The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies Part 8

Severance certainly wasn't found wanting in the shocks department, but it was essentially a dark comedy; however, on its release to DVD it acquired the kind of notoriety Christopher Smith and his crew would have never wanted. In June 2008, seventeen-year-old Simon Everitt, a promising engineering student, was taken against his wishes, to woods near Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. He was then tied up and doused in petrol before being set alight. Although he managed to escape his bonds and stagger a short distance, he collapsed and died. His killers then threw him into a ditch and in an attempt to hide the body, covered him with soil. Jonathan Clarke, nineteen, Jimi-Lee Stewart, twenty-five, and Maria Chandler, forty, were convicted of murder in May 2009. Clarke, Stewart and Mr Everitt had all been involved in a tangled love affair with a young woman in the area. The court was told the idea for the murder came from Severance, when Clarke had commented, "Wouldn't it be wicked if you could actually do that to someone in real life?" Clarke was later sentenced to at least twenty-seven years in prison before being considered for parole, with Stewart receiving twenty-two years and Chandler seventeen years. The debate continues as to whether the film should still have its cla.s.sification raised to "18".

SHAUN (SIMON PEGG) appears to be strolling aimlessly through life with his relations.h.i.+ps going steadily downhill. His stepfather seems to delight in hounding him, his girlfriend Liz has become so disillusioned with his ways she has dumped him and, let's face it, life in the electrical shop where he works is dull at best. Shaun is going absolutely nowhere in life. He is so wrapped in his own misery he fails to see the dead have returned from the grave and have one thing in mind: the succulence of human flesh. As he walks to the shops, Shaun remains oblivious to the putrefied host shambling along the streets. The news, however, is full of reports of the increasing atrophied plague, but Shaun continues in his own little world. When he and his idle game-boy friend, Ed, finally realize the events on their own doorstep, Shaun springs into action. First on the list to be saved are his mum (Penelope Wilton) and then his long suffering ex-girlfriend Liz. Armed with a cricket bat, his quest will take him back onto the fear-filled streets of suburban London and a showdown in the lounge bar of his local pub, The Winchester, when it is besieged by these mindless droves.

Following the success of the television comedy show s.p.a.ced between 1999 and 2001, Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright once again joined forces to create Shaun of the Dead, returning to many elements of the series' premise and then splattering it with the insanity of Dawn of the Dead (1978) and 28 Days Later (2002). As with these previous zombie cla.s.sics, the walking dead in this feature weren't without a sense of menace, but thankfully their sluggish nature gave Shaun and his entourage just enough of a chance to dodge between them for a few pints and some well observed one-liners. This wasn't an especially gory movie, but when one unfortunate was ripped to pieces before the camera's lens it did take the audience by complete surprise, thus making it all the more shocking. With so much hilarity and socially relevant humour played out by a cast that included some of the finest cult comedy talent of our times, there were moments when it was very easy to forget this was a bloodthirsty zombie feature. In between the laughter and putrescent mayhem there were certain poignancies to the proceedings, as family, love and friends.h.i.+p in the face of the apocalypse come to the fore, but not before Shaun and his friends have savoured that last pint at The Winchester and dispelled the living dead to the council dump. There was a concern that the comedy in this film wouldn't translate beyond these sh.o.r.es, but it proved a resounding success in the United States with Pegg and Wright being invited by George A. Romero to appear as zombies in Land of the Dead (2005).

ON THE CHRISTMAS Eve of 1971, a young boy watches in horror as his parents are murdered by a crook dressed as Santa. His father was gunned down and his mother raped before having her throat cut. After the trauma of their parents' deaths, both Billy and his brother are sent to a Catholic orphanage, where they spend their formative years enduring the tyranny of the Mother Superior. Billy's drawing of a b.l.o.o.d.y Santa Claus standing over a decapitated reindeer should have alerted the orphanage to his underlying problems, but the Mother Superior merely punishes him by sending him to his room. He doesn't stay there for long. When he slips away from his room, Billy spies on a couple making love. The Mother Superior catches the couple and beats them with a belt before using it on Billy. The following day he is forced to sit on Santa's lap, but he is scared out of his mind and bolts to his room.

The years roll on; it is now 1984 and Billy is eighteen years old. He now has a job at a local toy store and all seems to be going smoothly until Christmas comes along. In his time at the store, he has developed a liking for Pamela, a very amiable work mate. All, however, is not well, for in a dream he makes love with her, only to be stabbed as their pa.s.sion begins to heighten. The past then comes back to haunt him when he is instructed to dress as the store's Santa Claus. Later that night as the staff enjoy festive merriment, one of the employees, a young man by the name of Andy, attempts to rape his beloved Pamela. In these fleeting moments, Billy is consumed by a series of flashbacks showing images of his mother's ordeal and the abuse he suffered in the orphanage. It becomes too much; he snaps and hangs Andy with the Christmas lights. When Pamela starts yelling at Billy, he stabs her with a box cutter, repeating the Mother Superior's words, "Punishment is necessary Pamela, punishment is good". The violence escalates as the owner is. .h.i.t on the head with a hammer and his a.s.sistant manager is threatened with an axe before being brought down by a bow and arrow. Love-making couples seem to be his forte; one girl is impaled on mounted antlers and her boyfriend thrown from the window. Adorned in the Santa suit he continues on his murderous rampage, with a decapitation and subsequent head-rolling scene. Axe in hand, Billy makes his return to the orphanage to wreak his grisly kind of havoc.

Silent Night, Deadly Night caused considerable concern on its Christmas release in 1984. The controversy focused on the disturbing images of a killer dressed as Santa Claus, which contradicted the seasonal goodwill. Large crowds of incensed families were known to have gathered at cinemas to express their disgust. In the wake of such pressure, the distributor TriStar Pictures removed their advertising for the film only six days after its November release. Shortly afterwards it was withdrawn. However, even though condemned as worthless splatter it went on to cultivate a huge following, adhering to that slasher predilection for the holiday ma.s.sacre, which has never seemed to die away as recently attested by Deadly Little Christmas (2009). It was later re-released by Aquarius Films in spring 1986, replacing the original advertising campaign of "Twas the night before Christmas" with one referencing the controversy surrounding the film and edited close-up shots of Billy armed and ready in his Santa suit. In the United Kingdom, the movie was never submitted for certification and as such was never listed as a video nasty, nor was it privy to any form of official distribution. It wasn't until 2009 when Arrow Films submitted the film to the BBFC for cla.s.sification that it was pa.s.sed without cuts with an "18" certificate.

The film was to sp.a.w.n four sequels: Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 (1987), Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! (1989), Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation (1990) and Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker (1991).

