an obscene phone call, and soon he attacks and murders one of them when she isolates herself in an upstairs room. Taking her body into the attic, he hides up there until the next day, when he starts with more phone calls and more murders. Eventually the girls catch on that they're in danger, but nobody ever suspects the killer is operating from inside the house, not even the police.

I feel it is an appropriate time to geek out about one of my favorite movies ever, "Black Christmas", a Canadian flick made by Bob Clark ("Deathdream", "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things", "Porky's", "A Christmas Story"). Although "Black Christmas" isn't the first slasher film, it features a few tropes that later became crucial to the slasher genre that didn't get kick started until "Halloween" inspired "Friday the 13th", leading to an explosion of films about slashers racking up body counts in unsuspecting environments. The camera often serves as a first-person viewpoint of the killer; the opening scene of the film shows him prowling around in the dark outside the sorority house, peering into the windows at the people inside, all while heavy breathing is heard on the soundtrack. I can't watch the opening of Brian DePalma's "Blow Out" without thinking about how he seems to be channeling this movie. It also has an impressive body count for its era, with the insane killer making five on-screen corpses and several more implied.

But even though there are on-screen murders (the suffocation of one sorority sister with a handful of dry cleaning bags is one of the creepiest), this movie is more memorable because of its restraint, focusing on quiet passages of suspense followed by short bursts of loud screaming and violence. Much of the shock is communicated via the film's eerie sound design, as well as the dark, foreboding house where it takes place.  It could just be camera angles and set decoration, but there seems to be danger everywhere.

"Black Christmas" is also a little bit smarter than many similar movies, challenging the viewer and utilizing more subtle visual storytelling devices instead of plot exposition to drive the scenes. For instance, it remains cagey about the identity and motivations of its murderer. There's no character in the movie that knows who he is, or what his back story is, and nothing is ever discovered, but through the disturbingly sexual phone calls he makes throughout the movie, you can start to pick up that at some point this psychotic man possibly murdered his baby sister Agnes after sexually assaulting her. The movie never spells it out for us, just scatters the bits of information throughout the film and leaves it up to us to piece together. Even more disturbing is how the killer's psychology ties in to his victims; he targets a group of young women and calls several of them "Agnes" before murdering them, seemingly suggesting that he views all females as "Agnes". Even worse, he seems to fixate on the fact that one of the sisters is pregnant, bringing in the "baby" aspect of his madness.

A few shots in the film remind me of Dario Argento, like a murder involving the use of a glass unicorn as a deadly weapon.  Clark also uses several moments in the film where a change in focus reveals important information, like a chilling scene that shows the corpse of one of the victims staring blindly out the attic window while her father walks through the snow below outside, only just beginning to feel a sense of panic over the fact that nobody can locate her. Another focus pull later in the film reveals a second victim hanging by a hook in the attic.

The film may have no real connection to "Halloween", but you can find a number of visual cues in "Halloween" that seem to have been lifted directly from this one, such as the use of the camera's first-person perspective to represent that of the killer's. John Carpenter also seems to have noticed this movie's habit of using ominous foreground cues and background cues, often with the killer lurking somewhere in the frame of the camera, unseen by the potential victims.

I love seeing Margot Kidder in this, as well as Andrea Martin. Kidder has a delicious role as a vulgar sorority sister Barb, who swears and drinks constantly, gives alcohol to children, and gamely gives the obscene phone caller a run for his money. Olivia Hussey is excellent, too, as our main heroine and final girl Jess. In contrast to many later slashers, especially the "Friday the 13th" series, "Black Christmas" portrays its female characters as intelligent and assertive; although the girls are having sexual relationships with their boyfriends, they're never presented even once as sex objects. Barb is dominating and blunt, even to her own mother on the telephone (she calls her mother a "gold plated whore" when she calls to change holiday plans with Barb so she can take a trip with her boyfriend to a ski lodge). Andrea Martin's character cancels plans with her own boyfriend to support her sister Barb, and even mousy Claire seems to be finding her voice being in the company of other assertive women; her father's shock at finding sexually suggestive items in Claire's room reveals that she is breaking away from a conservative background. Jess in particular displays a forward-thinking attitude when she is able to very carefully navigate a difficult conversation with her boyfriend in which she explains to him her reasons for wanting to abort their unplanned pregnancy. She makes a valiant attempt to explain to her lover that she doesn't want to have his baby or marry him.

As a final girl, she doesn't get to do a whole lot; "Black Christmas" only gives her one scene where she faces the killer, and after he chases her down into the basement of the house, that's pretty much it for their on-screen battle. That's a little disappointing when you view it in terms of the countless slasher movies that came afterwards, when the Laurie Strodes and Ginny Fields of the genre showed audiences how it's done.

