Actually, I’d like to take this opportunity to talk briefly about the history of the slasher movie leading up to Totally Killer, a time-travel comedy horror that dropped on Amazon Prime this past Halloween season, which I only got around to watching last week.
After Halloween slew at the box office in 1978, the early 80s saw a glut of slasher movies all trying to replicate its critical and commercial success, mostly without much of either. 1980 to 1983 in particular saw the releases of such timeless classics as Prom Night, The Slumber Party Massacre, Sleepaway Camp, The Prowler, My Bloody Valentine, The Boogey Man, Sweet Sixteen, Student Bodies, Maniac, Pieces, The Burning, Final Exam, The House on Sorority Row, Halloween II, Don’t Answer the Phone, He Knows You’re Alone, and – yes – Friday the 13th Parts 1 through 3 (among many others, only a small fraction of which I’ve taken the time to watch). Most of these were cheap imitations, shameless rip-offs, and desperate cash-ins that were slapped together on shoestring budgets with scripts that had been written over a weekend on a bit of toilet paper, which is why most of them are set in either the director’s house or the woods (Friday the 13th famously entered production on the basis of a movie poster). The 80s became so notorious for generating cheap, tasteless B-movies about masked killers carving up half-naked teenage girls that it became a recurring joke in the early years of Calvin and Hobbes, with six-year-old Calvin sneaking such films as Vampire Sorority Babes and Cuisinart Murderer of Central High (for the record… I would totally watch Cuisinart Murderer of Central High). By 1984, the genre had become so tired and saturated that audiences began to check out.
Continue reading Let’s Talk About: Totally Killer
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