UNABLE TO FIND a room on campus, Scotty Parker (Rebecca Balding) has to look elsewhere for suitable accommodation. She soon makes her choice and moves into Mrs Engels' (Yvonne DeCarlo) creepy old mansion run by her son Mason (Brad Rearden), where three other college students are already boarding. The old house stands away from the town atop a cliff overlooking an eye-catching coastal area. Mrs Engels has her strange son attend to the boarders, as for reasons of her own she rarely leaves the seclusion of her upstairs domicile. As the evening draws in the students enjoy a few drinks, resulting in some harmless tomfoolery. None of them could have foreseen the murder of fellow student, Peter, who is later found stabbed to death on the deserted beach. A police lieutenant and his partner arrive on the scene to investigate the murder and begin to uncover the family's hidden secret. Victoria (Barbara Steele) is Mason's deranged sister, who was committed to a psychiatric inst.i.tution fifteen years before. As Scotty nestles away in the seeming safety of the house in the company of Jack, she is unaware that there is a presence creeping around in its pa.s.sageways.

Filmed in 1977 this would be Denny Harris's only time sat in the directorial chair, while his writers would go onto far greater success with Pitch Black (2000) and The Chronicles of Ridd.i.c.k (2004). The original cut of this much neglected film was so poorly rendered, the cast had to be called back to endure the trials of a second shoot, which eventually saw release in August 1980 just before the slasher phenomenon seized hold of America's cinemas with the advent of Friday the 13th. This typically low-budget affair owed much to Psycho (1960) with its unhinged family protagonists and ominous setting, and saw Barbara Steele make her only film appearance of the 1980s. Harris may have had little funding for his film, but he infused a creepy atmosphere to this ageing manse, using the camera to glide through its halls and pa.s.sageways in a series of suspenseful sequences. With only two murders to its credit, Silent Scream was heavily dependent on its adeptness in narrating a simple story, set against the air of gloom permeating the corridors of this mystery-laden abode.

IN THE OPENING minutes of Fernando Di Leo's film, a masked figure wearing a hood and cape stalks the grounds of a secluded asylum for wealthy women run by Dr Keller (Klaus Kinski), before quietly entering the building. As he advances on his intended victim, she phones for an orderly and without realizing scares him away. We are then introduced to the neurotic cast, one of whom (Rosalba Neri) is an insatiable nymphomaniac; the audience will never be entirely convinced that she is heartfelt in her search of a cure. The masked killers frenzy won't begin until much later in the film, when we become privy to a series of gory and stylish set pieces that would characterize the more sleazy giallo of the day. After a series of highly erotic scenes, the girls are dispatched by the medieval weaponry on display in one of the entrance rooms as the black-gloved killer tries to exact his still undisclosed revenge. The most graphic of these murders details Jane Garret as she pleasures herself just before the killer sneaks upon her, at first stabbing her before slicing her abdomen from her neck down to her pubis. The scene was edited before the film was given a cinematic release in both the United States and the UK, although the uncut version is still thought to be available in France.

Di Leo's La bestia uccide a sangue freddo, also known as Asylum Erotica and Cold Blooded Beast, took complete advantage of the relaxation in film censors.h.i.+p that came at the end of the 1960s. Any element of credible storyline was sacrificed for the more seamy aspects of s.e.x and bloodthirsty violence as Di Leo unlocked the door for the trashy exploitative cinema of the 1970s. The scenes of simulated s.e.x and masturbation would have fitted perfectly within the context of any soft-core p.o.r.n movie as some of Europe's horror s.e.x queens, among them Margaret Lee, Rosalba Neri, Jane Garret and Monica Strebel, rolled between the sheets to beguile their slavering audience. In the years that followed both Di Leo and Rosalba Neri would distance themselves from this film, but the director and his cameraman Franco Villa were bold in their experimentation, using the distorted angles and sinuous prowling shots that would become intrinsic to the slasher movies of the next decade.

SURREAL ARTIST KAY (Sarah Kendall) and her husband David (Alan McRae) are joined by her brother and sister-in-law as they fly out to a remote island off the coast of Georgia to enjoy a family holiday. In her childhood years Kay was plagued by a recurring nightmare, stalked by a malevolent presence she has since called 'the slayer' to face death in the flames of a burning room. The terrors of her sleeping hours have continued and for the past few weeks, their increasingly disturbing nature has started to affect her entire life. Such is their intensity they have become the obsessive inspiration for her latest collection of paintings, each of which reflect an artist bordering on the brink of madness. Her concerned husband is a doctor and is convinced some time away from the pressures of everyday life will ease her troubled state of mind.

The island is a wild and lonely spot and to augment the foreboding air as they make their way to the house, a storm rumbles away beyond the horizon. It doesn't take long before Kay becomes aware that this is the place which has tormented her dreams. Her family do all that they can to calm her, but when night comes and she falls into a fitful sleep something on the island begins to change. In a cleverly conceived stalking sequence, her husband is trailed to the attic and finally decapitated by a presence in the shadows. The following day as the rest of the family try to find him, the unseen killer, now armed with a pitchfork, continues to scour the island. Very soon, Kay's dreams will become a terrifying reality as she fights to stay awake and keep the fiend at bay. With all of her family having been brutally slaughtered at the hands of this monstrous ent.i.ty, she must now confront a creature of her making.

J. S. Cardone's low-budget The Slayer, also known as Nightmare Island, would have probably drifted into the periphery of obscurity if it had not later invited interesting comparisons with Wes Craven's dream-laden Nightmare on Elm Street, although by this time Craven had already penned his celebrated terror. The Slayer observed so much of what had gone before in the slasher fare of the previous two years, but now introduced a new concept in having the heroine come face to face with the horrors of her own psyche. As the storm moved in, so the impending sense of fear became heightened as Robert Folk's orchestrated score worked to suffuse the ever-building tension. While the pacing was often slow, this was counteracted by the unsettling ambience permeating the house that made for a highly apt setting.

While the gore effects were hindered by the constraint of a limited budget, The Slayer has acquired a quite gruesome reputation, particularly in the ingenious decapitation scene, which is yet to be copied. This set piece along with the graphic impalement on a pitchfork detailing the p.r.o.ngs jutting forth from the victim's chest before being s.n.a.t.c.hed back would attract the attention of the British authorities who placed Cardone's film on the list of videos nastiest in October 1983 following its release in June 1982. It was later removed from the offending schedule in April 1985 and was released seven years later with only fourteen seconds of editing to the grisly pitchfork murder. By 2001, the film was pa.s.sed uncut by the BBFC as it was prepared for issue to DVD. For political science graduate Joseph Cardone, this was but the beginning of a successful career in both writing and directing thrillers along with the occasional horror movie.