Some viewers are frustrated by the film's ending, which offers no explanation about the killer whatsoever, even refusing to suggest his identity. Maybe that's why I love "Black Christmas" most of all, it knows that the identity of the psycho is more frightening because it's unknown and irrelevant. "Black Christmas" understands that violence and murder can be terrifyingly random, and these particular victims just happened to catch the attention of a maniac. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A Bay Of Blood, aka Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971)

**Final Girl Film Club update, 8/27/13**

Check out Final Girl for her take on Bava's classic, as well as links to other Film Club reviews for total Bava Immersion Therapy! Tune in, Twitch on, Geek out!

I know I already wrote about this here once, but please allow me to officially geek out about one of my favorite movies of all time, familiar in English-speaking markets under the titles "Twitch of the Death Nerve" and "A Bay of Blood". Possibly my favorite of Mario Bava films, it's not perfect; it goes a little too far over the top, both in its plotting and in its visuals. The zoom lens is active as ever, shots wallow out of focus for lengthy periods before resolving themselves into discernable images, and Bava lingers on shots that simply show characters doing things that do nothing to further the plot. Like his masterpiece "Lisa and the Devil", "A Bay of Blood" is self-indulgent almost to the point of absurdity. But it's this self indulgence that makes me want to keep watching it over and over.

Look, even ALIEN stole from this movie!

There is a plot so convoluted that it may not be entirely decipherable upon first viewing: a wealthy Countess owns a piece of prime bayside real estate. She can't bear to sell it to the land developer who wants to turn the area into a profitable resort, so he engineers her murder by sending his slutty girlfriend to seduce the Countess's philandering husband. Things spiral rapidly out of control: the Countess's illegitimate son witnesses her murder and immediately kills the husband. He then kills four random teenagers behaving badly in the area after one of them uncovers a clue to the murder scheme. The Countess's daughter shows up and starts killing anybody that stands between her and her inheritance. The body count grows.

What I love about the film is its strange combination of elements. The setting appears to be a lush, leafy, isolated seaside village where a few ultramodern houses are connected by scenic pathways. The furniture alone is enough to give me a heart attack, with its Eames-era atomic look. A lot of the action takes place in one man's cottage, where colored lighting adds a beautiful but ominous tone. Characters burn incense while reading Tarot cards, drink brandy out of fancy decanters, and occupy homes furnished with interesting European design. It's a space I'd love to occupy myself, minus the bloody murders.

And yes, the murders are very bloody. Despite the fact that it was made in 1971, this film was repackaged in the late 70s by American distributors and shopped around to drive-ins under the ridiculous title "Last House on the Left Part II"--not only does it have nothing to do with "Last House on the Left", it was made the year before.  But the fact that it had 13 murders in it--yes, 13--made it a great exploitation film nonetheless.  A few of those 13 murders are brutal even by today's standards, and one in particular is one of the most shocking death blows I've ever seen committed to film: when a character suddenly and realistically gets a machete deeply embedded in his face. The effect was ripped off in both "Dawn of the Dead" and "Friday the 13th Part 2", but neither one of those scenes matches this one's sudden, ferocious intensity. I'll resist the urge to list the rest of the murders here like trophies, because their ability to startle the viewer should be as undiminished as possible before viewing the film. Yet, Mario Bava obviously isn't the "Saw" generation. His gory murders are best as punctuation after long, drawn-out suspense that gradually ratchets up until violence erupts. One death scene features ripples on the surface of the bay as a precursor to the victim's murder, surrounding her with a busy but lonely backdrop as she swims nude. When she leaves the water, discovering the danger too late, the imagery shifts to a whirling chase scenario that ends with the character's abrupt slashing. In this film, the death scenes are orgasmic (in one case, quite literally).

There are a few flaws, first and foremost being the complicated plot. It took me a few viewings to really understand what was going on, and there are so damn many characters in this movie it's almost like a Robert Altman ensemble cast. The ending is nothing more than a silly gag, although truthfully it doesn't ruin anything about the movie, since the tone is not ultra serious up to that point anyway. The best thing you can do with this film is just think of it as a visual experience. Much has been written about the film's influence on the slasher genre, and you can find direct visual references between this film and the first two "Friday the 13th" films, as well as "Halloween" and several others. Perhaps Bava's overpopulated cast contributed to this, since many of the characters are fleeting and nearly nameless, which is something the entire slasher genre was accused of by its critics. It's easy to see Bava's film as being merely about the murders, but I don't feel that way about "A Bay of Blood."  If he connects with you, Bava's visual language is all you really need to let his films work their magic; the words don't really matter all that much.