AFTER AN OVERLY long shot of a rural home, the camera takes us within these four walls to observe a callous mother trying to silence her son, whom she finally locks away in a closet. She then starts to get rather amorous with her lover, unaware that a silhouetted stalker has crept upon them. In an effectively gory scene, that probably drained a substantial part of the film's meagre budget, the lover is whacked on the head with a sledgehammer, with the mother soon to follow.

A crudely made t.i.tle card informs the audience ten years have pa.s.sed as a van pulls up outside this now abandoned house. A group of stereotypical eighties college kids have come to party for the whole weekend. It would have remained a fun weekend if one of them hadn't suggested holding a mock seance. In the shadows of their gathering, the house a.s.sumes a sinister air and a masked killer armed with knives and the requisite sledgehammer returns from the dead.

While David A. Prior's film contains so many cliches a.s.sociated with the period, his killer was gifted with paranormal powers that allowed him to change from a hulking murderer to the young child seen in the movie's opening scenes, and then completely disappear from sight. This was Prior's debut in a long career as a low-budget director, which has led to him overseeing more than thirty films. Here, in this shot-on-video feature, he revealed he had the ability to engineer the tension, but there were long moments when his tracking was woefully slow. The goriest scene appeared during the film's opening sequences but, alas, this was not to be matched, even though there was slaughter aplenty. The limitations of the camcorder made much of the filming noticeably blurry and the fadeouts observed a creative team yet to learn their trade, but Prior made perfect use of the light as he worked to create an air of terror in a plot that was guilty of meandering without pace. However, for all of its faults, Sledgehammer continues to attract the interest of homemade movie fans and those who wouldn't mind getting behind the camera themselves in the hope of making their own film for next to nothing.

WHEN A GROUP of teenagers cause a boating accident in the middle of a lake, which kills a father and son, the daughter, Angel (Felissa Rose), is taken to live with her peculiar Aunt Martha and cousin Ricky. Eight years later the still traumatized Angela is on her way to her first summer camp with her cousin, who has already made known the feelings he has for her. While at camp, the cook also displays an unhealthy interest in the young Angela. Very quickly, her quiet disposition makes her the b.u.t.t of her fellow campers' cruel jibes as the buffoonery begins to get out of control. While Ricky is quick to defend her, he cannot stop the bullying campers from being butchered by a mysterious prowler. The hapless Judy is brutally murdered, in a graphic episode, by a curling iron; then follows the slaying of four youngsters in their sleeping bags. Finally, Angela's would-be suitor Paul is decapitated before the killer is revealed, axe in hand and completely naked.

Robert Hiltzik's Sleepaway Camp invites immediate comparisons with Friday the 13th (1980) in having a murderer run amok in a remote camp, but its s.e.xual psychology draws from Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k's Psycho (1960) as well as Brian de Palma's Carrie (1976), to make this one of the most memorable slasher movies of the early 1980s. Here, the young Hiltzik creates an unnerving atmosphere as an unknown a.s.sailant sets about the cast in a series of highly original killings. This isn't a particularly gory movie, but the climax is one of the most shocking screen revelations since Norman Bates' admission some twenty-three years before.

The first-time director had no idea he had created a film which would command such a dedicated following. When he scripted his sequel, it was considered too dark as the film industry sought a deviant villain on a par with the rueful Fred Kreuger. A couple of sequels would eventually come from Michael A. Simpson, Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988) and Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989). Bruce Springsteen's younger sister, Pamela, played the part of Angela, now a camp counsellor. Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor, directed by Jim Markovic, was never completed, but the footage that was filmed was released in the Anchor Bay/Starz Entertainment's Sleepaway Camp DVD box set. Hiltzik, who had gone on to become a lawyer, scripted and directed Return to Sleepaway Camp in 2003, which, after so many setbacks in trying to find a distributor, finally saw release in November 2008. The Hiltzik trilogy will be brought to a close with Sleepaway Camp Reunion, which is still in production.

AMY HOLDEN JONES was observed by many to be a purely feminist writer when she penned her satirical The Slumber Party Ma.s.sacre; she introduces her film with a shower scene along with an ample display of bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Having grabbed her predominantly male audience's attention she presents a delectable eighteen-year-old high school girl, Trish, who has been left at home in a quiet suburb of Los Angeles while her parents are away on holiday. When she meets up with her girls' basketball team friends she invites them over for a slumber party. The guys in the theatres just couldn't have believed their luck. Valerie, who is new to the group and doesn't quite get on with everyone, decides to stay at home across the street with her annoying younger sister Courtney.

Unknown to them, a maniacal murderer, Russ Thorne, has escaped the asylum. He was incarcerated many years before having slaughtered five people way back in 1969, the same year as the infamous Manson murders. While radio bulletins regularly announce his breakout he cleverly avoids discovery, and then catches sight of Trish and follows her home from school. Prior to arriving at the party, he kills an attractive female electrician and then appropriates her van, which contains the drill that will prove useful later in the evening. Fellow teammate Linda is also disposed when she becomes locked in the school. Hidden away in the darkness Thorne makes his way to the house and gate-crashes the party. Armed with his power drill he begins to terrorize the scantily clad girls for the last twenty minutes of the movie as they run from room to room screaming their heads off. Their only hope of rescue is the estranged new girl who lives across the street.

The highly amusing Slumber Party Ma.s.sacre turned out to be an incredibly successful slasher movie and was the first of four films to see Jones at the director's chair. In the years that followed, she would return to writing considerably more successful screenplays, but who can deny the obvious pleasure she took in lampooning the genre. Here she supplied every facet of the trope with a typically limited budget and left the boys more than satisfied. They couldn't have been more delighted in being presented with a cast of hot teenage girls, some nudity and an abundance of splatter as the driller killer armed with his phallic implement ensured the body count began to rise higher and higher. The tension slowly simmered and then arose to boiling point with a devious set of manoeuvres that created innumerable deceptive shocks. It was Valerie, however, who made for the perfect final girl, innocent yet immensely resourceful and leaving the boys only guessing.

The promotional material accompanying this film and the covers to the video and DVD have given this movie an unwarranted reputation for sleaze. It has also been rebuked for its violent stance against women. Jones's detractors have always failed to appreciate her desire to parody rather than exploit. On its 1986 release to video in the UK, the BBFC insisted on a change of name to the Slumber Party Murders. It was, however, highly influential and sp.a.w.ned countless inferior copies, notably The Last Slumber Party (1988), the Bikini Bloodbath (20079) series, and all three entries in the Sorority House Ma.s.sacre (198691) collection. In its wake, there came three sequels, Slumber Party Ma.s.sacre 2 (1987), Slumber Party Ma.s.sacre 3 (1990) and Cheerleader Ma.s.sacre (2003) along with the doc.u.mentary Sleepless Nights: Revisiting the Slumber Party Ma.s.sacres made in 2010. Thirty years later, it remains a great favourite among fans of the genre.

IT'S 1971, TWO years after the infamous Manson family killings, and a gang of Argentine biker chicks under the control of an uncannily similar character, are relis.h.i.+ng their own version of Helter Skelter. As a drugs war rages in the city, an actress is being exploited by her sleazy p.o.r.n-fuelled producer boyfriend. The leather-clad girls are instructed by their leader Satan (Enrique Larratelli) to slaughter the actress's lover and prepare to make her fit to bear a child for their sacrifice. The tacked on final scene, filmed five years later in 1976, attempts to have the audience believe that they have been privy to the mutilation and real murder of one of the actresses seen in the film. While on set, she is stabbed and dismembered by the film crew, each of whom are then heard escaping the scene as the film runs out.

Filmed in Argentina in 1971, the sleazy exploitation feature The Slaughter, written and directed by the husband-and-wife grindhouse filmmaking team of Michael Findlay and Roberta Findlay, drew its sordid inspiration from the Manson family tabloid frenzy of 1969. However, its poor script and dubious acting were never going to turn it into a raging success. Five years later, without the knowledge of the Findlays, independent low-budget distributor Allan Shackleton released the film, which included the now infamous finale. He had read about the allegations surrounding snuff movies being produced in South America and decided to use The Slaughter as his vehicle to exploit this myth. He released his film as Snuff, also known as American Cannibale, using bogus protesters to picket those cinemas that dared to show the film. Very soon, the radical feminist group Women Against p.o.r.nography, who were highly active during the 1970s and 1980s, joined these protests thus exacerbating the film's unsavoury reputation.

Shackleton's publicity campaign certainly worked, for as bad as this film was, it continued to be the focus of much attention. The ending was certainly disturbing, but the effects were largely inspired by the antics of one Hersch.e.l.l Gordon Lewis. Four years before Ruggero Deodato was chastised by the Italian authorities for seemingly making a snuff movie with Cannibal Holocaust (1980), Shackleton faced the wrath of the mayor of New York. He saved himself from a long stretch in prison by presenting the supposedly murdered actress for all to see. In the UK, the uncut video was ready to be released in May 1982, but was cancelled only for bootleg copies to filter into the country. Not surprisingly, Snuff found its place on the list of video nasties in July 1983, and there it remained until the crisis came to an end. An uncut version was not approved until 2003. Three years later this lackl.u.s.tre piece of exploitation would be referenced in the second season of the UK Channel 4's The Dark Side of p.o.r.n, the episode ent.i.tled "Does Snuff Exist?" Unlike so many of the films in this collecton, Snuff refuses to be forgotten.

LITTLE BETH'S FAMILY were killed by her brother; she only managed to escape by hiding quietly in the bas.e.m.e.nt. He was then committed to an asylum, from which many years later he escapes. Like several ma.s.s murderers before him, he then sets off to return to his home town. Beth was brought up by her aunt, who has recently pa.s.sed away. She has now grown up and is about to settle down in a sorority affiliated to her college. However, although her mind has blocked out the memories of that terrible night from her childhood, she is plagued by nightmares of an ominous figure and a dark house she doesn't recognize. Little does she realize that the sorority house was once her childhood home and her evil brother has sensed her presence. Only when one of her sorority sisters places her under deep hypnosis do the recollections of her traumatic past finally return.

The connections with Halloween (1978) were all too obvious, as Carol Frank for the one and only time in her career sat in the director's chair after working as a.s.sistant director on The Slumber Party Ma.s.sacre (1982). Once again, she had the girls chasing around a secluded house wearing only their revealing night attire while a deranged killer prowled around with a sharpened knife. The psychic link had been used elsewhere, but on this occasion it was handled with an element of flair. There were many amusing moments in this film, some of them not intentional, but the stalking sequences did make the audience fall deathly quiet. The kills were far from gory, however, and by 1986 were not considered especially imaginative. This was a slasher done by the numbers as the era slowly came to an end, but Frank's film proved successful enough to generate a couple of sequels, Sorority House Ma.s.sacre 2 (1990) and the raunchy Hard to Die (1990), also known as Sorority House Ma.s.sacre 3.

APATIENT MAKES A bid to escape from a New York City mental hospital, killing one of the orderlies and then donning his clothes. Three years later a University sociology professor is horribly murdered as he works late into the evening. Next semester his replacement Julie (Forbes Riley) is told by Father Perkins (Richard W. Haines) of her predecessor's unfortunate death. It is obvious from the outset that Julie will be severely challenged by her dope-addicted, s.e.x-obsessed students and her views on abortion become the immediate talk of the college.

When their studies are over the cla.s.s like to party, but their revelry is brought to an unceremonious end when a killer begins to stalk the campus. With the reports of both students and teachers being killed beginning to escalate, Julie becomes enamoured with a fellow lecturer. We learn he was dating a tutor who was only recently murdered, but the colleague who pa.s.ses this t.i.tbit of information is then killed. Fearing the worst, Julie decides to leave her new life, but before she packs her bags her investigations reveal the psychopathic culprit is the escaped mental patient. Together she and her boyfriend try to stop his unforgiving onslaught through the corridors and hallways of the campus with tragic consequences.

The t.i.tle Splatter University typically left nothing to the imagination. As a slasher movie it runs with an air of distinct familiarity, but on this occasion does not observe the motif honoured to the final girl. In a well-crafted sequence the stalker's presence becomes all the more menacing as he strides ever closer to the endearing Julie. There has been criticism of inadequate post-production dubbing, the kids wearing the same clothes and dead bodies that have been observed to move, yet Haines isn't behind the mark when it comes to delivering low-budget blood, as b.r.e.a.s.t.s and crotches are sliced open and a disembowelment splurges off screen. Hersch.e.l.l Gordon Lewis would have been proud! Cheap thrills and shots of girls' backsides in tight jeans abound along with an amusing scene where a fl.u.s.tered priest when about to meet one of the teaching staff discards his p.o.r.n magazines. Splatter University came at a time when the slasher had been utterly played to death and for all its worth would have found it impossible to bring anything new to the table. Richard W. Haines, having ascended to his first role in the director's chair, continued in a career that would eventually lead into film archiving.

ALTHOUGH IT IS very late at night, a group of actors are still going through their routine rehearsing for a musical about a crazed killer they call "The Night Owl". When the leading lady, Alicia (Barbara Cupisti), sprains her ankle, she and the wardrobe mistress, Betty (Ulrike Schwerk), quietly leave the theatre to find a doctor. The only hospital in the area is a mental facility, but an amiable psychiatrist is happy to attend to Alicia's injury. Betty notices a patient lying restrained on a bed. He is the former actor Irving Wallace, a man who went wild and slaughtered more than a dozen people. As the girls prepare to return to the theatre, they are unaware Wallace has escaped after killing one of the attendants and is now secreted in the back of Betty's car. On her return, the angered director (David Brandon) dismisses Alicia for having left the rehearsal. She storms out of the building only to find Betty lying prostrate on the floor of the car park, the victim of a cruel murderer.

With two police officers a.s.signed to stand guard over the car park, the pompous director has one of his cast hide the keys so that no one else can slip away from the theatre. He has also changed the script to his play, renaming his "Night Owl" killer "Irving Wallace", and commands his team to continue working through the night so that they can familiarize themselves with the new material. As a thunderstorm rages in the world beyond the theatre, the real Wallace enters the building. He dons the owl-like mask and when mistaken for one of the cast willingly obeys the director's instructions and expertly butchers the girl who has only just hidden the key to the building. In a series of suspense-filled sequences amidst the darkened pa.s.sageways beneath the theatre, Wallace acts out his grisly fantasies in a succession of gruesome decapitations, a disembowelment and bodily dismemberment. Their only chance to escape this deranged psycho is for one of the cast to find the elusive key.

As the horror industry in Italy continued to struggle, Michele Soavi, who had been Dario Argento's eager protege, stepped into the director's chair to work alongside two of the most eminent figures from the halcyon days of Italian exploitation, producer Joe D'Amato and writer George Eastman. While learning his trade, Soavi had been a.s.sistant director on Argento's Tenebrae (1982) and Phenomena (1985) along with Lamberto Bava's A Blade in the Dark (1983) and Demons (1985), in addition to taking minor roles in Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead (1980) as well as Tenebrae, The New York Ripper (1982) and Demons. His stylish direction would engender a film worthy of the giallo of a decade past coupled with the slash and hack that had reached its nadir in the United States only a few years before. Eastman's script preferred an accessible linear narrative, but Soavi's adept cinematic approach revealed the apt pupil had ascertained much from his mentor, with imaginative camera work and atmospheric set pieces to distinguish his film with a flair commonly observed in more experienced directors. While there was plenty of blood-letting with the graphic exposition of power drills being forced into yielding flesh, there was also a claustrophobic tension to his film, which would leave his audience clamouring for more. This materialized in The Church (1989), The Sect (1991) and the acclaimed Dellamorte Dellamore (1994). Soavi wouldn't be able to save the Italian cinematic horror, but just for a few more years he ensured it once again became highly entertaining.

LUCY HARBIN (JOAN Crawford) returns home one evening to find her husband (Lee Majors) in bed with his former girlfriend. In a blind rage she creeps up to the bed and dispatches them with several blows of a sharpened axe, not realizing her young daughter, Carol, has seen the entire grisly incident. In the days that follow, Lucy is declared mad and sentenced to twenty years in the asylum.

Years later, the cured Lucy is dropped off at the farm where her daughter has gone to stay; Carol appears unaffected by the trauma of that night twenty years ago. She has grown up to become a very popular young lady, engaged to one of the most eligible men in town. The following day Lucy and her daughter spend some time together shopping, which allows her to have a complete makeover that by magic makes her look twenty years younger. However, all is not well for, while in the store, Lucy is convinced she can hear a mocking voice that taunts her with nursery rhymes of her murderous past. During the night, she awakens to the sound of the same goading and then turns to see the shocking sight of two decapitated heads lying beside her. When Carol's Uncle Bill enters the room, the heads are no longer to be seen. This shatters Lucy, who begins to appear increasingly unhinged, just as she had twenty years before. She doesn't help herself when she tries to seduce her future son-in-law and then those who cross her, suspecting she is not entirely sane, soon begin to turn up dead.

William Castle's Strait-Jacket was undeniably influenced by Psycho (1960) and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962), in which Joan Crawford had also had a starring role. Following the success of the Robert Aldrich-directed Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Crawford, now in her sixties, took on the role of a twenty-nine-year-old for Strait-Jacket's prelude. She then played the largest part of the film as a woman of forty-nine, giving a quite remarkable performance as a person unable to escape the catastrophic events of that one night of insanity. Castle, who had always relied on gimmicks to promote his earlier films, was looking to improve his reputation and now had one of Hollywood's greatest stars at his behest. Such was her commitment she supervised the redrafting of the script, made changes to the supporting cast and selected her own wardrobe.

Her presence elevated Castle's direction and, thanks to Robert Bloch's writing, he produced a macabre thriller with a twist ending set in an idyllic farmhouse that was revealed to be a thin veneer for the madness that lurked beneath this seemingly perfect family. When compared to his other movies, this film ran at a fair pace, and in its day those decapitations would have shocked its thrill-seeking audience, even though they offered little in the way of gore. Castle would continue with his B-grade schlock, but sadly the great roles would elude Crawford, whose later work was confined to low-budget features and television.

IN THE ONCE quiet college town of Galesberg, Illinois, teenagers are being slaughtered by a group of unknown killers. One of the town's police officers, John Brady (Michael Murphy), is convinced the killings are linked to the behavioural experiments being carried out at the university. In one of the university's lecture theatres the scientist overseeing this shady experimentation, Dr Le Sangel (Arthur Dignam), continues to teach his young pupils via archival film; the doctor pa.s.sed away from this world some years before. His successor, the aloof Dr Parkinson (Fiona Lewis), now continues with her former mentor's bizarre experiments.

Officer Brady's son Pete (Dan Shor) needs to raise the money to cover his college fees, and the only way he can do this is by volunteering to join the research programme. His girlfriend Caroline (Dey Young) knows nothing of Dr Parkinson's dubious machinations, but it is becoming increasingly obvious those students who enrol in this scheme are turning into mindless creatures with an inclination for slaughter. Brady, however, has a shady past, one connected with the mystifying Le Sangel.

Michael Laughlin's film came as Australian cinema was being revitalized following the success of Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Gallipoli (1981). One of his producers, Antony Ginnane, hoped to begin a wave of low-budget Antipodean horror movies, which started with Patrick (1978), and continued with Thirst (1979), The Survivor (1981) and, that same year, Dead Kids, also known as Strange Behaviour, Human Experiments and Small Town Ma.s.sacre. Filmed in Auckland, New Zealand, with a largely American cast, Laughlin's homage to the horror movies of the 1950s witnessed a painstaking re-creation of the small town atmosphere of the American Mid-West. Co-written with Bill Condon, who went on to script G.o.ds and Monsters (1998) and Chicago (2002), the imagery in Laughlin's film continues to haunt with the murders seemingly played down to exacerbate the horror at hand. The effect is chillingly surreal as a Tangerine Dream soundscape adds to the heightening paranoia.

After a reasonable reception among the critics, this was the first instalment of the ambitious Strange Trilogy, but was cancelled when the second feature Strange Invaders (1983) performed rather poorly at the box office. The audience of the day seemingly had little comprehension of such tributes to the nostalgia of 1950s science fiction and horror. When the film was first released in the UK as Small Town Ma.s.sacre in 1986, it pa.s.sed the scrutiny of the BBFC without being edited. However, subsequent releases saw increasingly more cuts to the suicide scene with the syringe to the eyeball also being slightly edited. Strange Behaviour, with its unusual science fiction premise, offers a unique play upon the in-vogue slasher of the early 1980s, one that recalls memories of The Invasion of the Body s.n.a.t.c.hers (1956).

ACOUPLE OF DEPRAVED maniacs, making themselves out to be student filmmakers, kidnap hookers and then place them before the camera before torturing and killing them. While the brutality in the killings is never seen, the body parts are later discovered with the refuse in back alleyways across the city. Their victims' agony is captured on tape and sold to a sleazy character as snuff videos. Officer Kelly Anderson is forced to go undercover in her high heels and stockings to put an end to these wretched crimes.

Jeff Hathc.o.c.k returns with another piece of shot-on-video slasher misogyny, which once again seems to have vanished from the face of the Earth. Its premise is both graphic and unpleasant with murky photography that works to enhance its unsavoury nature. The acting is typically poor and isn't helped by the unbelievably contrived dialogue. While the bloodthirsty nature of the psycho's activities is kept to a minimum, the level of violence is indeed shocking and adds to the film's notoriety.

AS THE RAIN pours down on this stormy night, an American ballet student Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) arrives in Freiburg to join an exclusive ballet school. Her taxi journey from the airport seeks from the very outset to unsettle, becoming increasingly claustrophobic and heightening the sense of dread, which rises for the next twenty minutes to a climactic frenzy before culminating in a brutal double murder. When Suzy returns to the school in the warming light of day, she learns that the student seen chasing through the woods the night before fell victim to a vicious murderer. The head of the school, Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett), tries to a.s.suage the novice student's trepidation, but the severity in her a.s.sistant Miss Tanner (Alida Valli) puts her very much on edge. This isn't the first student disappearance from the school and as the days go by it becomes glaringly obvious there is something amiss in this esteemed establishment. When Suzy attempts to mingle with her fellow dance students, they are not exactly welcoming, but she eventually befriends Sara (Stefania Casini), who then disappears after being stalked by an unseen malevolence. With her life in jeopardy, Suzy is now forced to uncover the dark secret that lies at the heart of this accursed inst.i.tution.

The plot to Dario Argento's Suspiria, the first of the "Three Mothers Trilogy", is very simple. Although true to the Italian terrors of these years, Argento refuses to adopt an entirely linear narrative; instead he makes an a.s.sault on the senses with an intensity of colour, contrasted by deep shadows that threaten and lighting that evokes an air of the surreal as this h.e.l.l-bound inst.i.tution seeks to haul you asunder. Accompanying this vivid display is a typically disturbing soundtrack from Goblin, which is probably the most unsettling score in the history of horror cinema. Suspiria is a stylized sensual masterpiece, suggesting menace at almost every turn, yet these lurid hallways and corridors were influenced by the seeming innocence of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), a film that made such an impression on Argento as a child. The script to what has been described as a perverse fairy tale was inspired by Thomas De Quincey's drug-induced fantasy, Confessions of an Opium Eater or Suspiria De Profundis, and was to take place in a children's school, but had to be amended owing to concerns about the controversy it would have undoubtedly caused.

Argento once again proved himself the master of horror cinema and unlike so many of his contemporaries he raised the tension from the film's opening frames, engaging a series of visual shocks before traumatizing the audience with two characteristically elaborate death scenes. Their graphic portrayal was to live on with cinemagoers, but unlike so many of the gialli movies of the period, this excess was only repeated when Sara became encased in razor wire while being pursued through the attic. Suspiria allowed Argento to explore his fascination with witches and in so doing he created this multi-layered magnum opus that will invite examination for many years to come.

NEW YORK AUTHOR Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) flies out to Rome to promote his new murder mystery "Tenebrae". He is met by his agent Bullmer (John Saxon), who has been busy lining up an interview on a talk show. As he arrives in Rome, a woman is caught trying to steal a copy of the book from a shop. Although she convinces the security guard to turn a blind eye, someone is discreetly watching her. When she returns to the comfort of her flat, she is attacked by an a.s.sailant who forces the pages of the stolen book into her mouth and then slashes her throat with a razor. The razor is very similar to that which is referenced in Neal's book. Following the discovery of the body, the writer is questioned by Detective Germani (Giuliano Gemma). Soon after he receives a letter and then a grating phone call from the killer, whose mission he reveals is to eliminate those he considers perverts. It's not long before two lesbians are murdered by the black-gloved killer, whose modus operandi again emulates the murders in Neal's latest bestseller. As murder follows upon murder Dario Argento saves his goriest scene until the last, in a stylish sequence that would one day draw comparisons with Saw (2004).

When he set out to write Tenebrae, which has also gone by the names Tenebre, Unsane, Shadow and Sotto Gli Occhi dell'a.s.sa.s.sino, Dario Argento put aside his intriguing "Three Mothers Trilogy" to direct one of his most stylish films of the period. His latest movie harked back to a plot device first seen twelve years before in his landmark giallo The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970). There would be the customary twists to the tale, along with an abundance of red herrings, which remained true to the format of these vaunted Italian mysteries. Inspired by Andrzej Zulawski's art house terror Possession (1981), he combined his visual mastery with the photography of Luciano Tovoli to create a washed-out cityscape with muted colours that were the ant.i.thesis of the shadows intimated in the film's t.i.tle. This bland vision was also very much at odds with the decadent splendour observed in both Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980) and left the impression of an urban sterility lying in a world without soul. Only when the blood began to flow did the audience get a taste of the deep red hues of his previous films. However, even these appeared somewhat restrained until the murder of Veronica Lario just as the film coursed to its suspense-filled denouement. This was a return to the Argento of a few years past, as Veronica lost her arm to the killer's axe and blood spurted freely across her apartment. Tovoli excelled with his long smooth-flowing panoramas, and then moved in to introduce the close-up shots that delivered the visceral shocks Argento fans had come to expect. Goblin returned to write the score and once again captured the atmosphere Argento and his team worked so hard to create.

Their hard work was unfortunately cut by four seconds by the BBFC prior to the film's cinematic release in 1983, specifically to Veronica holding her b.l.o.o.d.y stump following the arm-chopping scene. Worse was to follow when this cut version was transferred to video later that same year; it was cited as one of the offensive video nasties in March 1984 and remained on the list until the panic was finally forgotten. Poor Veronica's blood bath wasn't to see an unedited release until 2003.

ACOLLEGE FRATERNITY DREAMS up a bizarre initiation game by arranging for one of their girlfriends, Alana (Jamie Lee Curtis), to lure a naive young pledge into bed then switch with a corpse at a New Year's Eve party. Wrapped in the cold embrace of the cadaver, the poor fellow quite literally goes mad and has to be hauled away to a mental inst.i.tution. Several years later, it is graduation time and, the fraternity holds a fancy dress party on an old steam train. While the wealthy college kids enjoy their masquerade, a killer slips aboard and all too soon embarks upon the slaughter of the revellers, donning their costumes and the accompanying array of masks once he has disposed of them. For Jamie Lee Curtis this will be yet another chase through the shadows and a life or death showdown with a masked killer.

Terror Train was made soon after Halloween (1978) and similar to Carpenter's original relies on building the atmosphere rather than the gore of that same year's Friday the 13th. For Canadian director Roger Spottiswoode this was this first of many appearances in the director's chair, having already worked as an editor for Sam Peckinpah, most notably on Straw Dogs (1971) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973). He was lucky enough to have British cinematographer John Alcott on his team, a man who had excelled alongside Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A s.p.a.ce Odyssey (1968) and The s.h.i.+ning (1980). The pair would ensure this was a claustrophobic entry to this fledgling genre, which managed the suspense particularly during the chase sequences and kept much of the bloodshed to the imagination of the a.s.sembled audience, although the severed head was still quite graphic for the day. True to slasher lore the killer hid away behind a mask as a series of red herrings were thrown in, amongst them a young David Copperfield who appeared as a menacing magician. For Jamie Lee Curtis this wouldn't quite match the success of Halloween, The Fog (1980) and Prom Night (1980) but it would acquire a recognition as one of the more stylish slasher releases of the period, although the obvious lack of gore almost saw it consigned to obscurity.

TOBE HOOPER'S LEGENDARY movie opens in the stifling temperature of a Texas summer. There are reports of graves being violated and corpses a.s.sembled as gruesome sculptures in a distant cemetery. Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) and her wheelchair-bound brother, Franklin (Paul A. Partain), take it upon themselves to visit the cemetery to ensure their grandfather's grave has not been desecrated. They travel with three friends, Sally's boyfriend Jerry (Allen Danziger), her best friend Pam (Teri McMinn), and Pam's boyfriend Kirk (William Vail). The grave, they learn, has not been defiled, and safe in this knowledge they decide to continue to the old family homestead.

As they drive deeper into this isolated rural wasteland, Tobe Hooper builds the sense of foreboding with references to an abandoned slaughterhouse, soon after which their van is smeared with blood by a demented hitchhiker. The sense of unease persists when they attempt to fill the van with petrol; the strange attendant issues a warning about returning to their former home. The house, it turns out, was left deserted years ago. Undeterred, the kids explore the area and in the oppressive heat come upon a large farmhouse surrounded by dozens of abandoned vehicles. Kirk walks up to the dismal house with his girlfriend Pam; his knock, however, goes unanswered. Convinced he can he hear the sound of a distressed animal he enters the ill-kept hallway. Within moments, a huge masked man (Gunnar Hansen) we will come to know as Leatherface stands before him. This masked ogre raises a sledgehammer and slams it into his head. This a.s.sault of the senses takes place in mere seconds. Kirk's lifeless body is dragged away into the back room, his fate unknown.

When Kirk fails to return, Pam goes into the house to trace his whereabouts. She screams in terror when she discovers sculptures suspended from the ceiling fas.h.i.+oned with human skulls, furniture decorated with bones and skulls and the floor littered with bones, feathers and traces of blood. She becomes Leatherface's next victim, a meat hook gouged into her back. This scene presented the most brutal slaughter of a female character in a commercially distributed film and significantly altered the boundaries in what was acceptable in relation to cinematic violence. Hanging aloft, she is forced to watch her boyfriend's dismemberment at the hands of this mindless brute and his incessant chainsaw.

When night falls Leatherface's sledgehammer dispatches Jerry as he tries to save Pam, who is barely alive in the freezer. Franklin is the next to meet his maker, this time slaughtered by the psychotic giant's chainsaw. Only Sally is left; frightened for her life she takes flight with Leatherface in hot pursuit. She manages to escape his chainsaw, but is later captured at the petrol station by the outlandish attendant and escorted back to the infernal house. Bound to a chair she once again finds herself in the company of the hitchhiker and now has the pleasure of being introduced to his dysfunctional family, the petrol attendant, an age-old grandpa and the silent figure of Leatherface.

So begins a night of torment, climaxed by a main course of human flesh served by a now feminized Leatherface. Against all odds, Sally escapes by throwing herself through the window. Armed with his noisome chainsaw, Leatherface and the deranged hitchhiker give chase, but the hitchhiker is killed by a truck. When the driver pulls up and tries to help, Leatherface mounts a frenzied a.s.sault on the cab. Only when the driver hits him full in the face with a wrench does the pair escape, with Sally narrowly eluding death in the back of a pa.s.sing pickup truck. Just before the curtain goes down, she is seen laughing at the sight of the aggravated Leatherface, the unremitting buzz of his chainsaw still desperate for human flesh, bathed in the first light of a new dawn. Sally it would appear has completely lost her mind.

Filmed in a gruelling schedule lasting only four weeks, the highly controversial yet hugely influential The Texas Chain Saw Ma.s.sacre was portrayed as a sequence of true events. This brought the sensation seekers out in their droves and added to the film's success. It was, however, a ruse employed by Tobe Hooper to misinform his audience, just as he felt the American government had when they misled the country over Watergate, the petrol crisis and the atrocities of the Vietnam War. The sensationalism of everyday news reports had come to alarm him; he saw humankind attempting to hide behind a mask, one that obscured the true face of the monster. The grotesque Leatherface was incarcerated in his own mask; this monstrous visage, however, disguised the anguish within and consequently engendered a bizarre sense of pathos. Other observers would later note the underlying commentary in the desolate landscape symbolizing the end of the American dream. As s.a.d.i.s.tic as the film most certainly was, it was forthright in its use of social commentary, and was the first horror movie to address such concerns.

Wisconsin murderer Ed Gein provided an element of Hooper's inspiration. It was the moral schizophrenia, observed in the case of Houston-based Elmer Wayne Henley, that really caught the director's attention. As a teenager, he had been involved in the abduction, rape and murder of almost thirty teenage boys, some of whom were his friends. When arrested, Henley admitted to the crimes and freely accepted he must be punished; this ethical perversity became the basis for Leatherface and his deranged family, although Henley's lawyers did later appeal against his sentence. The idea for letting a chainsaw loose in his film came to Hooper in the hardware section of a crowded store; it provided the quickest means of getting through the throng. IcelandicAmerican actor Gunnar Hansen took the preparation for his role as Leatherface a little more seriously; he visited a school for those with learning disabilities, where he could study the pupils first hand and create the character both he and Hooper had discussed.

Hooper struggled to find a distributor for the film. Even though he had minimized the gore, it was still considered far too violent which in turn made it a potential risk. Wes Craven's Last House on the Left (1972) had already demonstrated such extremes were viable at the box office, in a film in which he had also engaged a murderous chainsaw. Bryanston Pictures finally took on the distribution; their terms almost resulted in disaster for Hooper, with his cast and crew going through the courts to ensure they were paid. When the company folded in 1976, due to Louis Peraino being convicted on obscenity charges following his involvement with Deep Throat four years before, New Line Cinema acquired the distribution rights. They were a little more amenable in agreeing to pay a greater percentage of the gross profits. Hooper's problems, however, were far from being over. The critics were none too pleased with the excess and as a result his film was banned in many countries, including the UK. It did eventually see a limited release owing to the actions of more forward-thinking local councils that were prepared to grant a licence. At the time of the film's banning, the word "chainsaw" was prohibited from the t.i.tle of any film, resulting in many producers changing the t.i.tle of their low-budget money earners.

It wasn't until 1999, when the artistic worth of The Texas Chain Saw Ma.s.sacre had been accepted, that the BBFC pa.s.sed the film uncut. With the tabloid press headlines well in the past, critics now applauded the "bloodless depiction of violence", as they had done with John Carpenter's Halloween (1978). Its historical relevance was reappraised, acknowledging its part in laying the foundations for the terrors that had already followed. Hooper's ingenuity originated several key elements in the slasher genre, princ.i.p.ally the use of the power tool as a murder weapon and the portrayal of the faceless killer. While the female protagonists were subjected to s.a.d.i.s.tic violence, the spotlight was thrown to the final girl scenario, the chaste heroine who would become the sole survivor and outlive her male counterparts. Ridley Scott paid tribute to the film in its inspiration for Alien (1979), while Alexandre Aja has been keen to extol on its impact during the early years of his career.

Five films would follow, three of which were sequels, The Texas Chainsaw Ma.s.sacre II (1986), Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Ma.s.sacre III (1990) and The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Ma.s.sacre (1994), which is also known as The Texas Chainsaw Ma.s.sacre: The Next Generation; and more recently, a reimagining of the original, The Texas Chainsaw Ma.s.sacre (2003), and the prequel The Texas Chainsaw Ma.s.sacre: The Beginning (2006). A video game was created for the Atari 2600 shortly after the film's release to video in 1982. Its violent nature caused considerable controversy and many stores refused to carry it. It wasn't until 1991, at what was a low point in comic book horror, that Nothstar Comics published "Leatherface". Avatar released their version of a comic inspired by the film in 2005, and in 2006 the DC Comics imprint Wildstorm started publis.h.i.+ng a series of stories using Hooper's premise.

THE THIRTEEN WOMEN were once members of an exclusive girl's college sorority. Although they have gone on to new lives they have kept in touch and now write to a clairvoyant swami (C. Henry Gordon). He sends their horoscopes by mail, each strangely predicting a terrible death. Little do the women know the clairvoyant is under the hypnotic influence of his secretary, the desirable mixed-race Eurasian Ursula Georgi (Myrna Loy). In the days when she was a student at the college, she was rejected by the sisterhood because of her mixed race. This sensuous creature now plots her revenge. The mysterious letters continue to be delivered, with the women completely unaware they are being manipulated by the person they once wronged. The doom-laden prophesies inevitably begin to become true. Some of the women band together, led by Laura Stanhope (Irene Dunne), to try to stop the sinister swami, not knowing they are the victims of a meticulously crafted plan. There will be those in the group who are deceived into killing themselves or each other. The clairvoyant also falls quite literally into Ursula's grasp; he commits suicide before an oncoming subway train. At the last, only Laura remains alive. She also has fears concerning her horoscope, but hers is somewhat different, as it predicts the death of her son Bobby before his birthday in three days' time. Ursula resorts to more direct measures to ensure Bobby's death comes to pa.s.s. With the help of Laura's chauffeur, she tries to kill young Bobby first with poisoned candy and then an explosive ball, but to no avail. Laura realizes someone other than the swami is behind these deaths so she now gets in touch with the local police. Sergeant Barry Clive, who is already familiar with the case, gets involved and is determined to keep Bobby from harm. As the film charges to a climax so befitting these years, the detective catches the dagger-wielding Ursula as she accosts Laura on a train. She flees to the rear carriage before falling to her own death.

George Archainbaud's Thirteen Women was also known as Hypnose, and sadly only fifty-nine of the original seventy-three minutes are still known to exist of this cla.s.sic psychological thriller, which contains so many hallmarks of the later sorority slasher. On its release, not even the beautiful art deco design, or the intensity in Max Steiner's score, or the low-cut clinging gowns could a.s.suage the poor reviews. This forced the legendary producer David O. Selznick to take the film out of the theatres and edit fourteen minutes, giving the version that we have today such an unsatisfactorily sudden ending.

This occult-laced feature was based on the scandalous novel of the same name by Tiffany Ellsworth Thayer, who himself had been an actor and was also the co-founder of the Fortean Society in 1931. Archainbaud's film was the Psycho (1960) of its day and in its relish to dispatch its cast one by one in a succession of highly stylized death scenes, it provides an interesting precursor to And Then There Were None (1945) and the slashers of the 1980s. While the film avoided the lesbianism of the novel, Ursula's s.e.xuality was used to suitable effect, luxuriating in her role as the femme fatale. In the next few years, The Hays Code would soon put an end to such lurid displays along with the story's obvious racist slant. Thirteen Women was relatively unique in its exploration of inherent racism, which, given the fact the industry was at this time p.r.o.ne to ridiculous racial stereotypes, was an appreciably bold move.

FOUR ATTRACTIVE YOUNG girls are on their way to a camping holiday in a wooded Lakeland area. After a lengthy skinny dipping session in the lake, they prepare to continue on their journey, but their car breaks down. A young farmer's boy by the name of Billy arrives, and offers to lend a helping hand. He then invites them to stay at the isolated farmhouse where he lives with his father. Little do the girls know, young Billy had interrupted his leisurely day of fis.h.i.+ng to spy on them as they splashed around in the cooling lake. His father, who is a butcher famed in the locality for his sausage meat, is furious when he arrives home with the four girls. He reminds his son, "You know what happens to you when you get around women." A little more than twenty minutes into the film, the four girls each meet with a grisly demise, one in a bath, another stabbed in the back, one shot and the other decapitated by a hatchet.

The following morning Billy is unable to remember anything of his murderous frenzy and this isn't the first time this has happened. His father solemnly lectures him, telling his son he should have listened. In an attempt